When I was growing up, virtually every house I went in, whether it was of family or friends, had something in common, and that was their vacuum cleaner, and their washing machine if they had one, were both made by Hoover. I believe that originally, Hoover made electric motors and only entered the domestic appliance market as an outlet for their motors. But nevertheless they were incredibly successful at selling those appliances.

There were at least two very good reasons for that. First of all, their products were very good. Secondly, their workforce had it drummed into them just how good those products were. One member of my family and a very good family friend had both worked for Hoover at one time and they told me that at company sales conventions and the like, at some point they’d all be up on their feet singing Hoover’s advertising slogan:

All the dirt, all the grit,

Hoover gets it every bit;

for it Beats as it Sweeps as it Cleans.

The intended result was to produce a highly motivated workforce who really believed in the company’s products. And it must have worked because Hoover were very successful at selling their products. So successful in fact that, even today when they might never have owned a  vacuum cleaner made by Hoover, people still talk about ‘Getting the Hoover out’ and of using their vacuum cleaner as ‘Hoovering up.’ 

Hoover became very successful at selling domestic appliances through a combination of manufacturing good products and creating a motivated team who really believed in those products. And we can apply those same ideas to the Church and its mission.

First of all, what is our product, what is it that we’re trying to sell? Well it’s not eternal life because it’s not in our power to grant that. The gift of eternal life is one that only God can give to people. What we do have though, is the instruction book on how to achieve eternal life. The Gospel is our product and that’s what we’re trying to sell to people. We could liken it, I suppose, to a search for buried treasure. We can’t give the treasure to people ourselves because don’t have the treasure, God has it. But we know how to find it because Jesus has given us the map. So what we can do is let people have copies of the map.

If you think about, this is something that everyone should want. No matter how successful we are in worldly terms, no matter how good our life is or how happy we are with life, we can all be brought crashing down to earth very quickly with the certain knowledge that one day it will all come to an end because we’re all going to die and there’s absolutely nothing that we can do to alter that fact. So something that shows people how they can live forever should be the most sought-after thing on earth. So why aren’t people banging on church doors pleading with us to be let in and pleading with us to share this wonderful thing we call the Gospel with them?

I think one very good reason for that is that our product is so unbelievably good that a lot of people don’t believe it. There’s a well-known saying in advertising isn’t there, especially when it comes to advertising get-rich-quick financial schemes, and that is,

“If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is!” 

And I think for a lot of people, eternal life is something that probably does sound too good to be true.

Perhaps another reason that people aren’t stampeding to the Church to get their hands on what we’re selling is that it’s not a get-rich-quick scheme. What we’re selling isn’t something you simply buy into and ‘Hey presto’ you’re going to live forever. It’s not that kind of product. It’s not really like a vacuum cleaner either. That made life a lot easier for people because before they had vacuum cleaners when people wanted to clean their rugs and carpets they had to take them up, hang them over a washing line and beat the living daylights out of them with a paddle, whereas all you have to do with a vacuum cleaner is plug it in, switch it on and push it round. The Gospel though is something you have to study, to learn how to use and then put to use every single day of your life if you’re going to get the reward it promises. It’s like searching for buried treasure, the doubloons don’t simply fall into your lap because you’ve got the map, you have to get out there, follow the map to where the treasure can be found and then dig for it. So even if you have the Gospel, there’s still a lot of work to do if it’s going to work for you. And that brings us to another reason, perhaps the main reason, that people aren’t falling over themselves to get hold of what we’re trying to sell them.

To put it in worldly terms, the Church has a product, the Gospel. We are the people asked to sell the Gospel to those who don’t yet have it, and to offer on-going support in helping people understand and use the Gospel so that it has it’s desired end result, i.e. the people who use the Gospel are raised to eternal life. The world calls it advertising and sales and customer support; we call it mission and evangelism, and discipleship. But we’re struggling to sell this product we have. The quality of the product isn’t in question, how can it be, it was made by God and given to us by God’s own Son. So if it’s not the product that’s at fault then surely we have to look at the team who are doing the advertising and selling and customer support. We have to look at our own motivation and to ask, for all our fine words, whether or not we really do believe in what we’re trying to sell to other people.

We know that being a Christian isn’t easy, but Jesus never said it was going to be easy, quite the contrary in fact. And because it’s not easy, and because living according to the Gospel is something we have to try to do at all times throughout each and every day of our lives, it’s understandable that we get things wrong sometimes. But I don’t think that’s really the problem. The problem is when we do things knowing them to be contrary to the Gospel but then try to excuse those things or shrug them off as though they don’t matter. And that is a very big problem for the Church and for its mission, evangelism and discipleship.

One of the most exasperating things I find about being a parish priest is having to deal with petty squabbles between members of the same congregation. And they are almost always petty, extremely petty because very often they’re about nothing more than people stamping their feet and spitting their dummies out simply because they want their own way and can’t have it. Perhaps the thing that makes me most angry as a parish priest is losing people from a congregation because of the un-Christian behaviour and attitudes of another Church member, whether that be an archbishop or the people sitting alongside one another in the pews. All these things stem from a failure of discipleship, a failure of Christians to act in accordance with the teachings of Christ as revealed in the Gospel, the very thing we’re trying to sell to others. And these things make it so difficult for the Church, for us, to engage in mission and evangelism because how can we sell the Gospel to others if we in the Church don’t use it ourselves? How can we convince people that we really believe in the Gospel we’re trying to sell if we ourselves act as though we don’t really believe in it?

When we do these things, what are we but blind guides, asking people to become disciples of Christ when our own example of discipleship is so far from being Christ-like. Is it any wonder that people see what we do and accuse us of hypocrisy? Why should anyone buy what we’re trying to sell when our voices say “We believe” but our actions say otherwise? And if our actions show that we don’t really believe in the Gospel, how can we expect and why should we expect anyone else to believe us when we try to proclaim the Gospel?

So what can we do to show that we really do believe and help others to believe through us? In one sense there isn’t very much we can do if the one who’s acted in ways contrary to the Gospel is a bishop or an archbishop except to tell other people that this is not the way of Christ and to pray for those concerned. But when we’re guilty of un-Christian behaviour and are involved in disputes because of un-Christian behaviour  we can always start by trying to see things through the other person’s eyes and simply say  to them “I’m sorry.” And if we think that we’re the one who’s been sinned against, we might want to remember that we are all sinners, think about the Lord’s Prayer and remember that God will forgive us only to the extent that we are willing to forgive others. So we might want to be a little more forgiving. And if we’re ever tempted to stop coming to church because of the words or actions of another Church member, we might want to remember why we come to church in the first place. We come to church to worship God and to give thanks to him for his love towards us. Is it God’s fault if someone else is less loving towards us than they should be? No, it’s not, so why should we stop worshipping God because of the un-Christian behaviour of another person? And if we think everyone else in the congregation is a hypocrite, so what. That doesn’t mean we have to be one too does it?

In the Gospel we have a great product. If we, at least, can be those humble, loving, forgiving, thankful, worshipping people the Gospel calls us to be then we’ll be showing that we, at least, really do believe in the Gospel we’re trying to sell and perhaps we. at least, might be able to sell it to someone else.

Amen.

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Propers for the 8th Sunday of Ordinary Time 2nd March 2025

Entrance Antiphon
The Lord became my protector.
He brought me out to a place of freedom;
he saved me because he delighted in me.

The Collect
Grant us, O Lord, we pray,
that the course of our world
may be directed by your peaceful rule
and that your Church may rejoice,
untroubled in her devotion.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever.
Amen.

The Readings
Ecclesiasticus 27:4-7
Psalm 92:2-3, 13-16
1 Corinthians 15:54-58
Luke 6:39-45

Prayer after Communion
Nourished by your saving gifts,
we beseech your mercy, Lord,
that by this same Sacrament
with which you feed us in the present age,
you may make us partakers of life eternal.
Through Christ our Lord.

There can’t be any doubt that one of the most controversial films ever made is Monty Python’s Life of Brian. The film is well over 40 years old now but no doubt some of you at least will remember the enormous arguments it caused when it was first released in 1979. Many people saw the film as an attack on Christianity, on the teachings of Christ, and even on Christ himself. The film was condemned as offensive and blasphemous, and it was banned in many countries and by many local councils in this country. All that is, as I say, well over 40 years ago now but I know that there are still people who haven’t seen the film and won’t watch it because of what was said about it all those years ago.  

But whatever your own opinions on this film are, I would say that while it may be offensive in some respects and may be in very bad taste in certain parts, it is not blasphemous because there is nothing in the film at all which ridicules Jesus Christ or his teachings. There is however an awful lot in the film about how stupid organised religion and individual believers  can be, about the appalling things that organised religion can lead to, and individual believers can do in the name of their religion. As the late Python member Terry Jones said;  

“We always stated Brian wasn’t blasphemous, but heretical. It wasn’t about what Christ was saying, but about the people who followed him – the ones who for the next 2,000 years would torture and kill each other because they couldn’t agree on what he was saying about peace and love.” 

In fact, one of today’s leading theologians, Richard Burridge, sees the Life of Brian as a tribute to Jesus because the Python’s decided that they couldn’t make a joke out of him or his teaching and that that, in the film, the only person who rises above the general stupidity and appalling behaviour on show, is Jesus himself.  

Whatever people thought about the Life of Brian, there’s no doubt that one of the most controversial scenes in the film, and certainly the one that probably shows the worst taste, is the crucifixion scene at the end of the film where Brian and many others, have been condemned to death and, while they hang, dying, on crosses, sing  Always look on the bright side of life.  

I’d be surprised if anyone doesn’t know that song or hasn’t heard it at one time or another. It’s actually become a theme tune of sorts for people going through hard times. During the Falklands War, for example, it was sung by the crew of HMS Sheffield as they waited to be rescued from their sinking ship. I’m sure too, that at least some of you will have heard it played, and maybe even sung, at funerals. And of all the things that I think we can learn from the Life of Brian, and I do think that there are many things we could, and should, learn from this film, perhaps this very tasteless song is one of the most important things that we can take from it. 

This morning, we read part of St Paul’s great teaching on the Resurrection, and what it means for us as Christians. There’s no doubt that, as St Paul says, if Christ was not raised from the dead, our faith is in vain. What is the point of being a Christian if this life is all there is? If there is no resurrection we might as well follow another way of life, another faith, a philosophy, or simply eat, drink and be merry because tomorrow, we die. But where is the hope in that? What’s the point in life then? And if this life is all there is, how can we look on the bright side when this life draws towards its end?  

In this chapter of his First Letter to the Corinthians, St Paul address some of these questions and says,   

^‘But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.’ 

And if we believe that, then we can always look on the bright side of life, even when this life draws towards its end. We can, in fact, and as the song says, always look on the bright side of death because if we truly believe that Christ is risen then we can still have hope in the face of death. In fact, we can have even more than hope, we can have assurance that the end of this life is not the end of our life because we have Christ’s assurance that, like him, we will rise to eternal life too.  

Having that faith though, doesn’t mean that we have to take death lightly. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t grieve when someone we know, and love dies. That’s a perfectly natural human thing to do and even Jesus did that. Jesus whose faith could work miracles and who knew better than anyone that the end of this life is the necessary precursor to eternal life, wept at the grave of his friend, Lazarus. So looking on the bright side of life, or death, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t grieve for people when they die. And whilst we might have faith that we’ll rise to eternal life, we don’t know what that life will be like, whereas we do know what this life is like. So when we die, we’re venturing into the unknown and, as I said in my sermon  last week, the unknown frightens us. We know that we’re not in control of what happens to us after the end of our earthly lives either and not being in control frightens us too. But perhaps what also frightens us is that fact that we know we haven’t always done the things we should have done as disciples of Christ. We know that we haven’t always done the things that Jesus told us we should do if we want to be raised with him to eternal life.  

There are two sides to our faith really. On the one hand it holds out to us this wonderful hope of the resurrection to eternal life, but on the other hand, it makes demands on us that we have to meet if we want that hope to be fulfilled. But I think we’re all rather keener on the hope of our faith than we are on fulfilling the demands of faith.  

Every time we come to church to receive the sacrament of Holy Communion, we’re asked to call to mind and confess our sins. We confess that we’ve sinned,  

‘…in thought and word and deed, through negligence, through weakness, 

through our own deliberate fault.’ 

We might beat our breast at that point and then we say that,  

‘We are truly sorry and repent of all our sins.’ 

But are we really sorry? Do we really repent? Do we really make our best effort not to do again the things we’ve just confessed to doing, or do we have to call to mind and confess the same things again, and again? If we’re honest, isn’t it very often, probably usually, the latter? And yet we still want to have that great hope of resurrection to eternal life, in spite of our failure, our inability or our unwillingness to live in the way that will make that hope more certain. To put it in terms of Monty Python’s Life of Brian, we all have tendency to act in the stupid, appalling ways the characters in that film act, but then, like those characters, we still want to sing Always look on the bright side of life, as we hang on the cross.  

I said a little earlier that I think this film has a lot to teach us and I think, above all, it is just this point. We proclaim our faith in Jesus Christ and yet, both as individuals and as a Church, we act in ways that are completely contrary to the things he taught. We talk about love and peace, mercy and forgiveness, tolerance and understanding. We talk about loving our neighbour just as much as we love ourselves and loving our enemies as much as we love our friends. We talk about all these things. And yet how often do we just talk about them without actually doing them? We talk so often about these things and yet we so often fail to show them in our dealings with other people, perhaps especially towards those who are different to us in some way. Even to those who share our faith but not our denomination, our tradition or our parish church. We do these things, and then we blame everybody else because it’s never us who’ve got things wrong, always them. We know Christ said we shouldn’t these things, but we do them anyway. We know the will of the Father is that we’re all raised to eternal life, and we know that Christ came to teach us what we need to do to inherit eternal life. We know that only those who do the Father’s will can be raised to eternal life, and yet we still do all these things. We seem to want eternal life without necessarily having to do what, or at least all, Christ said we need to do to gain it.  

At its heart, Monty Python’s Life of Brian is a story of mistaken identity; Brian is mistaken for the Messiah and people follow him because of that. And when I see and think about what we do as individuals and as a Church at times, I sometimes think we might as well be following someone called Brian because we certainly don’t appear to be taking very much notice of Jesus Christ. But if we always want to look on the bright side of life, and especially if we want to be able to look on the bright side of death, we can’t make that mistake.  

We live in hope of the resurrection to eternal life and our faith tells us that this is not a mistaken or a forlorn hope. Our faith tells us that we can do more that always look on the bright side of life, that we can also look on the bright side of death. But our faith also places some demands on us if we want that hope to be realised. So let’s make sure that we don’t just talk about our faith but live according to the teachings of Christ so that when our earthly lives are drawing to a close, we really still can always look on the bright side of life.  

Amen.  

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Propers for the 6th Sunday in Ordinary Time, 16th February 2025

Entrance Antiphon
Be my protector, O God, a mighty stronghold to save me.
For you are my rock, my stronghold!
Lead me, guide me, for the sake of your name.

The Collect
O God, who teach us that you abide in hearts that are just and true,
grant that we may be so fashioned by your grace as to become a dwelling pleasing to you.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever.
Amen.

The Readings
Jeremiah 17:5-8
Psalm: 1:1-4, 6
1 Corinthians 15:12, 16-20
Luke 6:17, 20-26

Prayer after Communion
Having fed upon these heavenly delights,
we pray, O Lord,
so that we may always long
for that food by which we truly live.
Through Christ our Lord.
Amen.