Entrance Antiphon I call upon you, God, for you will answer me; bend your ear and hear my prayer. Guard me as the pupil of your eye; hide me in the shade of your wings.
The Collect Grant, we beseech you, merciful Lord, to your faithful people pardon and peace, that they may be cleansed from all their sins, and serve you with a quiet mind; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
The Readings Missal (St Mark’s) Isaiah 53:10-11 Psalm 33:4-5, 18-20, 22 Hebrews 4:14-16 Mark 10:35-45
One of the problems we can often run into when we read the Bible, and I hope we all do read the Bible, regularly, is knowing how to read it. By that I mean, how do we interpret and understand what we read. How do we know, for example, what to take literally and what to take figuratively? One of the problems we can have in applying Jesus’ teaching to ourselves and in our lives, is that, at times, Jesus uses hyperbole to really emphasise a point. So how are we to interpret those things? And I think too that sometimes, we can be guilty of exploiting this difficulty for our own ends; we can of interpret things figuratively rather than literally, simply in order to make them easier to apply to ourselves and the way we live our lives. Perhaps even to excuse what we do when that’s contrary to Jesus’ teachings and commands. And this morning’s Gospel is a good example, I think, of this kind of problem.
I’m sure we’re all familiar with this Gospel story; a rich young man asks Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life, and Jesus tells him to sell his possessions, give to the poor and follow him. But being very rich, the young man is unwilling to do this and goes away unhappy. And in response Jesus says that,
“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.”
That’s an example of Jesus’ using hyperbole to emphasise a point. It’s quite obviously impossible for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle. But why put it in these terms? If it’s impossible for the rich to enter the kingdom of God, why not just say so plainly. And not only that, in spite of having just told this rich young man that the way to inherit eternal life was to sell his possessions and give to the poor, in answer to the question, “Who can be saved?” Jesus goes on to say that it’s impossible for anyone to be saved,
“…but not with God. For all things are possible with God.”
So how are we to interpret what Jesus is saying here, because he uses hyperbole rather than plain language, and what he says seems contradictory. Do this to inherit eternal life, but it’s impossible for the rich to enter the kingdom of heaven, and for anyone to be saved.
Some people have tried to make sense of this Gospel story is by saying that when Jesus speaks about ‘the eye of needle’, he isn’t talking about a sewing needle. They say that the eye of a needle referred to here is a small gate in a city wall. Camels, being large animals often used to carry goods, couldn’t go through such a small gate without great difficulty. But it wasn’t impossible. A camel could go through this eye of a needle but not unless it was unloaded of its baggage and made to bend down low. The point being that, just as a camel could go through the eye of a needle once it had been unburdened of its earthly goods and bent down low, so a person can enter the kingdom of heaven in a similar way, by laying aside earthly riches and bowing down before God.
Actually, there is no historical evidence to suggest that there was a small gate known as the eye of a needle. But nevertheless, reading this Gospel story in this way does, I think, probably give us a better understanding of what Jesus is really trying to say here. If we take this story as a whole, and we always must do that if we ever hope to understand these stories, Jesus doesn’t appear to be saying that it’s earthly riches per se that make it impossible for a person to enter the kingdom of God. What Jesus really seems to be saying here is that it’s our attachment to earthly riches that make it impossible for us to enter the kingdom of God. And that is in keeping with what we read more widely in scripture.
One of the most well-known sayings from scripture is that money is the root of all evil. Actually, there is no such saying in scripture. What scripture says is,
‘…those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.’
So it’s the love of money, and the love of earthly riches generally that is the problem. It’s our desire to be rich in earthly terms that makes us get our priorities wrong. We want the good life now and in trying to achieve that, we jeopardise our chances of eternal life. We put finance before faith, lucre before love, greed before God. But what scripture tells us is that, if we can free ourselves of our greed for and attachment to earthly riches, we’ll at least be on the right path, the path that leads to eternal life.
Think of the story of Zaccheus, a chief tax-collector and another rich man. But unlike the rich young man in this morning’s Gospel, after he met and spoke to Jesus, Zaccheus changed his ways. He said,
“Behold, Lord, half of my goods I give to the poor. And if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold.” And Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house…”
And this is what Jesus is saying in this morning’s Gospel. It’s not about giving away or even selling everything we own and making ourselves poor in earthly terms, It’s about getting our priorities right. The way to inherit eternal life is to put God first and have concern for our neighbour. It’s to make doing the things that lead to eternal life more important than doing the things that make us rich on earth.
But that still leaves us with what Jesus says about the impossibility of being saved. What are we to make of that?
Really, what Jesus is saying to us here is that we must accept that, whatever we do, we’ll always fall short of what we need to do in order to be saved. So we can’t achieve our own salvation. We can’t inherit eternal life and enter God’s heavenly kingdom solely through our own efforts. Ultimately, we have to rely on the love and mercy of God for our salvation. And so, as well as having to be prepared to give up our attachment to earthly riches, we also have to give up something that’s perhaps even more precious to us; we have to give up our pride and humble ourselves before God.
In many ways, our love of earthly riches is a sign of our pride. Because isn’t it true that people very often look down on those who have less in earthly terms than they do? We see it as a sign of our importance if we have more money than others, a bigger house, or even a bigger car than others, if we live in a better part of town than others, have a better job than others or more qualifications than others. But does having any of those things make us better human beings than those who don’t have them or don’t have so much or so many of them? No, it doesn’t. And does having any of those things make us better Christians than others? No, it doesn’t. And yet, in the Church, it’s usually those who do have these things who look down on those in the Church who don’t have them.
Who think that they’re better Christians than others, more worthy or more important in God’s eyes than others, simply on account of their earthly wealth and status.
But how we see ourselves is completely irrelevant when it comes to salvation. The only way we can be better than others that matters at all in those terms is by being good enough in God’s eyes and, as we see in scripture generally, and as we read in this morning’s Gospel, earthly riches are not only irrelevant when it comes to that, they can actually be a hindrance to us because we can become so focussed on getting them and so attached to them if we’ve got them, that they become more important to us than God and our neighbour.
So in this morning’s Gospel, Jesus is not saying that there’s anything wrong with wealth in itself. And in fact as we all know, we can do a lot of good with our wealth if we have it. What he is saying is that we can’t allow the pursuit of earthly riches and the desire to keep hold of those riches if we have them to prevent us from following him. We can’t allow earthly riches to become more important to us than God and the well-being of our neighbour. And we have to remember that being rich in earthly terms is no guarantee of salvation; earthly riches are irrelevant and, if we get our priorities wrong, they can even be a hindrance when it comes to inheriting eternal life. We have to remember that however good or important we might think we are, none of us are good enough to inherit eternal life through our own efforts. We have to rely on God to grant us that and so we have to lose the pride that’s so precious to us and humbly ask God that, in his love and mercy, he’ll forgive our faults and failings and allow to enter his kingdom.
Amen.
Propers for the 28th Sunday of Ordinary Time (Trinity 20) 13th October 2024
Entrance Antiphon If you, O Lord, laid bare our guilt, who could endure it? But you are forgiving, God of Israel.
The Collect God, the giver of life, whose Holy Spirit wells up within your Church: by the Spirit’s gifts equip us to live the gospel of Christ and make us eager to do your will, that we may share with the whole creation the joys of eternal life; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
The Readings Missal (St Mark’s) Wisdom 7:7-11 Psalm 90:12-17 Hebrews 4:12-13 Mark 10:17-30
Today we’re keeping our annual Harvest Thanksgiving service, or Harvest Festival as it used to be called. I know that these services tend to be either loved or loathed and people have their own good reasons for which side of that particular fence they sit on. But I don’t want to talk about that today or about what people’s reasons might be for what they think about Harvest services. Whatever we, personally, think about Harvest services, one very good thing about them is that they do draw our minds towards giving thanks to God. Specifically for the food we eat, but hopefully in more general terms too. So what I want to do this morning is say something about thanksgiving in general terms. About why we should give thanks to God and also how we should give thanks to God.
None of us should struggle when it comes to finding reasons why we should give thanks to God. We only need to pay attention to the words of our Sunday services to find plenty of reasons to do that. As we go through the liturgy we thank God for his glory, we thank him for his word as revealed to us in scripture, in the Eucharistic Prayer, the Thanksgiving Prayer which is what that prayer is, we thank God for many things and most especially for sending his Son into the world to save us from sin and bring us to eternal life, and we thank God for receiving the sacrament of Holy Communion. In the Creed we’re reminded that God is both our creator and the creator of all things and so, in turn, that should remind us that we have God to thank for our lives and all we need to sustain life. But as many and as important as all these things are, they don’t adequately cover our need to give thanks to God.
We believe that God is the creator and sustainer of life. And so we believe that God is with us and at work in our lives at every moment of our lives. So when it comes to giving thanks to God, we have to think about our lives and what’s happening in our lives that we need to give thanks for. And that includes both the good things that bring us happiness and the bad that we might learn some valuable lesson from, perhaps something that helps us grow in faith, or strengthens us for some future challenge or makes us more understanding of others. Giving thanks for bad things is very difficult to do when we’re going through them, but if we think about these things, we often can see that some good has come from those bad experiences and that, in the end, they are things we can actually be thankful for.
To do this though means that we have to think about our lives and what happens to us in our lives through the eyes of faith. That means spending some time, perhaps towards the end of each day, thinking about the day, reflecting on the events of the day and contemplating how God might have been active in our lives through those events and what he might have been trying to say to us through them. Doing this kind of exercise really can help us in more ways than one when it comes to giving thanks to God.
One way this kind of reflection and contemplation on the day can help us is through what it adds to our prayer. I think sometimes our prayers can amount to not much more than a wish list, that is, we tell God what we want and ask him to give it to us. By that I don’t mean “Please Lord, let me win the lottery” or anything like that (although I have actually been given prayer requests for that very thing!). What I mean is we tend to pray for things like Church unity, peace in the world, health for ourselves, our family and friends, the recovery of the sick and the repose of the souls of the departed. Now there’s nothing wrong with praying for any of those things and they are things we should be praying for. But there should be much more to prayer than that.
One way of thinking about prayer, which some of you may have heard of, is by thinking about ACTS of Prayer where ACTS is an acronym for Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving and Supplication. And the idea is that, when we pray, we start with Adoration, in other words, prayer begins as worship, in praise of God. Then we move to Confession. That in itself tells us that before we pray, we have to think about the events of the day and about all we’ve done during the day and be honest enough to admit and confess our sins, all the things we’ve done during the day that we shouldn’t have done and the things we’ve not done during the day that we should have done. Then we move to Thanksgiving and again to give thanks to God for the events of the day requires us to give some though to the events of the day. And only after we’ve worshipped God, confessed our sins to God and given thanks to God do we move on to Supplication, of humbly asking God to grant us what we need or want. So that wish list that so much of prayer tends to be made up of is actually the very last thing we should thinking about when we pray. So thinking about the day, reflecting on the events of the day and contemplating what God has been doing for us and through us and trying to teach us during the day helps our prayer and it helps us to understand what we need to thank God for.
One of the great issues with thankfulness though is the genuineness of the feeling, how heartfelt is our thankfulness. There’s a big difference between saying “Thank-you” and being genuinely thankful and I’m sure we all know that. How often, for example, have we given a gift to someone, and they’ve said “Thank-you”, but we’ve been able to tell, perhaps through their tone of voice or their body language, that it’s just been said out of politeness, they’ve not really meant it. And so, when we give thanks to God, we need to feel genuinely thankful. In our liturgies we use words to express what God has done for us and our thanks to God for those things, but the reality of what God has done for us and does do for us for us is beyond words. He gives us life and sustains our lives and has offered us eternal life how can we adequately put those things into words? How can we adequately express our thanks for those things in mere words? If we are truly thankful to God for all he has done for us and still does for us we can’t. So if we are really, truly thankful to God we can’t leave our thanksgiving at mere words.
Another thing we all know is that true thankfulness is best shown in action rather than words. We can say “Thank-you” to those who’ve been good to us, and so we should, but if we are really thankful for what they’ve done, we inevitably want to show that by doing something good for them in return. But how can we do that for God? God is complete in himself; he needs nothing so what can we give him in return for his goodness towards us to show how thankful we are?
One thing we can do is just what we’re doing here this morning. We can show our thankfulness to God by making the effort to come to church and worship him. But we can also show our thanks to God by doing what he asks us to do, and he especially asks us to listen to his Son Jesus Christ and live our lives according to what we hear from Jesus. And what we hear from Jesus is that we should love God with all our heart and soul and mind and love our neighbour as much as we love ourselves. So Just like our thankfulness towards God, our love of God has to be more than just words, it has to be something we really feel, from the heart. And our love of others has to be more than just words too. We don’t simply talk about wanting good things for ourselves do we? We really do want them, and we do things to make sure we have those good things. And so if we really do love our neighbours as we love ourselves, we won’t simply wish them well, we’ll actually do something about it, we’ll treat them well and make sure they have good things too.
And in doing that we’ll show our true thankfulness to God by giving something back to God for all he’s given and gives to us. Because, in speaking about the good we do to others, didn’t Jesus say,
‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you did it to me.’
So today we celebrate our Harvest Thanksgiving service, and we give thanks to God for the food we eat. We show our love of our neighbours too by giving some the food we have to those who have less than us. But what we do today is only a small part of the thanks we should give to God and of the love we’re called to show towards our neighbours. So, whatever we think about Harvest services, whether we love them our loathe them, let’s all use this Harvest Thanksgiving as a reminder of just how much we have to thank God for; of the genuineness of the thankfulness towards God we should feel, and of our need to show that depth of thankfulness through action in our lives.
Amen.
Propers for Harvest Thanksgiving, 6th October 2024
Entrance Antiphon The earth has yielded its fruit, for the Lord our God has blessed us.
The Collect Eternal God, you crown the year with your goodness, and you give us the fruits of the earth in their season: grant that we may use them to your glory, for the relief of those in need and for our own well-being; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
The Readings Missal (St Mark’s) Joel 2:21-24, 26-27 Psalm 67 1 Timothy 6:6-11, 17-19 Luke 12:15-21
RCL (St Gabriel’s) Joel 2:21-27 Psalm 126 1 Timothy 6:6-10 Matthew 6:25-33
Parish Church of St Mark Chadderton 