I don’t know if any of you have a favourite book of the Bible, one you read more than any other or just like more than any other, but if we were to do a survey of this question, it’d be no surprise whatsoever if the result came back that the favourite book of the Bible amongst you was the Book of Psalms. I do know that a lot of people love the Psalms and turn to them in times of trouble. I also know that the Book of Psalms is the most searched book of the Bible on many Bible websites. So it seems that, overall, the Book of Psalms is the most popular book in the Bible.

Whatever your own favourite book of the Bible is, it’s not really surprising that the Book of Psalms is the most popular. I’ve heard the Psalms described as the Scriptures in miniature because in the Psalms we find all the themes of the Scriptures. We find praise of God and prayer to God; judgement and salvation; prophecy and wisdom; exhortations to godly living and warnings against ungodly living; and we find every human emotion and condition of life described in the Psalms.

One of the things we read about the human condition in the Psalms is this, from Psalm 139:

For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. 

Psalm 139 speaks about God’s intimate knowledge of his people, in effect, it says that God knows us better than we know ourselves. But what does it mean to say that we’re ‘fearfully and wonderfully made’?

I’m sure we all know from the Scriptures that fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom and that fear of the Lord has nothing to do with being frightened of God but means to have a deep respect and reverence for God and his words and ways. So being made fearfully tells us that respect for God and his words and ways is something that we have within us as human beings.

But to be ‘wonderfully made’ is a little bit harder to understand because the word ‘wonderfully’ doesn’t really convey the meaning of the original Hebrew the Psalms were written in. The Hebrew word ‘pahlah’ which we translate as ‘wonderfully’ actually means ‘to distinguish’, to mark as separate and different.

To say that we’re ‘wonderfully made’ then is to say that we’re set apart, it’s to say that each one of us is made to be different. It implies too that each and every one of us has been set apart by God and given our own unique calling. So to say that we’re ‘fearfully and wonderfully made’ is to say that we all have within us a deep respect and reverence for God and his words and ways, and that we all have our own unique, God given, vocation in life.

Of course, as we’re all only too well aware, an awful lot of people don’t seem to have or show any respect or reverence for God or his words and ways. But that’s no doubt because they’re never taught or encouraged to. It’s one thing to have a gift or talent, a natural ability perhaps, but if people are never told they have it and are never taught or encouraged to use it, they may never even know they have it. Indeed, in our increasingly secular atheist society, many people are being actively encouraged not to have any respect or reverence for God and his words and ways at all. And because of that, they may never get to fulfil their own unique, God given vocation, the thing God created and called them to do because they don’t even know they have one.

Actually, very few of us know just what our God given vocation is but nevertheless, if we recognise that we are fearfully made, if we do have a deep respect and reverence for God and his words and ways, we may fulfil our God given vocation anyway, without even realising it, simply because we live out our lives fearfully. We have that deep respect and reverence for God and his words and ways, and we live out our lives accordingly. 

The Psalm tells us that we’re all fearfully and wonderfully made but today we give thank for and venerate someone who is a great example to us of just what it means to be fearfully and wonderfully made, and to live accordingly. Someone who did have and show deep respect and reverence for God and his words and ways, and fulfilled their God given vocation because of that, the Blessed Virgin Mary.

For many people, the fearful and wonderful making of Mary began with her Immaculate Conception, the teaching of the Church that, in order to be able to carry his Son in her womb, God granted Mary the special grace of being conceived without original sin. Not everyone agrees with this teaching because it’s not in the Scriptures and it also poses some awkward questions about Jesus and his Incarnation. But if we leave that to one side, there’s no doubt that Mary was fearfully and wonderfully made. Just think about her words to the archangel Gabriel when he told her that she’d been chosen to be the mother of God’s Son;

“Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.”

In those words we see that deep respect and reverence for God and his words and ways of someone who knew that they were fearfully made, and who acted accordingly. In those words we see someone who knew that they were wonderfully made, someone who knew they’d been called and set apart by God to fulfil a unique vocation. We could say that Mary was at least told what her vocation was, so at least she knew what God had wonderfully made her to do, but it wasn’t an easy thing she’d been called to do, and it was her fear of the Lord, her deep respect and reverence for God and his words and ways that allowed her to speak those words and fulfil the vocation she’d been wonderfully made to carry out. And through Mary’s response to being fearfully and wonderfully made, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ was fearfully and wonderfully made in human flesh.

Jesus, of course was someone else who knew that he’d been fearfully and wonderfully made. We see that in the story of him being found in the Jerusalem temple when he was just a young boy. We see it in his answer to Mary and Joseph who’d been frantically searching for him for days;

“Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be about my Father’s business?”

Ultimately, his Father’s business, the thing Jesus had been fearfully and wonderfully made to do, was to bring salvation to the world and open the way to eternal life for us, by giving up his life for the sins of the world.

Whilst the Church of England calls this the Feast day of the Blessed Virgin Mary, according to the Roman Catholic calendar, what we’re celebrating today is the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the bodily raising of Mary into heaven at the end of her earthly life. As with the Immaculate Conception, this isn’t something we find in Scripture; it’s a tradition of the Church that dates back to the 4^th Century. And so, as with the Immaculate Conception, this is a teaching of the Church that not everyone can agree with. But, however she was raised there, can we really doubt that Mary is in heaven? Can we really doubt that someone who fulfilled so well what God had fearfully and wonderfully made her for was rewarded with eternal life? Surely not, because if we do, what hope is there for the rest of us who may not fulfil, at least so well, what we were fearfully and wonderfully made for?

Mary is often called an example to Christians, and this is yet one more way that Mary can be an example to us. Like all of us, Mary was fearfully and wonderfully made. Like us Mary was given a deep respect and reverence for God and his words and ways. But unlike most people, Mary lived accordingly and so she was ready to accept her unique God given vocation when she knew what it was, and she was prepared to fulfil it, regardless of what that might mean for her personally. As a result, Mary has been raised to eternal life. And so it can be for us. If we can live fearfully, with deep respect and reverence for God and his words and ways, we can fulfil what we were wonderfully made for, our unique God given vocation. Whether we know what that is or not, we can fulfil it, whether we realise we’re doing it or not if only we can live our lives fearfully, as Mary did. If we can do that, can we doubt that, like Mary, we will be raised to eternal life too, through her son and God’s Son, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ?

Amen.  

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The Propers for the Blessed Virgin Mary (The Assumption) can be viewed here.

I’m sure we’ve all come across the saying, ‘Don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today’. I’m equally sure that we all know what that saying means – it’s a warning about something that can affect us all, and probably does affect us all at one time or another – complacency. It’s a warning about having a lack of urgency to do something, even when we know that what we have to do needs to be done and should be done.

I’m sure we know this saying, I’m sure we know what it means, and I’m also sure that this kind of complacency is something we’ve all suffered from at times. We’ve no doubt all been faced with a task that’s difficult or unpleasant, or one that we just don’t feel like doing for some reason, perhaps because we have other, easier and more pleasurable things to do, and so we don’t do what we know we should. We think ‘Oh well, I can always do it tomorrow’ and so we put it off. But, as another saying reminds us, ‘Tomorrow never comes’ and so what we’ve put off today until tomorrow, sometimes never gets done at all. 

One of the things we hear quite a lot about these days are ‘bucket lists’. I’m sure we all know what a ‘bucket list’ is, it’s a list of things we want to do or achieve during our lifetime before we ‘kick the bucket’. In other words, before we die. I don’t know how many of you have a ‘bucket list’. I know people often talk about things on their list but whether or not they actually have an itemised list of things they want to do before they die or not, I don’t really know. But whether we have a list like that or not, I’m sure we all have in the back of our minds at least, an idea about things we’d really like to do before we ‘kick the bucket’. And yet, how many people, as they come towards the end of their lives, can honestly say that they’ve done everything they wanted to do? How many of us can say that? Probably very few indeed, if any.

Next month, I’m going to fulfil one of the things on my ‘bucket list’ by going to the Passion Play in Oberammergau in Germany. For those who don’t know the story behind the Passion Play, it’s something that dates back to 1634 and an outbreak of bubonic plague in Bavaria. After half of the residents of Oberammergau had died from the plague, the remaining villagers vowed that if God spared them from the plague, they would perform a play, every 10 years, depicting the life and death of Jesus. After they’d made the vow, there were no more deaths and so the villagers fulfilled their vow and have continued to do so ever since.

The reason I mention this is because I first heard about the Oberammergau Passion Play from Fr Neville Ashton and over the years I knew him, it’s something he often said he’d love to see. So when I decided I was going to go to the 2020 play, I asked him if he wanted to come too, and he jumped at the chance. Unfortunately, the 2020 play was cancelled, ironically due to the outbreak of Covid-19, and postponed until this year. Sadly, Fr Neville died in the meantime and so he never did get to see the Passion Play. But, during his adult life alone, he had five opportunities to go to the Oberammergau Passion Play before 2020, and never went. And when he finally did decide to go, circumstances prevented him from going. So if that was an item on his ‘bucket list’ it’s one that he never managed to ‘tick-off’ even though he had a number of opportunities to.

I used that story as an example of how, by putting things off until tomorrow that we could do today, we might never get to do them. The example I used is one from everyday life because it’s an example of someone never getting to experience the pleasure of travelling to see a play because they let so many opportunities to do it pass by. But this is a problem that can affect our faith and our lives as Christians too.

Complacency in our faith and in our lives as Christians comes, I think, in two ways. The first comes with our response to that core teaching of the Reformation, justification by faith, the belief that we are justified, made right with God and saved, on account of our faith alone. There’s no doubt whatsoever that faith is essential to our salvation. Jesus said that the work of God is,

“…that you believe in him whom he has sent.” 

And the will of God is that,

“…everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”

But with faith in Jesus comes a commitment to live according to his commands and teachings. As he said at the end of that great body of teaching we know as the Sermon on the Mount,

“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock.”

And yet how many people do we know whose faith makes little if any difference to their lives? People whose commitment to faith in Jesus goes no further than coming to church from time to time? People who come to Church and yet, in their daily lives, act as though they’ve never heard of Jesus Christ nor know any of the things he taught? People who are, in fact, Christians in name only. And yet so many people like this think that they are right with God simply because they come to Church, or perhaps not even that, but think they’re right with God simply because they say, ‘I believe’? What is this other than complacency, a self-satisfied attitude that leads people to believe that they don’t have to do anything more than they want to do and are doing? But isn’t this the very attitude that Jesus condemns in the parable of the Rich Fool that we read last Sunday?

The second way complacency in our faith shows itself is related to our Gospel reading this morning.

The message of this morning’s Gospel is that we always need to be ready to do God’s will, to do the words that Jesus spoke. That we need to be ready, always, to spring into action to carry out Jesus’ teaching and commands, at a moment’s notice. And we need to be ready because we never know when Jesus will return. This was a teaching, a warning, that the first Christians very much took to heart; they really did believe that Jesus would return very soon, probably within their lifetimes. And so for them, there was no time to be complacent; they couldn’t afford to put off doing what Jesus commanded until tomorrow, they had to do it now. But Jesus said those words almost 2,000 years ago and we’re still waiting for him to return. So for us, that urgency has gone. We’re complacent because such a long time has passed since Jesus said we had to be ready at all times for his return that we always think we have more time. So if we miss an opportunity to put Jesus’ words into action today, it’s not too terrible is it because we can always do it tomorrow. But can we?

Our own experience should tell us that if we miss an opportunity to do something, there’s no guarantee that we’ll ever get another chance. Many of us, perhaps all of us, will have experienced that in some way during our lives. And it’s the same when it comes to putting our faith into practice. If we have an opportunity to do that today, and don’t, there’s no guarantee that we’ll get the chance to do it tomorrow. The particular circumstance may have changed by the time tomorrow comes. The person we could have helped today may have moved on by tomorrow. Perhaps we might not get the chance to do tomorrow what we failed to do today because Jesus does return and finds us unprepared and not busy carrying out his wishes. That may not happen during our lifetime, but one day our time on earth will come to an end and then, just as happened to Fr Neville Ashton who put off going to see the Passion Play in Oberammergau until it was too late, it’ll be too late for us to do tomorrow what we’d put off doing today. And in that case, and in the words of the parable in this morning’s Gospel, how will the master treat us? Will we be lashed, or even cut off with the unfaithful?

This morning’s Gospel makes it clear to us that, when it comes to living out our faith, we can’t afford to put off until tomorrow what we can do today. So what can we do to avoid the fate that Jesus tells us awaits the lazy and complacent who think they can do that? Perhaps one way we can work towards removing complacency from our lives as Christians is to treat every day as though it was our last. To treat every today as though we were sure to meet Jesus before tomorrow comes. Perhaps to see the events of each day as a ‘bucket list’. Not to make a list of what we need to do at the start of the day and then try to work through it during the day, we can’t do that because we never know what the day will bring, what opportunities the day will present us to be about the Lord’s business. But at the end of the day to look back on the events of the day, to think about what opportunities we had to put our faith into practice and then to ask ourselves a question; If I meet the Lord before tomorrow comes, is what I’ve done today enough to give me a place at the table at God’s heavenly banquet?

Amen.

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The Propers for the 19th Sunday of Ordinary Time (Trinity 8) can be viewed here.

One of the staples of conversation between people must be what we watch on the TV. I’m sure if we think about the conversations we have with people, we’d probably all agree that subject crops up regularly in them. In that respect then, I’m probably something of a disappointment when people speak to me because I don’t watch TV very often. I never watch soaps, I’m not really interested in football, I really don’t see the attraction in reality TV shows, or celebrity TV shows such as Strictly Come Dancing or I’m a Celebrity, Get me Out of Here, and I must be one of the very few people who’ve never, ever seen, nor has any interest in seeing, a single episode of Game of Thrones.   

Having said that, I do sometimes watch the TV. I have music channels on although in that case I tend to be listening to them rather than watching them, I watch films and I watch documentaries. And amongst the documentaries I do like to watch is one that seems to be known by various names but is actually called Autopsy, subtitled The Last Hours of… and completed by the name of the person whose death, and usually premature and often controversial death, is being investigated.   

I don’t know how many of you have ever watched this programme but if you have then, perhaps like me, you’ve been struck by a remarkable similarity between many of the people who’ve been the subject of the programme. They’re all famous people, celebrities. They’ve all been very successful in their chosen field, and they’ve gained the fame and wealth that success brings. And yet they’ve also usually been deeply flawed and unhappy people. Sometimes they’ve been people who’ve led very hedonistic lives and who’ve died prematurely because their lifestyle has eventually caught up with them. Sometimes they’ve been people who, despite their success and wealth, were wracked by self-doubt, by anxieties and insecurities and who’ve turned to substance abuse of one kind or another, and often multiple kinds of substance abuse, to help them through the bad times and who, in the end, have died prematurely because of the toll their abuse of tobacco, alcohol, various drugs, and even food, has taken on their bodies.  

It’s a programme, a documentary series, that I find very interesting but at the same time, I think it’s also quite sad and quite worrying too. It’s sad to see how so many people who, on the surface at least, had everything they ever dreamed of can be so troubled and unhappy. And it’s worrying because it shows that celebrity, success and the fame and wealth that go with it, far from being the stuff of dreams it’s usually portrayed to be by the media, can actually be the stuff of nightmares.  

It’s worrying to know that the celebrity lifestyle so many people aspire to and are encouraged to aspire to can actually be the cause of deep unhappiness and the tragedy of substance abuse, addictions and premature death.   

For a long time now, tobacco, has come with health warnings on the packaging because it’s known just how hazardous to health smoking can be. Alcohol usually comes with a warning not to drink more than a certain amount. Some drugs are illegal and those that are legal, whether they have to be prescribed by a medical professional or can be bought over the counter, come with warnings not to exceed a safe dosage. Even food comes with health warnings now in the form of advice on how much fat, salt, sugar and additives it contains. And yet, if the evidence of the TV programme Autopsy is to be taken seriously, one of the most hazardous things to our health and well-being is celebrity. And yet people are encouraged to want celebrity, or at least to aspire to a celebrity lifestyle, and this comes with no warning whatsoever about the potential dangers of such a lifestyle. Perhaps then, it would be a good idea to follow up any TV programme about celebrities, or any TV programme that encourages people to want a celebrity lifestyle, with an episode of Autopsy, just as a warning of what celebrity can do to people. Or perhaps people could just be pointed in the direction of this morning’s Gospel and the parable of the Rich Fool.   

What is this morning’s Gospel, the parable of the Rich Fool, other than a warning that success and wealth, at least in the earthly way we usually measure these things, don’t guarantee a happy life? What is it but a warning that earthly success and wealth don’t guarantee a long life? What is it but a warning that if we really do want to be happy and really do want long life, not necessarily a long earthly life which nothing can guarantee, but the long life of eternity with God, then we have to stop our striving after earthly success and wealth and make ourselves rich in other ways? What is it but a warning that if we do want happiness and long life, we have to make ourselves rich not in our own eyes or in the world’s eyes, but in God’s eyes?  

There’s no sense in this parable that Jesus condemns wealth in itself. What’s condemned here is the complacent, selfish and self-satisfied attitude that wealth can lead to. The Rich Fool is satisfied because he has enough for his own needs, more than enough in fact, and so he becomes so self-satisfied and complacent that he’s blinded to the needs of others. He thinks all he has to do is take care of himself and his own wealth and possessions. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say he thought that if he took care of his wealth and possessions, if he kept them to himself, they’d take care of him. But that’s not only to be blind to the needs of others, to be blind to what God asks of us in loving our neighbour, ultimately, it’s also to be blind to our own needs too.  

It’s being blind to our own needs because only being rich in God’s eyes can bring us the happiness and long life that we all want so much.   

But as well as being a health warning to today’s celebrity obsessed society, this parable is also a very timely warning to a Church that itself is becoming increasingly concerned about wealth and status. How often, for example, when we hear from leading figures in the Church today, are they talking about politics rather than faith? How often do we hear them making pronouncements on general issues, jumping on the latest ‘woke’ bandwagon, for example, rather than proclaiming the Gospel? Of course the Church should have an opinion and a voice on all aspects of life, but its opinion should be how well any particular aspect of life and society conforms to the Gospel and the Church should leave it at that. The Church’s ministry is a prophetic ministry, it’s not called to jump on the bandwagon of popular opinion in an attempt to make itself ‘relevant’ or ‘acceptable’ to the world, but to call society and the world back to God through obedience to Christ. And it has no business and no mandate to do anything else other than that.   

And how often do we see parishes that are wealthy in worldly terms enjoying what amounts to preferential treatment over parishes that are poor in worldly terms? The Church may not want to accept that this goes on, but it does. I’ve mentioned before a parish church in a world-famous medieval market town which had 11 clergy attached to it. 1 parish; 11 clergy, and yet how many parishes are being told these days they have to share 1 priest between 2, 3 or more churches? Or a parish in an area regarded as nice and well-off that went into interregnum owing over £100,000 in Parish Share which, by their own admission they had no intention whatsoever of paying. And yet, there was never any question that they wouldn’t get a new parish priest, which they did within just a few months. And this at a time when the Church is telling parishes that they can’t have a parish priest unless they pay Parish Share in full. And sometimes, not even then.   

Whatever the Church may say, these things do go on because the Church very often does give preferential treatment to parishes and people who are rich and successful and famous in worldly terms. So the Church too, it seems, perhaps in its attempts to be relevant and acceptable to today’s society,  regards celebrity and the trappings of celebrity as something to be aspired to and rewarded. But this is not the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This is not the meaning of the parable of the Rich Fool.  

There are so many examples in the Gospel of what it means to make ourselves rich in God’s eyes, but perhaps this from the Sermon on the Mount in St Matthew’s Gospel is as good an any. 

“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?  And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.”  

The Church though seems to be very anxious these days about the kind of worldly things Jesus tells us not to worry about. Could the reason why the Church is lacking these things today possibly be because it’s stopped seeking first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and has turned its attention to more worldly things?    

In the parable of the Rich Fool, Jesus tells us that the way to happiness and long life, eternal life, is to make ourselves rich in God’s eyes, and what better way is there to do that than to seek first his kingdom and his righteousness. I’ll leave the last words though to someone who has been the subject of the TV programme, Autopsy: The Last Hours of Muhammad Ali. Ali said a lot during his life, and a lot was said about him, but perhaps among the best words are those written on his grave.   

Service to others is the rent you pay for your room in heaven. 

Amen. 

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The Propers for the 18th Sunday of Ordinary Time can be viewed here.