It can’t have escaped the attention of many people, not only in this country but throughout the world that, last Thursday, Queen Elizabeth II died. And that’s really not surprising because our late Queen was a figure of truly worldwide standing, respect and affection. But if her death has been felt across the world, it’s a truly momentous event for us in this country. Queen Elizabeth has been our Queen for 70 years and so most people in this country will never have known another monarch and only those in their mid-70s and older will be able to remember the last time someone other than Queen Elizabeth sat on the throne of this country.

Not surprisingly then, the Queen’s death has been called the end of an era. But, as we come to the end of this era, we’re also aware that the end of what’s been called the second Elizabethan Age of this country, marks the start of a new age. The reigns of King Charles I and King Charles II are known respectively as the Caroline and Carolean Ages, so the Accession of our new King, Charles III, will begin a second Caroline Age, or second Carolean Age. And what this reminds us of is that the end of one thing marks the beginning of another. It reminds us that the old is replaced by the new.

Of course, when anything changes, especially when something important in our lives changes, people can be nervous and perhaps apprehensive about what the change will bring to our lives and mean for our lives. And that’s quite understandable. The old, what has been, is something we know and understand, it’s something we’re probably comfortable with, whereas the new is not known, it’s uncertain and, on the whole, people aren’t comfortable with uncertainty and the unknown.

By strange coincidence, last Thursday morning, about 9 hours before the Queen’s death was announced, I was in St Gabriel’s School to lead Collective Worship (that’s a school assembly to most of us) and I spoke about these very things; the end of the old marking the beginning of the new, and the uncertainty and nervousness that can cause us. In the context of the school, of course, I spoke about the change of class, about moving up to a higher year in school. I spoke about the nervousness that can cause because moving up a year means having new teachers and also means moving on to new and probably harder things to learn, something that might cause a lot of nervousness for those who found the work they’d done last year difficult. But I also said that with the new school year comes a new opportunity.

In the context of the school, I said that opportunity was to improve, to be better in this new school year, than in the old school year. And I said that was perhaps especially important for those who might have struggled in some way in the old school year because the new school year gives them an opportunity to put that behind them and make a fresh start; to work hard and to be better this year at the things they found difficult last year. And if you’re wondering what any of this has to do with worship, I then said that this idea of putting the old behind us and making a fresh start is very much at the heart of the Christian faith and something we read a lot about in the Bible.

If we read the Old Testament, on the whole, it’s the story of the people of Israel and their attempts to be God’s people. They didn’t find that very easy at all, in fact, on the whole, it’s something they never really managed to learn how to do and be. But, nevertheless, God gave them opportunity after opportunity to put their past mistakes and failures behind them and to start again. He sent them teachers, the prophets, to tell them what they were doing wrong and to tell them how to do what God wanted from them. But while the people of Israel might have had a bit of enthusiasm for change initially, that soon wore off and they showed time and time again that they found it much easier to carry on in their old ways, even though those old ways were wrong. And so, eventually, God sent his own Son to actually show them by his own example what they were doing wrong and show them by his example how they needed to change if they were going to be and live as God’s people.

This morning’s Gospel contains two parables that explain exactly what Jesus came into the world to do – to seek out and save the lost, as Jesus himself put it. In other words, to give people the opportunity to change for the better, to let go of their old, sinful ways, to put those things behind them and start again by living as God wanted and intended them to. But, as we also read in this morning’s Gospel, that made people nervous.

At the very beginning of Jesus ministry, in the first chapter of St Mark’s Gospel we read that the people,

‘…were all amazed, so that they questioned among themselves, saying, “What is this? A new teaching with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.” And at once his fame spread everywhere throughout all the surrounding region of Galilee.”’

And in this morning’s Gospel we read,

‘Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him. And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.”’

So Jesus was saying and doing things that were new and different, and that made people very nervous indeed, perhaps especially those who had a vested interest in the old, familiar things. And so, as they couldn’t stop Jesus or shut him up by showing him to be wrong through argument, they decided to stop him and shut him up permanently by having him put to death. But, if they thought by doing that they’d preserve their old ways and save them from being overtaken by new ways, that was the biggest mistake they ever made because, ironically, it was in trying to stop Jesus and shut him up that they ensured his words and ways would become the words and ways for millions of people throughout the world.

It is ironic that Jesus was put to death as a pretender to the title ‘King of the Jews’. That’s something he never claimed to be, even though it’s something that, as the Messiah, he actually was. But through his death and Resurrection, the old understanding that the Messiah was the King of the Jews, gave way to a new understanding that the Messiah is the King of all people who believe in him, whoever and wherever they are. Through his death and Resurrection, the old understanding that the Messiah was the Saviour of Israel gave way to a new understanding that Jesus, the Messiah, was the Saviour of the whole world. Through Jesus’ death and Resurrection, the old understanding that only the people of Israel could be God’s people gave way to a new understanding that all people could be God’s people. And through Jesus’ death and Resurrection, the old order of sin and death was replaced by a new way of life and the promise of eternal life for all who are prepared to accept the new way that Jesus’ gave us.

Of course, the fact that God sent his Son into the world to offer us this opportunity to make a new beginning doesn’t mean to say that the old ways are gone forever; we know that’s not true, and we only have to look at what goes on in the world around us to see that. It doesn’t mean that those of us who’ve accepted Jesus as our King, our Lord and our Saviour don’t slip back into those old ways from time to time because, as we all know, we do. But what the new way that Jesus gave us does mean is that all is not lost if and when we do slip back into old ways.

The most wonderful thing about the new way Jesus gave us is that, even if we do lapse in our living out of the way that Jesus taught us and showed us and slip back into old ways from time to time, we can always start again with those past lapses and mistakes put behind us and written off. The most wonderful thing about the new way Jesus gave us is that he has already paid for our lapses and mistakes through his suffering and his death on the Cross. We don’t have to pay for them again, all we have to do is repent of our sins, to show genuine regret and sorrow for them, and make a real effort to be better in the future, and if we can do that then we can start again with a clean slate. Other people may hold our past mistakes against us, and they very often do, as I’m sure we all know, but God doesn’t.

In his poem, The Everlasting Gospel, William Blake sums these ideas of the resistance of those who preferred the old ways of sin and death to the new way of forgiveness and life given to us through Jesus Christ. He wrote,

The Moral Virtues in their Pride
Did o’er the World triumphant ride
In Wars & Sacrifice for Sin
And Souls to Hell ran trooping in
The Accuser, Holy God of All
This Pharisaic Worldly Ball
Amidst them in his Glory Beams
Upon the Rivers & the Streams
Then Jesus rose & said to Me
Thy Sins are all forgiven thee
Loud Pilate Howl’d, loud Caiphas Yell’d
When they the Gospel Light beheld
It was when Jesus said to Me
Thy Sins are all forgiven thee
The Christian trumpets loud proclaim
Thro’ all the World in Jesus name
Mutual forgiveness of each Vice
And opened the Gates of Paradise

The death of her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, has brought one age to an end, but it has opened up the new age of King Charles III. The late Queen will be a hard act to follow, but that doesn’t mean the new King can’t do that. King Charles is not his mother so no doubt some of his ways at least, will not be her ways, they will be new ways for a new King. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they won’t be good ways. Some people have said that the new King should have stepped aside from the Succession and allowed the Crown to pass to his son, William. No doubt some people will criticise the new King for anything he does differently to the old Queen, but I hope that we will not be among them. Christians, of all people, should know that new starts and new ways can be great opportunities to be better than we were, so let’s give the new King that opportunity. Let’s give him the chance that God has so often and does so often, give us.

Amen.

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The Propers for the 24th Sunday of Ordinary Time (Trinity 13) can be viewed here.

When I was growing up, one of the things I liked to do was build plastic model kits, Airfix models and those kinds of things. I really can’t remember how old I was when I first started doing that, but I do know that I was still at primary school, and I also remember that I started with simple models and then, as I became better at making them, I moved on to models that were more difficult to make. Something else I remember is that, as I got older and into my teens, whilst I still liked to build models, I sometimes found it harder to finish them. Sometimes I didn’t finish them because they were quite large models that took a long time to make, and I simply became bored with them, usually because I didn’t seem to be making much progress towards finishing those models. Sometimes I didn’t finish them because there were other things I wanted to do, and so the model was put to one side, and sometimes, in spite of my having every intention of going back to it later, I never did. 

I think not finishing what we’ve started though, is a problem or at least can be a problem for lots of people, perhaps most people, can’t it? I’m sure that if we think about it, we can all remember times when we’ve started something but, for one reason or another, have never got around to finishing it. It might be something as simple as giving up on a hobby, such as building plastic model kits. It might be some kind of DIY project that we started and never finished. It might be that book that we always intended to write but never finished. In fact, there can be so many things in life that we want to do, started to do, but never finished doing. And this is a problem in our lives as Christians too.

In one sense, unless we lose our faith or renounce our faith, once we’ve started our lives as disciples of Christ, we never really give it up. But what we can do, and something I’m sure we all do at times, is put our faith to one side for a time, so that we can do something else, and then come back to our faith later. And there are so many ways we do this. For example, part of the  Christian discipleship we’ve started is to come to Church to worship the Lord. But how many of us can honestly say, hand on heart, that they’ve never missed a Sunday, or a Holy Day, in Church because they’ve preferred to go and do something else instead of coming to Church? Part of the Christian discipleship we’ve started is to support the poor and needy. But how many of us can honestly say that they’ve never missed an opportunity to donate to charity, for example,  because they’ve preferred to spend their money on themselves instead?

Those are just two of the many ways we can put our faith to one side but there are so many ways we can do that because the Christian discipleship we’ve started is about loving God above all things and loving our neighbour as ourselves, but how many of us can honestly say that we’ve never put ourselves before both God and our neighbour? If we’re honest, we know that we’ve all done that at times because, at times, we’ve all been selfish and followed the way of the world. That doesn’t mean we’re bad people or that we’re not Christians, but what it does mean is that, at times, we stop doing what we started to do as Christians.

This is what Jesus is warning us against in this morning’s Gospel. But, like all good teachers, Jesus doesn’t only warn us about a problem we need to avoid, in this case the problem of not being able to finish what we’ve started, he also gives us the answer to the problem. He tells us that, if we want to finish what we’ve started as his disciples we have to give up all our possessions.

I’m sure that there might be, and no doubt have been and are, some rather unscrupulous people out there, perhaps in TV evangelism world, who have encouraged people to take those words of Jesus quite literally and divest themselves of their worldly possessions and, for the sake of their eternal soul, hand them over to the Church. I think if I asked you to do that, I’d very quickly find myself with two empty churches and, no doubt, being invited for a little chat with the authorities of both the Church and the state! I’d be in hot water, and quite rightly so. Jesus tells us that to finish what we started as his disciples we have to give up all our possessions but if we take these words in the context of what he says at the start of this morning’s Gospel,

“If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.”

it’s obvious that when Jesus speaks about possessions, he isn’t simply referring to the things we own. What Jesus must be saying is that we have to give up everything that might prevent us from finishing what we’ve started as his disciples. What Jesus is saying is that to finish what we’ve started as his disciples, being his disciple must come before everything else. Loyalty to him and to our discipleship must come before loyalty to our families, it must be even more important to us than our own lives, than anything we want in worldly terms. That was Jesus’ example, the way he lived his life. That was why he could and did finish what he started. And that’s what it means when he says, 

“ Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.”

So we know what it takes to be a disciple of Christ and we know what we have to do to finish what we’ve started as disciples of Christ because Jesus tells us these things. But we also know that what we have to do isn’t easy.

Perhaps one of the most difficult things about being a Christian for us is not that it’s so hard to do what Jesus asks us to do, and tells us we have to do, although that often isn’t easy, but that we have to do it for so long. We all like to see the results of our work don’t we? And the harder and longer we work, the more we want to see some results. One of the reasons we can get discouraged and tempted to give up on something is that we’ve put a lot of work into something and we’re not seeing any results for all the time and effort we’ve put in. We begin to wonder if what we’ve started is worth the effort, we decide it’s not, and we give up and perhaps never finish what we’ve started. That is a great problem for us when it comes to finishing what we’ve started as disciples of Christ because we have to keep working at it for the whole of our lives. Our work as Christians is never finished until our earthly lives come to and end and we might never actually see any results from all the hard work we’ve put in. We might see some results in the good we’ve done for others, but in terms of personal reward for all our hard work as disciples of Christ, we don’t usually see anything in this life. The reward for those who do finish what they’ve started as Christians does come, but not until we’ve finished our time on earth.

Another great problem for us when it comes to finishing what we’ve started as Christians is that the things we know we have to give up are often the very things we least want to give up. We all like the creature comforts we surround ourselves with, for example, and far from giving them up for Christ, we not only want to keep what we have, but we often want to acquire even more.

When Jesus tells us to give up our possessions, I don’t think he means that we literally have to give everything we own away, but that we have to give up our fondness for the things we have, our attachment to them and our dependence on them. To finish what we’ve started as Christians we have to see our material possessions, whatever those might be, as less important than being about the business of being Christ’s disciple. We need to see our loyalty to family and friends as less important than our loyalty to Christ and to the Gospel. We need to see that to be a disciple of Christ and to finish what we’ve started as his disciples we need to love God and God’s ways more than we love having our own way. God loves us, so we should love ourselves too, but we need to love our neighbours just as much as we love ourselves.

So we have to think about these things and ask ourselves some hard  questions. Do we really need all the nice things we surround ourselves with and are so attached to? Do we really need two or three televisions, two or three cars, a new conservatory? Do we really need so many clothes that we’ve run out of wardrobe space for them? When we go shopping do we really need to buy so much food that we have to throw half of it away because it’s gone out of date before we’ve had time to eat it? Do bishops need to live in palatial houses and have chauffeurs? Is our sense of self-worth as human beings defined by the number and value of our possessions? Why do we think nothing of spending £10s or even £100s on ourselves and our families and then baulk at throwing a few coins of loose change into a charity box? What is the Christian thing to do, to do these things and have all these things and continually acquire more, or to spend just some of the time and money we do on these things, on helping the millions of people who are suffering and in need in the world?

We do these things but that doesn’t mean that we’re bad people and it doesn’t mean that we’re not Christians. What it does mean is that we tend to practice our Christianity in fits and starts rather than sticking at it the whole time. We could say that rather than carrying our cross all the way to Calvary, as Jesus did, we pick ours up, carry it for a while, then put it down for a while so that we can have a break and a rest from the long, hard slog of discipleship. It means we could be better Christians than we are, and one way to be better Christians than we are, is to stick at it for longer than we do before we take a break.

We know that the reward for those who finish what they’ve started as disciples of Christ is eternal life. That’s a reward we all want and so we have to make sure that we finish what we’ve started. It is a long, hard slog to get there, a lifetime of hard work in fact, and we all need a break from hard work from time to time. Even Jesus knew and did that; the Gospels tell us he spent time alone, usually at prayer, sometimes while his disciples went on ahead of him to proclaim the Gospel and prepare the way. But, when the finishing line was in sight, Jesus’ Cross was quite literally on his shoulders. What we need to do is make sure that when our finishing line is in sight and the time comes for the rewards to be handed out, our crosses are firmly on our shoulders and not lying by the roadside because we’ve left them there while we’ve slipped away to some more self-indulgent activity.

Amen.

 

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The Propers for the 23rd Sunday of Ordinary Time (Trinity 12) can be viewed here.

Earlier this month the Lambeth Conference, the meeting of the bishops of the Anglican Communion, came to an end. To the relief of most people at least, it ended without the Communion having torn itself apart during the conference by reopening it’s arguments about human sexuality and perhaps especially about same-sex relationships and marriages. However, that doesn’t mean that these issues weren’t discussed at the Conference – they  were, as an article in The Church Times made clear.

Quoting one of the bishops in attendance at the Conference, the article stated that,

“Justin (the Archbishop of Canterbury) very clearly said that to bless civil partnerships and gay marriages, in most parts of the Anglican Communion, would mean the end of the Church, because there would be no credence or credibility whatsoever. Similarly, if in the West we were not to do that, exactly the same thing would apply.”

I’m not going to comment on this particular issue itself, but I think there is an issue, a very serious concern in fact, with at least part of what the archbishop is reported to have said.

“…if we in the West were not to do that, exactly the same thing would apply.

In other words, if we in the West were not to do these things, the Church in the West would have no credence or credibility, that is, it would be unacceptable and be neither trusted nor believed in. This reminded me of a statement made a number of years ago by another Anglican bishop about another contentious issue, the ordination of women to the priesthood. That bishop said, if memory serves me correctly,

“If we don’t do this, the Church will be unacceptable to society.”

The issue with these statements, the very serious concern these statements raise, is that they’re tantamount to saying that, when the Church has a decision to make about what to do, perhaps even about what to teach, it should look at what the world does, or at least at what that part of the world in which the Church finds itself, that society, and then follow suit. What these statements imply is that the Church should do what its own society finds acceptable and what that society thinks the  Church ought to do.

But since when has the Church been called to be acceptable to the world, or to any human society? Surely the Church is called, both corporately and individually, to be acceptable to God and to Christ. The Church is called to make disciples of people, not by adopting and following the world’s ways, but by teaching them the way of Christ. The Church, and the individuals who make up the Church aren’t called to live according to the norms and values of the society it finds itself in, but to live by the teaching and example of Christ. And to do that means to be unacceptable to society, and to the world because the way of Christ and the way of the world are not the same and are very often incompatible.

How often do we find in the Scriptures God’s way being contrasted with the world’s way? How often in the Gospels do we hear Jesus instructing his disciples that they are not to do things the way that things are done in the world? We find two examples of this in this morning’s Gospel.

In the world, in most walks of life, it often pays to push yourself forward doesn’t it? How many people do we know, for example, who’ve got on in life, got a job or been promoted perhaps, not on merit but because they have what we often call ‘the gift of the gab’? They get on, not because they can do a good job, but because they can talk a good job and convince those in  authority that they’re the best person for the job. I myself have been told on many occasions to push myself forward more, to make people more aware of my abilities, so that I can get the recognition and promotion I deserve. That happened during my time in industry, but it’s also happened since I’ve been ordained, which I think says something about the way the Church, and the individual Christians in the Church have adopted the ways of the world. Because this is the way of the world.

But Jesus tells us that this is not the way Christians should do things. Quite the opposite in fact. In this morning’s Gospel, Jesus tells us that those who push themselves forward for the praise and acclaim of the world are simply setting themselves up to be humbled by God. In God’s way, Christ’s way, it’s those who don’t push themselves forward, those who don’t seek worldly praise, the humble, who in the end, will be exalted and rewarded by God.

Something else we often find in the world is that people get on in life, at work and in business simply because they’ve done something for those in authority; they get on simply because they’ve curried favour with the high and the mighty. How many scandals have there been in this country, for example, about people receiving honours, knighthoods, OBEs, MBEs and so on, simply because they’ve done a favour for someone in government, perhaps made a donation to their political party, or perhaps because they’re a personal friend of someone in government? We sometimes call this nepotism, favouring family and friends over others. We sometimes say things like this are simply a matter of one good turn deserving another, but it’s more often seen, I think, as a case of ‘you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours’. I’m sure this is something we’ve all seen too, again, probably in the workplace because this is the way of the world. But in this morning’s Gospel, Jesus tells us that this isn’t the way to gain the eternal reward of the virtuous which comes from God. We gain that, not by favouring those who can do something for us in return, but by favouring those who can’t return our favour.

If we think about this, it’s not really too hard to understand why this is God’s way and why Jesus tells us that it should be our way. If we do things for those who can do something for us, our motive might simply be self-interest. I’ll do this for you because I want you to do something for me. But, if we do things for those who can’t return the favour, our motive can’t possibly be self-interest because, in worldly terms at least, there’s nothing in it for us. If we do things for people who can’t do anything for us, our motives can only be  love and charity; we’re doing something for someone for no other reason than because they need it. That’s God’s way, that’s the way Christ said it should be with his disciples and so this should be our way and not the ‘you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours’ way of the world.

This morning’s Gospel makes it quite clear that the Church and the individual Christians who make up the Church are not called to follow the way of the world. We’re called to follow the way of Christ, because that is God’s way. We’re not called to do what the world, or any society in the world, does or  wants and expects us to do, we’re called to do what Christ did and taught. Anything we do, either corporately as a Church, or as individual disciples of Christ, our first concern should not be what the world or the society we live in thinks is right, but whether what we’re doing, or even thinking about doing, is in agreement with Scripture and especially in agreement with the teaching and example of Christ.

Of course, the Scriptures were written a long time ago and times have changed. Some questions we’re faced with now aren’t directly answered in the pages of Scripture, and Jesus made no mention of them in his teaching. Nevertheless, we must look there first and try to find an answer if we can. And in so far as we can find an answer, we must do what the Scriptures and what Christ tell us to do. When there’s no clear answer we need to find one through prayer and theological reflection. These things might, and often do, result in different answers for different people because we might interpret what the Scriptures are saying to us and what God is saying to us in different ways. Sometimes we will have to accept that, because there is no one, clear answer to the question, there might be more than one way of answering it. But what we must never do is deliberately distort the Scriptures and Jesus’ teaching to make them say what we want them to say. We must never claim that God is telling us to go down one particular road simply because that’s the road we want to go down. We must never change the word of God, however that comes to us, to make it fit the way of the world, or the way of the society we live in even if that does mean, as it undoubtedly will, that at times the Church will be unacceptable to the world and to various societies in it.

When we’re faced with questions that need to be answered and decisions that have to be taken about the way the Church should go, and what we as individual Christians should do, we always have to remember two things. We have to remember that, as Christians, we’re called to be in the world but not of it and that means we’re called to do things God’s way and Christ’s way, not the world’s way, whether that’s acceptable to the world or not. We have to remember too, that our reward, our eternal reward, doesn’t come from being acceptable to the world or to our own society, it comes, and only comes, through being acceptable to God and to Christ.

Amen.

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The Propers for the 22nd Sunday of Ordinary Time can be viewed here.