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.

One of the things we can’t avoid in life is rules; rules, regulations, laws. We have them in everything we do in life and it’s just as well we do because could you imagine what life would be like without rules? I’m sure we’ve all tried to play games at times with someone who ignores the rules of the game, someone who cheats in other words, and we know how difficult and annoying that can be. I’m sure there are more than a few of us who’ve had fallouts, arguments and maybe even fights with someone who’s cheated during a game. And imagine what life would be like if there was no law against theft, for example. How would we all feel if someone quite openly stole something of ours and when we complained to the police, they just shrugged their shoulders and said, ‘There’s no law against it.’ So we have to have rules, set standards of conduct that are designed to make life run more smoothly by making it fair for everyone, so that we’re all on a level playing field as the saying goes. And we go through life expecting that the vast majority of people at least, will stick to the rules.

Having said that, one of my favourite quotes, lines from the film Reach For the Sky actually, and something I very much agree with, says that,

‘Rules are for the guidance of the wise and the obedience of the foolish.’

That saying doesn’t mean that only foolish people stick to the rules while wise people break them. What it means is that, while we understand the need for rules, we also understand the need to be flexible in applying them. It’s a saying that reminds us that rules can’t cover every situation we might come across. It reminds us that there are always exceptions to the rules because rules can’t cover every situation. I think it also highlights a very fundamental problem when we apply rules which is the potential for conflict between the ‘spirit of the law’ and the ‘letter of the law’. It also reminds us that a good rule can be misused, misinterpreted, or over zealously applied to bad effect. It warns us that a good rule applied in too strict a way, can be just as bad, if not worse, than having no rule at all.

This morning’s Gospel reading at St Gabriel’s, the story of Jesus healing on the Sabbath, is an example of how a strict interpretation of a rule, and an over-zealous application of a rule, completely negated the spirit of the rule. In this case, the on how to observe the Sabbath. I’m sure we all know the commandment about the Sabbath, but just to remind you, it says:

“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labour, and do all your work,  but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

I think what stands out in this commandment is how it begins and ends – God commands that the Sabbath is kept as a holy day because he himself has blessed it as a holy day. The problem though, is in the way this law, this rule was applied. The emphasis was put on resting and doing no work. It’s true that people were, and are, encouraged to worship God, to pray and to study the Scriptures on the Sabbath, but is this all there is to making the day holy?

Holiness, as we know, is about being dedicated to God and so the Sabbath is intended to be a day dedicated to God. It’s a day when we’re called to put aside our own business and dedicate ourselves to being about God’s business. Part of that is to worship and pray and study the Scriptures, but isn’t a large part of being about God’s business our calling to love our neighbour, to cater to the hungry and thirsty, to be hospitable to the stranger, to give aid to the poor and the sick?  But how can we do these things if we’re forbidden from doing any work on the Sabbath? And if we can’t do these things on the Sabbath, even when they’re necessary, can we really keep it as a holy day?

This is the essence of the conflict between Jesus and the leader of the synagogue in this Gospel story. Jesus healed on the Sabbath, a work obviously, but one that made the day holy because doing it was being about God’s work. But in the synagogue leader’s rigid interpretation of the law, it was a very unholy thing to do, a thing that defiled the Sabbath, because it involved working. So in this instance, too rigid an interpretation of the letter of the law, negated the spirit of the law. In effect, this rigid interpretation and application of the law made keeping it worse than having no law at all because it stopped people from observing the essential thing about the Sabbath which is to keep it as a holy day. 

There are actually, 39 types or categories of work that Jewish law prohibits on the Sabbath, and also some prohibited by rabbinic law. But making lists of what’s allowed and what’s prohibited always leads to problems. For one thing, we can’t list everything in such a way that every possible situation or extenuating circumstance is covered. So that leaves loopholes in the rules which some people will be only too happy to exploit for their own purposes. And whenever things are written down, we have the potential for ambiguities and different ways of interpreting what’s been written. And, of course, once we have differences in interpretation we open the way for differences and inconsistencies in applying the rules, which automatically leads to disagreements about the rules. And all this leads to even more problems; the problem of people insisting that their interpretation of the rules is the right one, and the problem of people making up their own rules and passing them off as the rules.

People who do this are perhaps like those whom Jesus speaks about in the Gospel reading at St Mark’s this morning, people who try to enter the kingdom of God by ways and means other than the ‘narrow door’ Jesus tells us we must enter by. And this is a very common problem.

To coin a phrase, I wish I had a pound for every time someone’s said to me, ‘I’m not a Christian (or ’I don’t go to Church’), but I’m a good person and I live a good life.’  Perhaps they are and they do, but by who’s standard are they and their lives ‘good’? Usually, it’s by their own standard which is almost certainly not the standard by which God judges who and what is ‘good’.

How many people, for example, have we all met who fall out and argue with others regularly because they can’t control their tongues, especially what they say about other people? And how many of these people excuse what they do by insisting they they’re ‘only telling it like it is’? Only telling it like it is. Really? Isn’t what they’re actually doing telling it the way they see it which is not the way it is, but only their opinion and interpretation of the way it is. And how often do people like this influence others so that have a bad opinion of someone that’s actually based on nothing more than tittle-tattle, malicious gossip? And yet aren’t these often the very people who insist that they’re ‘good people’ who lead ‘good lives’ – Not like such and such a body down the road. If people round here knew what they were really like, if they knew I know, that’d open their eyes. I could tell you a few things about them if you’ve got a week or two to spare! Or some other such. But what is it that Jesus said?

“… everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgement; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.”

But still, in their own interpretation of what’s good and bad, right and wrong, those who do this do very often do insist, that they’re ‘good people’ who lead ‘good lives’.

And if we think about the Church, how many people in the Church think their way, and only their way, is the right way? How many people in the Church not only criticise, but condemn others because of their tradition, their liturgy, their denomination? And how much of this criticism is based on the premise that ‘We’re right’ and so anyone and everyone who doesn’t do things our way must be wrong? But in fact, how much of what we regard as right and wrong in the Church all boils down to nothing more than our own interpretations and opinions?

We have rules, and we need rules, in our lives, and we have them and need them in the Church too. But we always have to remember the need to be flexible in our interpretation and application of rules. As Christians, we’re called to love God and love our neighbour as ourselves. Every other law and commandment we have is summed up in these two great commandments, so everything we do, both in Church and in our lives should be done in such a way that we keep these commandments as well as possible. But that means we have to be flexible about the way we keep them. For example, as Christians we should be keeping the Sabbath holy by being in Church on Sundays to show our love of God in our worship, our prayers and by listening to the Scriptures. But if someone calls you, in urgent need of help on a Sunday morning, what do you do? The answer is, you do the most loving thing because that is keeping the spirit of the law. You might, in a sense, be going against the letter of the law by being late for Church, or by missing Church altogether that Sunday, but you will have given glory to God and shown your love of God, by showing your love of your neighbour so you will, still, have kept the Sabbath holy.

Rules are made for the guidance of the wise and the obedience of the foolish. We all want to enter the kingdom of heaven and Jesus tells us that to get there, we have to find and go through a narrow door. We find that door through faith in him and by living in obedience to his commandments, his rules, not ours. He also tells us, in the parable of the Ten Virgins, that only the wise find their way to the kingdom while the foolish don’t. So let’s be wise and find that narrow door by doing our best to keep every day as a Sabbath, a holy day, a day to be doing God’s work. That might mean that, at times, we have to use the rules for guidance only, but isn’t that what Jesus did?

Amen.

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The Propers for the 21st Sunday of Ordinary Time can be viewed here.

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.