Perhaps one of the most difficult problems we have in the Church, and always have had in the Church, is knowing what to do when members of the Church act in ways that members of the Church shouldn’t. To be more specific, we have a problem of knowing what to do about, and with, those people who act in ways that Church members shouldn’t act and, by doing so, cause harm to other members of the Church and the Church herself.

Not adhering to the norms and expected codes of conduct is a problem for any human institution, from small clubs and businesses to nations, but it’s a particularly difficult problem in the Church, and for the Church, for a number of different reasons. First of all, we are supposed to be a forgiving people. So, if someone steps out of line, our first response should be to forgive them. But forgiveness is not the same as allowing people to carry on doing wrong so we have to urge those people concerned to return to the straight and narrow. That’s especially important when what those people are doing is causing harm to others. But, as I’m sure we all know, those who are doing wrong, especially if it’s to their benefit to do wrong, can be very pig-headed in their wrongdoing; they usually don’t want to stop. That means that they have to be confronted about what they’re doing which is another particularly difficult problem for the Church. Very few people like confrontation with others, but Christians are called to be loving and peaceable people so for us, confrontation is something we should want to avoid if at all possible. And what do we do if those who are doing wrong are causing harm to others and won’t stop? However hard it might be for us, as forgiving, loving and peaceable people, to take some kind of action against another person, sometimes we have to for the good of those who are being harmed, and for the good of all the members of the Body of Christ.

No matter how hard it might be for us to do these things though, we do have Jesus’ own very clear teaching about how to deal with these situations:

“If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.” 

At that time, Gentiles were not part of God’s people and tax-collectors were outcasts from God’s people because of their sinful ways. So this teaching of Jesus very clearly implies that if someone in the Church is doing wrong, we are quite justified in taking action to try and stop them and bring them back into fold. But, if they won’t listen, and won’t stop then, in the end, we’re to treat them as though they are not part of the Church.

But of course we are also called to be loving, forgiving people so we then have the problem of what to do if those who have done wrong in the past,  even those whom the Church has had to take action against in the past, come to their senses and want to return to the right path and to the Church . How do we then deal with those people? Should we accept them back into the Church? To what extent should we make them welcome? Should we welcome them back with open arms or should we take only them back with reservations? Should we put them on some kind of probation until they’ve proven that they can be trusted before we welcome them back fully? As difficult as it may be for us to actually do, this morning’s Gospel reading, the parable of the Prodigal Son, leaves us in no doubt that the Christian thing to do in these situations is to welcome such people back into the fold not only without reservation, but with joy too.

The parable of the Prodigal Son of course, is a parable about God’s love for us. It’s a parable that explains God’s joy in seeing a sinner come to their senses and return to him and God’s own ways. But Jesus said that to have seen him was to have seen the Father and so this is the same kind of love with which Jesus loved and still loves us. And, as Christians, that’s the same kind of love with which we’re called to love one another. So if and when people who’ve done wrong in the past come to their senses, change their ways and want to return to the Church, we’re called to welcome them back with open arms and with joy because that’s the Godly thing to do, it’s the Christlike thing to do and so it’s the Christian thing to do.

When we think about this problem, and in particular what Jesus said about treating those who won’t listen and won’t change their ways like Gentiles and tax collectors, it’s very easy, and perhaps even tempting to say that means we should simply kick them out of the Church and have nothing more to do with them. In fact, I have come across people who do think this way and take this line with those who cause problems in the Church. But we have to remember two very important things before we’re tempted to go down this route. The first is that none of us are wholly without fault; we’re all sinners so we’re in no position to take such a high-handed approach when we’re dealing with the sins of others. The second thing we have to remember is how Jesus himself dealt with Gentiles and tax-collectors.

Jesus said he’d come to save the lost sheep of Israel and, on the whole, that’s what he did; the mission to the Gentile world was one he largely entrusted to his Church. But we also know that, when Gentiles came to Jesus in faith, he treated them with same love and compassion he showed to Jews who came to him in faith. And we know too that Jesus actively sought out people like tax-collectors, if fact, he even chose one, Matthew, as one of his  twelve core disciples. But we see this most clearly perhaps in the story of Jesus and Zacchaeus.

Zacchaeus if you remember was the rich, chief tax-collector  who climbed into a sycamore tree so that he could see Jesus as he passed through Jericho. Jesus saw him, called down from the tree and went to stay with him in his house. A lot of people were unhappy about that because Jesus had gone to be the guest of a sinner. But, the result of this encounter was that Zacchaeus repented, he 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.”

To which Jesus replied,

 “Today salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”

So when Jesus told us to treat those who sin against us and who won’t listen to anyone and won’t change their ways, as Gentiles and tax-collectors, he wasn’t telling us to simply have nothing more to do with them. He may very well have been telling us to treat them as though they were no longer part of the Church, but he was also telling us to treat them in the same way that he did. To seek them out and try to bring them back into the fold. And if we can bring them back to their senses, and they are prepared to change their ways and act as Christians and members of the Body of Christ should, we shouldn’t only welcome them back but rejoice in having them back.

It’s always very sad when we have problems like this in the Church. It’s very sad when members of the Church act in ways that aren’t compatible with the Christian faith, and cause harm, great harm sometimes, to other members of the Church by what they do, but who won’t listen when they’re told what they’re doing is wrong and who won’t stop what they’re doing and won’t change their ways. It’s very sad, but it does happen. And when it does, we have to do something about it.

We are called to be forgiving, loving and peaceable people, but that doesn’t mean we can turn a blind eye to the wrong that people sometimes do and simply allow them to carry on doing it. That in itself is just as wrong as the thing we’re allowing to happen. We have to stop wrongdoing for the sake of its victims. And, if we think about it from a spiritual point of view, we have to stop it for the sake of the perpetrators too, to stop the harm their doing to themselves. And we have to stop it for the sake of all the members of the Body of Christ.

But we always have to give those who are doing wrong the chance to come to their senses and change their ways. We have to try to bring them back onto the right path and we have to carry on trying to do that even if we do reach the point where we need to treat them as Gentiles and tax-collectors. And if they do come to their senses and come back to the right path, we should welcome them back in the same way that the Prodigal Son was welcomed by his father, with open arms and with joy. That’s not easy but we have to try to do that because that’s the way God our Father welcomes us back each and every time we sin then come back to our senses and return to him and his ways. We need to remember that we’re all sinners and we all do things we shouldn’t do at times and that the things we do can cause harm to others. And if we think about that honestly, how many times do we think, or do we know that we’ve been that prodigal one who’s needed to be welcomed back by God and to God’s ways?

Amen.

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The Propers for the 4th Sunday of Lent (Mothering Sunday) can be viewed here.

It’s now just over a year since my great friend and colleague, Fr Neville Ashton, died. I know that most of you knew Fr Neville too because he came to St Mark’s and St Gabriel’s numerous times to cover for me when I was on holiday. So I know too, because many of you have told me, just how well-liked Fr Neville was. That’s not surprising because he was a very friendly and approachable person, not to mention a very good pastoral priest, he was a good listener, especially when people came to him with problems. I also know that Fr Neville was well-liked for his preaching.

I knew Fr Neville for over 40 years and so I know that his style of preaching changed over the years. At one time he’d hand write or type out his sermons and preach from the pulpit. But over the years he stopped doing that and started preaching in front of the people. He also stopped preaching from a text and started giving short, homely talks that didn’t tax people too much either by their length or with complicated, academic style, theological arguments. But however Fr Neville’s preaching changed over the years, one thing about it remained constant and that was that there was a recurring theme in his sermons. And that theme was death. 

Death was a theme in Fr Neville’s sermons so often in fact that, when he was my parish priest, there was often a conversation in the vestry before Mass about how far he’d get into his sermon before he mentioned death; because he almost always did. Typically, he’d use the Gospel of the day to make a point about following Jesus’ example more closely and then he’d go on to say something like this:

“And you need to start doing this now because you never know what’s going to happen. The only thing we do know is that we’re all going to die. But we don’t know when. You might not be here tomorrow. I might not be here tomorrow. So you need to start doing this now because tomorrow may be too late.”

At which point, the servers in the Sanctuary and the choir in their stalls would all look at each other and smile.

To be fair to Fr Neville, he was making a very good point, and one that needs to be made. The trouble was, he made it so often, that it lost its impact and became something of a running joke.

And that’s a shame because what Fr Neville said so often does need saying from time to time. I’ve mentioned it today because, to all intents and purposes, it’s exactly what Jesus is saying in this morning’s Gospel.

When we read this Gospel story, we have to bear in mind the understanding of the people of Jesus’ day. To them, personal sin had a direct effect in and on life. So, if someone was ill, or if something bad happened to them, such as with the people mentioned in the Gospel, it was regarded as the result of their sins; the punishment if you like, for their sins. And that’s what Jesus is referring to when he asks if people think those Pilate had killed and those who died when a tower fell were worse sinners or more guilty than other people. In the popular understanding of the day they probably were but Jesus tells them, ‘No’, they weren’t. These people were no worse than anyone else and so if they could die so suddenly and unexpectedly, it could happen to anyone, at any time. And Jesus says that his listeners will die in the same way unless they repent.

We also need to think here about the circumstances of these people’s deaths. We’re told that the Galilean’s blood was mingled with the blood of their sacrifices. We can only assume that the blood of their sacrifices refers to the blood of the animals they were sacrificing to God. So these Galileans must have been killed whilst they were at worship. The tower at Siloam that fell killing eighteen people must be associated with the Pool of Siloam in which Jesus told a blind man to wash, in the course of restoring his sight. We know that the Pool of Siloam was adjacent to the Temple Mount and that water from the pool was used in temple worship at times. So these eighteen may have either been leaving the temple or making their way to the temple when the tower fell and killed them. In other words, all these people probably died either shortly before worshipping God, while they were worshipping God, or shortly after worshipping God.

That gives an added dimension to Jesus’ words. These people who died were, to all appearances, good people. They were good Jews who worshipped God. And yet they died, suddenly and quite horrifically really. And Jesus tells those he’s speaking to that they are no better than these people. He’s telling them that, if this can happen to people who worship God, people who are no worse than anyone else, it can happen to you too, at any time. These words of Jesus suggest that those who died, and his audience were all in the same boat, they worshipped God, but they were all unrepentant sinners too. Does that also apply to us? Those who died were no worse than those he was speaking to, but they were probably no better either. They worshipped God but they died, suddenly, and if it can happen to them it can happen to anyone, it can happen to you, and me, too. And they, and we, might not be here tomorrow so the time to repent is now. Which is the warning Fr Neville gave people so often in his sermons.

Of course, we believe in a God who is loving and merciful. We believe that the price of our sins has already been paid, in blood, by Jesus on the Cross. So we don’t have anything to worry about do we? But, as I said in my sermon last Sunday, we have a covenant with God, a deal, a deal sealed in the blood of Jesus. We can be forgiven and have eternal life, but we have to believe in Jesus and follow his teaching and example. Part of doing that is to be repentant. We have to accept that we are sinners but do our very best not to sin. We can’t think that Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross means that we can do as we please and we’ll be OK because Jesus has already suffered for our sins and paid the price of them. We have to keep our side of the covenant. And this is what the parable of the unfruitful fig tree we heard this morning is telling us.

The fig tree had been unfruitful for three years, so the owner decides to cut it down. But the man who tended the fig tree wanted to give the tree another chance, one more year to see if it would bear fruit. In the context of his ministry, what Jesus seems to be saying here is that the people have had three years to repent and bear fruit; they’ve had the three years of his ministry to do that. But that ministry is now coming to an end because he’ll shortly be making his final journey to Jerusalem where he knows he’s going to be betrayed, arrested and put to death. At this point, there’s still time to repent and bear fruit, but there’s not much time left.

And isn’t that always the case for us? We’ve had a lot more than three years to listen to Jesus, to repent and bear fruit, in fact, we’ve had our whole lives, or at least, the whole of our lives from the time we first heard the Gospel, to do that. And for most of us, there’s still time, plenty of time hopefully, to repent and bear fruit. But we can’t ever be certain of that because none of us know exactly how much time we’ve got left do we. We may live another ten, twenty, thirty years. Some of us may live a lot longer than that. But on the other hand, we may walk under a bus tomorrow and then our time will be up. We simply don’t know.

What we do know is that one day our time will be up and then our future will depend not on what we could do or could have done, but on what we did do. And we never know when that time will come. You might not be here tomorrow. I might not be here tomorrow. So if we’re going to repent and bear fruit, the kind of fruit that we’re called to bear under the terms of the deal we have with God, the time to do it is now, while we still can, before it’s too late.

Amen.

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The Propers for the 3rd Sunday of Lent can be viewed here.

Our readings today start with a story from the Book of Genesis which, in today’s hyper-sensitive, woke society, must be in some danger of being radically altered if not actually ‘cancelled’ for being offensive to some, and unsuitable for the young. Whatever our own views on such things are though, we must admit, this story about Abram killing and cutting in half various animals as a sign of a covenant between himself and God, is a strange one to us. But then I’m sure that many things we do would be strange to someone of Abram’s day and one very important thing this story does remind us of, is that a covenant is a deal between two parties because, just as we cut a deal, so Abram cut his covenant with God, quite literally in his case.

We read about lots of covenants in the Bible. God makes covenants with individuals, such as this one with Abram, and he makes covenants with groups of people, such as the one with the people of Israel that we read about in the Book of Exodus. In these covenants, as in any deal, there are promises made by the parties concerned. In return for his faith, God promised to give land to Abram’s descendants, and in return for their obedience to the law, God promised the land to those descendants, the people of Israel. As with any deal, all concerned had a responsibility to keep their promises and, as with any deal, if the promises weren’t kept by one party, the other party had no obligation to keep to their side of the deal either. And as we know, the people often didn’t keep their side of the deal and they ended up being exiled from the land God had promised and given them.

A covenant with God always involves a change in the status quo. The person, or people, with whom God makes a covenant are expected to change and become the kind of people God wants them to be and in return, God offers them a reward. As Christians, the covenant we’re most concerned with is what we call the new covenant, the deal we’ve cut with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Under the terms of that covenant, we’re required to have faith in Jesus and to follow his teaching and example and, in return, God promises us eternal life. And this is what St Paul is speaking about in this morning’s reading from his Letter to the Philippians.

Our reading begins with St Paul urging the Philippians to follow his example, the way of life he taught them. If we look at St Paul’s letters in general, that’s a way of life that shows a complete commitment to Jesus as Lord and Saviour. And St Paul says that those who don’t or aren’t doing this are destined to be lost. In other words, if they don’t keep their side of the covenant they’ve made with God, neither will God keep his side of the covenant. Then St Paul speaks about the change that keeping the covenant will bring about. He says,

‘…our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.’

That suggests a change that will take place in the life to come but perhaps what St Paul is really saying is that this is a change that will be completed in the life to come because we know that he believed it was a change that started in this life. It’s a change that begins as we change our mortal lives and conform them to Jesus’ teaching and example.

In his Second Letter to the Corinthians, St Paul speaks about the veil that Moses had to place over his face after he’d spoken to the Lord, something he had to do because the Israelites couldn’t bear to look at him because his face shone so brightly with the reflected glory of God. St Paul says that through Christ, the veil has been taken away and we can now see the glory of the Lord. He says,

‘But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.’ 

So for St Paul, there’s no doubt that this change from what we were to what we should be, from what we are to what we will be, from lowliness to glory, that will be completed in the life to come, begins in this life when we turn to the Lord, to Christ, and we allow the Holy Spirit to enter and guide our lives.

It’s all very well to say that though, the difficulty, as we all know, is in putting it into practice. We’ve all set off on the road to glory, and make no mistake, we have set off on that road, we wouldn’t be in the Church if we hadn’t, but how many degrees do we move before we come to a stop, or even slip back?

If we look at this as a clock face with the lowly, earthly person at the bottom, at ‘6’, and the glorious, heavenly person at the top, at ‘12’, with 180o of glory between them so that they’re exact opposites, then if we’re absolutely honest with ourselves, how far have we moved towards ‘12’ before our ‘clock’ has stopped? And let’s be really honest here, how often have we found ourselves having to reset the clock to ‘6’ and start again?

The difficulty isn’t in believing that we have to make a change from lowliness to glory, it’s not in understanding what we have to do to start making that change, the difficulty is in actually doing something about making that change. One of the great assets we have as Christians though, is that we have lots of help in this respect. We have the lives and examples of the saints, those who’ve struggled to make this change before us. They can guide us. We have each other and that should never be overlooked. We’re all trying to keep the same covenant with God; we’re all on the same journey, and so we can all help each other along the way. That’s exactly what St Paul was doing when he urged the Philippians to follow his example. And of course we have the teaching and example of Jesus himself to show us how to keep the deal we’ve made with God, and the Holy Spirit to guide us when we’re not sure what to do.

One thing we always have to remember is that while Jesus is the divine Son of God, he was also as every bit as human as us and as a fully human being, he was under the terms of a covenant with God too. So Jesus was one of us, a fellow traveller on the road to glory and for that reason, Jesus ticks all the boxes when it come to being able to help us on our journey towards glory.

This morning, we have different Gospel readings at St Mark’s and St Gabriel’s. At St Mark’s we read the story of Jesus’ Transfiguration, the story of Jesus being changed and appearing in glory to Peter, James and John. They saw Jesus in his glorious state. In that moment, Jesus appeared to them as the fulfilment of the law and the prophets, and they heard him acclaimed from heaven as the Son and Chosen One of God. A truly dazzling vision of Jesus in glory.

But at St Gabriel’s we read about a very human Jesus. In this Gospel story, we see Jesus in a quite belligerent mood and even engaging in name calling. When some Pharisees warn Jesus that Herod is looking to kill him, so yes, there were obviously some good Pharisees, Jesus responds by saying,

“Go and tell that fox for me, listen…”

And then, in essence, proceeds to say that he’ll be about his business, whatever Herod wants. Isn’t that exactly how we often react if someone tries to stop us doing what we want to do? And then we find Jesus speaking about his own death, something that, as a human being he had to face up to, as we all have to, eventually. And as he does that, and no doubt thinks about what his death means, what its purpose is, he laments over Jerusalem. He’s deeply, deeply upset because Jerusalem, and by implication, Israel, will not listen to him. They won’t change their ways, they won’t turn to him so that they can see God’s glory openly, with unveiled face, as St Pauls puts it. Because they won’t do that, they can’t begin that degree by degree change from lowliness to glory. But Jesus loves Jerusalem, and so he shows the very human emotion of grief. Some translations say that Jesus even wept for Jerusalem. But even so, Jesus knew the terms of the covenant; if Jerusalem wouldn’t listen then, on their own heads be it. How many times have we reacted in these ways when we’ve tried to help or advise someone, and they wouldn’t listen to us?

So in these two Gospel readings we see two very different images of Jesus. On the one hand we see Jesus in glory, the glory to which we’re called through our obedience to him and to the covenant, the deal we’ve made with God. And on the other hand we see a very human Jesus, a Jesus in the lowly state he shared with us during his earthly life; a Jesus with the very same human thoughts, feelings and emotions that make it so hard for us to change from lowliness to glory, even by degree. This is why Jesus is such a great help to us, not only through his teaching but because his example of keeping to the covenant he had with God is an example of someone who was exactly like us being able to keep to their covenant with God.

As Christians, we have this covenant, this deal we’ve made with God. The deal is that if we have faith in Jesus, if we’re obedient to his teaching and follow his example, we can have eternal life. God doesn’t break his word, so let’s do our best to keep our side of the deal. In Jesus’ Transfiguration, we see the glory to which we’re called, so let’s do as God asked Peter, James and John to do that day and listen to Jesus. Let’s listen to him and try our best to do as he says and to do as he did so that we can have some degree of glory now and have it fully in eternity.

Amen.

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The Propers for 2nd Sunday of Lent can be viewed here.