Well here we are on the last Sunday of September, ¾ of the year is behind us already and we’re now less than 3 months away from Christmas Day. Exciting isn’t it? I mention that because, notwithstanding that it is a little early, I want to start my sermon this morning with a quote from that most famous of Christmas stories, Charles Dickens’, A Christmas Carol.

It’s from the scene in which Scrooge’s fiancée breaks off their long engagement because she believes that money has replaced her in Scrooge’s affections. And Scrooge responds by saying,

“This is the even-handed dealing of the world” … “There is nothing on which it is so hard as poverty; and there is nothing it professes to condemn with such severity as the pursuit of wealth!”

At the heart of Dickens’ story is a critique of the social conditions of his day and an advocacy of a compassionate social responsibility towards the poor. But in spite of this, and in spite of the high ideals and fine words of so many people since, has anything really changed in the since Dickens wrote those words in 1843? To be honest, I think not. We might not have in this country now the level of abject poverty that existed in Dickens’ time, but nevertheless the poor are still with us, and the world is still very hard on them. And things are still the same when it comes to the pursuit of wealth.

Now I think Dickens chose the words he put on Scrooge’s lips here very carefully and very well. Many people today still do profess to condemn the pursuit of wealth, but for most people it is only a profession, it’s a claim. Because isn’t it true that those who condemn the pursuit of wealth, the greed of the wealthy, very often want to be wealthy themselves? Isn’t it true that they condemn the pursuit of wealth on the one hand while on the other hand, and at the same time, look for ways to make themselves wealthier? And how many people would complain if they were wealthy, very few indeed, I’m sure, because while we often hear people complaining about not having enough money, when do we ever hear anyone complaining about having more money, let alone too much money?

So just as in Dickens’ day, the world is still very hard on poverty and still professes to condemn the pursuit of wealth while at the same time actually doing all it can to pursue wealth. As Christians though, we should have a different attitude towards these things. We should be hard on poverty, but not on the those who suffer from poverty. That is, we should be hard on the existence of poverty as a condition in which people are forced live, lacking the resources and essentials to sustain at least a reasonable standard of living, while at the same time being compassionate and showing some care towards those who are living in poverty. And while there’s nothing wrong with wanting a better standard of living for ourselves and achieving the means, the wealth, to get that, and the Christian faith does not condemn wealth, we should see wealth as something through which we can help not only ourselves but help others too. And this is the lesson of the parable in this morning’s Gospel.

Nowhere in the parable does Jesus say that it’s wrong to be rich. Nowhere in the parable does Jesus say that it’s wrong to enjoy the good things that wealth allows us. Nowhere in the parable does Jesus say that the rich man was a crook, that he’d acquired his wealth dishonestly. Jesus simply says,

“There was a rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day.”

Similarly, Jesus makes no comment on why Lazarus was poor. He doesn’t say Lazarus was a bad man who was in any way deserving of his lowly condition. We know that to the ancient Jews, misfortune was often seen as divine punishment for sin, and there are people today who do believe that at least up to a point, the poor are to blame for their own plight because they’re lazy and can’t, or won’t, make good judgement calls between what’s right and wrong, good and bad. But there’s no hint of that in what Jesus says about Lazarus. Rather Jesus simply says,

“And at his gate was laid a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man’s table. Moreover, even the dogs came and licked his sores.”

So there’s nothing in the parable about the relative merits of either the rich man or Lazarus. Because that’s not what the parable is about. The parable is about the unrighteousness of turning a blind eye to the suffering of others. And more precisely in this case, it’s about turning a blind eye to the suffering of others when it’s going on right in front of our eyes, and we could easily do something to help alleviate their plight.

We’re told that the rich man in the parable dressed in purple. That was the royal, or imperial colour, so it tells us just how rich the man was. He was as rich as a king. And he” feasted sumptuously every day.” So he spent a lot of money, an excessive amount of money, just on food and drink while all the while, there was a poor man, who’s plight he couldn’t help but notice, lying at his gate. A poor man who would have been happy with just a few scraps of food, not from the rich man’s table, but that fell from his table; a few scraps of food that would have either been eaten by dogs or swept up and thrown away with the rubbish. But he wasn’t even offered that. Jesus doesn’t say this explicitly in the parable, but I don’t think we’re left in any doubt that this situation was left unchanged until that great leveller, death, took both the rich man and Lazarus; one to the side of Abraham and one to Hades, one to heaven and one to hell.

Because Jesus didn’t condemn the rich man simply for being rich, there’s no doubt he wasn’t tormented in Hades simply because he was rich but because of his complete indifference towards the plight of the poor man at his gate. A man who’s suffering he was well aware of, and whom he could so easily have helped without it in any way affecting or diminishing his own lavish lifestyle and yet didn’t. And this is what condemns him, not his earthly wealth per se.

In the parable, the rich man asks Abraham to send Lazarus to warn his brothers so that they might change their ways and avoid the torment of Hades. But as Abraham says this has already happened. No, they haven’t been visited by Jacob Marley and the spirits of Christmas past, present and future, but they have been visited by Moses and the prophets, so they should listen to them. This is something he, and no doubt they haven’t done but perhaps if someone were to go to them from the dead, they’ll not only listen, but repent. But, as Abraham says,

“If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.”

We know that Jesus is speaking about himself here. He’s saying that if people won’t listen to Moses, to the law, and the prophets, they’re not going to listen to him either. And we know that for many people has been and still is the case. But we’re Christians. We’re people who not only say that we do listen to Jesus, but that we follow his example and live by his teaching. But do we? And especially do we listen when it comes to what he says about wealth and what we should do with it?

We might say, and I’m sure many would say that, Yes, they do listen. And they show that by contributing to charity and so on. But even so, isn’t there still at least a bit of the Ebeneezer Scrooge in all of us? For example, one of the issues that people often raise with me is the inequity of a society in which footballers can be paid more each week, than what even nurses at the very top of their profession earn in a year, and many, many times more each week what nurses lower down the pay scale earn each year. And yes, I would say that is wrong, just as those asking me the question think it’s wrong. But when I’ve asked those people if they were offered tens of thousands of pounds per week to do something they like doing, would they turn it down, suddenly, their expression changes. Because of course, No, they wouldn’t. And the vast majority of people I’ve asked that have been honest enough to admit that they wouldn’t.

And how many of us do the National Lottery? How many of us say that if we had a big win on the lottery that, while we’d obviously look after our family, we’d give lots of money to our parish church and to various charities and we’d use the money to help people. Well we may very well do that. But can any of us honestly say that if we won millions of pounds we wouldn’t use an awful lot of it, perhaps, or probably even, the majority of it to look after ourselves, to improve our situation and indulge in our own pleasures?

I started with Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol, because this morning’s parable reminds me a little of the story of Scrooge and Tiny Tim Cratchett. Scrooge is aware of the poverty in the world around him, but he’s so wrapped up in his pursuit of wealth that he ignores it; as far as he’s concerned it’s nothing to do with him. And Tiny Tim is the poor, sickly child of Scrooge’s clerk. But as the story unfolds, Scrooge does begin to listen, he sees not only the error of his selfish ways, but also the good that his wealth can do to help others less fortunate than himself. And he changes. He changes from the “odious, stingy, hard, un-feeling man” he has been and becomes ‘a second father’ to Tiny Tim and

‘… as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world.’

Scrooge didn’t give up his wealth as such, he didn’t make himself poor, he just learned how to use the wealth he had for the good of others and did it. And Jesus doesn’t ask us to make ourselves poor, but simply to share our wealth with those less fortunate than us. The question is, are we listening?

Amen.

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Propers for the 26th Sunday in Ordinary Time, 28th September 2025

Entrance Antiphon
All that you have done to us, O Lord, you have done with true judgment, for we have sinned against you and not obeyed your commandments. But give glory to your name, and deal with us according to the bounty of your mercy.

The Collect
O God, who manifest your almighty power above all by pardoning and showing mercy, bestow, we pray, your grace abundantly upon us and make those hastening to attain your promises heirs to the treasures of heaven. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.
Amen.

The Readings
Amos 6:1, 4-7
Psalm 146:6-10
1 Timothy 6:11-16
Luke 16:19-31

Prayer after Communion
May this heavenly mystery, O Lord,
restore us in mind and body,
that we may be coheirs in glory with Christ,
to whose suffering we are united
whenever we proclaim his Death.
Who lives and reigns for ever and ever.
Amen.

If you find this morning’s Gospel reading a little difficult to understand, don’t worry, you’re not the only one! This parable of the Dishonest Manager is one that’s taxed the minds of a great many people including biblical scholars and theologians. The problem with this parable is seeing what Jesus is actually trying to teach us through it. Because he seems to be saying things in this parable that are not only contradictory in themselves but that also contradict our understanding of his teaching in general.

Just think about it. Jesus tells us about a rich man who had a manager who was accused of wasting the rich man’s possessions. So the rich man decides to sack the manager but first he wants an account from the manager of what he’s been up to . And the manager’s in a tiswas because he has to do something very quickly otherwise he’s not only going to be out of a job, but he’s also going to be out on the streets. So what he decides to do is call in as much of his master’s debt as he can and because he hasn’t got much time, he cooks the books in an attempt to make things look right on paper. But this is where the parable takes a strange turn. The manager is getting the boot for not looking after things properly and now it looks like he’s making things worse by fiddling the accounts to cover his tracks but when the master finds out, he actually praises the manager for his shrewdness; he might be dishonest but he’s no fool when it comes to business. And here is where it becomes strange.

The parable reads as a commendation of dishonesty doesn’t it? And we would expect some kind of condemnation of this kind of shenanigan from Jesus, but he actually seems to commend it to his followers, suggesting that they should act in the same way;

“The master commended the dishonest manager for his shrewdness.
For the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own
generation than the sons of light. And I tell you, make friends for
yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails they may
receive you into the eternal dwellings.”

But surely Jesus can’t be saying that his followers should be like the dishonest manager in the parable, that they’ll receive a heavenly reward for being dishonest. That flies in the face of everything we know and understand about Jesus and his teaching doesn’t it? So what is going on here, what is Jesus really saying in this parable? To be honest, I think what Jesus is trying to say in this parable becomes easier to understand if we read what he says after the parable before we actually read the parable itself.

As we heard this morning, after the parable, Jesus goes on to speak about the importance of faithfulness, in essence he asks if people can’t be faithful with earthly riches, how can they hope to be trusted with heavenly riches. In other words, if we can’t be faithful with what we’ve been entrusted with in this life, how can be given eternal life. To all intents and purposes he says that we are either children of darkness, children of the world, or children of the light , children of God. And we can’t have a foot in both camps, we either serve God or mammon, which is earthly wealth and possessions. And reading on a little further still we find that what Jesus said here brought him into conflict with the Pharisees who we’re told were ‘lovers of money’. And if we read the parable with these things in mind, we see it as both a comparison and a contrast.

So first of all the comparison. The manager is someone who’s been unfaithful. He’s wasted what his master had trusted him with. The manager himself says that he’s not strong enough to work and too proud to ask for charity. So here’s someone who’s abused his position of trust, not least by taking advantage of it by being lazy and thinking that he’s a bit better than other people. But now the party’s over, he’s been found out and asked to give an account of himself. And that spurs him into action, he knows he’s got to do something to save his own skin, and he’s got to do it very quickly. So he does and is spite of the fact that what he does is rather dodgy, his master recognises how shrewd the manager’s been and praises him for it.

And we can compare that to the way God will treat us. We’ve all been entrusted with things by God, and we’ve been charged with being good managers of what God has given us. Now we can be faithful managers of what we’ve been entrusted with, or we can be unfaithful managers of those things, we can either use them, or we can waste them. But one thing is certain, and that is that we will all eventually be asked to give an account of what we’ve done with the things God has entrusted to us. And if we’ve been unfaithful and wasted those things God has entrusted to us we’re going to find ourselves out in the cold, or perhaps in a very hot place in this case! And because we don’t know when we’re going to have to give that account of our management of what God’s entrusted us with, we can’t afford to hang around either. We need to put our affairs in order ASAP and we need to start doing that even sooner. Now.

If we were in this sort of fix in our everyday, worldly lives we would do something about it ASAP, but we delay doing anything when it comes to heavenly matters because we don’t recognise the fix we’re in, it’s not immediately apparent to us and so we think we’ve got plenty of time to put things right with God. And I think this is what Jesus is driving at when he says,

“For the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own
generation than the sons of light.”

So we need to recognise the trouble we’re in and do something about putting things right, and we need to get on with it without delay.

The contrast in the parable is in how wealth is used by the children of the world and the children of light. In the parable, the manager fiddles the accounts to try to save his own skin. He’s in trouble for not doing his job properly in the first place and now he tries to put things right as best as he can by cheating his master out of what he’s due. But far from getting into even more trouble, he’s actually praised for his shrewdness, for being smart enough to see a way out, even though it is dishonest. The master, a rich man, a man of the world and no doubt a shrewd businessman himself, recognises a kindred spirit, a shrewd operator and fellow man of the world, and so he praises the dishonest manager.

In contrast, Jesus says to his disciples,

“…make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that
when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings.”

Unrighteous wealth is any kind of wealth that holds us back from God. It’s any kind of wealth that we might become so attached to that it stops us from living out the Gospel, any wealth that we might be tempted to use for selfish or even evil purposes. Jesus tells us though to use this to make friends for ourselves. But then he reminds us that wealth will fail.

We know that. We can fall into hard times and run out of wealth and if we’ve used it to buy friends and friendship, how many of those friends remain friends when the wealth does fail? Not many usually. And wealth always fails in the end because we all die and what good is all our unrighteous earthly wealth to us then? None at all. So what does Jesus mean here?

Well the friends he urges us to make are those who can receive us into heaven so he’s not talking about ordinary human friends. Because who can receive us into heaven but God? So Jesus is telling us to use our wealth in such a way that we make a friend of God. He’s telling us to use our wealth in ways that are pleasing to God, so that we become kindred spirits with Jesus. And we know that means using our wealth, whatever it might be, to help other people rather than using it simply to help ourselves. And this is simply another way of saying, as Jesus does a little later,

“You cannot serve God and money.”

This parable then, that seems so strange, is actually not so hard to understand really because all Jesus is trying to say to us is that we need to be faithful managers of what God has entrusted to us, and if we haven’t been, we need to put things right ASAP. He’s telling us that if we’ve used what God has entrusted to us to feather our own nest, we need to stop doing that and start using those things in the way God intended us to use them, that is, to make a friend of God by using what he’s entrusted to us in loving service of others. We have to be shrewd in the service of God, not of earthly wealth, because that is the way to be commended by God for our good management of the things he’s entrusted to us and that is the way to be admitted to the eternal dwelling of heaven.

Amen.

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Propers for the 25th Sunday of Ordinary Time, 21st September 2025

Entrance Antiphon
I am the salvation of the people, says the Lord. Should they cry to me in any distress, I will hear them, and I will be their Lord for ever.

The Collect
O God, who founded all the commands of your sacred Law upon love of you and of our neighbour, grant that, by keeping your precepts, we may merit to attain eternal life. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.
Amen.

The Readings
Amos 8:4-7
Psalm 113:1-2, 4-8
1 Timothy 2:1-8
Luke 16:1-13

Prayer after Communion
Graciously raise up, O Lord, those you renew with this Sacrament, that we may come to possess your redemption both in mystery and in the manner of our life. Through Christ our Lord.
Amen.

If we walk into a church and we’re unsure of what denomination it belongs to, or any Anglican church and we’re not sure which tradition it belongs to, one way to work that out would be to simply look round and see what kind of crosses are in that church. If we saw crucifixes rather than plain crosses, we could be fairly certain that we were in either a Roman Catholic or Anglo Catholic church whereas if we saw plain crosses, we could be fairly sure that we were in a Reformed church of some kind, or an Anglican church of a more Reformed or Protestant tradition. Because different denominations and traditions do tend to favour one or the other, the plain cross or the crucifix.

And there are quite understandable reasons for that. Catholics tend to favour the crucifix because it emphasises the sacrifice of Christ and this is what lies at the very heart of the liturgy, Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross, the breaking of his body and shedding of his blood for the forgiveness of sins. Those of the Reformed and Protestant churches and traditions though favour the plain, empty cross because this reminds us that Christ is no longer on the Cross but has been raised to life. So the plain cross symbolises Christ’s Resurrection and his victory over sin and death. So who’s got this right?

Actually, both are right, but in a sense, both are wrong too. Those who favour the plain, empty cross are right because we must never forget that the foundational event of the Christian faith is Christ’s Resurrection; without the Resurrection there would be no Christian faith. I know that when we hear academics on the TV talking about Jesus and the early Church they usually say that that the foundational event of the Christian faith is Christ’s death on the Cross, but they are utterly wrong. If there had been no Resurrection, Jesus would have died on the Cross, and his movement would have died with him; end of story. Jesus’ death on the Cross is only given meaning in the light of the Resurrection. We Christians are called an Easter people are we not? We’re not called a Good Friday people are we? And for good reason because our faith is founded on our belief in Christ’s Resurrection from the dead.

Having said that, those who favour the crucifix are also right because we Christ couldn’t have been raised from the dead if he hadn’t first died, and that’s simply common sense. And while his Resurrection gives us the assurance that we can be raised to eternal life, it was his death on the Cross which made that possible because his death takes away our sins, the sins that would have prevented us from inheriting eternal life. So we simply cannot have the Resurrection without the Crucifixion; we can’t have the plain, empty cross without the crucifix. And this is why those who favour one over the other are both wrong, because we simply can’t have one without the other.

What we really need to do is to be able to look at a crucifix, see the cost of our salvation, Christ’s death on the Cross for the forgiveness of sins, but then look beyond that to see Christ’s victory over sin and death. We need to be able to see what Christ’s sacrifice and death on the Cross leads to, his Resurrection. But when we look at a plain, empty cross, we still need to be able to see Christ on the Cross. In seeing the empty Cross as a symbol and reminder that Christ is risen, we still need to be able to see that the Cross was also, and first, the instrument of his death and the means by which our sins are forgiven, and the Resurrection was enabled. In this morning’s Gospel, I think we hear Jesus saying this, albeit in a slightly different way.

In our first reading we heard the story of Moses and the bronze serpent. The people were being plagued by deadly serpents and in answer to Moses’ prayer God tells Moses to make a bronze serpent and set it on a pole so that anyone who was bitten could look at the bronze serpent and live. And Jesus uses this story to speak about himself:

“And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”

It’s quite common in John’s Gospel to find double meanings in Jesus’ words and what Jesus means by being “lifted up” here has been interpreted in a number of ways. He could mean lifted up on the Cross, in which case he’s referring to his death. He could though mean lifted up from death and be talking about his Resurrection. He could even mean lifted up from the earth and be referring to his Ascension. He could mean any of those things, or any one of them or all of them. This is one of the reasons John’s Gospel is not the easiest to understand. What we do know though is that later in the Gospel, when Jesus speaks in a similar way, John tells us quite explicitly that Jesus was referring to his death, to being lifted up on the Cross:

‘“And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” He said this to show by what kind of death he was going to die.’

I don’t think it’s unreasonable then, to assume that in this morning’s Gospel when Jesus speaks about being “lifted up” he was, perhaps primarily, speaking about being lifted up on the Cross. And I think that’s made more likely given the context of the Old Testament background story because that’s a story about being saved from death. Moses lifted up the bronze serpent so that anyone who looked on it would live, and Jesus was lifted up on the Cross so that those who look on him – believe in him, would live forever by virtue of his death on the Cross which takes away the sins that otherwise would have condemned us to death.

What I think we should notice here is what people are called to look at. In the reading from the Book of Numbers, the people aren’t called to look on the pole in order to be saved, they’re called to look at the bronze serpent. And neither are we called to look at the Cross for our salvation, but at the one who was lifted up on the Cross, to Christ. And this doesn’t only agree with what we’ve read this morning, but it’s in accordance with Old Testament prophecy more generally. The prophet Isaiah, in the Suffering Servant prophecy which is so central to our understanding of Jesus’ Passion and death says,

‘Behold, my servant shall act wisely, he shall be high and lifted up and shall be exalted.’

And Isaiah then goes on to describe the suffering that the Lord’s servant will go through. And through the prophet Zechariah, God says that after pouring out a spirit of grace and prayer on people,

“…when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child.”

And John explicitly links this prophecy to Christ being pierced by a lance as he hung on the Cross.

So the message is clear. When the people of Israel wanted to be saved from death, and God raised up for them a bronze serpent on a pole, they weren’t told to look at the pole, but at the serpent. And in the same way, when God wanted to save us from the death of sin, and his Son was raised up on a Cross, we weren’t told to look at the Cross, but to look at the one who was raised up on it. We’re called to look at Jesus.

Today is the feast of The Exaltation of the Holy Cross. It’s a day when we exalt the Cross, when we lift up the Cross and sing its praises. But even today, we mustn’t take our eyes off Christ because it’s Christ who gives meaning to the Cross through his sacrifice on the Cross. Even as we think of the Cross as the means of our salvation, we mustn’t take Christ off the Cross because it is he who accomplished our salvation. And even if we look to the empty Cross as a symbol of Christ’s Resurrection, we mustn’t take Christ off the Cross because we cannot have the Resurrection without first having the Crucifixion.

I think the relationship between Christ and the Cross is wonderfully expressed in the 9th Century Anglo Saxon poem, The Dream of the Rood. It begins with a vision in which the dreamer sees the Cross and describes it as ‘wondrous’ and ‘beautiful’, ‘surrounded by light’, ‘the tree of victory’. All things which we might well say today. In the poem, the Cross then begins to speak, and it describes the horror of the crucifixion and its own distress at being put to such terrible use. Eventually the Cross goes on to speak about the honour that people now give it, but it’s an honour that it knows it owes entirely to Christ who once hung and died upon it. It says,

‘Now, my loved man, you have heard
how I endured bitter anguish at the hands of evil men.
Now the time is come when men far and wide in this world,
and all this bright creation, bow before me; they pray to this sign.
On me the Son of God once suffered;
wherefore I now stand on high, glorious under heaven;
and I may heal all those who stand in awe of me.
Long ago I became the cruellest of tortures,
hated by men, until I opened to them the true way of life.
Lo! The Lord of Heaven, the Prince of Glory honoured me,
and exalted me above all other trees…

It’s right that we should exalt the Cross as the instrument of our salvation, but we must always remember that, in and of itself, the cross is a symbol of humiliation, torture and death. It is only given honour and glory because of the one who hung and died on it for our salvation; because it is Christ’s Cross. As the mantra of the Society of the Holy Cross says,

We should glory in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ,
for he is our salvation, our life and our resurrection,
through him we are saved and made free.

Amen.

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The Propers for the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, 14th September 2025

Entrance Antiphon
We should glory in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, in whom is our salvation, life and resurrection, through whom we are saved and delivered.

The Collect
O God, who willed that your Only Begotten Son should undergo the Cross to save the human race, grant, we pray, that we, who have known his mystery on earth, may merit the grace of his redemption in heaven. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.
Amen.

The Readings
Numbers 21:4-9
Psalm 78:1-2, 34-38
Philippians 2:6-11
John 3:13-17

Prayer after Communion
Having been nourished by your holy banquet, we beseech you, Lord Jesus Christ, to bring those you have redeemed by the wood of your life-giving Cross to the glory of the resurrection. Who live and reign for ever and ever.
Amen.