Anyone who’s ever taken up something as a hobby or pastime, or who’s taken up something for a more serious purpose such as a sport with the intention of entering into competition, will know that, in order to improve at what we’re doing requires at least some dedication to the activity in question. We may find that we have some natural ability at what we’ve decided to take up but, unless we practice what we’re doing, we’ll never be as good as we could be at that, or indeed any activity we engage in. 

We usually take up hobbies and sports, of course, because we want to do them and enjoy doing them and so practice isn’t usually too much of an effort for us; or at least, up to a certain point it isn’t. But what happens when we’ve reached as far as our natural ability at an activity will take us? If we want to improve beyond that level, practice becomes harder. It’s not so easy for us anymore because we’re having to push ourselves beyond our comfort zone, probably both in terms of what we’re having to do in practice and the amount of time we’re having to spend in practice. And that can make something we took up for pleasure, not so pleasant as it once was. Once we’ve reached that stage, what we’re doing becomes just as much about hard work and dedication as it is about pleasure and so it’s usually when we reach that stage in our progress at an activity that we have a decision to make. Do we settle for the level, the standard, we’ve managed to achieve already and simply do what we need to do to maintain that standard? Do we give up on that activity and look for something else that’s easier and more enjoyable? Or do we knuckle down to the task in hand and put in the work and the time we need to, so that we can carry on getting better at it?

I’m sure we’ve all found ourselves in that situation at some time in our lives. I know I have. At one time, I was learning to play the piano and, at first, I’d happily put my ‘hour a day’ and more. But once I’d reached a certain level, things started becoming a bit harder. For one thing, I was having to play pieces of music that I didn’t really like. My piano teacher said it was what I needed to do to take my playing to the next level but, because I didn’t like the pieces, I didn’t enjoy learning or playing them and so I began to find practice hard work and did less of it. At the time I was also quite keen on a young lady I was seeing. She’d always thought that I spent too much time on the piano and not enough with her and, as piano practice became harder and not so enjoyable, I started to come round to that point of view myself. Obviously, that didn’t please my piano teacher because I wasn’t progressing as he thought I should have been. He thought the young lady in question was holding me back, and he told me so in no uncertain terms! So, in the end, I felt that I was faced with a decision; the piano or the girl? I chose the girl, which in hindsight wasn’t the best decision I’ve ever made, but that’s another story!

To be honest, I don’t think I’d have ever been a great pianist, no matter how much practice I’d have put in; I started too late for one thing, I was 20 before I took my first lesson, but it doesn’t matter how good we are at something, there’s always something we can do to be better at it. For example, I remember once reading an article written by an England international speedway rider of the 1970s in which he spoke about his early years in the sport during which he was a team-mate of one of the true greats of the sport, a man who was a 5 times individual Champion of the World. What he said was that while he benefitted enormously from those years, they also taught him that he, himself, would never be a world’s champion. Not because he didn’t have the potential, in fact he went on to win world championship gold medals at team events 3 times. No, he realised he would never be an individual world champion because he saw just how hard you had to work to achieve that standard and the sacrifices you had to make to get there and stay there. And he decided that level of work and dedication was something he simply wasn’t prepared to take on.

So whatever we do and whatever level we reach at a particular activity, there’s always something more we can do to be better at it. But, if we really do want to be better, we have to be prepared to do what it takes, whatever that might be, to improve. We have to be dedicated enough to what we’re doing to put in the hard work that’s necessary to improve and to carry on putting in that hard work to make sure that our standards don’t slip, and we don’t backslide into bad ways or errors. And just as it is with anything else we do, the same is true of our lives as Christians too, as Jesus makes abundantly clear in this morning’s Gospel.

The standard we’re all trying to achieve as Christians is the standard of Christ himself. That’s a very high standard indeed and one we can achieve on perhaps only a very few occasions but, nevertheless, that is what we should all be aiming for.

And we do need to aim that high because that is the standard, the level of performance if you like, that we need to achieve if we’re going to be sure of winning the gold medal, the prize of a place in the kingdom of God. And in this morning’s Gospel Jesus sets out in very vivid terms just what we have to be prepared to do in order to reach that standard;

“And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off…  And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off….  And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out.”

And we have to do all these things because it’s better for us to enter the kingdom God crippled, lame and blind, rather than not do these things and be thrown into the unquenchable fires of hell. Which is really just a very vivid way of saying that we have to be prepared to do whatever it takes to live as God intends us to live and Christ taught us to live if we really do want to have a place in heaven.

I’m sure we can all think of ways in which our hands, feet and eyes cause us to sin, but I’ll give you a few examples. Do we use our hands to write unkind, or even worse, untrue things about people in letters, emails, texts or any other media? If we do, we should stop. Do we use our feet to walk away when we see people in need, or to walk, or perhaps use the pedals in our cars to go to drive to places in preference to coming to Church or attending Church meetings? If we do, we should stop. Do we use our eyes to feed our greed? In other words, are our eyes bigger than our bellies? Do we see something, want it and have it, not because we need it, but simply because we can have it, even if we then waste it because we don’t need it? That’s a very common way our eyes cause us to sin around Christmas time, isn’t it? How much food, for example, do we buy simply because ‘it’s Christmas’ but then waste because we’ve bought far more than we need and can eat? If we do things like that, we need to stop.

To stop doing these things though, requires dedication. We might be very tempted to say something unkind about others; we might truly believe that what we’re saying is true and justified, but how would we feel if someone were to say similar things about us? And so, no matter how much more difficult it is for us not to say those things than to give in to the temptation to say them, we have to have the dedication to our faith to do the difficult thing.

No matter how much easier it is for us to walk away from those in need than to help them, we have to have the dedication to our faith to do the difficult thing instead. No matter how much more we might want to watch the football, or whatever else it might be that we’re interested in that’s on the TV, than to come to Church, we have to have the dedication to our faith to put our faith first. And no matter how much more enjoyable it might be to meet friends, go for a drink or a meal, or even just watch something on the TV than to attend a Church meeting, we have to have the dedication to our faith to do the less pleasurable thing.

And no matter how much we might be tempted by what we see, no matter how much we might want what we see, we have to have the dedication to our faith to stop and think before we give in to temptation and take what we want. To ask ourselves whether we really need what we’re so tempted by or whether we’re just being self-indulgent, greedy and wasteful. We have to have the dedication to our faith to stop ourselves from doing what we want to do if what we want to do isn’t the right thing to do.

Like everything else, these things are a matter of practice. The more we practice our faith, the better we’ll be at living it out. The more often we stop and think before we speak, the more likely we’ll become to stop and think before we speak, all the time. The more often we put our duty and responsibility to the Church first when it comes to deciding what to do, the more likely we’ll be to put our duty and responsibility to the Church first whenever we have to decide what to do. And the more often we follow Christ’s example of resisting temptation, the more likely we’ll be to be able to follow his example and resist temptation at all times. 

We all want to be good disciples of Christ, we wouldn’t be here in Church if we didn’t, and I’m sure we all want to be better disciples of Christ than we are now. So let’s have the dedication we need to put our faith into practice however hard, and even unpleasurable that might be at times. We all want to win the gold medal, the prize of a place in God’s heavenly kingdom, so let’s cut out and cut off anything and everything that’s holding us back from achieving the level of performance that we need to win it.

Amen.

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The Propers for the 26th Sunday of Ordinary Time can be viewed here.

Last weekend, I had the pleasure and privilege to conduct a wedding at St Gabriel’s and, as is very often the case at Church weddings, the Bible reading we heard was chapter 13 of St Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians. I’m sure that’s a reading that we’re all familiar with. In it, St Paul speaks about love; he speaks about the indispensability of love, and says that whatever we do, even the most supreme acts of self-sacrifice are worthless unless they stem from love. And he speaks about the nature of love saying,

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Those words are very fitting for a wedding, any wedding, not just a Church wedding because, as I always say to the happy couple when this reading is used, if your love for one another can be like that, you’ll be well on the way to enjoying a long and happy married life together. But, as well as being very fitting for a wedding, I think those words fit in very well with the theme of our readings this morning.

Strictly speaking, the theme of our readings today is wisdom, the wisdom that comes from God. The Scriptures tell us that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. To fear God means to know and follow his ways and those ways are made known to us most clearly through the teaching and example of God’s Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who summed up those ways in the Great Commandment to love God and love our neighbour as ourselves. So wisdom and love go hand in hand. We could say that the beginning of wisdom is to know that we’re called to love, and the wise, those who have and practice wisdom, are those who do love, whose lives and actions are motivated by love.

In speaking about love in his First Letter to the Corinthians, St Paul is addressing his concerns about the less than loving ways of the Corinthian Church. He seems to be particularly concerned with the pride and arrogance that some members of the Corinthian Church are showing, and the divisions, arguments, snobbery and one-upmanship that this is causing in the Church. Essentially, St Paul is saying that this is not the way true Christians behave because this is not what it means to love as Christ taught us to love and showed us to love by his own example. And isn’t this very similar to what St James is saying in our New Testament reading this morning?

In this morning’s reading from St James we hear him speak about jealousy and ambition causing disharmony and wickedness, and he contrasts this with the pureness of heavenly wisdom which makes for peace and is kind and considerate, similar qualities in fact, to those which St Pauls says are indicative of love. And St James is in no doubt about the cause of such troubles for he says,

What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel.

And we see the same thing at work in the disciples in this morning’s Gospel reading. There we read that the disciples had been arguing amongst themselves about who was the greatest, the most important. They must have known what they were doing was wrong because when Jesus asks them what they were arguing about, they won’t say. And so Jesus takes a little child and tells them,

“Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me.”

What Jesus was saying to them was, no matter how important you might think you are, none of you are any more important to God than this little child, and so you should treat each other, and everyone else, even little children, with equal importance.

In St Matthew’s Gospel, we find a slightly different version of this story. There Jesus tells the disciples that if they want to be great in the kingdom of heaven, they must become like little children. In fact, he tells them that, unless they do that, they will never even enter the kingdom of heaven. So we know that, as Christians, we’re called to be like little children. In other words, we’re called to be humble because, just as a child needs the guidance, help and support of parents, grandparents, teachers and so on, so we have to accept our need of the help, guidance and support of God, our Father, of Jesus, and of the Holy Spirit. Just as a child trusts what parents, grandparents, teachers and so on tell them, we’re called to trust what God tells us, whether that be through the Scriptures, especially the words of Jesus, or the guidance of the Spirit. And just as a child is vulnerable, we’re called to make ourselves vulnerable, because loving others always does make us vulnerable. It makes us vulnerable to being hurt when our love is rejected and it makes us vulnerable to being used and abused when our love is taken for granted, when our love is taken but not returned, or when our love is taken but repaid with malice, hatred and evil.

We do have to make a distinction though, between being child-like and childish. Children, because of their humility, trust and vulnerability tend to be very loving, especially when they’re very young. As they grow older and less humble, trusting and vulnerable, they tend to become less loving, or at least more partial in who they love and more particular in who they show their love to. For example, in every school I’ve ever been in as a deacon or priest, I’ve had lots of young children running up to me shouting ‘Fr Stephen!’ and throwing their arms around me. But that only happens with the very young children. As the children become older, those innocent, child-like displays of love tend to be replaced with a ‘Hiya Fr Stephen’ and a smile.

I don’t think there’s any doubt that, as people get older, they tend to become less childlike. Unfortunately, we can’t say that as people get older, they always become less childish. We all know how selfish children can be. We all know that children very often want their own way and not getting it can end up in either a sulk or a tantrum. But, as children grow older, they can become even worse. In the ‘Terrible Teens’ they can have still have sulks and tantrums but, at that age, they seem to lose the ability to speak, and so we don’t even know what the sulk or the tantrum is about half the time! And adults can be every bit as bad as babies when it comes to petulance if they can’t have their own way. We have a saying that sums that up very well, don’t we? It’s a saying that applies to something babies do but we apply it to adults when we say that they’ve ‘Spit their dummy out!’ And doesn’t all this usually stem, among older children and adults at least, from a belief that they know best?

If we think about this kind of petulant, childish behaviour though, impatience, arrogance, irritability, resentfulness, aren’t all these things the very opposite of the way St Paul describes love? Aren’t these the very things that St James says are the cause of disharmony and wickedness, even of wars and battles between people? And aren’t they the very things Jesus is warning us against when he tells us to be like little children, to be child-like?

When he writes about love, St Paul says,

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.

So it is childish ways we’re called to give up, not child-like ways. It’s the cocksure arrogance that we’re right and should have our own way, and the petulant attitude we can all too often show if we don’t get it that we need to give up if we’re going to even enter the kingdom of heaven, let alone be great in the kingdom. We need to give up childishness and replace it with child-likeness; with the humility to accept that we don’t always know best, and with trust in God, that his ways are better than our ways.

And with love. The courage, and the wisdom, to love in the way St Paul describes in his First Letter to the Corinthians. If we can do that, then we have Jesus’ assurance that we will be worthy of a place in God’s heavenly kingdom. Who knows, we might even be great in that kingdom. But then, if we are truly child-like in the way Jesus says we should be, we really won’t care about greatness. Will we?

Amen.

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The Propers for the 25th Sunday of Ordinary Time can be viewed here.

 

During the time that I was thinking about offering myself for ordination, the diocese of Blackburn, under whose jurisdiction and care I was then under, were running an educational course called God our Rock, subtitled, Foundations for Christian Living. It was a course that anyone could enrol on and take but it was especially recommended to anyone who, like myself at that time, was thinking about offering themselves for any kind of authorised ministry, whether that was lay or ordained. It was a course you could take in two ways. You could either simply attend the weekly sessions or you could take the course with assessment. The latter option was the one recommended for those considering putting themselves forward for Church ministry and so that was the way I decided to take the course.

The course itself was split into 3 parts; God’s People, God’s Church, and God’s Book and for those who were being assessed, there was an essay to write for each part of the course. There was no marking involved but there was feedback given on the essays and at the end all those who’d completed the course received a certificate which stated that they’d either completed the course, or that they’d completed the course with assessment. I still have the essays I wrote for that course at home and so it’s quite easy for me to remember that the essay I wrote for the first part of the course, God’s People, was in answer to the question, ‘Does being a Christian mean being a doormat?’

A doormat, of course, as we all know, is a small mat that people place immediately in front of the doors to their homes; they’re there for people to wipe their feet on so that they don’t bring dirt they’ve picked up on their feet from the street, into people’s homes. But in the sense in which it was meant in that essay question, a doormat, as again I’m sure you all know, refers to a submissive person who allows other people to treat them badly without complaining or attempting to defend themselves. In that sense, it refers to someone who allows other people to walk all over them in the same way that everyone who enters a house, walks on the mat in front of the door. 

I don’t know what your immediate reaction was to that question. But even if you answer was the same as the answer I gave in my essay, ‘No’, it is a question that does, sometimes, need to be asked and answered. It needs to be asked and answered because some people, both inside the Church and outside the Church seem to answer that question with a ‘Yes’.

I’ve met people who’ve criticised Christians for being ‘doormats’. People who, in a sense, have despised Christians for being ‘doormats’ and for not standing up for themselves. People who have said that if being a Christian is about letting people walk all over you, they’re not interested because there’s no way they’d ever let anyone treat them in the way that Christians let others treat them. I’ve also met people in the Church who, whilst I’m sure they would never have thought of themselves as ‘doormats’ have, to all intents and purposes, allowed themselves to be used as such because, no matter how badly others treated them, they would never complain or stand up for themselves. And invariably, in my experience, people who allowed themselves to be treated in this way have allowed it because they wanted to avoid conflicts and arguments.

I’m sure that none of us wants conflict, especially in the Church. I’m sure that none of us want to get into arguments with other people, again, especially in the Church. But does that mean then, that to be a Christian we have to be a ‘doormat’? Does it mean it’s ok for Christians to allow themselves to be treated as ‘doormats’?

To be a Christian, of course, means to be Christ like. So if we want to know if being a Christian means being a ‘doormat’, we have to ask whether Jesus himself was a ‘doormat’. And for some people, in a sense, the answer seems to be ‘Yes’. There’s no doubt that Jesus did allow himself to be misused and abused in the most terrible way. There’s no doubt Jesus did that without complaint or any real attempt at self-defence. But, before we think that makes it necessary, or even ok for Christians to be ‘doormats’, we have to look at Jesus life, his ministry and example as a whole. And we have to put his suffering into its proper context.

In our Gospel reading this morning, Jesus teaches his disciples about what is going to happen to him:

‘… that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again.’

And Peter, at least, isn’t too impressed by what Jesus has told them. In fact, he tells Jesus in no uncertain terms that he’s wrong. Perhaps we could say that Peter was having a go at Jesus for suggesting he was going to allow himself to be treated as a ‘doormat’. But Jesus tells Peter that he’s the one who’s got it wrong because he’s only thinking in human terms, not in God’s terms. In fact, Jesus actually calls Peter, ‘Satan’, the evil one, the devil.

If we look at this encounter between Jesus and Peter as a simple story, what do we see? It’s an argument. Jesus says something Peter disagrees with, he tells Jesus he’s wrong, and in response Jesus tells Peter it’s him who’s got it wrong, and in the process, he resorts to name-calling, to abuse and insult.  That’s hardly the response of a ‘doormat’ is it? And if we look at the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ ministry as a whole, how many times do we find him arguing with people and engaging in name-calling and trading insults? How often did Jesus, in response to some attack or criticism from the Pharisees respond with an extremely erudite answer, but one that was laden with biting insults? Just think of what Jesus called them.

Fools, although a more accurate translation of the Greek would be ‘moron’ and, given what the Scriptures say about fools, that they say there is no God, immoral morons at that. Snakes and brood of vipers, people today might express the same sentiment by saying someone was ‘poisonous’. Hypocrites. That was a common insult Jesus used but the original meaning of the word isn’t what we often think it is. Originally, a hypocrite wasn’t someone who didn’t practice what they preached; a hypocrite was an actor. So, when Jesus called the Pharisees ‘hypocrites’, he was probably saying that they were people who were all show and no substance. People who didn’t really take their faith seriously but just liked to play the part. So they were ‘whitewashed sepulchres’, all white and lovely on the outside, but full of death, filth and corruption on the inside.

These are hardly the words and actions of a person we would call a ‘doormat’ are they? In fact, Jesus was anything but a ‘doormat’. He was perfectly capable of standing up for himself against anyone, and he was perfectly willing to do it too. And as we look at Jesus’ ministry as a whole, we find that only once did he allow himself to be used and abused without any complaint or attempt at self-defence. That was in the final hours of his life; when the time that he’d often called ‘his hour’ finally came. Only then did he allow himself to be used as a ‘doormat’, and then, only to fulfil the Scriptures in obedience to God. When the time had come for him to be the ‘Suffering Servant’ of Isaiah’s prophecies whom we read about this morning, of whom Isaiah said,

The Lord God has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious; I turned not backwards. I gave my back to those who strike, and my cheeks to those who pull out the beard; I hid not my face from disgrace and spitting.

The one of whom Isaiah also prophesied,

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth. 

I think sometimes, some Christians, perhaps many Christians, look at those final hours of Jesus’ life and take that as the only example we’re called to follow; an example to suffer abuse and misuse without complaining and without any attempts at self-defence. And so, sometimes Christians do allow themselves to be treated as ‘doormats’. But that is only part of the example Jesus gave us and it’s not an example to suffer in silence for the sake of it, but to suffer in silence only if our suffering in silence brings about some greater good. Jesus also left us another example to follow; an example to stand up for what’s right and to speak out against what’s wrong; an example to defend ourselves against malicious and unwarranted attacks from others, even if that means having to argue with them, and if their ways are human ways and not God’s ways, to criticise them for their ways.

Christians are not called to be ‘doormats’ because Jesus himself wasn’t a ‘doormat’, for anyone. And so, far from simply enduring wrong and suffering in silence, we’re called to stand up for ourselves and speak out in protest whenever and wherever we see God’s ways ignored. And, while we may not want to be involved in or see conflict and arguments within the Church, it is perhaps especially in the Church where we need to do that. To do as Jesus himself did and speak out in complaint and protest whenever and wherever we see people, especially in the Church, and even the Church itself, thinking and acting in human ways rather than God’s ways.

Amen.

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The Propers for the 24th Sunday of Ordinary Time (Trinity 15) can be viewed here.