In my sermon last Sunday, I spoke about the prevailing attitudes in the Church of England and questioned whether the current secular business model, woke agenda driven road the Church seems intent of following at the present time was the road the Church ought to be on. I asked whether this road would actually solve any of the Church’s current difficulties and suggested that the Church would do far better if, instead, it had the faith to turn, or return, to Christ and the Gospel for answers to its problems. Today’s readings give further evidence, if indeed any was needed, that this is indeed exactly what the Church ought to be doing.

Our first reading is from the book of Wisdom. As I’m sure you know, in scriptural terms, wisdom has very little to do with secular knowledge and the amount of information we have, but is about knowing the right thing to do, in God’s eyes, in any situation. And what wisdom tells us, or reminds us, in our first reading this morning is that God created us in his own image, and he created us to live in health and happiness. And wisdom tells us that it’s only through the devil and his followers that death and destruction have entered the world. So, the wise person knows that they’re made in the image of God and knows that, to live that good, happy, healthy, and ultimately eternal life God intended us for, we need to live in God’s likeness. The wise person knows that, to follow the devil leads to unhappiness and death. For us, as Christians then, the path to health happiness and life lies in following Christ and not in following the world and its ways.

Another book of the Bible that’s regarded as wisdom literature is the Book of Psalms and the wisdom this morning’s Psalm gives us is that it is the Lord our God who rescues us from our enemies and raises us up. It tells us that, if we call on the Lord, he will hear us and come to our help. It also reminds us that it is to God that we should give thanks for our salvation. So, what this morning’s Psalm tells us, is that the wise person knows that, when they’re faced with problems and difficulties, they should turn to God, in faith, for answers and solutions, confident that the Lord will hear and answer them. And it tells us too, that the wise person then thanks and praises God for his grace and goodness. It tells us too, that the wise realise that they do need God’s help and that they can’t solve every problem and overcome every difficulty without it. And they are thankful, not proud and self-congratulatory.

Usually when we think about wisdom literature, we tend to think of the books of the Old Testament, but I think we’re quite justified in thinking about the New Testament as wisdom literature too. If wisdom is about knowing the right and Godly thing to do in a situation, what is Jesus’ teaching other than wisdom? And if large parts of the Gospel are concerned with wisdom, aren’t the large parts of the rest of the New Testament that urge and encourage people to follow Jesus’ teaching and example concerned with wisdom too?

And so we can see this morning’s reading from 2 Corinthians as imparting wisdom because, in encouraging the Church in Corinth to be generous, St Paul reminds them that this is only following Jesus’ own example. We know that the cause St Paul was asking the Corinthians to be generous in supporting was a collection to help the Church in Jerusalem and Judea. And St Paul explicitly identifies the generosity of Christians in this cause as a manifestation of the grace of God in their lives. The message, I think, is clear. The wise do not hoard up treasure for themselves whilst others are in need. The wise do not hoard up treasure for themselves and then pat themselves on the back for how worldly wise they are in accumulating their vast riches. And most especially, the wise do not do these things while their brothers and sisters in Christ are in desperate need of help. Rather, the wise show the grace of God in their lives by following the example of Christ and letting their own example of generosity be like his. And the wise don’t share their riches and good fortune grudgingly, but willingly, and they give thanks to God that they’ve been so blessed that they can be generous in helping those in need. 

And we see these all things come together in this morning’s Gospel. The leader of the synagogue, Jairus, turning to Jesus, in faith, to heal his dangerously ill daughter. The woman who’d suffered for so many years, a woman with so much faith that she believed the mere touch of Jesus’ clothes would be enough to cure her of an ailment that no amount of human assistance had been able to cure. And Jesus who, despite the crowds that were pressing in on him, knew that someone had touched him. Not the touch of the pressing crowds but the touch of someone who’d come to him in faith, to be healed.

I think we have to consider here the situation Jesus found himself in. Jesus was every bit as human as you or I. How easy it would have been for him to be so taken in by the attention and perhaps adulation of the crowd, that he would have become more concerned with his own importance than with the needs of a few individuals. But rather than the selfish pride that might be expected in that situation, we see the completely selfless generosity of Jesus who was more concerned with the problems of two individuals in need than with the attention he was receiving from the crowd.

What we also see contrasted in this morning’s Gospel, are the differing rewards for those who have faith, and those who don’t. The woman who came to Jesus in faith, and who fought her way through the crowds to reach him, was healed. But when Jesus arrived at Jairus’ house and told those who were there that the little girl was not dead but sleeping, he was greeted with scepticism and laughter. No doubt that scepticism and laughter would have come from people who were worldly wise enough to know a dead person when they saw one. Their reward, the reward for their worldly wisdom and lack of faith was to be turned out of the house by Jesus. But the reward for those who did have faith, and who came to Jesus in faith, was to have their prayers answered and to witness the great miracle of the little girl being raised from the dead.

In his Letter to the Romans, St Paul asks,

‘If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else?’

This morning’s readings should leave us in no doubt that God is for us. We know that God sent his own Son to teach us his ways and gave him up to death for our salvation. But if we want to have everything else, all that God offers us, we have to have faith, and turn to him, in faith. And if we have that faith, the only people who can be against us are those who put more store in human wisdom than in heavenly wisdom and who have more faith in themselves and the ways of the world than in God and his ways. In particular, those who are against us are those who, as Jesus put it, say ‘Lord, Lord’ but who do not do the will of the Father. And those who are most against us are those who say ‘Lord, Lord’ and say that they act in God’s name and to his glory whilst they do the will of the world and encourage others to do the same.

This morning’s Gospel tells us though, that the reward for those who are worldly wise but have no faith and for those who laugh and scoff at the faith of others, is to be turned out of the house by Jesus himself. So with that in mind, let’s be the wise people we’re called to be and remain faithful to God and to Jesus. If we can do that, then we can rest assured that the opposition of those who are against us, is only temporary, it is for this life only. And so, as difficult as those who oppose us can make this life, let’s never forget that, as long as we are wise and have faith, God is for us, and with us, and always will be. If we can do that then we can have faith too that, when the time comes for us to enter God’s house, Jesus will not turn us out, but take us by that hand and invite us to rise up and eat with him in his heavenly home.

Amen. 

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The Propers for the 13th Sunday of Ordinary Time can be viewed here.

It can’t have escaped anyone’s notice that for many years now the Church has been adopting an increasingly secular business model of operating. One way we see this in the way the Church treats and staffs parishes. When a parish church goes into interregnum these days, there’s no guarantee that it will get another parish priest. Instead, it’s on the cards that it will be put into a united benefice or team ministry and have to share a priest with one or more other parishes. It could be, especially if it hasn’t paid parish share in full, the PCC of a parish church may come under pressure to close their church, for the good of the wider Church. And doesn’t this mirror the way unprofitable branches of secular businesses are treated?  Because aren’t they subject to staff cuts, amalgamations and closures, and told it’s for the good of the business as a whole?

We see it too in the way the Church adopts policies taken from secular society. These days, it seems, if society sees fit to have a policy for something, the Church follows suit and produces one too. In the society we live in of course, some policies are required by law, but does the Church have to follow secular models when it produces policies? And how much does the Church pay people to produce them? And it seems that the Church isn’t only concerned about statutory and business practices when it comes to adopting policies because to many people in the Church today, it seems that the Church is far too keen and quick to jump on the bandwagon of every agenda item that today’s ‘woke culture’ throws up, and to produce a policy on that too.

Perhaps, before the Church goes any further down the secular, business, woke culture road it seems intent on following these days, before it goes so far down that road that it can’t turn back, it needs to stop and take some time to think and reflect. To take the time to think about what the Church is, what it is called to be, and what it is, in truth, becoming.

The Church is very keen to tell ordinands preparing for ordination to sacred ministry in the Church, and to tell the clergy too, that they must have, and practice, self-awareness. Ordinands and clergy are told repeatedly that they must strive to see themselves as others see them, and especially to try to see themselves in the light of Christ’s teaching and example. We’re told to seek the help of others to help us to do that. We have to complete Ministerial Development Reviews to help us to be more self-aware and Christ-like. And it’s expected of us that we have a spiritual director to help us to do these things on a more regular basis than the bi-annua MDR. But perhaps now is the time for the Church herself in the persons of those who lead the Church to practice some self-awareness and to seek help too. 

Many people in the Church, both lay and ordained think it’s high time that the Church remembered that it is a Church and not a business. It’s high time that the Church remembered it is a Church and not a community aid organisation with Christian origins and religious trimmings. It’s high time that the Church remembered that it’s purpose for being is to call the world to the ways of Christ and not to lead Christ’s people into the ways of the world.

As important as finances and policies for people’s safety and well-being, and for justice and equality are, and those things are important, it’s high time that the Church remembered that it doesn’t need to follow the world’s lead in dealing with these things.  It’s high time the Church remembered that it already has a policy for dealing with all these issues. The Church has had a policy for dealing with these things for 2,000 years. The Church was founded on that policy and it’s a policy that’s superior in scope and understanding to anything that human society has devised, or can ever devise, because it’s a policy that’s been given to us by God. The policy was given to us, in person, by God’s own Son, Jesus Christ, and it’s called the Gospel.

In our Gospel reading this morning we read the well-known story of Jesus calming the storm, not to mention the disciples fears. And we could liken the disciples situation in the Gospel to the situation the Church is in today. The disciples were out in a boat in stormy weather and rough seas, and they were frightened that the boat was going to sink. And we could say that the Church is in stormy weather and rough seas today, and many people are afraid that the Church is in danger of sinking. But I think we really do have to ask the extent to which the Church’s problems have been self-inflicted because, whilst in the Gospel, the disciples turn to Christ for help and salvation, can we really say the same has always been true of the Church? Isn’t it the case that often, and far too often, that Church has, and is, looking to the world for solutions to its difficulties?

The Church, certainly in our time and place, is obsessed with money, and I don’t think obsessed is too strong a word to use. The Church is quite open today that the way it operates is driven by concerns about money. But isn’t the Church supposed to follow Christ’s example? And didn’t Jesus drive the money men out of the temple saying that they had turned his Father’s house, a house of prayer for the nations, into a marketplace and a den of thieves?

These days, the Church is quite open in saying that the way it treats and staffs parishes is driven by concerns about money. This coming week a local parish priest will be ‘welcomed’ as the incumbent of 2 parishes in north Manchester, though I should say as incumbent of 2 more parishes because he already has one parish in this diocese. 3 years ago, when my wife, Diane, and I were on holiday, we visited a well-known, world-famous, in fact, medieval market town in the West Midlands. When we visited the parish church there, we noticed the ‘Who’s Who’ board in the entrance which showed that, in addition to a parish priest and a curate, they also had 1 assistant priest and 8 associate priests attached to the parish. World famous medieval market town: 1 parish – 11 clergy. North Manchester: 3 parishes – 1 priest. And yet don’t we read in the Gospel that Jesus and his disciples had a common purse? And don’t we read that in the Acts of the Apostles that the early Church shared all things, everything they had, in common? The Church has a lot to say these days abut justice and equality, is that situation I’ve just described just or equitable?

One of the most shameful things that has gone on in the Church is the way people, especially young people have been abused over the years. What’s even more shameful is the fact that those in authority in the Church have known about it and covered it up. And so, understandably now these things have come to light, the Church is very keen on safeguarding, and all parishes have to have a safeguarding policy and safeguarding officer. But hasn’t the Church always had those things? Aren’t we all, each and every one of us, safeguarding officers? And haven’t we always been? Because didn’t Jesus say,

“… whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened round his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.”

Doesn’t the core of the Gospel, the great commandment to love your neighbour as yourself more than adequately serve as a safeguarding policy to prevent these things happening? It does as long as it’s observed. That the Church’s little ones have been abused, that the Church has known about it and done nothing except try to cover it up, is ample evidence that the Church has had total disregard for this, its own God-given, Gospel safeguarding policy.

And doesn’t the commandment to love your neighbour as yourself also more than adequately serve as a policy on justice and equality? How can there be injustice and inequality if we really do love our neighbour as much as we love ourselves? And if the Church needs that to be explained more clearly, then it’s simply a matter of reading St Paul’s Letter to the Galatians where he writes,

‘There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.’

I think the truth of the matter is, that many of the Church’s problems are, to some extent at least, self-inflicted because they stem from the Church’s own hypocrisy. They stem from the Church ignoring or paying little more than lip service to Christ’s teaching and example. At one time, because the Church was held in such high regard and with such respect, the Church could get away with that. But these days, it isn’t and can’t get away with it any longer. And because the world is criticising the Church and holding it, and its leaders especially, up to the light of the world’s scrutiny, the Church and its leaders are trying to appease the world by doing what the world wants it to do. But the Church can’t do that without further compromising the Gospel.

This morning’s Gospel reading calls to mind another story about a time when the disciples were at sea in stormy weather, the time they saw Jesus walking on the water. St Matthew tells us that Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water towards Jesus but, as soon as he saw the wind, in other words, as soon as he became more concerned with the things going on around him than with Jesus, he took his eyes and mind off Jesus, and began to sink. Then, when he called on Jesus again, Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up and out of danger. Perhaps that is a lesson the Church is in urgent need of being reminded of and taking to heart. That the answer to the Church’s problems doesn’t lie in concentrating on what’s going on in the world and copying the world’s ways and policies, but in turning back to Jesus and to the Gospel.

If the Church continues as it has been doing in recent times and continues further along the road towards adopting a secular business model of operating; if it continues to adopt secular policies and a woke culture agenda; and especially if it continues to do these things in preference to returning to Christ and the Gospel, I think there are many people, both inside the Church and outside, who will feel perfectly justified in echoing the words of Jesus we read in this morning’s Gospel. They will feel, and indeed will be, perfectly justified in asking he Church and its leaders, ‘Why are you so frightened? Where is your faith? And they will also, those in the Church especially, be perfectly justified in expecting the Church and its leaders to give them an honest answer.

Amen.

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The Propers for the 12th Sunday of Ordinary Time can be viewed here.

In our reading from 2 Corinthians this morning, we find St Paul discussing one of what we might call his favourite themes, which is his anthropology, his understanding of humanity, of what it means to be a human being. It would be very simple to say that St Paul has a dualistic understanding of human beings, that we’re made up of both a body and a spirit, which are often in conflict with one another. But that doesn’t really do justice to St Paul’s understanding of humanity, which is actually far more complicated than that.

For St Paul, human beings are very complicated creatures. We’re made up of a body, which is neither good nor evil and can be transformed and raised to life again after death, but our bodies are made of flesh which is evil and can’t. To simplify that, we might say that our bodies are about being in the world, whereas our flesh is about being of the world. We’re also made up of mind which allows us to contemplate and understand the ways of God, and of heart which motivates us to act in the way we do. Finally, we’re made up of soul, which is the essential and immortal part of human beings, and of spirit which is that part of us that can enter into relationship with God.

So, for St Paul, being human, and especially being human and a disciple of Christ, is a very complicated business. The inherent weakness and frailty of human beings as creatures of flesh and blood, constantly sets us against our inner self, our mind and heart, and our soul and spirit, so that, as St Paul puts it in his Letter to the Romans:

‘For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.’ 

So, for St Paul, the real problem with being human, and a disciple of Christ, isn’t that we don’t know how to do what God wants us to do, nor that we don’t want to do it, it’s that the weakness and inherent sinfulness of our bodies of flesh and blood conspires against us to stop us being the good, Christian people we know we should be, and actually want to be.

But that leaves us with quite a problem doesn’t it, because in this morning’s reading St Paul warns us that,

‘… we must all appear before the judgement seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.’ 

But if we don’t do the good that we want to do, but only the evil we don’t want to do, that’s going to leave us with quite a lot to answer for isn’t it? So how can we deal with that problem?

Well, having set the problem, it seems St Paul also supplies the answer because, as he says in his Letter to the Romans,

‘Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!’ 

And for St Paul, it is always Jesus who is the answer. His death frees us from sin, his resurrection is our promise of eternal life, and the gift of the Holy Spirit is the guarantor of these things. So, regardless of the evil our flesh might have compelled us to do whilst we’ve been inhabiting our earthly bodies, it’s always better to be with Christ than to be in our bodies. And so, as we read this morning, St Paul can say;

‘… we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight. Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord.’ 

But of course, to be at home with the Lord in the way St Paul means it in our reading this morning, means to be with Christ in our heavenly home, and we might like to be at home with Christ before we get there. And the good news for us is that we can be. We can be at home with Christ, in a spiritual sense at least, by entering the kingdom of God and, as we know, God’s kingdom is not just in heaven, but anywhere and everywhere God’s will is done. But where we ought to be able to find the kingdom most easily, is in the Church because the Church is called to be an earthly manifestation of God’s kingdom, a place where the world and it’s ways are not done, and God’s will is.

We know that God’s will is that all people should be saved, and so we know that his kingdom is open to all people. And that accords perfectly with what Jesus says in this morning’s Gospel when he says the kingdom,

” … is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when sown on the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth, yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes larger than all the garden plants and puts out large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”

And if that’s the way it is in the kingdom, that’s the way it should be in the Church too. So there should be no place in the Church for the ‘We don’t want their sort here’ attitude we sometimes find amongst Church people. We always have to bear in mind that if entry to the kingdom was based on merit, we’d all have a pretty hard time getting in, if we could get in at all. And it’s just as well for us that is the case because, as St Paul says, we don’t do the good we should do and want to do, but rather the evil we shouldn’t do and don’t want to do. So the Church too must be open to all. And if it’s not, then the Church in that place isn’t a manifestation of God’s kingdom, but rather a manifestation of the sinfulness of the flesh.

None of us can stand in judgement on other people because, like them, we’re made up of the same stuff; we all have the same weakness, our flesh that’s prone to sinfulness. And so, when someone wants to be at home with the Lord in the Church, we should be more concerned about making sure they can be, rather than about the kind of person they are. They might not be the kind of people we’d choose to have in the Church, but it’s not our Church, and so just because they’re not our cup of tea, doesn’t mean God isn’t calling them.  I’ll give you an example of what I mean. 

A few years ago, before I was ordained, a few of us from the parish church were out for a drink when a certain lady came over and asked if she could join us.
Now, this lady was a well-known character in the parish. She drank like a fish, swore like a trooper and in her younger days, so it was said, including by some members of her own family, she’d been a ‘lady of the night’. Nevertheless, as Christians should, we invited her to sit down with us, and as soon as she had, she started asking us about the Church and our faith. As the time went on, a few people made their excuses and left until, in the end, there were just two of us still sat with her. After chatting to us for quite some time, she asked where she could buy a Bible, we told her, and with that she left us. We thought that was the end of it. But the next Sunday, the lady was in church, in fact she was in church every Sunday after that. She was confirmed and she became a regular pilgrim to Walsingham with us. That lady didn’t come to church after any prompting by the Church, she approached us out of the blue. She was, I’m sure, typical of the kind of person whom some would say, aren’t wanted in the Church. But, because of how she came to the Church and what happened afterwards, how devoted she was, I don’t think there’s much doubt that God wanted her there and called her to be there. 

I tell you that story because, in a sense, that lady’s story is our story too. We might not have committed the same sins that she had, but nevertheless, we are all sinners. That lady might not have been worthy to enter this earthly manifestation of the kingdom of God we call the Church by her own merits, but neither are we. We’re all here for no other reason than that by some means and for some reason, God called us to be here because he wants us to be here. And that is good news, for all of us. It’s good news because it means that, despite the weakness of our flesh, despite the fact that we do the evil we don’t want to do rather than the good we do want to do, we can be of good courage and full of confidence that we will one day be at home with the Lord in heaven. Because why would God call us, we creatures of weak, sinful flesh, and want us to be at home with the Lord in the Church, his kingdom on earth, if he isn’t also calling us and wants us to be at home with Lord in his heavenly kingdom?

Amen.

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The Propers for the 11th Sunday of Ordinary Time (Trinity 2) can be viewed here.