Matthew 14:22-33 9 August
A recent report produced for the Church of England looked at the loss of trust in the Church of England concluded that the major reason was parish priests. There isn’t enough discipline, apparently, and there ought to be more control from the centre.
You can imagine that the response to this from parish priests was fairly robust, pointing out that almost every safeguarding failure has been laid at the feet of bishops who took inadequate action and that, by and large, surveys suggest that parishioners trust their own priest but increasingly don’t trust the higher-ups.
It so happens that I have, in my time, lectured quite a bit on trust. This is not the place to give you the whole nine yards, but essentially there are two sources of trust. There is a personal trust in which A trusts B because B has a track record of not letting people down. This is the trust we have, or want to have, in our partner. How could we go to bed at night and voluntarily go unconscious if we thought our partners might do us harm? But sometimes we have to decide whether to trust someone whom we have never met – a surgeon, for example – and then we fall back on a group trust. We trust them because they belong to a group that is expected to act in our best interests, that has pledged to do so, and that faces punishment if they fail in that duty; and it is made easier if we have previously had a good experience of others in that group.
Babies have to trust their parents to feed them and care for them. There you are with your newborn in your arms and he has to trust you. There is no known case of a baby announcing “Actually, if it’s all the same to you, I think I’d prefer to be brought up by that woman across the ward.” And I can imagine no greater pain for any parent than that of feeling that you have let your little ones down. It doesn’t matter that it’s not your fault that you’ve been bombed out of your home, that you have no money and nowhere to go. They trusted you and you think you have failed them.
On the other hand, think what is possible when someone believes in us. Cricket fans may recall David Steele who played for Northamptonshire and who was called up by England when they were being beaten all ends up by Australia, chosen by Tony Greig who believed that Steele could not be intimidated. He trusted Steele never to take a backward step, and he was right to do so. Steele repaid that trust.
We often categorise this piece of the Gospel as a question of faith, but actually I think it is a matter of trust. Does Peter trust Jesus? He believes in him as Messiah; but does he trust him?
In the early morning Jesus walks across the lake to the boat, which is unable to make land due to contrary winds. At first the disciples are frightened, as we all would be. These things don’t usually happen. But then they hear a familiar voice: ‘Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.’ Peter is doubtful. Peter answered him, ‘Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.’ He said, ‘Come.’
This is the point at which I show you my icon. This is Ὀλιγόπιστε, εἰς τί ἐδίστασας; O you of little faith, why did you doubt? You can see Peter sinking in the water, and that is the story we remember. But look again at verse 29.
So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came towards Jesus. Peter did it; he walked on the water. Not very far, but he did it. He became frightened and he doubted. But what did he doubt. He cannot have doubted Jesus; first, because he was the Messiah, and second, because Jesus was standing there on the water in front of him. He doubted himself. He doubted his ability to obey Jesus’ command.
He cried out, ‘Lord, save me!’ and Jesus did, saying to him, ‘You of little faith, why did you doubt?’ And we often assume that the rebuke is directed at Peter’s failure to believe in Jesus. But it is not said as condemnation, but as encouragement to do better next time. Peter, after all, was brave enough to try it, and he was doing well until he noticed the strong wind. He took his eye off Jesus for a moment to look at the waves or the trees bending, and without that focus on Jesus, all might have been lost.
When they got into the boat, the wind ceased. It wasn’t needed any more. The point had been made; and the disciples declared ‘Truly you are the Son of God.’
But what of us? What do we draw from this? First, that if we have faith, all things are possible through Christ. If Christ calls us to walk on water, we will walk on water, so long as we keep all our attention on him. I hate heights. I don’t even like being under tall things. And when, in Latvia, we had to cross the river on a high bridge, the only way I could do it was by focussing on the far end. While Gillian was saying “Look at that view!” I was growling that I will not look at anything until my feet are on firm ground. It’s the only way. Peter needed to be rescued, but only after he had succeeded. And next time, he knows what to do. Put your trust in Jesus. As the hymn says, trust and obey, for there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.
Matthew 14: 13-21 2 August
Sometimes in my mind’s eye I see an Israelite mother getting ready to put the rubbish out. She lifts the lid of a wheelie bin and notices an awful lot of bits of bread and fish inside. “Where did all this come from?” she asks; and her son says, “Well, you know that packed lunch you gave me. Something funny happened to it earlier…”
Jesus goes out onto the water in a boat. In a mountainous place like Galilee, with twisty roads and an eccentric water’s edge, a boat is much the fastest way to get around. It seems to be Jesus’ happy place. He likes being on his own, but that is rarely achievable. Although boats are generally faster than walking, and the route is often more direct, the crowds follow by running along the coastline. They do not know where he is going, nor do they care. They just want to be where he is.
I am going to pause there just to stress that point. They want to be where he is. They actively go looking. How different to so many of us who just hope that we know where Jesus is going to be on Sunday mornings between 10 and 11. Do we seek him out at other times?
And how does Jesus react to this? He wanted to be alone, but when he saw a great crowd who really wanted to see him, he took pity on them, and went to them. He put others first. He cured their sick, and they stayed on, hoping to hear him teach. They knew, just as he knew, that it was growing dark. Twilight does not last long in those latitudes, so if it is growing dark it soon will be dark; they know that, but still they stay.
I do not want you to name names, but I wonder whether any of you have one of those friends who is always keen to give advice, even though it is wildly incorrect, wholly impractical or downright dangerous? The person who seems to have an inexhaustible stock of barmy ideas; the one who, during a power cut, suggests opening the freezer to see if anything has thawed yet. Well, Jesus seems to have had a few.
We hear that there are more than five thousand men there, let alone women and children, and yet the disciples suggest sending them into the villages in search of a takeaway. What are the chances that there is enough food in any of them at any price? Jesus turns the idea down flat: he said to them, ‘They need not go away; you give them something to eat.’ They replied, ‘We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.’ And he said, ‘Bring them here to me.’
The disciples had been at Cana and watched Jesus produce at least four thousand glasses of wine, yet it does not seem to occur to them to ask him to provide for the crowd. But he does, with plenty left over.
Spectacular as it was, such multiplication of food was not unknown in the scriptures that the disciples knew. Manna rained down from heaven in Exodus; Elijah caused a jar of meal and another of oil to keep refilling while he stayed with a poor widow at Zarephath; in 2 Kings Elisha takes twenty loaves and feeds a hundred men with some left over. Jesus starts with less and has more left over; surely he must be the greatest prophet of them all!
Let us not see this as just a recapitulation of history, though. It is also a foreshadowing of what is to come, to the institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper. It was the same time of day, and the crowds adopt the same posture as those in the upper room at Jesus’ command. He takes, blesses, breaks and gives out the bread, in each case to the disciples.
And the disciples and their successors continue to hand out the bread week by week, inexhaustibly. However much we consume, there will be more. There is no limit on the distribution of Christ’s body, because Jesus sets no limit on the numbers who can receive. Indeed, he wants all to receive.
In a few minutes you will receive the Body of Christ. Don’t hold back. Please want it. We could all do with a little more Jesus inside us, and week by week, we get there. The Eucharist, you see, is not a small thing. It was instituted by Our Lord himself. He commanded his followers to receive him in this way. The Second Vatican Council summed it up very well when it said; ”every liturgical celebration, because it is an action of Christ the priest and of his body which is the Church, is a sacred action surpassing all others; no other action of the Church can equal its efficacy…”
Being fed by Christ was important to the five thousand, and it is no less important to us. Enjoy receiving Christ; and bring your friends, because there is plenty for all. If that doesn’t seem realistic, let me finish with a little story.
My dad was a ship’s engineer. One day when he came home he brough a young apprentice with him. This lad didn’t have anywhere to spend his leave, so Dad brought him home. There were no mobile phones, so Mum was unprepared and she complained to Dad that she didn’t have anything in the house suitable to give a guest. “Just stretch what you were going to give us,” said Dad. “Whatever he eats, it’ll be fine. What he really wants is to be at a table in a family.” Jesus is inviting us all to sit at his table in his family. Pull up a chair, and enjoy.
Matthew 13: 31-33, 44-52 26 July
Why does Jesus have five tries at telling us what the Kingdom of Heaven is like? I could illustrate this using the books of the Reverend Dr Richard Hakluyt (1553-1616), who, besides being a Prebend of Westminster Abbey, had a lifelong fascination with geography and exploring, just as many of my generation fantasised about becoming astronauts; at least until I discovered that a space capsule was around the size of an Austin A40. We had one of those, so I knew what it would be like, though at least my little brother wouldn’t be sitting beside me asking “Are we there yet?” every three miles on the way to the Moon.
Hakluyt wrote a great many books about the voyages of travellers to newly-discovered places, with catchy titles like his 1589 bestseller, The Principall Navigations, Voiages, and Discoveries of the English Nation: Made by Sea or Over Land to the Most Remote and Farthest Distant Quarters of the Earth at Any Time within the Compasse of These 1500 Years: Divided into Three Several Parts According to the Positions of the Regions Whereunto They Were Directed; the First Containing the Personall Travels of the English unto Indæa, Syria, Arabia ... the Second, Comprehending the Worthy Discoveries of the English Towards the North and Northeast by Sea, as of Lapland ... the Third and Last, Including the English Valiant Attempts in Searching Almost all the Corners of the Vaste and New World of America ... Whereunto is Added the Last Most Renowned English Navigation Round About the Whole Globe of the Earth. Good luck getting all that on the spine of the book! When I say he wrote them, that is not entirely true. He wrote some, but since he could not go on many of these travels, he filled in the gaps by translating the reports of other travellers.
However, he had no access to the woodcut blocks that illustrated these accounts, and he did not want to be thought to be a mere copyist, so he commissioned new illustrations. One of these showed an elephant. The snag was that the illustrator had not seen an elephant and if Hakluyt had, it was a long time ago. The result is a not very accurate drawing of an elephant.
When Jesus tries to tell his hearers what the kingdom of Heaven is like, we are a bit like Hakluyt’s illustrator. It isn’t that Jesus cannot describe it properly – he has been there, he knows it - but he has to do so in words that our minds can comprehend. I get that feeling when architects come to inspect our churches. They talk about things that I cannot understand, partly because I don’t know the vocabulary, but also because I have little idea how churches are put together. But one way round this is to keep giving different descriptions in the hope that one will make sense to the hearer.
And it is a testimony to the richness of the kingdom of Heaven that it can be described in so many different ways; and when the disciples heard these descriptions one or other of them must have penetrated their brains because when Jesus asked in verse 51 ‘Have you understood all this?’ They answered, ‘Yes.’ They may have been fibbing, of course. They might have said yes because if they said no he’d do it all again. The beauty of these similes is that they present different qualities of the kingdom to us.
The story of the mustard seed tells us about the extent of the kingdom, ever expanding. So long as we keep preaching the kingdom of Heaven, it will grow. There is no capacity limit. Consider this: if God is infinite, He has no boundaries, so there can be nothing outside God. We are already surrounded by God.
The yeast in the dough reminds us that if we incorporate Christ's teaching in our lives, it cannot be removed any more than you can take the yeast back out of the dough once it has proved; but we must incorporate it into our being in order for it to do its work.
The story of the treasure hidden in a field tells us something about the value of the kingdom, worth giving up everything we have to possess it, as does the merchant searching for pearls, but there is a subtle difference. The farmer was not expecting to find anything, but once he made the discovery he had to possess it; the merchant was looking for pearls and found the best. These are like two types of believer. The one isn’t looking for faith but suddenly finds it, the other knows there is something out there but is not quite sure what until he stumbles across it. I think of this when someone tells me they are spiritual but not religious, which usually means that they can experience the transcendence of God but not his immanence. They can believe in a big God up there, but not that he has any involvement in our lives. These may be the young people we read about who love coming to church to experience the beauty of the worship, the other-worldliness of it, but need to be challenged with the Gospel’s message of God’s work in the world.
And then Jesus presents what one might see as a recap of the parable of the weeds among the wheat that I spoke about last week. Curiously the compilers of the lectionary have lifted out the verses that explain that parable and tacked them on to last week’s reading. The kingdom of heaven will contain some who have no future there, but they will be weeded out.
There then comes one of the more baffling sentences that Jesus speaks. Having asked if they understand and received their confirmation Jesus tells them ‘Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.’ Now, the only scribes whom he has trained for the kingdom of heaven are his disciples, so he is telling them that they are responsible for explaining to people how Jesus and his new covenant has fulfilled the old treasure they already had in the Hebrew scriptures. The old treasure is not worthless, but it is surpassed by the new, and the two go together.
You see, it is not enough for the kingdom of Heaven to exist, wonderful as that is; it must also be announced to the world, which is our job. We may not be able to describe all its wonders until we see it, but that it exists, we can have no doubt, and we must announce that fact. Clergy obviously, but actually every believer who understands this can and should proclaim it. It is expansive, inclusive and intrinsically of the greatest possible value, worth giving up all to possess. Let us not let it slip out of our hands.
19 July Matthew 13: 24-30, 36-43
Last week we looked at good seed wasted on poor ground, and I argued that our job is to improve the ground, not to stop sowing seed. It is a very practical parable – and so is this week’s.
There are few things more vexing to a gardener than the weed or unidentified plant that pops up on your vegetable patch. The picture that Jesus paints is a very familiar one. You have weeds among your plants but if you try to remove them you may damage the plants. And the explanation that Jesus gives of his parable is quite straightforward. But what is its application for today?
Back in 2020 an American Jesuit priest, Fr Mitch Pacwa, wrote a book called “Wheat and Tares”, and as you can imagine it is based on this passage. But it isn’t about gardening. It’s about the scandalous behaviour of priests. I can’t summarise an entire book in a few minutes, but Pacwa argues that congregations have been scandalized by the failings of priests and the weakness of the hierarchy in dealing with them. Pacwa will be 77 years old next week; he just celebrated 50 years as a priest. Looking back on those 50 years he observes that priests have always had failings. Some drank too much, some were cranky or irritable, some could not be trusted with money, and some could not be trusted with women or choirboys. But he thinks something changed in the 70’s and 80’s; in a society that increasingly came to believe that anything goes, priests caught that bug. Some let their behaviour slip. Let’s be clear; Pacwa isn’t saying that permissiveness in the world caused priests to behave badly. At most, they saw standards slipping in society and let their own slip too. I don’t know Fr Pacwa personally. I’ve seen him many times on television. He comes across as an old-style family priest, and he has no time for any excuses about bad behaviour in the clergy. Safeguarding is necessary because you will always have these people among us.
But then he reminds us of a key point. The church will always contain sinners. It will always have people who failed. The apostles failed. Some of the early Christians failed. The biographies of plenty of bishops and archbishops could make you cringe. They were human, and they sinned. There will always, he says, be tares among the wheat. They may thrive among us; they may escape punishment for a long time; they may never be uncovered in this life; but there is always a reckoning. In the end, God will deal with them, and since they have never been faced with their wickedness, they are unlikely to have confessed or sought absolution. It will go badly for them.
That does not mean that we do not try to identify the weeds now. But just as we can try to make the stony ground into good ground, we can convert tares into wheat. We can encourage everyone, including us, to stop sinning. Of course, they must pay for their past sins; they cannot just be wiped out. Pacwa is scathing about any attempt to cover up offences. Quietly shifting priests to other parishes is unchristian and cowardly. But Jesus came to save sinners, and that is the church’s work. We have to try to turn weeds into wheat.
God cannot be tempted. What could be offered to Him that He could not give Himself? But when Jesus became man, he began to understand human temptation. He withstood it, but he experienced it. The temptations in the wilderness would have no point if he was not capable of being tempted. In this, as in so many things, Jesus showed us what people could be.
Safeguarding is simply identifying the weeds. They were always among us and I am sure that they always will be. We all grump about safeguarding training, but it is necessary. It is not restricted to PCC members, by the way; it would be good if everyone took at least the basic awareness course. It would take about 45 minutes of your life but that investment could make a world of difference to someone whom you spot being abused or manipulated.
Perhaps more importantly, it helps us examine our own behaviour. When you tell your children “Because I say so” that’s using your status to determine their conduct. There has to be a better response. It may not be abusive, but it’s getting close to it.
The picture in the parable is an instructive one. There will always be weeds among the wheat. Let us try not to be one of them.
12 July Matthew 13:1-23
The word parable has the same root as the word parabola. It means something “thrown alongside”. When a Greek teacher had something complicated to explain, he would give the explanation but then try to find a parable which would be simpler and from which an analogy could be drawn. The parable would provide the key that would unlock the more complicated or general saying. Aesop’s fables could be used as parables. The tortoise and the hare explain why steady plodding may be better than fast action; the fox and the grapes tells us that greed may cost us even what we already have.
Jewish rabbis used parables too, but commonly they didn’t provide the complicated or general answer. They left the student to work it out for themselves. Let me give you one of my favourite stories, that of a rabbi who knew that some of his flock were in great need, so he went to the better-off members of his congregation to ask for donations. When he came to the richest of them all, the man said he was sorry, but all his money was needed for his business. He didn’t have any spare cash to give away. “Look out of the window,” said the rabbi. “What do you see?” “I see people,” said the merchant, “lots of people.” “Now look in the mirror. How many do you see?” “I only see myself,” said the merchant. “Yes, it’s amazing what a difference a little bit of silver can make,” said the rabbi.
Maybe that parable needed no explanation, but the one Jesus tells here does. You heard the explanation, and I do not need to repeat it,
I have no argument with the parable, but I do have a disagreement about one of the conclusions that some have drawn from it, so you are now about to hear a rant. A controlled rant, I hope, but still a rant.
I have now been your priest for just over two months. I have been overwhelmed by your response so far. I see volunteers coming forward, I see loose ends being tied together, I see parishes supporting each other, I see people being willing to try new things. Now, this is happening against a backdrop of turmoil at the top, historic safeguarding failures, bishoprics that can’t be filled, financial pressures and dioceses like my old one in Truro pretty well abolishing parishes to form benefices with 17 churches and two or three clergy. But we ignore that. We sow in our little patch of ground. Whatever happens elsewhere, we plough our field. We prepare our allotment; because local people generally draw their view of the church and the faith from the people they meet.
Nationally, the church has followed the parable of the sower very closely. Money goes to the good soil. If you are a fairly affluent parish or fresh expression, you get more money given to you. The church spends its money on what is already successful. But what about the stony ground? Don’t the people there really need the gospel, even if they don’t know it?
I know we can be misty-eyed about the past, but I think back to my childhood. I grew up in a district which was predominantly Roman Catholic. A lot of our neighbours lived a hand to mouth life. Yet on Sundays they would file into St Hilda’s in their best. I dare say that among the better off, religion played a smaller part in their life. It was the stony ground that needed the Gospel.
If you are one of the long-term unemployed, a single parent with children to care for, a drug addict or one of those who sits on the steps of a building all day with a bottle of cheap cider, you need a message of hope. You need to be welcomed somewhere. You need proof that God loves you, that you count. You need the church – so the church had better be there; and we will be.
You see, nowhere in the parable of the sower does Jesus tell us to stop trying to sow amongst the thorns or on rocky ground. He tells us that it might not work, but that doesn’t mean that we stop sowing there. It means that we dig out the rocks, pile on the manure and do all we can to make that soil good soil too. That is our mission here. I have a five-year appointment, and perhaps most of that time will be spent cultivating the stony ground for the next sower. So be it. But we abandon no-one, and nowhere.
It will be hard work, but it is our work. Remember that when you bring someone to a coffee morning, or make them a cup of tea, or tell young mums about Little Lambs or Teddy Club you are cultivating that stony ground before I try to sow there. I am very aware that however good a sower I may be, without the land being tended first, we will not have much success. But let us work on our bit of land. Never mind what is happening over the hedge, or many miles away. We plough our fields, and then we scatter the good seed. And in God’s good time, it will grow.
28 June Matthew 10:40-43
I don’t know if any of you are ardent readers of the Court circular that appears in some of our newspapers each day telling us what the Royal Family has been up to. To give you a flavour of it, on one day the King visited Grimsby, met various charities and went to the Grimsby Town football stadium (though it doesn’t say why). Meanwhile the Prince of Wales was in Norfolk naming a blood bike and using it to deliver blood to the Air Ambulance base, while the Princess Royal was visiting the docks in Edinburgh (I know which of those trips I’ve have chosen). Then after lunch she was back in London to open a student residence and preside at a gala dinner at St James’ Palace. I wonder whether she ever thinks she’d prefer to just get a takeaway and watch a rom-com in her pyjamas.
Among these appointments there are regular meetings with ambassadors who are coming or going. There are many more independent countries than when I was a boy, and therefore many more ambassadors, but they must all be given their twenty minutes with the King. It may be that they are fascinating individuals with whom the King would like more time. There may be others who cause his heart to sink as soon as he sees them; but they are all ambassadors and all represent their Head of State.
That gives us some insight into our short gospel passage this morning. The essence of being an ambassador is that you represent the Head of your state, and you should be treated as if he or she is there. The disciples are being reminded that they are the ambassadors of Christ, and should be treated accordingly.
However, it is unlikely that the powers that were in those days were going to respect that – but this passage is not really aimed at them. It is directed rather more at us. It reminds us that those disciples were not at our door as Peter, or John, or Andrew in their own right, but as emissaries of Jesus Christ. Jesus is watching how we react to them, but this is not about punishment for doing wrong. It is about reward for doing well.
The first verse is clear enough: Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. The next verse is a little more puzzling: Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward; and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous.
First let me point out that prophet here does not mean a fortune teller. Prophets do not tell you how things will definitely be; they tell you how things will be if you don’t change what you are doing. They tell the future, but it is not an unchangeable future. In this light Jesus regards all his disciples as prophets because the gospel message is one of the need for change. Anyone who preaches the gospel is asking people to repent and change.
The idiom “in the name of a prophet” needs some explaining. To welcome a prophet in the name of a prophet means acknowledging them to be a prophet – awarding them the title of prophet. It doesn’t mean saying “Hello, Isaiah!” to everyone. And when it says you will receive a prophet’s reward, it means that you will be blessed by receiving the teaching of that prophet. He or she will pay you in the best way they can, by giving you their teaching. In the same way, a righteous person will reward you for what they receive by giving you their blessing and by praying for you. What more could you want?
Above all, this passage is an affirmation of the apostles as ambassadors for Jesus, entitled to speak on his behalf. I imagine that, like many of us, they felt unworthy for the task given them. But all the tasks Jesus has for us will have to be done by people who might think that they are unworthy. The antidote to this is to remember the words of Pope Francis that every human being is a child of God, with the inherent dignity that comes with that, and the guarantee of God’s love because of that. When your self-esteem is slipping, remember that. He loved Peter, who denied his Son three times; he loved Paul, who persecuted him. God made you, and he loves everything that he has made. Everything, and everyone.
21 June Matthew 10: 24-39
From our Gospel today, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace but a sword.”
“Gentle Jesus, meek and mild, look upon a little child, pity my simplicity, suffer me to come to thee.” Words, I suspect, many of us recited in Sunday school. Lovely poetry but, I would venture to suggest, total rubbish and possibly more than a little offensive when talking about the radical teacher and activist that was Our Lord. Anything but meek and mild!
I suspect that the Gospel reading for today is one that most of us dread preaching on. At first sight the message seems to be at odds with the messages of love, peace and healing that is the Kingdom of God on this earth, that Jesus teaches elsewhere in the Gospels.
We sometimes tend to overlook the fact that Jesus was human, with human emotions. Who had annoyed or irritated Him before this? To say that the passage is hard – hitting is somewhat an understatement. Indeed, Matthew’s telling of the story is somewhat moderated from the other Gospel writers’ interpretations. While Matthew suggests that, “Those who love their families more cannot be his disciples”, Luke actually suggests that they should hate their families.
So, what is this all about? Well, we need to look at the verses of the Gospel preceding our reading today to realise exactly what was happening at the time. Jesus was sending his followers out into a hostile world, “Like sheep into the midst of wolves.” Their task was to preach to the people a new way of living and being on this earth. They were given the authority to cast out unclean spirits, and to heal every disease and sickness. The Roman and religious authorities clearly did not like their radical messages. It will be a challenging ministry and they will be ruthlessly attacked for their beliefs. He points to a time of unavoidable conflict between two different viewpoints and reminds them that their ministry will confront many of the economic and vested interests which tolerate neglect and abuse head on, challenging social structures and beliefs of the time.
Their world was a difficult place for the poor, the marginalised and the sick. The Kingdom proclaimed new values. Concern for the widow, the orphan, the refugee. A divinely directed population disrupts the false peace maintained by the empire and the state. Heavily patriarchal households were the norm. You disobeyed or disagreed with your father or your grandfather at your peril. Marriages were mostly for economic purposes rather than for love. Forced marriage was, and still is in some societies today, almost the norm. Cast your mind to the story of Lot and his daughters in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. As such this provoked opposition from those with vested interests, inherited privilege and others who out of fear and self-interest blindly followed the status quo. This includes not only the authorities but also members of their families and probably so-called close friends and acquaintances. To set a man against his father, mother and siblings is simply Jesus realising the grim reality of the situation. His talk about swords and family division is, most certainly, not advocating or resorting to meeting violence with violence or engaging in self-harm. It is acknowledgement that solidarity with the marginalised will bring conflict with not only oppressive structures but with those close to you.
Interestingly, Matthew quotes Jesus using authentic Judaic prophetic and wisdom traditions. Sayings like, “lose your life to find it”, it is more important to be faithful to God than to be alive, had strong resonance with the Jewish martyrs.
And, “To take up the cross and follow me”. The cross was, of course, an instrument of torture and execution used for rebels, subversives and deemed enemies of the state. It is not simply a statement of devotion but a dangerous pledge to follow another more radical path and declare allegiance to another ruler; that is to God.
But, before I consider the lessons for us today, I quote from our Old Testament reading from the prophet Jeremiah as, I believe it has relevance to where we are in the year of our Lord 2026, “I am weary with holding it in and I cannot. For I hear many whispering that terror is all around. Denounce Him, let us denounce Him. But the Lord is with me like a dread warrior. Therefore, my persecutors will stumble and they will not prevail.”
Jeremiah regrets his unpopular message of Babylonian captivity. He wanted to stop delivering it but could not. The word of the lord burned like a fire within him. He overheard his friends plotting against him but committed his cause to the Lord. At times he is confident but at other times he is so discouraged he wishes that he had never been born.
And does any of this seem familiar to you? Consider what is going on in the world and our land today? Are we prepared to stand up for Jesus’ teachings and values of peace, love, reconciliation and forgiveness in the face of opposition and abuse from many including family and friends?
We are suddenly confronted with the dreadful philosophy of so-called Christian Nationalism. This appears to be linked in with extremist politicians who are promoting racism, bigotry, prejudice against those on the margins of society. Refugees, immigrants, LGBTQ + and other minority groups all come up against the hatred that these people promote, supposedly, in the name of Christianity. Let us be quite clear about this. Their beliefs do not reflect the teachings of Jesus. The Bible tells us to feed the hungry, help the poor and look after and respect the stranger in our land. Jesus tells us to love God and love our neighbour, a neighbour who, incidentally, maybe any inhabitant of this planet, and to love our enemy. The likes of Stephen Yaxley Lennon (AKA Tommy Robinson) and his followers and certain extremist politicians, whatever they may claim, cannot in any way be considered to hold Christian beliefs.
I believe that it should be one of the functions of the church to call out government, the institutions and others who subscribe to these obnoxious views and it is up to us, as individuals, to challenge and stand up to others wherever these views are expressed.
But it is not easy. The violence that happened in Belfast last week demonstrates the problem. No doubt, as Jesus taught the disciples when he sent them into the world as individuals we may lose friends, alienate family who hold opinions contrary to the Gospel message, just as Jesus told His disciples in our readings today. How many times have you heard the term, “Woke” used as an insult to those who, basically, are proclaiming the inclusive message of Jesus. A term which, I believe, is a compliment not an insult.
Through all this, the message of Jesus message, however, is “Do not be afraid”.
No, we should never be afraid to preach Jesus’ words of love and inclusion to a hostile world if we desire to bring the Kingdom of God to our world and to our land. Amen
14 June Matthew 9:35 - 10:8
I read a lot, and sometimes I need to think something over before its importance becomes clear to me; then, of course, I can’t remember exactly where I read it. That happened to me a fortnight or so ago, when I read something that suddenly seemed very relevant to today’s gospel. It’s a complicated argument, but I’m not going to hold back. You can take it.
First proposition: Jesus Christ is not created, he is “begotten, not made”. A bishop called Eusebius of Nicomedia, in Bithynia, caused uproar at the Council of Nicaea in 325 when he tried to suggest that Jesus came along after God. Orthodox bishops pointed to the start of the Gospel of John to prove him wrong, and then there was a punch-up (there were several at Nicaea) during which his speech was torn up. The council declared that there was never a time when Jesus was not; that is, he existed alongside or within God from the very start of time. And that is still conventional Christian teaching.
But then you have to ask why. Why was Jesus created in the first place? God doesn’t do anything for no reason, so why did he do it? What is Jesus for? We know why we have a Creator, and we know that the Holy Spirit exists to help faithful men and women, but why do we need Jesus? To save us by exhibiting God’s love is a good answer. So, if he existed from the start, he had that purpose from the start, so God always knew that Jesus would have to be sent some day. With me so far?
That visit to us ended with the Ascension. It was unreasonable to expect Jesus to live here eternally. So, in God’s plan, what happens when Jesus is gone? And the answer to this, as we see in Acts and the Epistles, is that we need people to make a church through which the Holy Spirit can continue to work. Thus Jesus found twelve disciples, young men, and took them with him as he toured the cities and villages, preaching, teaching and healing. This leads us to a key lesson; that we achieve more outside the church than we do inside. We need to get out into the world to spread the word.
There is another lesson coming up. Jesus saw the crowds and said that they were sheep without a shepherd. I am not wise in the ways of sheep, but I doubt if they realised that they lacked a shepherd. They just carried on eating grass and living for the moment – a bit like so many people today. And that is our great opportunity. The potential harvest has never been so great.
But then Jesus identified a problem to his disciples. ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few’. What would Jesus say if he were here today, I wonder? The potential harvest has never been greater, so many people know nothing of God, and the labourers have never been fewer. Not only that, but all too often the response to a decline in numbers has been to take away some labourers, or make them part-time. And here’s a giant paradox.
In our Truro days, the Diocese made the bishops’ diaries available to all. You didn’t need to be too acute to realise that we had organised the bishops’ diaries so that they spent nearly all their time meeting people who were already Christians. Spreading the Gospel has to be a local job; and for that, we need more labourers.
Our rotas are thinning. We need more people to read Lessons, to lead our intercessions, to serve the Chalice during communion. Please think about whether you could do any of these things, because they keep the worship lively. Yes, I can do it all myself; no, you would be bored out of your skulls if I did, every week! But we also need more churchwardens and PCC members. I’m not asking for any commitment now, but next spring it would be good to welcome some new blood. Talk to me about what is involved; it is not as frightening as you think.
Most of all, spread the Gospel in the hours when we aren’t at church. Invite people along at the very least. Sit with them when they’re new and don’t know what is going on here. I can’t cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers or cast out demons. But I can proclaim the good news: the kingdom of heaven has come near. Proclaim it with me. Please think about the role you could play in gathering in that harvest. For the harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few.