2nd Before Advent: What Are We Supposed to Do?

The parable of the Talents,
Stained glass executed by Clayton & Bell, London,
For St Edith’s Church, Bishop Wilton,

19/11/23
2nd Before Advent

1 Thessalonians 5:1-11
Matthew 25:14-30

We seem to be in in-between time on the calendar; both the church and in life. The days are shorter and darker. The weather is grey and miserable. Remembrance Sunday has passed.

Have you put up the Christmas decorations yet?
When should you do that without judgement?
Has the Christmas pudding started?

We seem to be waiting around for the next thing. There is a vagueness to everything. You come to church and we are faced with these seemingly dire readings all about the end times and gnashing teeth. Is that what we are waiting for?!

Both Paul writing to the Thessalonians and Matthew’s account of Jesus’ parable speak to the return of the Lord. The second coming of Jesus. This is what we are preparing for during Advent; God’s return. Yes we spend time preparing and celebrating the birth of Jesus. The bigger picture is God’s return for the second time. Not many people spend much time considering or imagining this event.

After the resurrection everyone (the gospel writers, Paul and the disciples, members of the new church) thought Jesus was coming back imminently. Yet here we are two thousand years later, still watching and waiting. Like the Thessalonians, we do not know the day or the time. Paul and Matthew are concerned with what people do in the meantime. Paul encourages the Thessalonians to put on the breastplate of faith and love, a helmet for the hope of salvation. Paul wants them to encourage and build each other up.

Jesus is coming back, and it matters what was done in his absence. This is true for us too, how are we doing in the meantime? Are we being foolish or wise, investing, hiding or squandering?

Matthew 25, like many of Jesus’ parables, can be read on several different levels and it needs careful attention. As a reminder, Matthew has this parable set in the last days of Jesus’ life. Generally people say some really important things as the end of life nears. This is not an easy parable nor is it made any more comforting by the times we find ourselves living in.

We could read this parable as a call to do more with what God has given us. It does not matter how much (think time, money, gifts, resources) we have been given, just do more with it and be smart about it. Again, if we do not use it, we will be punished.

The tension here is that, given the current situation with post-Covid, cost of living among many factors, many people cannot volunteer or contribute their gifts for the service of others as they may previously have. Should they be made to feel guilty? Punished for what is beyond their control? There is a difference here between inability to help and serve and being unwilling to help and serve.

In Jesus’ parable, the man (master) is going away for an unknown amount of time. He calls his servants and gives them each a talent of silver; but he does not give them any instructions about what to do with the talents. Why not? The man knew his servants, he had worked out what each would do with the talents given.

Through the actions of the first two servants who invested their talents, we can see that they knew their master. Even without explicit instructions, they knew what was expected of them and what would please their master. It is doubtful that these two slaves understood the motivation of their master but possibly suspected that this was some kind of test.

The third slave and the master know each other too. There is dislike and mistrust between them. The master does not trust this slave as much as the others. The slaves’ response is to focus on the negative, what he did not have, did not get and blamed the master for that.

The master replies by pointing out that the slave did not try, did not seek out what he (the master) wanted. Instead of trying to please or get to know his master, the slave gives up and buries the talent. When the master returns to his home, the third slave knows that trouble is coming so tells his master what he thinks of him. This slave had decided a long time ago that nothing would please his master so gave up trying.

Many people can relate to the third slave, that nothing they do is ever good enough, so why try? This is applied to God too. I’ve heard things like, ‘God has never bothered with me, so why should I bother with him?’ or ‘if God is so good, then why did x, y, or z happen?’

Questions like these often come from a place of deep hurt and carry some honesty. However, many people who tend to blame God for their misfortunes, do not seek after him in the first place. Assumptions about who God is and what He is like are often wrong and based on circumstance and feelings rather than knowledge and relationship.

When it comes to talents, by this I mean our gifts and skills; they have come from God. They are given to be used, we are stewards of them, not the owners. The owner is God, and he expects us to use his gifts wisely. Gifts, like the silver talents of the slaves, increase with use. To use them wisely and to the glory of God, we need to know the giver, the true owner of these gifts. God has a genuine and vested interest in what we do in his name.

If we seek to know God and his will for our lives, we do not need to worry about the outer darkness. We are all going to have to account for what we have done with what has been given to us. It does not matter how much; this is not a competition.

If you feel that God was stingy or somehow passed you by when handing out your gifts, seek him, ask him! God knows you, knows your capacity, He also loves and understands you. Proverbs 3:5-6 tells us to: ‘trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.’

The problem is not that Jesus did not know the slave or does not know us. The problem is that the slave, and us, do not fully know who Jesus is. We need to work to correct this imbalance. This is my prayer and hope for this upcoming Advent season; that we will find time and effort to deepen our relationships with God.

For the other slaves and for us, knowing Jesus is a positive, life-giving, life-affirming experience. It is an ongoing and ultimately loving relationship with the Father who loves us more than we can ask or imagine, who gives good gifts for the benefit of all. Let us not waste what God has given each of us, we can work together to build each other up. We can seek the Lord while he may be found, we need to build each other up for the day of the Lord in coming.

Remembrance Sunday 2023: Love & Service

1 Thessalonians 4:13-end
John 15:9-17

The British Legion’s theme for Remembrance this year is focussed on remembering and honouring Service. There are significant anniversaries united with the theme of service: the 70th anniversary of the armistice that ended the fighting of the Korean War. It has been 60 years since National Service ended with the last serviceman being demobbed. It is also the 75th anniversary of the arrival of the Windrush Empire’s arrival which brought settlers from the Caribbean to help with the post-war rebuilding efforts. There are also efforts to remember the contribution from Commonwealth personnel.

The Legion also endeavours to mark South Asian Heritage Month and Black History Month. Each of these events highlight the service of people who are often overlooked and whose stories are not told. However, their service is commendable and needs to be recognised. None of us have a monopoly on service.

The Legion writes, ‘Service, the act of defending and protecting the nation’s democratic freedoms and way of life, is rarely without cost for those who serve. Physical, mental or emotional injury or trauma; the absence of time with family; or the pressures and dangers that come from serving, highlight why the Remembrance of service is so important.’

I wonder what your first experience of community or public service was beyond your family?

Mine came through the Guiding movement; and as a good Canadian Brownie and Girl Guide, I spent many a November 11th shivering in my uniform at the local Cenotaph. November can be a rather frigid month in Alberta! It had to be a full-on blizzard with sub-arctic temperatures (hell would have to freeze over first) before any consideration would be given to moving indoors. Those old Canadian Legion members were a tough bunch!

I remember thinking about what was happening on Remembrance Day in other countries and feeling that somehow the world was joined on that day. And it is.

It is important to consider the cost of service, the cost to those who serve and the cost to those who support those who serve. Although the cost is often high, it is undervalued. Some pay the ultimate price and that is what we, of course, remember today.

There has been a change in societal attitudes to service, both civilian and military. Government spending cuts, the rise of social media, the pursuit of one’s personal comfort and convenience over the collective good have all contributed. In recent times we have seen the British Forces undertaking more civil work; driving ambulances and running testing centres during Covid, carrying out relief work in areas of the country experiencing flooding.

Some members of the public do not think that the armed services should be doing this sort of work. I spoke to a serving British Army officer about this at a wedding last summer. He pointed out that 20-30 years ago, almost everyone would know someone in the armed services but this is no longer the case. Currently the majority of people do not know anyone in the forces given the reduction in the number of serving personnel.

His view is that the public seeing the army serving the nation is actually a good thing. There is also a very low public appetite for sending personnel into active combat. His pride in these jobs was evident.

During Covid there was a huge swell in public service with many people wanting to get involved and help neighbours and communities in need. Whats App groups sprang up all over the country as neighbours reached out. People who lived next to each other for years finally learned each other’s names! There was and hopefully still is a real desire to serve our communities.

Why do people serve? Think of a few words or phrases about the why.

Loyalty, commitment, purpose, meaning, desire to help or care for others, sense of justice, the greater good. Love.

How do we respond to those who serve? Admiration, inspiration, respect, awe, but above all I would hope with love.

Love is the answer. Love is what should underpin our service. Not sappy or soppy love. Agape love. 1 Corinthians 13 love. Love that is patient, kind, never gives up, looks forward and not backwards. This love is more than emotional; it is a response to wanting what is best for the other despite the cost to ourselves. It is not easy, it often does not feel good.

Think of soldiers on a battlefield, fighting for a cause that is bigger than themselves, doing it for the people they love back at home. For King and country. For the man beside them. Honour and duty will take one so far but only love reaches the end.

Jesus is telling his disciples to stay in his love. Abide has a lasting, long-term quality to it. The timing of this passage is crucial; Jesus and the disciples are at the Last Supper and these are some of the final words of Jesus. Love. We are to love one another. There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. This is not an easy way to love a friend. This is the highest calling of love that there is. This is love shown to us by Jesus dying on the cross.

What the world needs now, in the words of Jackie Deshannon, is love sweet love.

What the world needs now is love, sweet love
It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of
What the world needs now is love, sweet love
No not just for some, but for everyone

Not just love for people that we love naturally or who are easy to love. Loving our neighbours as ourselves, loving our enemies. It is not convenient or easy to love the people we find difficult. This is where God’s love, agape love, comes into play. It is not about our feelings or desires, it is tapping into God’s view of the world.

The end of St John’s life was hard. All of his friends (including Jesus) had been killed or crucified in horrendous ways; he was probably present at their deaths. John had been exiled to the Greek island of Patmos under extreme conditions.

He was extraordinarily dedicated to his cause (as many people can be), his passion is evident in his writings. John had dedicated his life to the service of others by telling the Good News of Jesus. Despite the hardships, pain and grief, at the end of his life John knows that it is love that got him through. Everything he did was all done for love.

John learned over his many decades, that following the commands of Jesus, leads to a full, loving abundant life. What a different world it would be if we could abide in God’s love and live out the commandment to love one another as God has loved us. Maybe we would not be here today?

Maybe I am a little idealistic. Like many people, I yearn for a world that is fair, peaceful with love and grace in abundance.

As we remember again today those who have died in the theatre of war, we can be reassured that because of the resurrection of Jesus, it was not for nothing. The cost of their service came at a high price; it cost everything. The love, the life, the sharing of burden and suffering, the service required to work together for a greater good is not lost in death. There is more to the story.

Our own service whether to King and country or friend and neighbour is needed and valuable. It needs to be done from a place of love.

All Saints: Why We Should Remember the Saints

All Saints’ Sunday

1 Thessalonians 2:9-13
Matthew 24:1-14

God of holiness, your glory is proclaimed in every age: as we rejoice in the faith of your saints, inspire us to follow their example with boldness and joy; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

It used to feel a bit strange for me to ‘celebrate’ All Saints and All Souls. My very Protestant upbringing in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Canada did not help matters much either. Although we make a big deal out of Halloween! I like how Methodist theology puts it: ’All Saints Day revolves around giving God solemn thanks for the lives and deaths of his saints, including those who are famous or obscure.’ A Saint is a person of great holiness, likeness or closeness to God who remains this way through life and into death. The lives of the Saints are set to be examples to the rest of us on the graciousness of God and what virtuous living can look like.

Not all saints are famous. Most are everyday people who have done remarkable and yet sometimes really odd things! My attempt this morning is to talk about why it is important to mark All Saints Sunday.

Firstly, The dead sit at the dinner table long after they’re gone.

I said last week at All Souls that there is a belief in a powerful spiritual bond between those in heaven (the Church triumphant) and the living (the Church militant). We don’t tend to forget people once they have died; whether we loved or liked them or not. The impact of our relationship with them, their life, the love, the moments that were shared do not cease to be important once they have bodily departed.

Does God shut his ears to prayers for them? If I am concerned about the soul of a person who has died, will God not hear that prayer? He knows far more than I do about them and their situation. Certainly we can seek his peace and reassurance.

We have biblical evidence that indicates God cares about the dead. 1 Thessalonians tell us that the dead in Christ will rise first and we will all meet together. Time and again we see Jesus cut through the cultural and religious rules to reach out to people; Lazarus’ sisters Mary and Martha, the Widow of Nain, the daughter of Jairus to name but a few. Jesus was not afraid to touch a dead body which would have made him unclean.

In the words of the Apostles’ Creed, which we will say in a few minutes ‘he will come again to judge the living and the dead.’

Secondly, we have an inheritance with the saints

Many of us here may know what it is to share an inheritance. My very wise Grandpa Lepp said ‘that you never truly know someone until you share an inheritance with them.’ My youngest sister is a Wills & Estates solicitor in Canada. She has a framed photograph of Grandpa on her desk with that quote underneath it. She spends her days and makes a considerable amount of money sorting out legal issues (mainly fraud and deception) for families who have come apart over inheritance.

Paul in his letter to the Ephesians speaks of the inheritance we have obtained in Christ. It is hope in Christ that brings salvation and the seal of the Holy Spirit. To the Thessalonians, Paul encourages them to live a life worthy of God, who calls them and us into his kingdom and glory. We are to receive the word of God and then live it out. That is largely what the saints have done.

Paul is trying hard to speak of his sense of wonder at the richness of the gospel. For Paul, true riches are found here and they are far, far better than the knick-knacks, bric-a-brac, even the property and money we may receive in an earthly inheritance.

Thirdly, we need to be reminded that Jesus overcame death and still does!

We do well to remember that the Christian faith is built on the death and resurrection of Jesus. Let us not forget that death came first; Good Friday before Easter Sunday. For those who die in Christ their physical death is not the end of the story. This is Good News!

I appreciate that this can be cold comfort to those who live with grief. Christian or not. Grief can overwhelm and when allowed to rob life from the living. What is a Christian response to this?

In our world, most people think that wonderful news consists of success, wealth, long life and victory in battle. Jesus, in our Gospel reading this morning, is offering pretty much the opposite of that! He tells them that the temple, the centre of Jewish worship and ritual is going to be torn down (and it was a few decades later). The world is going to get much worse with famines, wars and earthquakes. The disciples themselves are going to be hated and tortured. Remember, Matthew is recording all of this in the last week of Jesus’ life.

Jesus ends with a glimmer of hope; anyone who endures to the end will be saved. The good news of the kingdom will be proclaimed. This is what the disciples did for the remainder of their lives as well as the saints that came after.

I would encourage you this morning and in the coming days or weeks to remember and give thanks for the Saints in your life; both the living and the dead. They are around. Have a conversation about them. See what comes up, compare memories. They still sit at the dinner table! If it’s hard or brings up any feelings of grief or love or guilt or joy, pray about them. Ask God for his peace and input. He is in this with you. He loves and cares for all his Saints. That means you too.

All Souls: The moments when we shiver in grief

All Souls Service
29/10/23

Lamentations 3:17-26; 31-33
John 5:29-25

In Church of England tradition, we come together over these few days at the end of October/beginning of November for a short season of remembrance. The Church has marked All Saints and All Souls for hundreds of years. It stems from the belief that there is a powerful spiritual bond between those in heaven and those living on earth. It is often said in my family that the dead sit at the dinner table long after they are gone.

This service offers us space and time to give thanks to God for the life and love that was shared, for the memories we carry and to ask for God’s help if we have unfinished business with those who have died. Not all our remembering will be of the good, sweet times as none of us are perfect and neither were they!

I am going to start with a quote from Arthur Golden’s novel Memoirs of a Geisha:

“Grief is a most peculiar thing; we’re so helpless in the face of it.
It’s like a window that will simply open of its own accord.
The room grows cold, and we can do nothing but shiver.
But it opens a little less each time, and a little less;
and one day we wonder what has become of it.”

Memoirs is the beautifully haunting story of a young Japanese girl named Chiyo whose life was a catalogue of loss, grief and bereavements. She is now an old woman and is telling her story to a writer who will publish it. Chiyo’s story is not only a story of death but of the many non-death losses we encounter in life. The loss of relationship, loss of trust, she loses her name, her status, her freedom. As she looks back on her life, she makes this comment about grief as a most peculiar thing; we’re so helpless in the face of it. It’s like a window that will simply open of its own accord. The room grows cold, and we can do nothing but shiver.

This speaks of the random nature of grief. It just happens, we have no control over it. Isn’t this true? We hear the opening bars of a much-loved song, a favourite program on the telly, driving by a special place, or seeing an item that would be the perfect gift for our person. Whatever our trigger is, it can bring that feeling of uncontrolled grief, the coldness and all we can do is shiver.

The writer of the Lamentations reading certainly is shivering; ‘my soul is bereft of peace; I have forgotten what happiness is’. The person writing this book is lamenting the fall of Jerusalem around 587 BC and the horrors experienced by the Jewish people. Jerusalem was once the chosen city of God but has now fallen from grace because of bad behaviour. The enemies have taken over and the people who lived in Jerusalem have been exiled. The loss for the people is immense.

The reading we have here is about the author’s own suffering; he believes that God has deliberately marked him out and is now not listening to his prayer. His peace is gone. Yet at his lowest point he remembers God’s steadfast love, hesed. Hesed is the love and mercy God has towards his people; it is a long-term and loyal love. It is love that never ends. It is new every morning.

The writer has experienced this love, not just with his head and his heart but in his very soul, in the marrow of his bones. ‘The Lord is my portion,’ he says. The Lord is enough for him.

The bereavement that we are facing is not the whole story. It might be a very big part of the story right now, might feel like it has taken over the whole story for a long time. It might feel like you won’t ever stop shivering.

The only alternative to avoiding grief is to avoid love. If I want to avoid the grief I feel over my person who has died means I would have had to forfeit the love and the relationship that we shared.

I appreciate that many relationships are complicated. We should not pretend they are not. Some feelings about the person who has died might be mixed or ambiguous; maybe there is guilt or shame if you felt you didn’t do enough for them or felt relief when death finally came. We must be very careful in how we interpret relationships; especially ones that are not ours even if they are in the same family.

There can also be great temptation when someone dies to want to paint a rosier picture of them, their life and relationships than actually ever existed. We lie! We do it for all sorts of reasons; some even noble ones.

We might almost be able to fool ourselves but we cannot fool God. He knows what was said, unsaid and done and not done. He also knows the motivations behind our words and actions. He knows and loves them, and He knows and loves you. He knows the situation and is the only one who truly knows both sides.

That is because God has authority over everything. In John’s Gospel reading, Jesus is telling the disciples precisely this. Everyone (even him) and everything (even death) is under God’s control. He can raise the dead. This is not just the physically dead; but John is suggesting that those people who are spiritually dead. The people who Jesus healed got their lives back and came alive again.

This authority is not based in control or power or a malicious need to be authoritarian. It is the authority of love. God’s love is so great for his Son and for us. The idea is that God the loving father is showing Jesus the beloved Son all that he does and even greater things.

Those who believed in Jesus would be treated by God in the same way that Jesus was. Jesus died and rose again and so will we. The Bible does not give us very much information on what happens when we die. To die in a few places means ‘to fall asleep’.

Paul’s vision in 1 Thessalonians, which is based on what he has been taught, is that one day when Jesus comes back, those who have fallen asleep/died will be woken up. The dead in Christ will rise first and if we happen to still be alive when that happens will be caught up together. We will be together with God forever. This is the great Christian hope: that once this life is over we will be reunited together with God to spend eternity.

This is good news – death is not the end of the story. Grief is not the whole of the story either. We live in the in-between time where everything might seem withheld, you might be shivering in your grief, you make your own way through. Even in that, knowing that the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, there is good news for the soul that seeks him. A new dawn will arrive.

Trinity 20: What does belong to God?

Trinity 20
22/10/23

1 Thessalonians 1:1-10
Matthew 22:15-22

How are you with handling tricky situations? We can all find ourselves in them; hopefully not too often. Some people are quick on their feet and can get themselves out without much fuss. They have an ability to say or do the right thing just at the right time. Many of us probably fudge our way through, praying the situation will end quickly. If you are like me, you will think of a brilliant rebuttal after the situation is over and then wish you had said whatever it is when you had the opportunity.

It is one thing to watch a politician squirm on breakfast television as they get pressed for an answer and something else to be on the receiving end of a trick question. This is where Jesus finds himself in the Gospel reading this morning.

Last week’s Gospel reading was a parable of Jesus; the wedding banquet for the king’s son, where none of the invited guests attended. This week’s reading is a real-life situation. Matthew sets these parables and events in the final week of Jesus’ life as chapter 21 has the palm-waving, triumphal entry into Jerusalem on a donkey. These are some of Jesus’ final messages; understanding this helps us to experience the urgency in the tone. This story also appears in the Gospels of Luke and Mark as well. When accounts and parables appear three times and even four – you know that these are significant!

On its face, this passage from Matthew’s Gospel is about taxation. A very exciting topic! It is also a divisive topic as there are likely many different opinions on the subject in the church this morning as there would have been 2000 years ago. The Pharisees and Herodians were looking for ways to expedite Jesus’ arrest and devise their clever question to him, ‘Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?’ History tells us that this was a trick question.
The Jews of the day were deeply unhappy at paying taxes to Rome; it was a hot topic. Imagine how you’d like it if you woke up one morning and discovered people from the other end of the world had marched into your country and demanded that you pay them tax as the reward for having stolen your land! (Tom Wright, Matthew for Everyone, volume 2).

This question puts Jesus in a lose-lose situation; He knows that this question comes not from curiosity but from malice. In his very typical Jesus way, he responds to a challenge with an even greater challenge. Jesus takes a Roman coin, bearing the image of the emperor, and answers, ‘Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.’ This is not the answer that was expected.

Jesus is not saying there are two distinct realms, the religious and the secular, and that both require equal loyalty. Jesus is saying that the hated coin already belongs to the emperor, his face is stamped on it; so give the emperor what is his. There is a much harder and more complicated question to answer: What belongs to God? Everything.

From the very beginning we were created in God’s image. Go back to Genesis. As we were created by God, his image is stamped in us, we are God’s image bearers. Like the coin with the emperor’s face that belongs to him, we belong to God. We are far more valuable than an old Roman coin. This also means that we owe God everything, our whole and entire selves. It is a fairy tale to think that we can divide up the sacred and the secular. We cannot separate them when everything already belongs to God.

God knows how much tax you pay, he knows down to the last pence what is in the bank or under the mattress. More frighteningly, God knows how and on what you spend your money; along with your attitude towards it. This is not a Stewardship sermon, I promise! However, you will hear me say this more than once but the most honest document you have is your bank statement and/or credit card bill. Think about that for a moment.

These statements are recorded proof of how you spend your time and your money. If you really want to know someone, ask to see their bank statement! This is also true for a church. If I want to know what the priorities of this church are, the bank statements are very helpful.

What does it mean to give to God what belongs to God in these challenging times? How can we be God’s image bearers while families and communities are struggling, while war wages in the Middle East and Ukraine, poverty is on the rise and all the other things that are troubling us? If everything does belong to God, then our spiritual, Christian lives and our secular (political, work, social) lives must agree.

How we behave at work, must be the same as we behave at church. How we love our neighbours, as difficult as they can be, must be the same as how we treat ourselves. Whatever we render to Caesar must always take second place to what we render to God.

What is God asking of us? The words of the Shema from Common Worship sums it up rather well: Our Lord Jesus Christ said; The first commandment is this: ‘Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is the only Lord. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

In Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians (modern day Thessaloniki in northern Greece) he expressed his relief that the church had survived some recent attacks. Paul is trying to encourage and reassure the church family to continue to stand firm in their Christian faith.

Paul lists all the things that he is thankful for; their faith, all the labour done in love, steadfastness of hope in Jesus. The Thessalonians have faced some hard times, as had Paul and Jesus. Paul is clear that there is more to the story, Jesus is trying to convey that in his parables and teaching in the last days of his life.

When the questions are tricky and the future seems bleak and the weight of the world is bearing down we can find our refuge in Jesus. He is everything. Love God. The emperors and their reigns in this world are temporary; we are to give the emperor what belongs to him. So yes, pay your taxes. Remember that God’s reign is eternal and encompasses everything. Give to God what is God’s. Give God everything. He gave everything for us.