Sermon - SUNDAY, 26 JULY 2020

Romans 8:26 - end

Trinity 7

We’re now in week two of being back in our church building and we are beginning to see a few glimmers of old routines creeping in. One of which, I’m pleased to say…are rotas. They were stopped in their tracks back in March when lockdown began.

I can remember, when I was new to church, I was painfully shy and I was reluctant to go on any rota. But you know what it’s like, one day you agree to do a bit of washing up after church and before you know it, you’re running Sunday School, arranging flowers and on every rota going.

Anyway, I can remember that the one rota that I avoided for a long time was the intercessions rota. Praying wasn’t something that I was good at, plus everyone else did such a good job.

Eventually I gave in and agreed to give it a go. I bought a few books to help me along and, if I’m honest, because I was shy and most people had their eyes closed, I quite liked reading them out.

One day, I was at the Sunday morning service in church and it came time to the intercessions and Peter, the vicar at the time, said something like “and now Julie will lead us in our prayers” …

I froze!

I had forgotten to look at my rota and I was down to lead intercessions. I was far too shy and embarrassed to admit publicly that I had forgotten…and so I found myself standing up and walking to the front, without a note in front of me.

It was like my biggest nightmare!

So, there I was…at the front of church, in front of the microphone, looking out at the congregation. No-one seemed to notice any difference, they bowed their heads and closed their eyes…and so I did the same.

The difference was that I then pretended they weren’t there… and I prayed to God…

I haven’t got a clue what I said but much to my amazement, I managed to complete them and made it back to my seat.  I couldn’t believe that no-one seemed to notice my predicament,

in fact I even received some nice comments afterwards.

I learnt a lot that day. Not only about myself but also about God.

It was one of those special moments when you just know, deep in your heart, that you have been held by God and done something in his strength and not just your own.

Prayer is something that many of us feel inadequate about. I mean… who are we that we can speak to God?

But God knows about our weakness hen it comes to talking with him. Paul – St Paul himself acknowledges that we do not know how to pray as we ought,

but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.

Isn’t that wonderful…?

’sighs too deep for words’!

When we don’t know what to say or how to say it, we don’t have to because God does it for us.

At my home church, we used to have prayer services and there was a time

in the service where you could go forward for prayer and two people would pray with you. 

There was one man who I liked to go to. He was a lay person…a down-to-earth working-class man with the broadest Yorkshire accent. When he prayed, it was just like he was talking to his best friend. He didn’t flower his words, he said it the way he saw it. It was quite powerful and very moving.

Sometimes, we are too busy trying to find all the right words in order to articulate

what we really want to say. Sometimes we even forget to give God a chance

to get a word in. And of course, he already knows what’s on our mind and in our hearts.

Sometimes it is good to sit with God…and just be… we don’t need words.

Now, obviously you can’t get away with that when it comes to public intercessions, but prayer is about relationship…our relationship with God through Jesus Christ and that relationship

is rooted in love.

Too often, just like our prayers, that relationship also can become one-sided.

When that happens with our human friends, the bonds easily break and friendships fall away. But not with God. He doesn’t give up on us so easily. We might forget about him but he doesn’t forget about us. God is always ready to put the past behind us and help us start again.

It doesn’t matter what’s gone before and there is nothing that we have ever said or done, or had done to us that God cannot redeem through Jesus Christ. The good news is that the resurrection offers hope and new beginnings to everyone who believes. That’s because he loves each one of us with a fierce passion. Those words from St Paul are sooo powerful. We are told that NOTHING will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

Do you believe that? I mean really believe it?

What I want you to do is close your eyes and feel God’s love for you now. Hear it and believe it because with God’s help, we can deal with anything and everything that life throws at us.

I’m going to read out the last two verses from Paul’s letter and I want you to listen to God using speaking to you now

…… SILENCE ……

“… neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us

from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Amen.

Sermon for Trinity 5

Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

I’ve always loved stories, especially those with a good ending. One of my earliest memories

is of reciting nursery rhymes to myself over and over. Like most children, I liked them because they were so visual and they told a story. They didn’t always make sense, of course and I can remember really analysing each line to try to figure out what they really meant.

Jesus is well known for telling stories that need a bit of analysis. On the surface, his parables seem quite simple but he didn’t tell stories just because people liked them, he told them so that he could teach them something about God, his kingdom and about their relationship with him. Jesus used parables to make his stories clear. His stories were about the world in which he lived. He talked about things that people knew well and could relate to.  

So, when Jesus told them the story about the man sowing seed, they knew exactly what he was talking about and they could picture themselves in his story. I can imagine them nodding along as he spoke.

In Matthew’s gospel, we have the added benefit of actually having the gospel explained to us.  It’s at this point that we start to nod along too, because experience tells us that we know people who fit the description of each type of soil mentioned.

But what about us? What’s our soil like right now? How would you label yourself?

Of course, we all strive to be “good soil”. It’s sort of expected of us. We’ve heard the word of God and we responded to it. We go to church, we say our prayers, we read the Bible…

yes, we tick all of the boxes.

Or do we?

Now, if we’re being honest with ourselves, we probably fit into more than one category

depending on what’s going on in our life or how we are feeling. I know I do. There are times when things feel a bit stony or even when we’re feeling choked by the thorns of our everyday lives and things that get in the way. We wouldn’t be human if we didn’t.

The big challenge of course is about bearing fruit a hundredfold. That’s a lot of fruit! Now, we could be forgiven for not even reaching thirty-fold. After all, we’re still in the midst

of the corona pandemic and we’ve been in lockdown. Our church buildings have been closed for 15 weeks and the majority of our congregations are still shielding.

A couple of questions…

·       how would you label your soil before lockdown?

·       And…will anything change once some sort of normality resumes?

I take comfort from the fact that the sower keeps on sowing his seeds. He scatters them generously far and wide, even on the areas that shows little promise.

Jesus doesn’t give up on the unproductive soil even if the response isn’t forthcoming. The gardeners amongst us will know that the ground needs constant attention and for seeds to grow, it takes more than just the soil. It needs watering and warmth in order to yield a harvest.

Jesus invested in his disciples who, let’s be honest, showed very little promise. And just look at the people he gave his time to. The very people who the elite and respectable of his day frowned upon…the tax-collectors, the beggars and the unclean.

I often wonder what Jesus’ ministry on earth would look like in this day and age. What would the focus of his parables be in order to get his message of God’s kingdom out into the world? The obvious way of course would be the internet. I can just imagine Jesus saying

“Listen…a church put a post on facebook…”

Now…I jest! BUT…is it really that far off the mark?

This corona pandemic has really brought home to us the power of technology when it comes to being Church. Just look at us…here we are, worshipping God using Zoom

on the world-wide web. Who would have thought it?

The internet…the world-wide web…did I say worldwide?

Now that has a lot of potential when it comes to outreach and mission.

I know not everyone likes the internet but there is no denying that it has the potential to reach a lot of people. And people who don’t normally step over the church threshold.

·       Facebook

·       YouTube

·       Twitter

·       TikTok

·       Instagram

and a host of other social media platforms.

We now live in an age where we do many things …on demand. We choose when to do our shopping, when to watch a film… or even ‘live’ sport. And now that we record our morning worship and upload it to YouTube, it means that our congregation can be anywhere in the world and can worship God at any time they like. Night or day. How mad is that?

Those who administrate these social media platforms can see the statistics…and they are showing that massive numbers of people are viewing online worship. Much more than would ever attend church each week.

And that, my friends is…modern-day mission!

It does of course make us wonder …how deep the soil is? But God’s word is God’s word

and it isn’t up to us what takes root or how or why! When the seeds land on good soil, they can flourish and multiply, regardless of who does the sowing.

It has become even more apparent over the past few months that the church isn’t the building, it is the people.

Each one of us chooses our own path. We decide how we respond to God’s call. It is between us and God. The more we put into it, the stronger our roots will become. It doesn’t matter whether we have been attending church all our lives or whether we are new

and just dipping into the occasional service online, we need ears to hear what God’s Spirit is saying to us. We need God’s warmth and water so that we can be nourished by his love and grow in faith. When that happens, the most natural thing in the world is to share the story of Jesus with others…and to tell our own story. We all have one.

People enjoy a good story!

So…”Let anyone with ears listen!”

Amen

^“Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain,

some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.

Let anyone with ears listen!”

Matthew 13:8-9

Sermon for Trinity 4

Sermon for Trinity 4

Matthew 11:16-19, 25 - end

Do you ever overdo it when it comes to carrying things? I know I do. You know what it’s like, you go into a supermarket and don’t bother with a basket because you only need a couple of things? And you end up with your arms full by the time you get to the checkout? Or do you take advantage of the special offers and convince yourself that you can carry the bags all the way home? Or…do you make one trip or two trips from the car to the house? Or what about when you are tidying up and try to carry too many things at once and they all live in different places…and as each thing is put away, the load is lightened and it gets easier the more you offload.

Feels good, doesn’t it when you are free of the things you’ve been carrying around?

And all of us, at some time in our life find ourselves carrying things around whether we like it or not. Things like the cares and worries of life: Illness, unemployment, money, our family. It might even be something we’ve said or done, or even not said or done. Sometimes, all the little worries niggle away and keep coming to the surface and it is so easy to become overwhelmed by them.

The thing is though is that we get so used to carrying them around that we somehow get attached to them and forget all about letting them go.

We might even feel that these burdens are just too big to share with anyone else. Or that people might judge us or won’t understand.

In our gospel reading from St Matthew, we hear that Jesus invites each one of us to share our cares and our worries with him.

He tells us: “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest’

These are some of the most well-known words in the Bible and are part of what the Book of Common Prayer refers to as ‘comfortable words. I like that word…comfortable. It suggests things like safe and secure and of course comforting.

I think we need some of that. These past few months have probably been some of the most testing times that we have experienced. Living in fear of a virus that so far has taken the lives of over 11 million people worldwide, over 44,000 of them in this country. You might even have lost family or friends to the virus yourself, I know I have. I even took the funeral of a friend just three weeks ago.

Jesus’ invitation is for all of us. He said “Come to me, all you…” It doesn’t matter who you are or how big or small our burdens are, Jesus wants to offer us some rest…some respite from the constant little niggles that are wearing us down. He wants to set us free from them.

In Jesus’ day, the people who were weary and carrying heavy burdens were the poor and the sick and they had the added burden of also being weighed down by the rules and restrictions of their religion. Jesus went on to say “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. ³⁰For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

Upon first reading that, you could be forgiven for thinking that Jesus is piling even more problems on us by saying “take my yoke upon you”.

Did you notice the image that I added to the gospel reading of the two oxen? They were yoked together. We don’t see that nowadays in this country but it would have been common to see that in Jesus’ day. To yoke two animals together lightens the load.

 Jesus is telling us that he won’t take all our worries away but he will carry our burdens with us. We need to walk alongside him and to share our troubles with him and to trust him as we pull the load together, side by side.

I don’t think that we are very good at asking for help and we’re even worse at accepting it. We don’t like putting people out…they’ve got enough on…they’re busy people…they’ve got their own lives, their own families…and their own problems…

The stubborn among us, when we are offered help, often choose to go it alone. But ask yourself this…how grateful have you been over the past few months for all the help given to you when it came to getting your shopping and prescriptions throughout lockdown?

Jesus wants us to turn to him in our time of need. He tells us “I will give you rest.” He doesn’t add any conditions. He doesn’t say I might, he says I will.

It would be good, wouldn’t it if walking alongside Jesus meant the end to all our troubles? But life doesn’t work like that. It continues to put   obstacles in our way. To be human means that we live with the challenges and temptations of everyday life and the result may mean that things get us down.

What we need to constantly remind ourselves of is that Jesus’ invitation to turn to him isn’t a one-off and if we are yoked with him, we will be guided by him and close enough to him to allow him to continue to help to bear our load.

That way we don’t get too over-loaded with the things that we carry.

So the next time that our shopping tumbles from our arms onto the supermarket conveyor belt or when we stop for breath as we carry our shopping home, remember that when we are weary, the help is there…all we have to do is ask.

Amen.

“Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens,
and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me;
for I am gentle and humble in heart,
and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
Matthew 11:28-30