SERMON 13TH NOVEMBER 2011 - REMEMBRANCE SUNDAY
Today, one of our Lay Readers, Adrian Parkhouse, preaches based on the reading from Matthew 26: verses 30-46
GNB: “Watch and pray, so that you will not fall into temptation.”
NIV: “Keep watch and pray that you will not fall into temptation.”
1. “Watch and pray” is a suitable text for a Service of Remembrance. There is a sense in which our moment of quiet was anything but peaceful as our minds replayed the links that our personal histories hold to the experience of conflict: so for some today those histories will have taken you back not just to the Second WW but beyond to stories of fathers and brothers and uncles and friends lost or damaged by the Great War; for you and for others, your memories will have come too from personal involvement in the Second World War, most likely as children and young people, affected by the consequence of war; for some our memories will have taken us to more recent, less widespread, but for you equally significant, conflicts abroad; and for all perhaps the images of recent desert wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya. And for some, the memories will have been especially close: of sons, daughters, brothers or friends. And during those moments of quiet you will have watched. And prayed.
2. With only 2 chapters of Matthew left, you won’t be surprised that we are nearly at the end of our Parish series on the gospel’s teaching on being a disciple. It will be for Cameron, I suspect, to draw together the strands of our studies when he preaches next Sunday. I am anxious not to steal his thunder but I do want to set the scene for this morning’s passage (and perhaps to set you up for next week), So can I do a whistle-stop tour of the places we have been and the highlights we have seen: we started by the lake and the call to the fishermen; and then to the hillside, the Sermon and the challenge to be sure who we were apprenticed to; and then, out on the road, we listened to two stiff warnings of the consequences of signing-up – that we might be isolated (like sheep among wolves) and create conflict (and carry a cross); then we were back to the lake, among the big, vibrant crowds by the shore, listening to stories, especially a story about the fruit a disciple might show; then, as the party begins to move towards Jerusalem, Peter comes to the fore - “You are the Christ!” …. and again talk of a cross; and last week, some last teaching to the crowds (and to the disciples) about the cost of commitment.
3. Between last week and this much has happened and the atmosphere has changed. Jesus and his followers have come into Jerusalem to celebrate the Feast, welcomed by the crowd, challenged by the authorities. The teaching has become more pointed – warnings to and against the leaders, predictions of conflict and suffering and the promise of return and the rule of peace. In truth, if the teaching was difficult to apply on the hill-side, by the lake, on the road, now in the City it has become difficult even to grasp. But throughout, one word resonates – as if, were they unable to understand any more of what he was saying, Jesus wanted them to see and apply one essential truth: watch! Be alert!
4. You may be puzzled by this and it is true that we can lose the message in the drama of the action that is going on around the Teacher and his apprentices – the ride of triumph into the City, the display of righteous anger in the Temple, the debates with the Pharisees and the lawyers, the making of plots and, just before our passage, the holding of the final meal together. But now, in the quiet of the garden in the place called Gethsemane, think back over the stories he has told in the previous two chapters – of the foolish bridesmaids who failed to plan ahead and the wise ones who did; of the bad servant who takes the opportunity of his master’s absence to misbehave and the good servant who doesn’t; of the good stewards who invest their master’s wealth ready for his return and the bad steward who does not; and finally the account of judgment and the separation of the sheep and goats. In these last days, Jesus is preparing his apprentices, his disciples, to take responsibility – to be the ones who must be ready to plan, to be faithful, to steward and to serve. And this responsibility requires above all things they must be watchful, in the stories he told , what set the “good” aside from the “bad” was their watchfulness, their readiness..
5. It is this watchfulness which Jesus looks for in Gethsemane. I wanted it to be something different: I wanted it to be “watchfulness” that you would want from a security guard (“watch for the baddies coming!”); or more an example of empathy for him in his suffering (“watch over me”). But it isn’t: it is the same word as is used in the earlier chapters and so his concern, even as his own suffering reaches its crescendo, is that his disciples and ready to recognise what is good and to do what is right, come what may.
6. In lighting on these words in our passage, I have skipped Peter’s (and the others’) typically hyperbolic protestation of undying loyalty, the set-up to his denial. But let’s go back briefly to that part of the passage and notice how Jesus explains what will happen “this very night”. It is effective that he takes the image, the metaphor, the shepherd with the flock, which we have become used to identifying with safety and security (“I am the Good Shepherd ..”; “I am the gate … “, etc), and uses a passage of scripture to express what will happen: with the shepherd killed, the sheep will scatter and run away. Their focus gone, with no-one to guide them the sheep will return to their own way. But Jesus of course adds to the scripture: But after I have risen, I will go ahead of you …”. This is the context of the desired watchfuless: in all that is to happen, watch out for me, be ready to recognise me, don’t be tempted away.
7. My previous passage in the series was on the sun-soaked lake-side when we could joke about salesmen’s techniques and consider the richness of a disciple’s experience. I think it was even in that sun-soaked Indian summer of early-October. Now the Autumn is here and in our gospel the setting is very different. Very early on, in the context of facing testing, Trevor referred to the impending Rugby World Cup (what happened to that?); and I want to borrow an expression from the world of the rugby journalists to suggest that in today’s passage we are into “the hard yards” of discipleship. “Hard yards” sounds as if it ought to derive from the world of trench warfare but I can’t find that it does: it seems to come from rugby where it describes that passage in a game when the opposing scrums settle down for a relentless period of running into each other, making a yard here, losing a yard there. A punishing experience to be involved in. And I say that that is where we are with out apprentices in our passage today: facing the hard yards of discipleship: facing the prospect of the shepherd being slain and it all being lost. “I will go ahead of you. Watch and pray. Watch.”
8. They didn’t of course. Their exhaustion overtook them. We come back to the beautiful way in which the Bible tells the story how it might really have happened. Like us, they fell asleep when they might have watched, they fled when He was arrested and Peter did not to do what he had promised. But Jesus did: he was raised and he did go before them
9. Lastly, how does this apply to us? Because being a disciple involves being a person we do or will the hard yards of discipleship, not only times when our faith is not as strong as we would want, but times when our faith seems stretched, almost over-used with the demands made on us. Today we will pray for each other and those prayers will include prayers for folk facing such times now – facing illness or illness of someone close or coping with loss. Perhaps for some Remembrance Sunday itself reawakens memories of such times. And these are just some of what I think may be the hard yards in our discipleship. If that is you, or for when that is you, then watch, watch, be ready for the touch of the risen Christ.
GNB: “Watch and pray, so that you will not fall into temptation.”
NIV: “Keep watch and pray that you will not fall into temptation.”
1. “Watch and pray” is a suitable text for a Service of Remembrance. There is a sense in which our moment of quiet was anything but peaceful as our minds replayed the links that our personal histories hold to the experience of conflict: so for some today those histories will have taken you back not just to the Second WW but beyond to stories of fathers and brothers and uncles and friends lost or damaged by the Great War; for you and for others, your memories will have come too from personal involvement in the Second World War, most likely as children and young people, affected by the consequence of war; for some our memories will have taken us to more recent, less widespread, but for you equally significant, conflicts abroad; and for all perhaps the images of recent desert wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya. And for some, the memories will have been especially close: of sons, daughters, brothers or friends. And during those moments of quiet you will have watched. And prayed.
2. With only 2 chapters of Matthew left, you won’t be surprised that we are nearly at the end of our Parish series on the gospel’s teaching on being a disciple. It will be for Cameron, I suspect, to draw together the strands of our studies when he preaches next Sunday. I am anxious not to steal his thunder but I do want to set the scene for this morning’s passage (and perhaps to set you up for next week), So can I do a whistle-stop tour of the places we have been and the highlights we have seen: we started by the lake and the call to the fishermen; and then to the hillside, the Sermon and the challenge to be sure who we were apprenticed to; and then, out on the road, we listened to two stiff warnings of the consequences of signing-up – that we might be isolated (like sheep among wolves) and create conflict (and carry a cross); then we were back to the lake, among the big, vibrant crowds by the shore, listening to stories, especially a story about the fruit a disciple might show; then, as the party begins to move towards Jerusalem, Peter comes to the fore - “You are the Christ!” …. and again talk of a cross; and last week, some last teaching to the crowds (and to the disciples) about the cost of commitment.
3. Between last week and this much has happened and the atmosphere has changed. Jesus and his followers have come into Jerusalem to celebrate the Feast, welcomed by the crowd, challenged by the authorities. The teaching has become more pointed – warnings to and against the leaders, predictions of conflict and suffering and the promise of return and the rule of peace. In truth, if the teaching was difficult to apply on the hill-side, by the lake, on the road, now in the City it has become difficult even to grasp. But throughout, one word resonates – as if, were they unable to understand any more of what he was saying, Jesus wanted them to see and apply one essential truth: watch! Be alert!
4. You may be puzzled by this and it is true that we can lose the message in the drama of the action that is going on around the Teacher and his apprentices – the ride of triumph into the City, the display of righteous anger in the Temple, the debates with the Pharisees and the lawyers, the making of plots and, just before our passage, the holding of the final meal together. But now, in the quiet of the garden in the place called Gethsemane, think back over the stories he has told in the previous two chapters – of the foolish bridesmaids who failed to plan ahead and the wise ones who did; of the bad servant who takes the opportunity of his master’s absence to misbehave and the good servant who doesn’t; of the good stewards who invest their master’s wealth ready for his return and the bad steward who does not; and finally the account of judgment and the separation of the sheep and goats. In these last days, Jesus is preparing his apprentices, his disciples, to take responsibility – to be the ones who must be ready to plan, to be faithful, to steward and to serve. And this responsibility requires above all things they must be watchful, in the stories he told , what set the “good” aside from the “bad” was their watchfulness, their readiness..
5. It is this watchfulness which Jesus looks for in Gethsemane. I wanted it to be something different: I wanted it to be “watchfulness” that you would want from a security guard (“watch for the baddies coming!”); or more an example of empathy for him in his suffering (“watch over me”). But it isn’t: it is the same word as is used in the earlier chapters and so his concern, even as his own suffering reaches its crescendo, is that his disciples and ready to recognise what is good and to do what is right, come what may.
6. In lighting on these words in our passage, I have skipped Peter’s (and the others’) typically hyperbolic protestation of undying loyalty, the set-up to his denial. But let’s go back briefly to that part of the passage and notice how Jesus explains what will happen “this very night”. It is effective that he takes the image, the metaphor, the shepherd with the flock, which we have become used to identifying with safety and security (“I am the Good Shepherd ..”; “I am the gate … “, etc), and uses a passage of scripture to express what will happen: with the shepherd killed, the sheep will scatter and run away. Their focus gone, with no-one to guide them the sheep will return to their own way. But Jesus of course adds to the scripture: But after I have risen, I will go ahead of you …”. This is the context of the desired watchfuless: in all that is to happen, watch out for me, be ready to recognise me, don’t be tempted away.
7. My previous passage in the series was on the sun-soaked lake-side when we could joke about salesmen’s techniques and consider the richness of a disciple’s experience. I think it was even in that sun-soaked Indian summer of early-October. Now the Autumn is here and in our gospel the setting is very different. Very early on, in the context of facing testing, Trevor referred to the impending Rugby World Cup (what happened to that?); and I want to borrow an expression from the world of the rugby journalists to suggest that in today’s passage we are into “the hard yards” of discipleship. “Hard yards” sounds as if it ought to derive from the world of trench warfare but I can’t find that it does: it seems to come from rugby where it describes that passage in a game when the opposing scrums settle down for a relentless period of running into each other, making a yard here, losing a yard there. A punishing experience to be involved in. And I say that that is where we are with out apprentices in our passage today: facing the hard yards of discipleship: facing the prospect of the shepherd being slain and it all being lost. “I will go ahead of you. Watch and pray. Watch.”
8. They didn’t of course. Their exhaustion overtook them. We come back to the beautiful way in which the Bible tells the story how it might really have happened. Like us, they fell asleep when they might have watched, they fled when He was arrested and Peter did not to do what he had promised. But Jesus did: he was raised and he did go before them
9. Lastly, how does this apply to us? Because being a disciple involves being a person we do or will the hard yards of discipleship, not only times when our faith is not as strong as we would want, but times when our faith seems stretched, almost over-used with the demands made on us. Today we will pray for each other and those prayers will include prayers for folk facing such times now – facing illness or illness of someone close or coping with loss. Perhaps for some Remembrance Sunday itself reawakens memories of such times. And these are just some of what I think may be the hard yards in our discipleship. If that is you, or for when that is you, then watch, watch, be ready for the touch of the risen Christ.
posted by Sharren Taylor at 12:58 pm
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