Sermon 22nd July 2012

Today, our Vicar, Cameron Barker, completes our study of The Lord's Prayer.

Following the fine example of the Lord’s prayer itself, I will end this series in the same way that I began it. I should then add that this one is in honour of the Open Championship that also ends today.

So, it’s a story about a golfer, now into his golden years. His lifelong ambition was to play one particular hole at Pebble Beach, California in the way that the pros do. They drive their ball over the waves, onto a green that juts out into the ocean.

He’d tried it many times before, without any success. His ball always fell into the water. So he never used a new ball on this hole. He always picked one with a cut or a nick. But one day, while playing one more round, at that fateful hole, as he teed up an old ball as usual, he muttered a silent prayer.

Before he drove, a voice from above said, “REPLACE THAT OLD BALL WITH A BRAND-NEW ONE.”

He did as he was told, with some misgivings, despite this apparent Word from the Lord. As he confidently stepped up to hit the ball, the voice said: “TAKE A PRACTICE SWING FIRST.”

Again he did as he was told. When he thought that he was ready to hit it for real, the voice boomed out, “TRY THAT AGAIN.” He did. Silence followed. Then the voice spoke out once more: “PUT THE OLD BALL BACK.”

The best that I can offer in terms of a spiritual point from that story also goes back to the first sermon in this series. Quoting from “The Lord and his prayer”, the Tom Wright book that we have based our teaching on, I said the Lord’s prayer is like a new baby’s mug-and-spoon set. It is almost the first gift that we are given as Christians – because most churches pray it almost every week. But the Lord’s prayer is so much more than that. That same description goes on to say how it’s also like a suit of clothes that has been made to be worn by grown-up. Every time we put it on – pray it – we realise afresh that we have still got plenty of growing to do. Or that’s what we should realise – if we pay proper attention to what it is that we are praying, in the way that Jesus intended, I said. And maybe that is the point in the golf story: as we get to the end of this series, we know that we really do still have lots of room to grow into, in our understanding, and in our praying alike.

As promised, it has been quite a journey that we have been on through these past six weeks. The ending of the Lord’s prayer does bring us back to the beginning of it – and it does indeed look like a very different place now that is has. I do then wonder whether you would say that of yourself: are you in a different place now, compared to when we began? I can remember inviting all of us to pray the Lord’s prayer, in full or in part, every day for these 6 weeks. Have you managed that, or something close to it? And what difference has however you have prayed made to you, would you say? How has it changed you personally; and/or changed how you pray? And so where will you go from here in your praying; and in your living?

Those are the important questions for each of us to ask: those who are Christians are called to be God’s praying people, who live out our faith in the reality of God’s Kingdom. We have been hearing how this prayer that Jesus taught to his disciples encapsulates his understanding of that Kingdom: what it looks like, what it means to live in it, and to live for its coming. To call God ‘Father’, as Jesus did, is to sign up to be his fellow apprentice. It is to learn from our perfect parent how to work for His holy name to be honoured. We are also saying that we want His Kingdom to come, and for His will to be done in the same way: just like it is in heaven, so also here on earth. These are bold, and dangerous requests and promises to make – and then to keep.

Jesus’ prayer starts – and ends – with God; but of course there is room for us in there too. Now today can only ever be a concluding summary of the whole. Visit our website, or ask for printed copies, for the detail of how to pray and live the beginning, as well as the middle parts, of this amazing prayer. But for me the 2 stand-out features of the middle part of it are these. First, when it comes to us, it is ‘us’, not ‘me’! So we go from ‘Our Father’ to ‘Give us our ...’. It’s not ‘Give me my ...’ – which is what probably comes more naturally to us humans, and always has done, I’d guess. And then, second, what stands out is that Jesus taught us to pray for what we need, not for what we want. Of course there will be times when those 2 are the same; but maybe not so often. In God’s kind of praying we are to choose what we need – daily bread; forgiveness, for us and towards others; to stand firm when tempted; and be delivered from evil, and the devil.

There may be more to say on those later; but where they have brought us is to this, the final phrase of Jesus’ prayer. “For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours, now and for ever. Amen”. And I don’t doubt that you have all noticed one obvious feature of this ending. How we pray to conclude the Lord’s prayer is not as we read it in the Bible: not here in Luke, nor where we find this prayer in Matthew’s gospel either! There is a footnote in Matthew, saying that some later manuscripts do have this ending. Scholars think that Matthew was written later than Luke, and also that his version of this prayer shows signs of regular liturgical use. No scholars say that Jesus used this ending that we do; but they are all sure that Jesus would have finished his prayer with something like it!

Jewish prayer often ended in a doxology, as this is known – in other words, a phrase praising God. The only question, then, is which one Jesus would’ve used. It’s an academic question, though: we can’t know anything other than that this is the one that the church has used off and on for nearly 2 000 years! Tom Wright says that it does chime perfectly with the rest of Jesus’ prayer; and who could argue with him? God’s Kingdom; God’s power; and God’s glory are what it’s all about. To end like this is then to pray for God’s alternative vision of reality not ‘just’ to be a vision, but to become reality, here and now.

What this ending evokes, Tom Wright says, is the cross as the ultimate redefinition of what Kingdom and power and glory are. Right from the beginning of the gospel there has been a stark contrast between God’s Kingdom coming in Jesus, and the kingdom represented by Caesar. Jesus is the true king, but his power and glory are seen in a manger, in a garden and on a cross. That is what Christians believe, we say. If we pray this prayer we are asking for this kingdom, with this kind of power and this glory to be seen in all the world. Our starting point is to submit our own life to God’s alternative kingdom-vision. But this is what Tom Wright calls a prayer of mission and commission. So we must also work and pray for this vision to come in reality, often by subverting this world’s kingdoms.

This prayer that we have, and pray, isn’t magic (though we can try to use it that way). What it is is an appeal “To the one who has taken on the power of the world, and has defeated it with the power of the cross; who has confronted the glory of the world and has outshone it with the glory of the cross”. Even so, as Tom Wright also puts it, “When we pray in the name of Jesus, we find, again and again, that what we want to pray for subtly changes as we focus on Jesus himself. So we must be ready, in great things and in small, to put our plans and hopes on hold and let God remake them as we gaze upon him, revealed in the inglorious glory of the manger, in the powerless power of the cross. But when we allow that to happen, bit by bit, and then come with holy boldness into the presence of our Father, we discover he really does have, prepared for those who love him, such good things as pass human understanding”.

It really is quite a prayer: it truly has an amazing impact when we pray it, and live it, as if we really believe it. No wonder then, that it has stood the test of time, and is just as relevant and as powerful today as it was 2 000 years ago. So, as I also quoted as we began this series, our task, then is “To grow up into the Our Father ... seeking daily bread and daily forgiveness as we do so  ... feasting at the table (of our older brother), weeping with him in the garden, sharing his suffering, and knowing his victory”. We are to do that in how we live, and in how we pray this prayer that Jesus has taught us – if we dare to.

And so it’s right to end on a note of caution, almost. I’ve not been able to find the source of this quote, but it has been around for some time, as the language of it suggests. You see, as this series ends today we are invited to commit ourselves to keep on daring to pray Jesus’ prayer. Here then is a shorthand reminder of what we are signing up for when we do. So:

“I cannot pray “OUR” if my faith has no room for others and their need.

I cannot pray “FATHER” if I do not demonstrate this relationship to God in my daily living.

I cannot pray “WHO ART IN HEAVEN” if all my interests and pursuits are in earthly things.

I cannot pray “HALLOWED BE THY NAME” if I am not striving for God’s help to be holy.

I cannot pray “THY KINGDOM COME” if I am unwilling to accept God’s rule in my life.

I cannot pray “ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN” unless I am truly ready to give myself to God’s service here and now.

I cannot pray “GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD” without expending honest effort for it, or if I would withhold from my neighbour the bread that I receive.

I cannot pray “FORGIVE US OUR TRESPASSES AS WE FORGIVE THOSE WHO TRESPASS AGAINST US” if I continue to harbour a grudge against anyone.

I cannot pray “LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION” if I deliberately choose to remain in situation where I am likely to be tempted.

I cannot pray “DELIVER US FROM EVIL” if I am not prepared to fight with my life and my prayer.

I cannot pray “THINE IS THE KINGDOM” if I am unwilling to obey the King.

I cannot pray “THINE IS THE POWER AND THE GLORY” if I am seeking power for myself and my own glory first.

I cannot pray “FOREVER AND EVER” if I am too anxious about each day’s affairs.

I cannot pray “AMEN” unless I honestly say “Not MY will, but THY will be done.”

And if you want to say ‘Let all this be so’ for you, then say ‘Amen’ ...

Sermon 15th July 2012

Today, one of our Lay Readers, Trevor Tayleur, continues our study of The Lord's Prayer.

Deliver us from evil

(Matthew 6: 5-15)

15 July. Who can tell me what’s significant about the date?

Yes, it’s St Swithin’s Day.

St Swithin was the Bishop of Winchester in Saxon times. He was famous for charitable gifts and building churches. He died on 2 July 862. According to tradition, he asked to be buried in a humble grave, and so he was. However, it was thought that his grave was not fitting for someone of his status so it was decided to move it to a special shrine in the Cathedral. And so on 15 July 971 Swithin's remains were dug up and moved to the shrine. However, the moving of his remains was accompanied by heavy storms that lasted for 40 days and 40 nights. The storms were said to be a sign of his displeasure at being moved. And from this comes the saying that if it rains on St Swithin's Day (today), it will rain continuously for 40 days. And if it doesn't, then there will be clear skies for 40 days. In view of the weather we’ve been having this summer, ...comment on today’s weather.

There is actually, however, a more personal reason why 15 July is a noteworthy date for me. It was my father’s birthday, and indeed today is the 100^th anniversary of his birth. He was born on 15 July 1912. Amongst other things, he was a lay reader, so when Cameron circulated the current preaching rota, it struck me as very appropriate that I was down for today’s sermon.

Although I have started today’s talk on a personal note, there is a link I can make with today’s sermon title – Deliver us from Evil. In his lifetime, my father did see great evil, as in WW II, as part of the British Army’s legal team, he arrived at Belsen concentration camp shortly after it had been liberated from the Nazis. He saw evil and its effects at first hand. Human beings are capable of great evil, as the Holocaust so terribly demonstrates. And so when we reflect on these words in the Lord’s Prayer, “Deliver us from evil,” we need to acknowledge the reality of evil and its consequences.

Earlier in this series on the Lord’s Prayer, Gill explained that heaven and earth are the two interlocking arenas of God’s good world. Heaven is God’s space, where God’s authority rules and his future purposes are waiting in the wings. Earth is our world, our space. The two are separate, but touching, for now. But there’s a marvellous vision at the end of Revelation, where the holy city, the new Jerusalem, comes down from heaven to earth. When Jesus comes again, he will join together heaven and earth in an act of new creation. God’s space and ours, heaven and earth, will finally be integrated, and God and his rule will be central. That is what we can look forward to for all eternity.  But we are not there yet. The world is still full of pain and suffering. Evil still abounds.

God’s new world isn’t simply going to happen. It requires evil to be confronted head on, and that is what Jesus did when he came to earth; he confronted evil and all the powers of darkness, and defeated them through his death on the Cross and resurrection.  God’s new world was to be born through Jesus’ pain and suffering. It was in that context, that he knew that he was going to confront the power of evil head on, that Jesus said we should pray;

“And lead us not into temptation,

But deliver us from the evil one.”

“Lead us not into temptation.” That does sound rather strange in some ways, doesn’t it? It almost sounds as if God himself might cause people to be tempted. But Tom Wright and other scholars assure us that it doesn’t mean this.  The Greek word used for temptation is sometimes translated ‘test’ and sometimes ‘trial’. This means that we are praying that we are spared from temptation that we cannot bear and praying that we pass safely through the tests or trials of our faith.

Life is filled with tests – little ones and huge ones. And to get through them, we need to go to God and regularly say, “Deliver me from evil in these tests of life. I am going to come into these tests, I am going to face these trials. I ask that they don’t devour me.”

At school I suspect that most of us did tests – Maths tests, History tests, Geography tests and so on. If we had worked hard during the course and revised well, then we could hope to pass the tests and get a good mark. But if not – well, we would probably fail. The tests showed us where we stood, whether we had worked hard and understood the subject. The tests of life also show us where we really are. If we are out of touch with reality, then the tests of life can be devastating. If we are harbouring wrongdoing and sin in our lives, tests are traps. We need to ask God, “Don’t let the tests in life be traps.”

I heard a story about an interview with a man who was sentenced to life imprisonment following a hit and run accident in America. Let’s call the man Max. Max had run over a small boy, drove off and the boy died. In the interview, Max said he had started on the slippery slope downhill when he was a young boy. His father owned a valuable watch which he kept in a drawer, wrapped up in a cloth. One day, when his father was out, Max opened up the drawer, unwrapped the watch and broke it while he was looking at it. He put it back in the drawer, and told no one about it. A few days later, Max’s father discovered what had happened and summonsed all his children and asked the culprit to own up. Max kept quiet, and got away with it. And from then on Max said he lived his life avoiding the consequences of his actions. And then came that fateful night when he ran over a small boy, and his instinct was to drive off, to avoid the consequences of his actions. If he had stopped, then there’s a good chance the boy’s life might have been saved. But instead he drove off and the boy died. The police tracked Max down and he was gaoled for life – the Americans go in for long sentences. Max’s downward spiral started with something relatively small, but ended up with something huge.

Delivery from evil in the tests of life; we need to pray that we will not be devoured by them. How are we handling the tests of life? Might we be failing a small test right now that will set us up for a bigger failure later, like Max did with his father’s watch? And if we are going to stand up to the tests of life, we should expect them.

As Christians, we should not be shocked if we face tests and trials. The Lord’s Prayer is a model for what we pray, and it tells us that we should be constantly praying about the trials and tests we will face. We should expect to face tests. Sometimes we miss little tests, because we don’t see them as tests. The Lord’s Prayer is a way of getting us to focus and look at our lives and to see the tests that are there. We may think they are irritations; “Why do I have to have a boss like that!?”  Or we may think that they are choices of little moral consequence, like going above your duty free limit when bringing back goods from abroad. These are tests. We may think they are irritations or don’t matter, but they are tests. We should see them for what they are – ways of keeping us honest, ways of keeping us on our toes. Recognising them for what they are – and dealing with them – will help us when the big tests come.

We should not only recognise the little tests, not be blind to them, but we should also expect the big tests. In 1 Peter 4, Peter writes; “Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you.” The fiery ordeal. Yes, we should not be surprised if we are having troubles.

I think some Christians are surprised when they face troubles. It’s nice to believe that good people who live a good life will have pleasant lives, and bad people who lead bad lives will have unpleasant lives. That’s the way it should be. But I think in our Parish we know that it’s not like that; life isn’t that simple. It’s just over two years since our Lazarus sermon series where there were several sermons which dealt directly with the pain and suffering many members of our church family have faced. If you want to read some good and very personal counsel on how to face up to the fiery ordeal, it’s well worth reading those sermons. They are on the Parish blog – April and May 2010 – or you can ask the Parish Office for a copy.

Look at the life of Jesus – the only 100% good man. He was rejected and suffered an excruciating death. In his own life he faced extraordinary trials. During Lent we reflect on the 40 days in the wilderness when the Devil tempted him, and on Good Friday we remember the agony he experienced in the Garden of Gethsemane when, just before he was arrested and then crucified, he prayed, “(M)ay this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.”

In the hands of God death leads to resurrection, the seeds die and come up as flowers and mighty oaks.  Remember the Cross. Jesus Christ the best had the hardest life.

Yes, we should expect tests, and we should realise the real enemy is evil. That is why we pray, “Deliver us from evil.” Evil is real and it exists. The Bible personifies evil in the form of the Devil, or Satan, and I believe evil is at work in the world as an active and personal being, attacking everything that God wants to achieve through his people. We need to pray that we will not be devoured by evil. Evil is real and powerful, but so is Jesus’ victory over the Devil and evil. Jesus defeated all the forces of evil on the Cross, some 2,000 years ago, and we share in that victory.

We follow Jesus, the Son of God who was crucified to save the world. We cannot expect to avoid darkness in our own lives. We will face tests and trials, but we can face them knowing that God is with us. God has triumphed over evil, and one day his Kingdom will come.

Let’s pray.

Lead us not into temptation. Lord, give us strength as we face the trials and tests of life. May we stand firm when facing small tests, so that you may lead us through the big tests.

Deliver us from evil. Lord, protect us from the forces of evil so that we may not be devoured by them. Thank you that you have defeated evil. May we share in your victory.

In Jesus Christ’s name.

Amen.

---

[i] 15 July 2012

Sermon 8th July 2012

Today, our Curate, Gill Tayleur, continues our study of The Lord's Prayer

[We continue our series on the Lord’s Prayer, today looking at, “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us”. We are using Tom Wright’s book, The Lord and his Prayer, as a basis for this series, and this sermon uses his helpful insights from that book extensively.]

“Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” Anyone remember that? It’s a quote from the 1970s film Love Story. I enjoyed it at the time – well, I cried through it at the time. But now I must say I disagree with the quote. I’m not the only one, lots of people have taken issue with it, including John Lennon who said, “Love means having to say you’re sorry every five minutes.”

Love doesn’t mean never having to say you’re sorry. Love means you are sorry when you hurt someone, especially someone you love, and in saying it you take responsibility for it. And give the person you have hurt, the opportunity to forgive you.

Saying sorry, and forgiving, don’t get talked about a lot in our society. Have you read an article in a magazine or paper recently on how to say sorry, or how to forgive your partner or friend? I haven’t. And if there’s an apology in a publication because they printed something not true, it’s often hidden away in a small paragraph in a middle page. We seem to have either forgotten about forgiveness or trivialised it.

And I think that’s because as a society we don’t think much about sin, or wrongdoing, about the stuff that might need forgiveness. For many people, there’s hardly any rights and wrongs any more, just the really extreme ones, and the philosophy of life is ‘live and let live’, ‘if it feels good, do it’, and tolerance is valued above nearly everything else.

If almost everything is tolerated, and almost nothing seen as morally wrong, then I don’t need God to forgive me, and I don’t need to forgive anyone else either. If I’m hurt by someone, I can retreat into my private world and pretend it didn’t happen. Or get revenge. Or simply delete or block the person from my Facebook or Twitter account, so I needn’t relate to them any more. There’s little pressure or encouragement to forgive the person who has hurt me.

Jesus talked a lot about forgiveness, and it’s here in the Lord’s Prayer. “Forgive us our sins, for we forgive everyone who does us wrong.” That’s what we just read in Luke’s gospel. In Matthew’s (chapter 6) Jesus said, “Forgive us the wrongs we have done, as we forgive the wrongs that others have done to us.” And a few verses later in Matthew, immediately after the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus adds, “If you forgive others the wrongs they have done to you, your Father in heaven will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive the wrongs you have done.”

There are plenty of other places Jesus spoke about forgiveness, told stories or parables about forgiveness, and where he actually announced that someone was forgiven their sins! This was all part of the coming of God’s kingdom, which I’m bringing in, he said.

If you were here when we looked at the earlier line in the Lord’s Prayer, “Your will be done, your kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven”, you’ll remember that Jesus announced the coming of God’s kingdom a lot. The people wanted God to come and rule as King, to liberate Israel from her slavery, to bring an end to oppression & exile, thus setting the world back to rights. They knew that that oppression & exile were consequences of Israel’s sin, and so that liberation would include liberation or freedom from sin. The Forgiveness of sins, capital F, was part of God’s kingdom coming. And Jesus announced this Forgiveness of sins, whenever he said, “your sins are forgiven” to someone, and showed it too, with healings and miracles, and in welcoming people looked down on as immoral and sinners. Jesus’ words and his life said, the Forgiveness of sins is happening now!

And as he went round announcing it, announcing that the Kingdom of God had arrived, and the Forgiveness of sins was happening, people responded and he taught them how to live as Kingdom of God, Forgiveness of sins, people. In particular, having received God’s forgiveness themselves, they were to forgive others. If they didn’t, it would show they hadn’t grasped what was going on, hadn’t grasped or accepted

that the Kingdom, and Forgiveness was coming. Not forgiving others wasn’t a matter of failing to live up to a new bit of moral teaching. It was more like cutting off the branch you’re sitting on. Denying others forgiveness, denies the truth that we’re forgiven by God. It denies the truth that we’re all sinners in need of God’s forgiveness, all of us including me, and not just people I think are worse than me.

For that is our natural frame of mind, isn’t it? To think, I’m not so bad, I’m not a sinner like a child abuser, or drug pusher, or murderer. Those are the sort of really extreme things everyone knows are wrong.

But wake up! Listen! The truth is, Jesus said, greed, and anger, and lust and jealousy,

control and manipulation, and selfishness of all sorts – is sin. He said that not loving God,

and living his ways, is sin. That not loving others – all the time! – is sin. The standard is,

not just above someone we consider worse than ourselves, more greedy than me,

more critical than me, a bigger liar than me, but the standard is how Jesus himself lived, a holy and perfect life, and that’s how God designed you and me to be. So none of us is up to the mark, all of us are sinners. We may not like hearing it, but it’s what Jesus said, and it’s true. And living in denial is pointless in the long run. But recognising our sin,

taking responsibility for it, is the way to forgiveness and freedom from it.

This is The Good News of the gospel! That God loves us, and offers his forgiveness and mercy, thanks to Jesus’ death on the cross. On the cross, Jesus took the whole weight of sin and evil on to himself, in his tortured, agonising death. On the cosmic scale, and the individual scale, that is for you and me, for your sin and mine. Because God loves us so much. That much.

And so the prayer “forgive us our sins” was supremely answered on the cross. The cross was indeed the great act of liberation, of forgiveness, which the people of Israel had been waiting for, although it didn’t look like it at the time. And we too can experience

that forgiveness and freedom, when we recognise our need for it, when we admit our sin.

Then we can live as his forgiven people. And that means forgiving others. As we read in Matthew, Jesus said, “If you forgive others the wrongs they have done to you, your Father in heaven will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive the wrongs you have done.”

This doesn’t mean that we earn our forgiveness by forgiving other people. It’s saying, as people who understand and appreciate our own need for forgiveness, and God’s wonderful gracious mercy in giving it, so of course we are going to forgive others.

Asking for the blessing of God’s forgiveness only makes sense if we’re living by that same blessing, giving it to others, ourselves. It’s a nonsense not to.

And there are other reasons to forgive the people who’ve wronged us. I’m assuming there are people in your life who have wronged you. We’re all bruised, physically or emotionally, from what others have done. Accidentally or deliberately, people have hurt us, and it can rankle, and smoulder in our memory and emotions. We may be resentful, bitter & twisted, angry and/ or very, very hurt. But we can forgive.

You’ve hear it said from this lectern before, love is a choice, not just a feeling, a choice,

about how to live lovingly toward someone. In the same way, forgiveness is a choice,

not just a feeling.

One way of thinking about forgiveness, is in terms of releasing or writing off a debt.

When someone has wronged us, the damage is like a debt to be paid. The damage they’ve done and the debt they owe us may be emotional, financial, physical or relational. It might be as a result of betrayal, or related to our reputation. Whatever the situation, a debt is owed to us, because we’ve been wronged.

In order to forgive, we can decide, can choose, to write off the debt, to release the person who has wronged us, from their obligation to us. We can choose not to expect them to repay the debt.

Imagine living with one hand tied by a strong cord (representing the debt owed to us)

to a big wheelbarrow full of sand (the way we were wronged). We have to push that thing round with us everywhere we go. It’s exhausting! But this is a picture of the burden

of an unforgiven sin against us. Forgiving means taking a sharp knife and cutting that cord, dropping the load and leaving it behind. What a relief!

Forgiveness is a choice. It doesn’t condone the wrong or hurtful action. It doesn’t mean that the consequences of their wrong against us disappear. And we can be sure that one day God will judge the one who has wronged us, and indeed all of us. But forgiving those who have wronged us, by writing off their debt, or slashing the cord that binds us to their wrong, means that we can be free of the burden of it.

So, we’ve seen there are several reasons why we might choose to forgive those who have wronged us. Because God has forgiven us – at the price of his son’s agonising death on the cross. Then, it’s a nonsense not to – as in, if we say we believe in our sins being forgiven, isn’t it hypocritical not to offer the same forgiveness to others? So when we forgive, we are behaving like our Father in heaven. Then, not forgiving can be a dreadful burden to us, like the wheelbarrow of sand. It can lead us into sin ourselves;

lead us to bitterness, resentment, anger, self pity.

And lastly and most importantly, we forgive because Jesus told us to. We’ve just heard it in the Lord’s Prayer, and there are plenty of other places where we are told to forgive like God does. Later in Matthew’s gospel, in chapter 18 Peter asked Jesus

how many times should we forgive someone who has wronged us? Rabbis would have said 3 times. Peter said, is it as many as 7 times? Jesus replied, 70 times 7 times! In other words, without limit. Forgive, again and again. And again. And again. Even if the person isn’t sorry? Jesus says to forgive because God forgives us, full stop.

This is so hard. I know this is so hard. There are people in my life I have to forgive over and over, knowing it’ll happen again, it’s infuriating! But it’s my choice. To push a wheelbarrow around all the time, & carry all that infuriation, and hurt, and indignation,

and self pity, and self righteousness – or to slash the cord and forgive, to let the debt go. Freedom. It’s a no brainer. But still it can be very, very hard to do.

So how do we forgive? We’ve heard it’s a choice – what does that mean, how do we cut that cord?

We pray. We bring it all to God. We come and tell God all we think & feel about what has happened. He has plenty of experience of people saying and doing things that hurt him. We bring to him our pain, our anger, all of it. We thank him for forgiving us,

and ask him to help us forgive the other person.

Then we have to recognise the wrong against us, to see it for what it is. In my experience, thinking about it, often means seeing some way I’ve contributed or not helped the situation, or at least reacted badly to it, so that the sin isn’t entirely on their side. In which case we need to genuinely repent and honestly say sorry to God for our own wrong doing.

I have sometimes found that writing down what has happened, how I’ve been hurt,

what the debt is if you like, is helpful. To write an imaginary letter to the person, one I’m not going to send, saying you did this this and this and it hurt me or caused trouble for me in these ways... Or we can write down simply how they’ve wronged us, what they owe us, like a bill. And then we can make the choice, the firm irrevocable choice, to forgive them. We must rip the paper up, or burn it. Or write PAID on it like a bill, and then throw it away. Get rid of it. Permanently.

Or if pictures and imagination is more our thing, maybe imagine the wheelbarrow, and imagine it being full of the way we were wronged, picture the wrong in there in some way. And imagine cutting the cord that binds us to it – slash it! And see it roll away down a hill, or see yourself stand up and start to walk away from it.

Whether either of these ways are helpful for you, or you find some other way of putting into practice the choice to forgive, I strongly encourage us to speak our forgiveness out loud before God. “I forgive my brother for the things he said. I choose to forgive him. I set him free from owing me for it. I don’t expect him to pay me back any more. The debt is written off. He’s free of it. And so am I.”

We may not FEEL any different; that’s not the point. We’ve made a choice, we’ve acted on it, we’ve forgiven. Now we can pray for the person who has wronged us. Pray for them – for God’s blessings on them, for their well being in whatever ways are appropriate. We might think of a practical way to show kindness or love toward them.

I may have made it sound easy – it’s not. I may have made it sound quick – sometimes it can be, once and for all, sometimes forgiveness is a long drawn out process,

especially if the wrong and the damage caused was great and the pain runs deep.

But over time, God can help forgiveness to really take effect, and can bring a measure of healing for the pain, so that our bruises can be healed.

I realise that in 15 minutes I’ve not covered every aspect of forgiveness! It’s a big subject and there are lots of difficult questions about it I’ve not begun to tackle – and that I don’t have the answer to. But I’d like to end with a story from the Evening Standard a few weeks ago, 12^th May:

“A mother whose 22 year old son was stabbed to death in a brutal gang attack is to sell family heirlooms to raise thousands of pounds to help give his killers the chance to lead better lives. In an extraordinary act of forgiveness, Fatemah Golmakani, 56, said she hopes to mentor her son Milad’s four attackers when they leave prison. She wants to show them they are loved, take them on nice trips, and show them what life is really about”. She said her anger had turned to sadness and now to forgiveness. She added: “I can’t bring my son back but what I can do is forgive his murderers to begin to take the weight off myself. It’s the only way I can start coming to terms with it.”

Every week we pray the Lord’s Prayer together. We pray, “Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.” Today, will we earnestly admit our sin and ask God for forgiveness? He has promised to give it freely out of his great love for us!

And today, will we choose to forgive those who have sinned against us?

Amen.

RESPONSE

WHO do you need to forgive? Maybe there’s someone you’re not on speaking terms with? Or someone about whom you’ve said, “I can never forgive them!” It may be a family member, a friend, someone you work with, a neighbour, or someone here in church. Who might you need to forgive?

WHAT have they done to wrong you?

HOW do you feel about that, and about them?

Is the way you think or feel actually something you need God’s forgiveness for yourself as well? (maybe anger, desire for revenge, self pity, bitterness)

WHAT do they owe you? What’s on the bill, or in the wheelbarrow?

WHAT might it look or feel like to be free of that outstanding bill, or of the weight of the wheelbarrow?

DO you want that? Will you CHOOSE to forgive?

DO IT! SAY IT! PRAY IT!

WHAT else can YOU do to enact your forgiveness?

To show love to the person?

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Sermon 1st July 2012

 Today, Ben Hughes continues our study of The Lord's Prayer: 

GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD

We had toast for breakfast today…always quick and easy

‘Can you all say TOAST three times….’        ‘Toast, Toast Toast!’  is the reply

‘What do you put in a Toaster?’    ‘Bread!’ They all answer.

Too easy!

‘What did Homar Simpson say when he got his hand jammed in the bread making machine?’

‘Dough’

Now bread is not a laughing matter especially for the unfortunates who do not have enough to eat!

In fact ask people who are and have been hungry and they certainly know the true value of food!

And likewise….if you really know what it is to be a sinner and to know suffering then you know the true value of the bread of heaven the broken body of Christ made perfect in you

I we will come back to that in our Communion later if I may.

We have been looking at the Lords prayer with Cameron starting the series on Our Father…and then Jill covering last week the coming of God’s Kingdom.

If I may do their sermons the injustice of a one line summary it is pretty much as the Lord prayer describes: (you can check out both Sermons in full on the Church website)

Knowing the Holiness of God our maker and ‘Father’ and waiting in expectation for the coming of the righteousness and love of Christ in his perfect Kingdom…

Today as you might have guessed is ‘give us this day our daily bread’!

Very straightforward…likewise - exactly as it says!

Or is it?

Bread of heaven, Bread of Heaven, feed me now and evermore…Feed me now and for evermore…

That great hymn of the Rhonda valley describes Christ as the bread of heaven coming down to us like the manna falling uopon the Israelites in wilderness…

Bread of Heaven feed us now and evermore…

But Like most things written in the Bible it carries a form double speak, a paradox if you like…it is both simultaneously true in the real aspect of bread on the table and as the  metaphor and symbol of the body of Christ, that bread that we are about to participate in our Holy Communion.

The bread we ask God to Give us on a tables each breakfast … is the everyday start of a new daily covenant that we have with God as our provider. In doing that we are simultaneously asking God of his Son Jesus who he sent to save us…God our Saviour. In other words…in saying “Give us this day our daily bread” we are requesting to God the two – “give us food for our stomachs and the food that saves our souls”. That Bread being both Christ’s body broken for us being the same commitment to us in God meeting our daily needs. The important interrelation in this is that you cannot say give us this day our daily bread with out saying also forgive us our sins…

As a practical point and some wise advice perhaps is always to be thankful in this , and dare I use an old fashion idea, to be ‘grateful’ for all the gifts that God’s gives us. In being thankful and gracious reminds us, again an old fashion expression –,‘to count our blessings one by one”. To understand that, is to know  where our sustenance comes from and by acknowledging so -  doubles and increases ten fold the value of therefore of what God provides for us.  This action of thanksgiving helps us stay out of the trap of greed…never having enough and always wanting more. Saying grace before a meal I have heard (but don’t hold me to it)is a good way to diet. Because it regulates your greed by making you think about what the meaning of ‘what we are about to eat make us truly thankful’!  Try it – I think it works in a funny way. Being thankful for all God’s gifts places us in the correct position before God as well. Not grovelling - like dogs gathering up crumbs under the table but as his children in need of His love and sustenance. Finally, as we say thank you for what we are about to eat, turns each meal into a act of togetherness uniting those around the table in a simple act of worship. It helps us focus together as well. And if there are more than two people around that table then in the name of Jesus he will be there with us… a promise to claim. Much of Jesus ministry appeared to be  centred around food and drink, indeed, Tom Wright takes this point up in some detail in his book of the same chapter… commenting on the Pharisees serious accusation of Christ being a ‘glutton and wine bibber’- Serious enough to warrant a death penalty alone. Jesus on earth appeared to enjoy a good feast, not only for the food and wine but because it brought people together - people who eat together speak and share together. And they were often people whose paths would have not crossed otherwise for example, the prostitute and Doctor of the law, the tax collector and the fishermen and so on. The wonderful ministry of food at St Saviours and St Paul’s and the meals at alpha and in home groups are all positive in my view signs of a lively and healthy Church.  As in Cranmer’s book of common prayer states: When we share with one another in Christ ‘we are joined by the whole company of heaven as participants in the eternal  feast of love’.

But what about those who do not have enough to eat?

According to the World health organisation Bread is an official staple food. Along with rice, maize, potato and certain beans and pulses. It would be appropriate to say Give us this day our daily rice, or maize or beans. Some bible translations describe give us this day our daily food for this reason (Good News Bible) Any essential staple food stuff will do would do! But saying give us our daily coca-cola, caviar, braised steak might not be so right! Test it on yourself see how you feel about inserting your favourite food into the Lords prayer instead of the word bread? Yes it might be fine so then don’t worry, carry on. However,  I think Jesus was careful in his choice of using bread.  This is because staple foods are a right, something that everyone should have. Perhaps fizzy drinks are certainly a luxury but are they a right!

Luxuries and nice foods are certainly something that we can thank God for….but staple foods are a basic human right.  It is the functional nature of Christ teaching , like if you have two shirts give one away to somebody who need its…bread is enough, its our daily requirement and there should be enough to go around for everybody. Share it! And it is not give me my daily bread it is give us our daily bread!  And it doesn’t say give me my daily feed? We might be given that bread to pass on to others. Christ does not stipulate who the bread is for! God has given us all physical life and so it is right to ask him for that which sustains all physical life!

I believe - that if there are people who for whatever reason cannot ask God or will not ask God for their food then we - as our Christian duty - need to provide that staple food for them.

I say this to myself and it is hard thing to say…if I am enjoying the luxuries of life - whilst others are going without - then according to the judgement of God I might be in mortal jeopardy…only by His Grace can I be forgiven in ignorance or otherwise for feasting whilst others starve. 

But we are a generous Church and in many ways a generous nation many give way beyond our 10% demanded by God in our salaries but we need to be watchful that in hard times-  as we are now,  we do not forget the hungry. If the state doesn’t pay out of our taxes then we must do so instead and in addition. Jesus was sent into the world to feed the hungry and poor, the rich we are told will be sent empty away.

I think it no accident too that bread is also slang for money. Dough means healthy and liberal. The Yank GI’s  of WW11 were called dough boys not only because of their high pay compared with Allies and Axis troops but also because they looked so well fed and strong. To their credit they were generous too…my father was kept in chewing gum and bananas by local GI’s stationed in Highbury. Generosity buys generosity.

Generosity and giving back to God is what blesses us and others.  We talked about the Exodus, the Israelites brought out of slavery into the wilderness where they roamed for forty years…then they were bought the promised land and what they found  was it…a barren rocky hard dried up mountain region with a dried up sea of salt and where was the land flowing with milk and honey that was promised? …disappointed was not the word?

But the point was not lost on Joshua, if Israel was obedient and honoured God then this harsh sun baked goat scrub land  surrounded by vicious enemies would become a land - secure, rich and fertile -  which it did…for a time. The point is, that when God rules the heart, hearth, house and home He turns our rocks bricks and sand into a land of plenty.  When we give thanks and acknowledge God then He says ‘see I will open the flood gates of Heaven!

Give us this day our daily bread….is inviting God into our barren lives…it means covenant and security. It creates a Jerusalem in our hearts and like Joshua and Moses who understood that the true Jerusalem is the city of peace and that a city of peace is a right relationship with God.   Give us this day our daily bread…is placing God in the pinnacle and hearts of our lives. God is bountiful with us we must be the same towards others!

 And if you cannot cope with the daily bread, cope with the morning or the afternoon bread, and if not that then the hour.  If not the hour then the minute even the second. Give me what I need this minute oh Lord because I cannot cope otherwise…is a very legitimate prayer and something that we all need at times in these hard lives when the enemy is at the gate and your worried scared and afraid. Give us this minute our daily bread because tomorrow has enough worries of its own?

You might also notice that the metaphor of grain is used throughout the bible. Grain of course is used in bread. But grain on its own is generally inedible. It can also rot and go bad in a matter of days.

It is also hard work to sift and to break the germ form the kernel and husk

The threshing floor allowed the wind to blow across it was a clever way to separate the germ from the chaff and husks and is also used as a way to describe how God chooses his people…separating them out - allowing the detritus of life and our hard outer shells to be blown away leaving the germ stripped bare as grain sorted and separated from the chaff and rubbish of the things that enclose and wrap our hearts.

Jesus then uses the image of yeast to describe the working of the Holy Spirit in his people.

And again it is a wonderful and accurate description. Grain stored in barns is no good it is not food. You need to add some water salt, sugar, yeast, oil and heat to make it delicious bread

If we are the grain - sifted and sorted on the threshing floor….then the salt is our common humanity, the yeast is the Holy Spirit, sugar perhaps some love and water our baptism. Oil heals and fire is the refiners work in us – that then describes all the necessary ingredients of a Christian faith. We can then become the bread that can then feed the nations. 

Perhaps you say…this is all too much.

Bread is Bread. It is just that! But is it? There is the mater of purity.

But bread is not bread….Bread comes in many shapes and varieties. In the eighteenth century bakers added alum (lead) to bread. Bakers were prosecuted for selling bread loaded with sawdust.  Bread can be fake and hollow. Our Grandparents tapped a loaf because that right hollow sound proved its purity. Bakers went to the gallows for poisoning their customers

When we ask God to provide our bread we put ours and families well-being into his hands. Modern supermarkets do not cut chemicals into their bread today… well I hope not…but the image again works for as a good metaphor. Where others are fake insubstantial, cut with fillers and poisons the bread of heaven by comparison is guaranteed pure!

Many will come in my name and do marvellous things…Jesus says. The bread of heaven is the bread of heaven…the purest and most delicious bread, better even than manna of the desert, better than the best human baker in the world can bake.

Our Jesus - the bread of heaven who we are about to share in - as my Nana would say…’is the best thing since sliced bread’