Sermon 9th February 2014

Today, one of our Lay Readers, Adjoa Andoh Cunnell, continues our study of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. The reading is from Matthew 6 verses 16-34.

Dear Mum and Dad,

Our scoutmaster told us all to write to our parents in case you saw the flood on TV and worried. We are OK. Only one of our tents and two of our sleeping bags got washed away. Luckily none us got drowned because we were all up on the mountain looking for Andy when it happened.

Oh yes, please call Andy's mother and tell her he is OK. He can't write because of the cast… I got to ride in one of the search and rescue jeeps. It was great. We never would have found him in the dark if it hadn't been for the lightning. Scoutmaster Long got angry with Andy for going off on a walk alone without telling anyone. Andy said he did tell him, but it was during the fire so he probably didn't hear him. Did you know that if you put gas on a fire, the gas can will blow up? The wet wood still didn't burn, but one of our tents did. Also some of our clothes. John is going to look weird until his hair grows back.

We will come home on Saturday if Scoutmaster Long gets the car fixed. 

Guess what? We have passed all our first aid merit badges.

Don't worry about anything. We are fine.

Love, Carl

P.S. How long has it been since I had a tetanus injection?

Oh my goodness – stuff and worries….

I started writing this sermon on the Notes bit of my iPhone

If you could see all the other notes...

Lists...

What jobs I have coming in

Whose paid, who do I need to chase up

Phone:- school, electricity people, car mechanic

Dog walker

Plant tulip bulbs..is it too late?

Birthdays to remember oops ones I've forgotten 

School exams

homework  school trips 

Essay deadlines

People to visit 

Grocery lists

Emails and phone calls I haven’t answered

ring dad

fence falling down

Sort out cupboard of doom

And that's just the stuff I've written down 

Do you lie in bed with stuff whizzing round your head while the minutes tick by and then do you add to the whizzing by looking at the clock (deadly) and calculating how much sleep you'd get if only you could just fall asleep right now which only makes it harder to get to sleep....

Or is that just me...

WORRies we carry a lot of worries

 Back in January Cameron introduced this series we call the sermon on the Mount, telling us amongst other things, that what we would be sharing over the coming weeks is a presentation of a group of teachings, by the Gospel writer known as Matthew, teachings that Jesus shared most probably with his disciples alone at some times and also with larger crowds at others.. And no doubt some of his teaching may indeed have taken place on the mountains and hills surrounding Capernaum

Running Through all the subsequent talks given by Gill, Ben and Trevor is the understanding that It’s not just our actions that need to change; it’s our hearts.

This Understanding is the spine that runs through what Jesus has to say to us from that Mountain.

AS Tom Wright puts it in his version of one of the beatitudes from earlier in the Sermon on the Mount, a version that Cameron shared with us

Jesus says

“Wonderful news when you’re content with just who you are: no more, no less. That’s the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can’t be bought.

Today we are looking at what can and can’t bought in the world and in our hearts.

Possessions, stuff, anxiety and the Peace of Jesus

How do we face up to life as it keeps rolling towards us?

I’m very much struck in this mornings passage how Jesus appears to be giving us a ‘How To’ manual, to address ‘how to ‘ respond to all that life may send our way.

But this is not just any How To Manual it comes direct from the manufacturer. The Sermon on The Mount from our Creator to His Creation, the Maker of the World telling us directly how to live at our optimum in the world he made for us.

In the Friday home group I go to we’re following a series by Canon Jay John on the 10 commandments – an earlier How To Manual…? Jay John was talking the week before last about attending a school assembly where before his talk the head teacher really let fly at the assembled students  about their being badly behaved and what some of them could look forward to as a result…

and then Jay John was introduced ….

These were quite no nonsense boys who had just been publicly torn off a strip or two and now they had to listen to the God man.

They planned on giving JJ a bracing time, so he got in there first and asked them if they had any questions

Yes a boy from the back stood up

What’s your question JJ asked

What does God look like?

At this point in the story I have to admit I was expecting JJ to say something like ……God looks like a kind act to a stranger, a courageous act with no thought for ones own safety, a sunrise, a flower..

That sort of thing

But JJ said none of that

He said ‘I don’t know I wasn’t there when Jesus was alive and that’s the only time God has been on earth in a visible form.. I mean it’s like asking me what Queen Victoria looks like..I don’t know I wasn’t there, bit before my time…”

But the point he went on to make was that while he wasn’t there to know what Jesus looked like or was like, there were people who were.

Just like there were people who were around when Queen Victoria was around and in both cases, there were those who wrote about their experiences of these people.

We have letters and diaries and stories passed on about Queen Victoria.

And similarly we have the same about Jesus, in one handy carriable document – the Bible…

How extraordinary when we stop and think about that – God in human form, a form we could cope with, documented during his time on earth.

Yesterday, Readers in the diocese were relicensed – you’ll be relieved to know I’m officially ok… and I was struck by this phrase from one of our workshops

The scriptures point us to Jesus

The written word points us to the living word.

We have the privilege in the Gospels of hearing directly from Jesus, via the Gospel writers, how an Optimum life can be lead, what a life of inner Peace can look like.

The Australian theologian William Loader observed that Jesus is framed in Matthew as the judge who is made of love. Matthew emphasizes the way Jesus sets discipline against poor behaviour and compassion for the fallen, side by side.

No doubt to engage Jews with their history, Matthew is purposefully reminding us of Moses coming down from the Mountain with the tablets of stone on which were written the ten commandments, when here he shows us God in Jesus communicating not by the written word during his Sermon on the Mount, but by that living word.

Jesus shares with his listeners a ‘How To’ of living

 in the way that we are made for, and that pleases our maker

Optimum living is Optimum, the Best, because this How To Live from Jesus, is not simply a list of instructions to cope with a variety of circumstances but over and above this, it is a way to actively engage with our life in peace.

A way to live peacefully , harmoniously , confident in the enduring healing love that Christ has for us and has showed in the way he lived his life on earth.

‘Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid’

Jesus says

In John’s Gospel 14:27

Peace – we share it symbolically with one another on many Sundays here, but do we really feel it in our lives?

GN

33 …be concerned above everything else with the Kingdom of God and with what he requires of you, and he will provide you with all these other things.

NIV

33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

What makes our lives ‘unpeaceful’

Thinking about Stuff, food, bills, clothes, medicine, transport, gifts Holidays, cars repairs, - possessions, stuff –

Jesus answers - Peace

GN

34 So do not worry about tomorrow; it will have enough worries of its own. There is no need to add to the troubles each day brings.

NIV

34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

Worries –jobs , friends, family, beloveds, anger resentments, loneliness, health – worries.

Jesus answers- Peace

Chasing wealth, success, acquiring more and more stuff, sacrificing time love friendship in the pursuit of status, financial security, nice extras

 It’s all transitory,it can be lost in an instant    

We own nothing, it all comes from God *****

I was recording an audiobook by Ian MacDonald

The Broken Land. In it one of the characters says

 Like pilgrims lifting handfuls of holy water from the river that runs away through their fingers the moment they claim hold of it, no man can own a river, only borrow it and let it flow on….

the river runs away through their fingers the moment they claim hold of it

If we get right with God. We can see that all that stuff we yearn for is transitory, passing, as are all our worries, they may not feel it at the time but they too pass and God remains .

Jesus says you CANT be servant of two Masters, the pursuit of worldly wealth or the acceptance of God’s love -  he says

24 ‘No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.

Why cant you?

Jesus says

21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

God or money – where is our treasure?

We need to be with the source of creation not with the by product

If we believe God created the world why would we want to focus on the made stuff and not the maker

Stop rushing after the world. Jesus says

Be present first with God. Psalm 46 v.10 says

“Be still and know that I am God”

In hearing Jesus and seeking his Peace, his “how To’, his leadership in our lives, we are required to Listen.

Have you noticed that the word Listen is an anagram for Silent??

As the hearers on the Mount did, we need to echo the Psalm - be still, be silent and listen for God.

While we have our How To Manual to support the foundation of our lives we get our daily updates specific to our particular circumstances in conversation with the manufacturer – in Prayer

American theologian Philip Yancey says of prayer

‘Why pray?..Prayer has become much more than a shopping list of requests to present to God….I pray to restore the truth of the universe, to gain a glimpse of the world, and of me, through the eyes of God….Prayer is the act of seeing reality from God’s point of view’

The Psalmist says in Psalm 139

“before a word is on my tongue you know it completely O Lord..”

And Jesus confirms this here in the most poetic of images in this beautiful passage as we read in the King James version verses 28-30

Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; 29 and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 30 Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you,

For all the stuff of our lives Jesus continues, V 32

‘your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.’

We need to make space to hear God - as the phrase goes

For one Soul that exclaims “ Speak Lord for thy Servant heareth” there are ten that say “Hear Lord! For thy Servant speaketh”

Trevor spoke in depth about prayer last week, he said

Prayer isn’t just vertical. It’s not just us praising God and asking him to meet our needs. Prayer must be horizontal; it must also affect our social relationships.

Just as when we pray we are praying to a creator who knows already what we need, God’s intimate knowledge of who and what we are, means that our faith is intimate too - Jesus calls on us to respect it and not use it as a status symbol of public godliness in our communities. That spine running through this series, it is a matter of what is in your heart that concerns Jesus, not what you appear to do or be on the outside.

GN

16 “And when you fast, do not put on a sad face as the hypocrites do. They neglect their appearance so that everyone will see that they are fasting.

NIV

16 ‘When you fast, do not look sombre as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others they are fasting.

God sees everything -  you can be private and humble or you can be public and a hypocrite, God sees it all…

Don’t be a hypocrite,

don’t be greedy – you can’t take it with you

Look to the quality of your relationships.Have a generous opinion of people, Jesus says

GN

If your eyes are sound, your whole body will be full of light;

NIV

‘If your eyes are healthy,[a] your whole body will be full of light.’

Generous , healthy, sound.

Eyes like a lamp, look with generosity – healthy eyes

Not with meanness – unhealthy eyes

Look for the good see the positive, be generous

Don’t be mean spirited

Or as Canon Jay John would put it

‘Say what you mean, mean what you say, don’t say it mean’.

Talking of Heaven On Earth in his wonderfully named book ‘Love Wins’ Christian writer Rob Bell observes

‘Jesus calls disciples in order to teach us how to be and what to be, his intention is for us to be growing progressively in generosity, forgiveness, honesty, courage truth telling and responsibility so that as these take over our lives we are taking part more and more and more in life in the age to come now’

we are working more and more to bring God’s Kingdom of peace love and justice into the world we live in now.

In other words as we learn to live our optimal life, in a body full of light,( the one God has made us for,) not only will we be more at peace in our lives but we will also share that loving light with the world around us – light puddles of heaven on earth'

Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

Jesus doesn’t say if you trust in me everything will be easy street, but once you do trust in me,

know that you can be present, in the moment, you need only deal with today

and at the same time do see and enjoy those lilies and birds too,

Just like for everyone else, there is trouble in the Christian life too, but God has us in mind, our heart is concern, we are not alone in our troubles.

if we release ourselves from making the world our master and stop being overwhelmed by its demands, if we give ourselves over to Peace in Christ wholeheartedly, we may become part of the change that can ease the troubles in the lives of others, as well as our own

God is concerned with that change in our hearts

He wants to heal our hearts, so we can heal our lives and then help in the work of healing our world

and however it is that the loving Peace of Christ inspires us, if we focus on him first, if we seek first his kingdom, he will carry us through anything and everything in His Love.

Amen