Sermon 26th February 2017

And now we start preparing for Easter – with the help of a study book – as the season of LENT approaches.

Our Vicar, Cameron Barker, begins our preparation. The reading is from Luke 15: verses 11-32.

“Gracious; graceful; gratitude; congratulate; gratuity; ex gratia; grateful; with good grace; period of grace; grace notes”. Or: “Ungracious; disgrace; ingrate; graceless; ungrateful; fall from grace; in bad grace”. It’s quite the pair of lists; and there is plenty more that could be added to both of them as well.

I know that there are countless other words that give rise to many further words; but do any of them rival grace in its power to inspire; or to lay bare ugly truths? No wonder it’s been described as “the last best word” – by our old friend, Philip Yancey. He found it to be such a good word that he wrote a whole book about it: What’s so amazing about grace – all the way back in 1997, I was shocked to be reminded.

This book has been hugely influential in my own life, I would say. The areas that he covers in it are core to the vital task that any Christian faces each day: how do we live out what we believe in the face of often-gritty reality. The kind of gritty reality that Jesus addresses in the parable that we’ve heard today from Luke 15 – where choices, words, and actions have consequences that are far-reaching and life-shaping. Those can be for the good of all: if they’re gracious and Godly; or for untold ill, if they are ungracious and un-Godly. And all of that is what Yancey was trying to address in the context of life at the end of the last millennium – which is rather different to life 17 years into it.  

So he’s had another go at the subject in these times – and that’s what we are going to be exploring here this Lent. I know that doesn’t start until this Wednesday; but this latest book is very much based on his previous one. So we’re beginning our Lent series a bit early, with a reminder about the original. I say ‘reminder’ because it’s a book that preachers here have often mentioned over the years; but not for some while that I can think of. It may be new to you; in which case I highly recommend that you read it. Grace really is a timeless concept in every way that matters – as is clear from us learning about it from Jesus, in a story that he told over 2 000 years ago! But it’s particularly instructive looking back over these past 20 years to see what has changed in both the world and the church in that time; and to grasp why this later book is called VANISHING grace.

Adjoa will introduce this book in detail when she speaks next week so I’ll leave that to her. But the scene for it need setting today; in particular by making clear just what grace is; and why it really is quite so amazing. Obviously that’s a topic much more broad and wide than any one sermon could ever cover; but grace is best summed up for me by the time of year when we’re looking at it. Of course this isn’t any co-incidence! Lent is when we prepare for Easter which I’d say is, in itself, the best-ever, fullest definition – and illustration – of grace. Jesus’ death on the cross truly says it all about grace. In the classic explanation of it, here are God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense (G.R.A.C.E): offered for free: to each one of us; and to all humanity.

“You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” So wrote St Paul in his letter to Christians in ancient Rome, as he tried to explain what he believed and why. Read any New Testament letter that he wrote, and ‘Grace’ is in its first paragraph; if not its first word! As much as any person in history Paul knew he had nothing to commend him to God. He’d given his whole life to wiping out the early church; to the point of being complicit in the murder of Jesus’ followers, even. And God’s response – before Paul had even done it – had been to send Jesus to die on the cross so that Paul could be forgiven for persecuting him. And that is what grace is!

From my reading this week I’ve come away with literally a whole side of A4 in cracking Yancey quotes – yes, in my teeny-tiny hand-writing! I’ll offer 2 of them here, even if they may be familiar to some. So: “Grace means there’s nothing we can do to make God love us more. And grace means there’s nothing we can do to make God love us less.” And, 1 of my all-time favourites: “Grace comes free of charge to people who don’t deserve it; and I am one of those people.” That’s just a flavour of what to expect between now and Holy Week – from either of Yancey’s books, in fact. But don’t expect this to be just words that are put together to sound fine: Yancey specialises in setting those words in the gritty reality of daily life, which is the place where faith is to be lived out.

Yes, some of that will be foreign to us because he is American, and he writes for an American readership, primarily. But there are many common threads, along with his use of illustrations from around the world: Mother Teresa; post-Soviet Russia; the ending of apartheid South Africa all feature in his 1997 book. Here is one of his stories from the days of apartheid, to illustrate the challenge of being gracious in all circumstances. Yancey tells of how a black woman had the audacity to be walking on a pavement with her children. So a young white man spat in her face as she went past him. “Thank you, sir”, she told him. “And now please can you do that to the children too.” Shocking; and yet so very real; and I can believe from my having lived there in those bad old days that this is a true story. I only wish I could say that her gracious response shamed him into inaction. My fear is that it probably made him angry enough to beat her up – and then to spit in her children’s faces, claiming that they deserved it for their ‘cheek’.

Again, I’ve told that one very deliberately, because of the cultural divide between us and the characters in Jesus’ parable. The request from the younger son that the story begins with is the equivalent of spitting in his father’s face – and that of the extended family too. It was telling his father that he wished he was dead – which is about as ungracious as it gets. The father’s gracious response was to let him have, and do, what he demanded; even when he shamed his family further by selling their land to a stranger; and then again by going off to a foreign land; not to mention the shame of abandoning his duty to care for his aging parents. His father watched him go; without a word; no threats, no demands, no warnings. And how would any parent feel about being treated worse than dirt by the child you’d loved, nurtured, and brought up? Yes grace is often costly, difficult, demanding and very, very gritty.

The details of the story stick in the mind; how this young man shamed himself to the pig-sty, before he ‘came to his senses’. He crawled home, expecting nothing; yet hoping not to be treated the way that he fully deserved. There’s no hint of his hoping for the grace of forgiveness; that was beyond his wildest expectation given just what he’d done. But fullest grace awaited him there: no condemnation, or ‘I told you so’; but a loving welcome with all the trimmings – from the same father he had so ungraciously rejected, of course. How can we not marvel at the glorious, gracious love of God that is willing to forgive, to forget, to wipe our slate clean at the first hint of just wanting to come back?

But this, of course, is nothing like the half of it. Yancey tells the story of the bold preacher who rewrote this parable as he taught from it. In his version the father agreed with the younger son’s suggestion, and sent him off to the servant quarters. He called the older son in from the fields, and threw a party for him; and yes I can see some approving smiles. Yancey’s preacher was greeted with a cry from the back: “Well, that’s what should have happened!” And, be honest, it’s not hard to understand why people should think like that. We get what we deserve in life; and quite right too; people who spit in other people’s faces do have to face up to the consequences of their actions. If you can’t take it, then don’t hand it out in the first place.

There is something of the older brother from this parable in all of us; and the tricky part is that there’s a way in which that’s a reflection of a Godly sense of justice and fairness. People should not get away with outrageous behaviour. But as Yancey points out here it’s grace that solves God’s dilemma. Our choices and behaviour so often repulse Him; but He chooses in Christ not to treat us as we deserve; but rather with this forgiving, gracious love. You see, grace, thank God, really does come free of charge to people who don’t deserve it; and I am one of those people. So was the older brother in Jesus’ story; and he was treated in just the same loving, forgiving way by his gracious father. The son who’d stayed home was just as ungracious, in his own way, as his younger brother had been. The difference is that he had not got to the point of recognising his sin; let alone of doing something about it. And this is a mirror which most of us need to look deeply into.

How often do we sit on our high horse; where we have got to where we have done through our own hard work, or good character? The view from up here is so sweet, as we enjoy what we deserve, we think; and if others haven’t got as much – or even enough – well, that’s their problem. The grace that Yancey identified when he wrote his later book in 2014 as vanishing has been dissipating even faster in the years since then, I’d say. Never better than right now could we tackle a series about grace; in these storms of un-grace that assail the world and the church everywhere we look. And maybe the very best place that each of us can start is with a mirror in one hand, and this parable in the other as we enter this Lent.

So let’s put ourselves into this story: ask where we really are in it; and what we truly think. Do we honestly see ourselves as crawling back; not deserving to be accepted, let alone welcomed; or do we see ourselves instead as deserving everything that we’ve worked so hard for? Either way, what we each need first and foremost is a full measure of God’s grace that doesn’t treat us as we deserve. And then we need to share that grace, with others who deserve it just as little as we do. There is the challenge, and the joy, that lies ahead this Lent: to learn about, and live out, that grace – in the grittiness of our lives. This surely is the best possible way in which to prepare for Easter – which is, remember, the best-ever, fullest definition – and illustration – of grace. And so may we be amazed by God’s grace in Christ all over again. And now let’s pray …

Sermon 5th February 2017

Today, our Vicar, Cameron Barker, continues our study of the story of Jesus as told in the book of Matthew. The reading is from Matthew 9: verses 18-38. 

Here are some offerings that are at least partly in keeping with one of the dominant Sunday themes of 2017 here:

Doctor, Doctor, can I have second opinion?
Of course you can: come back tomorrow.

Doctor, Doctor, will this ointment clear up my spots?
I never make rash promises.

Doctor, Doctor, I’m worried I’m a kleptomaniac.
Have you taken anything for it?

Doctor, Doctor, I’ve broken my arm in two places.
Well don’t go back to either of them again then.

Doctor, Doctor, I keep thinking I’m a spider.
It’s just a web of lies.

Doctor, Doctor, when I press with my finger here, it hurts; and here; and here. Whatever do you think is wrong?
It’s obvious: you’ve got a broken finger.

Obvious: now there’s a fine word which could be applied to so much of what we’ve seen and heard in these 2 chapters of Matthew’s gospel. And yes, at the same time, so much of it is anything but obvious: now just as little as it was then. Of course we’ll get to both the obvious, and the not-so-obvious, as we draw to the end of this short gospel series. We’ve gone over this ground in fairly big strides for a specific reason. At the outset I talked about – and that, as ever, is posted on our website for those who missed it – how Matthew is built around 5 blocks. The way that he tells the story of Jesus is by grouping thing together: first a block of Jesus’ teaching; and then the action which proves just how real that teaching was.

In this series we’ve covered the entire first action-block that followed Jesus’ first teaching-block, in the Sermon on the Mount, as it’s known. That had ended with people being – quite rightly – amazed by the authority with which Jesus spoke. These action-stories have all proved what that authority looked like – in o-so-many dramatic, radically life-affirming, life-changing, life-giving ways. And telling the story like this wasn’t, of course, Matthew re-writing the history of it. Rather it’s presenting it so that his readers (who were mostly Jewish, originally) just couldn’t miss the point about who Jesus was, and exactly what it was that he had done. It’s meant to be obvious; as I hope has been very clear in this series; or else we preachers have failed!

At 1 level it would be very hard for us to have failed: these stories almost shout for themselves, about just how amazingly different Jesus was. So as early as verse 2 of chapter 8 we have man with an incurable disease telling Jesus that he could fix a problem (leprosy) which nobody else then would have dreamed was even possible. And of course Jesus did it; as Matthew told in as few words as possible in his hurry to get onto the next amazing thing that Jesus did. (By the way, that was healing a man in agony he didn’t even have to go and see – such was the faith of the Roman soldier (!) who’d asked Jesus to do it.) And that’s only where this series began; let alone what else has been happening: right through to Jesus’ first raising of a dead person in today’s passage!

There have been numerous notable themes running through these stories. Most obvious among them has been the role of faith in people’s healing. As we’ve seen again today, sometimes it’s their own faith; sometimes it’s the faith of those who’ve brought them to Jesus. But sometimes there’s been no mention of faith – which adds to the complexity (or the mystery) of how these things ‘work’. Another theme, which we may have missed because it’s not so obvious to us, is about infection. I don’t mean the sort of infection that makes people ill – though that is what lay behind many of the Jewish regulations that we’ve heard about. This (and again we’ve had examples of it in today’s passage) is about Jesus turning everything on its head. Instead of him being infected by their illness, Jesus ‘infects’ them – the leper, the bleeding woman, the dead girl, and so many more besides – with healing; with life itself!

As I say, so much of this is so obvious; and it’s continuously in our faces too, given the way that Matthew just keeps the stories coming; and coming. It’s almost easy to miss, then, what else is going on in these 2 chapters. Of course they primarily are about Jesus doing the sorts of things that Jesus does which prove his total authority over everything and everyone; from storms, to death itself. And we really mustn’t miss that; so we won’t gloss over all the detail of today’s healings. In case you weren’t counting, those number 5 in specific total; apart, of course from another of Matthew’s catch-all summaries. Verse 35 reads: “Jesus … healed every disease and sickness”. But there’s a key note on which this series must end, if we are to take from it what we need to.

You see, Matthew didn’t set out ‘just’ to tell a story. It was that radically life-affirming, life-changing, life-giving nature of it that drove him to write, and to live, as he did. Last week Simon mentioned almost in passing – in keeping with how Matthew himself did it – how he had entered this story himself. I’m sure that the company that had gathered for dinner at Matthew’s house were people he knew who most needed to join in as well. The 4 gospel writers are often known as ‘evangelists’, because that’s what each of them wanted: for other people to become part of the story that had so changed their lives. And that’s the less-obvious thread which runs through these 2 chapters: Matthew’s constant reminder of the invitation for everyone to join in.

Even amid all this miraculous action, there are regular hints that people need to respond to who Jesus is as much as to what he does. It’s there in the middle of chapter 8, when a teacher of the Law said he wanted to follow (but couldn’t). We’ve had it in the person of Matthew too; and this is now how this first action-block ends as well. Jesus tells his followers to ask God for people who will take his teaching, preaching, healing out to everyone who needs it; and that means everyone! It also means that they should be the ones doing it, of course! God often invites us to be the answer to our own prayers; so that’s always an option for us to have in mind when we pray. To see what that looks like this time, read on into chapter 10. Or just glance at the section headings on the next page of the Bible – where Jesus sends the 12 out to do what he does.

It’s worth pushing the pause button at this point; not least to review just what it is that Jesus then sends them out to do. As I say, there are 5 miraculous events in here, the last 3 of which are unique to Matthew. In usual style, he races through each of them in next to no time – so Mark and Luke are where to look for the detail of the double-healing that it begins with. All 3 of them group these 2 events together, presumably because that’s what happened! Only Matthew reports that the girl was dead before her father went to appeal to Jesus, though. That fact then emphasises the sort of practical, trusting faith that we’ve seen so often in this series. And it was met with the same sort of radical life-affirming, life-changing, life-giving action that Jesus was able to bring about as sign of the authority that God had given him – yes, even over death itself, look.

And the same thing also happened in response to the practical trusting faith of that woman who suffered such humiliation and isolation for 12 years. No wonder then, that news spread around that region – even before the 2 blind men told their story about what Jesus had done for them. He’d told them not to tell anyone because he didn’t want people to think of him only as a healer. But it’s not hard to understand why people would want others to know what Jesus could do in an age when there was so little medical help, or hope. But all the time Matthew is trying to draw our eye away from the spectacular. As real and meaningful as it clearly is for the people that it’s happening to, the point is so much bigger, and wider than that.

As ever, there is far more detail in here than we are able to tackle in any depth; or at all, even. The story of the mute man healed here by Jesus casting out a demon may be worth a sermon of its own. It certainly is when the combined reactions of the crowd, and the watching Pharisees, are added into the mix as well. But Matthew’s ever on the march; drawing the bigger picture, and leaving us to ponder the detail of it when we’ve grasped the central message, about the central person and the central task that Jesus came to accomplish. And again Matthew provides his readers with this briefest but sharpest of summaries of that; before moving on to his next block. Jesus’ teaching, preaching, and healing were the signs of the Good News about this kingdom that he had come to bring in.

That’s a great summary for us to carry with us as we move on ourselves. Being half-term, we’ll pick up the children’s series on Psalms next week; and then our focus will be on getting ready for Easter. That, of course, is re-telling the story of how Jesus finished what he’d come to do: first by dying on the cross for us; and then by being raised back to life so that we all can be too. This is always where the story that Matthew is telling is heading towards, of course. He’s also always inviting all his readers to join in with that story; to become part of this kingdom that Jesus was teaching, preaching, and healing about. That invitation is the less-obvious sub-plot that has been running throughout this series; and now it needs a response from us.

There are, of course many ways in which we can respond to all that we’ve seen and heard here. And of course I hope that there will be many different responses, at many different levels, over a long time. I couldn’t begin to list what those may be, then; but I do encourage you to pursue whatever it is that God has been speaking to you about through this series. As well as that, I need to mention again what I flagged up at the start of this series: money. We don’t mention this here very often, but it’s time to do so now, at start of a new year that will see significant rises in our expenses. Part of a decision to follow Jesus is taking responsibility to fund that work of the coming of his kingdom, so now is a good time for each of us to review how we all do that.

[AT ST SAVIOUR’S: Our Treasurer, Graeme, will be happy to talk you through any numbers you want to know about, and the process of responding; all very confidentially. The headlines are that we’re inviting everyone who already gives to review that, especially if you haven’t done so in a while. If you’re more recently arrived and want to start giving to this church, then that will be very welcome too. The target that Action Group has necessarily set is an increase of at least £4 000 in regular giving this year, if that helps to know; and we are deliberately setting that **]

[AT ST PAUL’S: I’ve written a letter to all St Paul’s regular members with the detail of this need, and of how we can respond to it. Do please take yours today, and pray about what God is saying to you about this. The aim is that we will all be able to see this appeal **]

AT BOTH ** in this context; of being Jesus’ disciples, who are carrying on his work here. In this Matthew series we have not ‘just’ been reminded of the amazing nature of God’s kingdom but also have been invited to be part of it ourselves, and of making it real for others. Here is one way in which we can all do that; and so now let’s pray that we will do so, in this, and in many other ways besides ...