Month: July 2020

Isaiah 55.1-5, Matthew 14.13-21

The Eighth Sunday after Trinity, 2nd August 2020

Eldroth, Clapham and online

“If you are thirsty, come to the waters; if you have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.” Isaiah’s great song of God’s boundless generosity echoes down the centuries through Jesus’ parable about the prodigal sower who spread his seeds wildly, and Jesus’ remarkable act with the loaves and fish; through the early Christians who each shared all that they owned to meet the needs of all in their fellowship; and right through to today where in food banks across the land people engage in kind acts of generosity towards our most vulnerable families.

“If you are thirsty, come to the waters; if you have no money, come, buy and eat!” Inspiring words – which make no sense to us, economically. For the way our world is organised means that those who have no money cannot buy and eat. But Isaiah’s wondrous hymn celebrates God’s economy, opening the door to a different way of organising our world.

Any flick through the pages of scripture shows how God looks compassionately on the world’s poor and longs to see them fed. Isaiah 55 is just one example. Listen again to today’s Psalm which says,

The Lord upholds all those who fall
and lifts up all those who are bowed down.
The eyes of all wait upon you, O Lord,
and you give them their food in due season.
You open wide your hand
and fill all things living with plenty. [1]

Now, what can these words possibly mean to people who in this time of the coronavirus have just  lost their jobs, and those for whom being endowed with the title of ‘hero’ disguises the reality of their daily struggles with long working hours in poor conditions on very low pay? They may have been applauded during this crisis, but in their precarious circumstances how can they know themselves to be truly upheld and lifted up? [2]

And what can these words mean to our sister and brother Christians in the Sudan, whose churches are partnered with our churches here in Leeds Diocese, where rocketing inflation now means that a quarter of the population are in need of urgent help with food, and whose Christians are the poorest of the poor, living in long-term displacement camps, in crowded townships with no medical facilities and no running water. They look to the Church as their only source of help but the  Church in Sudan has no financial reserves to meet this crisis. When their Archbishop hears  these people claim “they would rather die of a virus than of hunger”, how can they believe that the Lord will give them their food in due season, and fill them all with plenty? [3]

When Jesus’ disciples came to him and said, “This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves”, he told them, “They needn’t go away; you give them something to eat.” [4]

It is miraculous that Jesus found a way to make five loaves and two fish feed the thousands of men, women and children gathered in that place. But perhaps the greater miracle is the transformation he brought about in the disciples. From being glass-half-empty people who couldn’t see how they could feed the crowds, they became the facilitators of that wonderful feast. Something in Jesus’ instruction to them gave them the confidence to go out into the crowd to see what food they had; and when they returned with a paltry amount of provisions, something about Jesus’ persistence persuaded them that this might just be enough. Their faltering faith was rewarded: twelve times over.

This is God’s economy enacted in first-century Palestine. This miracle’s great power extends way beyond that late-night lakeside gathering: it has inspired countless acts of generous giving throughout the ages by those who have captured its spirit.

For some time now we have been living under the idolatry of what has been called Capitalist Realism, that is “the widespread sense that not only is capitalism the only viable political and economic system, but also that it is now impossible even to imagine a coherent alternative to it”. [5] The global climate crisis and viral outbreak is “forcing us to re-evaluate how we have been living and working” and “to imagine any number of alternatives as many of the old structures crumble around us”. [6] But Capitalist Realism was never a valid position for Christians to take, who have always embraced the struggle to live by God’s economy, to demonstrate the reality that in the world as God intends it, it is absolutely possible to “have no money, and to come, buy and eat”.

God’s economy depends, of course, on God’s people abandoning our glass-half-empty perspectives on such matters and – like Jesus’ disciples handing over five loaves and two fish to their Lord – being inspired to try out acts of generous giving, however modest they may seem. This may mean us sharing food and other physical goods with those in need; and it can also mean us giving time and energy to joining with the poor in campaigns to challenge the system to treat them better.

How can the newly-unemployed and the exploited low-paid workers in this country be lifted up? How can our fellow-Christians in impoverished Sudan trust they will be fed? The answer – not a complete or perfect answer, granted, but a holy, prophetic, practical and generous answer nevertheless – rests with us, and the ways we share the gifts that God has given us for the service and well-being of others.

 

Notes

[1] Psalm 145.15-17.

[2] Sophie McBain, What it means to be a hero: Acts of courage in the age of Covid. New Statesman, 22 July 2020: ‘Karleigh Frisbie Brogan, a shop ­worker, pushed back against the “hero talk”: “It’s a pernicious label perpetuated by those who wish to gain something – money, goods, a clean conscience – from my jeopardisation,” she wrote. Supermarket cashiers are not heroes, “they’re victims. To call them heroes is to justify their exploitation.”’

[3] Jack Bacon, Diocese of Leeds launches new appeal to support the church in Sudan. Diocese of Leeds website, 27 July 2020.

[4] Matthew 14.15-16.

[5] Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? (Zero Books 2009). For an overview see Wikipedia: Capitalist Realism.

[6] Jason Cowley, Editor’s Note: The great university funding crisis, sub-prime degrees and Boris Johnson’s “new normal”. New Statesman, 22 July 2020.

Romans 8.26-39, Matthew 13.31-33, 44-45, 51-52

The Seventh Sunday after Trinity, 26th July 2020

Austwick, Keasden and online

On the day that Clapham village school closed, the school leavers of 2020 planted a time capsule in Clapham village park. The capsule is due to be retrieved in 2050. Maybe one or two of this year’s ‘last-ever’ pupils will be around to take their children along to share in that revealing moment. 

Into that stainless steel capsule the pupils put their memories and memorabilia; including something quite unique: extracts from their ‘Lockdown Diaries’, so that those who open the capsule thirty years from now will be able to read these children’s first-hand accounts of life in the season of coronavirus.

Introducing the ceremony Headteacher Adam Kay gave a brief history of time capsules, which have been around for centuries to preserve people’s history and capture people’s personalities, or the culture, the spirit, the concerns of the institutions which sponsor them. They also often speculate on the way that people will live in the future; and express people’s dreams and hopes for those who will come after.  

When Zagreb Cathedral, Croatia was reconstructed in 1898 a time capsule was planted in the bell tower, carrying a message from the architect Herman Bollé, saying, ‘When it is opened, let the Croats be a unified nation’. It was opened in 2013, by which time Croatia had been a sovereign state for 22 years. [1]

Time capsules capture the things people treasure – what is new and what is old; memories, hopes and dreams. Planting a capsule is a generous act, a way of reaching out to the people of the future and gifting those treasures to them. It’s an act of hope in itself, hope that when its contents are rediscovered its old treasures will be cherished for the windows they open on a world now past, and its new treasures – that is, its hopes and dreams for the future – may be realised. For reasons such as these I’ll dare to say that planting a time capsule is a way of praying.

In my home town in 1904 a stonemason Fred Bower surreptitiously placed a letter in a tin in the foundations of Liverpool Cathedral, a short time before King Edward VII laid the foundation stone over it, sealing it for posterity. Bower’s letter was addressed to a future society. Signed, “Yours sincerely, ‘A Wage Slave’” Bower described the “immense wealth” and the “abysmal poverty” of the then “second city of the mightiest empire the world has ever seen”, and of the poor working conditions of his fellow construction workers. His message encapsulated his hope that their descendants’ lives would, “compared to ours of today, be a happier existence.”

Fred Bower treasured his people, and cared about their lot in life with a passion expressed through his lifetime commitment to the labour movement. The secret of his letter was revealed in his autobiography published in 1936, and on June 27th 2004, as the cathedral was preparing for its grand centenary celebrations, a small group of people gathered by its foundation stone to commemorate the secret message in the tin. They laid a wreath in memory of the unknown number of workers who died during the 74-year construction of the cathedral, including those who fell victim to the stonemason’s disease, silicosis. Amongst them were members of the Merseyside Construction Safety Campaign, who channel the spirit of Fred Bower into their present-day struggles for safe working conditions. [2] 

Time capsules hold the things people treasure – what is new and what is old; memories, hopes and dreams – and so they can be catalysts for change in the future world they address.

I’d like to invite you to take something away from here today. If I offer you an empty ‘time capsule’, what would you put in it? What of all those things and people you treasure would you want to preserve for a future generation to discover? What old things would you want to share with them? And what new things do you wish for, for those who will come after? What are your hopes and dreams for the coming generations?

This, I suggest, is a way of praying – of saying ‘thanks’ for the most precious things in our lives past and present, and of interceding for the future. 

Notice how Jesus taught about the kingdom of heaven in terms of buried treasures. Often modest little things, but treasures nevertheless. The tiny mustard seed that someone put into the ground and which grew into great tree, a nesting place for the birds of the air. The yeast that a woman mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened. The treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he went and sold all that he had to buy that field. The one pearl of great value a dealer discovered after a long laborious search, and went and sold all that he had to buy it. 

The kingdom of heaven is Jesus’ way of describing how God meets us in the world. Always there but often hidden, waiting to be revealed, longing for us to search for him.

The kingdom of heaven is Jesus’ way of expressing how God operates in our lives, always ready to share his treasures with us, longing for us to make those wonderful discoveries.

And the kingdom of heaven is Jesus’ way of talking about the way that we then live – what we do with the treasures that God has given to us, how they can grow and flourish and make things new when we share them with others.

Jesus said to his friends and followers, ‘Every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.’ That joyful task is ours, we who train for the kingdom of heaven by our life of prayer and devotion. 

What is your treasure – your cherished past stories and your future hopes and dreams? How can  you share that today and with those who come after?       

 

Notes

[1] Wikipedia: Time Capsule; Timeline of time capsules.

[2] Peter Taaffe, Laying the foundation stones of the workers’ movement. The Socialist newspaper, 24 June 2015; Paddy Shennan, The secret message buried in Liverpool Cathedral. Liverpool Echo, 6 July 2015.

Wisdom of Solomon 12:13, 16-19, Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

The Sixth Sunday after Trinity, 19th July 2020

Clapham, Eldroth and online

Jesus gives out terrible farming advice. In his Parable of the Sower the sower apparently did nothing to prepare his field. He didn’t clear any rocks or pull any weeds; he didn’t plough the soil to soften the earth and bury the remaining weeds. No, he simply went out into a field with a lot of rocks and weeds and trampled down, hard ground, and flung the seed to the four winds, so much seed, happy for it to land anywhere. Jesus’ scene of ordinary rural life contains this bewildering action, so ridiculous that it can’t be about real farming; instead, it must be about the extravagance of God, who from now on we can call The Prodigal Sower, who generously sows his seeds of love, peace and grace without prejudice or privilege, without bounds. [1]

Yes, Jesus is a ridiculous agriculturalist. Listen closely to his parable about the wheat and the weeds, the one which follows-on from the story of the Prodigal Sower in Matthew, which is framed as one of those apocalyptic rants so beloved by those whose religion is toxic and based on harsh judgementalism and enmity. Listen closely like a farmer would, to the detail. And what you’ll hear is one line which jars, because once again it’s Jesus giving out terrible farming instructions.

“Let the wheat and the weeds grow together until the harvest.” – he says. There in Verse Thirty. Now, this is comical agricultural advice. And it is knowing, subtle, subversive teaching, which runs the risk of being misunderstood.

Here, in apocalyptic tones, Jesus is re-telling the oldest story ever told among humankind, the story which always goes like this: “We are the wheat and these others, over there, they are the weeds – and for being weeds, we’re condemning them to hell”. This story is what holds groups of people together – we identify ourselves in opposition to others. “We are the upright ones because we’re not like those degenerate others.” In Jesus’ context the wheat were his people the Jews; the weeds the Samaritans: or the Romans, or collaborators like Zacchaeus who collected taxes for the enemy – each of them judged to be ‘weeds’ by the self-righteous ‘wheat’ who condemned them to hell. 

“Let the wheat and the weeds grow together until the harvest.” That one line in Jesus’ story subverts the whole thing – it undermines the whole passage, making it all seem unbelievable. It has the same sort of effect as the way that one man’s recent actions – a trip to Barnard Castle – subverted the government narrative which to that point almost everyone had faithfully followed: ‘Stay Home – Save Lives’; that little twist in the government’s tale so undermined its credibility that the following weekend the beaches were full. [2]

What point was Jesus trying to make by undermining the old antagonistic human story? Those who worked the soil would understand that if you let weeds grow up among the wheat then there will be no harvest – no harvest of any worth, anyway, for how can you separate wheat and weeds at harvest-time? It’s an impossible task for the reapers. The whole long summer’s work has been for nothing. Is Jesus saying that there can be no harvest like the apocalyptic harvest so beloved by toxic religion? Is he teaching that the idea of wheat and weeds being separated at the end of time is not at all what God has in mind?

If this is his intention then he is drawing on the deep wells of his own scriptures, and ours. Listen again to the words of the psalmist in Psalm 86, which come across as the words of someone who other people, regarding themselves as ‘wheat’ have judged to be one of those condemned ‘weeds’:

O God, the proud rise up against me and a ruthless horde seek after my life;  – he says – 

they have not set you before their eyes.

But you, Lord, are gracious and full of compassion, 

slow to anger and full of kindness and truth. [3]

And listen again to the Wisdom of Solomon, whose reflections on the nature of the Divine One lead him to conclude that:

There is no other god besides you, whose care is for all people, 

to whom you should prove that you have not judged unjustly;

For your strength is the source of righteousness,

and your sovereignty over all causes you to spare all.

Though you are sovereign in strength, you judge with mildness,

and with great forbearance you govern us. [4]

What do we make of this message, that God does not after all spend his energy angrily separating people into two camps to subject one to violent judgement, but rather rules the world in compassion and kindness, for his instinct is to spare all? If we had taken it to heart from the beginning then two thousand years of Christian enmity and bloodshed, crusades and death camps, slavery and rancour, might have been avoided. If we take it to heart now, we needn’t be troubled  about what an angry God will do to us at the end of our days, and instead can spend our days enjoying the fellowship of a God who truly, madly, deeply, loves us and is all for our care?

This is not to deny us the opportunity to resist evil when we see it at work in the world – it’s an invitation to do so by other means than resenting and fearing and judging others: by reaching out to a broken world in compassion and care.

Think of the effect on our broken communities and conflicted world if we take to heart the teaching that we are all wheat and we are all weeds – that no one group of people is any more or less perfect than any other, or any more loved than any other, in God’s eyes. That all lives truly do matter to God, of every race, class and creed, formed to live together peaceably. [5] What sort of society could we create if we acted on the Sermon on the Mount:  “Judge not – and be not judged”, “Love God – and love your neighbour as yourself.” [6] Jesus’ resurrection power makes it possible. Surely this is the good news which saves us.

(As Solomon says,) You have taught your people that the righteous must be kind, 

and you have filled your children with good hope, because you give repentance for sins. [7]

In the Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds Jesus invites us to turn away from our fixation with the wrongs of others, to put aside our instinct to judge, our dreams of annihilation. And to embrace others in love in the power of the resurrection, for this is the way of the kingdom of God.

Jesus points us away from judgement into joy. By his Spirit we can change our understanding; change our direction, in openness to the reality that God is doing a new thing in creation and human society, and has a place for us within it. 

“Let the wheat and the weeds grow together.” It is awful advice for farmers. But it is the joyful way of the new life which God in Christ, every day, invites us to live.

 

Notes

Drawing on a previous sermon Jesus the satirical gardener on the road to the future of God, Somerset, 2017, and with grateful acknowledgement to Paul Nuechterlein for this interpretation of The Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds in Girardian Lectionary, Notes, Proper 11A. 

[1] See my previous talk, At sea with the elemental Spirit of Christ, 12 July 2020.

[2] Faye Brown, Trust in government has collapsed after Dominic Cummings scandal. Metro,1 Jun 2020

[3] Psalm 86.14-15.

[4] Wisdom of Solomon 12.13,16,18.

[5] ‘All Lives Matter’ emerged as a heavily racalized statement owing to its use in reaction to the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement. See eg. Arianne Shahvisi, The philosophical flaw in saying “All Lives Matter”. Prospect, July 3, 2020.

[6] Matthew 7.1-3, Matthew 22.38-39

[7] Wisdom of Solomon 12.19.

Psalm 65, Isaiah 55.10-13, Matthew 13.1-9, 18-23

The Fifth Sunday after Trinity: Sea Sunday, 12th July 2020

Keasden, Austwick and online

You still the raging of the seas, the roaring of their waves and the clamour of the peoples.

You visit the earth and water it; you make it very plenteous. The river of God is full of water.

You prepare grain for your people, for so you provide for the earth. (Psalm 65)

Today is Sea Sunday, when we may reflect on the elemental forces of life around us, how much we rely on them and on those who work in them. The Mission to Seafarers is keen to remind us that each day we depend on seafarers for our daily food, that so much of what we eat is brought to us by seafarers, through sometimes dangerous and often difficult waters. Elemental waters – great forces of nature, strong in power and great in magnitude. Today, we think of those who spend their working lives in them: ships crews vulnerable to the weather, to international pirates, to maltreatment by their employers, to poverty, fatigue, homesickness and loneliness. [1]

In this time of the coronavirus seafarers are more exposed than ever. In Europe’s busiest port, Rotterdam, a Mission to Seafarers chaplain Reverend Dennis Woodward recently shared how  ‘Some have reported non-payment of wages, or contracts being extended without consent. Other seafarers have been stranded in foreign ports without wages or flights home.’ Many of the seafarers who work the container ships have not been ashore in months – and may not be able to land for some time yet; all are missing their families who are often thousands of miles away, in countries that are in lockdown; troubled that they can’t offer their families protection. [2] 

And so, on Sea Sunday let us reacquaint ourselves with the Jesus who preached on the shores and sailed in the Sea of Galilee; the Jesus who recruited the fishermen Simon and Andrew, James and John from beside the sea, the Jesus who famously walked on water, calmed the storm, provided the disciples with a boatload of fish, the resurrected Lord who cooked breakfast on the beach for his awestruck followers: the Jesus who lived with the elemental forces of physical nature, nurtured and used them, at times transcended them by his divine power, for his divine purposes. 

In today’s Gospel reading we find Jesus doing what he did so often: standing in a boat at the edge of the lake, telling a story about a human being and the elemental force of physical nature – a story about a sower going out to sow; which was really another way of telling them about another elemental force at work in the world: the Spirit of God, and the nature of his power. It’s a story full of surprises. [3] 

In the Parable of the Sower we can see at least two twists that would have struck Jesus’ audience. The first is that this sower apparently did nothing to prepare his field. He didn’t clear any rocks or pull any weeds; he didn’t plough the soil to soften the earth and bury the remaining weeds. Not bothered with any of this, he simply went out into a field with a lot of rocks and weeds and trampled down, hard ground, and flung the seed to the four winds, happy for it to land anywhere. 

And Jesus’ audience would have been jolted by the ending of this story: that the good soil produces thirty, sixty, and a hundred-fold. This is an unheard-of harvest! In our modern times of heavy, mechanised agriculture we would expect that sort of outcome. But in Jesus’ day, thirty, sixty, and a hundred-fold would be an outrageous expectation for a harvest. It’s like the crazy catch of fish which Jesus arranged for his disciples on the Sea of Galilee – an unprecedented amount. 

There’s something elemental going on here. It’s the primal forces of the Spirit of God at work in the world, told through the parable of a Prodigal Sower, who doesn’t seem to care where he throws his seed. The parable of the Prodigal Sower teaches us that, just as there is an unlimited supply of water in the sea and the sky, so there is an unlimited supply of love and mercy, in Christ. This sower’s seeds – of love and mercy – will never run out. God will ‘sow’ them absolutely everywhere, because there are no limits to God’s generosity. In the Spirit of Christ, God’s love and mercy do not give out, and one day will yield a fantastic harvest. 

The elemental nature of the flesh is that it severely limits such love, mercy and grace, as we human beings get caught up in desires and obsessions which cause conflicts between us. We restrict the amount of grace available to others; we ring-fence salvation. Philippino seamen stuck in Rotterdam, why should I care about them? But by the elemental nature of the Holy Spirit God’s love, mercy and grace are available to all, without exception, without prejudice. The Mission to Seafarers get this, a Christian agency operating in more than 230 ports, caring for the practical and spiritual welfare of seafarers of all nationalities and faiths. [4]

So let us pray for those who work out in the elements – on the land, here and across the world, and those who make a vulnerable living out on the seas and the oceans, often immersed in dangerous and difficult waters. And let us pray and practically support those who spend their days sharing with them God’s unlimited love.

 

 

Notes 

Adapted from The Elemental Jesus, preached in Devon, Sea Sunday 2011.

[1] The Mission to Seafarers lists Abandonment, Communications, Fatigue, Mental Health, Piracy and Shipwreck as the issues facing seafarers with whom they work. 

[2] Karen McVeigh, ‘One seafarer almost cried’: the last chaplain visiting quarantined boats. Guardian, 1 April 2020.

[3] ‘The Prodigal Sower’ passages borrow from my 2005 sermon, The Prodigal Sower which is a rewrite of Paul Nuechterlein, The Prodigal Sower (2002).

[4] The Mission to Seafarers.

Zechariah 9.9-12, Matthew 11.16-19,25-30

The Fourth Sunday after Trinity, Sunday 5th July 2020 – Eldroth and online

‘Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.’ Such gracious words tell us so much about the nature of the God who loves us, and how he lovingly invites us to be restored in him. 

This is not a God who makes hard demands on people – contrary to what we may have been told; this is a God who wants to unburden us. 

This is not a God who controls us by keeping us busy – contrary to what we might have been led to believe; this is a God who wants us to find rest for our souls. 

This is not a heavyweight God who imposes on us – this is a God who is gentle and humble in heart. His yoke is easy; his burden is light. 

So if we are carrying heavy burdens, those burdens are coming from somewhere else; God invites us to come to him to find rest. 

Whatever burdens you – whether failing health, or worries about what the future might hold;  whether financial worries or fears of loss or loneliness; whether you’re troubled by aspects of yourself which you don’t like, habits you can’t break, unhealthy obsessions… or whether it is others who trouble you – in a world which feels at present so insecure, so ill-at-ease, so conflicted… ‘Come to me,’ he says, ‘and I will give you rest.’

Or whatever wearies you – the monotony of days in isolation, the grind of a tiring working pattern, keeping up appearances to please others, to do things just to fit in with them, that sense of not being ‘true to ourself’… ‘Come to me,’ he says, ‘and I will give you rest.’

At times today it may feel like you can’t do right for doing wrong. As a people for some weeks now we have been asked to carry the burden of this damned coronavirus on our own shoulders. We are commanded to  ‘Control The Virus’ – as if we had the power – and abandoned to make our own choices as to what that means in practice.

And so you are burdened, for if you stay indoors aren’t you failing to help get the economy moving again; but if you go out aren’t you risking infection and putting extra strain on our health services? If you meet with friends aren’t you putting them all at risk; but if you decline their invitation aren’t you being antisocial? What a bind we are in… what burdens we carry. How they weary us. In this, we are not alone.

‘But to what will I compare this generation?’ (asks Jesus in Matthew 11.) ‘It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to one another, “We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn.” For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, “He has a demon”; the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, “Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax-collectors and sinners!”’

They couldn’t do right for doing wrong, John the non-drinker, and Jesus the drinker – the crowd condemned them both: they couldn’t fulfil the people’s expectations because the people’s expectations shifted according to their mood and to suit their interests at the time. 

Can you sense how our present generation also sounds like children in the marketplace calling to one another? People may say to us – ‘You shouldn’t be opening the church, it invites the vulnerable to risk their health’; and then others may say – ‘You can’t keep that old church closed, it’s a vital part of our village, it holds our history, it should be open to us all’. 

And we too, can be like children in the marketplace calling to one another. We may say – ‘Let the young people come into the village, we long for more young families, let’s create affordable housing’; and when they come we may tell them, ‘Keep the noise down, don’t let those kids play ball games, you can’t park your car on this road’. 

Just as we are burdened by people’s expectations so at times we burden others too. The good news is that Jesus wants to lift from us all those burdens, and in doing so, to give us the wisdom to live in such a way that we don’t burden others. 

When we take the ‘light load’ which Jesus offers, then we discover ourselves to be involved in  another set of relationships altogether: the completely loving, gracious, self-giving relationships between God the Father, Son and Spirit, which he wants us to share in. Jesus wants to reveal God to us, so that we can enjoy receiving and giving out our share of his gentle, humble, liberating love. 

Now please understand that I’m not saying that we should sideline or neglect our other, human relationships for the sake of our relationship with God, that we should be so heavenly-minded that we’re no earthly use; far from it. But I am suggesting that if we place the greatest importance on how God thinks of us, if our focus is in living in response to his love for us, then we will become so liberated in our hearts that all of our other relationships will be liberated too. 

Come to me… take my yoke…. learn from me… Jesus says. 

You can do that, quite simply, in prayer. However you choose to pray. Whether you pray by pouring out in great detail all the concerns you have, unburdening yourself to him; whether you pray by removing yourself from the business of the day to be quiet, and in that silence to allow God to speak to you his words of comfort, healing, peace; whether you pray by contemplating scripture, asking God to direct you to help you see your life in God through the stories or words of guidance you find there; whether you pray by watching the birds in flight, or by taking comfort, strength, inspiration from the prayers of others which you can read, digest, and use for yourself. 

Let us practice meeting God in Jesus, where we are. Let us unburden ourselves to him there. And let us learn from the humble, gentle, teacher how to help release others from their burdens, how to help and encourage others to find rest for their souls in God. 

Let us pray for the fragile ecology of the heart and the mind. Let us be careful: with ourselves and with others. [2]

 

Notes 

[1] Based on my previous sermons Come, all you weary and burdened, in the Crimewatch generation, Somerset, 2017 and Come to me all you weary and burdened, Devon, 2011.

[2] Lines from Michael Leunig, ‘Let us pray for the fragile ecology of the heart and the mind’, in A Common Prayer. For many years Leunig’s wondrous prayers and pictures have been a comfort, strength, inspiration to me.