"Other mens' flowers"

Apologies for absence...We've had an awful lot of special occasions, guest preachers and wonderful events over the past month - and sermon writing has been squeezed into insufficient time and has often felt less than inspired....so I thought I'd spare you! This one is no exception - except for the helpful words that I borrowed from the then Dean of Bradford, who preached a remarkably similar sermon there in 2007. So...I'm plagiarising with deep gratitude and in hopes that I may find the space to do some decent reflecting of my very own before too long. Meanwhile, as we celebrate Ss Simon & Jude tomorrow I have particular cause to be grateful that the Church is a body of Christians travelling and learning together. 

Today we remember the apostles Simon and Jude.

They’re not exactly the most famous of the twelve followers of Jesus. Simon was called the Zealot, the jealous one, and was probably linked with the Jewish nationalist Jews movement, bent on ousting the Romans – nowadays he might well be a terrorist suspect. Jude also called Thaddaeus (but often referred to as Judas NOT Iscariot) is indeed Jude the obscure, the patron saint of lost causes and last resorts. Because of the confusion with his better known but universally unpopular namesake, a belief arose that practically NOBODY would ask for his help...and thus that he worked extremely hard for the few who did...hence his patronage of lost causes. Though a letter at the end of the New Testament is ascribed to him, it tells us nothing about the man at all, and may well have been written by someone quite different...

Simon and Jude: not really in the first rank of famous Christians..not dwellers in the limelight,but faithful followers who managed to stick with Jesus throughout his public ministry...and of course that's where their value lies. Ordinary people...nothing special really. People maybe a bit like us.
Simon and Jude, remembered, not because of what they did, but because of who their friends were, who their friends are. 
Simon and Jude,part of a small group that changed the world. 
They didn’t choose their own individual way, their tailor-made path to fulfillment and holiness: they devoted their lives to following Jesus, and so their lives will always be remembered. Their story reminds us that being a Christian isn’t a matter of just “me and my God”. Rather, it's about all of us travelling together... Being a Christian is a corporate act: you can’t make it on your own. Christianity is the least individualistic of all the world's religions...we share corporate responsbility for one another and for the world that God loves só much...We need each other, we need to be part of the body of Christ, in order to be saved. 
More, we don’t get to know God alone: we come to know God together – and we need the different insights, gifts and understanding that the whole faith community, young and old, can bring.

In our gospel reading from John, Jesus speaks to the twelve apostles including Simon and Jude after his Last Supper. He’s already told his disciples that they must love one another as he loves them; as they gave themselves to Jesus so they must give themselves to one another; and they must stick together, because the world outside will hate them as it hated Jesus himself.

That’s what we’re called to do as disciples of Jesus. To love one another and stick together: to be together with all other Christian people; to be friends of the friends of Jesus.
‘Any friend of yours is a friend of mine’.

Sometimes that seems surprisingly hard. We look at our fellow Christians and, really, they aren't the people we would choose to share our lives with. Our tastes and our habits don't match. Indeed, we struggle to spend time together at all, and so we miss out on the many things we could learn from one another, the many ways in which our journeys are better together...
Judging by the gospels, the 12 apostles thought each other really rather strange and didn’t get on that well either: but they learned to become a community of love in Jesus Christ. Perhaps the persecution that they suffered strengthened the bond. It's noticeable today that where the church is allowed to exist in peace and prosperity, precious energy is wasted in factions and disagreements.Instead of working together for the Kingdom, we work against one another, in the best tradition of family squabbles...whether our divisions are over women bishops, human sexuality or our preferred translation of the Bible and the words that we use in worship...When we don't need to stand together, against the world, we find ourselves indulging in in-fighting that does nothing to mark us out from the crowd..We don't seem to be strangers and aliens in our broken world, but very much at home in it, as broken as our neighbours...
And of course, we ARE broken...

But we are called to something different. To unity on the foundation that is Christ...
There’s a very good visual image of all this which Paul gives us in today’s epistle reading from Ephesians ch.2. It’s the picture of us as God’s building. Jesus Christ is the cornerstone, the first key stone which is laid and which is the point of reference for the rest of the building. There’s a lovely phrase about the cornerstone in Isaiah, from which this image comes:

I am laying in Zion a foundation stone, a tested stone,
a precious cornerstone, a sure foundation:
‘One who trusts will not panic.’

Or as our collect for the day says, ‘God builds the Church upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Jesus Christ himself as the chief cornerstone.’ We are part of God’s building. If you've time after the service today, go and look at the drystone wall that surrounds our churchyard. Look at those stones...so many different shapes, irregular, unpolished, not matching one another but all having a place, necessary to give structure and strength. That's how the Church works. As individuals we fail....but together....well then, when we feel alone or isolated or meaningless – as Isaiah tells us, Don’t panic! We belong in Jesus.

Sometimes that call not to panic feels like a really tall order. We hear the call to be holy, the reminder that we are citizens with the saints above...we look at our own lives, with all their failures and unfinished business.....and.....well, most certainly I for one DO panic. There's só much I long to change...

But remember,all of us are broken people in one way or another, and it's those broken people that Jesus calls to him. A church of broken people finding strenth together, through our unity in Christ.

We may not have chosen each other, but each of us is here because, wonderfully, God has chosen US. And God asks us, not to judge and exclude each other, but to love and serve and find Christ in one another, even in those with whom we profoundly disagree. I know I'll find that hard next month, as synod debates the ordination of women as bishops for one more time...I'll dream for a while of a church where everyone sees things just as I do...I'll imagine those whose views differ from mine miraculously vanishing.

But then, I hope, I'll take time to reflect and to pray. Because excluding difference is never part of our calling as Christians.

The world may hate us, but we are called to love...and to love inclusively.

We do not stand against one another but FOR all God’s people, of every kind and condition;

We belong together in love, whatever decisions are made elsewhere.

One who trusts will not panic. You may, like me, need to ask for help to trust more fully....but really - please Don’t panic – for all of us who follow Jesus, whether conservative or liberal, gay or straight, black or white, famous or powerless, men or women have a place in God’s household, the community of Jesus, who is the cornerstone of God’s Temple which will last for ever.

Do not panic. Love one another.

The Big Question - homily for St Matthew's, Trinity 14 B

I wonder what would happen if I stood in the Co-op car park and asked passing shoppers “Who's Jesus?”

The answers would surely be quite varied...from “dunno really” through “a good man and a wise teacher” to, maybe, just maybe “the Son of God”.

Who's Jesus? It's an important question – perhaps THE most important question...so important that Jesus asks it himself.

“Who do you say I am?”

His whole ministry is a story that points to his identity…and now Jesus wants to see if his disciples have learned the central lesson he came to teach

Who do you say I am?”

Imagine Jesus asking you….

“Who do you say I am?”

What's your answer?

Messiah?

Son of God?

Saviour?

Teacher?

Brother?

Friend?

Good man?

Innocent victim?

Colossal embarrassment?

Blasphemer?

Threat?

Disturber of my peace?

“Who do you say I am?”

It's not a question reserved for theologians, for priests, for the great and the good, or those who like that kind of thing.

It's a question aimed at each one of us, one on which pretty much everything depends…for if we decide against Jesus, then there’s not much point in hanging around waiting to see what will happen next.

We can, of course, answer with our lips…like dear Peter, quick to leap in with his extraordinary insight You are the Messiah – but then as quickly disappointed when Jesus turns out not to be the kind of Messiah he expected .

That’s something I can sympathise with. I have my own preconceived notions of who Jesus is, based on childhood imaginings, on received wisdom, and some serious Bible study…

Sometimes I think I know…Often I get it very wrong.

I think Jesus should be over HERE doing THIS, when he is apparently over there doing something else, and I feel confused and at odds with him.

That’s when I’m specially grateful for Peter – so proudly and gloriously wrong, but redeeming his blindness with the warmth of his love! Peter can't be doing with all this talk of death & defeat...he wants a triumphant Lord, who will turn the world upside down and put everything right in an instant. In the end, of course, he won't be disappointed – but for the moment it seems he's way off course.

I suspect that I (and maybe you) would have felt very much the same...specially when asked to answer that great question not just with our lips but with our lives.

That's really challenging – specially when you hear today's gospel in the words of that modern paraphrase The Message

Listen...

Jesus confronted Peter. "Peter, get out of my way! Satan, get lost! You have no idea how God works! Calling the crowd to join the disciples, he said, "Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You're not in the driver's seat;I am. Don't run from suffering, embrace it. Follow me and I'll show you how. Self Help is no help at all. Self Sacrifice is the way, my way, to saving yourself, your true self. What good would it do to get everything you want and lose you, the real you? What could you ever trade your soul for? If any of you are embarrassed over me and the way I'm leading you when you get around your fickle and unfocused friends, know that you'll be an ever greater embarrassment to the Son of Man when he arrives in all the splendour of God, his Father, with an army of the holy angels.

Don’t run from suffering…embrace it.

You’re not in the driver’s seat. I am.

Gulp!

That’s not the sort of thing we want to hear, is it? We believe in self help, in independence, in clear rewards for effort and in prudent business practice…

In fact, this invitation to embrace suffering is indeed deeply embarrassing for us, - conditioned as we are to seek an easy path for ourselves and for our families.

If this is what it means to be a disciple of Christ, then maybe we're not up for it after all.

We would so much rather choose the easy way, the way of green pastures and still waters. The hard way is, quite simply, too hard.

Why go there?

We want Jesus to lead us to life, but we want him to clear the way and make it easy for us. We want to enjoy the glory, but skip the slog.... But that's never been the way of it. Again and again, we find Christ in the hard places..In the washing of feet and the carrying of crosses.

Christianity - not for the fainthearted!

So, though we might make a reasonable stab at answering that crucial question with our words, our actions too tell others just who Jesus is for us.

"Who do I say Jesus is when I cut in on someone in traffic?"

“Who do I say that Jesus is, when I ignore the Big Issue seller on the High Street?

When I fail to stand against injustice, at home or abroad?

When I put my own needs, or those of my family, ahead of the needs of my neighbour?

When I just can’t be bothered to go the extra mile?

When (to touch base just briefly with our New Testament lesson) my words are destructive and hurtful, not affirming and encouraging?

Who do I say that Jesus is, then?

If we are known as disciples, then our actions tell the world just who we say Jesus is as loudly as any declaration of faith…and sometimes they seem to be sadly at odds with our protestations here, Sunday by Sunday.

Think about that.

We need to show the world who Jesus is for us...Lip service or agnosticism just won't do.

“Who do you say I am?”

He stands there, waiting for an answer…

There’s no time like the present…

We are each called to respond, and there’s no way to hide.

It’s such a deceptively simple question, really…but the answer must shine through all that we do and all that we are...

- for what will it profit us to gain the whole world and lose our life?

BE OPENED – a sermon for Trinity 14

This time last week J & I were in Prague – a wonderful city that I can't recommend too highly – but a city very much shaped by its history.

The ghetto where the Jewish community was confined over many years no longer stands but the Jewish cemetery remains.

It's an extraordinary place, where 12,000 grave stones jostle one another for position and the burials themselves are some 12 deep, so that it's estimated that over 100,000 are buried there...in a community as closely confined in death as in life.

You see, in Prague as in so many other places, the Jewish community represented the alien in the midst...the outsider, to be treated with suspicion, anxiety, even hatred.

We're not good, on the whole, at dealing with outsiders.

We are, all of us, more comfortable with familiar situations, familiar people...and that can make the Christian life a challenge.

We know the theory – God's love embraces all...but we tend to organise our lives, even our churches, into zones of like-mindedness.

And we're not alone.

1^st century Jews, Jesus among them, had had many centuries to establish themselves as a race apart...God's chosen people...the ultimate insiders, secure in an identity reinforced by law, faith and practice. But in our gospel today Jesus encounters someone from the other side of the tracks – and is challenged and changed by the encounter.

He has crossed into Gentile territory, where Jewish law and custom have no remit – and comes up against a woman driven by that most compelling force, parental love.

She pushes her way in, intent on claiming the healing she believes her daughter deserves.

Like so many others, she throws herself on the mercy of Jesus. Kneeling at his feet she entreats his help.

And what happens?

For reasons that may be obvious, I’ve never tried to tell this story in a primary school assembly, but if I did, I know what the children’s answer to that question would be. 

"What happens?"

“Jesus makes the child better”

That’s what we’d all expect.

Jesus goes about doing good, healing, rescuing,- surely that’s the essence of his earthly ministry. Of course Jesus is going to comfort the mother and heal her child, without further ado.

Except that he doesn’t.

Not at first.

First, we find ourselves thrown off balance, our expectations flouted by words of such staggering rudeness that they are almost unbearable. Jesus, JESUS of all people, tells that frantic mother that she and her child are no better than dogs….and I don’t think we’re under any illusion that he meant cute and cuddly pet spaniels.

He is saying without compunction that as Gentiles, the woman and her daughter are not fully human, and they’re therefore beyond the scope of his love, his healing.

“It’s not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs”

It’s extraordinarily hard to hear this. We want to retain our soft focus image of Jesus, the source of endless compassion…but this abrasive stranger shakes us.

However, this woman is made of sterner stuff, and refuses to go away quietly.

Instead, she responds in kind, picking up Jesus’s words and turning them back on him without missing a beat.

We may be dogs, but surely you’re not so mean that you begrudge us even the left-overs.

She refuses to take No for an answer…

And in doing so, she stops Jesus in his tracks.

Against his own expectations, he is forced into really seeing her, - another human being, a child of God…and what he sees makes him change his mind in a radical way.

Hang on...

Jesus changes his mind?

Surely not!

As God’s Son, Jesus must be perfect…the unmoved mover, no shadow of turning, right?

Perhaps not! Surely, since Jesus is fully human, he must have lived and learned. Even Mrs Alexander was prepared to accept that Jesus went through all the normal stages of physical development – “day by day like us he grew”

So too, surely, he learned and grew in relationship…and maybe sometimes he changed his mind. It seems to me that today's gospel presents Jesus rethinking the scope of his whole mission, as he responds to that Gentile woman whose love for her child isas fierce and determined as any Jewish mother's.

His eyes, his ears, his heart are opened...and another miracle of scandalous grace occurs.

And oh, how badly we need that scandalous grace in the Church today.

We find it so hard to admit we might be wrong.

With God on our side,we cling to the notion that we don't really need to listen to the voice of strangers, because we already know the truth. 

Really it’s hard not to sympathise with the Jews, who believe themselves to be the insiders, on a fast track to Salvation. We don't have to look far in our churches, or in ourselves, to find traces of that same approach.

Time, then, for us to be challenged.

This morning's gospel concludes with a second encounter, as Jesus heals the deaf man, transforming his life and his world with that great “Eph phathah” “BE OPENED”.

That, surely, is the call to us this morning.

We need to pray that God will open OUR ears, eyes, minds, hearts..

We need to allow ourselves to be challenged and changed, as we encounter a God who listens and changes his mind, whose unlimited love seems almost to surprise himself.

We need to be open to the realisation that with God there are no boundaries...that there is grace enough to include us all

We need our eyes opened so we may SEE our brothers and sisters as God does, as beloved children, neither better nor worse, more or less beloved than we ourselves.

... our ears opened to hear their voices – and our tongues loosed so that we can be their advocates, speaking for those silenced by circumstance.

We need, too, to pray for our Church – that it may become truly inclusive, a place where God's unconditional love and amazing grace can be encountered by all without hindrance– regardless of race, gender, orientation...

“BE OPENED”

Because, you know, there really ARE no limits, so there's no need to see  any as outsiders. We all belong and there is enough and to spare for all….

Nobody need be content with crumbs from under the table.

BE OPENED. 

See how, again and again, God’s reckless mercy sweeps us off our feet, how his love compels us to come in, so we find that we are all alike included in a boundless welcome, enfolded in the love that embraces all.

Today we have Together at Ten - our shorter, informal service, designed for families - though there are often few present. Earlier today I was tweeting about my lack of ideas, and someone suggested this wonderful poem by Charles Causeley. I loved it as a child...and perhaps the image of Jesus STILL offering bread to those who refuse to admit their hunger may help the congregation to think some more about what it means to feed on the Bread of Life. 
In any case - it's good to reconnect with the poem.

THE BALLAD OF THE BREADMAN

Mary stood in the kitchen
Baking a loaf of bread.
An angel flew in the window
‘We’ve a job for you,’ he said.

‘God in his big gold heaven
Sitting in his big blue chair,
Wanted a mother for his little son.
Suddenly saw you there.’

Mary shook and trembled,
‘It isn’t true what you say.’
‘Don’t say that,’ said the angel.
‘The baby’s on its way.’

Joseph was in the workshop
Planing a piece of wood.
‘The old man’s past it,’ the neighbours said.
‘That girls been up to no good.’

‘And who was that elegant fellow,’
They said. ‘in the shiny gear?’
The things they said about Gabriel
Were hardly fit to hear.

Mary never answered,
Mary never replied.
She kept the information,
Like the baby, safe inside.

It was the election winter.
They went to vote in the town.
When Mary found her time had come
The hotels let her down.

The baby was born in an annexe
Next to the local pub.
At midnight, a delegation
Turned up from the Farmers’ club.

They talked about an explosion
That made a hole on the sky,
Said they’d been sent to the Lamb and Flag
To see God come down from on high.

A few days later a bishop
And a five-star general were seen
With the head of an African country
In a bullet-proof limousine.

‘We’ve come,’ they said ‘with tokens
For the little boy to choose.’
Told the tale about war and peace
In the television news.

After them came the soldiers
With rifle and bombs and gun,
Looking for enemies of the state.
The family had packed up and gone.

When they got back to the village
The neighbours said, to a man,
‘That boy will never be one of us,
Though he does what he blessed well can.’

He went round to all the people
A paper crown on his head.
Here is some bread from my father.
Take, eat, he said.

Nobody seemed very hungry.
Nobody seemed to care.
Nobody saw the God in himself
Quietly standing there.

He finished up in the papers.
He came to a very bad end.
He was charged with bringing the living to life.
No man was that prisoner’s friend.

There’s only one kind of punishment
To fit that kind of crime.
They rigged a trial and shot him dead.
They were only just in time.

They lifted the young man by the leg,
Thy lifted him by the arm,
They locked him in a cathedral
In case he came to harm.

They stored him safe as water
Under seven rocks.
One Sunday morning he burst out
Like a jack-in-the-box.

Through the town he went walking.
He showed them the holes in his head.
Now do you want any loaves? He cried.
‘Not today’ they said.

I am the living bread...Words for Proper 15 B John 6:51-58

Over the past 4 weeks, we've heard Jesus saying a lot about bread...and it's very easy to hear his words through those special, church-friendly filters that we seem to have fitted at baptism...filters which can sometimes be so effective that we don't really hear at all

“I am the living bread”
"Ah yes," we say, calmly, "Jesus the living bread. Of course!"

But what is he actually saying...and what does it mean for us,as we try to live his way of Love today?

I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh."Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day

It's outrageous...impossible....absurd
except that we believe that somehow, it means EVERYTHING...and we come together to eat this bread week after week after week.
It's a huge part of why we are here this morning.

Let's try, though, to jettison those church-friendly filters and engage again with the words that John gives us this morning as he sets out to demonstrate that Jesus is the One for whom Israel was waiting, and to do this aligns Jesus with Moses...This is to be another story of liberation and pilgrimage...a journey through hardship to the homeland that has been promised.
We need to remember that for the Jews, the Torah (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) provided a constant frame of reference. The contents of these books were not abstract concepts for the Jew - these were living words, pregnant with layers of meaning, and each new generation of Jews felt themselves part of the story in some way. 
And so John has Jesus evoke memories of the defining period in Jewish history, the Exodus from Egypt, and recall God’s provision of manna, “bread from heaven”. 
This was the freedom food, which enabled God’s people to travel onwards to their promised destination.
The food which sustained them, and made it possible for them to live as a people on the move, following wherever God lead them. 
But, though this food seemed miraculous, it had to be consumed on the day it appeared, or it rotted and became worthless. 
The Israelites were not allowed to build up supplies in case of crisis. They just had to trust God’s provision, day after day after day.

Now Jesus compares himself with that bread…in terms guaranteed to have any observant Jew sitting bolt upright on the edge of this seat
I am the bread of life.
I AM is the name God gives himself when he meets Moses, at the burning bush 
 Say I AM has sent you. 
And so Jesus identifies himself with God and urges the crowd 
“Stop looking only to your physical needs!
Your ancestors ate manna but they still died!
You who ate when I fed the 5000 will die in time!
But belief in me is ‘food’ that leads to eternal life.”
Jesus, the bread which now comes down from heaven sustains those who eat for ever. 
This is no less the food of pilgrimage, no less a food provided directly by God,- indeed this food represents God’s very life, available to be absorbed by all God’s people. 
Jesus is offering himself to his disciples…whoever eats me…
Imagine the impact of that, with Jesus himself standing beside you, on a hot day in Palestine, as the crowds press around, murmuring in doubt or disapproval. 
A living, breathing man inviting you to eat him.
Shocking, unthinkable words.
Frightening, unwelcome words – in the same way as those words Jesus spoke at the Last Supper
“This is my body…this is my blood...”

John wrote several decades after Jesus’ death and resurrection, as part of a community that would have regularly celebrated the Lord’s supper together. For them, as for us, Jesus’ imagery - eating flesh and drinking blood - had come to life in a new way as the church shared the meal Jesus instituted.
So it is, week by week, when we gather and make Eucharist.
We bring ourselves, just as we are, broken, flawed, hungry for love and reassurance.
We bring the mess and muddle of our lives and lay them with our gifts upon the altar.
And as the bread and wine are consecrated and transformed, as Christ becomes truly present in those ordinary things made holy by the power of the Spirit, so we find ourselves joined with Christ and with one another.

No I don't understand what is happening – but I know with all that is in me that this is true.
As we eat this bread we encounter Christ and are changed by that encounter
“I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty”
Hear Christ speak these words to you as you make your way to the Communion rail.
Open your hands to receive your Lord
Here in this fragment of bread is Jesus himself, all we will ever need to sustain us on our pilgrimage. 
Bread is, we know, the staff of life, but the life that this bread represents is everlasting. 
It is the life of God himself…and we are invited to share it.

Thanks be to God!

5 baskets over – a homily for 8.00 at St Matthew's

With the sudden (if brief) arrival of summer, today feels like a good day to hear the story of the most famous picnic of all time.

We all know it so well – and it may be tempting to just enjoy sitting on that sunny hillside, part of the crowd that listens to Jesus....knowing that we can trust him to feed us when the time comes.

That's good – and true.

We DO need to take time to sit still and listen to Jesus – and he WILL ensure that all are fed, if we trust him to do so.

But there are other parts of the account that are also worth our time.

Jesus worked the miracle – but he needed that little boy, who gave everything that he had with him.

He didn't stop to think about practicalities, to ponder the impossibility of that small packed lunch feeding the assembled multitude...He was instead, impressively impulsive...just the way that younger children always are when you ask for a volunteer.

Sometimes God needs us to be wildly impractical, to allow ourselves to be swept up in his vision, to offer ourselves to attempt the impossible...and always, always, he takes the little that we offer and transforms it beyond our wildest dreams.

But we do need to be obedient...Jesus asked the disciples to get the crowd seated – and they did their part, as did the crowd, before there was any evidence of food on the horizon.

Too often, I fear, I limit God's work in my life by assuming that nothing is going to happen.

Instead of sitting down expectantly, I'm the one arguing about how it can't really work...insisting that really we ought to have a plan, should maybe send a group to buy supplies...missing the miracle by my own stubborn insistence that it cant really happen.

To live in obedient hope leaves the way clear for God to do great things in the most unlikely situations...

And God's generosity is unstinting, limitless

When those gathered on the hillside had been well and truly fed – there were twelve baskets of fragments left.

Jesus took the little that was offered and transformed it into enough and to spare.

He still does...whenever we let him.

You see, we really don't need to view the world from a perspective of scarcity.

So often we live as if we must, above all, protect ourselves and those dear to us.

We plan our living and our giving as if there is not enough to go round – though we know, if we stop to consider, that there is enough for our need, if not for our greed...that even today, it would not take a huge effort to redistribute wealth & resources to ensure that everyone had sufficient.

But we cling on, worried that we might go short...and we are no better in the things of faith – for we assert the claims of our own brand of belief in ways that suggest that we can't cope if God loves others as well as us.

Like a child again, but this time one intent on attention seeking we jump up and down demanding that God notices US...engages with US...over HERE...We're the real Christians, the true Church.......

We forget that God so loved the WORLD – each and every man, woman and child who has ever lived...so much that he sent his only Son.

There are no limits.

 I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth....

NO LIMITS.

God longs to fill us, as Paul grasped after his own vision expanded to include those whom he'd once seen as beyond God's reach

“that you may be filled with all the fulness of God”

Fulness of life.

Fulness of love.

Love without conditions, limits or end.

Love that enfolds each one of us here.

Love that transforms us...and our half hearted, inadequate offerings, just as a fragment of bread and a sip of wine are transformed through God's grace into His Body & Blood – all that we need to sustain us as we journey in faith.

"Sometimes it's hard, being a prophet" - Sermon for Triity 6B, Proper

We have a tendency, I think to regard the saints, heroes and heroines in the faith, as people who've got things sorted.

They are the ones who've managed to keep all of the Commandments – even that pesky one about loving your neighbour.

People whose lives are so overwhelmingly full of the joy of the Lord that they float through their days in a kind of glorious golden haze, secure in faith and hope and chock full of love at all times.

Finished products, secure and serene – so focussed on the promises of heaven that earthly struggles pretty much pass them by unnoticed.

If that's your impression, you might just need to think again.

Saints are real people, forthright, outraged, not afraid to take God to task

Saints are people like Teresa of Avila, who exploded one day

“If this is the way you treat your friends, Lord – I'm not surprised you have so few of them”

Her words most definitely struck a chord with me as I looked at today's gospel

Jesus says of his cousin

“Among those born of woman there is none greater than John the Baptist” but despite this affirmation, things don't exactly turn out well for him...(any more, of course, than they do for Jesus)...The story of his death is one of the most gruesome and disturbing in the New Testament. No easy ride for him.

“If that's how you treat your friends...”

Actually, when you're called to be a prophet easy rides are almost unheard of.

Small wonder, then, that most of the great Old Testament prophets resisted their vocation with all that was in them.

“Me? speak truth to power? God, you have to be joking!”

Think of Jonah, bolting for Tarshish when told to take God's message to Nineveh

Or Jeremiah, insisting “How can I speak. I'm only a child...” or Moses, pleading that his stammer disqualified him

Or Amos

“I'm neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet, but I'm a herdsman and a dresser of sycamore trees”

That sounds wonderfully bucolic and peaceful – but God is adamant

“Go prophesy......”

Background doesn't matter....John the Baptist's father was a priest in the Temple, dedicated to the rites and observances of Jewish tradition...nor was Amos's father a recognised spokesman for God......but God called both their sons and placed HIS words of radical challenge on their lips.

You see, God persists in calling unlikely people

Ordinary souls with no particular gifting, fearful souls who would much sooner stay at home, sceptical souls who aren't really sure that God is still active, truculent souls who fight him every step of the way.

People like you and me

God calls them.

God calls us

He calls, because there remains so much in our world that needs to be challenged, needs to be changed...

But don't panic if you don't see yourself as an orator, - for often prophetic action speaks louder than all the words in the world.

Yesterday morning, some of you came to help us raise money for the 5K feast, a month long fund-raising drive for Marah and the Stroud & District Foodbank.

Those who came may have thought they were simply buying a cake or supporting a raffle – but actually they were part of an act of prophetic challenge.

I have to admit, I do have some reservations about the foodbank – because only those with an official referral can be fed, because there are limits to the help that one individual or family can receive. If we set this prudent strategy against the reckless generosity of God – it seems to me that the food bank organisers are setting their sights a little too low. But for all that, they ARE doing something...their words and their actions proclaim them emphatically a sign of God's kingdom.

Motivated by their faith, they are affirming with every food parcel they give out that the hungry in our society matter to God...that it is not acceptable that men, women and children should be going to bed with empty stomachs while just down the road their neighbours spend money on diet foods and exercise classes.

Their presence is a reminder that something is badly broken in society – and, as Christians, we have a responsibility to challenge that brokenness by our actions and by our words.

Does that bother you?

Perhaps I'm sounding too political?

But faith and politics absolutely belong together, until the power structures of our society and all societies are fully reflective of Kingdom values.

When Jesus began his public ministry, he took as his mission statement those words of the prophet Isaiah

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor”

If you are poor and hungry, then good news will surely involve being fed...

If you are frightened of persecution, good news will involve finding a place of safety...

If you are helpless, dis-empowered, good news will arm you with the tools that you need to claim your own future.

Good news changes things

I know that many feel the church should stay out of politics – and perhaps it may be inappropriate to engage in PARTY politics...

But our God has never been content to sit, robed in majesty, untouched by the plight of his children

Our God chose to become incarnate – to join in the mess and muddle and heartbreak of human life, so that that same mess, muddle and heartbreak might be transformed and redeemed.

Our God CARES – and charges us to live as signs of that care.

“Preach the gospel...Use words if you must” said St Francis...

Today too many will be deaf to the gospel unless we show them what it really means for them.

The clamour of their own struggle, their own pain, deafens them to our cry of “good news” - unless they can see, experience and recognise it as good news for themselves.

So......we are called to live as prophets, signs of the Kingdom, to the elderly, selling their homes to fund social care, to the mum crying in the Co-op because there's not enough cash in her purse to buy the food her family needs, to the children sent to school without breakfast, the rough sleeper, the battered wife.

We are called to show that there IS a better way, to live as prophets...sometimes to speak but ALWAYS to act to bring about transformation and root out injustice

This is the agenda presented in the letter of James

“ What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill’, and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?”

But to act will probably not win you many friends

To act AND to speak will undoubtedly win you enemies

The Brazilian Archbishop, Dom Helder Camara said

“When I feed the hungry, they call me a saint. When I ask why people are hungry,they call me a Communist...”

and you can be sure that “Communist” was not intended as a compliment.

No, it's definitely not easy being a prophet...downright dangerous at times.

But safety can be over-rated.

Remember the Collect for today, with its invitation to shake the kaleidoscope and see the world in a different way...

Our current preoccupations with personal security, prosperity, popularity, become second-order concerns when set against those good things which pass our understanding...God's promises that exceed all we can desire

There IS a better way

There IS more on offer than we can imagine in our wildest dreams

So we CAN dare the risk of faith, we can speak and act as citizens of this world who know that our true home is the Kingdom of God...

Let's pray that Collect once again, as we thank God for all those who speak his Truth in our world and ask for courage and faith to do the same

Merciful God, you have prepared for those who love you such good things as pass our understanding: pour into our hearts such love toward you that we, loving you in all things and above all things, may obtain your promises, which exceed all that we can desire; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.