The Wretched Man

The following is a more or less verbatim transcript of the sermon for the Fifth Sunday after Trinity. I have lightly edited it for clarity, but it is not meant as a written version of the sermon.

The sermon itself can be listened to wherever you get your podcasts or at this link:

The Wretched Man

The Fifth Sunday after Trinity

Romans 7:13-25

Consider the following two statements:

1. ‘Human beings are fundamentally good; there is good in everyone.’

You will often hear this said or see it written on inspirational pictures posted online, and we desperately want to believe it. We want to believe that we are all basically good, despite the evil that we see in the world around us. Take Ukraine, for example. Good people, good Christian, church-going people, are committing what are regarded as crimes even in a time of war: torture, murder, rape. Despite their supposed innate goodness, humans like you and me, are still doing evil.

2. ‘I couldn't help myself; I had to do it. I had no choice.’

People often explain their behavior, particularly their bad behavior, by appealing to some inner compulsion or drive over which they have no control. And this explanation of their behavior is often used by people who would otherwise resent being told they had no free will, or that they are unable to do what they want to do! They see no apparent contradiction between claiming that they had no control over something they have done, and at the same time believing that they are free to do what they want to do.

So, which is it? Are we basically good and free to choose how we live? Or are we captive to forces over which we have no control? Well, the reply that is often given is that we are indeed free, but we're free to choose and that includes being free to choose to do evil and that itself includes choosing to give in to both internal and external forces. However, the replier will go on to explain, there is still good in people if you look for it.

Well, St Paul would disagree fundamentally with this explanation. He wouldn't disagree that some people want to do good, but he would disagree with the idea that we have either the freedom or ability to do it.

In our reading from Romans for this week, St Paul, having described a struggle with sin, writes, ‘Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? (Romans 7:24)’. Who is this wretched man? Is St Paul speaking of himself personally or is he speaking more generally, with himself as the representative of a type or of a group? And when did this wretched man's struggle take place? Did it take place before he came to Christ? Or is St Paul describing the experience of everyone including that of every believer?

The wretched man, in Romans chapter 7, wants to do good and to resist sin but finds himself powerless and unable to do so. Instead, he finds himself doing the very sin he hates. While there are many different variations, there are basically only two ways of understanding and interpreting what St Paul says in Romans chapter 7, that is, the pessimistic or the ultra-pessimistic way of interpreting it.

The pessimistic way understands St Paul to be saying that outside of Christ, before someone comes to faith in Christ, they are incapable of doing even the good they want to do. The ultra-pessimistic way of interpreting it understands St Paul to be saying that no-one, not even a believer, can ultimately resist the power of sin. And there are people who argue for either of these interpretations. But what, on either interpretation, has led St Paul to such a depressing view of the human condition?

It used to be said that St Paul was reflecting the experience of someone who was a believer but who wanted to keep the Law. In other words, St Paul is describing his own experience as a Pharisee before he came to faith in Christ. This understanding of the chapter has largely been abandoned by scholars nowadays. This is because elsewhere in his letters, this is not how St Paul remembers his experience before he became a believer. He writes to the Philippian church that when he was a Pharisee keeping the Law, he was blameless when it came to righteousness under the Law (Philippians 3:6). Here in Romans chapter 7, however, St Paul writes of the impossibility of keeping the Law.

Now it's important to see that St Paul is not saying that people never keep the Law or that they never do good. Rather he is saying that we are unable to keep the Law as the Law itself demands. Let me give an example.

Suppose on the way home from church this morning, you're driving down the freeway, and you're stopped by the police for speeding. And the police officer says to you, ‘You were speeding sir (or madam).’ And you reply, ‘Officer I've kept to the speed limit for most of the freeway. It's only just now that I've broken the speed limit.’ You wouldn't get a pat on the back from the police officer for having kept the speed limit for seven eighths of a mile and only sped for the last eighth. You would be given a ticket! You have broken the law.

So, which is it in Romans chapter 7? Is it the pessimistic interpretation or the ultra-pessimistic interpretation that we should go for? Well, I started to write my own interpretation of Romans chapter 7 for the sermon this week, and you would still be here at midday if I was to read it out! Instead, for those of you who are members of the Facebook Group, I'll post it this week. So, if you want to read the logic behind what I'm going to say, it will be there for you to look at. What follows is a summary of it!

I think that Paul is pessimistic about any attempt to do good outside of faith in Christ. However, for someone who has come to faith in Christ, St Paul has the confidence that in Christ that person can defeat sin; that, as a believer, we can be freed from sin's power and control. This, then, explains the identity of the wretched man in Romans chapter 7.

The wretched man is indeed St Paul himself, but St Paul writing as the representative of all who want to do good by keeping God's commandments. But it is St Paul also writing as the representative of those who haven't yet come to faith in Christ but who, nevertheless, still want to do good. St Paul is looking back on his life as a Pharisee perhaps, but looking back from the vantage point of faith, and he is looking back on his life differently. He sees the reality of his former life, and he sees the reality of all those who, like him, are genuine in their effort to keep the Law. He sees, though, that their effort to do good will ultimately come to nothing. And it will come to nothing because they simply do not have the power and the ability to do good. St Paul describes in Romans how we need to die both to sin and die to the Law itself.

In Romans chapter 6, St Paul describes how when we're baptized into Christ, we are baptized into his death; we die to sin. But in Romans chapter 7, at the very beginning of the chapter, he writes something that to any good Jew would seem absolutely incredible, indeed, almost blasphemous. St Paul writes that we have died to God's Law. St Paul writes that we no longer serve God that way. We now serve, St Paul writes, in the new way of the Spirit (Romans 7:6). He will go on to describe that new way of the Spirit in Romans chapter 8.

In Romans chapters 1 to 5, St Paul has spent a lot of time describing the human condition. He describes how it is one of sin, how we are all sinners, and how we all fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). Here in Romans chapter 7, he shows one of the terrible consequences of this. We not only sin; we are under the power of sin, which means not being able to do good. Seeing ourselves like this, as sinners controlled by sin and unable to do good, may lead to despair. St Paul cries out, ‘Who will deliver me from this body of death?’. But St Paul knows the answer. He writes, ‘Thanks be to God through our Lord Jesus Christ’. Who will deliver me? St Paul knows the answer. But do we?

We resist this pessimistic assessment of our condition outside of Christ. We insist, don't we, on believing in our own innate goodness and our freedom to choose how we live our lives despite all the evidence to the contrary? We refuse to admit our inability to keep God's Law and to live as even we know we should live. We refuse to see the reality of our condition, and our stubborn refusal to see the reality of our condition is itself part of our wretchedness. Who will deliver us indeed?

Sin not only prevents us from doing good, it has led us to believe that we actually can do good. We need to understand ourselves, our sinfulness, our powerlessness, our hopelessness.

The desire to understand ourselves is itself a common one. Hence people will sign up for psychotherapy sessions, will take psychometric tests, and will submit themselves to psychological assessments. And the desire for self-knowledge is a good one, when it is motivated by a wish to be a better person. Sadly, all too often, it's just part of our ongoing self-obsession. The need for self-knowledge, however, is a common theme in philosophy and in religion in general.

But here's the thing: true self-knowledge can only be found when we come to know God. We can never see ourselves as we are until we see ourselves, as St Catherine of Siena put it, in the mirror of God. It is only when we come to know God in Christ that we gain true self-knowledge, for it is only God who sees us completely and who understands us entirely. But when we see ourselves as God sees us, it can be desperately frightening, because to see ourselves in the light of God is to become aware of the darkness in each one of us. It is to become aware of our weakness, failure, and unworthiness. When St Peter saw himself as Christ saw him, he said to our Lord, ‘Depart from me O Lord for I am a sinful man (Luke 5;8)’. But it is when we see ourselves as God sees us that we also see that God loves us as we are, as wretched, as weak, as failures, as unworthy.

I've told you in the past about how when I was just a schoolboy at secondary school, a teacher challenged me and said to me, ‘Ross, do you know God?’ And that was the beginning of my journey of faith. The same teacher also said to me at the same time, ‘Ross, Jesus didn't come to die so we could be forgiven for our sins. And I was a bit taken aback by this, because that was standard Christian teaching: Jesus died for our sins. But he said that no, God had been forgiving sins throughout history. The Old Testament is full of God forgiving sins. The problem was God forgave sins and people went on sinning afterwards. Forgive sin, sin, forgive sin: it was a cycle. God wanted, this teacher explained, to end the cycle. God wanted not only to forgive us our sins, but to make it possible for us to overcome sin. And that's what Paul is writing about in Romans chapters 6, 7, and 8. God not only wants to forgive us our sins, which, of course, he does, God wants to deal with our sin. He wants to make it possible for us to be freed from sin. He wants to enable us to serve him in the new way of the Spirit.

When we look at ourselves, we all too often compare ourselves with others, and so we think we're not doing too badly. But in the presence of God, all is revealed, and we see our wretchedness. The wretched man of Romans chapter 7 is each one of us outside of Christ. And when we see our wretchedness, we too cry out, who will deliver me? And it's in that cry, it is in that moment of despair that we come to see the power of God to change us and to free us. It is when we see our wretchedness that we also see that deliverance is to be found in Christ. Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Freed from Sin

The following is a more or less verbatim transcript of the sermon for the Third Sunday after Trinity. I have lightly edited it for clarity, but it is not meant as a written version of the sermon.

The sermon itself can be listened to wherever you get your podcasts or at this link:

Freed from Sin

The Third Sunday after Trinity

Romans 6:1-14

Well, over the summer, when I'm preaching, I'm going to be looking at the readings from Romans. So far, we've seen that St Paul has told us that all of us, without exception, are equal in sin and subject to the wrath of God. All need saving and all need saving the same way, writes St Paul. The only way we can be saved, St Paul tells us, is through faith in Christ. We don't deserve to be forgiven and accepted by God, but God out of love for us, and because of what Christ has done for us by dying for us, forgives us freely and accepts us.

Well, there is an obvious question that emerges from all this, and St Paul asks it in verse one of our reading from Romans. If God forgives us no matter what we do and no matter what we have done, is there any need for us to do anything differently? Why can't we just go on living as we have always lived, knowing that God will go on loving us as he has always loved us? St Paul puts it this way, ‘should we continue in sin that grace may abound’ (Romans 6:1)? When we were sinners, grace abounded to us, so why not go on sinning, so that grace may go on abounding?

It's a logical question but it's not just a theoretical question. It seems that there were people who were accusing St Paul of saying just this and claiming that St Paul didn't care whether people sinned or not. There were others who argued that that was precisely what the Gospel meant. St Paul was writing Romans from Corinth, and he had had to deal with people in the church in Corinth who thought that now they were Christians, forgiven and accepted by God, it meant they could do whatever they liked. St Paul is horrified that people can think he thinks like this, and he is horrified that believers could think like this.

Nevertheless, St Paul doesn't respond to the idea that we can go on sinning as believers by simply telling people to stop sinning. He will say that, but first he explains, not only why we should stop sinning, but also why we can stop sinning. St Paul asks, ‘how can we who died to sin go on living in it (Romans 6:2)?’ ‘Do you not know’, he continues to ask, ‘that all who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death’ (Romans 6:3)? St Paul has previously written about Jesus' death and the forgiveness of sins it brings. Now, in Romans 6, he speaks about our death and the freedom from sin it brings.

We will only understand what St Paul is saying in Romans chapter 6 when we understand that Paul is not simply talking about sins, that is, sins in the sense of those wrong things that we do. Not loving God with our whole being, for example, not loving our neighbor as ourself, not keeping the Ten Commandments, and so on. ‘Sin’ for St Paul isn't just the things that we do that are wrong. Sin is both a power that controls us and a state in which we live.

In times past, when a couple were living together outside of marriage, the phrase that was used to describe it was ‘living in sin’. I don't know if you remember that phrase or have heard it. The idea wasn't just that what they were doing behind closed doors was wrong, but that the state of being together outside of marriage was itself a state of sin. Well, that's what St Paul is saying. Every one of us outside of Christ is living in a state of sin. A state in which Sin itself controls us. And the only hope for us, writes St Paul, is for our relationship with Sin to come to an end. And for it to come to an end, there must be death. It can only be ended by death, he writes, and it is us who must die.

And we did die, St Paul tells the Roman believers, when we came to Christ in faith. When we come to Christ, our relationship with Sin as a power ends. St Paul tells us that our old self was crucified (Romans 6:6). ‘Whoever has died is freed from sin’ (Romans 6:7), and it follows that if we have shared in the death of Christ, so too we will share in the resurrection of Christ (Romans 6:5, 8). We have died and been buried with Christ, St Paul writes (Romans 6:3-4). So, we can now share the resurrection life of Christ. We have died with him, so now we can live with him. We can walk in newness of life (Romans 6:4).

St Paul is describing something that has actually happened. Before the Roman believers came to Christ, it was impossible for them not to sin. St Paul describes this state in Romans 7. He calls it being under the ‘law of sin and death’ (Romans 8:1). We're all familiar with the physical laws of the universe, laws that govern us and govern our life in this world. St Paul says there are spiritual laws that govern our life in this world as well, and one of them is the law of sin and death. The law of sin and death tells us that when we want to do good, no matter how much we may want to do it, we can't, and that if we don't do good, we will die. Sin leads to death.

It’s a terrible situation to be in. If I sin, I will die. And yet I cannot help myself, I will sin. St Paul will write in Romans 7, ‘the good that I would I do not, the evil that I would not that I do’ (Romans 7:19). ‘O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death (Romans 7: 24)?’ But, writes St Paul, we have, as believers in Christ, died to sin, and we are freed from it, so that the law of sin and death no longer applies to us.

Now we do have a choice. St Paul urges his readers to make it. We are to understand that we are dead to sin and alive to God and that we need to act accordingly. We now can do the good we want to do, and we can not do the evil we don't want to do. St Paul tells his readers, not to let sin exercise control over them (Romans 6:12).

In other words, he is saying previously you had no choice, you had to do what Sin told you to do; now you don't. Previously you were dead to God and alive to sin; now you are dead to sin and alive to God. St Paul, as he goes on in Romans, will explain what this means in practical terms for how we live, but first he wants the Roman believers and us to understand how real and how radical the change is that Christ has brought about in our lives.

I want to highlight three points for us from all this.

1. Continuing in Sin?

Most of us would not put it so bluntly. We would not say, ‘let us continue in sin that grace may abound’. In any case, this is not the language we use anymore. But isn't this the reality?

To put it another way, how seriously do we take our faith? How much difference does it actually make to how we live? To what extent does our faith influence our choices and decisions? Isn't our attitude all too often, basically, that no matter what we do, there is nothing to worry about, God will forgive us anyway? Yes, we'll try to avoid serious sin, but as to significant lifestyle changes, that's a different matter altogether.

And why worry if God loves us and accepts us, whatever? Why indeed? Jesus in our Gospel reading says to his disciples that those who find their life will lose it and those who lose their life for his sake will find it (Matthew 10:39). What both our Lord and St Paul are saying is that faith in Christ is a life-changing experience. We can't just continue living as if nothing has happened. And if we can live as if nothing has happened, then we may need to ask ourselves whether maybe nothing has happened. If we really have come to Christ, it will result in real and radical change.

So real and so radical, in fact, that only the language of dying and rising again is sufficient to describe it. It may take time for us to appreciate it and to realize how significant it all is, but we must appreciate it. We must appreciate that Christ changes everything.

2. Changed by Christ

The reason why we don't always appreciate the difference coming to Christ makes is because we don't understand quite what life is like outside of Christ.

One of the most misunderstood and misleading ideas that has gained currency in our world and in the Church is the idea of ‘free will’. We in the church are partly to blame for championing it and promoting it. The idea of free will, as it is popularly understood, is that we are all free to make our own choices. Christians will say that God has given us free will so we can choose whether to worship him or not, and we believe it! It would be funny if it were not so tragic.

We have made this idea of human freedom central to how we think. St Paul is far more realistic. He describes our condition outside of Christ as ‘enslaved to sin’ (Romans 6:6). It's not that we have no choice, but that our choices are limited. We are controlled by forces external to us. That seems so obvious, but we so desperately want to believe in our autonomy and our freedom that we just ignore all evidence to the contrary.

St Paul writes that we are slaves to whom we obey, either sin that leads to death or the obedience that leads to righteousness (Romans 6:16). Now we miss what St Paul is actually saying here. He is not simply saying choose whether you serve sin or choose whether you serve righteousness. He wants us to see that we can only serve righteousness once we have been set free from sin, and we can only be set free from sin when we have been changed by Christ. We have to come to Christ first. It is only once we have come to Christ that we are given the freedom to choose to serve Christ.

Many do want their lives to be turned around. Many are conscious of the wrong they have done and of the unhappiness they have brought both to themselves and to others by the way they have lived and by their actions. It is by accepting that we have done wrong, accepting that we are powerless to change our lives, and accepting that we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves, that we begin the journey of our lives being turned around. This is because it is when we realise just how powerless and hopeless we are that we can see how Christ is sufficient for our need. We need to trust in Christ and Christ alone, St Paul tells us, and, if we do, Christ will bring about real and lasting change.

3. Controlled by God

Coming to Christ changes everything, but we have to act on that change.

At the moment, it seems as if everybody is emigrating somewhere or other: Australia, Canada, UK, you choose it! They are leaving Hong Kong and life in Hong Kong and moving to another place. They will no longer be subject to the rules and laws governing us in Hong Kong; they will instead become subject to the rules and laws governing them in wherever it is they have moved to. They are changing citizenship, exchanging life in Hong Kong for life in the UK, or wherever.

St Paul tells us that we have changed citizenship. We no longer belong to the kingdom of Sin and are no longer governed by its rules. We belong to the kingdom of God. We have been given the right and power to live as children of God, but we need to start living that way. We are now given the opportunity to live lives free from Sin, no longer controlled by it. As I've said, St Paul will go on to explain what this means in practical terms, but he wants in Romans 6 for us to see how real that change is, and he wants us to live as changed people.

Many people, sadly and tragically, prefer life in the kingdom of Sin to that in the kingdom of God. And we need to be under no illusion here. The demands that Christ makes of us as citizens of the kingdom of God are very real. Jesus in our Gospel reading spells out just how demanding those demands are. But Jesus promises to all those who follow him, who lose their life in the kingdom of Sin and exchange it for life in his kingdom, that they will find life, life that lasts eternally. But more than that, we are promised that we will be given the power to live that life. We'll be given the resources we need to be able to live that life.

It's as if when somebody lands in London, they're welcomed right away as a citizen and told there's a million pound bank balance that has been set up for them. A million pound bank balance that’s there for them to draw on to finance their new lifestyle. Jesus not only transfers us from the kingdom of Sin to the kingdom of God, he gives us the resources we need to live in that kingdom, but we have to want to; we have to decide to do so.

The challenge before us is very real. We have experienced in Christ a real change. We now need to live out that change and walk, as St Paul puts it, in newness of life.

May we find that life and may we walk in it!

Amen.

Saved from the Wrath of God

The following is a more or less verbatim transcript of the sermon for the Second Sunday after Trinity. I have lightly edited it for clarity, but it is not meant as a written version of the sermon.

The sermon itself can be listened to wherever you get your podcasts or at this link:

Saved from the Wrath of God

The Second Sunday after Trinity 2023

Romans 5:1-11

We don't appreciate today what a major issue for the early church the Gentiles believing in Christ was. Jesus came unto his own, that is, to the Jewish people. He came as the Jewish Messiah in fulfilment of the Jewish Scriptures, and what is more, he largely confined his ministry while on earth to the Jews. He says in St Matthew's Gospel, ‘I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel’ (Matthew 15:24). In our reading this morning, when Jesus sends his 12 disciples out on mission, he tells them to go nowhere among the Gentiles and enter no town of the Samaritans, but rather go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Matthew 10:5-6).

Now, he did tell his disciples that after his ascension that they were to go beyond Jerusalem and Judea to Samaria and away to the ends of the world (Acts 1:8). But nothing during their time with him had prepared them for what it meant when Gentiles started believing in Jesus. How were they as Jews to welcome Gentiles into the people of God? In Romans chapters one to four, St Paul explains that as all are equal in sin, all must find salvation the same way.

And the way that they will find salvation, he tells the Roman believers, is by the way of faith in Christ. St Paul explains that God forgives and accepts all who come to him through faith in Christ. Having explained this in the first four chapters, St. Paul concludes in our reading this morning, ‘having been justified by faith, we have peace with God, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand’ (Romans 5:1-2). Justification is not the only thing that happens to us when we come to Christ in faith, but it is an important, indeed essential, part of it.

Being justified by faith, however, is not the end but the beginning. St Paul writes of how we boast of our hope of sharing in the glory of God (Romans 5:2). St Paul describes how the suffering we experience now produces in us endurance, and how that endurance produces character, and how character produces hope. Hope that does not disappoint us. Hope! Hope is something that is in short supply in our world. We read and hear of the existential threats facing humanity almost daily. Jesus himself warned his disciples that they would hear of wars and rumours of wars, that there would be natural disasters and plagues (Luke 21:10-11).

We sort of thought war was on the way out, didn't we? With the arrival of nuclear weapons, we didn't think anyone would be mad enough to risk large scale war. And now we see the unthinkable. War again in Europe. Not just a local squirmish, but a war which is even now having global consequences. This week, African leaders visited Kyiv because the war is now impacting on food supplies on a global level. It is a war that carries with it the threat of nuclear destruction. And while this war is going on, there is the threat of another war in another part of the world – in Taiwan.

Natural disasters such as earthquakes and famine continue. But looming over us now are the natural disasters with a human cause. Global warming is producing climate change. We have all heard about it. But despite all the publicity and all the warnings from scientists, we are doing next to nothing about it. It is no wonder that young people who have the most to lose are especially worried, and they are right to be. We have seen the wildfires and the floods, and we've seen how even in New York in the past few days people have had to stay indoors because they could not breathe, the air quality was so bad. Scientists warn that there is worse to come.

And we don't need reminding of plagues, do we? We've just lived through a plague, the like of which most of us thought we would never see. And just as we were congratulating ourselves on having got on top of some of the world's most infectious diseases, COVID came along to remind us of how vulnerable we are. And while COVID has been terrible, it could have been much worse. It could have been a far more fatal virus.

The sense that all is not well with our world goes some way to explain why many people don't want children. The birth rate in Hong Kong, for example, is now at its lowest level since records began. In half of the world's countries, the birth rate is now below the level needed to replenish the population. Before I was ordained, I worked for a short time with Oxfam and two of the things we were most worried about while I was working for Oxfam were starvation and overpopulation. Now we're worried about obesity and underpopulation. It's ironic, to put it mildly.

Not only are young people not wanting to have children, rates of depression and mental illness are on the increase. And this is before we talk about artificial intelligence and the societal scale risks it poses to humanity. You will have read recently how those who invented AI have issued a statement saying, and I quote, ‘mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war’.

Jesus warned his disciples about these things. He told them they would happen, and he told them not to despair or lose hope because the end is not yet (Luke 21:9). These things, Jesus said, must happen. Most of us feel there is not much we can do about them anyway. But it doesn't stop us worrying. What I want to say this morning is that real though these existential threats may be, the real threat to each of us is much nearer home. The real threat is personal and individual. It comes from within us, not from outside. The threat is internal to us, not external. It is a threat that comes from the sin and unrighteousness in each one of us.

St Paul writes, ‘for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth’ (Romans 1:18). While we are still sinners, we are subject to the wrath of God. And so, we can have no hope, no hope, that is, until we find peace with God. The amazing thing, writes St Paul, is that it is God himself who has taken the initiative to make peace with him possible. St Paul writes, ‘but God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us’ (Romans 5:8).

This is the Gospel. We can have peace with God, we can be forgiven, but we need to be clear, there is nothing automatic about this, nor is it something that can be earned. St Paul tells us that it is only something we can receive, receive as a gift by faith in Christ. It is by faith that we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, St Paul writes. But more than that, St Paul says, ‘we even boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.’ (Romans 5:11).

We boast in God! But here's the thing: we don't want to boast in God. June is ‘Pride Month’. I don't know if you've noticed, but it used to be called ‘Gay Pride Month’ or ‘LGBT Pride Month. It is interesting how ‘now ‘Pride Month’ has become much more. It is interesting how popular it is regardless of your sexuality.

‘Pride month’ has become popular with all people because of the ideology behind it. An ideology that is now the ideology of society, regardless of your sexuality. It is the dominant ideology, at least amongst us. It's an ideology in which we ourselves are central. And what's not to love about me? What's not to be proud about in me. It's my identity, my needs, my wants, and my desires that matter to me, and they should matter to you too. Pride in who I am is what counts. And in the same way that the letter in the middle of the word defines what sin is, so too the letter in the middle of the word ‘pride’ defines what pride is. It's I, me. The Bible calls it idolatry, and the wrath of God is being poured out on all those who in their idolatry suppress the truth by ungodliness and unrighteousness.

We can boast in ourselves all we like, but all we are doing is boasting ourselves to judgment and destruction. St Paul tells the Roman believers, and through them he tells us, that our hope lies in sharing the glory of God. St Paul writes, ‘much more surely, therefore, since we have now been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath of God’ (Romans 5:9).

Jesus in warning his disciples not to worry about all the existential threats they saw in the world around them, warned them instead to worry about the false prophets and messiahs who would lead them astray. Don't worry about the wars, don't worry about the earthquakes, don't worry about the plagues, but do worry about false teaching. Because false teaching is much more dangerous than earthquakes and famines, plagues, and wars.

Many are being led astray in our own day and led astray, sadly, by teachers in the church who tell us that we have nothing to worry about, that God's just too nice. He won't judge you. He won't get angry with you. He's too loving for that. But St Paul writes that he is not ashamed of the Gospel because it is the power of God to salvation (Romans 1:16) and the reason why the gospel is the power of God to salvation is because we need saving. Thank God, he has made that salvation possible. Possible to all of us, without exception, but only through faith in Christ.

It is through faith in Christ that we are justified and given hope, and it is through that faith that we will be saved. The hope we have in Christ is a real hope. St Paul writes, ‘and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us’(Romans 5:5).

May we find peace with God today through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, and may we too be able to boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God.

Amen.

Introduction to Romans

The following is a more or less verbatim transcript of the sermon for the First Sunday after Trinity. I have lightly edited it for clarity, but it is not meant as a written version of the sermon. The sermon itself can be listened to wherever you get your podcasts (search for: Ross Royden).

The First Sunday after Trinity 2023

Romans 4:13-25

Facebook group members will know that my original intention for the next few weeks was to preach on St Matthew's Gospel. Over the past few years, I've preached sermons going through St Mark's Gospel, St Luke's Gospel, and St John's Gospel. It was my intention to preach this year through St Matthew's Gospel. However, as you will have noticed, our second reading as we enter the season of Trinity is from Romans. And we're going to be reading through Romans for our second reading from now until the middle of September, September 17th, to be precise. So, I have decided instead to preach on Romans!

I am not quite sure why the readings start today at chapter four of Romans, but the fact that they do means that this week I can introduce Romans and then start properly on Romans next week, because Romans chapter five, verse one is a much more natural place to start if you're not going to start at the beginning.

Well, if you do the maths, this means there's about 13 Sundays when we'll be having readings from Romans. And you may think, oh my goodness, that's a lot of sermons on Romans. If you are thinking like that, can I just mention Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones, who was the minister of Westminster Chapel during the 20th century? On October 7th, 1955, he began a series of sermons on Romans on a Friday night. They attracted 500 to 600 people. Those were the days! He finished preaching on Romans twelve and a half years later, having preached 372 sermons. They've been edited and transcribed, and they're available to buy in 14 volumes.

So if you think 13 sermons isn't quite enough, you can go and get Martin Lloyd-Jones's sermons. Many of them are available online to listen to as well. If you do think I'm getting off a little bit lightly, I intend to do a series on a few chapters of Romans for Lent 2024. Whether or not we get anything like 500 people to them, I rather doubt.

St Paul's letter to the Romans is 7,114 words. St Paul averages 4,134 words in his letters. Seneca's longest letter is 2,495 words, so quite a bit short of the 7,000 plus words of Romans. St Paul's letter to the Romans, then, is long. But it's not long as we would think long. You can read it in a few minutes. It's shorter than a lot of reports that I'm sure many of us have to read in the course of our work. Although it is not long by our standards, the scholarly literature on Romans is immense, far beyond any one person's ability to get on top of. It's very easy, when seeing all that's been written about Romans, to feel bewildered and overwhelmed Because there are many different and conflicting interpretations of what St Paul meant by what he wrote in his letter to the Romans, scholars will argue at length even over single words.

Well, faced with all this, we need to remember that St Paul originally sent his letter to a church composed of many who were poor, illiterate, and uneducated. But he expected them to understand what he wrote. St Paul wrote Romans from Corinth in the winter at the end of the AD 50s. He spent three months there at Corinth before he went on to Jerusalem. So he had time to think and time to write. As he wrote, he wrote having been active in ministry as an apostle for some 25 years. He had already established churches in Galatia, in Philippi, in Thessalonica, in Corinth, in Ephesus, and these are just the ones we know about. What we have in Romans, then, is the mature reflection of somebody who had been engaged in ministry for a considerable period of time. The question is, of course, why did St Paul send the letter to Rome?

St Paul did not found the church in Rome. It wasn't even an associate of his who had established the church there. Indeed, as he sends the letter to Rome, he has to apologise for not having visited Rome before. So why go to all this trouble to send such an important letter to people many of whom he didn't know and a church which he had never visited? Well, the answer is that St Paul felt he had finished the work God had given him to do in the east of the Roman Empire and that he was now being called by God to go to the west of the Empire and specifically to Spain (Romans 15:24, 28).

St Paul's hope is that Rome will supply him with the material resources he needs for that mission to Spain and will also give him a base to work from. This reminds us, firstly, that St Paul wasn't the real founder of Christianity. Sometimes you hear people say that it was St Paul who founded the Church, or that St Paul was the second founder of Christianity. Well, it's true he was a major apostle. He founded many churches. But there were several churches he didn't establish. He didn't establish the church in Jerusalem, the church in Antioch, the church in Alexandria, the church in Rome, and others besides. St Paul was important, but not perhaps quite so significant as some people think.

Secondly, St Paul wasn't a lone ranger. He wasn't somebody who just went off on his own to do his own thing. He always worked in teams. In Romans 16, he sends greetings to people in the church in Rome whom he did know; people he had worked with in the past. Many of them are women. And this reminds us that St Paul wasn't hard to get on with.

You often hear people say he was a very difficult person to get to know. No, he wasn't. The people that he greets in Romans are people he's been imprisoned with, people he's been close to death with. And it also reminds us that he wasn't a misogynist; he wasn't someone who disliked women. The person who delivers the letter to the Romans to Rome and the person who first reads it out, because they wouldn't have been able to read it for themselves - there would have only been one copy to begin with - the person who reads the letter out to the church in Rome and the person who first teaches on Romans was Phoebe, a woman. We know that tells us in Romans chapter sixteen verse one.

Well, in Romans, St. Paul explains how, as an apostle to the Gentiles, he sees his mission to the Gentiles. He is sharing his understanding of the Gospel with them, so that they will know what it is they're getting into if they support him and get behind him in his mission to Spain. Now it was necessary for him to do this because there was significant disagreement in the Church over the Gentile mission. We forget that Jesus came unto his own, that is, he came to Jews, to the Jewish people. After Jesus' ascension, the church reached out to pagans, to Gentiles. But this raised questions over which there was a lot of argument, because Jesus hadn't left any guidance as to the basis upon which Gentiles were to be admitted to the church.

St Paul and the early church all agreed on the fundamentals of the faith. They agreed that the Scriptures were inspired by God. They agreed that God was the creator of the world and that he had sent his Son into the world. They agreed that Jesus had died, had risen, and had ascended. They agreed that Jesus had died for our sins. They agreed that we should worship around a common meal. They agreed on the sending of the Spirit and that the Spirit was active in their midst. All the things that we today would say in the Creeds, they largely would have agreed on. They might not have agreed on it in the same detail as we now have it, but they would have been united in the basics of their faith.

The problem was, what did this Jewish message about a Jewish Messiah mean for people who weren't Jews? Fundamental to the Church's faith was that Jesus was the Christ. So fundamental was it that the title ‘Christ’ became Jesus' name. Jesus the Christ became Jesus Christ. But what did it mean for a pagan to confess faith in a Jewish Messiah? And what did pagan Gentiles have to do when they did confess faith in this Jewish Messiah? Did they also have to keep God's Law as God had revealed it to his people in the Scriptures? Well, the obvious answer as many people saw it was, yes, of course the Gentiles had to keep God's commandments. Of course they had to keep God's Laws. Others said, well, yes, they do have to keep God's commandments, but there are some things that God asked us Jews to do that they don't have to do. So the answer is yes and no.

St Paul, however, said, no, they don't have to keep God's commandments; they don't have to keep God's laws. And that was controversial. St Paul's position eventually won the day, and we now accept it without question. So we don't keep the Sabbath holy; we do work on it. We do eat pork, at least most of us do. We do wear garments, perhaps are now wearing garments, of more than two fabrics. These are all things that are forbidden in the Old Testament Law. Men who become Christians today don't feel the need to be circumcised. So when Bishop Timothy leads the confirmation service in the Autumn, he won't be asking a doctor to conduct a physical examination of the men to make sure they're circumcised. As parents, we don't feel that as well as getting our children baptized, we also have to circumcise our sons.

But God said to Abraham that any male who wasn't circumcised could not be a member of the people of God (Genesis 17:14). So where did that leave the pagans, the Gentiles who were becoming members of God's people? The point is, St. Paul couldn't take Rome's support for his mission for granted. He had to explain himself, and he had to explain his understanding of what the Gospel meant for pagans. Well, his three months break in Corinth gave him the chance to explain in a careful and systematic way how he saw the Gospel for Gentiles.

He begins by telling the Roman Christians that he's looking forward to his visit to preaching the Gospel in Rome. And he's looking forward, he says, because the Gospel is the power of God to salvation to all who have faith to the Jew first but also to the Greek to the pagan to the Gentile. The reason he says the Gospel is the power of God to salvation is because in the Gospel is revealed the righteousness of God and it is revealed ‘ by faith for faith’(Romans 1:17). And St Paul will spend quite a lot of time in Romans explaining what he means by this.

Now when we hear that the Gospel is by faith, for faith, we probably don't have a problem with that. But for the first Christians who were Jews, the righteousness of God was revealed in the Law for people who kept the Law. Yes, they believed in Jesus the Messiah, but that didn't mean that they didn't also have to keep God's Law to be righteous. And people who didn't keep God's Law, by definition, weren't righteous. But St Paul says, no, the righteousness of God, what God wants, is by faith for faith.

Now, while we today probably don't think that ‘by faith for faith’ is too controversial, we may find the reason that St Paul gives for saying it's by faith for faith somewhat more disturbing. In the first four chapters of Romans, St. Paul explains why we need the righteousness of God by faith, and he explains why we all, without exception, need it.

Firstly, he says we need the righteousness of God because we as as human beings are unrighteousness. He begins his account of his Gospel, not with the love of God, but with the wrath of God. ‘For the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven’, he writes, ‘against all the ungodliness and unrighteousness of human beings who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth’(Romans 1:18-19). I don't know if you're one of those parents who produces portfolios for your children. In them you display, quite rightly, certificates showing their achievements as well as pictures of them doing what they love and what they're good at. And you submit them as a way of showing the school that you're submitting the portfolio to a feeling of what your child is like, what the child looks like as a person. As adults, we do it with a CV when we apply for a job. We list all our achievements, all our skills, and so on and so forth, to show future employers why they would be stupid not to employ us.

St Paul in the first chapters of Romans does that with the human race. Only the portfolio of the human race is one of failure, wickedness, and rebellion against God. St Paul says that human beings are dead in sin, disobedient to God, and as a consequence doomed under the judgment of God. In other words, St Paul concludes that the human situation is a desperate one. There is none who is righteous, no, not one, all have sinned, he writes, and come short of the glory of God (Romans 3:10, 23).

‘Diversity, equality, and inclusiveness’ are the key words of our generation. Companies all want to make their mission statement DEI: diverse, equitable, and inclusive. St Paul begins his account of his Gospel by saying the Gospel meets that criteria. It meets that criteria because no matter who we are, we are all equal in sin, and all alike included under God's judgement. We are equal in sin and facing the wrath of God. All alike; no exceptions.

Now, St Paul doesn't write all this to make the Romans feel bad and he doesn't write it to make us feel bad, although, it has to be said, if we haven't felt bad, then it's unlikely we have ever understood the Gospel. All are sinners, all need saving, all can only be saved the same way. And to be saved we need to be righteous, but no one is. So we need the righteousness of God. We are ourselves are not righteous, we need God's righteousness. St Paul writes that the righteousness of God is revealed in the Gospel through faith for all who have faith, not just the Jew but also the pagan. Which pagans? All pagans! The Gospel is through faith for all who have faith.

Having explained this in chapters one to three, St Paul, in our reading today in chapter 4, gives the example of Abraham. Now this is a key example because the Jewish people saw Abraham as the father of the people of God, and St. Paul agrees that Abraham is the father of the people of God, but says St Paul, the people of God are those who share the faith of Abraham and those who trust in God in the way Abraham trusted in God. And crucially, writes St Paul in our reading, Abraham had faith in God before he was circumcised and before he did anything that could be counted as good. He trusted in God while still ungodly, unrighteous and as a sinner.

And so to be part of the people of God, people who look to Abraham as their father, St Paul writes, we need the same trust in God and in God alone that Abraham had. Now St Paul will go on in Romans, as we will see, to unpack the implications of this and to answer the questions which he knew would arise from it. But he wants to make sure that we all have understood from the word go what it is he's saying.

The Gospel is for all who have faith in Christ, but it is only by faith, not by works, not by good works, not by works of the Law, not by keeping God's commandments, but solely by trusting in God and in what God has done for us in Christ. This, says St Paul, is the Gospel he is going to Spain to preach. This is the gospel he wants the Roman Christians to get behind. All of which is great. But the problem for us with all this is that it's not how we think today.

I don't think many of us worry too much over whether we're righteous or not or whether we keep the Law or not. I doubt that many of us worry about whether or not God is going to punish us or not. Not only is the language that St Paul uses not our language, his concerns are not our concerns. Preachers like me attempt to put what St Paul has written into the language of our day. We try to show why his concerns should be our concerns. But we're hampered by all the arguments there are over what St Paul meant and by the divisions in the church historically over what he meant.

It is no wonder that people say, isn't it all too much trouble? Ross, you'd been better to have stuck with St Matthew! At least there are some good stories in the gospels. But St Paul writes that the Gospel is the power of God to salvation. Well, this makes it something that matters. It also means that the Gospel is not just another creed that we believe in or code that we follow. It is something we can have confidence in, but it is also something we ignore at our peril.

In our Gospel reading this morning, Jesus says that he has come not to call the righteous but sinners. And St Paul tells us, that's you and that's me. So hearing the Gospel message to sinners isn't just a nice idea, something to do on a few Sundays in 2023. What we are dealing with is a message that St Paul claims is absolutely relevant to us, to our life, and to our our future. Jesus said he came to call sinners. It is in the Gospel that Jesus calls sinners to him today. And so Paul tells us that the call of Jesus can be answered by having faith and trust in him, by trusting that he will heal us and forgive us our sins in the way the woman with the hemorrhage trusted, that simply touching his cloak would give her healing.

Our faith can make us well too. We are, of course, free to turn away like the Pharisees did. We are free to get on with other things we think more important and find more interesting. But if we like St Paul, believe that the Gospel is the power of God to salvation, we will want more than 13 sermons. 372 sermons won't be enough because we will want to make absolutely sure we have understood it and have responded to it.

St Paul writes, ‘I'm not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God to salvation, to the Jew first, but also to the Greek, for in it the righteousness of God is revealed, by faith, for faith’.

May we be amongst those who have faith and are saved.

Amen.

Jesus' Farewell to His Disciples

For Lent this year, I gave a series of studies on what is known as the Farewell Discourse in St John's Gospel. I recorded a short summery of each for the Reflections programme on RTHK Radio 4.

1. Believe in Me

In the Church, we have just celebrated Easter, and we will soon be celebrating Ascension. These festivals are highlights in the Church’s year. But while we celebrate our Lord’s triumph over death and his return to take his rightful place in heaven, we have to ask where that leaves us. Has Jesus in leaving this world also left us?

On the night before his crucifixion at the Last Supper, Jesus specifically promised his followers that he would not leave them alone but would send them another to be with them forever. This other is the Holy Spirit whose coming we will celebrate 10 days after Ascension Day at Pentecost. As well as promising them the Holy Spirit to lead and guide them, Jesus sought to give them some teaching while he was still with them on what it meant to be his disciple. I would like this week to reflect briefly on this teaching and what it means for those who want to be his disciple today.

The first thing Jesus tells his disciples in his closing words to them is that they should believe in him. This seems obvious enough. You can’t follow someone you don’t believe in. To believe in Jesus means first of all believing in his existence, not only his historical existence, but also his present existence as the One who rose from the dead and is alive. Secondly, however, it means to believe that he is who he said he is. Jesus stresses throughout his ministry that it was God the Father who sent him and that he and the Father are One.

Believing in Jesus, then, is more than believing in another human religious teacher, but believing that in him we meet with and come to know God himself. Many find that a step too far. But it is a step that Jesus challenges us to take.

2. Follow Me

We are reflecting this week on Jesus’ teaching about what it means to be his disciple. Jesus told his first disciples that they should believe in him, believe, that is, that he was who he said he was. Jesus’ claim was that anyone who had seen him had seen God his Father. Being a disciple of Jesus isn’t simply about believing in his teaching about how to live but believing he is who he claimed to be. Many can relate to Jesus as a good man and a teacher of morality. They find it much harder to accept that in him we meet God himself.

Jesus said his sheep follow him because they know his voice. Know that is who it is who is speaking to them. It is because we know that Jesus is the One sent from God to reveal the truth about God and about ourselves that we have the confidence to follow him. Jesus also says that his sheep will not follow a stranger.

Sadly, many may as well follow a stranger, for all too often we don’t like what following Jesus means for us. Jesus leads his sheep through dark valleys as well as green pastures. He demands complete obedience in following him and a willingness to sacrifice everything as we do so. The way he takes is a hard one and the gate narrow to enter it. Few are they who find it, he observed.

Instead, then, of following where he leads, we try to convince ourselves that Jesus isn’t really as demanding as the Gospels make him out to be. Surely, he wants to give us what we want and makes us happy, not to cause us pain and take from us what little we have? No wonder that many of the disciples who first followed him gave up and turned back! No wonder that many do so today.

3. Abide in Me

Having decided to follow Jesus - believing him to be the Way, the Truth, and the Life, the One by whom we come to God the Father - we soon discover how hard following him actually is. Firstly, there are so many routine distractions in our daily lives that take our minds off following Jesus. Whether it’s raising a family, pursuing a career, or any of a number of otherwise perfectly legitimate activities. Then, secondly, there are all those other things we would prefer to follow: money, ambition, pleasure. The temptation to follow after things other than Jesus is all around us. Thirdly, though, Jesus’ own conditions for following him don’t exactly make following him easy. Dying to self, putting the needs of others before our own, and always putting God first is not how we have been brought up to live.

Left to ourselves, then, we are bound to fail. We will be distracted; we will seek after other things; and we will put ourselves before God and others. No wonder, then, that we are tempted to give up and ask not only whether it is worth it but whether it is even possible to follow Jesus in the way he says we must.

Jesus knew that we could not do it on our own and that left to ourselves our feeble attempts to follow him were doomed to failure. ‘Apart from me you can do nothing’, Jesus told his disciples on the night he was to be taken from them. If they were to follow him, they needed, he said, ‘to abide in him’. He is the True Vine, he said, and his followers the branches. As the branches get life from the vine, so we get our life from him. But we only get it by being completely united to him. Separated from him, we wither and die.

4. Feed on Me

Jesus uses several metaphors to explain what it means to follow him who describes himself as the Way, the Truth, and the Life. He is the Light of the world, who shows his followers the way to go; he is the Shepherd, who leads his sheep; he is also the Door they must go through; he is the Resurrection and the Life, who gives life to all who believe in him. He is the True Vine that his followers must abide in and remain united to. We may not always like what we hear or even agree with it, but the metaphors Jesus uses are clear enough, except, perhaps, for one. Jesus says he is the Bread of Life. This is a metaphor that Jesus pushes to its absolute limit.

‘He who eats me will live because of me’, he says. And he doesn’t leave it there. Jesus warns them that unless they eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, they have no life in them. He tells them that those who eat his flesh and drink his blood abide in him and he in them. In saying this, he links the requirement for his followers to abide in him with the need for them to feed on him by eating him.

But what does it mean to eat him? It clearly involves believing in him in the sense of trusting absolutely in him and obeying him by doing what he tells us to do. But both the metaphor itself and Jesus’ expansion of it seem to indicate there is more to it than that. ‘This is my body’, Jesus said of the bread at the Last Supper; ‘this my blood’, he said of the cup of wine. Feeding on him cannot be limited to what happens in the Eucharist or Holy Communion, but Jesus’ actions and words seem at the very least to suggest that it is an essential part of it.

5. Love One Another

At the Last Supper, Jesus told his disciples that he was giving them a new commandment. The new commandment, he said, was for them to ‘love one another’. He demonstrated what he meant by this by getting down from the table during the Meal and washing their feet, something that normally only a slave would be asked to do. Peter, the leading disciple, is so horrified at what Jesus is doing that at first he refuses to allow Jesus to wash his feet. Jesus explains that he has given them an example. They should wash each other’s feet, that is, they should serve each other and no task should be too lowly or mean.

Well, we get it, but why was it so important for Jesus to say it then, just as he was about to be arrested and crucified? He has, in fact, been criticized for saying it. By telling his disciples to love one another, Jesus has been heard to be telling his disciples that their love is only to be for one another and not for those outside the group. It was not, however, them loving outsiders that Jesus was worried about, but how outsiders would treat them. ‘If the world has hated me, it will hate you’, Jesus warns them. And they were about to see just how much the world hated him.

Jesus knew that if his followers were to survive in a hostile world that would hate them because they loved and followed him, they would need each other. Rather than worrying about their position in the group, Jesus’ followers were instead to serve those who belonged to it. Their love for each other would show everyone that they were his followers. The problem has always been that we prefer to have our feet washed rather than to be the one to do the washing.

Forgiveness, Faithfulness, and Thankfulness

Here is the transcript of my latest podcast, 'Forgiveness, Faithfulness, and Thankfulness'.  It is based on the Gospel readings for the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Sundays after Trinity

Forgiveness, Faithfulness, and Faithfulness

Readings: Luke 17:1-10; Luke 17:11-19

The Gospel readings for the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Sundays after Trinity are a mixture of sayings and stories of and about Jesus. It is worth reminding ourselves that St Luke’s account of the life and teaching of our Lord, as he says in his introduction to the Gospel, is intended to be an ‘orderly’ one. It is not, however, an account that is generally in chronological order.

St Luke when he came to write his account had access to a lot of material. There were, for example, the ‘many’ before him who had already compiled their own account (Luke 1:1-2). There were eyewitnesses he could speak to, and he also had access to sayings and stories from several different sources as well. St Luke drew on all these in writing his Gospel.

It was, however, one thing knowing, for example, that a saying, was spoken by Jesus and another altogether knowing when he spoke it. Stories such as that of Jesus’ baptism (Luke 3), St Luke could locate reasonably accurately chronologically; with others, however, such as Jesus going to dinner with a Pharisee, it was not possible to say when exactly they occurred. This explains why St Luke uses rather general terms when relating sayings and stories from Jesus’ ministry. For example, St Luke uses such phrases as ‘One day while he was teaching …’ (Luke 5:17); ‘On another sabbath …’ (Luke 6:6); ‘On one occasion …’ (Luke 14:1); ‘Once Jesus was asked …’ (Luke 17:20). St Luke knows Jesus said and did these things, just not precisely when! St Luke brings them together, then, to make a logically and theologically ordered account but not necessarily a chronologically ordered one.

In our reading, St Luke has brought several sayings of Jesus together. Jesus begins with a statement of fact. Occasions for sin are bound to come, Jesus tells his disciples, but there will be severe consequences for those are responsible for them coming. It would be better for them, says Jesus, if they were to be thrown into the sea with a weight around their neck rather than for them to cause one of these ‘little ones’ to sin. Jesus, in using the phrase ‘little ones’, isn’t referring to children but to his disciples. Elsewhere, Jesus uses the word ‘children’ itself to refer to his disciples (John 13:33; 21:5), as does St John throughout his letters.

Forgiveness

Jesus expresses himself so strongly about the seriousness of sin because he wants to establish how serious sin is, as the basis for what he is about to say. It is because it is so serious, Jesus goes on to warn them, that the disciples need to be on their guard against sin. Just because sin is common doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter. It does. It is because it matters that if a brother or sister sins, the disciples must, Jesus tells them, rebuke the offender; and then, if the brother or sister repents, they must forgive.

We normally miss out the rebuke part of what Jesus says and move quickly on to what Jesus says about forgiveness. Forgiveness, however, in Jesus’ teaching, follows repentance, and the disciples have a responsibility to help each other find repentance. A person can only repent if they realize they have done something wrong. To pick up a previous metaphor of Jesus: a doctor can only provide treatment if they have convinced the patient they are ill.

If, however, a brother or sister, on being told of their sin, repents, then the offended party must forgive. It doesn’t matter, Jesus says, how many times the person sins; as long as they repent, they must receive forgiveness. Jesus speaks of forgiving ‘seven times a day’ to mean repeated acts of sin, if they are followed by repentance, must receive repeated forgiveness. This may seem a tough ask, but isn’t this how God extends his forgiveness to us?

Jesus, then, establishes a pattern of rebuke, repent, forgive. In the course of my ministry, I have known Christians and churches who are very good at rebuking. These are people and churches that call sin out and stand against it. If, however, you were to do something wrong, of which you were ashamed, you would never go to them in the hope of finding forgiveness. Churches of this kind are often cold and unwelcoming. The irony is that there are often people in these sorts of churches who sin; they are just very good at hiding it. They feel they would be rejected if they didn’t.

In recent years, however, there has been a reaction against this approach, and most churches now seek to be warm and welcoming instead. To an extent, it is a reaction born from necessity. We know people are simply not going to come if all that happens when they do come is that they get judged and condemned. The attempt to be warm and welcoming began with churches trying to be more forgiving. Now in our churches we behave as if there is nothing to forgive. We don’t like talk of sin, at least, not in traditional sense of personal sin. We are happy to rail against societal ills, but when it comes to individual behaviour, we are unwilling to pass comment.

Jesus, however, starts from the premise that sin is serious and needs calling out. Jesus warns against sin, and so should we. Jesus himself rebuked those who were in the wrong, such as the Pharisees, but refused to condemn those who knew themselves to be in the wrong, such as the woman caught in adultery (John 8:1-11). When people knew they were in the wrong, Jesus offered forgiveness instead. Sin leads to people being lost. Jesus rebukes sin because he hopes it will lead to repentance and to the lost being found.

Churches are to be places where sin is taken seriously. It is only when sin is taken seriously that there can be the offer of forgiveness. If there is no sin, there doesn’t need to be forgiveness. People can only find forgiveness when they know they need forgiveness. The path to forgiveness lies in rebuke and repentance. Repentance, however, must always be met with forgiveness.

If someone comes to me and says they have done something that they regret and are sorry for, then, without even knowing what it is, I can assure them of God’s forgiveness. God’s forgiveness is never in doubt; the only thing in doubt is whether we are willing to repent. Forgiveness for sin follows sorrow for sin.

In Series 6 of the BBC crime drama, Shetland, there is a storyline about a character called Donna Killick. Donna murdered, Lizzie Kilmuir, the 18 year old twin sister of Kate Kilmuir. The murder took place in quite horrific circumstances. Donna is imprisoned after allowing someone else to be blamed and imprisoned for the crime she has committed. Donna, while in prison, becomes ill with terminal cancer and is released on compassionate grounds and rehomed back into community she came from. There is much protest not least from Kate who is still full of hurt and hate from what Donna did to her sister whom she loved. In a powerful scene, Kate goes to where Donna is living to confront her. But instead of condemning Donna, Kate tells Donna she forgives her. Donna tells Kate to keep her forgiveness (she uses much stronger language!). Donna neither wants nor thinks she needs Kate’s forgiveness.

As followers of Christ, we must always be willing to forgive, but forgiveness must be both wanted and accepted. We mustn’t give the impression that forgiveness is no big deal. Forgiveness is a big deal. There would have been no need for Christ to have died for our sins if it wasn’t. Sometimes the sin that has been committed against us has hurt us so much and the wounds gone so deep that it can be hard to forgive, but we forgive as people who know themselves to be forgiven and who are in need of God’s daily forgiveness.

Jesus has taught us to pray, ‘Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us’ (Luke 11:4). Churches are places for recovering sinners. They are, or at least they should be, places where those who want to find recovery from sin can begin the journey of forgiveness. They are not places for people who think they have no need of forgiveness, whether that’s because they think themselves better than others or because they simply don’t think sin matters.

Faithfulness

It is perhaps because forgiveness is not always easy that the disciples ask Jesus to increase their faith. We live in an age that is very sceptical about faith and, what is more, which encourages scepticism, seeing doubt as a good thing. Doubt is generally seen, even by priests and pastors, as healthy and to be encouraged. It is somewhat ironic given that we fail to adopt the same sceptical approach to what we read and see online. We will ask question after question if someone suggests believing in God and then fall for the first online scam that comes along!

It is now easier not to believe in God and not to have a personal religious faith than it is to believe and have faith. It is worth reminding ourselves that this has not always been the case. In the past, belief was the norm and doubt what made you different. There may have been arguments about what the content of a person’s belief should be, but that there was a spiritual being to believe in was taken for granted.

Today, even when we go against the mainstream and overcome our doubts and believe in God, we still find it difficult to believe that God is active in our world and answers prayer. Belief can be no more that believing theoretically in the existence of God rather than thinking that he is in control of what happens. It is even less the case that our belief makes any real difference in our lives. Our doubts about God’s involvement in our world make it hard for us to think that prayer to God is of any use.

Most Christians don’t pray on a daily basis. The words, ‘I’ll pray for you’ are something we say automatically when someone is in need or trouble, but rarely do we follow up by actually praying, and even more rarely do we think prayer will actually change anything. The only time we take praying remotely seriously is when we have nowhere else to turn. God and prayer, at this point, become the last refuge of the desperate.

Then, of course, when prayer doesn’t seem to work in the way we hoped it would, our personal experience of prayer seeming not to work only reinforces our doubts about its usefulness. Many have had the experience of praying in desperation for someone who was sick and suffering, only for their prayers not to be answered.

Not only is believing in God and in the effectiveness of prayer difficult, it is also not easy having faith in Jesus, given all he asks of those who profess faith in him. It’s not easy forgiving people, loving people, taking up the Cross daily, dying to self, following him and being known as his disciple. It’s not easy being unpopular or laughed at because we believe in Jesus, and it’s even harder still to be prepared to die for him, as he asks.

Yes, we can identify with the disciples in their desperation for Jesus to increase their faith. We desperately need him to increase ours too.

Jesus’ reply is that if we only had faith the size of a mustard seed, we would be able to command a mulberry tree to be uprooted and planted in the sea. Jesus refers to ‘this mulberry tree’ suggesting there is one in sight! Jesus’ reply to the disciples’ request might at first appear to be something of a put down. Jesus might seem to be suggesting that we don’t even have faith the size of a mustard seed, proverbially the smallest of seeds. It is as if Jesus is saying we don’t have any faith at all, not even to the smallest degree.

I don’t think Jesus words, however, are meant as a put down in this way. Jesus is rather suggesting that we have got our focus all wrong. We are worrying about the size of our faith when we should be worrying more about but its reality and who it is we have faith in. It is not our ability to believe that counts, but the God that we believe in. Our faith may be small, but our God is not. What we need is not great faith but faith in a great God. As long as we are genuinely connected with him, we need not worry about how much faith we have.

Our focus as followers of Jesus needs to be not so much on our faith, but on our faithfulness. Jesus goes on to tell a parable. Jesus asks whether anyone who has a slave, when the slave comes in from working in the field, will ask them to sit down and have their dinner. Won’t the slave owner rather ask the slave to prepare and serve the slave owner their dinner first? The slave can have their dinner later. So too Jesus says his disciples shouldn’t feel pleased with themselves for doing what they were supposed to do. Jesus tells them that when they have done what they are ordered to do, they should say:

‘So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, ‘We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!’” (Luke 17:10)

This is another of Jesus’ parables that is not so popular, and which does not get told very often! It calls for a change and reorientation in our thinking. Following Jesus is not about us. We often think that following Jesus is about us finding happiness and fulfilment and that’s how we try to sell the Gospel to people. We promise people that if they join us, God will be there for them. Faith, however, begins with obedience; happiness and fulfilment are something that follow. Faith and its benefits come from faithfulness.

Thankfulness

The reading for the Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity is Luke 18:11-19. In this passage, St Luke writes of how Jesus, while on the way to Jerusalem, is passing through the region of Galilee and Samaria. This is the most direct route to Jerusalem from Galilee, it was, however, often avoided by Jews, as it meant going through Samaria. Jews would often take a longer route to avoid having to pass through Samaria. As will be well-known, there was deep antipathy between the Jews and Samaritans going back many years. As Jesus enters a village, he is greeted by ten people with a skin disease who cry out to him for healing.

Many translations use the word ‘leprosy’ rather than ‘skin disease’. Leprosy, however, refers to a specific type of disease and one that is not in view here. Those with skin disease were required to separate themselves from the general population. This is why St Luke tells us the ten lepers kept their distance, even while approaching Jesus for help. Their disease made them ritually unclean, and their physical isolation led to an inevitable social isolation from families and friends.

The ten cry out to Jesus for mercy. Jesus tells them to go and show themselves to the priests. This was the procedure laid down in God’s Law (Leviticus 13:2; 14:2) and was necessary for them to be readmitted into society and for them to be able to live a normal life. The ten do as Jesus tells them and as they go, they are made ‘clean’. They are not only healed but have their ritual uncleanness, caused by their disease, removed.

One of them, on seeing he is healed, turns back and praises God with a loud voice, prostrating himself at Jesus’ feet and thanking him. St Luke writes simply, ‘And he was a Samaritan.’ Jesus asks where the other nine are. Was it only this foreigner who returned to give thanks to God? It is a reminder to us that those who respond to Jesus are often those we think the least likely to do so. It is also interesting that Jesus links the man returning to him with giving thanks to God. It is God who is at work in and through Jesus. Jesus says to the man:

‘Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.’ (Luke 17:19)

Jesus has said that faith the size of a mustard seed can remove a mulberry tree. Here it has removed a man’s disease.

Jesus asks where the other nine were. Doubtless, they were just in a hurry to get back to their families. This led to them forgetting to say thank you. But what’s our excuse? St Paul writes to believers in the Church at Corinth:

‘What do you have that you did not receive? And if you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive?’ (1 Corinthians 4:7)

We prefer, however, to think and act as if what we have, we have because of our own efforts. We like to think we are free agents who have worked hard and deserve everything we have. We did not receive it. Many who are successful in life refuse to admit that circumstances or luck have played any part in their success. Others are willing to acknowledge that circumstances have played a part. They admit they have been in the right place at the right time but, they insist, they have made the most of their chances. We want at least some of the glory to come to us.

When we say thank you to God, however, we are admitting there is more to what happens to us than chance and circumstance and our ability to make the most of them. We are acknowledging God and our own dependency on him. Humans don’t want to admit to this dependency and so resist saying thank you. Faith and thankfulness go together. We trust God, knowing we cannot trust ourselves; and we thank God, acknowledging our own inadequacy but knowing that he can be trusted.

The Gospel readings for these two weeks contain sayings and parables that are apparently unlinked, and which seem at first to have been brought together by St Luke in a somewhat random manner. They, nevertheless, highlight three essential elements of following Jesus.

We are to be people who take sin seriously and who, because they take sin seriously and know the damage it can do, are prepared to call it out. In calling sin out, we do so as sinners ourselves who know the forgiveness of God and who offer that forgiveness to others. Knowing our own worthlessness, we seek, nevertheless, to be faithful to the One whom we are called to serve. And we thank him, knowing that in serving him, we are serving the One who has made us, healed us, and given us all things.

May forgiveness, faithfulness, and thankfulness characterize our lives as we follow him who has shown us mercy.

Amen.

Choose Life

Here is the transcript of my latest podcast, Choose Life. It is based on the Gospel reading for the Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity.

The Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity

Reading: Luke 16:19-31

Last week, we were looking at the Parable of the Dishonest Manager (Luke 16:1-9). Jesus tells the parable to teach his disciples that they should use money in such a way in this life that they will have a home to go to in the next. Using money wisely means not valuing it more than its worth. Jesus drives the message of the parable home with a series of short sayings about the importance of being faithful in how we use money (Luke 16:10-13). Jesus says that we can’t expect God to give us true wealth if we have let him down in our use of false riches. Jesus could not be clearer. Jesus says:

‘No slave can serve two masters, for a slave will either hate the one and love the other or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.’ (Luke 16:13)

The Pharisees, who St Luke describes as ‘lovers of money’ (Luke 16:14), ridicule Jesus for saying this. We immediately have an impression of the Pharisees as being totally fixated on material wealth. I suspect they were no more lovers of money than most Christians. They simply don’t see that there is any conflict. They would have resolutely rejected any suggestion that it was alright to love money before loving God. Their attitude would have been to ask why you can’t love God and love what money buys and enables you to do. After all, that is what loving money is all about. The Pharisees can point out in their justification of themselves (Luke 16:15) that, in the Old Testament, riches and material well-being are seen as a sign of God’s blessing and a reward for faithfulness to God’s Law. The Pharisees were committed to God’s Law and probably thought that material wealth came to them as a consequence. Money was precisely what was given to you if you did love God.

Jesus’ statement that you can’t love God and money is, therefore, a radical one. Jesus is saying that you can’t have both God and money, and that if you try to have both, you will inevitably find yourself preferring one against the other.

Many Christians, however, think exactly the same as the Pharisees. Many Christians are committed to what is known as the ‘prosperity Gospel’. Quite simply, this teaches that if you are faithful in your obedience to God, God will reward you with money and material things. Perhaps not surprisingly, the ‘prosperity Gospel’ is particularly popular amongst some Christians in the United States.

Most of us, I think, would not express it quite so crudely, but many of us, without even realizing it, believe a version of it. We instinctively equate God’s blessing with things going well for us in this life. This is why we have so many spiritual problems, doubts, and questions when they don’t. If you listen carefully to people’s prayers, they are often for material things and for God to give them to us or to make it possible for us to get them.

Jesus says some things about money that we find difficult to accept, so we, like the Pharisees, seek to justify ourselves and try to explain away our love of money. Jesus warns that God knows our hearts. Jesus tells us that what we value and think important as humans is an abomination in the sight of God (Luke 16:15).

In our churches, clergy and church leaders themselves have a somewhat ambivalent attitude to money. This results in the church giving out mixed messages. On the one hand, we don’t like talking about money, but then, on the other, we never stop asking for it. It is rare that you are able to go to a church meeting without being asked for money.

Despite being ridiculed, Jesus won’t back down or soften his teaching, but doubles down on his message, and he does so by telling another hard-hitting parable that makes for uncomfortable reading. After all that Jesus has already said about money in St Luke’s Gospel, you might wonder what else there is to say. Quite a lot, as it turns out!

Jesus tells the story of a rich man who is not only well-off but who has the money to enable him to live extravagantly. Jesus describes him as dressing in purple and fine linen and feasting sumptuously every day. Purple dye was expensive and while the Jewish people had several festivals during the year where there was feasting, this man feasted all the time. We might say today that he wore designer clothes and dined out at expensive restaurants. Not only this, we know he lived at an exclusive address. We know this because Jesus says that at his ‘gate’ lay a poor man named Lazarus. Gated properties were not common and only the seriously rich would have been able to afford them. Designer clothes, an extravagant lifestyle, and a beautiful home, it is what many aspire to. It is the lifestyle of the rich and famous that we enjoy reading about and following online.

Our society takes the attitude that people should be allowed to do what they choose with their own money. The Lazaruses of this world we simply don’t want to know about. If their presence is brought to our attention, we either respond with charity or blame, or both. The charity we give is often less than the cost of a meal at the restaurants we like to visit; the blame is of them for not doing more to help themselves. Lazarus, though, doesn’t ask for charity; he would be happy just to get what the rich man doesn’t want and which falls from his table without the rich man even knowing it is gone. Lazarus lies there at the rich man’s gate not because he won’t work, but because he can’t work. He simply hasn’t the strength.

Lazarus is as badly off as the rich man is well off. Lazarus is covered with sores that the dogs lick, making him ritually unclean in the process. These dogs are not the nice cuddly pets that people post pictures of on social media, these are feral dogs that will eat the corpses of the dead if they can get to them. The dogs licking Lazarus’ sores is the equivalent of vultures pecking on someone while they are still alive. It’s about as bad as it gets.

Then it all changes. Both Lazarus and the rich man die. Lazarus, who has been unable to walk, is carried by the angels to be with Abraham where he is comforted, while the rich man goes to hades where he is tormented. It is, in the next life, a complete reversal of what it was like for them both in this life. The rich man did indeed get to choose what he wanted to do with his money. It is his choices that have landed him in the fires of hades.

In agony, the rich man looks up and sees Abraham far off with Lazarus at his side. He calls out to Abraham to send Lazarus to just dip the tip of his finger in water to cool his tongue. In life, the rich man had ignored Lazarus, now he begs for his help. Abraham reminds the rich man of how this is the complete opposite of how things used to be. But it is too late to do anything about it now. There is a great gap between the two places that it is impossible to cross. In despair, the rich man begs Abraham to send Lazarus to his father’s house where his five brothers live to warn them, so that they will not end up where he is.

Abraham’s response is deeply disturbing. Abraham points out that they have ‘Moses and the prophets’, that is, they have the Scriptures. They should listen to what the Scriptures say. If they did, they would know what they needed to do to inherit eternal life. The rich man knows that his brothers are not going to listen to what the Scriptures say, any more than he did. He also had the Scriptures, but he didn’t listen to them, and he knows his brothers won’t either. If, however, someone were to go to them from the dead, then, he believes, they would listen. Abraham is blunt. If they don’t listen to the Scriptures, they won’t listen, even if someone rises from the dead.

Often when people hear this story, they ask what it tells us about the next life. This is to miss the point somewhat. Jesus in telling this story is making use of popular ideas at the time about what happened when a person died. Jesus is not, however, telling this story because he wants to give us a detailed guide to the afterlife. Nor is Jesus only wanting to encourage people to be aware of the needs of others as well as their own, although he does want us to have such an awareness.

We need to be clear about this. Many rich people are generous with their money and genuinely seek to do good with their wealth. I think many in the Church are happy for people to be rich as long as in addition to spending money on themselves, they give to the poor and don’t ignore the needs of the poor and hungry. While Jesus certainly does criticize people who ignore the needs of the poor and hungry, Jesus is doing more than encouraging us to give money to the poor.

Jesus, in telling this story, is also showing us what happens when someone tries to serve God and money. What happens to someone when they love money doesn’t just happen to them in the next life. The effect on a person of serving money is to be seen in this life. It is what serving money does to someone in this life that results in what happens to them in the next. The destructive effect of serving money begins now and Jesus describes it in this story. It is because even now we ourselves are being brought under money’s destructive power that we can only see the consequences of serving money in the story when Jesus describes what happens when the rich man dies. Jesus, in fact, describes the destructive effect of money on the rich man from the moment Jesus begins the story. They are three-fold.

1. Loss of Identity

Let me ask a question. What is the rich man’s name? We know the name of the poor man. His name is Lazarus. It is the only time in Jesus’ parables that one of the characters in them is given a name. This only emphasizes the fact that the rich man is not given a name. We know what the rich man wears, what he eats, even where he lives. But we don’t know who he is. He has lost his identity to what he values in life. It may appear as if he is doing well in this life, but money is already destroying him, and the extent of his destruction will be revealed when he dies. By which time, it will be too late.

2. Blind to the Needs of Others

Lazarus lies at his gate and the rich man must have to go past him several times a day, but he literally doesn’t see him. It is not that he actively wishes Lazarus harm; it’s that Lazarus is nothing to do with him. It is as if Lazarus doesn’t exist. The rich man has become blind to the needs of others; he cares only about his own appetites and desires. Lazarus himself doesn’t even want the rich man to do anything; he would be happy simply to get what falls from the rich man’s table that the rich man doesn’t know or care about. But the rich man is too fixated on himself to think about anyone other than himself.

3. Deaf to the Word of God

The reason the rich man knows that his brothers won’t listen to the Word of God in the Scriptures is because he hasn’t listened himself, and they are just like him. The rich man would have been a member of the synagogue and would have attended services at the Temple. He would have heard Moses and the prophets read every week, perhaps every day, but he has become deaf to the Word of God. So deaf spiritually does money make people that they would not be convinced of its danger, even if someone rose from the dead to warn them.

The loss of his identity, blind to everyone except himself, and deaf to anything that anyone said to warn him. What does that sound like? It sounds as if Jesus is describing someone who has money in the way we would describe a drug addict. Drug addicts also lose their identity to their addiction. They too are blind to everyone’s needs but their own. They too are deaf to what anyone says to them; all they care about is their next fix. Yes, they initially get a high from what the drug gives, but the drug steadily takes everything away from them until eventually it destroys them completely.

When Jesus says you cannot serve God and money. He is making a statement of fact. The two are completely incompatible. A choice has to be made. The rich man made his choice and suffered the consequences. So, what about us?

Money matters

If there is one thing we can all agree on, it is the importance of money. We may feel we don’t have enough of it, or we may feel others have too much, but either way we know we personally can’t live without it. Money makes the world go around! Gone are the days for most of us when we can supplement our incomes by growing our own food or making our own clothes. Most of us are some form of wage slave.

We may react against that description, disliking the idea in these egalitarian and self-centred times that we are not free to live as we please. But while some may be able to live off inherited wealth or past investments, most of us for most of our lives need an income and that means we need a job. The reason unemployment is regarded as a social evil isn’t because we would be bored if didn’t have a job to go to. Indeed, many who are employed are bored by their jobs; they just have no alternative but to do them. Governments might pass laws to regulate the employment market and to protect workers from the worse excesses of their enslavement, but there is no escaping the necessity of work and the dire consequences of not having it. We need employment, quite simply, because we need the money.

That we need money is not in question, but we use the language of need to justify what we spend money on whether we need it or not. It sounds better to say that we need something than to say that we want something. What we need and what we want, however, are two entirely different things. We need food and clothing; we don’t need the latest iphone or model of car. Nevertheless, whether it’s to spend on what we need or on what we want, we still need money.

This much at least seems straightforward enough, but it is not just individuals who need money. Society, in general, needs money. Countries need a functioning and successful economy if there are going to be the jobs their citizens need to survive.

Understanding money

And it is here that everything starts to get far more complicated. We are not just individuals who can make independent choices about our lives, irrespective of what is happening in the community in which we live. We are part of and bound up with a world dominated by money. Politicians, economists, and bankers may try to understand and control it, but money defies understanding and control. Money has a mind and a life of its own. To take just one simple example: at the moment, across the world, central banks are struggling to control inflation. Yet only a few months ago, the bankers were confidently predicting that inflation was nothing to worry about. They are worried now!

So great is the hold that money has over us as a society that the only way it seems for our economy to survive is for us to print more of it, borrow more of it, or spend more of it. So, at the present time, governments, in an attempt to solve the problem that their economy isn’t making enough money, are giving their citizens money to spend on things they don’t need and often don’t want.

Understanding money isn’t simply a political and economic question; money is primarily a spiritual issue. Money is the means the Devil uses to keep both communities and individuals in his power and prevent them from serving God. The Devil offered Jesus the glory of all the Kingdoms of the world hoping that the temptation would be sufficient to get Jesus in his power (Luke 4:5-8). Jesus rejected the Devil’s offer insisting that worship should be offered to God alone. Sadly, the Devil has had more success with many of Jesus’ followers. St Paul writes to Timothy:

‘Those who long to be rich, however, stumble into temptation and a trap and many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is the root of all evils. Some people in reaching for it have strayed from the faith and stabbed themselves with many pains.’ (1 Timothy 6:9-10)

Some will argue that St Paul is exaggerating for effect here and that we should not see money as the root of all evils. Others argue that it is only the love of money and not money itself that is the problem. Many believers quite sincerely want to view money as something that is neutral in itself. They want to see it as something that can be used to do good or evil, depending on what choices we make. Money only becomes evil, they argue, if we do bad things with it, or if we allow it to have too big a part to play in our lives.

Seeing money as neutral and harmless in itself is another one of the many ways we ‘justify ourselves in the sight of others’. It allows us to have more of it than either we need or is safe. Convincing ourselves, however, that money is neutral and that we can have both money and God seriously misunderstands the nature of money and underestimates its power.

When talking about the relationship between money and power, many will respond that money is power, and crave for themselves the power that they think it gives. This again misses the real nature of money. Money doesn’t just give those who have it power, money is itself a Power. Money isn’t just the currency in our wallets or the numbers on our bank statement, money is a Power that first entices and seduces people, and then controls and enslaves all who love and serve it. It goes on controlling those it enslaves once they stop loving it. Like an addict, we may tell ourselves that we have our addiction under control, but like an addict in denial, money gets us hooked and renders us powerless to help ourselves.

Choose life

Jesus talks so much and so directly about money because he knows its power and that, as much as we may tell ourselves otherwise, money is not something that we can decide to use as we wish. Jesus warns that money is something dangerous and deadly, and that it needs to be taken seriously if we are to love and serve God. But if it is so powerful and integral to the world in which we live and of which we are a part, how are we to avoid falling into its power? How are we to love and serve God, not money?

Jesus said a slave cannot serve two masters either they will love the one and hate the other or be devoted to the one and despise the other (Luke 16:13). It’s a stark choice. We have to choose which master we are going to love and serve, God or money. We cannot serve both. It is only by loving God and despising money that we can be free from the destructive power and hold that money wants to have over us.

We mustn’t think this is easy. It isn’t. The Devil knows our weakness and knows how easy it is to tempt us with money and what it can give. The Devil shows us everywhere we look what could be ours if we had it: where we could live, what we could eat, the clothes we could wear, the things we could buy, the places we could go, even the good we could do.

In the same way that we can’t escape sin in this world, we can’t escape the presence and power of money, but we can make a choice to serve God, not money. Jesus told his disciples to seek God’s Kingdom and all the things they needed would be given to them as well (Luke 12:31).

It is by seeking God and loving him that we can begin to see how false and empty what money offers really is and, as the rich man discovered when it was too late, how destructive it is. The only way to escape the power of money is to discover the power of God; the only way to avoid the love of money is by falling in love with God. In the second reading this week, St Paul writes of the ‘uncertainty of riches’, that is, they can’t be trusted. God, though, is faithful, and he can be trusted. What money gives comes at a terrible cost. What God gives, he gives freely. St Paul wants Timothy to teach those who are tempted by money instead to take hold of the life that really is life. Jesus said he came that we might have life and have it abundantly (John 10:10).

Money seeks to get us in its power by inviting us to accept all it offers; may we instead choose life.

Amen.