A Dangerous Gamble

This is the transcript of my podcast for this week, the Twentieth Sunday after Trinity.

This is the link to podcast itself:

A Dangerous Gamble

The Twentieth Sunday after Trinity

Reading: 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10

We are beginning to read through St Paul's first letter to the Thessalonians.

St Paul first went to Thessalonica immediately after he had visited Philippi with Sts Silvanus and Timothy (Acts 17:1-8), and after they had established the church there (Acts 16:11-40). We have been reading through the letter to the Philippians for the past few weeks.

Although he went to Philippi before Thessalonica, St Paul wrote first Thessalonians before he wrote the letter to the Philippians. Some think that it is earliest of St Paul’s letters that we possess. I personally don't think it the earliest, but it is certainly one of the earliest. It was written about AD 50 from Corinth, not long after St Paul’s initial visit to Thessalonica, at a time when Saints Silvanus and Timothy were with him.

St Paul writes of the positive reception he and Sts Silvanus and Timothy received from the Thessalonian believers when they were with them. St Paul sees this as evidence that the Holy Spirit is at work in the believers. The faith of the Thessalonian believers, St Paul writes, has become something that is talked about throughout the whole of the region. But what was it about the Thessalonian believers’ faith that got it so talked about?

We don’t really understand nowadays just how significant it would have been for pagans to become believers. The first believers after all were Jews. For Jews who became believers, following Christ was about recognizing Jesus as the Messiah they had been hoping for. This was a major step, but while much changed as a result, much didn’t. The God they believed in remained the same; the Scriptures they used were the same; and how they lived ethically remained largely the same. This was not the case for pagans. For pagans, becoming a follower of Christ involved a complete change in their lifestyle and worldview.

Pagans, for example, made physical representations of their gods. Jews were absolutely forbidden from doing so. Most pagans had no prior knowledge of the Scriptures. When it came to ethics, while there were pagans who lived ethical lives, the pagan gods themselves didn’t much care. The behaviour of the pagan gods in the stories about them left a lot to be desired. Indeed, behavior forbidden to Jews was actually encouraged among pagans, especially when it came to sexual ethics. Hence some of the guidance St Paul gives in his letters to new converts from paganism.

The dramatic change coming to faith in Christ involved for pagan converts helps explain, then, why the Thessalonians becoming believers made such an impact in the region. It was a very big deal indeed. St Paul explains what it meant. St Paul writes:

‘For the people of those regions report about us what kind of welcome we had among you, and how you turned to God from idols, to serve a living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the wrath that is coming.’ (1 Thessalonians 1:9–10, NRSV)

This helps to explain something else that would otherwise be something of a mystery to us. St Paul refers in our reading to the persecution the Thessalonian converts had experienced on becoming believers. He refers to it again in chapter 2 (1 Thessalonians 2:14). Why would these Thessalonians becoming believers attract persecution from their neighbours? Pagans after all worshipped a whole multitude of gods. Why would the Thessalonian converts now worshipping the Jewish God be a problem? Why would anyone care?

The answer is that no-one would have cared, and it wouldn't have been a problem, if the Thessalonian believers worshipped the Jewish God as well as the pagan gods. Some pagans did do just that without it causing too much trouble for them. The problem was, as St Paul explains, that the Thessalonian believers had stopped worshipping the pagan gods to serve the living and true God, and that really was serious.

In the ancient world, worship of the gods wasn't simply a matter of individual choice. Every family had their own household gods. Cities too had their gods and all a city’s citizens were expected to worship and honour them. Rome had a whole variety of gods of which the Emperor himself was one.

There are still parts of our world where changing religion has huge social, even political consequences, but for most who are listening to me now, who we do or do not worship is largely our own affair. So, we naturally find it hard to understand what whom or what you worshiped meant socially, economically, and politically in past ages.

Christians in the early years of the church were to be accused by pagans of being atheists because they did not worship the pagan gods. Later, early in the fifth century, St Augustine was to write one of his most important books, The City of God, to respond to the charge that the reason Rome had suffered a humiliating defeat was because it had abandoned the pagan gods in favour of the Christian religion. Turning from idols to serve the true and living God was serious, with serious consequences for those who made the move, and many believers were even to suffer death because of it.

It is amazing, then, looked at from this perspective, that anyone would want to become a believer; the cost was simply too great. Understanding what it meant for someone to become a believer also helps to explain why St Paul puts so much emphasis on God and the role of the Holy Spirit in the Thessalonians he writes to becoming believers. St Paul writes:

‘For we know, brothers and sisters beloved by God, that he has chosen you, because our message of the Gospel came to you not in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction; just as you know what kind of persons we proved to be among you for your sake.” (1 Thessalonians 1:4–5, NRSV)

Given how much the Thessalonians had to lose and the prospect of what they would suffer, it needed God to be at work within them if they were to come to faith. It was because God was at work in them that they were able to receive the word of God with joy from the Holy Spirit, despite the opposition they experienced to them becoming believers.

So, what does all this have to say to us today? Surely it can’t have much to say given that we no longer believe in idols and pagan gods? On the contrary, it has something fundamental to say to us.

An author I much respect has described Christianity as the ‘destroyer of the gods’. What he meant by this was that as Christianity took hold in the Roman Empire, as well as not worshipping idols anymore, people stopped believing in their existence. The Christian worldview increasingly became the dominant worldview. It was the dominant worldview, as far as Western civilization was concerned, for many years – until comparatively recently in fact.

It was not that during this time everyone was a Christian – they weren’t; or that there weren't varieties of belief – there were. It is rather that the Christian worldview provided the framework within which society functioned. In recent years, however, there has been a systematic dismantling of this framework of basic Christian assumptions about the world and how we should live in it. We have progressively abandoned fundamental beliefs, not least when it comes to God himself. ‘In God We Trust’ might be printed on what is still the world’s dominant currency, but it is no longer the dominant belief of the country that issues it.

More concerning still, however, is that the church itself has also abandoned many aspects of its historic worldview. Unpacking this would take a lot longer than there is time for here. But let me give an example.

St Paul writes that the change in the Thessalonian believers’ worldview meant that they now were waiting for God’s Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the wrath that is coming.

The worldview that most of us operate with has very little place in it for waiting for anything, and we certainly don’t think we need rescuing from the wrath to come, not least because we don’t think there is any wrath to come. We are not here to wait but to get on with enjoying ourselves and to getting the most of out of life. Something that we are constantly being urged to do.

For those who don't believe in God, there is in any case nothing to wait for. However, it is also true that many who do believe in God and in an afterlife also think that God doesn’t want us to wait and that we too are to get on with enjoying life in this world. Many churchgoers also no longer believe there is anything for us to be rescued from, as God (assuming he does exist and even as churchgoers we are not always sure he does) will welcome us anyway. It is, in any case, unthinkable that God would be angry with us and reject us.

Well, that’s fine if that’s what we want to believe, and I accept that it is what the majority of people in the Church do believe, but let’s be clear about one thing. This is a very different worldview and way of thinking to that of our Lord and the New Testament writers. It is also a very different worldview to the worldview that has been held by the Church for most of its history. So, as long as you are happy to gamble on our Lord, the apostles, and the Church all having been wrong and us today being right, then okay. It’s your choice. I have to tell you, though, that for me it is far too big a gamble to take.

And just remember this: you are not only taking a gamble on how you live in the present, in this life; you are gambling on whether you will live at all, in the future, in the next life. What is more, if we do make that gamble, then not only will it affect how we see and live our own lives now as individuals, it will also affect how we as a church see our mission and purpose as a church.

For this talk of worldview is not simply an issue of only theoretical concern. Our worldview results in a radical difference in how we live as followers of Christ and how we function as the body of Christ. Just how radical a difference has been brought home to me recently reading some devotional writing of those in the past who thought about things in the way the New Testament writers thought about them and comparing it with devotional writing today. The priorities and outlook are very different.

‘You shall call him Jesus because he will save his people from their sins’, the Angel said to Joseph (Matthew 1:23). We, however, have decided we don't need saving. Sin is someone else's problem; it’s not ours. All I can say is that looking at our world and the state it is in, it needs an awful lot of courage to believe that we don’t need saving and to think that everything is going to be alright. I would suggest this morning that we need to start taking the Biblical worldview a lot more seriously, and if we do, then that’s going to have huge consequences for us and how we live both as individuals and as a church. Like the Thessalonians, we too are going to be unpopular with our compatriots and on the receiving end of persecution as a result.

In closing, then, a question: what do you believe in when there is nothing left to believe in? We stopped believing in idols some years ago; now we have stopped believing in God. Instead, we believe in ourselves, a belief that is now at the heart of our worldview. Getting people to change their worldview, to turn from our idols to serve the Living and True God, isn’t going to be easy.

Our idolatry of Self and our determination to live for the moment is now integral to how we see ourselves and our world. Convincing people to turn from this idolatry to the living God is not going to be achieved through better marketing, special campaigns, or by forming more committees. It will only be achieved when our message, like that of Sts Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy, comes to people ‘not in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction’.

And for that to happen it needs to come to each one of us that way first.

Amen.

Think On These Things

This is the transcript of my podcast for this week, the Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity.

This is the link to podcast itself:

Think On These Things

The Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity

Philippians 4:1-9

This week at Christ Church, it is our Harvest Festival service. The format of this service does not easily allow for a recorded version of the sermon. I have, therefore, recorded the following version of the sermon for this week’s podcast. This explains why it may sound different to usual!

The reading from St Paul’s letter to the Church at Philippi is the last of the readings the lectionary gives us from St Paul's letter to the Philippian believers. Next week, our second reading will be from the (first) letter to the Church at Thessalonica. Thessalonica was the place that Saints Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy visited after they left Philippi on their first visit there to preach the Gospel (Acts 17:1-8). When St Paul refers in his letters to the Macedonian churches, the churches at Philippi and Thessalonica are two of the churches he is referring to.

Of all of his churches, the Macedonian churches seem to have given St Paul the maximum of support and the minimum of trouble. We have seen how at Philippi the main issue seems to have been the all-too-common problem of people not getting on with each other. St Paul refers to a specific example of this in the first few verses of chapter 4.

St Paul directly asks two women, Euodia and Syntyche, to agree in the Lord. He also appeals to another unnamed person to help them to do this. St Paul describes Euodia and Syntyche as having struggled beside him in the work of the Gospel together with someone called Clement and the rest of his co-workers. We know nothing more of Euodia, Syntyche, the unnamed companion, and Clement. This is a good reminder to us that there is so much about St Paul and his ministry that we do not know. What we do know is that, contrary to the way some people think of him, St Paul did not work alone but had many co-workers who worked with him.

Having made this personal appeal, St Paul tells the Philippian believers to rejoice in the Lord always, and to emphasize the importance of what he is telling them to do, he repeats it.

St Paul then tells them that they are not to worry about anything, but instead to pray and make their requests known to God. If they do this, St. Paul writes, the peace of God will guard their hearts and minds. It is the words from this verse that we quote in the blessing at the end of our services.

Finally, St Paul tells them, they are to think good thoughts. They are to think about whatever is true, honourable, just, pure, pleasing and commendable; anything in which there is excellence and which is worthy of praise. St Paul closes by telling them to take him as their role model and to copy his example.

St Paul packs a lot into just a few verses and unpacking it would take longer than I have. So just a few thoughts about what St Paul writes.

1. Rejoice

Firstly, we too are to rejoice in the Lord, that is, we are to have joy in the Lord. Joy isn't the same as happiness. I do not imagine that St Paul was particularly happy at being in prison. Joy is more than a passive emotion that we experience as a reaction to our situation in life or to something that gives us pleasure in it. It is about the certainty and confidence that comes from actively and consciously putting our trust in the Lord. ‘Joy in the Lord’ enables us to rise above our circumstances and our emotions.

As believers, we do not, or at least we should not, rejoice in ourselves and in our own abilities. We should not put our trust in what we own or any of the outward things that we are told will give us security, purpose, and fulfilment in life. As believers, we rejoice in the Lord, knowing that the Lord is the one who cares for us and who will look after us, whatever our circumstances.

This is why St Paul can write, ‘Rejoice in the Lord always.’ It is why he personally can rejoice, even though he is in prison not knowing whether he will live or die. It is why he can rejoice despite all the suffering and hardship he has been through and knows he will still have to go through, even if he is released.

Rejoicing in the Lord is not about a superficial sense of well-being. It is not a feeling that can be induced or comes from anything we might do. It is rather a deliberate expression of the assurance we have as believers that whatever may happen to us, good or bad, God is in control and is on our side.

So, even though we may weep, either because of our own pain or in seeing the suffering of others, we can still rejoice in the Lord, knowing that God is with us and, as St Paul writes, that the Lord is near.

2. Pray

Secondly, we are to pray and not worry. It is because we rejoice in the Lord and put our trust in him that we do not need to worry. That does not stop us worrying, of course. We are human after all, and we find ourselves worrying about all sorts of things: about our family, our career, our money, our health; but we also worry about the everyday things in life whether it as mundane as shopping for our families or simply where we should go on holiday.

St Paul, however, does not say that we are not to worry selectively. It is not that it is alright to worry about some things and not about others; St Paul says we are not to worry about anything. This would be unrealistic advice and impossible to follow unless we were able to rejoice in the Lord first and foremost. It is, however, because we can rejoice in the Lord that we can be freed from worry.

Imagine, for example, that you are out on your own somewhere one night and you suspect that someone is following you intent on causing you harm. Then you see someone you know and trust. You rejoice at seeing them. You tell them your worry and fear, and you feel safe as a result.

If we rejoice in the Lord, we will tell him our worries and fears. If we do, St Paul writes, then the peace of God, which is greater than our minds can understand, will protect both our hearts and minds.

This will not, however, just happen. We have in everything, St Paul writes, by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving to make our requests known to God. We all know it is good manners to say thank you for something we are given. Normally, however, we say thank you after we have been given it. When we make our requests to God, we are to say thank you even as we ask him for something. We do that because we are sure that the Lord hears us and wants to answer our prayers.

Rejoicing always, not worrying about anything, but praying in everything calls, however, for a different way of thinking to what we are used to and to the way we are taught by the world in which we live.

3. Think

So, thirdly, we are to take care of how we think. Our minds matter. St Paul tells the Philippians in chapter 2 that we are to have the same mind in us that was in Christ Jesus. We are to think the way Jesus thought and to think about things the way he thought of them. We can’t serve God if our minds are always on ourselves. Nor can we serve him if we don't trust him or if our minds are on other things.

We are often distracted or diverted by our thoughts. Distracted, as we have mentioned, by worry and the cares of this life. We are also diverted by thoughts that lead us astray or even which lead us to do things that are wrong. Jesus said:

‘For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.’ (Matthew 15:19)

Thoughts come from within and often they come to us without warning. We might respond to this by saying, ‘I can't help what I think!’ But that is only partly true. We can cultivate damaging thoughts by dwelling on them or by dwelling on what encourages them.

The internet, for example, is a breeding ground for bad thoughts. I'm not suggesting avoiding the internet altogether, that simply is not possible nowadays. We do, however, need to give more thought to what we expose our ourselves to online and what thoughts are stimulated in us as a result.

Young people, for example, are being exposed to some very extreme material online from a very early age. Those who work with young people are reporting how this is affecting young people’s relationships and behaviour towards each other in destructive and at times alarming ways. What is particularly disturbing is how young men are expecting their girlfriends to do things they have seen being performed in hardcore pornography. And it is not just young people who are being negatively affected in this way. We are all affected by it to a significant extent, often more than we realize.

‘Whatever is true, honourable, just, pure, pleasing and commendable; anything in which there is excellence and which is worthy of praise.’ These are things that St Paul tells us we are to think about. We need to keep this in mind as we browse online and on social media. We need not just to censor ourselves and shut out evil; we need positively to seek out good things to see and to hear, to read and to watch, to concentrate and to dwell on. If evil comes from within us, we need to take care what we allow into us.

Rejoice in the Lord; don’t worry, pray; think good thoughts. It is hard for us to do this; we are novices in the spiritual life. This is why we need role models, people to teach and to guide us. We are, though, very proud, and we don't like to admit our ignorance. We don't like people telling us what to do, even less how to think. We wonder, then, why it is we make so little progress and get into so much trouble. The spiritual life doesn't just happen. We need both to make an effort and to get help from those who are skilled and experienced in it. Pride has no place in spiritual growth.

St Paul urged the Philippian believers to learn from him. We too can learn from mature believers in the Church today. But we also have the example of the saints who gone before us. Some believers reject looking to the saints as guides. It is our loss if we do. We need all the help we can get. It will soon be All Saints’ Sunday. The lives of the saints are a great gift from God to us. We need to look to the saints and learn from them, as we join our prayers with theirs.

May we rejoice in the Lord always, pray in everything, and think about those things worth thinking about!

Amen.

That I May Know Him

This is the written version of my sermon for this week!

The audio version of the sermon can be listened to at this link:

That I May Know Him

The Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity

Philippians 3:4-14

Our second reading today is one of my favourite passages, although that description doesn't really do it justice. I don't know about you, but when I hear the word ‘favourite’, I can't help but think of Julie Andrews and the Sound of Music. ‘Favourite’ in the sense of the sort of things that Julie Andrews sings about are not what I mean in talking about this passage! Favourite simply doesn’t do it justice. This passage gets to the heart of what being a believer in Christ is, or should be, all about. It is a life changing passage - at least it changed mine.

St Paul writes:

‘that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.’ (Philippians 3:10–11, LSB)

Last week, we saw how St Paul dealt with personal differences and disagreements in the church at Philippi by urging the Philippian believers to have the ‘same mind’ in themselves that was in Christ Jesus. While there were some personal conflicts in the church, we said that church in Philippi does not appear to have had any serious theological issues in the way, for example, that the churches in Galatia had.

St Paul’s experience, however, was of people who were determined to cause theological problems in his churches by challenging his understanding of the Gospel. This challenge came principally from Jewish believers in the Church who felt that St Paul was wrong about God's Law and its role in the life of a believer. St Paul was concerned that these people might one day make their way to Philippi and cause trouble in the church. He wants to warn the Philippian believers in advance before they get there. He does not hold back. St Paul writes:

‘Beware of the dogs! Beware of the evil workers! Beware of the mutilation!’ (Philippians 3:2, LSB)

I said last week that it was amazing that St Paul, himself a devout Jew and a contemporary of Jesus, could write about Jesus in the exalted way he does in chapter 2. It is also amazing that he can talk of his opponents in this way. What St Paul's opponents were advocating was everything that St Paul himself had devoted his life to before he became an apostle. What they advocated was not in itself so revolutionary. They simply taught that if someone believed in God's Messiah, they should also keep God's Law.

One of the central commandments of that Law was that a male must be circumcised as a sign of God’s covenant and their commitment to God. God himself had said when he gave the commandment to Abraham that a person could not be a member of God's people, if they were male, unless they were circumcised (Genesis 17:14). Jesus himself was circumcised, as was St Paul. And yet here St Paul calls those who advocate circumcision ‘the mutilation’. Instead, St Paul tells the Philippian believers that it is they who are the ‘circumcision’. They are the ones who worship in the spirit of God and boast in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh (Philippians 3:3).

The word ‘flesh’ in the New Testament can refer both to the physical stuff of which we are made and to our nature as humans, that is, our ‘self’ and our identity. St Paul sees circumcision as a mark in a person’s physical flesh that symbolizes a person's confidence in themselves. Certainly, St Paul’s opponents were proud of their Jewish heritage and all that went with it.

The obvious response to what St Paul writes here was to suggest that perhaps St. Paul said this because he himself had nothing to be pleased about and little to boast of. In fact, this was something St Paul's opponents did say to Corinthian believers when they turned up at the church in Corinth to cause trouble there. They accused St Paul of being unimpressive physically and inferior to other leaders in the Church (2 Corinthians 10:10). In our passage today, St Paul responds directly to this accusation.

He writes that he was circumcised on the eighth day. In other words, as a Jew he was the genuine thing: he was of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, and a Hebrew of Hebrews. When it came to the Law itself, he writes, he was a Pharisee, that is, he was a member of one of the groups within Judaism that was most committed to the Law. As for zeal, he was a persecutor of the Church; in other words, he had actively opposed those whom he saw as the enemies of God's Law. As to righteousness which came by obedience to the Law, he was blameless. He had had and had done everything that his opponents valued and advocated.

But here's the thing, says St Paul, whatever had been to his own personal gain, he now counted loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, he claims, he counts all things as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus his Lord. This could all sound like mere rhetoric or just well-meaning words, except that St Paul continues by writing that he actually has suffered the loss of all things for Christ. Rather than missing them, he counts them as rubbish that he may gain Christ and have a righteousness that is not his own, gained by his own effort keeping the Law, but a righteousness that comes through the Gospel and which is from God by faith.

It is, then, after explaining all this, that St Paul makes this powerful statement. St Paul writes:

‘… that I may know Him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed to his death, in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.’ (Philippians 3:10–11, LSB)

St Paul has had and has done all that his opponents advocate and boast about, but he has given it all up, not reluctantly but gladly. Nothing compares to knowing Christ. Even so, St Paul writes that he has not yet obtained all that he wants but he presses on looking forward to what God has promised to give him.

He tells the Philippian believers that he wants them to see him as a role model and to do the same. Knowing Christ now, they too are to press on to what God has for them in Christ in the future.

There is so much I wish I had the time to say about this passage, but perhaps I can highlight the following three points.

1. Losing all things for Christ

St Paul had literally lost all things for Christ, including his freedom. St Paul you will remember is in prison for Christ when he writes this letter to the church at Philippi. It is important, however, to make a distinction here. There are some things it is necessary to lose either because they are bad in themselves or are bad for us. Killing, stealing, and lying are examples of things that are bad in themselves. Alcohol, while not bad in itself, may for example, be bad for someone who finds it hard to stop drinking. There are other things, however, that while not necessarily bad either in themselves or for us that we still have to be prepared to lose if God wants us to.

St Paul judges all things in relation to the value that Christ has for him. We too need to see the value of things in the light of Christ. Seen in this light, things that previously we saw as not only good but of great value become of much less value. St Paul writes he regards them as rubbish. Most of us do not find ourselves called to lose all things, but we are all called to value things differently to how society around us values them, and this can be hard.

The other day, I was watching a documentary about women who wanted to become nuns. In it, some nuns were filmed going into a school to talk to young teenagers about what being a nun involved for them. They describe how they took the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. These young women had literally given up all things. What do you think the teenagers found hardest to believe the nuns had given up? The first thing on their list was their phones!

Now we may not value phones as much as the teenagers did (although I expect we may!), but there are things that each of us do value. These are things which are really important to us and which we cannot imagine doing without. They may not be materially valuable. They may be more the sort of favourite things that Julie Andrews sings about. But they are things that we find the thought of losing difficult even distressing. We need to ask ourselves what it is that we would find most difficult to give up for Christ.

2. Gaining Christ

Secondly, we need to see that we are not called to give up things for the sake of it. Indeed, most of the time, apart from things that are intrinsically wrong, most of us are not called actually to give things up at all. What St Paul is concerned about, however, is the value we place on things compared to the value we place on our relationship with Christ. St Paul is happy to lose all things because in losing them he gains Christ.

People will often make sacrifices for something they believe in, even being willing to die for a cause. This is not what St Paul is talking about here. St Paul is concerned here not so much with what we believe, although that comes into it, but with how important our relationship with Christ is to us and what we would be prepared to give up in order to know him, irrespective of whether we are in reality called to give them up or not.

Often, we are emotionally attached to things whether they are intrinsically valuable or not. They can dominate our lives and occupy a central place in them. It is Christ and knowing him who is to be the centre of our lives and, for St Paul, it is the surpassing value of knowing Christ that makes it possible for us to give up things that we value.

We are always going to be attached to things and find them hard to give up if we don't have a relationship with Christ. It is not easy believing in God and living a life of faith, and if we remain at the level of seeing our faith as a philosophy of life or a code of ethics, we will never quite understand what St Paul is talking about here. When, however, we see our faith as being about a relationship with Christ who is himself the source of all things, including life itself, that we will gain a different perspective on life.

3. Forgetting what is behind

Thirdly, St Paul knows that although we can truly and personally know Christ now, we know him as people who are mortal and who will one day die. St Paul’s own hope is that that he will attain the resurrection of the dead, that is, that after his death he will be raised from the dead to live with Christ eternally, and so his relationship with Christ will last forever. This is the goal he is pressing towards and what he is looking forward to, and he wants the Philippian believers and us to do the same.

It is hard to look forward, however, if you are always looking back. This is why St Paul writes that in reaching forward to what lies ahead, he also forgets what lies behind.

Some people have problems remembering, either because they have a bad memory or, more seriously, because of a terrible illness such as Alzheimer's. Others of us, though, have a problem forgetting. We have difficulty forgetting, for example, the wrong we ourselves have done and because of the guilt we now feel; or in forgetting harm or injury that has been done to us in the past; or in forgetting opportunities that we missed or were denied to us. Life is full of ‘if onlys’: if only I had not done that; if only that had not happened to me; if only I had been given the opportunity or taken my chance when I had it. If only …

At one level, of course, it is impossible to forget, if by forget we mean ‘erase all memory of the past’. St Paul does not forget that he was a persecutor of the Church. He even mentions it here in this chapter. But we can let go of the memory; we can let go of the guilt, the regret, and the resentment; let go of all that might have been and focus instead on all that we now have in Christ and what we have gained in knowing Him. We all have things holding us back that we need to break free from, so we too can press on toward the goal of the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.

When it comes to what we have given up for our faith, little is achieved if we continue to look back and to long for what we have lost. We are to forget both the good and the bad in our past and hold on to what we have attained in Christ and look forward with hope to all that God promises to those who are faithful to him.

May God grant us the will and the strength to do so.

Amen.

With Fear and Trembling

I am pleased to say that I have again managed a written version of the sermon for this week! The link below is to the recording of the sermon itself.

With Fear and Trembling

The Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity

Philippians 2:1-13

Our second reading this week is from St Paul's letter to the church at Philippi. It contains a very well-known passage that some people describe as a hymn because of the way it is structured. Nowadays, it is normally laid out in a poetic form in our Bibles. It describes how Jesus left his rightful place with God, died a humiliating death for us, and was exalted by God, so that everyone will one day acknowledge his authority to the glory of God.

It is very well-known, but we tend to miss a lot of its significance. St Paul, a Jew, is writing about someone who was his contemporary and who was executed as a rebel against Rome and yet St Paul can say that everyone, including those Roman soldiers who crucified Jesus and who hammered the nails into his hands, will one day kneel before him and confess Jesus and not Caesar as Lord.

It is indeed a remarkable passage. When St Paul describes how everyone will kneel before Jesus, St Paul has taken a passage in the Old Testament from the prophet Isaiah that refers to God himself and has applied it to Jesus (Isaiah 45:3). It is, however, remarkable not only because of its theological content, although that is remarkable enough. It is remarkable because St Paul has included this hymn not to tell his readers something they didn't already know about Jesus but to encourage them to be like Jesus and not only to worry about themselves and their own interests. They are, St Paul tells them, to have the same mind in them that was in Christ Jesus. Jesus was of exalted status and yet he humbled himself. St Paul wants his readers to do the same.

The church at Philippi was especially loved by St Paul, and the feeling was mutual. The Philippian believers had been on board with St Paul's mission from the very beginning, and St Paul acknowledges in the letter the practical support they had given him on more than one occasion. The reason he is writing to them now is in part to say thank you for a gift they have sent to him while he is in prison. While the Philippian believers don't seem to have had any serious theological issues that were troubling them, there is, nevertheless, some evidence of personality clashes within the congregation and that they were finding it difficult always to get on with one another. So, for example, in chapter 4, St Paul writes:

‘I urge Euodia and I urge Syntyche to be of the same mind in the Lord.’ (Philippians 4:2)

St Paul continues by describing these two women as ‘co-workers’ who have struggled beside him in the work of the Gospel and yet, despite their commitment to the Gospel, they seem to have fallen out with one another.

Many of the divisions and conflicts in congregations are of a personal nature. As a clergyman, I am aware that people are more likely to fall out with me because they don't like me than because they don't agree with me theologically.

St Paul, however, believes strongly in the need for unity and harmony in the Church, and he knows how destructive these personal disagreements and differences can be. St Paul urges the Philippian believers to put aside such feelings by regarding others as better than themselves and by having the same attitude as Jesus. Jesus put our interests before his own, and they, he tells them should follow him by putting each other’s interests before their own.

In this way, the passage follows on very well from what St Paul writes in his letter to the Roman believers on the subject of food, which we looked at last week and the week before. St Paul told the Roman believers that what mattered was not that they got to eat or not eat whatever they wanted, but the good of the church and of each other.

In our passage today, St Paul concludes the so-called hymn by describing how Jesus will be the One before whom all will one day appear. He then draws an important conclusion from this. In his letter to the Roman believers, he says something similar. St Paul writes to the Roman believers:

‘Why do you pass judgment on your brother or sister? Or you, why do you despise your brother or sister? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God. For it is written, “As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall give praise to God.”’ (Romans 14:10-11)

The conclusion St Paul drew from this in his letter to the Roman church was that each one of us will be held accountable to God (Romans 14:12). He draws the same conclusion in Philippians. The Roman and Philippian believers would have got the significance of the imagery St Paul uses more than most of us do today. The ‘judgement seat’ was an actual seat in the public square where the Roman governor or official sat to hear accusations brought against people. The Roman governor was Caesar’s representative and had the power of life and death. To be brought physically before the ‘judgment seat’ in public to give an account of oneself and one’s actions was a frightening thing to happen. How much more so when the person sitting on the judgement seat is Christ himself acting as God’s representative?

Three things, then, from this passage this morning.

1. Jesus not Caesar is Lord

Firstly, Jesus not Caesar is Lord. St Paul is clear that the governing authorities are appointed by God to keep law and order and that the believer is to be subject to them (Romans 13:1-7). We are to respect those in authority, obey them, and pay the taxes due to them.

This doesn't mean there are no limits to their authority or that there aren't times when we have no choice but to obey God rather than them (Acts 4:19; 5:29), but it does mean that submission to them is something God wants from us. Our duty is to pray for those in authority, not oppose them, much as we might prefer to do otherwise. However, St Paul is also very clear that the governing authorities having been appointed by God are themselves subject to him whether they realize it or not. Jesus, not Caesar, is Lord!

This means that we can have confidence that the course of history and all that take places within it are not under the control of earthly powers, much as they might think they are in charge, but under the control of God. Presidents Biden, Putin, and Xi; Prime Minister Sunak and Chief Executive John Lee are not Lord and in control, Jesus is. Jesus is because God has exalted him to that position. We honour earthly presidents and rulers as appointees, but we do not fear them. Jesus said:

‘I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body and after that can do nothing more. But I will show you whom to fear: fear the one who, after killing, has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear that one! (Luke 12:4-5)

2. With Fear and Trembling

Secondly, following on from this, then, we are to work out our salvation with fear and trembling.

We do not fear earthly rulers and authorities, what we are to fear is having to stand before Christ and give an account of ourselves. I've never understood why people don't find this more scary. I think one of the reasons is that we have convinced ourselves, or allowed ourselves to be convinced, that there is nothing to fear: God is just too nice. And so, when we die, we believe, God will be so pleased to see us that he will just wave us into heaven, no questions asked. Believe this if you want to, and many do believe it, but there is nothing in the Bible that supports such a belief. So rather than the idea of appearing before God leading us to amend our behaviour, we think there is nothing to worry about. Convinced God will save us whatever we do, we just do what we want to do. If it is not going to matter what we do, why bother?

At one level it is a reasonable response. If there is not going to be any need for us to give an account of ourselves and there are no consequences for us regardless of how we live, then not only does it not matter how we live, we are naturally not going to be bothered about what may happen in the future. Whatever happens it will all be OK, or so we tell ourselves.

Imagine, however, if you were to find yourself standing in front of Jesus, and he was to question you about your life and behaviour. How would you feel then? Imagine being asked, for example, why we didn't go to church more regularly. How would that make us feel, I wonder? And that's a fairly innocuous example. What would it feel like when the questions got on to other aspects of our life? How would we feel when the questions became more personal and challenging?

There is a reason why we are to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling and that's because it is our salvation we are talking about, and that is a serious business that we all too frequently take far too lightly. But where then, you may ask, does this leave, the love of God. If we are all going to be required to give an account of ourselves to God, does this mean, we are to see God primarily as a judge whose main concern is that we should behave correctly and who will pass judgement on us if we don’t? All this talk of fear and trembling doesn’t sound very loving!

3. For God is at work in us both to will and to do

Frankly, if what St Paul were saying is that we are to work at our own salvation on our own, knowing that at the end of our life God will assess us to decide how well or otherwise we have done, we are all doomed. None of us left to ourselves would do very well at all. We would definitely need to be frightened, as we would certainly fail.

That, thankfully, is not what St Paul is saying. St Paul certainly is saying that we are to take our salvation seriously and work at it, but we are to do that because it is God himself who at work in us to motivate us both to want to do it and to do it. God knows that we can’t ‘just do it’. It is God who gives us the desire to work out our salvation and God who gives us the ability to do it. God is already at work in us if we have faith in Christ, now he wants us to work with him. The process of our salvation doesn’t end when we come to Christ; it begins. Or at least, it should.

There are some branches of the Church that talk about salvation as if it is only something that God works in us; we are simply passive recipients. Other branches talk about salvation as if it is entirely down to our own works and effort.

St Paul, however, sees salvation as a work that God does in us that God enables us to work with him to achieve. St Catherine of Siena said that God created us without our help, but he won't save us without our help.  We are not merely passive recipients, but active participants. Salvation is a work of God, but we have not only to receive it but to work at it.

If you take the example of physical health. We can be given the gift of a gym membership and a personal trainer to go with it, but we still have to turn up and do the work out. What is more our fitness will be assessed at the end of it!

We are not saved by our works, but we are not saved without them. So knowing that we all will appear before the judgment seat of God, that we will bend the knee before Jesus as his appointed representative, and that we will confess Jesus as Lord. Let us take seriously the need to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling, knowing that it is God who is at work in us both to want to will and to do. And let us do that, as St Paul writes, so that we will give glory to God the Father.

Amen.

United in the Truth

While I have no idea how long I am going to be able to keep it up for, I have again managed a written version of the sermon for this week!  This week, the written version is much longer than the sermon and has significantly more material in it.  It is for the Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity.  The link below is to the recording of the sermon itself.

United in the Truth

The Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity

Romans 15:1-13

Last week, we looked at how St Paul deals with an issue that was preventing different groups of believers in the church in Rome from getting together with one another. This was not just an issue in Rome but was an issue more generally in the early church. The historical and cultural context of the issue was the different backgrounds of the believers in the early church.

Those Jews who had become believers had previously had a lifestyle based on God's Law. This Law regulated all of life, including what a person could and could not eat. Those who were from a pagan background had had no such limitations on their diet.

A major question, then, was how much believers who had previously been pagan in their lifestyle should adopt God’s Law once they had become believers and what the status of the Law itself was now that the Messiah had come.

St Paul's spends quite some time in the letter to the Roman believers explaining his own position. He states quite clearly that all believers, both Jew and Gentile, have died to the Law and that they no longer serve God according to the ‘written code’ (Romans 7:6).

St Paul would be expected, therefore, to think that the food laws no longer applied to the believer and that all food could be eaten. He did think that, but, in a surprising turn in Romans 14 and 15, St Paul also argues that if someone believed they should go on keeping the food laws, as some did at Rome, then they could do so, as long as they did not judge those who did not keep them. St Paul states the principle that whatever a believer does is to be done to honour the Lord, and if someone eats in such a way that is honouring to God, then they should be left alone to get on with it (Romans 14:5-9).

Furthermore, St Paul also argues that those who don't keep the food laws, those he calls the ‘strong’, should voluntarily give up their right to eat anything they like and not eat meat, if by their not keeping the food laws and eating meat, they cause harm or grief to those who do (Romans 14:21).

St Paul believes that the question is not what people may or may not eat, but whether they accept one another or not. He urges them to accept one another, so that together with one voice they may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ (Romans 15:6-7).

Many people today have a very distorted view of the Apostle Paul. He is often seen as having been very dogmatic and inflexible. St Paul certainly was firm in what he believed, and he could be uncompromising when he needed to be, but one of the most fundamental things he believed in was the unity of believers in Christ and the need to preserve that unity as much as possible. He lived by that truth, and he possibly died for it.

St Paul tells us in chapter 15 that at the time of writing the letter to the Roman believers, he was preparing to go to Spain to preach the Gospel and that he intended to visit the Roman believers on the way. St Paul informs us, however, that, before this, he intends to visit Jerusalem to deliver the money he has collected for the church there (Romans 15:22-29.

St Paul tells the Roman believers to accept one another. He is not sure, however, that when he gets to Jerusalem whether he himself will be accepted by the believers in the church at Jerusalem (Romans 15:31). St Paul was right to be worried. When he gets to Jerusalem, St James, who is the leading figure in the church there, together with the other leaders of the church, tell St Paul they are pleased with all that he has achieved in his mission to the Gentiles so far. They are, however, far more concerned by what people are saying about St Paul and his attitude to God's Law and the effect it may have on their own mission to the Jews. They are worried what the consequences of a person with St Paul’s reputation coming to Jerusalem may have for them in Jerusalem and beyond. They say to St Paul:

‘You see, brother, how many thousands there are among the Jews of those who have believed, and they are all zealous for the Law; and they have been told about you, that you are teaching all the Jews who are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children nor to walk according to the customs. What, then, is to be done? They will certainly hear that you have come.’ (Acts 21:20-24)

In what must be one of the worst pieces of advice in church history, the leaders in Jerusalem suggest that St Paul goes to the Temple to take part in a Jewish ritual to show his respect for the Law and to demonstrate that what the Jewish believers have heard about him is not true.

St Paul acts in the way he told the Roman believers to act. While he doesn't see any obligation for him to continue to follow Jewish customs and practices, he is willing to do so out of love for his fellow believers in Jerusalem. Through no fault of his own, it all goes disastrously wrong, and St Paul loses his freedom, having almost lost his life in the process.

People are aware that St Paul spent a long time in prison and even that he wrote some of his letters while in captivity. If, though, you ask people why St Paul was imprisoned, the answer you will often get is ‘for preaching the Gospel’. This, however, is not the case. As we have just read, St James and the other leaders of the church had been preaching the Gospel in Jerusalem without any of them being arrested. St James says there were thousands of Jewish believers in Jerusalem, and the authorities at the time seemed happy to leave them alone.

The reason, in fact, that St Paul was arrested and imprisoned was not for preaching the Gospel as such, but for attempting to reach out in love to the ‘weak’ in Jerusalem in the way he had told the ‘strong’ in Rome to do. His actions, however, were misunderstood by the Jews leading to the Roman authorities imprisoning him to prevent the Jews from killing him. It appears from what St Luke writes that the leaders of the church and the believers in Jerusalem did little to help him. It is noticeable that there is no mention of the Jerusalem church and its leaders again in the book of Acts after this incident.

St Paul accepted the believers in Jerusalem and reached out to them in love. It is not at all clear, however, that they accepted him. Acting out of love can be costly. It cost St Paul his freedom and nearly cost him his life. It may, in fact, actually have done so. We know that after being taken prisoner in Jerusalem, St Paul spent two years in prison in Caesarea and then a further two years as a prisoner in Rome. We do not know whether after the two years as a prisoner in Rome, he was released or executed.

I said last week that there were three fundamental principles that emerge from what St Paul writes to the Roman believers about accepting one another.

• that God will grant us the wisdom to know when we need to argue for the truth and the courage to do so

• that whatever we do will be honouring to the Lord

• and that in all things we will put the love of others before the love of ourselves

In the letter to the Roman believers, St Paul faces up to the question of the Law and a believer’s relationship to it. St Paul is clear in what he writes to the Roman believers that keeping the Law is not the basis for our acceptance by God; it is no longer the way we serve God; and it is not the means by which God will save us in the future. In Galatians, St Paul is prepared to cause whatever division is necessary to guard what he regards as fundamental truths of the Gospel. As long as these truths were accepted and understood, however, St Paul could live with people voluntarily choosing to keep parts of the Law, as long as they didn't judge those who did not.

Of course, those who kept the Law in St Paul’s day would have struggled with the idea that keeping God's Law could be something that was optional. But St Paul believed that, although he himself did not see the need to continue to keep parts of God’s Law, respecting those who did was, at least, a way that both types of believers, strong and weak, Jew and Gentile, could come together with one voice to glorify God.

This issue was eventually settled not by discussion and debate, but by the events of history. Firstly, by the Jewish War of AD 66-70 and the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 by the Roman army. This ended the leading role of the church in Jerusalem and diminished the influence of Jewish believers in the church more widely. Secondly, and linked to this, issues surrounding the Law became far less of an issue as the Church became predominantly Gentile.

If historically, however, the Church had learnt from this dispute and had adopted the principles that St Paul taught, it would have avoided at least some of the divisions that were later to hinder its mission and to cause it so much damage. Damage, sadly, that is still with us today.

So,what about today?

It is important to see that St Paul can be flexible in his approach to the weak because he knew what he believed and what was essential to the Gospel he preached. It wasn't a case with St Paul of anything goes or that unity comes before everything else. Indeed, St Paul spends the first 11 chapters of Romans establishing how he understands the Gospel and what it means for those who come to know God through it. It is only after having done so that he turns to how what he has said is to be lived out in love.

St Paul believed that it was false teaching about the Law that threatened the truth of the Gospel in the churches he had established. He writes in very strong terms against those spreading this false teaching and warning of its dangers (Philippians 3:2-3). This was by no means the only issue to threaten the church in its early years. In St John’s churches, for example, the truth of the Gospel was threatened by false teaching about the person of Christ, and St John responds to it in the same way and with the same determination that St Paul had responded to the false teaching in Galatia, refuting the teaching itself and urging the church to have nothing to do with the false teachers (1 John 4:1-3; 2 John 10).

We can then see a four-step approach in what St Paul writes:

• recognizing when thinking and teaching is false and presents a challenge to a fundamental truth of the Gospel

• refuting the false thinking and teaching by a clear explanation of the Gospel truth showing where the false thinking and teaching is wrong

• warning against the false thinking and teaching and those who are spreading it, urging believers to avoid them where necessary

• applying the truth that is being challenged in a way that maintains unity and accepts legitimate differences of opinion

St Paul closes his letter to the Roman believers with a passage that often gets overlooked. St Paul warns them:

‘Now I urge you, brothers, to keep your eye on those who cause dissensions and stumblings contrary to the teaching which you learned, and turn away from them.’ (Romans 16:17)

The Biblical writers are all clear about the need both to recognize and resist false teaching; what in former times was called heresy. But a word of warning! False teaching is not just teaching with which we disagree but teaching that poses a real challenge and threat to the truth of the Gospel. St Paul thought that those who taught that a believer should only eat vegetables were wrong, but he didn't accuse them of false teaching. The church has too often in the past divided over issues that at the time were believed to be about fundamental truths but which, with the benefit of hindsight, can be seen to be what St Paul describes as differences of opinion.

So, with that caution in mind, are there any issues today that we should beware of as a threat to the fundamental truths of the Gospel? I think there are three. There is, however, only the time for me to give one, and then only briefly! I realize, of course, that what I am about to say needs exploring in far greater detail than is possible now.

One of the most serious challenges we face today, I would suggest, is over the issue of human identity. The Bible begins with a very clear assertion about the nature of human beings. The Bible teaches that human beings are created by God in the image of God:

‘So God created humans in his image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.’ (Genesis 1:27)

Not only the man in the image of God, nor only the woman, nor even simply the man and the woman individually, but both together, so that the image of God is to be found in a proper relationship and mutual interdependence between man and woman. This means a recognition of the equality of men and women, but also a recognition of the difference. It is an equality and difference that is not abolished in Christ but affirmed.

This enables us, I think, to recognize the error of those who, for example, are at present teaching both transhumanism and transgenderism. Human identity, we need to teach is not to be found in an assertion of human autonomy and freedom but in an acceptance of God's plan for his creation, a plan which involves maintaining that God created us as man and woman in the image of God.

This will be interpreted differently by different people in the Church when applied to the roles of men and women in the Church and society. For some, for example, male and female roles will look very traditional. For others, there will be a desire to explore new ways of expressing what it means to be a man or a woman in Christ.

It is here in the area of interpretation and application that there is a need for love and acceptance. What, I would suggest, there is no room for is the idea that we are free from all constraints to choose whom we want to be. The Bible neither recognizes nor gives such freedom. We are not free to choose whoever we want to be but rather in Christ we are given the freedom to become who God wants us to be.

True freedom is only to be found in becoming who God calls us to be in Christ, and then serving Him as children of God. We can only discover who God wants us to be when we discover God himself for ourself. In this, and indeed in every issue, as the Psalmist says, it is the fear of the Lord that is the beginning of wisdom (Psalmist 111:10).

In conclusion, firstly, we need to know our faith. If we are going to argue and make a stand for the Gospel, we need to know what the Gospel is. I think it is true to say that many sincere believers do not know their faith very well. St Paul begins his letter to the Roamn believers by writing:

‘For I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.’ (Romans 1:16)

We need to know the Gospel both because our own salvation depends on it and also because this is what we are called to preach and this is what other people's salvation depends on. One of the reasons St Paul writes Romans is to explain the Gospel he preaches as the Apostle to the Gentiles and to show what difference it ought to make in the lives of those who believe it. The result of St Paul’s efforts is the longest letter we have of his.

Too often we do not think it matters what we believe. People who stand for what they believe and who insist on the truth of the Gospel are often, as St. Paul was, labelled dogmatic and bigoted. But if a doctor prescribes medicine for a patient and insists that the patient takes it, the doctor is not described as dogmatic and bigoted for not being flexible about whether or not the patient should take the prescribed dose. It's just being sensible.

The Gospel is the power of God to salvation, and we need to insist on it, and insist that people believe in it if they want to be saved. We need to know our faith!

But secondly, we need to accept one another. The truth of the Gospel is to be the basis of our acceptance of one another. It is the basis of our own acceptance by God, and we should accept all who are accepted by God and who accept the truth of the Gospel. Which means we need to put aside our own prejudices, our own preferences, and prioritize coming together as brothers and sisters in Christ.

Standing for the truth of the Gospel is not the same as standing for our own opinions, and too often in the past the Church has divided over people's opinions rather than over the truth. I will resist the temptation to give examples.

So, as Paul closes his letter to the Roman believers and as we end on our journey through it, let us pray that God will grant us to know the power of the Gospel unto salvation and have the courage to preach it and to stand for it. Let us also commit, like St Paul, to prioritizing unity amongst ourselves. Because we will only be able to preach the Gospel, we will only be effective in preaching the Gospel, if we are united in Christ.

St Paul prays for the Roman believers that with one voice they may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. May we too with one voice glorify him.

Amen.

With One Voice

I have managed a written version of the sermon again this week! It is for the Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity.  This is it with the link below to a recording of the sermon itself.

With One Voice

The Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity

Romans 14:1-12

After all that we have been reading so far in St Paul’s letter to the believers in Rome, chapter 14 comes as a bit of a shock.

In chapters 1 to 11, St Paul has been discussing God's plan of salvation. In chapters 12 and 13, he writes about how we should respond to all that God has done for us in Christ and how it should affect our relationships in the world, both with each other and with those in authority. Then, after having warned the Roman believers that the Day of the Lord is at hand at the end of chapter 13, he follows it in chapters 14 and 15 with what seems a relatively trivial subject in comparison: discussing the believer’s diet and whether we can have meat with our vegetables or whether we should stick to just vegetables!

After all that has gone before, it seems a pretty big come down and something of an anti-climax. It would not perhaps be quite so bad if St Paul only spent a few verses on it. In fact, St Paul devotes 30 verses in our Bibles to the subject. This is nearly double what he spends on the Holy Spirit in chapter 8. So why is this issue so important to him?

To understand why it is, we are going to need to understand something of the cultural and historical context.

Firstly, by the time St Paul wrote the letter to the Roman believers, the Church was made up of both Jews and gentiles. In Rome, gentiles were, in fact, in the majority. Coming from such different backgrounds, how Jews and gentiles related to each other and got on with each other on a practical day to day basis was a major issue.

The Jews, after all, were already worshipping the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and had been doing so, albeit imperfectly, for many centuries. They had been expecting the Messiah, and they were familiar with the Scriptures. The gentiles, however, came from a pagan background. Some had some knowledge of God through their attendance as guests at synagogues, but many did not, and all would have been involved in idolatry in some form or another. The pagan gods were everywhere in the first century.

Secondly, those from a Jewish background had a lifestyle grounded in God’s Law. The Law made one day special and gave specific instructions on what could and could not be eaten. Sabbath observance and keeping kosher were not optional extras for the Jews. This is something we don't quite understand today, but for Jews it was central to their identity. Indeed, many Jews in the past had chosen to die rather than work on the Sabbath or eat pork, which was forbidden in God’s Law. Furthermore, much of the meat available in the meat markets of the ancient world had previously been offered in pagan sacrifices or had not been slaughtered in the way that the Law required.

So, for many Jews, it was easier simply not to eat meat and to stick to vegetables. In that way, they could be sure of keeping the Law’s requirements.

Thirdly, worship in the early church centred around a meal, not just a symbolic meal, which is what we have nowadays on a Sunday, but a proper meal (see 1 Corinthians 11:17-34). When Jews became followers of Christ and found themselves mixing with an increasing number of gentiles within the Church, how that meal was prepared and what was in it was for many both a religious and social issue.

How much of an issue it was can be seen in St Paul's letter to the Galatians in which St Paul describes how he and St Peter had a very public argument over it. St Peter, we learn, had routinely eaten with gentile believers in Antioch, but when Jewish believers arrived from Jerusalem, St Peter withdrew from eating with the gentiles in order not to upset the Jewish believers by eating in a way that the Jewish believers would have found contrary to the Law. St Paul was horrified at this and said so, rebuking St Peter publicly (Galatians 2:11-14).

The Roman Church itself seems to have consisted of several small groups of believers. These were predominantly gentile in composition, but by no means exclusively so. It seems that some were made up of Jewish believers and those who sympathized with them. These Jewish groups, in an attempt to be faithful to God’s Law, kept the food laws and ate only vegetables. Many of the groups, however, ate what they liked.

This made fellowship between the groups difficult, which was bad enough, but worse still, those who did not eat meat passed judgement on those who did, and those who ate everything despised those who only ate vegetables.

It is, then, to these different groups and their members that St Paul addresses his comments. It should be said that while this was an issue in Rome, it wasn’t only an issue peculiar to the Church at Rome. We know that it was a problem more generally in the Church. We argue today over sexual issues; they argued over food. Food and sex are always issues that get people worked up!

St Paul is certain that what a believer eats no longer matters and that the food laws in the Law no longer apply. St Paul himself calls those who take this view the ‘strong in faith’. He is also very clear that those who think that the food laws do still apply are ‘weak in faith’.

There were thus two types of believers in the Roman Church: those St Paul calls the ‘weak’ and those he calls the ‘strong’. What we have to remember, however, is that those St Paul thought weak in faith certainly did not think of themselves in this way. As far as they were concerned, they were obediently keeping God's Law, which was why they were so judgemental of those who did not. For their part, those who ate all things believed that those who ate only vegetables were limited in their understanding, which was why they despised them.

The reason that this was such an issue was that their differences were preventing the different groups from coming together to worship God and to have fellowship with each other. Given the problems and challenges the Church was facing from outside, it certainly didn't need to add internal division to them.

The way St Paul tackles this problem is very interesting. We may have expected him to do so by discussing the issue itself and attempting to explain to those who did not eat meat why it was okay for them to do so. In other words, that St Paul would to try to sort out the division by getting the believers in the church to agree on one single position, but he doesn't.

St Paul does not see the question that needs to be answered as being whether they eat meat or not, but whether they accept one another or not, and acceptance of one another means accepting differences of opinion. Consequently, St Paul starts chapter 14 by urging the strong to accept the weak. St Paul writes:

‘Now accept the one who is weak in faith, but not for the purpose of passing judgment on opinions.’ (Romans 14:1)

Now St Paul can take the position he does because he thinks the food laws are a matter of indifference. However, while he is convinced that the food laws no longer apply, he accepts that for some they can be a way of demonstrating their desire to honour God. I am not sure how convinced the weak who kept the food laws would be by what St Paul writes. They ate only vegetables because they thought that this was what the Law demanded. For them, this was not a question of human opinion or something that they had any choice in but about obeying God’s Law. I am sure that St Paul would have realized this, which suggests that what St Paul writes is designed principally as an appeal to the strong. He does seem predominantly to be addressing the strong. Hence, St Paul can write ‘we who are strong’ (Romans 15:1), as if the strong are his principal audience.

St Paul tells them that rather than claiming their right to eat meat or protesting their freedom, the so-called strong are, firstly, not to despise those who eat only vegetables, and, secondly, they are to be willing to give up their right to eat meat in order not to upset their brother or sister in Christ.

All this seems a bit removed from us today. People are vegetarians, of course, but it has nothing to do with keeping the Old Testament food laws! St Paul, however, in the process of discussing this issue gives us some principles, which are very relevant to us and to every age.

Firstly, we need to choose our arguments.

St Paul was not averse to telling people when he thought they had got it wrong. I have already referred to his argument with St Peter at Antioch. The letter to the Galatians itself is strong stuff in which St Paul severely reprimands the Galatians for what he sees as their abandonment of the Gospel. This is the key to understanding St Paul’s approach. It is why he begins chapter 14 by writing that they are to accept the one who is weak in faith but not to pass judgement over ‘opinions’.

St Paul is clear in his own mind that those who ate only vegetables were weak in faith and have not understood the implications of having died to the Law. Equally, he doesn't see any threat to the truth of the Gospel in those who only ate vegetables continuing not to eat meat as long as they, in turn, don't judge those who do. What St Paul thinks is all important is whether someone seeks to live for God and honour him by what they do. If a believer is able to offer what they do to God with thanks, then St Paul thinks they should be left alone to get on with it. Each person has to decide for themselves how they live. St Paul writes that each one should be fully convinced in their own mind (Romans 14:5).

Secondly, we are accountable first and foremost to God.

Now this sounds all very liberal and individual. We each do what we feel is right for us. Except, for St Paul, it is not quite like that. We have to be able to offer what we do as individuals to the Lord with thanks for it. The one who eats should be honoring the Lord by eating and the one who does not eat should be honoring the Lord by not eating. St Paul has already made it clear that there are some behaviours that are never honoring to the Lord and which we cannot thank him for. Drunkenness, sexual promiscuity, and jealousy, for example. Other behaviour, while not necessarily being a logical outcome of the Gospel, is in itself morally neutral, but it can become something good if offered with thanks to God. The person to decide whether a particular behavior is good or not is ultimately, of course, God himself. And decide he will. As St Paul writes:

‘Why do you pass judgment on your brother or sister? Or you, why do you despise your brother or sister? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God. For it is written, “As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall give praise to God.” So then, each one of us will be held accountable to God.’ (Romans 14:10-12)

If we think that God will not be pleased if we do something or if we are not sure whether we should, then we should not do it ‘for whatever is not of faith is sin’ (Romans 14:23).

Thirdly, just because we can do something, does not mean we must.

Something can be good in itself or even morally neutral and done by us to honour God, and yet there may still be a reason for not doing it. That reason is out of consideration for a brother or sister in the body of Christ. St Paul makes this plain in chapter 15. St Paul writes:

‘Now we who are strong ought to bear the weaknesses of those without strength and not just please ourselves.’ (Romans 15:1)

Even when a brother or sister has failed to understand fully what the Gospel allows us to do, not only do we ourselves not have to do it, there are times when we definitely should not do it. We are to go out of our way not to harm or cause distress to a brother or sister. If we cause our brother or sister grief, we are no longer walking in love (Romans 15:14).

This does not mean that we have to listen to unreasonable or irrational demands from people, but it does mean that getting our own way is not what we should be most concerned about. What we should be concerned about is being able to join together with each other in loving acceptance of each other, so that with one voice we may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ (Romans 15:6).

We need, then, to pray:

• that God will grant us the wisdom to know when we need to argue for the truth and the courage to do so

• that whatever we do will be honouring to the Lord

• and that in all things we will put the love of others before the love of ourselves

St Paul gives us the governing principle. St Paul writes:

‘For not one of us lives for himself, and not one dies for himself; for if we live, we live for the Lord, or if we die, we die for the Lord; therefore whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s.’ (Romans 14:7-8).

Our Lord himself tells us that we are to love the Lord our God with all our being and our neighbours as ourselves. It is not necessarily easy, but nor was it easy for Christ, writes St Paul, to take on the reproaches of us all (Romans 15:3). We are now called to honour him, so that we may indeed with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

May God grant it to be so.

Amen.

Time to Wake Up

The great enemy when it comes to writing sermons is time, or rather the lack of it, especially when you are preaching every week, as I am at the moment. 

Ideally, time would be spent on reading and preparation, then on producing a written version, followed by some thought being given to delivery and the production of the notes needed for the sermon itself. Then, in an ideal world, the sermon would be recorded and posted online together with a transcription of the sermon as preached as well as the written version for those who wanted to take time over it. 

Most weeks, however, it is only possible to complete part of this process or to complete it inadequately. The written version is normally something that doesn't get finished!

This week for the sermon for the Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity, however, I have managed to complete a written version.  So, instead of the transcription, here is the longer written version. The actual preached sermon can be heard at the link below!

Time to Wake Up

The Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity

Romans 13:8-14

Last week, we saw how St Paul teaches the need for us to love and for that love to be real. He tells those he writes to not be overcome by evil, but to overcome evil with good (Romans 12:21).

What follows immediately after this in Romans 13, then, is something of a surprise. St Paul writes about the need for believers to obey those in authority and to make sure they pay their taxes. He is quite strong in how he puts this. St Paul writes:

‘Let every person be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment.’ (Romans 13:1-2)

St Paul goes on to describe those in authority as God’s servants and ministers (Romans 13:4, 6). This is why those he is writing to pay taxes, he tells them.

This is a passage that continues to trouble Christians today. What about when the authorities are not only people we disagree with but are also truly bad people. Surely St. Paul doesn't see them as instituted by God, and surely he doesn't expect us to obey them whatever they tell us to do?

The first thing to be said about this passage is that St Paul was only too well aware that the authorities could be really bad people. After all, he had been on the receiving end of the cruelty of those in power more than once. What is more, he had held them to account when he felt they were in the wrong (see Acts 16:35-40).

This passage in Romans, though, is not our reading today, and as much as I would like to say more about it, I must resist the temptation. What I would say, however, is that the principles that St Paul enunciated in our reading last week apply here as well.

Firstly, we are not to be overcome by evil, but to overcome evil with good, and this applies to our relationship with those in authority as well as to anyone else. Secondly, St Paul hasn’t stopped discussing how our love is to be real at the end of chapter 12. He continues his discussion on how our love is to be real on into chapter 13 and into this passage about the governing authorities. The need for us to love applies to the many issues we face in the world that St Paul has said we must not be conformed to, and it applies in the world of politics and government as much as anywhere else.

It is only because we have such a romanticized and sexualized view of love that we don't see the connection with what Paul writes about love in our reading last week and what he writes here in Romans chapter 13 about the governing authorities.

That St Paul has not left off discussing the theme of love at the end of chapter 12 is to be seen in how he continues after this passage in chapter 13. After telling the believers of the Church in Rome to obey the government and pay their taxes, St Paul writes,

‘Owe no one anything, except to love one another, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.’ (Romans 13:8)

St Paul tells them in the passage that follows, and which is our reading today, that all the commandments are summed up in the single command to love your neighbor as yourself.

St Paul was accused by some in the Church of teaching that believers didn't have to worry about how they lived and what they did (Romans 3:8). St Paul himself asks the question of whether God's grace, that is, his unconditional love for us, means we should continue in sin? He answers it with an emphatic, ‘No!’ (Romans 6:1,15). He realizes, however, that his teaching could seem to suggest otherwise. As, indeed, could his teaching about the God’s Law. He tells the Roman believers that we have died to God’s Law (Romans 7:1) and that we don't serve God any more according to the written code, but in the newness of the Spirit (Romans 7:6).

So, does this mean that there are no rules? There were those who thought it meant exactly that. The Corinthians, for example, had a slogan, ‘All things are lawful to me’, and they used it to justify all kinds of behaviour, even going to a prostitute (1 Corinthians 6:12-20).

St Paul definitely doesn’t think it means this. He firmly believes that there is behaviour that is absolutely incompatible with a believer’s life in Christ and that if a believer is led by the Spirit in the new life that Christ gives that there are things that they simply will not do. In Galatians, St Paul describes these things as the ‘works of the flesh’ (Galatians 5:19).

Again, we saw last week that we live between two times, the time of Christ's death for our sins as our Saviour and his return as our Judge. How are we to live in this in-between time? Many then as now lived as if they were asleep, as if they didn’t have to worry too much about how they lived. St Paul calls his readers to wake from sleep. He tells them that the night is far gone and the day is at hand. He urges them to cast off the ‘works of darkness’ and put on the ‘armour of light’ to protect themselves from the darkness.

St Paul gives three examples of the works of darkness that believers are to cast off. The first two are typical behaviours of the night, ‘partying and drinking’ and ‘sexual promiscuity and licence’. The third is different to the other two, ‘quarrelling and jealousy’. The past lifestyle of some of the Gentile members of the Church may well have included partying and drinking and promiscuity and licence in it, as is the case today. Today, however, we may feel that these two types of behaviour are not typical of church members generally! That may be true. But quarreling and jealousy, sadly, have been major problems in the Church from the beginning. It serves as a reminder to us that we should not focus only on certain types of bad behaviour and ignore others.

St Paul closes, firstly, by telling them, using the metaphor of getting dressed, to put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and secondly, to make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires. They are to so copy Christ and how he lived that they look like Christ, and in living as Christ lived, they are not to satisfy their own desires. The life St Paul calls them to live is the precise opposite of one that makes self-fulfilment its goal.

How are we to apply all this today?

Firstly, it wasn't just in St Paul's own day that people thought that love meant the freedom to do whatever they felt was right. In the 1960s, there was a general rebellion against rules and authority. Many truly believed that ‘love is all you need’. Anything to do with law and commandments, rules and regulations, was to be done away with. We may not put it quite so crassly now, but the belief continues that as long as you do something ‘out of love’ that's what matters.

The question is, however, what is love? It means so many different things depending on who is using it. Ideally, we would find a different word than ‘love’ to use. It is clear that St Paul’s idea of what it is and what many today think it is are very different. Given how the word love is used and understood today, using the word love to describe what St Paul and the New Testament tell us to do simply confuses and even enables conduct contrary to love as the Bible understands it.

For St Paul, love isn't contrary to the Law, it's what the Law was all about and what the Law itself was pointing to. As St Paul has previously explained, the problem wasn’t with the Law but with our inability to keep it. Love represents a different way of achieving what the Law itself was seeking to achieve. If we love, we will do what the Law wanted us to do all along.

For many today, however, love rather than enabling us to fulfil the Law is about me finding fulfilment for myself and satisfying my own desires. If it feels right, do it! If challenged about whether what we are doing is right or not, often the response is to ask how something can be wrong when it feels so right?

As we have seen, St Paul closes chapter 13 by telling us to put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires. The fact that something feels right is no guarantee that it is right. Indeed, the very fact that something feels right ought in itself to serve as something of an alarm call to us. It should alert us that it may be our own selfish desire, what St Paul calls the desires of the flesh, that is telling us to do something, rather than something that the Holy Spirit is leading us to do.

St Paul writes that love does no wrong to a neighbour. If something we want to do is primarily about what is good for us rather than what is good for others, it is at the very least worth questioning and reconsidering.

Secondly, as well as an emphasis on ‘love not law’ there has been a general feeling that the Church has been too negative in the past. It was, many claim, too concerned with telling people what they should not do rather than being positive about what they should do. This sounds good in theory, but it has led to people not being sure that there is anything they shouldn’t do. What we should or should not do has now largely become a matter of individual choice with no-one’s choices being either wrong or better than anyone else’s.

St Paul is far more robust and realistic. He tells us we are to cast off the works of darkness. Having surrendered to the prevailing cultural climate, we in the Church have failed to tell people both what these works are and why they need to cast them off. The works of darkness are not only wrong in and of themselves, they hurt and damage both ourselves and others.

Let us take the works of darkness that St Paul gives in our reading this morning by way of example. Firstly, as we all know, alcohol is a real social problem. A lot of crime and violence is caused by drinking and drunkenness. As are broken families and domestic abuse. Secondly, sexual permissiveness has become the norm. But did you know that STIs are at an all-time high? How many people on any one day in the US have an STI? The answer is 1 in 5. That figure is from the Centers for Disease Control. Now you may say that’s the US. AIDS Concern, however, did a survey amongst young people in Hong Kong and discovered of those they surveyed that 17.5% of the girls had had an STI. We are very selective about the diseases we let affect our behaviour, don’t you think? Thirdly, I think we can all agree that envy and jealousy can lead people to do things that harm others, but they also harm the person who is envious and jealous. Envy and jealousy add to stress and anger, which are closely linked to several illnesses. Anger itself is a risk factor for heart disease and long-term stress harms the immune system and has been linked with several forms of cancer.

It may sound to our ears today that St Paul is being negative and opposed to anyone having a good time and enjoying themselves, the reality is that the desires of the flesh lead to destruction, disease, and death.

When St Paul tells us to put on the armour of light, he is not only telling us what we should do instead, he is telling us how we can protect ourselves from the darkness, that, after all, is what armour is for. But if you are going to put the armour on, you first need to take the clothing of darkness off, which is why St Paul closes our passage with the metaphor of putting on the Lord Jesus Christ and making no provision for the flesh.

Our goal as believers is to become Christ-like. Sometimes when people like me talk about love it sounds all very abstract and unreal. For the believer, love is not an abstract concept. Love is a person. If we want to know what love looks like, we look at Jesus and if we want to see the right way to live, we look at Jesus. Our goal in life is to become like him. We are to put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires.

May God grant that each of us puts on the Lord Jesus Christ and becomes more like him.

Amen.

Real Love

The following is a more or less verbatim transcript of the sermon for the Thirteenth 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 the link below!

Real Love

Real Love

Romans 12:9-21

St Paul begins chapter 12 of his letter to the Romans and a new section of the letter by appealing to his readers on the basis of the mercies of God. In the light of all that he has described about what God has done for us, St Paul now appeals to us on that basis. He tells us and tells his readers that we're not to be conformed to this world, but rather we are to be transformed. The way we are to be transformed is by the renewing of our minds. How we think matters. The first thing our renewed minds will think differently about, St Paul writes, is ourselves.

As we saw last week, St Paul tells us that we are not to think of ourselves more highly than we ought (Romans 12:3). St Paul will repeat this instruction in our reading this week. Well, if we are not to think of ourselves too highly, how are we to think of ourselves? St Paul writes that we are to think of ourselves according to the ‘measure of faith’ God has given us. We are each given gifts to enable us to play our part in the body of Christ. We are all different with different gifts, but we are all part of the same body, and we are to use our gifts to benefit that body.

Which brings us to this week's reading.

St Paul begins, ‘Let love be genuine’, that is, let love be real. Well, that's clear enough. Commentators, however, don't agree on the meaning of what follows. They are at something of a loss to explain the connection between the different parts of the passage that we have just read. Many see it as just a random collection of things that Paul wants us to do. They see what St Paul writes as loosely connected sayings about how we should live.

Closer examination, however, reveals that there's nothing random about what Paul writes. This is a carefully constructed passage. St Paul uses various rhetorical devices, which are clear if you hear the passage read out aloud in Greek, but which, sadly, are lost in translation. I've tried to give you a better idea of the passage or at least part of the passage on the order of service this morning.

As I have said, St Paul begins by stating his theme, let love be real, let love be genuine. And because the word love can mean different things to different people, St Paul tries to banish any sentimentality by explaining what it is that he means. We are to hate what is evil and cling to what is good. Love involves hating what is bad and discovering, discerning, what is good and holding onto it. St Paul goes on to explain that love shows itself in how we relate to one another. We are to love one another, outdo one another in showing respect and be earnest, devoted, in our concern for each other. This will lead, amongst other things, to us contributing to the needs of the saints and to welcoming strangers, being hospitable to outsiders who come to us.

In other words, for Paul, if we are to love, there is a strong emphasis on how we relate to others, both in the church and outside it. He tells us we are to bless those who persecute us, to identify with others in their need, live harmoniously together, and not have a high opinion of ourselves, but instead mix with those from less privileged backgrounds. We are to live peaceably with everyone as much as we can and under no circumstances to seek revenge. We should think about others rather than ourselves and our concern for others should extend outside the community of faith. Should we worry about what other people think of us? As far as St Paul is concerned, the answer is, ‘Yes!’ because what other people think of us is a reflection of how we think about Christ.

Well, all this seems a very tall order, doesn't it? Think about what St. Paul is asking of us. He wants us to share our gifts with each other, love one another, and live peaceably with everyone as much as it is in our power to do so. How are we to do this? It seems an impossible task. If, however, we have been following what Paul has been writing in Romans so far, we will have some understanding of how we are to do it. But St. Paul encloses a little reminder in this passage about how we are to do it.

We are to be ‘passionate in the Spirit and serve the Lord’. Your translation may have ‘be fervent in spirit and serve the Lord’. I think a better translation is ‘be passionate in the Spirit and serve the Lord’. And this will see us rejoicing in hope, persevering in suffering, and persisting in prayer. If you want a simple way to remember it, there are three words beginning with the letter P: praise, perseverance, and prayer. There is so little hope in our world, but we can rejoice in hope because Christ gives us hope. We can persevere in suffering because of the hope that Christ gives us. And the suffering we experience, rather than leading to despair, leads us to pray. To pray for the strength to bear it, but also to pray for the day when Christ will return and all suffering will cease.

In chapter 13, St Paul will discuss our obligation to the governing authorities, and he will then sum up our response to the mercies of God by writing, 'Owe no one anything except to love one another.’ (Romans 13:8). He will then encourage us to see that love, to see our response to the mercies of God, in the light of the coming day of the Lord, and he will conclude by writing, ‘Put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires’ (Romans 13:14).

St Paul locates our life here and now between two events: between the death of Christ and the return of Christ. These provide the basis and the impetus for how we are to live. We live in response to what God has done for us in Christ our Savior and in the light of Christ's return as our Judge.

What can we learn from all this? And what does it teach us about how we are to live? How are we to live in this ‘in-between time’ between these two pivotal events?

Well, firstly, St Paul makes clear that worship is about how we think and live. We understandably see worship as being about what we do on a Sunday: singing hymns, saying prayers, listening to the readings, and trying to listen to the sermon. But worship in the New Testament is so much bigger than this. It includes all this, of course. But worship in the New Testament is about the offering of ourselves to God. St Paul writes:

‘I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.’ (Romans 12:1)

Elsewhere St Paul writes:

‘So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God.’ (1 Corinthians 10:31)

We are to present our bodies, who we are, as a living sacrifice to God. This is our spiritual worship. It calls for a new way of thinking and looking at our world. We are a living sacrifice, and we are to offer all we are, all our thoughts, and all we do to God as a continuous act of worship. You have all been given this morning an order of service, a liturgy, when you came into church this morning. St Paul is telling us that our diaries, our daily schedules, are to be our order of service, our liturgy, because we worship God in the smallest to the greatest act of our day.

But secondly, this offering of ourselves will requires not only a radical rethink of our attitude to God and worship, and but also to ourselves and to others. Jesus tells his disciples in our Gospel reading that they must deny themselves (Matthew 16:24). This is completely alien to us today, isn't it? We are told constantly that we are to put ourselves first, and that we are to do this by believing in ourselves, by being kind to ourselves, and by making time for ourselves.

St Paul challenges this way of thinking. He tells his readers, and tells us, not to think of ourselves more highly than we ought to think, not to be arrogant, not to claim to be wiser than we are. Our focus is not to be on ourselves and what we want but on God and what he wants.

And so finally, what God wants is for us to take seriously the needs of others. St Paul stresses the importance of our loving one another. As a vicar, I sometimes get asked, ‘Can I live the Christian life on my own?’ No, you can't. ‘Do I have to go to church to be a Christian?’ Yes, you do. ‘Isn’t it enough to read my Bible, say my prayers, and try to live a good life?’ No, it isn't. Because living the Christian life on our own is not how God has designed it.

St Paul tells us we are all given gifts, all are given gifts, but not the same gifts, and we all need all those gifts to live as God wants. To worship God as we should means we need each other, you need the gifts that I have, and I need the gifts that you have, we need to share our gifts in the body of Christ.

The problem is we don't think we need each other, and so going to church has become for many people something of an optional extra. The reason why it was so easy for us to give up going to church over Covid was because we didn't have a serious enough view of the Church before it. We are one body in Christ and individually members of one another, St Paul writes (Romans 12:5). We are a community of faith, and that community needs to come together bodily, physically, to function in the way God intended. I certainly appreciate all the resources that there are online, and I try to avail myself of them. But it's not enough. You need me and I need you.

Responding to the mercies of God, then, really does involve a complete rethink in how we see God and worship, ourselves, and each other. St Paul closes his explanation of love and our passage this morning on the same note with which he began it.

He began by telling his readers to hate what is evil and to cling to what is good. He closes by saying, ‘Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good’.

May we overcome evil with love, love that is real, as we seek to serve the Lord passionately in the Spirit.

Amen.