2024 Sermons

God indeed calls us to life not death... Sermon by Canon Daphne Green for the Fifth Sunday after Trinity. Biblical References: Wisdom of Sol. 1.12-15; 2.23-24; 2 Corinthians 8.7-end; Mark 5. 21-end ‘Do not invite death by the error of your life, Or bring on destruction by the works on your hands. Because God did not make death, And he does not delight in the death of the living (Wisdom 1.12-13) These are timely words for us from the Wisdom of Solomon for we live in a world which often feels characterised by a death-wish both in how we relate to one another globally and in the context of how we live our individual lives. This morning I want to explore with you how God indeed calls us to life not death and in Christ, shows us the path to life away from destruction. In this passage from the book of Wisdom, we see a heart-felt contrast between the rich, vibrant potential of the world which God has created and our tendency as human beings, to wreck things through our sin. Listen to these words: ‘For he created all things so that they might exist; The generative forces of the world are wholesome, And there is no destructive poison in them, And the dominion of Hades is not on earth. For righteousness is immortal’ (Wisdom. 14-15) These words take us back to the very act of God’s creation of the world as described in the first chapter of Genesis when ‘God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good’ (Genesis 1.31). Yet how comprehensively have we unleashed destructive forces in this world which is intrinsically good. Not only that, but we have also made it worse by succumbing, certainly in the West, to a dour fatalism that there is very little we can do to change our ways. Any of you familiar with the BBC sit-com ‘Dad’s Army’ about the Home Guard in the UK during the Second World War, will remember the character James Frazer, a platoon member and undertaker, who catchphrase was – “We’re doomed!”.  We too, despite our Christian faith, tend to go round like rabbits blinded by the headlights, expressing the fear that we too “are doomed”. And in many ways, there are sound grounds for that view because of what we have done and also failed to do in our public and personal lives. Let’s start with the public sphere. We know that we have wreaked enormous environmental damage on the planet through the way we live our lives.  This has resulted in dangerous global warming, loss of biodiversity, a clogging and pollution by plastics of our precious oceans and rivers and some changes which irreversible. Politically, we are living in a world torn apart in many, many countries by wars and civil wars. The unthinkable has now become the thinkable as we now also have war in Europe after the many decades of peace following the Second World War. The number and spending on nuclear weapons has proliferated despite attempts for disarmament. And in many cases, we have lost the appetite, or perhaps lost the way to create peace, and so bloody conflicts fester and continue. We also are now in a context in which the uniqueness and preciousness of human life is under threat.  Aidan Liddle talking at a recent Sunday service here spoke to AI – the tremendous potential which it offers us, for example in medical interventions, but the risks to human employment, creativity and dignity. And in the West, this has compounded a trend which had started far earlier and it is what I would describe as the commodification of human beings. As we live in an increasingly affluent society in the West, so too, we have tended to categorise and judge people as to how useful they are economically.  This has meant that those who are older and no longer working as well as those with little or work are seen as less useful, less important and in some cases, a drain on limited resources.   With this, has come a dangerous diminishment of the hallowing of each human being. In our own lives too, we can see a similar dynamic at work of choices we are making which are fundamentally destructive. Often we deny that this is the case and also fail to acknowledge that there is a link between the choices we make, however small they may be, and their impact on our communities and the lives of others. Yet there is a direct link and many of our choices are leading to death rather than life. Thus our desire to have more and consume more, regardless of what we already have, is having a terrible impact on the life of our planet as we squander precious resource. Our desire to have things straight away has put pressure both of people and resources.  And our reluctance often to pay a fair wage or stand up for those we know are exploited condemns others to a life where they can barely subsist, let alone flourish.    ‘Do not invite death by the error of your life, Or bring destruction by the works of your hands’ Where, then, does the path to life lie?  How do we bring our Christian faith to show that God calls us to life not death? I believe that our Gospel reading of today with Jesus’s encounters with the woman with haemorrhages and Jairus’ daughter, points us on the way that leads from death to life. Both encounters bring us face to face with the reality of both physical and spiritual death and how they are transformed by the one who is the author of life itself, Jesus. It is, I think, no accident that Mark has placed these two incidents together, with the story of the raising of Jairus’ daughter, sandwiching that of the woman who seeks healing from Jesus.    For both deal not only with life and death but also the ways in which the taboos, rules and judgements we make as a society, can entrap and diminish others and rebound on us too. The story starts with Jairus, the leader of the synagogue in the small town of Capernaum. His daughter is dying & suddenly, whatever his reservations may have been about Jesus, it is her life and that only which matters at this moment.  We too share this experience in the face of disaster or at the deathbed of a loved one.  The barriers come down as in a moment of startling clarity, we see what really matters – the need to show love, to reconcile, to forgive and be forgiven. Jesus agrees, without hesitating to come and help him and yet on the way to his home, Jesus is touched by the woman in the crowd. We can imagine Jairus longing for Jesus to finish with her and hasten to his house before it is too late. But Jesus asks who has touched him and, knowing that she cannot keep hidden any longer, the woman forward trembling proclaiming what God has done for her. Under the Jewish ritual rules, she would have been regarded as ritually unclean for all the period she had bled – twelve, long years. As we think of this woman and what life must have been like for her, cut off from friends and family, reduced to poverty and isolation, let’s think for a moment about those who the outsiders in our community today.  Those we do not welcome in to our churches and homes because they seem to us as different and perhaps difficult. However, as she comes forward, confesses what has happened – instead of facing condemnation by Jesus for ritually polluting him or rejection, he affirms her – ‘Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace and be healed of your disease’. She is set free with dignity, like the woman at the well and Mary Magdalene, to witness to the power of life in Jesus and the potential of communities to overcome fears and taboos and instead make those who are suffering welcome and accepted. As Jesus and Jairus at last resume their way to Jairus house, a messenger comes to him with the news he had dreaded to hear.  ‘Your daughter is dead.  Why trouble the teacher any further?” Yet Jesus is unperturbed, reassuring Jairus with the words, “Do not fear, only believe”.  As he brings the young girl to life, so he reveals himself as the Lord of life itself. This is the life on which our Christian faith is rooted and why it matters so much that we bear witness to this hope. For as Christians, baptised in to the family of Christ and made in the image of God, our calling is to proclaim this truth - that Christ is the source of life; that life in Christ is stronger that death and that God calls us into the fullness of that life, both during our time on earth and in His kingdom. Finally, St Paul in his 2nd Letter to the Corinthians today, indicates how we too may break ourselves, with God’s grace, from the spiritual death of selfishly focusing on ourselves, to engage instead with the source of life itself.  We do this is through consciously turning away from focus on ourselves, to give to God and to others. In St Paul’s case, he was seeking to persuade the fractious and selfish Christian community in Corinth to offer money generously to help the early Christian communities in Jerusalem. Many in Jerusalem lived on the breadline, often unable to find work and barely subsisting. Paul tells the Corinthians of the wonderful example of the Christian community in Philippi who, although they are far poorer, have given generously. By turning the attention of the Corinthians outwards to those in need, he helped them to find a life-giving way forward.  This is rooted on Christ who offered everything, including his own life, so that they, we and the generations who follow us may have life in all its fullness. Jesus said, “I came that you might have life and have it in all its fullness” (John 10.10). May we learn to embody this truth and by so doing, help others to find in Christ, the way that leads to life. Amen

If you just had more faith …… Sermon by Canon Daphne Green for the Fourth Sunday after Trinity Biblical References: Texts: Job 38.1-11; Psalm 107.1-3, 23-32; 2 Corinthians 6.1-13; Mark 4.35-end

Sow the seed, and live as lamps... Sermon by Revd Glen Ruffle for the Third Sunday after Trinity Biblical Reference: Mark 4:26-34

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