... And with all the company of Heaven

Today, 29 September, is the feast of St Michael and All Angels. Michaelmas, they used to call it, a term which still survives in Michaelmas daisies, which are in bloom at this time of year. It is a Quarter Day, when, back in the day, rents had to be paid, and rural employment contracts ran from one Michaelmas to the next, so you would have Michaelmas fairs in various towns which were hiring fairs – people whose jobs hadn’t been renewed, for whatever reason, would stand in lines with some token showing what their trade was – a dairyman, for instance, would probably have a piece of straw – so farmers in need of labourers could come and hire them.

You haven’t to pick blackberries after today, either – the old superstition is that the devil comes and pees on them or spits on them or something, and they are no longer worth eating. Basically, it is the end of summer and the start of autumn.

But who were St Michael and all the angels? Do angels even matter? If so, why do they matter to us? And what, if anything, does this festival mean to us today?

What are angels, anyway? They appear to be a different kind of creation, not human at all. I know we talk casually about someone “growing their wings” when they die, particularly of children, but in fact that’s probably not what happens. Our children will, I’m sure, be with God in heaven in some way, but probably not as angels!

There seem to be several different kinds of angels – Michael is described as an archangel, but he is the only one. Although tradition says Raphael, Gabriel and Uriel are also archangels, the Bible doesn’t describe them as such. But there are also seraphim – they are the ones with six wings that Isaiah saw, you may remember: two wings to cover their heads, two to cover their feet, or more probably their private parts, since “feet” is often a euphemism for that in the Bible, and two to fly with. And there are cherubim – not the chubby little baby angels of popular culture, which are more properly called putti, but very grand beings indeed. Two of them were stationed outside the Garden of Eden, with a flaming sword, to stop Adam and Eve going back in there after the Fall. And there were golden cherubim represented on the Ark of the Covenant, and images of them woven into the curtains of the Ark of the Covenant. And God, apparently, spoke to Moses from between the cherubim. And when the Temple was built, the Ark was placed between two great statues of cherubim, wooden statues overlaid with gold.

It’s amazing how often angels of various kinds do appear in the Bible. I did an on-line search, and they seem to be mentioned in practically every book! There are only two mentions of an Archangel, in one instance explicitly Michael, but pages and pages of angels, cherubim and seraphim. So they obviously do matter.

But what do they do? What’s the point of them? Certainly Michael is depicted as a warrior prince, fighting and defeating the evil one. And there is a book in the Apocrypha called the book of Tobit – if you have access to an Apocrypha, either a dead-tree version or on-line, have a read of it sometime. It’s actually a good story that hangs together. Tobit is a pious old man who goes blind when a bird poos on his eyes when he is asleep in the sun; his wife Anna is a bit of a nag; Sarah is possessed by a demon who kills any man she marries before he’s crossed the bedroom door – and she’s been married seven times so far, but is still a virgin. Tobit sends his son Tobias to collect some money he left with a relative some years earlier, and God sends the angel Raphael to accompany Tobias, posing as his cousin Azariah. Raphael helps Tobias defeat the demon and marry Sarah, and then goes and gets the money for him while Tobias and Sarah are on their honeymoon, and then when they get back he heals Tobit’s sight. And then he reveals who he is and departs, reminding them always to praise God.

Mostly, though, angels seem to be God’s messengers. In the Old Testament they tell Abram and Sarai that they are to have a child, much to their amusement; an angel fights with Jacob at Bethel; angels go before the Children of Israel to defeat their enemies and so on and so forth. Apparently there are 290 references to angels in the Bible, not counting cherubim and seraphim. Of these, 108 references are in the Old Testament and/or the Apocrypha, and 182 in the New Testament. Obviously we know about the role of the angels in the Nativity story – how the angel appears first to Zechariah in the Temple to announce John’s birth, then to Mary to tell her she will bear the Messiah, if she is willing, then to Joseph to tell him to marry Mary anyway, and the various disclosures to the magi and the shepherds and so on. And, of course, angels minister to Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, and in some versions of the Resurrection it is an angel who tells the women that Jesus has risen.

And there is that wonderful story in Acts where Peter is in prison and an angel comes and sets him free, and he thinks he’s dreaming, and when he realises he isn’t, he goes to the safe house where they are all praying for him, and the maid who answers the door is so startled that she leaves him standing there, and they have trouble believing that it’s really him! An angel appears to Cornelius in a vision, and to Philip to take him to the Ethiopian treasury official who wanted to know about Jesus.

Angels also seem to have guard duty – we are told that when the Lord returns, he will come “with his angels”, like an escort, or guard of honour. And they also fight – Jesus comments on the Cross that he could ask the Father who would send twelve legions of angels to rescue him, if necessary, but he knows that’s not part of the plan.

And so it goes on. I honestly thought, when I started to think about this sermon, that there weren’t many references to angels in the Bible, and it was mostly extra-biblical tradition, but I was wrong! Of course, there is a lot of tradition around angels. One comes, I think, from the passage where Jesus says about children: “‘See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven.” I think it’s that passage that has given rise to the idea of guardian angels, one per person, but I’m not sure whether that is actually what happens.

But why does it matter? Are angels important to us? Why should we bother with St Michael and his angels?

I think, by and large, angels are one of the things we don’t necessarily think about most of the time. They are not, for most of us, something that impinges on our daily walk with God, on our daily journey with Christ. But they are, nevertheless, there in the background. We are told that they rejoice when a sinner repents, when someone says “Yes” to Jesus, perhaps for the first time, perhaps for the hundredth. The angels rejoice. They rejoice when you, or when I, consciously decide, yet again, to be God’s person, to walk in God’s way. They rejoice even more when someone who had never made that decision makes it for the first time.

The writer of the letter to the Hebrews reminds us not to “forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.” Although angels, apparently, don’t actually eat or drink, but they can make it look as though they are doing so.

Angels lead us in our struggle against the powers of darkness. You remember how St Paul tells us to put on the whole armour of God? “Our struggle,” he reminds us, “is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” Angels are the ones in the front line of the battle, and bear the brunt of the struggle.

We are not to worship angels. It’s made pretty clear that they, too, are created beings who worship their Creator. In fact, we sometimes invoke their aid in our hymns, as in some of the ones I’ve chosen for today. Angels can, perhaps, help us in our worship. And, if you remember, in the great prayer of thanksgiving, in our Communion service, we say “Therefore, with angels and archangels, and all the company of heaven, we proclaim your great and glorious name, forever praising you, and saying,” and go on into “Holy, holy, holy.”

And on that note, let’s do just that, and sing together….

Pride and Prejudice

Our Old Testament reading this morning came from a book you may never have heard of – the book of Sirach, also known as Ecclesiasticus, the book of the Church. It didn’t make the cut into the Protestant Old Testament, although Catholics see it as canonical, but for us it is part of that collection of books we call the Apocrypha, which we are told to study “for example of life and instruction of manners; but yet not apply them to establish any doctrine.” But once in awhile the Lectionary throws up a reading from the Apocrypha as an alternative, and I think, particularly where it resonates with the Gospel reading, it’s no bad thing to have a look at it.

Anyway, this book was written, or possibly compiled, by someone known as Joshua Ben Sirach, who was a Jewish scribe who had lived in Jerusalem, and who may have been living in Alexandria when he compiled the work between about 180-175 BCE. We know who wrote it because, uniquely among the Old Testament and Apocryphal writers, he signs his work. And there is a prologue to the Greek version, written by his grandson in 130 BCE who translated it from the original Hebrew! There are far more Greek manuscripts of it available than there are Hebrew ones, although a large portion of the Hebrew version was found among the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Anyway, that’s all very interesting, but what was he about? Basically, it was a collection of ethical teachings, rather like the book of Proverbs. I must admit I’ve not read all the book, although I have skimmed the first few chapters, and he writes a great deal about Wisdom, pretty much equating her with God Himself, as the apocryphal writers are apt to do. And a great deal of it, as in the passage we just heard read, is to do with pride.

Pride, we are told, begins when a person abandons the Lord. Pride begins when a person abandons the Lord. Pride, says ben Sirach, is like a fountain pouring out sin, and whoever persists in it will be full of wickedness. A fountain pouring out sin. Strong stuff, no?

The thing is, though, he’s right. Pride is the worst of sins – if sin can be said to have any “worst”, because it is the one that totally turns us away from God. C S Lewis had a lot to say about it in his book, Mere Christianity, and I propose to quote from it, because he says it better than I could: “According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride.  Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind.”

Lewis goes on in this vein for some time, saying that Pride is essentially competitive – I’m not too sure he’s right there – and then we come to the heart of it:

“But pride always means enmity – it is enmity. And not only enmity between human beings, but enmity to God.

“In God”, says Lewis, “you come up against something which is in every respect immeasurably superior to yourself. Unless you know God as that – and, therefore, know yourself as nothing in comparison – you do not know God at all. As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.”

Of course, Lewis points out, it’s not pride to be pleased when someone pays you a sincere compliment – as long, that is, as the compliment doesn’t lead you to believe you’re cleverer or prettier or a finer person! As long as you delight in the praise, and don’t start thinking you must be a grand person to have merited it. And he also points out that it’s fine to be proud of your school or your father or your children as long as you don’t start thinking you must be a grand person to have been to such a school, or had such parents or children. The “Aren’t I clever, knowing a famous person” syndrome is alive and well today!

And obviously Pride, as in the carnival of that name, is fine, too – again, as long as you don’t think yourself rather superior for being part of it, or, indeed, rather broad-minded for enjoying it even if you aren’t gay!

Jesus, of course, knows all about it. In our Gospel reading, we saw him and his disciples – dare I say being amused by the people who obviously thought they deserved the best place at table, and being asked to move down…. As Jesus said, it makes far more sense to go down to the bottom, less honoured, places at the table and be asked to move up than to try to grab a place at the high table and be told in no uncertain terms you don’t belong there! Although I can see, as I’m sure you can, a danger lurking there whereby you rather ostentatiously go to the lowest place and look, expectantly, for the host coming to move you up a bit! And, indeed, it’s all too easy to see how, if you were to give a dinner for those who couldn’t return it, you could feel rather good about yourself in the wrong way: “What a good person I am to help out at Robes”…..

As I said, Jesus knew all about it. Look at the story he told of the Pharisee and the tax-collector who went to pray at the same time, and the Pharisee was all, “Oh God, I thank you I am not like this tax collector; I tithe and I fast and I’m generally a Most Superior Person, thank you very much.” But Jesus said it was the tax collector, who knew himself to be a sinner, who went away right with God on that occasion.

I heard a story once of a Sunday school teacher who was discussing this parable with her class, and at the end, she said “Now, let us thank God that we are not like this Pharisee”. Hmm – all well and good, until the moment I found myself thanking God that I was not like that Sunday School teacher!

No, pride and God are basically incompatible. Or rather the wrong sort of pride is. It can be very insidious – we go, imperceptibly, from being delighted that we have become God’s person, that we have been cleansed, forgiven and made whole, we go from that into thinking that we must be a pretty good person, really, to have allowed God into our lives.

Or, worse, we take this sort of thing to heart and, knowing that we are apt to be a bit proud on occasions, we think we must be truly terrible people, and quite beyond redemption. Which is another sort of pride, isn’t it – pride in one’s own sinfulness!

You know, this sermon feels very thou-shalt-nottish, which is not at all where I want to leave it. Pride is a very great sin, it is the sin that brings us into total opposition to God. Ben Sirach warns us, that whoever persists in pride will be full of wickedness. That is why, he tells us, the Lord brought terrible punishments on some people and completely destroyed them. And not only people, he says, but nations and empires, too. And if I were to leave it there, we would all be in a very sad case.

But there is hope. After all, we aren’t supposed to try to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps. We aren’t supposed to strain and strive and continually fail and hate ourselves for so doing. No, my friends, not that. Never that.

If we try to overcome our faults in our own strength, we will fail. And we will become proud of ourselves for trying – I try far harder than he does, of course. I’m sure God will reward me better than him.

No, that’s not the answer. And continuing in our pride isn’t the answer, either. Let’s face it, we’re all guilty of feeling proud, some of the time. But if we continue, we will cut ourselves off from God, and perhaps end up worshipping what we think is God, but is in fact a god, made in our own image, who thinks we’re really rather brilliant!

God knows what we’re like. God knows our struggles, our failures, our weaknesses, our tendency to think we’re rather good for allowing Him to heal us…. And God goes on loving us and forgiving us and healing us. No matter how often we take our eyes off him to look at ourselves, or to look down on our neighbours, as soon as ever we realise what we’re doing, as soon as ever we turn back to God with an, “Oh, sorry!” or “Oops!” then God is there, forgiving us, healing us, helping us to grow into the person we were designed to be. “The Creator,” says ben Sirach, “never intended for human beings to be arrogant and violent.” And that being so, the Creator will help us become humble and peacable folk, the peacemakers who Jesus told us were to be given the kingdom of Heaven. Amen.

Great Expectations

Once upon a time, there was a young man called Jeremiah.

He was from quite a good family –

his father was a priest, although not a high priest,

and owned a fair bit of land not far from Jerusalem.

So Jeremiah grew up in a fair amount of comfort,

loved and nurtured by his family.

Perhaps he had planned to be a priest himself when he grew up.

But then one day, in about 626 BC, God came to him, and said:

"Jeremiah, I am your Creator, and before you were born, I chose you to speak for me to the nations."

Jeremiah is shattered!

“Lord God, you’re making a big mistake!

I am a lousy public speaker and I’m too young for anybody to take me seriously.”

But God insists:

“Don’t put yourself down because of your age.

Just go to whoever I send you to, and say whatever I tell you to say.

Don’t let yourself feel intimidated by anyone, because I’ll be there as back up for you.

You’ll be okay;

take my word for it.”

And Jeremiah is touched by God, and enabled to speak God’s word.

Some six hundred years later, Jesus is teaching in the synagogue one Sabbath day, as he often did.

There was a woman in the congregation who was twisted and deformed –

perhaps she had scoliosis or perhaps it was an arthritic condition.

Certainly it was long-standing.

We are told she had been like this for eighteen years.

And Jesus suddenly notices her, and heals her.

She is able to stand fully upright again, and starts praising God.

Well, that didn’t please the leader of the synagogue.

Healing people like that on the Sabbath –

wasn’t that dangerously close to work?

“Oi,” he goes, “Stop healing people on the Sabbath!

Now then you lot, if any of you want healed,

you come on any of the other six days of the week;

I don’t want any Sabbath-breaking going on here!”

“Oh come on, mate,” says Jesus.

“I saw you taking your donkey down to the drinking-trough earlier this morning, Sabbath day or no Sabbath day.

If it’s all right for you to take your donkey to have a drink on the Sabbath,

it’s all right for me to heal this good lady,

whom Satan had bound for eighteen whole years!”

The leader of the synagogue had nothing to say to this, but the crowd really cheered.

---oo0oo---

I think it’s about expectations, isn’t it?

God expected Jeremiah to proclaim His word to the nations.

Jesus expected that the woman would be healed,

Sabbath day or no Sabbath day.

The ruler of the synagogue expected Jesus to keep the Sabbath.

And Jeremiah and the woman?

I don’t think they expected anything at all!

What does God expect from us?

What do we expect from God’s people?

And what do we expect from God?

Firstly, then, what does God expect from us?

Jeremiah was expected to go and proclaim God’s word.

He had been specifically called for this purpose,

and although he was horrified when the call came, and tried to get out of it,

he ultimately accepted it, and trusted in God’s promise that

“Attack you they will, overcome you they can’t”;

a promise that was fulfilled many times over in the Biblical narrative.

I wonder what God is expecting of you?

I know I am expected to preach the Gospel.

Like Jeremiah, I was very young when I was called –

about fifteen.

Unlike him, I wasn’t able to answer that call for many years for reasons that I won’t go into now,

but suffice it to say that for about the past thirty years I have known that this is what God has wanted me to do.

This is what God expects of me.

I am so grateful, every time I preach,

that all I am expected to do is to provide the words;

God does the rest!

So what does he expect of you?

Some of you will know, definitely, what God expects;

you are a steward,

or a local preacher,

or a musician.

Or, like my daughter, you’re called to children’s ministry.

For others, it’s less clear cut.

You have a job, perhaps, or are bringing up a family.

Or perhaps that is all behind you now, and you are retired.

But whatever it is you do, you are expected to be Christ’s ambassador.

You are a witness to him in everything you say and do.

Now, before you start squirming uncomfortably,

and thinking “Oh dear, I’m not a very good one, am I?”,

don’t forget that Jesus said that when the Holy Spirit came,

we would be his witnesses throughout the known world.

Not that we should be,

or ought to be,

but that we would be.

We are.

You are an ambassador for Christ,

and whether you like it or not,

whether you know it or not,

this is what you are, through the power of the Holy Spirit who dwells within you.

When God calls you to do something,

whether it is some well-defined job like cleaning the church,

or running a prayer group,

or speaking forth his word,

or simply praying quietly at home,

or whether you’re called to be God’s person where you work, or where you live, God will enable you to do it, just as he enabled Jeremiah.

---oo0oo---

And so to my second question for this morning:

What do you expect of God’s people?

When someone says he or she is a Christian,

what do you reckon they’re going to be like?

The leader of the synagogue was confounded when Jesus didn’t conform to his expectation of what a good Jewish man did or didn’t do on the Sabbath.

Healing people?

Seriously?

No, no, that counted as work!

And sometimes we are confounded when we come across Christians whose standards of acceptable behaviour might differ from ours.

Could they possibly be Christians at all?

Do real Christians behave like that?

Some churches have felt so strongly about some of these issues that they have even split up,

causing enormous hurt and upset in their various denominations.

Yet who are we to judge another’s behaviour?

In fact, you might remember that St Paul suggests

that if your brother is offended by something you do or don’t do,

you should do it, or not do it, as the case may be,

so as not to upset them, or, worse,

to let them think it’s all right for them to do it,

when it might not be at all all right,

and might lead them away from God.

We need to be sensitive to one another,

and to refrain from judging one another.

We probably have our rules that we live by,

but we don’t have the right to force those rules on to other people,

not even on to other Christians.

I suppose the thing is, we shouldn’t really expect other Christians to be like us!

Many, of course, will be –

that’s why you go to this church, here,

because you find people you are comfortable with,

people whose vision of what God’s people are like resonates with yours.

But there will be others whose views you are less comfortable with;

who perhaps strike you as rather puritanical, or rather lax.

Of course, when we know someone, we know what they are like,

whether they are reliable,

whether you can trust them.

And we accept them, normally, for who they are.

Just as God does with us.

But we mustn’t be judgemental.

Maybe they hold views that we find strange, or even unpleasant.

Maybe they feel free to behave in ways we’ve been taught that Christians don’t do,

or ways that we feel would be sinful for us.

But it is not for us to judge.

Our Lord points out, in that collection of His teachings known as the Sermon on the Mount,

that we very often have socking great logs in our own eyes,

so how can we see clearly to remove the speck in someone else’s?

In other words, keep your eyes on what’s wrong with you,

not on what’s wrong with other people!

See to it that you obey your rules, and leave other people to obey theirs.

That’s something, I think, that the leader of the synagogue would have been wise to keep in mind,

rather than criticising Jesus for healing someone on the Sabbath,

to say nothing of criticising the congregation for coming to be healed that day.

He had rules he needed to keep,

and he needed other people to keep them, too.

But Jesus had other ideas.

For him, healing someone on the Sabbath was as normal and as natural as making sure your livestock were fed, or your cow was milked.

---oo0oo---

So, then, God is free to expect anything from us;

we should not, though, expect other Christians to be just like us.

But what do we expect from God?

Jeremiah didn’t expect anything from God.

When told that he was to proclaim God’s word, his first reaction was to panic:

“I can’t possibly! I’m a lousy public speaker and much too young!”

But God gave him the gifts he needed to fulfil his task,

and sometimes Jeremiah had to actively act out God’s word, not just speak it!

The woman who was all twisted and bent over didn’t expect anything from God, either.

She presumably went to the synagogue each week to worship,

not really expecting anything to happen.

But that particular Sabbath day, Jesus was there –

and that made all the difference.

After eighteen years she was finally free of her illness,

able to stand up straight,

able to walk normally and talk to people face to face once more.

What did you expect from God this morning?

Let’s be honest, we come to church week after week,

and on most Sundays nothing much happens!

We worship God, we spend some time with our friends,

and then we go home again.

And that’s okay.

But some weeks are different, aren’t they?

Not often, but just sometimes we come away from Church

knowing that God was there, and present, and real.

I wonder why these occasions are so rare?

Partly, of course, because mountain-top experiences like that are rare,

that’s why we remember them.

There’s an old story of two men coming out of Church one Sunday morning when the preacher had been rather more boring even than usual.

The first man said, “Honestly, what’s the point?

I’ve been going to Church more or less every Sunday for the past 30 years,

and I must have heard hundreds of sermons,

yet I hardly remember any of them!”

To which the second man replied, “Hmm, well;

I’ve been married for 30 years and my wife has cooked me a meal more or less every night,

and I don’t really remember many of them, either.

But where would I be without them?”

Church, mostly, is about providing daily bread for daily needs.

We don’t expect to see miracles each Sunday,

or healings such as took place in the synagogue that day.

But what do we expect when we come to Church?

Do we expect to meet God in some way?

What do we expect from God?

We know that our sins have been forgiven, right?

And that God is gradually making us into the people he designed us to be.

But do we expect more?

Should we expect more?

Neither Jeremiah nor the woman in the synagogue expected anything from God –

yet God gave, bountifully, to both of them in very different ways.

---oo0oo---

Who was it who said “Expect great things from God.

Attempt great things for God”?

I can’t remember right now,

but it’s really what I want to leave with you this morning.

What does God expect from you?

Are you trying not to hear something you think God might be trying to say?

What do you expect from other Christians?

Are you requiring a higher standard from them than from yourself?

And what are you expecting God to do for you today?

Amen.

You have to go there to be there!

Recording didn't work - not sure why - which is a great pity as I added in some stuff about migrants.

Have you been on holiday yet?

We’re off again in a few weeks, when the schools go back.

I love our trips in the motor home, but one thing I don’t love is the long, dreary drives across Belgium to get to where we’re going in Germany!

It is always a long, dreary day –

Robert drives,

I knit or doze,

we listen to podcasts and music

and, of course, stop every few hours.

But oh, how I wish, sometimes, that we could get there without the long journey!

I want to be there without going there!

I don’t quite go “Are we nearly there?” like a small child,

but I’m very tempted….

I probably would, if our Satnav didn’t tell us how far there was, and how long it would probably take.

And I am sure that anybody who has travelled with children longs and longs for the journey to be over,

whether it’s by car, train or aeroplane.

You long to reach the resort, and if you could,

would get there without having to go there.

It’s the same if we’re learning a new skill, or a new subject at school.

We don’t start off being brilliant at it.

Our first attempts to speak a foreign language sound like baby talk!

Our first knitted strip is going to be uneven and full of holes.

We have to learn and study and practice, and in the end we get good at it.

And it’s the same with faith, which is what our Bible readings this morning are all about.

You don’t start off being a person of terrific faith –

you have to learn how.

We all hope to be brilliant Christians, but it takes time, and it takes practice.

You can’t be there without going there!

I have often said that these Sundays in Ordinary Time are when we discover whether what we think we believe actually matches up to what we really do believe.

And our readings this morning are the absolute epitome of that.

All our readings emphasize faith, but slightly different aspects of it.

Isaiah, for instance, is talking about repentance:

“What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices?”
   says the Lord;
“I have had enough of burnt-offerings of rams
   and the fat of fed beasts;
I do not delight in the blood of bulls,
   or of lambs, or of goats.”

And then;

“When you stretch out your hands,
   I will hide my eyes from you;
even though you make many prayers,
   I will not listen;
   your hands are full of blood.”

In Isaiah's day his day, people worshipped other gods,

gods who didn't actually require you to do more than perform the sacrifices and rituals.

But for God, our God, this was not enough.

God demanded –

and still does demand –

a lot more than that:

“Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean;
   remove the evil of your doings
   from before my eyes;
cease to do evil,
learn to do good;
seek justice,
   rescue the oppressed,
defend the orphan,
   plead for the widow.”

You can't just go on as you were and then come to the temple to do your sacrifices.

This will not work.

Remember Psalm 51;

“The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit;

a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.”

We need a complete change of heart, to turn right round and go God's way, not ours.

This is called repentance, of course –

not so much about being sorry, although that can be part of it,

but about a complete change of outlook.

And then, according to Isaiah:

“Come now, let us argue it out,”
   says the Lord:
“though your sins are like scarlet,
   they shall be like snow;
though they are red like crimson,
   they shall become like wool.
If you are willing and obedient,
   you shall eat the good of the land;
but if you refuse and rebel,
   you shall be devoured by the sword;
   for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

It is about an attitude of the heart.

The letter to the Hebrews shows us how this faith works out in practice;

we are reminded that

“Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

Abraham, we are told, was promised a wonderful inheritance.

God promised to make his descendants, quite literally, more numerous than the grains of sand on the seashore.

He was going to be given a wonderful land for them to live in.

Now, at this stage, Abraham was living very comfortably thank you, in a very civilised city called Ur,

and although he didn't have any children, he was happy and settled.

But God told Abraham that if he wanted to see this promise fulfilled he had to get up,

to leave his comfortable life,

and to move on out into the unknown,

just trusting God.

And Abraham did just exactly that.

And, eventually, Isaac was born to carry on the family.

And then Isaac’s son, Jacob.

And we are told that, although none of them actually saw the Promised Land, and although the promise was not fulfilled in their lifetimes,

they never stopped believing that one day, one day, it would be.

Their whole lives were informed by their belief that God was in control.

This sort of faith is the kind we'd all like to have, wouldn't we?

Wouldn't we?

Hmmm, I wonder.

In our Gospel reading, Jesus says, “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”

That's great, isn't it?

“It is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”

Well, it would be great, but then he says, “Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys.

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

That's the bit we don't like so well, do we?

Like Abraham, we are very-nicely-thank-you in Ur,

comfortably settled in this world,

and we don't want to give it all up to go chasing after something which might or might not be real.

This is the difficult bit, the bit where what we say we believe comes up against what we really do believe.

It's like I was saying earlier, we would like to be there –

wherever “there” is –

without the hassle of actually going there!

We want to have all the privileges and joys of being Christians without actually having to do anything.

Of course, in one of the many great paradoxes of Christianity,

we don't have to do anything!

We can do nothing to save ourselves!

It is God who does all that is necessary for our salvation.

But if we are to be people of faith, if we are to be of any use to God.

And faith does, or should, prompt us to action.

First of all, then, our faith should prompt us to repent.

To turn away from sin and turn to God with all our hearts.

It's not just a once-and-for-all thing;

it's a matter of daily repentance, daily choosing to be God's person.

And as we do that, our faith grows and develops and strengthens to the point where, if we are called to do so,

we can leave our comfort zone and try great things for God.

As Abraham did, and as Jesus calls us to do.

We aren't all called to sell our possessions and give what we have to the poor –

although a little more equity in the way this world's goods are handed out wouldn't be a bad thing;

look how 25% of the world consumes 75% of its production,

or whatever the figures actually are –

I may be being generous on that one.

We are all called to work for justice in our communities,

whether that is a matter of writing to our MPs if something is clearly wrong,

or getting involved in a more hands-on way.

Some people –

maybe some of you, even –

are or have been called to leave your home countries and work in a foreign land to be God's person there,

whether as a professional missionary, as it were,

or just where you are working.

Others are asked to stay put, but to be God's person exactly where they are –

at school,

college,

work,

home,

at the shops,

on the bus,

in a traffic jam,

on social media...

everywhere!

Being God's person isn't something that happens in church on Sundays and is put aside the rest of the week.

It isn't easy. It's the every day, every moment hard slog.

The times when we wish we could skip over all this,

and be the wonderful faith-filled Christian we hope to be one day without the hard work of getting there!

Sadly, it doesn't work like that.

We don't have to do all the hard work in our own strength, of course;

God the Holy Spirit is there to help us, and remind us, and change us, and grow us as we gradually become more and more the people God designed us to be.

But God doesn't push in where He's not wanted.

If we are truly serious about being God's person, then we need to be being that every day.

Each day we need to commit to God, whether explicitly or implicitly.

Jesus reminds us that this world isn't designed to be permanent.

One day it will come to an end, either for each of us individually,

or perhaps in some great second coming.

But whichever way, it will end for us one day,

and not all of us get notice to quit.

We need to be ready and alert, busy with what we have been given to do, but ready to let go and turn to Jesus whenever he calls us.

None of this is easy.

Being a Christian isn't easy.

Becoming a Christian is easy,

because God longs and longs for us to turn to Him.

But being one isn't.

Allowing God to change us,

to pull us out of our comfort zone,

to travel with Him along that narrow way –

it's not easy.

But it is oh, so very worthwhile!

Amen.