ruminations

16th Sunday after Trinity, 2026. Year A.

Jonah 3:10–4:11, Philippians 1:21–30, Matthew 20:1–16

Jesus’ parable of the labourers in the vineyard may seem like a simple message for us.  Maybe it is. 

All of us, no matter our efforts or labours are equally loved, treasured and valued by God.

Those who labour for just an hour, will receive the same wage as those who have worked all day.

The wages of God, of course are salvation – eternal life in God’s kingdom, and eternity in the joy of the presence of the Lord.

And when we think of it like that, of course, there can only be one wage.  There cannot be part shares in the kingdom.  You cannot experience part of eternal life, or part of the joy of the presence of God.  Half of eternity is still eternity.  Half of infinite love is still infinite love.  It is an all or nothing experience.

That is why God’s love for us is so complete.  There is nothing that you can do that will make God love you any less and nothing that you can do that will make God love you any more.

That is because God’s love is so powerful that it is indivisible.  Even the tiniest bit of it is beyond our comprehension of what love is.

If God loves us, and he does love us – each and every one of us, then he can only love us completely and utterly; he can only love us more than we can possibly imagine.

And yet, with this parable, Jesus also touches upon something very fundamental in our human nature.

The parable of the labourers in the vineyard offends out natural sense of justice.  There is something in us that rebels at the idea that those who exert more effort are not rewarded more.

Why bother, it is easy to say.  If the salary is the same no matter how much we work, if God loves us equally no matter what we do, why not slack off, muck around, don’t take things seriously.  It’s OK to that – Jesus says so.

I hope it won’t come as a surprise if I say that I don’t think that is what Jesus is trying to say in this parable.

That instinct for fairness is not a bad issue.  Jesus doesn’t criticise it in this parable.  In fact Jesus is recognising it and using it in this parable.  It doesn’t work if we don’t have a sense of fair play.  But Jesus then subverts it to tell us something of the nature of God, and how it differs from our nature.

The owner is clear that the wage agreed is a fair wage for the full day’s work – there is no exploitation taking place here.  But he is also making it clear that it is within his gift to decide how much he wants to pay the others.  He is not taking anything away from the people who have worked all day.  They are getting the reward they are promised, which is eternal life.  But the owner, God, is choosing from his own riches to give more to people who may not deserve it, or have earned it, because God’s riches, his love, is infinite, and cannot be earned – it can only be gifted freely by God.  We cannot compel God to love us, but we do not need to, because he is generous and faithful.

In a world of zero-hours contracts, workplace efficiency and AI job takeover, and billionaires spending millions to try and avoid paying taxes, Jesus not just talking about the nature of God though.  He is reminding us that there can be another way to deal with our fellow people, especially when there are differences of wealth and power.  He is reminding us that cutting costs especially the wages of the poor to maximise profits that so often go to those who have more money than they can ever spend, is the not the only way to structure society.  It is not the way that God structures his society.

The parable, like all parables, needs to read it in its context as well – it comes immediately after the dialogue with the rich young man who asks what he must do to inherit eternal life, and is told that he must sell his possessions and give the money to the poor. 

The young man leaves in sorrow because he has many possessions.  The implication is that he is unable to unburden himself of these possessions.  Maybe he feels that he has earned them – that he deserves to have them.  Jesus has seen into his heart and sees what it is in his life that is separating him from God.  In his case it is his relationship with his possessions.  This is not a universal rule that Jesus is laying down.  It is not even that he is rich that is the problem – it is his relationship with his riches that is the problem.  Because he values his riches so highly, the only solution for him is shock therapy – he needs to renounce his relationship with his riches.

For another person it will be something else – each of us have deeply personal things that come between us and God, and Jesus is always pastoral in his responses to situations that he encounters – he doesn’t lay down universal rules or laws, but in every situation he looks to address what it is that is separating that person from God, what in their life is holding them back.  For some it is their disease, or their blindness, or their possession by demons. 

For the rich young man it is possessiveness over his possessions, and therefore in this parable, Jesus shows an example of a rich man, a vineyard owner, who doesn’t hoard his wealth but instead gives it out freely and even-handedly.  It is unfortunate that the young man has already left before he can hear it.

We see a similar dynamic at work in the reading we heard about Jonah.  Jonah is annoyed because God has chosen to spare the city of Nineveh, because they have repented, despite Jonah having told them that God is going to punish them.  Nineveh at the time was the capital of the powerful and tyrannical Assyrian Empire, an empire built over the previous 200 years on a constant stream of conquests, massacres and pillaging.  Nineveh was rich with the wealth of a hundred conquered nations, and built by the slaves that so many of them had become.  It was hated and feared in equal measure.  This is the city God had sent Jonah to, to warn them of the consequences of their actions if they did not repent.  And unlike the Egyptians under Pharoah in Exodus, the Assyrians do repent.  They turn to God, and God spares and forgives them.

Jonah is annoyed both because he has lost his credibility, because God hasn’t followed through, and also I think because he doesn’t feel that the Assyrians deserve to forgiven, but God is quite clear that punishment and reward is in his gift. 

To demonstrate this, He choses to give Jonah a bush to sit in the shade of, and then he choses to make the bush wither, to show Jonah that this too is within his gift, and also to make it clear to Jonah how valuable the people of Ninevah are to him, as people, even if they are gentiles and sinners.

In his letter to the Philippians, Paul, now in prison in Rome and unsure as to whether he will be freed, or executed, is reflecting on how he both wishes to die and be with Christ, but also to be freed so that he can continue to minister and spread the Gospel. 

He is reconciled to either outcome, and is concerned mainly that whichever path God choses for him, he should be able to continue to glorify God.  In this he seeks to reassure the Philippians, who are a church that also been suffering from persecution, but is standing firm in the faith.  He wants them to know that he shares their sufferings and also rejoices in their faithfulness.  The Philippians have not chosen to take the easy path.  They could just trust in God’s faithful love, and that he will welcome them no matter what they do, but they are faithful, even though they’re suffering because that is the response to the dilemma of the parable of the labourers.

If we are all gaining the same reward no matter the effort we put in, then why put in the effort.  Why, the Philippians might say, why suffer in the name of God, if their reward is the same as those who have not suffered?

Why indeed?

We can do it because, like Paul, this is something that we can take pride in.  We cannot boast in the presence of God about our wealth or our beauty or our intelligence – all of these are gifts of God anyway, so how can we boast before God of the gifts that he has given us himself.

But we can boast of our faithfulness.  God’s faithfulness to us is shown in the love he bears all of us, love that cannot be compared or even measured.  Our only possible response to God’s love and faithfulness is to return that gift with our love and faithfulness given freely back to God, not because he needs it; not because we will earn salvation that way; but because God gives freely to us without expecting a return, but always hopeful that we will respond to his faithfulness and love of us with our faithfulness and love of God.

Amen

Patron Festival (translated)

Genesis 50:15–21, Romans 14:1–12, Luke 1:39-56

“My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.”

It would be easy from this start to the Magnificat to see it as boasting by Mary, if we are not careful, but Luke’s account soon moves onto the themes that Luke builds so much of the rest of his gospel around – “he hath brough down the mighty from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly.”

More than any of the other Gospels, Luke’s is an examination of inequalities in power and wealth, and the injustice that this causes in the world here and now.  Luke’s Jesus is focussed on how this is not what God’s love and justice looks like, and Luke’s Mary is similarly focussed from our first introduction to her. 

I guess this is what happens with a Gospel written by someone with an ancient Greek, rather than ancient Hebrew, background.

So many of Luke’s parables revolve around money.  Not that he made them up – they are in the other Gospels too, but Luke seems to give them an extra focus. 

It is clear that, like many of the later old testament prophets, he was focussed on how the Kingdom of God could make a difference here and now, in how we relate to each other, and in how we treat each other – whether it is as God created us, all equals before him, or as we often chose to be, always looking to gain power for ourselves at the expense of others.

And this theme is first introduced here, from the lips of a young, unmarried, pregnant teenager.    A woman, not a man.  A Jew, yes, but not a proper Jew from Judea, but rather a Galilean.  Young.  Unmarried and yet pregnant.  Someone who doesn’t get a long and impressive list of ancestors like Joseph does (although there are some interesting names in that pedigree as well).  God has certainly chosen to look with favour on the lowliness of Mary.

It is a powerful start for Mary in the Gospels, and yet despite this, she soon fades out of view.  It really feels like there are only three places in the Gospels where she acts on her own behalf and makes an impact on the story.

The first is here – firstly at the Annunciation and now, in the Magnificat, where she is an archetype of obedience to the will of God, no matter how much it may turn your life upside down.  In this willingness to be open to the will of God, and prepared to embrace a vocation thrust upon you, it feels like only Jesus in his passion in the Garden of Gethsemane is more compelling.  And I think it is important to keep these two in your mind together, rather than projecting this willingness just onto Mary.  It is important not to use Mary as a means to make subservience into a female virtue.  Subservience to God’s will, and only to God’s will, is a appropriate to all of creation.

Secondly, we find her at the foot of the cross, where she and the other Marys gather to bear witness to the crucifixion – with John the only one of Jesus’ male followers to walk alongside him all the way to the cross.  She may be silent in this scene, but her silence is not the silence of passivity – it is the silence and despair of all creation as it witnesses the death of the creator.  She chooses to be there, to be a witness to her son’s death, as she was present at his conception and birth.

She is present at the start of Jesus’ incarnation and at the premature ending of it.  She envelops and encompasses all of Jesus’ earthly presence.

The third instance, comes in between, and is a stranger event, recorded by John, in his account of the wedding at Cana.  Here we see her interceding with Jesus on behalf of the groom, in order that the wedding should not be ruined, despite his initial unwillingness to intervene and reveal his power.

I will confess here that I have for a long time had a slightly ambivalent view of how the church approaches the Blessed Virgin Mary.  I think my protestant sensibilities rebel somewhat at the excesses of Marian devotion of the Roman Catholic church, and worry that it comes very close to crossing the line from veneration to worship. 

I have an instinct to need to cut Mary down to size – to make sure that there is no possibility of confusion – that she is in no way divine, but merely a saint like any other saint.

I think the tendency towards an enhanced or even excessive veneration of Mary probably starts in the controversies of the fourth and fifth centuries of the Christian era, when debates were raging about the relative humanity and divinity of Christ.

The Greek title for Mary of theotokos, literally the God-bearer, was used to emphasise that the man Jesus, born of Mary, was also at the same time, and indivisibly God the Son, the second person of the Trinity.  It was a way of emphasising that Jesus wasn’t born human, and became divine at some later stage, like his baptism, but was from the very beginning indivisibly both human and divine at the same time.

This critical orthodox theological point needed to be emphasised to compete with alternative doctrines around Christ, but also had the side effect of elevating the status of Mary, as the God-bearer.  Various beliefs later beliefs, like the Immaculate Conception of Mary, arose.  It sometimes feels like these are based on ideas of having to be holy and pure in order to approach God’s presence – ideas with are directly refuted by Jesus’ teaching and behaviour in the Gospels, where He makes it clear that his divinity serves to purify and cleanse us as he moves among us, rather than our impurity and sin making us unacceptable to Him.

But, for me, deep reflection on John’s account of the wedding at Cana, opened up a new appreciation of Mary as intercessor with Christ, as our representative to the divine.

Here at the wedding at Cana, Mary does intercede with Jesus on behalf of the groom.  She is acting here in as the great intercessor between humanity and God, in the person of Jesus.   And she does this not on her own behalf, but on behalf of someone else. 

I’m not going to try and unpack why Jesus is not minded to help the groom – that would take a lot longer than I want to be preaching for, and I don’t really have any good answers on that, only more questions; and I am certainly not going to renounce my very protestant belief that we are in no need of any intermediary between us and God – that the very essence of the Incarnation is that we have gained a face to face relationship with God through the person of the Son, and in the power of the Holy Spirit, but I was left with a new-found appreciation of Mary’s strength of character and her righteousness – her obviously constant concern for the other – the weak, the troubled, the powerless.

I think though that when we place Mary on a pedestal, or proclaim her the queen of heaven, we must do so remembering the teenage girl who sang of how the powerful are brought down from their thrones. 

I don’t think she wanted to sit on a throne over anyone else. 

I think the beauty of Mary is that she is still down here among us.

It is the shame of our society that she still occupies a position of subservience and inferiority.  Women are still abused and exploited.  Single mothers are still shamed.  Minorities are still marginalised.  That literally patriarchal authority figures have chosen to exalt one women doesn’t make it OK to treat other women as second class citizens.

So let us remember Mary as that young woman who is so filled with the love and the joy of God that she can hope for a better world – a world of justice and equality before God.  Let us hope alongside her, but more than that, let us go out strengthened in her resolve to build that better world; to build the kingdom of God where all are honoured and none are excluded.

Amen

12^th Sunday after Trinity, 2026.  Year A.

Matthew 16:13-20

May I speak in the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Caesarea Philippi is the turning point of the synoptic gospels, mentioned by name in both Mark and Matthew’s accounts.

This is both the point at which Jesus turns away from Galilee, the very furthest point of Galilee, right under the slopes of Mount Hermon, and sets his face towards Jerusalem, and also the point at which we get Peter’s acknowledgement of his identity.

Until now, Jesus has been acclaimed as a prophet and miracle worker, like John the Baptist or Elijah, or Jeremiah.  Now Peter openly declares that he is the Messiah, the Son of the living God.

This is something that is profoundly different about the Jewish God, our God, compared to the gods of pagan idolatry.  Something that Paul frequently contrasted.

The pagans worshipped gods of wood and stone,  gods who were dead in their physical manifestations and limited in their spiritual descriptions, constrained in what they could be and do.

The Jews worshipped a God who could not be constrained by idols of wood or stone.  A God who had both created the world and everything in it, and who imbued that world with life and love, second by second, breath by breath – a living God; an infinite and uncontainable God.

Up to this point, Jesus has been going under the radar, as much as it was possible for someone like Jesus to go under the radar.  And it is hard for him to do so.  As the Messiah, as God the Son, he is the creator and sustainer of the world that he is now incarnate in.  The world was made through him, and without him, not one thing was made that was made.

Like all prophets, he speaks with actions as much as or more than with words.  When he talks of the Kingdom of God, he is also acting out the Kingdom of God.  But in his case, his actions are the actions of the Living God.

Where he goes, there is the Kingdom of God.  The Kingdom surrounds him, and overwhelms the ordinary world.  Where he goes, the sick are healed, the enslaved are freed, the marginalised and dispossessed are brough back into the community. 

It has to be like this because he is the living God, the creator and sustainer of the world – not creating and sustaining it as it has become, but re-creating it, and re-sustaining it as it was originally created, as it was always meant to be, and as it will be when the kingdom comes.

The creativity of God cannot help but to flow from him, and it is so much more powerful than the world he is in.  We cannot help but be changed by God every time we encounter him.  Our reality is always going to be a poor reflection of God’s reality.

But what we also see is that Jesus is not just there for the moment.  He knows that the time for the full coming of the Kingdom is not now.  Where he goes, there the Kingdom will be, but he knows that he is fated to die, and be raised, and to ascent to the right hand of his Father.

He knows that he needs to take action to sustain this coming Kingdom, even after he has departed.  He has created the world, and now he needs to create the church within it.

This is why he has chosen the twelve.  Not because they are the twelve most powerful, or faithful, or intelligent, or honest, or courageous people that are out there.  It is very obvious from what we read that they are none of these.

And that is OK.  He is not calling them to carry forward the message and the mission of the kingdom in their own strength.

He knows that the Spirit will come to comfort them, to empower them, to direct them, and to sustain them.

Peter is the rock on which he builds his church, but Peter is hardly a rock as we encounter him in the Gospels.  It is God the Holy Spirit, empowering him, who allows him to speak as he does on the day of Pentecost.  Jesus points this out in our passage – Peter witnessing Jesus as the Messiah is not earthly knowledge, but knowledge that comes from God in heaven.  Peter is changed, not by his own efforts, but by God working within him, guiding and directing him.

This is not a perfect work.  Peter is still Peter.  He is still the weak, vacillating, compromising person that he always is.  We see this at Jesus’ trial, and later, in his arguments with James and Paul over gentile converts.

Peter stands for all of us.  We are not perfect, as he is not perfect.  We are filled with the Holy Spirit, like Peter was, but that does not perfect us.  We are still ourselves, with all our weaknesses, failings and foibles.  But, with God within us, sustaining us breath by breath, we are able to reach above our human failings, and occasionally be the people that God wants us to be.

It takes work.  It is hard.  But God has created us to be his beloved children, and has created the church to bring us together to support one another on the journey of life, and sustains us all though his Holy Spirit.  Peter may be the foundation-stone on which the church is built, but each of us is another stone that helps build the Kingdom, in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Amen

7th Sunday after Trinity, Year A. Holy Communion with Baptism. St Mary’s Northolt.

May I speak in the name of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Amen

Matthew’s gospel continues with another parable by Jesus themed around wheat and farming.  Again, he is using a common problem that farmers of the time had, to paint a picture of the difference between the world as it is now, and the world to come.

Last week he spoke of how in some cases the devil comes and snatches away the word of God in our heart before it is understood and can bear any fruit – the seed that falls upon rocky ground.

This week he paints a picture of a farmer who does successfully sow an entire field of wheat – who ensures that all the seed falls upon fertile ground and is well nourished and fertilised, so that it will grow well.  This is indeed a good and fruitful church.

But despite this, under the cover of night, the devil comes and sows weeds amongst the wheat, so that even amongst this plentiful and fruitful harvest, there are also people who are unfruitful, who create discord and disharmony, or who work evil.

And the farmer is unable to pull out these evil weeds, for fear of harming and destroying the good wheat.

There are many lessons we can take from this parable.

One is that God accepts the world for what it is.  God so loves us that he is not prepared to destroy the good in order to root out the evil.  The worth of the good is so great that God will not sacrifice them for some putative greater good.  The ends do not justify the means for God.  God’s love for us is so great that he will never abandon us.

I am reminded of two contrasting episodes in the Old Testament that reflect these two ways.  With Noah, God does seem to try to eliminate the evil in the world by allowing the flood waters – the destructiveness of primitive creation that he holds back from us, allowing the flood waters to overwhelm all of the world except for that which is safe in the ark.  But this does not solve the issue, at least not in the long term.

The other is the story of Abraham and Sodom, where Abraham tries to spare Sodom even if only a few good people can be found there – although it turns out in the end that there are no good people there at all.

We discover from these ancient stories a Jewish understanding of the mercifulness of God which Jesus’ parable stands in the tradition of.

God accepts that evil is unfortunately an inevitable part of the world, and that the cost of defeating it head on is too great if it means the destruction of all that is good in creation.  Instead, of course, he takes that cost upon himself, offering himself up to die so that evil may be conquered by his own death and resurrection.

We need to continue to live in this world that evil can thrive in though, and this parable can speak to us today.  If we think of the field as the church, it can show us how we need to conduct ourselves in the world.  Jesus is warning us that no matter how fruitful and good the field may look, evil can and will thrive in there as well.  The safeguarding scandals that the church is coming to terms with are evidence of this – indeed it feels like it is when the field seems especially fruitful that it is easy to let down our guard and not see the weeds that are growing and thriving amongst the wheat. 

Good farming keeps an eye out for weeds hidden deep amongst the wheat, and good safeguarding practice needs to similarly always be looking and examining for signs of bad practice, of abuse of authority and power and position, of the devil at work amongst us.  It seems to be the case that this often is found where things seem at first glance to be most fruitful, that the devil can find these the easiest places to hide.

There is yet another level that this parable can be read at though.  The field is not necessarily the world, or the church, the field can also be us within ourselves.

We are a field that contains both good fruitful wheat, but which also contains many weeds that are sown by the devil.  There is no one who is either perfectly good or perfectly evil – for all of us, the two are blended together in our souls.

And yet despite this, God still loves us for the good, and the potential for good, that is within us.  We are made in the image of God, and we are loved by God for that reason.  God knows that we are fallen and sinful, but he also knows that we are created by Him. And he choses to redeem us for that reason.

We are baptized into God’s family in order to show our loyalty to the covenant that God has made with us – to show our trust in his eternal redeeming love that can and will overcome any evil in our hearts.

This is especially important to those of you who will be standing here today later in this service as godparents to Jasmine.

As part of the declarations you will make, you will renounce the devil and his works, both for yourselves and on behalf of Jasmine.

This is not just an old and outdated form of words.  This is a very real recognition by the church the evil still exists in the world, and within each one of us, and we need to constantly fight against the seductions and temptations of the devil. 

We might not use the simple categories and rules that we once did – we are wiser and humbler now, and we understand better that God’s love is not reducible to simple rules, but God still gives us the knowledge of what is the difference between right and wrong.  God gives us this gift, but it needs nurturing and developing and encouraging, and your job as godparents especially is to help Jasmine develop wisdom to know what God’s path is.

We too as a congregation have a role to play in that – Jasmine is being adopted today into the family of God, and we as this church are the representatives of that great family.  We have a responsibility too towards our newest sister in Christ.  We have a responsibility to walk alongside her, accompany her, guide her and above all to love her as our own sister in Christ.

This is not an easy or light burden that we are given.  The seductions and temptations of the world are many and varied.  None of us are perfect.  Some of us struggle to be good even half the time.  But as the baptised children of God, we are all the adopted children of God, and therefore we all know that we have God as a parent. 

We know that like a good parent, God is merciful and loving, and does not abandon us when we need him most.  God never abandons us, no matter how far we may stray.  God’s love for us is the one eternal truth.  God will never abandon us, any of us.

Jesus gives us a vision here of how, when the time of judgement comes, it is not that there is a clear distinction between good and bad people, who will be saved or damned as appropriate.  Instead this parable tells us that we are all a blend of both good and bad, and he will at that time separate out the weeds of our evil desires from the good and fruitful wheat that also exists within us, and he will burn away the evil that is within us, and only the good will remain.

This is what a merciful God does – he does not discard that which has good in it just because there is also evil, because doing so would also destroy what is good.  Instead, when the harvest time is come and the two can be finally separated, then he will purge the evil from us so that only the good remains.  Then we can enter the Kingdom of God as the people that God always intended us to be.

This is what a merciful and loving God does.  We baptise Jasmine today into that God’s church as a mark of God’s love for her, a love that means that God will never abandon her, but will always walk alongside her and watch over her.

Amen

6th Sunday after Trinity, Year A. St Mary’s, Northolt.

The observant amongst you will have noticed that in my sermons so far I haven’t really touched on our New Testament readings, which are from Paul’s Letter to the Romans.

This isn’t because I think Paul’s letter to the Romans isn’t important, although it is true that I do not think it has the priority that some people think it should have in the New Testament canon.

It isn’t that I don’t want to talk about the messages that Paul has in Romans.  I think Paul has some very important messages in Romans.  But they are also very complicated messages that he is sending, not because this is a theological textbook but because he is writing a letter to a church that is in very particular circumstances, a church he did not found or have any relationship with before this letter, and a church that had probably been warned that many of his views were regarded as wrong by the church in Jerusalem.  This is why he is at pains to construct a very complex and subtle argument to defend his views but also to demonstrate his orthodoxy.

For these reasons, I believe that Romans isn’t an epistle that you can just jump into the middle of, or sample verses from out of context.  It needs to be read very carefully in its context, and given the lectionary is almost halfway through it at this point, I feel it is too late to try and contextualise the readings that we are currently getting.  Plus I don’t pretend I understand Romans myself, yet.

The early church context that Paul is part of would have been very in tune with Jesus’ parable of the sower, which Paul and they would have known from oral tradition and stories that were being told and retold about Jesus life and death in their church meetings even though the Gospels as we know them hadn’t been written by this stage.

The early church knew all about different reactions to Jesus’ message of the kingdom.  Jesus himself encountered them even during his ministry.

It seems incredible that people could not want to listen to the message of the kingdom, especially when combined with the miracles and healing that Jesus brought with it.  How could anyone not be uplifted by a vision where everyone is raised up and brought into the presence of God.  Where all are included in the God’s kingdom, rich and poor, inside and outsider, male and female.  Where God’s covenant with Abraham is finally fulfilled – when all the people of the earth are blessed and restored to their rightful place with God.  Where Israel can rest from their labours as God’s priestly race, knowing that in bringing God’s blessing to all the earth, they have achieved the task that God has given them.

And yet…

And yet it is sadly a part of our fallen, sinful, human condition that all too often such a message isn’t one we find uplifting.  Satan all too easily works in our hearts to make us envious and jealous.  We don’t look to our own happiness or wealth as something to be enjoyed as an absolute, but only as something to be compared with that of others.

We are happy because we have more than others, and we are downcast because others have more than we do.  Satan works in our hearts so that we are rocky ground for the seeds of God’s message to fall on. 

We live in a time of extraordinary plenty.  We take for granted so many essential things that generations before us did not know.  We turn on taps and clean, healthy, clear water comes out, rather than having to trek to a deep well to pull up water by hand.  We expect our children to survive childhood – indeed when a child is lost to us it is a matter of devastating anguish, rather than being an expected outcome as it would have been only a hundred and fifty years ago.

And yet, people are more unhappy, more anxious, less satisfied.  Modern communication enables us to see others who we think have more than we do, and modern communication enslaves us into algorithms that prey on our insecurities and our envy and our jealousies, so that that can make more money off us.

The gospel gives us an antidote to this modern culture of materialism, envy and comparison.  The Gospel gives us that absolute truth that is God, and empowers us to see that it is only our relationship with God that has value in this world.  It is only by comparison with that relationship that anything else has any value at all, and the value that it has is in proportion to how it lives out the truth of that relationship.  Our relationships with each other are only valuable in how much they embody our relationship with God.  Our love for each other can only ever be a reflection of our love for God, and that is only ever a place reflection of God’s love for us.

Sometimes this gospel message falls upon stony ground and gains no purchase.  There are now, as there have always been, those who wilfully close their hearts to Christ’s message.  What can we do in such circumstances?  Well, we can pray and we can look to God’s generous mercy.  God is always ready and reaching out to us whenever we are ready to receive him.

Sometimes this gospel message may fall upon shallow earth.  We all know people who have heard Christ’s message and embraced it enthusiastically, but then it lacks nourishment and withers away, and they move on, looking for something else to sustain them.  It is our duty as the church to help nourish these early seedlings; to reach out and welcome those whose faith needs nourishing and help provide that nourishment – help it grow those deep roots.

Sometimes the gospel message does take root, but then the busyness and confusion of modern life can overcome it.  People fall away from the faith because they go to university, or because their job gets to busy, or because looking after a family takes too much energy.  It is hard to find time in the busy schedule of modern life, and while I would never equate attendance at church with faith, being part of a worshipping community does help sustain faith, does keep habits of prayer alive, does give us the spiritual food of the communion table.  We need to help those whose lives are crowded to find what space they can in those lives for God – we need to go and meet them where and when they have that space.

And sometimes the gospel message bears fruit.  We see that in JP who we are sending out today as a gift to the wider church.  We can see fruitfulness in JP here, and I am sure we will see even more fruitfulness in the future.  Jesus talks about thirty-fold, or sixty-fold or even a hundred-fold, but fruitfulness is not a numbers game.  It is about quality, not quantity.  If our fruitfulness is that we have a deeper relationship with God, then we are blessed.  If our fruitfulness is to help just one other person have a deeper and more beautiful relationship with God, then we are doubly blessed. God does not call each one of us to fill stadiums or revival tents – some of us one day might, but he lovingly only calls us to be faithful to Him, to grow deep in our faith with Him, and to heed His call, whatever that might be.

Amen.

5th Sunday after Trinity, 2026. Year A.

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight O Lord, our rock and our redeemer.

Amen.

The gospel reading we have just had ends with a saying that I used to find one of Jesus’ most confusing.  I could never understand how a yoke could be easy.  For me, far from the manual agricultural culture that Jesus lived in, a yoke was something you used to impose burdens on people or animals, not something that liberates.  But I realised that actually a yoke is a machine, albeit a basic one.  A yoke allows you to distribute weight more equally, and also to take that weight through your most powerful muscles and joints rather than your weakest.

Jesus isn’t saying that there are no burdens in life.  He isn’t saying that he will remove all of the pain and struggle of life.  Life will always have its pains and struggles.  But Jesus will help us bear those pains and struggles.  He will help strengthen us to bear them with our strengths rather than our weaknesses, and he will help us by bearing our pains alongside us.

In the kingdom, of course, there will be no more pain, but the kingdom is not yet here, even if we have seen its coming in Jesus.  This is part of the Christian paradox – the kingdom has come, but is not yet here.  This might not feel like much of a comfort.  But we know that in Christ we have God who knows our pain and suffers alongside us.  God may be all-powerful, but is also painfully human.

The reading we had from Zechariah is familiar to us of course, even if we have never read it, because it is to fulfil this prophecy that Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a colt on Palm Sunday.  This gives us one of our great visions of the paradoxical contradiction that Jesus is – he enters Jerusalem to a triumphant welcome, and yet riding, not in a chariot or on a proud stallion, but instead on the humblest and poorest of animals – the humble ass – a beast of burden rather than of war.  He enters to a king’s welcome, but not as a king.

We can see this contradiction in the rest of the Gospel passage as well, where he complains about the expectations of his generation, and how fickle the people are.  Fickleness is not just a modern problem…

John and his disciples live a life of ascetic self-denial in the desert – famously dressed in camel hair and living on locusts and honey, and people complain that he is possessed because of it.

John’s role is to prepare people for the coming of the kingdom, and he models this by discarding the distractions and temptations of everyday life, so that he can focus on the signs of the kingdom to come.  He withdraws into the desert, and his followers withdraw with him.  His message rings forth across all of Judea even to Jerusalem, and the people flock to him to repent and be baptized, but he demands that they come to him. 

Jesus, by contrast, although he is no stranger to personal time spent alone or with a few companions, makes no such demand.  Jesus does not need to withdraw from everyday life in order to find the divine – Jesus is the divine come into everyday life.  Jesus goes out amongst the people in order to encounter them where they already are.  Jesus joins them in everyday life – by the well, in the street, and most often by dining with them.  Jesus’ willingness to eat with absolutely everyone was one of the most scandalous things about him in a culture that was obsessed both by status, which was most pointedly expressed in who you ate with and how people were arranged for dinner, and also by purity and cleanliness codes that you needed to stick to in order to be able to come near to God.  Codes that served as a boundary marker, to show clearly who were God’s chosen people, and who were definitely not.  Jesus smashes through these codes, welcoming everyone whether pure or impure, whether poor or rich, whether powerful or marginalised.

Jesus knew how to bring people of all kinds together through communal meals; a tried and tested technique that lives on down to the present day.  For this, he complains, people say he is a glutton and a drunkard.

What people want, of course is a middle way, but this is not what John or Jesus offer.  Both of them demand something from us.  Even though Jesus comes to meet us where we are and as who we are, he still demands something from us – he demands that we recognise that he is also coming to everyone else where they are and as who they are.  Jesus doesn’t just have a personal relationship with us, Jesus has a personal relationship with everyone, even the people we don’t like, the people we despise or hate.

This is the contradiction of Jesus’ love for us – Jesus loves us for who we really are, despite all our failings and sinfulness, but he also loves everyone else, despite their failings and sinfulness, and he calls upon all of us to love each other – not just the each other that are in our community or in this building here today with us, but all the other each others that are out there.  Every person is loved by Jesus, and valued by him as a unique human being.  Every single one.  We may want to group people together into races or faiths or nationalities, but Jesus demands that we recognise that even if we do, everyone in those groups is still a unique individual, each totally and fully loved by God as much as we are, and we must relate to them in this Christlike way.

This is the burden of love that Christ places upon us.

But as Jesus says at the end of our Gospel passage, if we come to Jesus he will teach us how to be gentle and humble in heart.  The burden that Christ places upon us, the burden of love, is a light one once we have come to accept it for what it is.  The yoke is easy, and the burden is light.  Jesus is here to be our guide, and a light before our path.

Amen

4th Sunday after Trinity 2026, Year A

Well, after that Gospel reading what is there actually to say in a sermon?

Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, says Jesus to the twelve apostles, and while I am not equating myself with any of the apostles, the warm welcome which I, and Petra and Larissa, have received here is indicative of a genuinely Christian community here that does open its arms to welcome everybody, understanding that it is in welcoming everyone that we truly welcome Christ into our lives.

Two weeks ago I was preaching my farewell sermon at Holy Trinity, and the passage was the beginning of this section of Matthew’s Gospel, where Jesus was sending out the apostles having given them authority to act in his name.

Now, having been sent out by Holy Trinity, I am being welcomed here by you.

In between, Jesus has warned his apostles that the road ahead will not be an easy one.

There is a hint of this in our passage.  Jesus says whoever welcomes a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward, and whoever welcomes the righteous will receive the reward of the righteous.

I think Jesus makes it quite clear elsewhere that the rewards of the prophet and the righteous are not in this world, but in the coming kingdom.

The Christian journey is not necessarily an easy one.  Having spent six years of discernment and training, including failing a selection panel and having to reapply a year later, I can say that even the journey that I have taken in order to be here as your curate today has not been an easy one, although I wouldn’t dare to compare it to the struggles that other people have faced.

And the setbacks that I have faced in this journey have been, in retrospect, good setbacks – they have forced me to examine myself, and come to terms with issues that I was ignoring or burying.  It has been a painful but cathartic process.

For those of you who I haven’t talked to about it before, I was brought up in a largely non-religious household, and only really started going to church properly around 20 years ago, prompted by my wife Petra.  In the end I was confirmed twelve years ago, and the confirmation preparation process opened up for me a love of discussing and debating about Christianity that led me to offer myself for discernment as a licenced lay minister.  I trained to be a lay minister from 2016 to 2019, and so was licenced just before Covid hit – I may have had plans for what I was going to do as a lay minister, but that was an early lesson in how as a Christian minister you need to be flexible and adaptive to the needs of the people, rather than needing them to adapt to you.

My experience of training for licenced lay ministry opened me up to the possibility that I might be being called further, into ordained ministry, and I spent several years examining and exploring that vocational calling before offering myself for formal discernment.

And so, after some false starts, I have spent the last two years in further training, and then yesterday, as some of you witnessed, I was ordained as a deacon.

What is a deacon then?  Of the three ranks of ordained ministry, it has the earliest roots, dating back to almost the start of the book of Acts, when the apostles appoint seven people, including Stephen, the first martyr, to wait at the tables in the communal meals of the early Christian community.

And the word in Greek literally means ‘servant’ – and can be used in both meanings – as a servant, or as a title of someone in a leadership position in the church, through the rest of the New Testament.  It is a disappointing reflection of the failings of the Church that there are still Bible translations out there that will translate the male version of the word into English as Deacon, and yet the female version of it as servant, even when it is obvious that the meaning is as a Deacon, i.e. a church leader, for both men and women.  In the final chapter of Romans, when Paul refers to Phoebe as a diaconon, he is saying that she is a Deacon, the leader of the church of Chenchrae, and a benefactor of Paul, not a servant.  Female leadership in the church goes back to the time of St Paul.

So I am now come to you as a servant – I am here amongst you to serve and to learn, from Reverend Julia obviously, but also from all the rest of you here.  Bishop Lusa sent me here to St Mary’s because he felt that it would be a place where I could learn much, and which would help me to be better Christian.  So I stand here in humility before you, and thank you for your welcome, and hope that over the next three years I will be able to serve you well, and that I will learn much from each of you and from this community.

Amen.