Stewardship of Time

September 18, 2019 / admin / 2019, Sermons

A sermon preached by the Reverend Trevor Jamison at Saint Columba’s United Reformed Church, North Shields, 15^th September 2019

Genesis 1:1-5; John 3:1-8

“I’d love to do that, but I just can’t seem to find the time.”

Welcome to the first sermon in a short series on “stewardship”. Today, on this third Sunday of Creation Time, we are looking at stewardship of time. Next week we shall consider stewardship of community. In week three, at our harvest service on September 29^th, it will be stewardship of creation. Then, on October 6^th, we’ll round off the series with stewardship of finance, including church finances!

Today, it’s stewardship of time: “I’d love to do that, but I just can’t seem to find the time.” Back in the day, when I was working as a librarian, before I got into being a church minister, one of the most useful training courses I ever did was on time management. As a result, my disorganised diary was put in order, and my desk, which had been piled high, with higgledy-piggledy piles of paper, was now clear and pristine.

Some lessons from that time management course have stayed with me, continuing to be helpful in my present work, though there seems to be something about the ministerial life that mysteriously attracts chaos and disorganisation. Still, I’m not too worried because Christian stewardship of time is a rather different thing from time management.

For us, for Christians, stewardship of time is about our use of time in relationship to God. Being well organised – time management – might form part of that, but it’s far from the whole story. So, what is stewardship of time about? It’s about taking the time to thank God for the gift of time. It’s about trusting God with regard to chronological time. It’s about taking God-given opportunities at the right time.

Taking time to thank God for the gift of time. In Genesis 1 we hear that God, who was before anything in creation ever was, commanded light and dark into being: ‘Then God said, “let there be light”; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from darkness. God called the light Day, and darkness … night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.’ (Gen. 1:3-5)

Genesis 1 is neither an eye witness account (even in the story itself humankind does not come along until some time after night and day are created), nor is it a modern scientific description of events. Genesis 1 is less about telling us about creation in itself – the universe and planet earth’s place within it – than it is about telling us about God. It declares something about God; that God is the author of time itself. Without God there is no light or dark, night or day. Without night and day, and their subdivisions of hours, minutes and seconds, there is no time. To put it another way: no God, no time.

One hymn says, “think of a world without any flowers”.[1] That’s hard enough, though you can envision it if we, humankind, keep on misusing the planet in the way that we do. If a hymn asked, “think of a world without any time”, it would make no sense at all. Time gives structure and meaning to life; life has a beginning, a middle, and an end. At least, it has an end in this form of existence, though we hope, in God’s grace to go on to something more; some new form of relationship with God, when life comes to an end.

Time enables us to have a sense of progress through life: All the world’s a stage, as Shakespeare put it, and all the men and women merely players; they have their exits and their entrances; and each one in their time plays many parts … [their] acts being seven ages.[2] But how would we ever know when to make out entrance or our exit; how would we ever be able to interact with each other, if there was no sense of time?

Without time our existence has no meaning for us. So, first of all, stewardship of our time is about recognising that it is a divine gift and thanking God for it. Our time is not our own. It comes from God as a free gift. Good stewardship of time begins (and how can you begin to do anything if there is no time) by thanking God.

In terms of stewardship of time and thanking God for the gift of time perhaps a little spiritual time management might be in order. Take a moment to picture your diary or timetable for the week – time you give to work, leisure, family, exercise, shopping and so on. How much of your time is taken up with what might be called spiritual activity? Since good stewardship of time is about our use of time in relationship to God, how much of that time do you spend thanking God for all you have been given?

How about taking a little bit more time each week for thanking God for the good stuff in your life, including the time in which to do things. Maybe a moment of “thank you” to God at the beginning or end of each day, for all that day might bring, or for all that it has brought.

Then, from thanking God for time we turn to trusting God with regard to chronological time. I would be a rich man if I had a pound for every time someone in church told me “You know, Trevor, we’re not getting any younger.” (I’ll be collecting money from several of you at the end of this service!) Add in another pound for, “You know, Trevor, we’re all getting older,” and I would be a multi-millionaire.

When people say this, they are making a serious point about the age profile of this congregation and many other. We are weighted towards the mature end. Of course, although we are getting older every day, we are not doing so more quickly than anyone else. Everyone is getting older … one day at a time, and no quicker.

All the same, this touches upon an important point about chronological time and trusting God. We don’t know how much time we have left. It’s hard to steward your time well when you don’t know how much of it you possess. Maybe we look at our age, and the law of averages, and make a rough guess. Yet exceptions to the rule show us not to take too much for granted or that we might receive more than we ever expected. We just don’t know.

Some people do know, up to a point. We get given news, perhaps news that’s unwelcome, about how much more of this life we can expect. Recently, I’ve been reading a book by the palliative care doctor, Katherine Mannix: With the End in Mind: How to Live Well and Die Well.[3] In it she shares her observations and convictions from working with literally thousands of people who are nearing the end of life. That might sound quite depressing. Actually, I found it a comforting and, at times, uplifting book.

One of Katherine Mannix’s observations is how on many occasions an indication of how long is left is the impetus for people to live well, not just in terms of actually getting around to the things on their “bucket list” but in living their relationships with others at a profoundly deeper level. To me, in that context, it’s almost as though they have been born again into a new way of living in relationship with others. We get a glimpse of what Jesus is getting at in terms of our human relationship with God when he tells Nicodemus (who came to him in God-created night time (3:2)), that you must be re-born from ‘above’ or ‘anew’ (3:3, 7).

For most of us, though, for most of our time, we don’t know how long we have. That’s where good stewardship of time involves trusting God about chronological time. Will we have time, individually or as a church, to finish this or that project? We don’t know. That should not prevent us from going ahead in the belief that all that we do has value within the context of God love, God’s concern, and God’s infiniteness. I don’t suppose the biblical book, Lamentations, is your first choice of reading. The title is not encouraging, but it does give us the verse, ‘The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.’ (3:23)

So, we are thankful to God for the gift of time and trust God concerning chronological time. Then, thirdly and finally, we strive to take God-given opportunities at the right time, when they come along.

“History”, the saying goes, “is just one damned thing after another”, yet nothing could be further from the truth. In his night time conversation with Jesus, Nicodemus is wedded to chronological time, and in chronological time you’re born once and that’s it: ‘How can anyone be born after growing old?’ he asks, ‘Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?’ (3:4) Nicodemus misses the point. Jesus is not talking here about chronological time – length of time – one thing after another – but about a quality of time; a significant moment in time.

Neither life nor history is just one thing after another. There are special moments, times of opportunity, that we choose to take or let go by. That’s true of individuals and its true of churches. In the Greek there is ‘chronos’ and there is ‘kairos’. ‘Chronos’, from which we get ‘chronological’, refers to the sequence of time. ‘Kairos’ refers to the important moment; the opportune time for action. And every so often moments come along that are seized and things change. In the history of this church, Harold Lishman, hearing someone speak about housing conditions in North Shields in the early twentieth century, seized the moment, raised funds and built homes. Chronologically, his work continues in and through the Square Building Trust,[4] but only because he recognised a kairos moment when it came along.

I wonder what moment we in our time might recognise and seize when God sends it our way? Doing so will be good stewardship of time; stewardship which thanks God for the gift of time; stewardship which trusts in God for living well in chronological time; stewardship which responds with action when the time is right.

O God, giver of time, make us thankful, trusting, active stewards of your time. We ask it in Jesus’ name, Amen.

[1] Think of a World Without Any Flowers by Bunty Newport (1927-2004) and children from Emmanuel Junior Church, 1966. (Rejoice and Sing, no. 123)

[2] From As You Like It.

[3] Katherine Mannix With the End in Mind: How to Live Well and Die Well. London: William Collins, 2017.

[4] http://squarebuildingtrust.co.uk/

Breaking the Rules?

August 26, 2019 / admin / 2019, Sermons

A sermon preached by the Reverend Trevor Jamison at Saint Columba’s United Reformed Church, August 25th, 2019

Isaiah 58:9b-14; Luke 13:10-17

‘Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. For six days you shall labour and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns.’ (Exodus 20:8-10)

That’s the fourth commandment. It’s from the Book of Exodus, part of the Hebrew scriptures read aloud in the synagogues that Jesus attended. And in one such a synagogue, on a sabbath day, there was a woman who ‘for eighteen years … was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight.’ (13:11)

The sabbath day was a day designed not for work but for rest and worship. As explained in the Book of Exodus, ‘in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it.’ (20:11) The sabbath was both weekly holy day and holi-day. So where does Jesus’ healing of a woman who ‘was bent over and quite unable to stand up straight’ fit into all of that? Well, the indignant synagogue leader was convinced that whatever the sabbath was for, it was not for this: ‘There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day.’ (13:14)

It’s too easy to “write off” the synagogue leader as an overly pedantic religious fanatic who thought the life of faith was a matter of following the rules and regulations. We today think something like, “If it’s a matter of life and death then human need takes precedence over religious regulations. What sort of person would think otherwise?” After all, in an emergency, if you find yourself carted off to hospital on a Sunday, in an ambulance with blue flashing lights, when you arrive you expect people to be working there, sabbath or no sabbath.

The synagogue leader, with his knowledge of religious law that allowed for such urgent needs, would not disagree. He would point out, however, that this woman was not in that sort of situation. This was not a medical emergency, but a chronic condition she had had for eighteen whole years. What difference could a day make? It’s not that the synagogue is uncaring. In fact, it’s fully accessible; men with withered hands, women with curvature of the spine: everyone welcome, able-bodied or not.

On this one day of the week, on this sabbath day, so the synagogue leader argues, we’re here to worship, not for other work. If he was with us today, he might say that he was only doing what we do at Saint Columba’s United Reformed Church. For example, health service personnel in this congregation, whether currently working or retired, come to church on a Sunday with the reasonable expectation that they will not be approached by others during the service for a consultation on non-urgent medical matters. Also, if you want to have a one-to-one with the minister right at this moment, you will be told (politely) to wait until the service is over; the health professionals might tell you to hold on until the working week begins.

The synagogue leader’s not wrong about the religious rules and regulations, or even about what constitutes reasonable expectations. On the other hand, he can’t be exactly right either; otherwise Jesus would not be labelling him, and those who took his side, as ‘hypocrites’: ‘you hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water?’ (13:15) Or, perhaps more positively, from the woman’s point of view, give that nobody can be thrilled to have their life situation compared to that of a donkey, ‘ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham [a Jew, one of God’s people] … be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?’ (13:16)

So what about us? What does this event in the life of Jesus and the conversations around it say about “sabbath” and being a Christian church in the twenty-first century UK? It says that in terms of organised religion, some rules are better than no rules at all. It says that such rules are not an end in themselves. It says that sabbath rules, like other religious rules, need to be interpreted in the light of how we understand God and God’s purposes.

Some rules are better than no rules at all: Sundays in our highly secular society today are no sabbath where everyone gets to down tools to rest and enjoy creation in the company of God. Even for churches, our choice of Sunday as the day to worship has always been just that – a choice. Early Christians chose to gather on this day and that tradition that has continued, but if a congregation worships on another day of the week it will not lead to excommunication.

What won’t work, however, is if sabbath rest rules get completely ignored. Imagine what it would be like if you took away the rule that people get some shared time of rest from work every week. Society would break down quite quickly, I think. Consider the fairly short-lived experiment in the early years of the Soviet Union, where there was a seven-day working week, with all workers getting one day off, but without any reference to the rest day given to their spouse or children. Thinking about it, with our 24/7 consumer driven capitalist culture, underpinned by flexible working practices and zero hours contracts, we might not be a million miles away from that approach, and our society feels the strain.

Likewise in a shared church setting we need some religious rules and regulations. We will worship on at least one day per week. We will meet to do so at 10.30 a.m. and 6.30 p.m. on Sunday (which has sometimes been called “the sabbath”). We will worship for an hour, more or less. We will worship God, creator of the universe, made known to us in Jesus Christ, whose Spirit is present with us at this time. We will pray together. We will listen to readings from the Bible (the Protestant 66 book version) and reflect upon them. We will sing the hymns chosen by the worship leader (even if we do think their choice eccentric at times). Remove all these shared religious rules or traditions and we cease to function as a body. Some rules are better than no rules.

But rules and religious traditions must not become an end in themselves. Yes, it’s true that our society has moved to a work pattern that is very stressful and unhelpful for the people who have to live with it. We benefit by making sure that there are shared times of rest as well as work during each week. Many of us, however, will remember a time when Sunday was often referred to as “the sabbath”. This was not because as a society we were enthused by a shared vision of human flourishing achieved through “imaging” or imitating the nature of God, though. This was not about trying to make a down-to-earth reality of the instructive, imaginative genesis account where God makes rest and enjoyment the high point of creation.

No! That “sabbath”, as we experienced it, too often was about being prevented from doing certain things (often enjoyable things), because to do them would be against the (religious) rules. People could choose to spend their time in religious activities, but if not, there was not much else on offer. This approach did not lead to human flourishing and has not led to religious flourishing either. When, for example, you get so wrapped up in in keeping sabbath rules that granting a woman freedom from years of suffering becomes an occasion for complaint rather than rejoicing, then you’ve forgotten what the rules are there for in the first place, and you’ve forgotten the nature of the God you are trying to worship.

In other words, sabbath rules, like other religious rules, need to be interpreted in the light of how we understand God and God’s purposes. The synagogue ruler should have been able to do that. After all, like Jesus, he would have been an avid reader of the prophet Isaiah. In today’s reading, I’m sure he would have noted God’s demand that the people ‘refrain from trampling the sabbath.’ (58:13) For Isaiah, though – for God – it was pursuing your own interests or affairs at the expense of others, that constituted trampling the sabbath.

Looking to the interests of others is the way to ‘call the sabbath a delight and the holy day of the Lord honourable,’ according to Isaiah. (58:13) So, the prophet talks in terms of offering food to the hungry and satisfying the needs of the afflicted. (58:10) So what, if Jesus decides to hit the “pause button” on preaching or teaching for a few moments? He does so to meet the need of one of the afflicted; a woman bent over for eighteen years. Is Jesus ignoring and breaking the normal rules and regulations for collective worship? Yes, he is. Should the synagogue ruler make such a big deal of it, keeping on telling the crowd (13:14) that this should not have happened? No, he should not.

As someone who appreciates structure and good order, and who spends time planning worship services, I feel a bit of sympathy with the synagogue ruler. There goes Jesus again, messing up carefully-made, well-intentioned plans. Perhaps the synagogue ruler should be permitted a small sigh of exasperation. Arguing forcefully against bringing relief to the afflicted, however; arguing against putting the interests of others ahead of yourself, because it’s the sabbath, makes him into a hypocrite. In fact, the very scriptures he would read in the synagogue said that doing things for others was the sort of thing that makes the sabbath delightful for God.

For us, today, members of and worshippers at a Christian church, the same principles apply. We need some rules and regulations in order to make our shared life possible. It might not hurt to write some rules into our collective life about doing things that are restful for us. We are talking about this in the context of “sabbath” after all. The rules and the regulations that we write, along with the ones that we have inherited, are there to help us, not to oppress or afflict us. As Jesus said on another occasion, ‘the sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath.’ (Mark 2:27)

So religious rules, including sabbath rules, need to be interpreted in the light of how we understand God and God’s purposes of love and justice. The Apostle Paul suggests that the very spirit of God is experienced and shared through love, joy and peace, through patience, kindness and generosity, in faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. (Galatians 5:22-23) Interpret situations and rules in this light, and even our best-loved rules might get well-broken on occasion. (And finally, thank you for keeping to the rules, not interrupting the sermon … on this occasion at least.)

Isaiah 58: 9b-14, law, Luke 13: 10-17, rules, Sabbath

Redeemed!

August 13, 2019 / admin / 2019, Sermons

Sermon by the Reverend Trevor Jamison for a North Shields Churches Together Service at Saint Columba’s United Reformed Church, August 11th 2019

Genesis 15:1-6; Romans 3:21-31

I should begin by saying how I find Cor van der Woude from the North Shields Salvation Army inspirational! At least, I found his choice of scripture reading for our Churches Together service last Sunday evening to be inspirational.

Last week, our reading was from Romans chapter one. And Cor introduced that for us with information and reminders about this letter that the Apostle Paul wrote to Christians living in Rome, a few years after the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Cor helpfully reminded us that this is the longest letter or ‘epistle’ in the New Testament. Paul wrote it to a church, prior to making a visit.

Paul had not been to Rome before and so he was writing to people most of whom he did not know (if you look at the last chapter of the letter you see he makes sure to send greetings by name to everyone he does know in the church in Rome, to remind them of the links he has with them already).

Paul wrote because he intended to come to pay them a visit, where he would perhaps share with them his take on following Jesus, and the gospel which he says is, ‘the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, for the Jew first and also for the Greek [or gentile]’ (1:16)

Although many saw Rome as the centre of the world, it being the centre of a great empire, Paul’s eyes were on another goal. He was heading West, towards Spain and to the known ends of the earth. Maybe he saw this bringing of the gospel to the West as doing his bit towards God’s plan to bring all things to a proper conclusion for all of creation. Paul spoke Greek as well as Hebrew, for Greek was the shared language of the lands that Rome occupied to its East. To Rome’s West, however, Latin was the living language, along with whatever languages were spoken by the local peoples. I wonder if Paul hoped to recruit from amongst the church members at Rome people ones who could speak the language in Spain, so that he could most effectively share the good news of Jesus Christ there.

If so, Paul needed to be on good terms with the church in Rome. He needed to build trust, and his way to do that was to demonstrate his trustworthiness by sharing with them his beliefs, and how they related to the sort of life situations that the believers in Rome experienced.

That’s all a rather roundabout way of saying that I thought to myself, “if Cor chose a reading from Romans last week, why don’t I do the same this week?” No pressure upon those who lead the evening services on the 18th and 25th, of course! There’s no law that says you have to do this simply because someone do that the week before.

But I thought I’d mention ‘law’ because, of course, faith and law, law and faith, get a good mention in tonight’s reading from Romans; ‘but now, irrespective of the law, the righteousness of God has been disclosed, and is attested by the law and prophets,’ is the opening verse in Romans 3:21-31, for example.

In fact, this passage is just full of interesting words. It is jam-packed with words and phrases familiar to church goers but strange to most people, or at least, strange when used in this way; words that inspire, puzzle and unsettle many of us: ‘law’, ‘righteousness’, ‘prophets’, ‘sin’, ‘glory’, ‘justified’ by God’s ‘grace’, ‘redemption’, ‘in Christ Jesus’, ‘atonement by his blood’, ‘divine forbearance’, ‘justified by faith’, ‘works prescribed by the law’. And all this in the space of eleven verses. There’s enough here for me to preach to you all night long, and then some.

Now being church folk – sisters and brothers in Christ, thank God – we have probably heard most or all of these terms more than once. We might think that at least some of them are straightforward, but that’s because we are used to them in our relatively comfortable church setting. Go outside the church and you find that either no one has heard of them or that they carry a somewhat different meaning. Let me give you example of that.

A couple of dozen years ago, I was a newly minted Minister of Word and Sacraments, as the official title goes in the United Reformed Church. I was sitting at my new desk in my only recently occupied study. I was probably basking in the good feeling of getting to put the word ‘Reverend’ in front of my name when the telephone rang – it did so more often in the days before emails. ‘Hello,’ said a woman’s voice at the other end of the line. ‘I wonder if I could ask you something about redemption?’

‘Wow,’ I thought, this ministry business is amazing; people ring you up out of the blue wanting to talk about theology. ‘Go ahead,’ I said. ‘Well,’ she continued, ‘my mother died recently.’ ‘I’m sorry to hear that’ (those college lessons in pastoral care were coming in handy). ‘I’ve been clearing out here house and that’s why I called you to ask about redemption.’ ‘Was it something in particular when you were clearing the house out?’ ‘Yes, it was when I found the tickets. That’s when I knew I could not just leave it but had to ask you about redemption.’ ‘Really?’ ‘Well, I know they are past their date, but…’ ‘But?’ Well I thought, if you still had the items in the shop, I could still pay for them to be redeemed!’ ‘Ah, you’ve telephoned 525 6606. You should have dialled 525 6066 to get Milton’s, the pawnbrokers. It’s a different sort of redemption that’s on offer at this address.’

‘For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.’ (3:22, 23, 24) As I’ve said, I could preach on these verses all evening, but I’ll show a modicum of self-discipline; leave something to say for those who might come along behind me on another occasion. I’ll just stick to these couple of verses which only cover sin, glory, God, justification, grace, gift, redemption, and Christ Jesus.

Justification and redemption: ‘justified … by the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.’ There are several images that are used to try to describe that act at the cross by which God reconciled us and the rest of creation to God’s self through God’s Son, Jesus Christ. One of them, ‘justification’ comes the world of law, it’s like the judge, in a moment of mercy, deciding to declare you not guilty and send you out of court without a stain upon your character: justified in the eyes of God and the world.

The redemption image comes from the world of commerce. You’ve got yourself into a bind in life and you can’t get free. In fact, you’ve sold yourself to lifestyle and a life force that delights in your falling short of the mark. You know what’s the right thing to do but forces within you and/or acting upon you make you forever do the wrong the thing – Paul devotes the last twelve verses of Romans chapter seven to that theme, if any other preachers are interested. You are like someone in Paul’s time who has get so deep into debt the only thing you have left to sell to pay your debts is yourself. So off you go to the market and sell yourself as an indentured servant or a slave to the highest bidder.

And your only hope is that some friend – and they will be some friend indeed – will step in and redeem you. They will buy you back out of the slavery you got yourself into in the first place. And you will have nothing with which to pay them back: ‘justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.’ Now maybe I have a more pessimistic outlook on human nature than the majority of people. That might have something to do with growing up in Northern Ireland in the 1960s, 70s, and early 80s, and seeing how people in that sort of setting think and act. So, although I would acknowledge that there’s something of the ‘image of God’ to be found in any human being, I still see us as caught up in some sort of power or outlook – call it ‘sin’ if you want – in the face of which we are helpless.

We are like self-sold slaves in need of redemption that we cannot make happen, but which God makes happen; and if there’s a price to be paid for that to happen, well it’s God that pays it, not us. Some friend it is indeed, who buys back, and gives us back our very lives, and at no charge; it’s a gift, it’s grace, it’s glorious – God’s glory. We may fall short of the ‘glory of God’ but God, as see God in Jesus Christ, does not. As the hymn says, ‘what a friend we have in Jesus.’

There is redemption. There grace and there is glory, but for whom? It’s all very well hearing about this good news, but is it good news for me? Given the things that I know about myself – wrong thoughts and actions I can’t seem to avoid; right thoughts and actions that I never seem to get around to – am I included? Am I redeemed? Yes, I am, and so are you: ‘for there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.’

‘There is no distinction.’ In his letter Paul particularly has in mind the distinction between Jew and Gentile. But what he says there is no distinction. Imagine God taking you outside on a dark night, away from modern light pollution, and saying, ‘Look towards heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.’ (15:5) That’s who it’s for; everyone. It’s for all of Abram’s promised descendants. It’s for all the inhabitants of all of the planets that circle all of the stars of the universe: ‘there is no distinction.’ ‘Should even the entire universe need redemption, I will do it’, says God, and, ‘out of grace, out of love, and through love, and I’ll do it for free. And you, whoever ‘you’ are, is included.’

So, ‘thanks be to God through our Lord Jesus Christ,’ (Romans 7:25): ‘there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they [and we] are now justified by God’s grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.’ (3:22, 23, 24) Thank you, God, Amen.

Genesis 15: 1-6, redemption, Romans 3: 21-31

Don’t do That!

August 13, 2019 / admin / 2019, Sermons

Sermon Preached by the Reverend Trevor Jamison at Saint Columba’s United Reformed Church, August 11th 2019

Isaiah 1:1, 10-20; Luke 12:32-40

Don’t do that!

Last Sunday we listened to the parable of the rich fool (12:16-21), where Jesus says, “don’t do that”; don’t be like the man in the story; he who was concerned only with self and possessions, sparing not a thought for God, from whom the good things came, nor for the people who might be in need of the things he was hoarding. Don’t do that.

This week we have another, “don’t do that” message. That wouldn’t surprise a lot of people in today’s UK. For many, the word, “Church” has negative connotations. Even people who have spiritual interests (and there are many) avoid Christianity because they associate Church with an attitude of “thou shalt not”. They don’t believe Church is a place where the big social and spiritual questions can be explored together imaginatively, in non-judgemental ways. What might surprise them, however, and surprise some of you who are here today, is that today’s “don’t do that message” is … “don’t do religion”.

‘Hear the word of the LORD’, says Isaiah, in the opening chapter of the OT book that bears his name. (1:12) Today’s popular understanding of the reputation Sodom and Gomorrah is that it was all to do sexual immorality, but that’s a mistake. In fact, according to Isaiah, God says that the problem with Sodom and Gomorrah, and with the rest of the land of Judah, eight centuries before the birth of Jesus Christ, is too much religion: ‘what to me is the multitude of your sacrifices, says the Lord … I have had enough of burnt offerings … trample my [temple’s] courts no more.’ (1:11, 12) ‘I cannot endure [your] solemn assemblies … and your appointed festivals my soul hates; they have become a burden to me.’ (1:13, 14) And so, ‘when you stretch out your hands [in prayer] I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen.’ (1:15)

Imagine if we in this church were on the receiving end of something like that from God: “I’ve had enough of your Sunday services, week after week after week of them. Please, just don’t darken the doors of my church again. I hate what you’ve done with Christmas and, you know, I really don’t care how many times you have communion at Easter. I’ve given up on your prayers and if I have to listen to one more of those sermons, I am going to scream. Just don’t do that; stop doing all that religion.”

Or, at least, stop doing all of that religion, if your religion is just about worship and you are never going to do the stuff that goes along with it: ‘learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow,’ God says through God’s prophet, Isaiah. (1:17) Worship, which many people think is what religion is all about, is, it turns out, an affront to God, when it is not accompanied by righteousness; by right living; by doing the right thing.

Yet for Sodom and Gomorrah, and even for St Columba’s, all is not lost, because the God who is enraged by those who say they love God but who don’t love their neighbours, is still ready to sit down with such “religious” folk and put them right: ‘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 be like wool.’ (1:18) God, it turns out yearns to be reconciled, even with the sort of religious folk who drive God mad. We always have the opportunity, to be reconciled with God when, instead of having to be told, “don’t do that”, instead we do the right thing and do it now.

And we do the right thing when we listen and respond positively to Jesus Christ, the one through whom Isaiah’s reconciling LORD has reconciled the world to God’s self.’ (2 Corinthians 5:19) Jesus, in his parable of the rich fool, presented us with someone who needed but failed to hear God saying, “don’t do that,”. Now, in today’s reading, Jesus goes on to talk about what we should be doing and how we should do it: ‘Sell your possessions and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven … for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.’ (12:33, 34)

‘Sell your possessions and give alms …’. A few years ago we went on holiday to Marrakech in Morocco. Marrakech is famous for its souk, or covered market, and for the main square of the old city. Each evening the main square becomes a great outdoor market and eating place, drawing thousands of people, including all the tourists, of course. Whilst there I saw something that impressed me, and it wasn’t the snake charmers. Tourists, being people from affluent countries got approached by people begging for money, but they didn’t often give to them. On the other hand folk from Marrakech, stall holders and others, often did so. They didn’t give a lot; usually it was just one or two small coins. They gave unobtrusively; so much so that the right hand might almost not know what the right hand was doing; but they did give.

And I think they did so because they take their religion seriously, in a good way, of which God would approve. That’s to say, they are Muslims, and charitable giving – zakat – is one of the five pillars of Islam. So alongside their proclamation of God’s oneness and character, their regular prayers, their fasting, their pilgrimage, there is also alms-giving. You can almost imagine Jesus standing there in the square in Marrakech, nodding with approval and saying something like, ‘you are not far from the kingdom of God.’ (Mark 12:34)

Perhaps Jesus would want to say something similar or even more to this Church; that’s what we would hope anyway. And there would be some grounds for him to do so; some evidence that for us religion is not just about acts of worship, undertaken only to make us feel good (though, of course, regular participation in worship, like regular exercise, has benefits for all of us). For Jesus to speak positively of us, however, our practice of worshipping of God needs to be accompanied by our doing good to other people.

This includes our charitable or alms-giving. After all, that’s what Jesus said: ‘sell your possessions and give alms.’ For each of us as individual Christians to give money and our time to help others, because we believe that’s the will of God, and because we have heard the words of Jesus, is important. It matters that we as individual make charitable donations. It also matters that we give of our time, our gifts and our skills to aid those in need.

Our giving of money and time fits within the prophetic call of Isaiah to ‘do good, seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, [and] plead for the widow.’ It’s of piece with things Jesus says elsewhere about clothing the naked, caring for the sick and visiting the imprisoned. (Matthew 25:34-36) So, sometimes, legitimately, our responses will need to go beyond charitable giving or acts of service and enter the realms of planning, systems and political solutions.

What’s true of us as individuals is true of us as a church community. Jesus calls upon us to accompany our worship of God with a giving of our money and our time to others. That all affirms this congregation’s ongoing commitment to a number of charitable organisations: Christian Aid, Commitment for Life, Compassion UK, Operation Christmas Child, UNICEF, and a number of local and other organisations on a one-off and occasional basis.

The message from Isaiah and the words of Jesus also affirm the work we undertake together as a church to help others, not just though financial gifts, but also in kind; food, time, conversation. I’m thinking here of our Café 2-21 on Tuesdays, our Square Table Lunches on Thursdays, and our early Bird Breakfasts on Sundays. Both of today’s Bibles passages contain powerful images of God getting together with people. In Isaiah, God invites them to come close for a conversation, in order to be reconciled; in Luke, Jesus talks of the Master who returns and sits down his faithful servants so that they can eat a meal together.

So, I’m hopeful that St Columba’s United Reformed Church is not quite Sodom and Gomorrah for the twenty-first century. Yes, we’re committed to actions widely identified as “religious”; worship, prayers, exploring the Bible together – guilty as charged as far as that is concerned. As long as we continue to make sure to integrate that with our giving and our care for others – a righteousness that’s not only about religion but about right action – I think we are storing up ‘treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near, and no moth destroys.’ (12:33)

There is, though, an additional sort of sharing that remains upon my mind. I’ve already observed in this sermon that many people in our society, including many of the spiritually inclined, have a negative perception of the Church. They see us as caught up in religious structures and attitudes which make us unconcerned about wider society and much too prone to demand conformity to our views, rather than allowing people to explore spiritual issues in a community setting. You might think that’s unfair picture of who we are. The fact that we manage to integrate our worship, prayer and other spiritual practices alongside giving and service to others is, to some extent, a good answer to such accusations.

On the other hand, we don’t, as far as I can see, within the life of our church, give substantial time and other resources to creating opportunities for others to explore in an open, safe setting, spiritual questions, including the implications, challenges and joys of choosing to follow Jesus. I say that tentatively, because we are already a very busy church, though historically one of diminishing numbers. I am also reticent about saying it because I am not sure how we should go about doing it.

At the same time I think it would be good to give thought and have conversation about how a church can make something happen along these lines – creating opportunities for others, that they might want to take up, to explore spiritual issues , including what’s involved in acknowledging God and following Jesus. And I think we should have such a conversation sooner rather than later. That’s not because we are worried about the future of our church (though we might be) but because Jesus calls upon followers like us to live life as though the Master might return at any hour. In other words, not only to do good, but to do it now.

Isaiah 1: 10-20, Luke 12: 32-40, religion

What’s it all About?

August 5, 2019 / admin / 2019, Sermons

A sermon preached by the Reverend Trevor Jamison at Saint Columba’s United Reformed Church, North Shields, August 4th 2019

Ecclesiastes 1:2, ; 2:18-23; Luke 12:13-21

‘What do mortals get from all the toil and strain with which they toil under the sun? For all their days are full of pain, and their work is a vexation; even at night their minds do not rest.’ (2:22, 23)

Yes …

The minister’s back from his holidays and he’s not happy about it. Instead of reclining in my chair next to the tent, by the riverside in sunny France, sipping my glass of wine, I’ve had to go back to work. With my happy holiday experiences still fresh in the memory, I came back back to greyer weather and the demands of ministry, so I’m wondering, what’s the point of it all?

As the somewhat gloomy author of Ecclesiastes puts it, ‘What do mortals get from all the toil and strain with which they toil under the sun? For all their days are full of pain, and their work is a vexation; even at night their minds do not rest.’

Now you might want to support and comfort me with words such as, “for goodness sake, Trevor, lighten up and get a life,” and you might not be wrong to do so. All the same, our readings today, from Ecclesiastes and from this parable about a barn-building rich farmer (it only appears in Luke’s Gospel) invite us to ask , “what’s life all about?” What gives meaning and value to our lives?

These are reasonable and relevant questions to ask. After all, a recent survey of a group of people living in North Shields revealed that almost half of them did not believe that the things they do in their life are worthwhile: ‘For all their days are full of pain, and their work is a vexation; even at night their minds do not rest.’ Maybe you know some of the people around here who feel just like that. So what might give their lives, your lives, and my life purpose and meaning?

Can work give our lives meaning? Maybe to some extent, but, if so, is that just down to the pay grade? Why is a top surgeon paid so much less that a premiership footballer? And when a footballer retires and becomes a BBC Match of the Day pundit, is he really worth £440k p.a. – even if he is Alan Shearer!

Alternatively, perhaps we can find meaning through the things we acquire and possess – like books! Having said that, some years back, on the bus home from Newcastle, I chatted to a grandmother and her young granddaughter, Tracy. Tracy had been pressing gran to buy her a toy that had caught her eye whilst they were in town. Gran told me, however, that Tracy already had that toy, back home, but had forgotten, because she possessed so many other toys.

If work and money, if acquisitions and possessions, don’t guarantee a sense of meaning to life, what about reputation and celebrity? Amber Gill, this year’s Love Island winner – she’s from the NE, you know – has certainly achieved celebrity, and with the host of offers that will now come her way, possessions and work will soon follow on. To become a celebrity who is celebrated for being … a celebrity: is that what gives meaning to life?

Now, there’s a real danger here of hypocrisy; criticising others for their good fortune, supposedly on Christian grounds, but more because these are things I can’t have, don’t deserve, or which don’t interest me. You wouldn’t trust me to wield a scalpel on you or pick me for your football team so why should I be paid like a surgeon or like Alan Shearer? Tracy may have had more toys than I ever had, but then I had far more than my parents did when they were children. And Love Island’s audience is heavily represented among 16-34-year-olds in the C2DE socio-economic bracket, so criticism from me may be less the result of Christian insight and more the jealousy of an out-of-touch, culturally middle-class oldie.

All the same, these verses from Ecclesiastes do touch on something, I think. Many people do struggle, at least at times, to believe that their lives have much in the way of meaning. By themselves, work, possessions or celebrity status just don’t cut it. Ecclesiastes, however, is a lot stronger on diagnosing the problem than offering a cure. When we read Ecclesiastes in the light of Jesus’s life and teaching, however, we get some ideas about where to find meaning in our lives today. Look, for example, at this parable Jesus told about a rich farmer.

Does the farmer have work to do that fills up his life? Well crops don’t grow themselves, and although he cannot have done everything himself, he would have had to plan and oversee the planting, reaping and storage of the harvest. Did he have possessions? You bet! Not only did he own land but the crops it produced were so large that he decided to build bigger barns, saying, ‘and there I will store all my grain and my [other] goods.’ (12:18) Does he have celebrity status; a big reputation locally? Yes, probably. He might not have been popular, hoarding food in his barns in an era when hunger was an ever-present possibility for those who lived around him. On the other hand, he’d have known that people could not afford to ignore him, and that would be enough for a lot of people.

So, the rich farmer had work, which paid, he had possessions aplenty, and he had at-least-local celebrity status. What more could you want in life? No wonder he said, ‘[my] soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ (12:19) And God says … ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And these things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ (12:20) Maybe he should have read Ecclesiastes: ‘I hated all my toil … seeing that I must leave it to those who come after me – and who knows whether they will be wise or foolish? Yet they will be master of all for which I have toiled.’ (2:18, 19)

Surely one thing that Jesus’s parable of the rich farmer teaches us is that the meaning of our lives does not reside solely within ourselves and our own doings. Our relationship with others is an essential element in determining the meaning of life. The rich farmer ‘thought to himself, “what should I do … I will do this …. I will pull down … and build … I will store … I will say to my soul … [I will] relax, eat, drink, be merry,” but God said to him, you fool!”’ From beginning to end the man has no thought for God and makes no mention of other people; he thinks he makes all the meaning of his own life. ‘So it is,’ says Jesus, ‘with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich towards God.’ (12:21)

What if that man, what if we, lived life, including our work and achievements, our acquisitions and possessions, and our reputations, with God and others in mind as well as ourselves?

Work and achievement: recognise that all your work and achievements take places in the context of God’s work and depend upon what God has done first. In the parable, it’s remarkable that in what was a very religious age the man made no mention of God when he listed all his achievements and intentions. It was all me, me, me. He stored up treasures for himself but was not rich towards God. And yet, all the man’s work depended on God’s work; the man’s life itself, the crops which grew, the land upon which they grew, its place on the planet within the vast ecological systems of God’s creation; all presented as a gift that enabled his human work and achievement. The man was an efficient farmer. Think of the things that you are good at doing and do them, knowing that God has given you these abilities and situations as a gift.

Possessions: so if the ability to do things in life is a gift from God then it follows the possessions we acquire also come to through God’s grace, God’s generosity. As gifts, our possessions are given to us to be enjoyed. In principle, there was nothing wrong in itself in the man’s intention to relax, eat, drink and be merry. It’s what time off, holidays, food and drink, hobbies, interests and a host of other things are for. The problem is that once God, the giver, is erased from the picture, the man sees these things only as his possessions and not also as gifts. They stop being something to be appreciated and instead become something to be hoarded: ‘I will build larger barns and there I will store all my grain and my goods.’

Reputation and celebrity: so, having failed to recognise that his work achievements and his goods come from God as gifts before they can ever be considered his achievements and possessions, what sort of reputation does this give to the rich man? There’s no suggestion in the parable that he is a tyrant, but he’s clearly regarded as a fool: ‘You fool! This very night your life is demanded of you.’ He’s a fool because he has been given so much as a gift and he doesn’t know what he should do with it. Imagine being given a huge box of chocolates as a gift. You know what you’re supposed to do; you’re supposed to share it with others.

The rich man gets given so much and he never so much as mentions sharing any of it with anyone when all around him there would have been people in need. Gifts from God are meant to be enjoyed and shared. He should have been saying “thank you” to God and sharing with others. As it is put elsewhere: ‘he does not realise that just as his soul is in the hands of God, so his surplus should be in the mouths of those who are hungry.’ ¹ If you are going to have a reputation, best it should be for recognising God’s gifts in your life and sharing them with others.

So what’s the point of it all? Work and achievements, acquisition and possessions, celebrity and reputation; none of these, nor all of these together, by themselves, will give ultimate meaning to our lives. As Jesus put it, ‘Be on guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.’ (12:15)

It’s when we put such things into the context of knowing God and seeing others that meaning emerges. Recognise what God has given you. Enjoy what God has given you. Share it with others. And in the midst of that your life can take on greater purpose and meaning.

I could say more, but I’ll stop there. After all, time is getting on, and I’ve got work to do.

¹ Amy Jill Levine and Ben Witherington III The Gospel of Luke. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018, p. 345.

Ecclesiastes, fame, life, Luke 12: 13-21, meaning, money, possessions, work

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