Collect
Almighty God, you have broken the tyranny of sin and have sent the Spirit of your Son into our hearts whereby we call you Father: give us grace to dedicate our freedom to your service, that we and all creation may be brought to the glorious liberty of the children of God; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
or
God our saviour, look on this wounded world in pity and in power; hold us fast to your promises of peace won for us by your Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ.
Post Communion
O God, whose beauty is beyond our imagining and whose power we cannot comprehend: show us your glory as far as we can grasp it, and shield us from knowing more than we can bear until we may look upon you without fear; through Jesus Christ our Saviour.
Readings
Old Testament – 2 Kings 5.1–14
Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Aram, was a great man and in high favour with his master, because by him the Lord had given victory to Aram. The man, though a mighty warrior, suffered from leprosy. Now the Arameans on one of their raids had taken a young girl captive from the land of Israel, and she served Naaman’s wife. She said to her mistress, ‘If only my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy.’ So Naaman went in and told his lord just what the girl from the land of Israel had said. And the king of Aram said, ‘Go then, and I will send along a letter to the king of Israel.’
He went, taking with him ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold, and ten sets of garments. He brought the letter to the king of Israel, which read, ‘When this letter reaches you, know that I have sent to you my servant Naaman, that you may cure him of his leprosy.’ When the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his clothes and said, ‘Am I God, to give death or life, that this man sends word to me to cure a man of his leprosy? Just look and see how he is trying to pick a quarrel with me.’
But when Elisha the man of God heard that the king of Israel had torn his clothes, he sent a message to the king, ‘Why have you torn your clothes? Let him come to me, that he may learn that there is a prophet in Israel.’ So Naaman came with his horses and chariots, and halted at the entrance of Elisha’s house. Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, ‘Go, wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored and you shall be clean.’ But Naaman became angry and went away, saying, ‘I thought that for me he would surely come out, and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, and would wave his hand over the spot, and cure the leprosy! Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them, and be clean?’ He turned and went away in a rage. But his servants approached and said to him, ‘Father, if the prophet had commanded you to do something difficult, would you not have done it? How much more, when all he said to you was, “Wash, and be clean”?’ So he went down and immersed himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God; his flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and he was clean.
Psalm
1 I will exalt you, O Lord, because you have raised me up ♦
and have not let my foes triumph over me.
2 O Lord my God, I cried out to you ♦
and you have healed me.
3 You brought me up, O Lord, from the dead; ♦
you restored me to life from among those that go down to the Pit.
4 Sing to the Lord, you servants of his; ♦
give thanks to his holy name.
5 For his wrath endures but the twinkling of an eye, his favour for a lifetime. ♦
Heaviness may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.
6 In my prosperity I said, ‘I shall never be moved. ♦
You, Lord, of your goodness, have made my hill so strong.’
7 Then you hid your face from me ♦
and I was utterly dismayed.
8 To you, O Lord, I cried; ♦
to the Lord I made my supplication:
9 ‘What profit is there in my blood, if I go down to the Pit? ♦
Will the dust praise you or declare your faithfulness?
10 ‘Hear, O Lord, and have mercy upon me; ♦
O Lord, be my helper.’
11 You have turned my mourning into dancing; ♦
you have put off my sackcloth and girded me with gladness;
12 Therefore my heart sings to you without ceasing; ♦
O Lord my God, I will give you thanks for ever.
Epistle – Galatians 6.[1–6] 7–16
[My friends, if anyone is detected in a transgression, you who have received the Spirit should restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness. Take care that you yourselves are not tempted. Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfil the law of Christ. For if those who are nothing think they are something, they deceive themselves. All must test their own work; then that work, rather than their neighbour’s work, will become a cause for pride. For all must carry their own loads.
Those who are taught the word must share in all good things with their teacher.]
Do not be deceived; God is not mocked, for you reap whatever you sow. If you sow to your own flesh, you will reap corruption from the flesh; but if you sow to the Spirit, you will reap eternal life from the Spirit. So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up. So then, whenever we have an opportunity, let us work for the good of all, and especially for those of the family of faith.
See what large letters I make when I am writing in my own hand! It is those who want to make a good showing in the flesh that try to compel you to be circumcised – only that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ. Even the circumcised do not themselves obey the law, but they want you to be circumcised so that they may boast about your flesh. May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. For neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is anything; but a new creation is everything! As for those who will follow this rule – peace be upon them, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God.
Gospel – Luke 10.1–11, 16–20
After this the Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go. He said to them, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest. Go on your way. See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves. Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and greet no one on the road. Whatever house you enter, first say, “Peace to this house!” And if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you. Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide, for the labourer deserves to be paid. Do not move about from house to house. Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; cure the sick who are there, and say to them, “The kingdom of God has come near to you.” But whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go out into its streets and say, “Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you. Yet know this: the kingdom of God has come near.”
‘Whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever rejects you rejects me, and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me.’
The seventy returned with joy, saying, ‘Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!’ He said to them, ‘I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning. See, I have given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing will hurt you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.’
Sermon on Sunday, Trinity 3
What do you say when you catch someone out? Are you sarcastic or bitter? Do you berate those persons about their failures? – Or – would you say something like:
My friends, if anyone is detected in a transgression, you who have received the Spirit, should restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness.
So Paul writes to the Galatians. He goes on to say, “Take care that you yourselves are not tempted.” Has anyone ever said such a thing to you? Do we give way to that wicked temptation all too easily? Do I let my bile rise when I come across a mistake and lambaste the poor fellow who already may be feeling bad about this “sin”? Imagine that person standing in front of you – there you are with the transgressor before you, you see such embarrassment and contrition in front of you, do you still wale into that hapless individual and vent your fury because of your own feelings? Have you succumbed to such a temptation and let rip because others have done that to you?
Such things do happen, don’t they? I know that I have behaved pretty badly from time to time, and I haven’t remembered or heard these words of Paul in those moments. So, afterwards, what happens? Do any of us at all regret that loss of control?
Is life only all about catching other people out? Paul doesn’t think so, does he? “Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfil the law of Christ.” Any transgression can be remedied and everyone is better off, especially when there is this corporate responsibility – when we share each other’s burdens. When we all try to do what is right, we become merciful and fulfil the law of Christ. We live in charity with one another.
That is a very different way of behaving compared to our everyday, what could be called our ‘default’, position in the world. Don’t we normally let the blame fall on the guilty party and pile on more and more recrimination? We see this all the time in government all over the world and even on our own streets where ‘road rage’ used to be the thing, but now we see this same anger on the so-called ‘social’ media. We have all been there, haven’t we? When we are driving down the motorway or pushing our trolley in the supermarket, we might get cut off – “What did you do that for?” we ask silently to ourselves, or perhaps under our breath. Yet there are people who say it out loudly and embarrass everyone all around them. That is now what happens on social media, I am told. And who knows where that may lead?
That underlying rage is in the world, but it is more dangerous now – knives are being carried and such rage could result in an assault or – even more terrifying – murder. That would not be the case, if all of us were kind and forbearing with each other, that attitude which should lead us to bear one another’s burdens.
A few weeks ago I spoke about our prayer life. I considered it the point from which we act in the whole of our lives, I said that faith was not some black hole into which everything disappears. No, I thought faith is the sun which is forever shining in the whole of our lives. We live out of our faith, into the world. Faith emits life in all its fullness, and that faith propels us into such a visible life.
I realise that is a paradox – everyone else says faith or religion is totally “a private matter”, but that only became so since the Victorian period, that age of double standards and contradiction, when private and public never quite agreed – like every period of history when hypocrisy is so very visible – if we examine the contradiction of what is accepted as the normality of the crowd.
On the contrary, we here in the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church find that religion has always been a public thing. That teacher of mine, whom I like to quote, says that religion is out there in public where the myths, symbols and rituals of faith are revealed in everyday behaviour. Of course the link can be tenuous nowadays, since we no longer ken the stories of the bible, and since we no longer gather together as communities with shared stories. We no longer see signs of meaning in the everyday, yet extraordinary, things around us. An example of this forgetfulness is the biblical desperation of the cry from the core of my being, my heart exclaims “My God, my God …” This has become the trite “OMG” which children in the schoolyard shout out. These youngsters exclaim these letters without understanding anything beyond those letters they have heard their parents say. Those letters, ‘O M G’, do not come anywhere near anyone’s heart, do they? When we people of faith utter the words of that psalm, “My God! My God …”, our hearts are about to break because of such pain tearing at them. It is then, at that point, we learn about the “bearing of one another’s burdens”
We try to lift up the other’s heart gently. We ensure the wholeness of that other person’s life with gentleness? I want to say that we do heed this exhortation from Paul – even if it does come from an epoch of history so very different from our own. The same idea has occurred in our own time, hasn’t it? We all acclaimed what care in the community could do. The government set up this programme and we all agreed with the principle, didn’t we? We all do contend that we should care for our neighbours in their distress as community. This is bearing one another’s burdens on a grand scale, when society takes up the cause of each other’s burdens, whether physical, mental or spiritual. Care in the community only happens if there is a common ground, a shared story of where we find ourselves in life. The Church used to be the locus for that participation, where neighbours shared the peace (however grudgingly) in worship because it is in peace that no one would be overburdened.
However, Paul goes further when he writes,
All must test their own work; then that work, rather than their neighbour’s work, will become a cause for pride. For all must carry their own loads.
While we bear one another’s loads, Paul counsels that we are supposed to look at our own work – not our neighbours’. We must be our own harshest critics pondering just how well we do for others. Doesn’t someone somewhere talk about the futility of the unexamined life? – One of the most wonderful things to come out of daily self-examination is the judgement that we might have been productive throughout the day just past, as we call to mind what we have done. That critical self-awareness defends us from temptation, that temptation against which Paul warned us at the beginning of our reading this morning. When we reflect on our activity, we realise just how full – or empty – our day has been. We see just how well we have borne our own burdens and how graciously we have lifted the other’s.
On Radio3 a University of Pennsylvania study was quoted. They studied the effects of kindness, and concluded that it benefited all. The presenter concurred and that kindness is not a commodity to be hoarded but a blessing to be shared. We could say that kindness is our own way of sharing the burdens of life when we love our neighbour.