Collect
Let your merciful ears, O Lord, be open to the prayers of your humble servants; and that they may obtain their petitions make them to ask such things as shall please you; 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
Lord of heaven and earth, as Jesus taught his disciples to be persistent in prayer, give us patience and courage never to lose hope, but always to bring our prayers before you; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Post Communion
God of our pilgrimage, you have willed that the gate of mercy should stand open for those who trust in you: look upon us with your favour that we who follow the path of your will may never wander from the way of life; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Readings
Old Testament – 2 Samuel 11.26 – 12.13a
When the wife of Uriah heard that her husband was dead, she made lamentation for him. When the mourning was over, David sent and brought her to his house, and she became his wife, and bore him a son.
But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord, and the Lord sent Nathan to David. He came to him, and said to him, ‘There were two men in a certain city, one rich and the other poor. The rich man had very many flocks and herds; but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb, which he had bought. He brought it up, and it grew up with him and with his children; it used to eat of his meagre fare, and drink from his cup, and lie in his bosom, and it was like a daughter to him. Now there came a traveller to the rich man, and he was loath to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the wayfarer who had come to him, but he took the poor man’s lamb, and prepared that for the guest who had come to him.’ Then David’s anger was greatly kindled against the man. He said to Nathan, ‘As the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die; he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity.’
Nathan said to David, ‘You are the man! Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: I anointed you king over Israel, and I rescued you from the hand of Saul; I gave you your master’s house, and your master’s wives into your bosom, and gave you the house of Israel and of Judah; and if that had been too little, I would have added as much more. Why have you despised the word of the Lord, to do what is evil in his sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and have taken his wife to be your wife, and have killed him with the sword of the Ammonites. Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house, for you have despised me, and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife. Thus says the Lord: I will raise up trouble against you from within your own house; and I will take your wives before your eyes, and give them to your neighbour, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this very sun. For you did it secretly; but I will do this thing before all Israel, and before the sun.’ David said to Nathan, ‘I have sinned against the Lord.’ Nathan said to David, ‘Now the Lord has put away your sin; you shall not die.
Psalm 51.1–13
1 Have mercy on me, O God, in your great goodness; ♦
according to the abundance of your compassion blot out my offences.
2 Wash me thoroughly from my wickedness ♦
and cleanse me from my sin.
3 For I acknowledge my faults ♦
and my sin is ever before me.
4 Against you only have I sinned ♦
and done what is evil in your sight,
5 So that you are justified in your sentence ♦
and righteous in your judgement.
6 I have been wicked even from my birth, ♦
a sinner when my mother conceived me.
7 Behold, you desire truth deep within me ♦
and shall make me understand wisdom in the depths of my heart.
8 Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean; ♦
wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.
9 Make me hear of joy and gladness, ♦
that the bones you have broken may rejoice.
10 Turn your face from my sins ♦
and blot out all my misdeeds.
11 Make me a clean heart, O God, ♦
and renew a right spirit within me.
12 Cast me not away from your presence ♦
and take not your holy spirit from me.
13 Give me again the joy of your salvation ♦
and sustain me with your gracious spirit;
Epistle – Ephesians 4.1–16
I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.
But each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift. Therefore it is said,
‘When he ascended on high he made captivity itself a captive;
he gave gifts to his people.’
(When it says, ‘He ascended’, what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower parts of the earth? He who descended is the same one who ascended far above all the heavens, so that he might fill all things.) The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knitted together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love.
Gospel – John 6.24–35
So when the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum looking for Jesus.
When they found him on the other side of the lake, they said to him, ‘Rabbi, when did you come here?’ Jesus answered them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For it is on him that God the Father has set his seal.’ Then they said to him, ‘What must we do to perform the works of God?’ Jesus answered them, ‘This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.’ So they said to him, ‘What sign are you going to give us then, so that we may see it and believe you? What work are you performing? Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, “He gave them bread from heaven to eat.”’ Then Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.’ They said to him, ‘Sir, give us this bread always.’
Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”
Sermon on Trinity 10
The bible is full of examples of sinfulness and repentance, but perhaps we should ask ourselves – do our own lives show such changes? Do we willfully forget about the whole of our lives, both the good and the evil we have done? Is this why the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church has no bearing in today’s world?
God demands righteousness of us. The Old Testament has the Torah, the laws of God. The prophets make up a great deal of the OT, and they are forever revealing God’s judgement on the moral failure of the people of Israel. The OT lesson for this morning which is not in our booklet tells two versions of the story of David and Uriah. – The first is a simple declaration that the wife of Uriah lamented the death of her husband and when the mourning period was over David took her for his own wife and had a child with her. The second version, after a parable about sheep, is Nathan saying that David conspired to have Uriah killed by putting him in the front line and then, isolated in the midst of the fighting so that, outnumbered and alone, Uriah would fall by the sword of the Ammonite enemy. The prophet Nathan “outed” David’s perfidy, just as prophets always do reveal the sinfulness of the world.
In the epistle, Paul implies poor behaviour in his exhortations to the young churches, as today’s reading says,
We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ.
It is quite clear that Paul’s audience were not behaving well at all. They had no moral purpose guiding them along their paths in life – they seem to have schemed deceitfully and trickery was the order of the day. But Paul wanted everyone to speak truthfully – Paul wants everyone to live in love so that we grow into Christ, rooted there in Jesus, not blown about by a fickle wind of celebrity and fashion. – – Paul invites us to live a life of rectitude. “with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” This is a very different manner of life to that which he sees in his (and our) contemporaries. They enjoy “the latest thing”. They are happy to bumble along without anything guiding them to any unity, let alone “the bond of peace”.
The words of Jesus in our gospel this morning are more oblique in their exhortation to righteousness. “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.” This is very obscure, isn’t it? What food does not perish? As a gardener, I know that all vegetables eventually end up on the compost heap, there to rot away, to decompose so that perhaps sometime it might do some good.
Who can give us this enduring food Jesus is talking about? This saying is opaque to the world in which we live. We need to think about food in a very different way, don’t we? Jesus gave himself as this food, his flesh becomes bread and his blood wine for our benefit. With these enduring gifts he will fulfill us for eternal life – this is quite a different understanding than we have, for the everyday food and drink we get from Tesco or McDonald’s, and still different from the food we make from scratch with the freshest and healthiest ingredients prepared with the love of parents for their children or created for dear friends whom we invite to share our tables.
However, we are content with that food which perishes; we are happy with crafty trickery; and we even collude in despicable acts. If only life were as simple as Nathan, Paul and Jesus make it out to be! If only we could live “with all humility and patience, bearing with one another in love.” “If only!” is the mantra of the present, This trope defines us in the hollowness of despair – we stand either alone on the precipice of anxiety or we huddle in the mass of humanity without a self to bear another for love’s sake. We do not stand ourselves up against the cruelty of the world for the sake of other people. We hide away in deceit and try to trick our way on whatever wind is blowing at any one time. Looking at the behaviour of politicians revealed in the last elections in Europe and the coming election in the USA, we find that “the bond of unity in the Spirit” – even if it is only a spirit of toleration – has had nothing to do with governance.
Nathan, Paul and Jesus are asking us to look at life in this world in a very different way. They are teaching a lesson which the world has abandoned because the world revels in the deception that we are all children who have nothing to do with those grown up virtues of humility, gentleness and patience. At present it seems that self-promotion, callousness and intolerance are the marks of life in the twenty-first century.
These children, it seems, have nothing to do with the goal of love, that healthy love which the sages have always described as being beyond all telling but lies beneath all that is good and true. It is that virtuous love called
Agape
, that very grown up love which at its very heart reveals what humility, gentleness and patience truly is. This mature love is not what Nathan, Paul and Jesus see around them, nor, I have to say, do we. Let us wake us to the virtues of a moral life, a life too often avoided because of its difficulty, that “If only!” which rules our hearts all too often.
Nathan, Paul and Jesus direct us to that virtue, even if the Church has made it rather difficult to attain and even more difficult to aspire to. We have heard the Church say, for instance, that we cannot have joy on Sunday. – Just think of the film, “Chariots of Fire”, where Eric Liddell’s joy was constrained and he was loathe to run on Sunday. Our very puritanical brethren in fact would chain up playground swings so that children could not enjoy the outdoors on a Sunday. Nathan, Paul and Jesus do want us to be virtuous, rising out of the crowd to run that race to virtue, to be strong in ourselves so that humility, gentleness and patience become the character of our lives – that we might love.
It is true, “If only!” is the mantra for today – “If only!” we could express joy on every day of the week. “If only!” we could do what is right all the time. “If only!” we could be merciful and be shown mercy. “If only!” humility, gentleness and patience were the virtues we aspired to in our everyday lives. After COVID we talked incessantly about “the new normal” – where is that conversation now? What is the “normal” we have today? We need to look around us to see whether what Nathan, Paul and Jesus complained about in their time is still the case. The vision those teachers gave the world should still be our ownmost guide into a future of our own making, a future where righteousness rules life in all its fullness “with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love.”