Collect
Almighty and everlasting God, you are always more ready to hear than we to pray and to give more than either we desire or deserve: pour down upon us the abundance of your mercy, forgiving us those things of which our conscience is afraid and giving us those good things which we are not worthy to ask but through the merits and mediation of 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 of constant mercy, who sent your Son to save us: remind us of your goodness, increase your grace within us, that our thankfulness may grow, through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Post Communion
God of all mercy, in this eucharist you have set aside our sins and given us your healing: grant that we who are made whole in Christ may bring that healing to this broken world, in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord.
Readings
Old Testament
The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: ‘Come, go down to the potter’s house, and there I will let you hear my words.’ So I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was working at his wheel. The vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter’s hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as seemed good to him.
Then the word of the Lord came to me: Can I not do with you, O house of Israel, just as this potter has done? says the Lord. Just like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel. At one moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, but if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will change my mind about the disaster that I intended to bring on it. And at another moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will build and plant it, but if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will change my mind about the good that I had intended to do to it. Now, therefore, say to the people of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem: Thus says the Lord: Look, I am a potter shaping evil against you and devising a plan against you. Turn now, all of you from your evil way, and amend your ways and your doings.
Jeremiah 18:1–11
Psalm
1 Blessed are they who have not walked in the counsel of the wicked,
nor lingered in the way of sinners, nor sat in the assembly of the scornful.
2 Their delight is in the law of the Lord
and they meditate on his law day and night.
3 Like a tree planted by streams of water bearing fruit in due season, with leaves that do not wither,
whatever they do, it shall prosper.
4 As for the wicked, it is not so with them;
they are like chaff which the wind blows away.
5 Therefore the wicked shall not be able to stand in the judgement,
nor the sinner in the congregation of the righteous.
6 For the Lord knows the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked shall perish.
Psalm 1
Epistle
Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus, and Timothy our brother,
To Philemon our dear friend and co-worker, to Apphia our sister, to Archippus our fellow-soldier, and to the church in your house:
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
When I remember you in my prayers, I always thank my God because I hear of your love for all the saints and your faith towards the Lord Jesus. I pray that the sharing of your faith may become effective when you perceive all the good that we may do for Christ. I have indeed received much joy and encouragement from your love, because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you, my brother.
For this reason, though I am bold enough in Christ to command you to do your duty, yet I would rather appeal to you on the basis of love – and I, Paul, do this as an old man, and now also as a prisoner of Christ Jesus. I am appealing to you for my child, Onesimus, whose father I have become during my imprisonment. Formerly he was useless to you, but now he is indeed useful both to you and to me. I am sending him, that is, my own heart, back to you. I wanted to keep him with me, so that he might be of service to me in your place during my imprisonment for the gospel; but I preferred to do nothing without your consent, in order that your good deed might be voluntary and not something forced. Perhaps this is the reason he was separated from you for a while, so that you might have him back for ever, no longer as a slave but as more than a slave, a beloved brother – especially to me but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord.
So if you consider me your partner, welcome him as you would welcome me. If he has wronged you in any way, or owes you anything, charge that to my account. I, Paul, am writing this with my own hand: I will repay it. I say nothing about your owing me even your own self. Yes, brother, let me have this benefit from you in the Lord! Refresh my heart in Christ. Confident of your obedience, I am writing to you, knowing that you will do even more than I say.
Philemon 1–21
Gospel
Now large crowds were travelling with him; and he turned and said to them, ‘Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him, saying, “This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.” Or what king, going out to wage war against another king, will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to oppose the one who comes against him with twenty thousand? If he cannot, then, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for the terms of peace. So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.
Luke 14.25–33
Sermon on Sunday, Trinity 12
Last Sunday we said goodbye to Bill Boon. I think we are mourning his departure from the benefice. We have been anticipating his leaving for over a month in different ways. But now that he has left, we are bereft. Alone. And feeling our inadequacy. I myself have failed you this morning, for I have not arranged any music. So I too am in mourning. — What biblical story does all this remind you of? (Don’t worry, I had to look it up too – it comes from the gospel of John.) I am tempted to compare our experience of Bill’s departure with that of the disciples when Jesus set his face to Jerusalem, when Jesus told them in the Farewell Discourse that he was leaving them, that he was going away to the Father, that death awaited him in Jerusalem and he had to go. Don’t you think the disciples feared his departure, just as we fear for the future of the benefice?
Absence is what strikes us so palpably when we think about the vacancy in the parish. We will be without an assigned leader. We thrash about asking questions in this “inter regnum” – What are we to do? Who will tell us what we ought to do? Who will take over all those things that were automatically done in the Sharpness vicarage? So many questions are raised about the future and how our lives will be affected. – Jesus said in that story from John, “Do not let your hearts be troubled.” Bill also said this from time to time as well, even before he announced his own departure from us. – This gives me pause for thought – matters philosophical and theological flood into my mind and I have to ask myself difficult questions – what is the most important problem of life really? – is it making money or having a nice home? Do we pursue something intangible when we struggle for meaning in life? Should we consider our intention to grasp others lovingly in our lives? Do we reach for the divine?
When we stand at the cliff edge of absence, we are forced to confront those questions, aren’t we? These are the questions the Danish theologian Kierkegaard raised over a century ago. He wrote about the existential angst of absence. He was perplexed by the utter loneliness of being a human being. The usual perception of this quandary is totally at odds with those words Jesus used in his Farewell Discourse, “Let not your hearts be troubled.”
In my first class at university, the teacher said, “Philosophy must first consider death.” – that ultimate moment of being alone, by that abyss Kierkegaard describes. Jesus says in the gospel this morning –
Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.
What do you think this means? On one level I think it points to our alienation from family and friends, estrangement from the life we all consider normal. Another aspect is the self-loathing of the ascetic, when we really don’t like ourselves at all. Another way to look at it is the solitary life which is bound to the cross. I think it can also be seen as the moment when the child becomes a singular individual, when we become mature adults. Doesn’t Jesus embrace this loneliness of faithfulness completely when he turns his face to Jerusalem?
Let’s consider Good Friday explicitly, when our Lord gave himself up to the hands of sinful men to reveal the power of God in life here and now. – I would like to say that the crucifixion of Jesus does call on all of us to confront the imminence of death so that we understand what life in all its fullness truly is. Here and now we are alive and the object of our faith has to be seen through the prism of the cross. We read in the Gospel of John, when Jesus was lifted up, when he had irrevocably gone away, then he reveals the glory of God, that he has healed the world.
I begin to wonder whether we ever take that statement seriously. Do we understand that, when Jesus was nailed to the wooden beam and roughly raised to hang in the blistering sun –that the glory of God is radiating out from the agony of that ignominious death, a death reserved for the most heinous of criminals, a death forced on men who were the lowest of the low, men held in contempt by all because of their crimes against what we all consider the normal life?
Imagine that! We human beings pass judgement on and murder the incarnation of the divine in one of the most painful and wicked ways possible, an utter destruction devised by people just like you and me. But it is transformed against all expectation by our perception. Instead of showing how wretched humanity can behave towards itself, the cross becomes the wonder of salvation. Jesus shows us life in all its fullness as the glory of God, even as it ends in his own crucifixion. We must remind ourselves that the cross becomes the way to understand life. Jesus has foreseen the manner of his death as a revelation for those who have eyes to see. As he undergoes the end of his life, alone and solitary, offering himself up for others, he silently declares the meaning of a life lived in all its fullness.
The Church says he died for me. For the wretch I consider myself to be, just as the hymn “Amazing Grace” explicitly says. For me, who once was blind but now I see just what that death is. – It is mine own. It is up to me to live life in all its fullness, so that when I have passed others might be blessed by my spending time with them – that is something we all hope, don’t we?
Yesterday as I drove home from enjoying myself for the day, I listened to a J B Priestley play on Radio 4extra. As I heard it unfold, I was forced to consider our topic for today, our hopes for those who come after, the stuff of that Farewell Discourse from the Gospel of John.
I know that we have been blessed by the presence of Bill Boon in the last quarter century. — However, now he is absent. We must take the lessons he taught and make them our own. Bill taught us that we can stand on our own, that we can live out the christian virtues and avoid the vices which populate the circles of hell in Dante’s Inferno. Bill was only repeating Jesus’ words – he says to the generations, “Let not your hearts be troubled.” These words of Jesus should put our minds at rest, even if we think we hate our parents and siblings. We need to let all that pass away until we can stand alone and free, on the edge of Kierkegaard’s abyss.
Each one of us must struggle with that most important of philosophical problems with the same candour and passion of Jesus, just as we have to deal with the mundane decisions of our day to day lives. Whether they are large or small choices, we have to consider every moment of our time as life in all its fullness. In other words, I think each of us must contemplate the divine and come to terms with the sacred for ourselves. Each of us stands alone at that decision of faith, and we stand there at any – and every – moment of our lives.
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