Collect
Almighty God, who called your Church to bear witness that you were in Christ reconciling the world to yourself: help us to proclaim the good news of your love, that all who hear it may be drawn to you; through him who was lifted up on the cross, and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
or
Almighty God, you search us and know us: may we rely on you in strength and rest on you in weakness, now and in all our days; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Post Communion
God our creator, you feed your children with the true manna, the living bread from heaven: let this holy food sustain us through our earthly pilgrimage until we come to that place where hunger and thirst are no more; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Readings
Old Testament
O Lord, you know; remember me and visit me,
and bring down retribution for me on my persecutors.
In your forbearance do not take me away;
know that on your account I suffer insult.
Your words were found, and I ate them,
and your words became to me a joy
and the delight of my heart;
for I am called by your name,
O Lord, God of hosts.
I did not sit in the company of merrymakers,
nor did I rejoice;
under the weight of your hand I sat alone,
for you had filled me with indignation.
Why is my pain unceasing, my wound incurable,
refusing to be healed?
Truly, you are to me like a deceitful brook,
like waters that fail.
Therefore, thus says the Lord:
If you turn back, I will take you back,
and you shall stand before me.
If you utter what is precious, and not what is worthless,
you shall serve as my mouth.
It is they who will turn to you,
not you who will turn to them.
And I will make you to this people
a fortified wall of bronze;
they will fight against you,
but they shall not prevail over you,
for I am with you
to save you and deliver you,
says the Lord.
I will deliver you out of the hand of the wicked,
and redeem you from the grasp of the ruthless.
Jeremiah 15.15–21
Psalm
1 Give judgement for me, O Lord,for I have walked with integrity; ♦
I have trusted in the Lord and have not faltered.
2 Test me, O Lord, and try me; ♦
examine my heart and my mind.
3 For your love is before my eyes; ♦
I have walked in your truth.
4 I have not joined the company of the false, ♦
nor consorted with the deceitful.
5 I hate the gathering of evildoers ♦
and I will not sit down with the wicked.
6 I will wash my hands in innocence, O Lord, ♦
that I may go about your altar,
7 To make heard the voice of thanksgiving ♦
and tell of all your wonderful deeds.
8 Lord, I love the house of your habitation ♦
and the place where your glory abides.
Psalm 26.1–8
Epistle
Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honour. Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers.
Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. 18If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’ No, ‘if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.’ Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
Romans 12.9–21
Gospel
From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, ‘God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.’ But he turned and said to Peter, ‘Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling-block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.’
Then Jesus told his disciples, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?
‘For the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay everyone for what has been done. Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.’
Matthew 16.21–28
Sermon on Sunday, Trinity Thirteen
I wonder if nowadays we listen to advice from anyone, whether they are our loved ones, our neighbours, or our teachers. I wonder whether we even listen to our priests and bishops speaking from the pulpit, let alone a mere Reader. Do we even listen to the advice given when it comes from the Bible, which we here in church confess to be the Word of God. Let’s take our reading from the epistle today as an example.
Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’ No, ‘if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.’
What wonderful advice! Vengeance is better served from an agency which has no connection with personal revenge – vengeance has to be that dish best served cold, without the heat of personal emotion. But we ourselves are not to seek revenge, are we. It seems our writer is counselling kindness whatever the situation. Why? Surely it would feel a lot better to take action against those who had wronged you in the same way they had treated you – or even more harshly …
So would we take this advice? Would we ever take any advice which goes against the grain of everyday expectation? – The other day I heard on the radio a few moments of a discussion of pride – that most heinous of the deadly sins, for it gives rise to just about any evil act a person can commit. For pride has contempt for all others. It would seem pride moves people to do just about anything, because a proud person is beyond considering anyone but him- or her- self. Psychologists might call it something else, narcissism or psychopathy or some other four syllable word. How ever it manifests itself, pride does demean everything one does, as well as the person doing it, let alone the degradation pride accomplishes on everyone else. Pride does not lift up, rather it destroys everything else except one’s self delusion.
Only the humble act can be exalted. We have heard about the meek inheriting the earth and the other blessings of the beatitudes, but do we really believe them? Kindness is the humblest of acts, and it does allow us to be exalted – if only in the eyes of the recipient of any small act of kindness.
What if that act of kindness were better known to a wider public? Would others also see you in another light? But more importantly, would you understand yourself anew?
At the moment, if we look around us, pride – not humility – is the mark of our society. We are to have pride in ourselves – black, white, yellow, male, female, trans, tall, short, extra-extra-extra-large or extremely petite. We should puff ourselves up in whatever the one thing we think defines us. This is what a profile on social media does – it is what we do to ourselves. We objectify ourselves and reduce ourselves to only one thing and that can change in the blink of an eye – from life to death.
This is what we have heard about before, isn’t it? Paul talks of this transformation in his letters time and again, as he speaks of the speedy, unexpected coming of Christ into our lives again, ‘at the last trump’ as they used to say. Paul and Jesus are agreed that we should live as though we were in the final moments before the gates of heaven are to open and that final judgement about each and every one of us is to be made. How humbling is that!
However, this message is not what social media proclaims, is it? It is not what the news conveys. Everything around us is about aggrandisement – and sadly this is a very selfish pursuit. We listen to that “chatter”, that prattle is what determines our actions all too often. What “they” think is more important to us than what is deep within our hearts. – I know you have heard me speak about this many times before, so I hope you can dredge up memories of those times when I spoke about the barbarous rule of the faceless crowd. – Today, I am again speaking of your own silent voice, the one that whispers to you in your disquiet when you are being led rather than stepping out on your own on the righteous path.
You remember that “still small voice of calm” from the hymn, don’t you – whose is it? How do we hear it? These are the questions the sage has always contemplated in deep thought. The religious have always confronted that silent voice in the prayer of the monastic cell. Just like each one of us, they have always wondered what the just path is as they followed their vocation, their calling to be their ultimate self, their ownmost being.
Is that true being the superman of the past, the conquering hero, the single-minded person whose only goal was that one prize? Or is one’s ultimate being to be the kindest person in the world? To follow that admonition we read from the bible today. To be good to your enemies – to heap those coals on their heads as they fester in the discomfort of their own self-judgement, let alone the judgement of God. – To be good to your enemies fulfills in ways we can never expect. We have no doubt. We have no self-reproach. We will love others as we love ourselves and so fulfill the great commandment Jesus laid on our shoulders, that heaviest of all labours anyone can take up. That is the cross Jesus wants us to carry – that command to love. Everything fades into insignificance if we fail in that one task. It is the humbleness of kindness. Pride can have no place in a kind heart.
In the kind heart there is nothing that takes our attention away from the task of love, and the true object of that love – God, that beyond which there nothing. Kindness strips away all our delusion. God is there before us when all become the objects of love. Kindness reveals that. The kind person really does reveal God in our midst – that love which is without expectation and yet is forever reaching out to an other.
This is getting rather mystical, isn’t it? But don’t we all wish for that vision of God? Don’t we all want to be kind and loving to each and every person we meet, just as we want each an every person to be kind to us? Don’t we want to love the other as he or she loves us? We should imagine love as the greatest revenge we can wreak in the world. In our everyday understanding, agape (true christian love) would turn everything upside down. Imagine if the worst we could do to others was to love them. Wouldn’t the world be such a different place? In other words, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”
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