Equality and the generosity of God

Here's the sermon that I shared today at St John's Langdon Hills and St Andrew's Wickford: 

Chichele Road in Cricklewood is known as Job Street, where economic migrants line up to be hired from the back of a van, no questions asked. Dozens of men in jeans and anoraks hang around from 6.30am to discover whether they will be working that day. A car will stop, a negotiation will take place, a deal may be struck. Typically, the men will be whisked off to a building site or a house in the process of renovation. They will be paid £20 to £40 for a long, arduous day's work: no tax, no national insurance, no questions asked.

That’s essentially the scenario for today’s Gospel reading (Matthew 20. 1 - 16). The social situation in Jesus’ day was that many small farmers were being forced off their land because of debt they incurred to pay Roman taxes. Consequently, large pools of unemployed men gathered each morning, hoping to be hired for the day. They were the displaced, unemployed, and underemployed workers of their day. Those still waiting at five o'clock would have had little chance of earning enough to buy food for their families that day. Yet the vineyard owner pays even them a full day’s wage. The owner in the parable ensures that all the workers are paid enough to support their families, as a denarius was a full day’s pay for a skilled worker.

So, unlike those exploited illegal workers or gig economy workers earning less than the minimum wage, the employer in this story is concerned that those he employs are paid a living wage. The standard thing for an employer in Jesus’ day to do would be to send one of his employees to the marketplace to pick up a few extra workers for the day. But this employer goes to the marketplace himself. In fact, he goes repeatedly to seek workers and clearly cares about their predicament seeking to lift them out of their despair by providing work that meets their needs and the needs of those who depend on them. If God is like the owner of the vineyard then he cares about our hopeless situation as human beings. He comes looking for us. He goes on an all-out search to find workers for his vineyard. He longs to provide us with a life of significance in his kingdom work.

As N. T. Wright has said, God’s grace, in short, is not the sort of thing you can bargain with or try to store up. It isn’t the sort of thing that one person can have a lot of and someone else only a little. The point of the story is that what people get from having served God and his kingdom is not, actually, a ‘wage’ at all. It’s not, strictly, a reward for work done. God doesn’t make contracts with us, as if we could bargain or negotiate for a better deal. He makes covenants, in which he promises us everything and asks of us everything in return. When he keeps his promises, he is not rewarding us for effort, but doing what comes naturally to his overflowingly generous nature.

Michael Green says of this story: Length of service and long hours of toil in the heat of the day constitute no claim on God and provide no reason why he should not be generous to those who have done less. All human merit shrivels before his burning, self-giving love. Grace, amazing grace, is the burden of this story. All are equally undeserving of so large a sum as a denarius a day. All are given it by the generosity of the employer. All are on the same level. The poor disciples, fishermen and tax collectors as they are, are welcomed by God along with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. There are no rankings in the kingdom of God. Nobody can claim deserved membership of the kingdom. There is no place for personal pride, for contempt or jealousy, for there is no ground for any to question how this generous God handles the utterly undeserving. He is good. He sees that the one-hour workers would have no money for supper if they got paid for only one hour. In generosity he gives them what they need. Who is to complain at that?

Yet there is always a danger that we do get cross with God over this. People who work or move in church circles can easily assume that they are the special ones, God’s inner circle. In reality, as we have seen, God is out in the marketplace, looking for the people everybody else tried to ignore, welcoming them on the same terms, surprising them (and everybody else) with his generous grace. In Ephesians 2:8-10 Paul says, For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. Is there anywhere in today’s church, I wonder, that doesn’t need to be reminded of that message?

The parable is also a message of hope to everyone struggling to find adequate employment. In God’s kingdom, it suggests, we will all find work that meets our needs. The parable is, therefore, also a challenge to all those who have a hand in shaping the structures of work in today’s society. What can we do, as Christians, to advance this aspect of God’s kingdom right now?

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R.E.M. - Finest Worksong.

Peace be with you, receive the Holy Spirit

Here's the sermon that I shared at St Mary’s Runwell and St John’s Langdon Hills this morning:

There are two occasions on which we are told Jesus’ disciples received the Holy Spirit. The second was at Pentecost but the first was one of the Resurrection appearances, in which Jesus appeared to his disciples and said, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit (John 20. 21 & 22). On this occasion the Holy Spirit came as the breath of God and as words of peace.

The Spirit’s coming in this way was promised by Jesus who, as we heard in today’s Gospel Reading (John 14. 15 - 31), said, “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth … he abides with you, and he will be in you” (John 14. 15 – 17). “The Holy Spirit … will remind you of all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid” (John 14. 26 & 27).

By giving them the Spirit he was giving them his peace and doing so in a similar way to that in which he had received it; as, when he was baptised, the Spirit descended upon him in the bodily form of a dove. The dove being a Biblical symbol of peace; a symbol that derived from the dove which brought news to Noah of the flood having receded, enabling life to begin again on earth.

When I was at St Martin-in-the-Fields we had an art installation which saw two thousand white paper doves hanging in the nave of the church forming a 15-metre-long paper sculpture called Les Colombes – The White Doves. Following successful installations with over 300,000 visitors in Jerusalem and Munich, these origami doves bore hopes and greetings from people who came into the church, from passers-by, from night revellers in the bar around the corner, from locals and strangers, people from all over the world. Catholic and Protestant, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, poor and rich, anyone could fold them and should fold them. In the flock each individual, separately folded dove became one of many.

The German artist, Michael Pendry, said: “Folded by different people, the doves in their unity stand for such a fundamental human right. The time has come to admonish and to stand up for this – for the right to peace and freedom! So that that the flock of doves might grow, from place to place, from country to country, across all borders.”

In this way, the flock was a symbol of a collective spirit of peace; one which is particularly needed at this time when terror has revisited our streets and leisure activities. The flock of doves headed from the entrance of the church towards the sanctuary, where lies the answer to all the questions of our spiritual potential – who am I, where do I come from, where am I going? In answer to these questions, the descent of the Spirit in the bodily form of a dove told us that we are the beloved sons and daughters of our Father God and that we are here to use our God-given abilities to do work for him that only we can do.

The Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields, Sam Wells, said that: “When at his baptism the Holy Spirit descended on Jesus like a dove Jesus wasn’t blown away – he was touched more deeply that words can say or eyes can perceive. That’s what this exhibition is about – and what’s more, it affirms that the Holy Spirit works through the humble hands of you and me.” Jesus gives us his peace, in the form of the Holy Spirit, so that we can then be peacemakers ourselves.

Sam has explained that “The Holy Spirit is the part of God that gives us here and now and forever and always those things that Jesus brought us once and for all. Jesus has shown us and brought us peace, but we need the Spirit to continue to make peace in and among us. The one Spirit proclaims “peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near” (2:17). One of the most difficult things in life is to balance your care for those who are near – your regular circle of friends, family, neighbours, and colleagues – with your responsibility for those who are far off – distant friends, family, fellow citizens, and people of other nations and faiths … how easy it is to become so wrapped up with a small circle of intimates that we can’t register the need of those outside our own tiny world … It’s hard to be at peace with those who are far and at peace with those who are near … Jesus is our peace because he gives us the Holy Spirit to reconcile those from whom we are far off and those to whom we are near. Jesus is our peace because he gives us the Holy Spirit to reconcile the parts of ourselves that are far from God with the parts of ourselves that are near.”

Sharing the Peace is the climax to which the first half of our service moves. We are used to it and probably imagine that it has always been part of Anglican worship. However, it was the liturgical reform of the later 20th Century that rediscovered the Kiss of Peace of the early church, and it was introduced in the Church of England’s experimental Series 3 liturgy in about 1971. Holy Communion is celebrated by the whole people of God gathered for worship and at the sharing of the Peace we are reminded that we are together unified as the body of Christ.

This is the moment when we are reminded that Jesus said Blessed are the peacemakers: they shall be called children of God. We are to let the peace of Christ rule in our hearts, since as members of one body we are called to peace, and we are reminded that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace. If we live in the Spirit of peace, we are to walk in the Spirit of peace.

This is the moment in our service when Christ breathes on us so that we receive his Spirit and live in his peace. His promise was, Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. The Peace is the moment in our Service when we are reminded of that promise and encouraged to receive it.

Many of us shake hands or hug on Sunday mornings without thinking about what the symbol means. Sometimes, we “cross our fingers” as we say “peace!” with people we don’t like, and keep bland, expressionless faces as we shake hands with someone we haven’t yet forgiven. The Peace calls us to go deeper than that.

“Before you offer your gift at the altar,” Jesus says, “be reconciled.” In our Service, the Peace always comes after the Prayers of the People and the Confession and Absolution. We are called to prepare ourselves to go to the altar: to pray for those we’ve hurt, and those who have hurt us; to confess the sins we need to confess, and to receive God’s forgiveness; and then to be reconciled, one with another, as a symbol of our new life in Christ.

Then, we can truly go to the Altar with clean hands and a ready heart, and receive truly the gift Christ makes available to us all: his body and blood given in love for us.

When others spread war, anxiety, division and strife, those led by the Spirit make peace. Sharing the Peace is the time in our service when we can make peace amongst ourselves. Then, at the end of our Service we are told to go in peace to love and serve the Lord in the rest of the week because those who are led into peace by the Holy Spirit become peacemakers in the world and in their local communities. May it be so for each one of us. Amen.

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Adrian Snell - Peace Be With You.