Using all we have for God's praise and glory

Here's the sermon that I shared at: Luke 14. 25-33 (07/09/25, 10.30 am, St Mary’s Little Burstead this morning:

“Christ Jesus had equal status with God but didn't think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn't claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death—and the worst kind of death at that—a crucifixion.” (Phil 2:5-8 MSG)

One thing of which Jesus could never be accused is of not practising what he preached. When he taught that, “none of you can be my disciples unless you give up everything you have,” it was not as though there was anything that he himself was holding back. He gave everything that he had and was, holding nothing back.

He calls us to do the same. That is crystal clear in today's Gospel passage: “Those who do not carry their own cross and come after me cannot be my disciples … none of you can be my disciples unless you give up everything you have.” (Luke 14. 25-33)

These statements sound as though they are a problem for us as we think today about stewardship and following Christ. Jesus’ words are a problem for us because whatever we are currently giving and have given in the past, we are clearly not giving everything. So, are we really disciples at all or are we just playing at being Christians; compromising for our own comfort?

Jesus called his disciples to leave their jobs and families in order to follow him and to take nothing with them for their journey; “no stick, no beggar’s bag, no food, no money, not even an extra shirt.” Is that what Jesus is calling us to when he says, “give up everything you have”? However, when Paul writes to Christians in the new church at Corinth, he says exactly the opposite: “Each of you should go on living according to the Lord’s gift to you, and as you were when God called you.” This is the rule, he writes, that he teaches in all the churches and makes that a rule despite having left his home and given up everything he had to bring the good news to the Gentiles.

So, we can say from this that there may be two different types of calling for Christians; the call to leave everything that we have and to go wherever God sends us, and the call to stay where we are and go on living according to the Lord’s gift to us. Whether from choice or calling, most of us would seem to be currently in the latter group, while those like the missionaries we may support would seem to be in the former group.

But isn’t being in the latter group simply a soft option; following Christ without any real sacrifice? It is not intended to be, although it is possible for us to live like that. The key to staying where we are but still giving up everything we have is in Paul’s words, “to go on living according to the Lord’s gift to us.” What he means by that, is that everything we have is a gift to us from God, given not simply for our benefit, use and enjoyment but to share with others and to use for the glory and praise of God.

You see, we can view what we have as being ours to use to suit ourselves and as we wish or we can view what we have as belonging to God and for his use. Those are two very different attitudes which have very different outcomes and if we genuinely live with the latter attitude then we are also giving up everything we have although we don’t physically leave it behind.

The way it works is like this. We look at what we have and ask ourselves how God wants us to use what we have for his praise and glory. Let’s think about that for a moment in terms of ways in which we might give what we have.

We could think, for example, of our homes; how are they being used for the praise and glory of God? Some people, for example, might open up their homes by showing hospitality to others; they might host a homegroup or a tea afternoon or invite others for a meal or to stay with them for a time. Others, for example, may make a home in which their children can grow up to experience the love and freedom of Jesus for themselves. Others may be lowering the carbon footprint made by their homes through, for example, recycling, energy efficiency initiatives and growing as much of their own food as possible.

These are just a few examples of the difference that this approach to life can make in one area of our lives. This is not to say that only those who already doing some of the things I have mentioned are doing all that they can or that they are in some way better than others. Rather than making comparisons with others, what we are each called to do is to take a detailed look at what we have - time, talents, money, possessions, investments, work, relationships – and work out how we can offer them to God and use them for his praise and glory.

Doing that is what Stewardship is all about. We become stewards when we recognise that what we have has been gifted to us by God and we become good stewards when we use all that we have for his praise and glory. When we do so then, although we have not physically given away all that we have, we hold it and use it not for ourselves, but for God.

Sometimes, you will hear people in churches talk about giving particular amounts or proportions of our income to the Church; most commonly, a tithe or tenth, which is a proportion taken from the Law of Moses in the Old Testament. Measures like that can be helpful in terms of deciding how to divide up the money we have been gifted by God and how much we might give to support local ministry through a local church.

But fundamentally, Jesus says that everything we have is a gift from God. Nothing belongs solely to us for our own sole use. Everything is to be given up and used for the praise and glory of God. That is the challenge of Jesus’ words to his disciples and that is, therefore, why it is vital that we regularly review what and how we use what we have been given by God because our giving is never as generous and cheerful and willing and sacrificial as it could become.

“Christ Jesus had equal status with God but didn't think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn't claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death—and the worst kind of death at that—a crucifixion.”

As we remember and celebrate in communion all that Jesus gave for us, may we too cheerfully, generously and willingly give up everything we have for his praise and glory. Amen.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Eric Clapton - Let It Grow.

The only way is up

Here's the sermon that I'm sharing at St Mary the Virgin, Little Burstead, this morning:

In his great book The Gulag Archipelago Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote of the way the Siberian labour camps to which the Soviet government consigned those they deemed enemies of the state robbed him of everything that makes life meaningful: 

“He is robbed of his name – he is known only by a number. He is robbed of books and pen and paper – a dreadful deprivation for a writer of his stature. He is robbed of work he can do with dignity. Instead he must labour as a slave. He is deprived of sufficient food and sleep. He gets no letters. He hears no news of his family or of the outside world. He is stripped of his own clothes and dressed in verminous rags. He is robbed of his health – he succumbs to cancer.

Solzhenitsyn, robbed of everything, sinks as it were to the bottom, to the very base of being. And then he says something extraordinary. He writes of the day, ‘when I deliberately let myself sink to the bottom and felt it firm under my feet – the hard rocky bottom which is the same for all.’

On the Friday that we call ‘good’, Jesus too descends to rock bottom. He is betrayed by a friend, arrested, deserted and denied by his friends, falsely accused, wrongly condemned, beaten and mocked, before being killed by extreme torture. More than this even, scripture implies that in death Jesus descends to hell and, if hell is separation of God and the absence of all that is good, then, because Jesus cries out “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” we can understand that he enters hell.

As a result, we can say that however low you go Jesus has already been there and that it is Jesus that we find when we, like Solzhenitsyn, reach rock bottom. He is the rock that we find when we have lost everything that is ours or have reached the outer limits of who we understand ourselves to be. He is the firm foundation on which a different way of life can then be built because when you do reach rock bottom and find there a firm foundation on which to stand, then the only way to go is up.

Some of you will remember these lines from Yazz’s No. 1 song:

“We've been broken down / To the lowest turn / Being on the bottom line /

Sure ain't no fun ... / I wanna thank you / For loving me this way / Things may be a little hard now / But we'll find a brighter day

Hold on, hold on / Hold on, Won't be long

The only way is up, baby / For you and me now / The only way is up, baby /

For you and me now”

That is what we celebrate today and that is why this is an Easter Day sermon and not the Good Friday sermon that it has appeared to be so far. Jesus reached rock bottom on Good Friday but that was not where the story ends. For Jesus, the resurrection meant that the only way for him, following Good Friday, was up. And because Jesus dies and is resurrected as the forerunner for each one of us, this can be our experience too. Jesus went into the depths of human sin and suffering to save us, to bring us up and out from our depths of sin and suffering into new life together with him; a life in which resurrection has begun to be our experience and will become our eternal experience.

This change was brilliantly captured in a sermon that the American preacher and sociologist, Tony Campolo has made famous. A sermon based on the repeated line; “It’s Friday, but Sunday’s coming”:

“It was Friday, and my Jesus is dead on a tree. But that’s Friday, and Sunday’s coming.

Friday, Mary’s crying her eyes out, the disciples are running in every direction like sheep without a shepherd. But that’s Friday, and Sunday’s coming.

Friday, some are looking at the world and saying, “As things have been, so they shall be. You can’t change nothing in this world! You can’t change nothing in this world!” But they didn’t know that it was only Friday, and Sunday’s coming.

Friday, them forces that oppress the poor and keep people down, them forces that destroy people, the forces in control now, them forces that are gonna rule, they don’t know it’s only Friday, but Sunday’s coming.

Friday, people are saying, “Darkness is gonna rule the world, sadness is gonna be everywhere,” but they don’t know it’s only Friday, but Sunday’s coming.

Even though this world is rotten, as it is right now, we know it’s only Friday. But Sunday’s coming!”

St John in his Revelation prophesies: “I saw Heaven and earth new-created. Gone the first Heaven, gone the first earth, gone the sea. I saw Holy Jerusalem, new-created, descending resplendent out of Heaven, as ready for God as a bride for her husband. I heard a voice thunder from the Throne: "Look! Look! God has moved into the neighborhood, making his home with men and women! They're his people, he's their God. He'll wipe every tear from their eyes. Death is gone for good—tears gone, crying gone, pain gone—all the first order of things gone." The Enthroned continued, "Look! I'm making everything new.” (Revelation 21. 1-5, The Message)

There is light at the end of the tunnel. Ain’t no valley low enough to keep us from Jesus, even the valley of the shadow of death. A change is gonna come. The times, they are a’changin’. We can move on up to our destination. We will rise from the ruins. The only way is up. The songs and the clichés find their truth in Jesus and his resurrection which is the promise of our own personal resurrection and the resurrection of our world itself. Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Yazz - The Only Way Is Up.

Christianity is fire, passion, desire, longing, yearning

Here's the sermon that I shared this morning at St Mary the Virgin, Little Burstead:

What is it that you most desire? How would you answer that question? It could be another person that you desire; your current or a future partner. You might answer in terms of other relationships; time with children or grandchildren, for example. It might be money that you desire; a lottery win would do very nicely and give you wealth to do with as you please. You might answer in terms of opportunity; the chance to travel or to enjoy particular types of experiences. Some might answer in terms of dreams; the chance to make a difference in the world, be famous for 15 minutes or to prove they have the X Factor.

Some years ago I was at a conference on ‘The Holy Spirit in the World Today’ where the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, said that the Holy Spirit is desire in us. He didn’t, of course, mean that the Spirit is any or all desires that animate us but instead a very particular desire; the desire, longing or yearning or passion for Christ and to become Christ-like. The challenge of the Archbishop’s homily was that we should be consumed with desire for that goal. He quoted St Symeon who prayed "Come, you who have become yourself desire in me, who have made me desire you, the absolutely inaccessible one!"

The desire that the Holy Spirit creates in us is a desire to be where Jesus is; in relationship with God the Father, in the stream of healing love which flows from the Father to the Son. In other words to know ourselves to be members of God’s family, brothers and sisters of Jesus, loved and accepted by God as his children and longing to grow up into the likeness of our brother Jesus, who is the image of the invisible God. When we are where Jesus is; in relationship with God the Father then we are able to use the same words and pray the same prayer as Jesus who called God, “Abba” or Daddy. This is the place of intimate relationship with God, this is what it means to be in God and it is the Holy Spirit who stirs up the desire in us to be in that place where we are able rightly and truly to speak intimately with our “Abba” Father.

By stirring up this desire in us, Graham Tomlin has suggested, the Holy Spirit provides the answer to one of the most fundamental questions of existence; the question of identity. We ask ‘Who are we?’ and the Spirit answers, we are beloved sons and daughters of the Father because the spirit has united us to Christ that we might live forever in the love that the Father has for the Son.

That answer to the question of our identity then leads to the question of our vocation – what are we here for? Again, the Holy Spirit is key because the Spirit is given to us as the first fruits of the kingdom of God. The kingdom is still to come but we have the Spirit as the guarantee that the kingdom will come. The Spirit comes from the future to anticipate the kingdom in the present by creating signs of what the kingdom will be like when it comes in full. So, the Spirit initiates the mission of God which is to bring humanity and creation to the completed perfection for which we were originally intended; the time when the whole world will freely return to God, worship him and become like him by living in him. As Colin Gunton has written, “the Spirit is the agent by whom God enables things to become that which they were created to be.”

Our role is to become involved in this work of the Spirit to heal the broken creation, bring it to maturity and reconcile it in Christ. We get involved by creating signs of the coming kingdom here and now in the present. In the conference, as an example, David Ford spoke of being in Rwanda with women whose families had died in the genocide. They spoke in a service about the pain of their loss and then a younger group of women danced. As they danced in praise of God, the older women cried and mourned their loved ones. Joy and grief were combined and both brought simultaneously to God.

Ford also gave the example of the L’Arche Community where those with learning disabilities and their Assistants live and work together. L'Arche is based on Christian principles, welcoming people of all faiths and none. Mutual relationships and trust in God are at the heart of their journey together and the unique value of every person is celebrated and both recognise their need of one another.

At the conference Rowan Williams also told the story of Mother Maria Skobtsova who on Good Friday 1945 changed places with a Jewish woman at the Ravensbruck Concentration Camp and went to her death in the gas chambers. Like L’Arche and the Rwandan women, Mother Maria was a sign of the coming kingdom in her passion and sacrifice. Mother Maria said that "either Christianity is fire or there is no such thing." Christianity is fire, passion, desire, longing, yearning for Christ and Christ’s mission. What is it that you desire?

If the Holy Spirit has stirred that fire, passion and desire in you then, like St Symeon, we need to cry out for the Spirit to come to us. To daily pray, “Come, Holy Spirit.” Come to stir up this desire and longing and yearning and passion in me. Come to make my heart restless till it finds its rest in you. Come to cause me to run into your arms of love. Come, Holy Spirit, come.

Let us pray,

Almighty God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
Together with believers all over the world,
We gather today to glorify Your Name.
Apart from You, we can do nothing.
Transform Your Church into the image of Jesus Christ.
Release Your power to bring healing to the sick,
freedom to the oppressed and comfort to those who mourn.
Pour Your love into our hearts and fill us with compassion
to answer the call of the homeless and the hungry
and to enfold orphans, widows and the elderly in Your care. Amen.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Victoria Williams - Holy Spirit.

Make our scars beautiful like your scars

Here's the sermon I shared at both St Mary Magdalene Great Burstead and St Mary the Virgin Little Burstead this morning:

Jesus said, “Look at my hands and feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see …” ( Luke 24. 36b – 48)

During my curacy I knew a lady called Mandy whose arms are a web of scars from having self-harmed for fourteen years from the age of fourteen. At one point she needed 300 internal and external stitches. Her scars, as you can imagine, are so extensive that there is no way she can completely hide or cover them up. Now that she no longer self-harms, she is encouraged and helped by the realisation that Jesus also bears scars on his resurrected body.

When Jesus says to his disciples, “Look at my hands and feet … Touch me and see”, it is the scars (from the nails that were driven into his hands and feet while on the cross and the spear that was thrust into his side) that he is asking his disciples to look at and touch. These scars are part of Christ’s resurrected body.

Why was this important to Mandy? For her this was about identification. She and Jesus are similar because both bear scars. She need not feel different or unusual or excluded because the marks that mark her out as being different from many other people are also borne by Jesus. She feels at one with him, included and accepted by him, because he bears similar marks on his body to those she also bears.

She has expressed it like this: “Having Jesus in my life now has made me look at things in a very different light. You see, to be an anybody, anywhere is to look into the eyes of someone who matters to you and know that they don't care what or who you are, where you have been or what you have achieved. To be an anybody, anywhere is to look into those eyes and know that if you see love there, then you have earned it. Not for being a walking achievement or an interesting case or a social inspiration or a charity case, but just for being you. That is the gift of the Lord Jesus Christ; a loving and understanding heart. Not someone that is looking at what you did, instead he looks at what you will become. I have now found the best friendship and a sense of belonging and the love that I have always longed for. The mask that I had hidden behind for so long has now gone and I am no longer a label but a child of God.”

Roy McCloughry writes that Jesus “has taken up the marks of disability into himself” and that “his body, in showing how he suffered, offers solidarity with all who remain disabled.” Similarly, Nancy Eiesland says, “Resurrection is not about the negation or erasure of our disabled bodies in hopes of perfect images, untouched by physical disability; rather Christ’s resurrection offers hope that our nonconventional, and sometimes difficult, bodies participate fully in the imago Dei …”

In some ways this is a surprising realisation because we tend to think of resurrection as being our entry into whatever we imagine perfection to be; including, perhaps, the thought that supposed imperfections, like our scars, are healed and removed. Reflecting on some of the reasons why Jesus’ risen body shows the scars of his crucifixion may help us to revise our ideas about resurrection.

Scars are about healing. The formation of a scar is a part of the healing process and where they remain on our bodies they are signs that significant healing has taken place. Christ’s resurrection is only achieved by way of the wounds he gained from the crucifixion. He is for us the risen Christ because he was firstly for us the crucified Christ. In a similar way our wounds inevitably form and shape us. We would not be who we are as we now are without having gone through or having endured those wounding experiences.

Jungian therapy suggests that it is only by being willing to face, consciously experience and go through our wounds that we will receive a blessing from them: ‘To go through our wound is to embrace, assent, and say “yes” to the mysteriously painful new place in ourselves where the wound is leading us. Going through our wound, we can allow ourselves to be re-created by the wound. Our wound is not a static entity, but rather a continually unfolding dynamic process that manifests, reveals and incarnates itself through us, which is to say that our wound is teaching us something about ourselves. Going through our wound means realizing we will never again be the same when we get to the other side of this initiatory process. Going through our wound is a genuine death experience, as our old self “dies” in the process, while a new, more expansive and empowered part of ourselves is potentially born’ (http://www.awakeninthedream.com/wordpress/the-wounded-healer-part-1/).

Scars are also about wounds. In Isaiah 53 we read: “Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering … and by his wounds we are healed.” Jesus saves us through his wounds. Jesus took bread, blessed it, broke it and gave it to his disciples at the last supper. Henri Nouwen, who is perhaps best known for applying Jungian thinking on the wounded healer to pastoral ministry, “interprets these acts as symbolising the way in which Jesus was taken by his father, blessed at his baptism, broken on the cross and then given to the world and that the same can be said of people (God’s beloved children according to Nouwen). This means that God reveals to people their chosenness and the blessing of being His beloved children; they are broken by life’s sorrows and the result of their brokenness is to be given to the world as a gift” (Philip Nolte).

That was Mandy’s experience as she shared her story with others and set up support groups which aimed to cut out the pain for those taking part. Mandy’s experience of acceptance in Christ in time led her to a place where she could talk openly about her experiences, particularly if by doing so she could help others cope with their traumas or move beyond the urge to self-harm. Those who are wounded often become wounded healers, with their experience of living with their wounds shaping their ministry to others facing similar experiences and circumstances.

So how could our resurrection lives and bodies not include what is both formative and loving in us, of us and about us? For that to be the case, however, we need to acknowledge that we are all wounded and scarred, to view the wounds we bear as being embraced by Christ, as formative in our lives and as opportunities which create potential in us to minister in future to others. An Easter Day Eucharistic Prayer includes these words, ‘make our scars beautiful like your scars’. May it be so for each one of us. Amen.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

John & Ross Harding - Yesterday Today Forever.