2 before Lent, Year A
NT Lesson : Romans 8.18-25
Gospel: Matthew 6.25-34
Text: In hope we were saved (Romans 8.24)
Last Sunday Jan reminded us that Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount is hard going. The fullness of life which is held before us in the Beatitudes is a world of serene optimism in the face of adversity, a world where those who mourn are comforted, where the kingdom of heaven belongs to the meek, to those who are poor in spirit, to those who are persecuted for righteousness sake. But the flipside of such bliss, the freedom of the glory of the children of God as Paul calls it in our reading from Romans this morning, is the human impossibility of the demands that Jesus makes on all who seek to follow him.
The old law set out in the Ten Commandments forbids murder, adultery and covetousness. Not good enough, says Jesus. We must even avoid anger, insults and calling people bad names; we must not so much as look at one another with the smallest flicker of lust in our hearts; we must turn the other cheek, go the second mile, give to every beggar, love even our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. As if the bar were not high enough already, chapter 5 of St Matthew’s gospel concludes with a truly impossible challenge: be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. And chapter 6 goes on to insist that even when we behave with such perfection, or give with such generosity, we must do it all in secret.
This morning’s gospel reading may at first sight appear less daunting. Don’t worry. Your Heavenly Father, who loves you, knows that you need food to eat and clothes to wear. He will not leave you to go hungry or naked. Similarly, God’s all-embracing loving care was amply reflected and celebrated in the constant refrain of this morning’s psalm: his mercy endureth for ever (Ps 136). But there is a catch. Strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well (Matt 6.33). So, how hard are we striving? As Matthew draws his summary of Jesus’ teaching to a close in chapter 7, we read: Not everyone who says to me ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven (7.21-23). Is the door being slammed in our face yet again? How are we to find a path through the moral maze of failure and sin which lurks on every side?
I love this church. I love its graceful proportions, its restful colours, its inspiring music, its marquetry and stained glass; more than that, I love its gifted people, and the warmth of your concern for one another and for me. I shall never forget the sensitivity with which you reached out to embrace Anne and myself when Hilary died.
But we have just been dealt a terrible blow. Something went badly wrong. We don’t know what it was, but it has caused us to lose in Jeremy a respected and valued priest, one whose knowledge of his congregation, and especially our more vulnerable members, bore witness to a deep pastoral concern for us all. He and Julia will be greatly missed and we are left wondering what more we could have done to support him in his ministry among us. Their tragedy is our tragedy, for we are one body. Moreover it is hard to heal the wounds which we are suffering if we cannot be told what went wrong, nor can we set in train a suitably focussed review of our own procedures in order to identify where we may have failed to discharge our own responsibilities. In these unhappy circumstances, we are all very sad, and some of us are angry. We need to be honest about our feelings.
But if we really cannot be told anything more, we may have to look for help in the darkness of unknowing, and for that we need to turn to the experience of those who have gone before us in the faith, finding themselves in a very dark place. The psalm we sang this morning was written from a heart full of joy and praise and thanksgiving, but there are others which explore the dark places of sin and anger and abandonment. If we feel that we may have failed as a community, we can take comfort from Psalm 130:
O Israel (and the church is the new Israel) trust in the Lord, for with the Lord there is mercy: and he shall redeem Israel from all his sins.
If we risk falling into the depths of despair, we can turn to Psalms 42 and 43. We know the opening phrase so well – Like as the hart desireth the waterbrooks, so longeth my soul after Thee, o God … My tears have been my meat day and night, while they daily say unto me: Where is now thy God? … and there is no answer. Three times in the course of these two psalms of lament, we get the chorus:
Why art thou so full of heaviness O my soul, and why art thou so disquieted within me?
And three times the psalmist answers himself with words which say, in effect:
Put your trust, put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Saviour and my God.
As we hear those words, we can feel the psalmist relaxing from his bitter tears, as he senses God taking upon himself the burden of our failure and our despair. If you are feeling devastated by what has happened, if you wonder where God has been in all this, do go home and pray psalms 42 and 43 to enter into the bitterness and ultimately the relief which the psalmist expresses.
And now, as we are gathered in this hallowed place, let us open ourselves to its poetry. High up on the back wall are our Commandment Boards. They serve to remind us week by week how far we have all fallen short of the standards of love which God requires of his children. The black surface is hard and unyielding. But that is behind you. You are facing the altar, where your eyes focus on the cross glinting in the light, the shining symbol of the love which God showed for us in the lengths to which he was prepared to go in Jesus to lift from us the burden of our sins. For in hope we were saved. As St Paul continues in his letter to the Romans:
Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies.
Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who … indeed intercedes for us.
…and nothing in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
In that hope, in that love, we put our trust. Amen