All is Grace: A Harvest Homily

Joel 2.21-27 God pours down abundance upon you

1 Timothy 6.6-10 The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil

Matthew 6.25-33 Your heavenly Father knows all your needs, but seek first the kingdom of God

 

 

 

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‘Grace’ is the word we Christians use to account for the gift of God, that God bestows on us, simply by being God.

 

That sounds both quite simple and quite dense all at the same time; and it’s a really important basic of Christianity.

 

God gives of Godself.

 

Grace means ‘gift’: freely given; unmerited; unearned.

 

Out of nothing God brought the creation into being.

 

Out of nothing he brought you and me into being.

 

That’s grace in action.

 

The sun and moon, the stars, the wind, the mountains and hills, trees, seas creatures, birds of the air and cattle, me and you – none of us did anything that deserved to be created, and none of us can be fulfilled any more than to praise and magnify our Maker eternally.

 

With all the elements of creation we are creatures, albeit - as we shall see – we are creatures bestowed with a responsibility and capacity to respond to grace.

 

This sense of the graced nature of the creation and our lives is captured by St Paul when he says:

 

we brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of the world. (1 Timothy 6.7)

 

They’re words used at a funeral service, and perhaps really should be uttered at a birth.

 

We brought nothing in, we take nothing out: all is grace.

 

Actually, these words are for every single day.

 

It’s no use saying thank you for the gift of life, of food, of clothing annually and neglect to say it daily.

 

That is why I am such an advocate of the practice of saying ‘grace’, as it is known, before meals: in that way we hallow the gift we receive ultimately from the abundance of God’s creation.

 

Saying ‘grace’ acknowledges that all that sustains body and soul is [God’s] grace.

 

But grace can be dis-graced.

 

A graceful life - a life full of grace - is a life lived open to the prompting and gift of God, it is a life which the Christian aims for, being so at one with God, in Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit, that all that we think and speak and do is animated by Him.

 

A dis-graceful life - a life evacuated of grace - is a life shut down to the prompting and gift of God, it is an unrighteous life, that rejects grace, rejects the gift of God, and seeks other routes to contentment: money and power and prestige being the obvious ways.

 

St Paul nails it again, from our second reading:

 

…those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains. (1 Timothy 6.9,10)

 

So, a driven pursuit of wealth, power and prestige is dis-graceful and leads not to contentment but to ‘many pains’.

 

The call of the scriptures is to graceful, full of grace, lives; lives that are contented.

 

The full of grace life knows its dependence on God.

 

This is the life of a saint.

 

The Archangel addresses the Blessed Virgin Mary in a Greek phrase hard to translate but is best rendered “filled with grace”, “created by grace”, “full of grace” (Luke 1.28).

 

St Stephen, the first Christian martyr, is described as being ‘full of grace and power’ (Acts of the Apostles 6.8)

 

And all this comes from Jesus Christ who is, in the words of St John’s Gospel, ‘full of grace and truth’ (John 1.14) and that from his abundance ‘we have all received, grace upon grace’.

 

The saintly life which, frankly, we are all called to, otherwise you might as well go home now, is one that is grace-ful and grateful.

 

The life of the saint is a life that fixes first on God’s life and grace, in other words on the kingdom of God.

 

It is a graceful life that Jesus describes in today’s gospel, a life that lives non-anxiously, but lives thankfully.

 

And it seems our fellow creatures are somewhat better at doing this than we are.

 

Consider, says Jesus, the birds of the air or the lilies of the field.

 

The birds don’t stockpile and, ironically, they don’t even have a ‘nest egg’; but they are fed and are sustained.

 

The lilies of the field, with their surpassing beauty, don’t angst in the mirror, or on social media, about how they look; but they are simply beautiful.

 

Seeking first the kingdom of God, and putting aside our worries, cares and concerns, even about things we think are so important, is the start of the graceful life, or perhaps the recovery of it.

 

The time we live really graceful lives is when we know our need for grace, or even more just live in grace.

 

The infant at her mother’s breast has no concept of worrying about what to eat or drink or about being clothed.

 

Likewise, the person with dementia or with Down’s Syndrome, who accepts care and feeding, without asking for it or seeking it, lives close alongside grace.

 

Isn’t it telling that our culture is so scared of both the dependent infant and frail adult.

 

We have become so dis-gracefully nihilistic that we can’t savour the gifts we have, but resort to a destructive path that shuts God, our creator, out of the picture.

 

Little wonder that inconvenient lives are valued less than ones that appear rich, successful, powerful, prestigious.

 

How contrary to the Gospel is that?

 

Let’s go back to grace.

 

The most beautiful human life, is a life responding to grace.

 

It is a life of gratitude that knows it’s dependence and that offers all it has back to its creator ‘lost in wonder, love and praise’.

Welcome the love of Christ as a child

Wisdom 2.12,17-20 The wicked prepare to ambush the just man

James 3.16-4.3 The wisdom that comes from above makes for peace

Mark 9.30-37 Anyone who welcomes one of these in my name welcomes me

 

 

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We learn lots of things when we’re on the move.

 

I have on my bookshelf a book called A Philosophy of Walking.

 

It reminds us that there is something about walking along with others that makes our quality of conversation different from when, say, we’re sitting face to face in a meeting or other setting.

 

In scripture then it’s no surprise that whilst people walk along that transformational happen.

 

Two dejected disciples walk along with a stranger who opens up the Bible for them, so much so that afterwards they describe their hearts as ‘burning within us’ as they walked along and he talked. The stranger was Jesus Christ.

 

Saul of Tarsus, persecutor of the Church, was on his way to arrest more Christians in Damascus.

 

On that journey he was struck down by a dazzling light that blinded him; the blinding refocused his vision so that he, who we know as St Paul, recognised that the light was… Jesus Christ.

 

Philip the Apostle was walking along a road in Gaza, of all places, when a chariot came alongside him and he chatted with an eminent Ethiopian man who quizzed him about the Bible: ‘who is this suffering servant that the prophet Isaiah writes about?’ (cf Acts 8.26-40) They discuss. Of course, the suffering servant is… Jesus Christ.

 

Here’s a great spiritual discipline.

 

Try walking, slowly.

 

Look around.

 

Sense what is going on.

 

Look forward.

 

Sideways.

 

Look up (but don’t trip).

 

There’s no hurry; put your phone down, take off your headphones.

 

Slow walking – spiritual and physical - will help you foster an awareness that opens you up to transformation, a moment when you realise that walking alongside you, behind you and in front of you is… Jesus Christ.

 

Now, that is all in contrast to the discussion taking place amongst the disciples as they walk along with Jesus, as described in our gospel reading.

 

They walked through Galilee, a region of northern Israel. Here with Jesus Christ absolutely present to them – not talking about him, but talking with him – what is their reaction?

 

They don’t understand and because they don’t understand they are scared.

 

There is a lot to understand about life, faith and being a Christian, but there is absolutely  nothing to be fearful of, save losing those things that are not of Christ.

 

Christ’s ‘perfect love casts out fear’ (1 John 4.18).

 

What last week’s Gospel reading, and today’, tells us is that the way we find life, life in all its abundance (John 10.10) is through letting go of self and embracing Christ; this is what it means to ‘take hold of the life that really is life’ (2 Timothy 6.19).

 

The response of faith, and hope, and love is not the abject fear of losing the things I have become comfortable with, ingrained habits of sin or denial of God’s mercy, but the response is rather a holy fear, of awe and trembling before the majesty of God.

 

Walking along that road, the non-understanding, fearful disciples, begin calculating what they will lose, in worldly terms, if they indeed follow this man to Jerusalem and to suffering, betrayal and crucifixion: ‘take up your cross and follow me’ he has said (cf Mark 8.34-37)

 

So as they walk they shut down, they turn in on themselves and start arguing about who is the greatest of them – something they can’t even admit to, not out loud, even to Jesus - because they know the grasp for human greatness, adulation – other people cooing over them – is seductive and addictive.

 

What we so often want are those intoxicating things money, sex, power, adulation, fame, perfection, and just other people thinking we’re great, or at least okay.

 

It’s frightening to hear that all that counts for nothing in the eyes of the God who loves us .

 

That is where the example of the child comes in.

 

It’s not that Christ says we are, or should be, immature, or kept in a forced state of naivete, but he says accept love without question and without condition.

 

The love of God is not a transaction to enter into or a bargain, but something to bathe in.

 

The child receives love in that way, and we start losing that wonderful gift all too quickly.

 

‘Revisit’, Jesus is saying, ‘what it is simply to be loved without having to prove anything to anyone’.

 

If, as St Thomas Aquinas puts it, love is ‘willing the good of the other for the sake of the other’, then that is first what Christ gives us and, second, what disposition towards others must be.

 

I love not because I want or need to win; I love not to make up for a lack in myself; I love simply because I love and will the good of the other without condition.

 

With that assurance of love and salvation, we don’t need to worry about what we don’t understand of our faith – it’s about the heart before the head – we don’t need to be fearful, we don’t need to retreat into power struggles and asserting ourselves over others.

 

Rather, we find the strongest way of all, the virtuous way, the true way, the way of Jesus Christ, where we walk the path of life simply savouring the fact that we are loved, and receiving that love as a child, without fear or anxiety.

 

Welcome that love, for then you welcome Christ and the loving Father whose face he reveals.

 

The Cross of Christ: (inflection) point of history

Isaiah 50.4-9a I offered my back to those who struck me

James 3.1-12 Taming the tongue

Mark 8.27-38 The Son of Man is destined to suffer grievously

 

 

‘If any want to become my followers,

let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.’

Mark 8.34

 

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I don’t know about you, but I sometimes find that there is a word or a phrase that I haven’t heard for a long time, or haven’t ever heard, that suddenly I seem to be hearing, repeatedly, in different places and from different people.

 

One such example for me, just last week, was the phrase ‘inflection point’.

 

Someone said to me, now that I am Vicar of Croydon having been Priest in Charge, ‘this is an inflection point for you and the Minster’.

 

Similarly, at the Whitgift Foundation I was on an interview panel for a new Chief Executive, and someone said, reflecting on the significance of the appointment, ‘this is an inflection point for the Foundation’.

 

I heard the Donald Trump/Kamala Harris debate described as an ‘inflection point’ for the presidential campaign in the USA.

 

An ‘inflection point’ is a moment of noticeable change in a situation; it’s the moment after which things will never quite be the same again.

 

The general election was a major political inflection point; the emergence of the world wide web was an inflection point in technology and culture and so on.

 

Today we heard of an inflection point in the Gospel.

 

It happens at Caesarea Philippi.

 

It is a decisive moment when Jesus reveals something that the disciples had barely wanted to consider, and something that moved Peter to deep indignation.

 

Too often we focus on Peter’s words in this scene, as if it is about him and his ‘me and my big mouth’ moment.

 

That said, in the spirit of our second lesson from the letter of James, Peter’s tongue speaks wonderful truth ‘you are the Christ’, and then Peter’s tongue delivers a rebuke to Jesus.

 

As James says,

 

With [our tongue] we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. (James 3.9,10)

 

What insightful words, and let’s be honest, we all do it.

 

Each moment of the day, then, is an inflection point.

 

I can choose to speak with my tongue what is good and beautiful and true, or choose to wound others, sow dissension or even to deny Christ.

 

As the wonderful and ancient hymn of St Ephrem the Syrian says,

 

Lord, may the tongues which 'Holy' sang

keep free from all deceiving…

 

St Ephrem the Syrian (c306-373) New English Hymnal, 306

 

So, what we see at Caesarea Philippi is Peter recognising the inflection point and wanting to stop it.

 

He can cope with saying Jesus is the Christ, but can’t handle the recognition that the Messiah is vindicated through the cross and will not shy away from insult and spitting (cf Isaiah 50.6): he will not shy away from death.

 

Here’s the moment it becomes clear:

 

Then Jesus began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. (Mark 8.31)

 

Peter sees where all this is going and tries to stop Jesus by rebuking him, but Jesus is set on this path, declaring:

 

If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. (Mark 8.34)

 

The cross is the inflection point of the Gospel.

 

It all hinges on this.

 

To be a disciple of Christ is not simply about following a great teacher, an inspired guru or an amazing wonder worker, it is so much more.

 

To be a disciple of Jesus Christ is to walk the way of renunciation; about finding abundant life by giving up superficial life; about salvation born in suffering; about love until death.

 

Thy will, not mine, be done.

 

Yesterday was the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross which asks us to ponder the invisible, but indelible, mark we bear as baptised Christians, as we take up Christ’s call to self-denial, as we face, and embrace, what the cross means and as we follow him day by day.

 

St John Chrysostom, who was celebrated last Friday, says that on the cross ‘we see him crucified, we call him king’.

 

The inflection point of history is Calvary; the cross of Jesus Christ, of which the hymn says:

 

When I survey the wondrous cross

on which the Prince of glory died,

my richest gain I count but loss,

and pour contempt on all my pride.

 

Isaac Watts (1674-1748) New English Hymnal, 95

 

St Paul reminds us that the cross is a red line for some and crazy to others but says, ‘to us who are being saved it is the power of God’ (cf 1 Corinthians 1.18, 22).

 

That’s what makes the cross the inflection point of history, it is the moment God declares, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.’ (2 Corinthians 12.9).

 

Jesus says: ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.’

So there it is, '…love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all’.

The scriptures: announced, accepted, actioned

Deuteronomy 4.1-2, 6-9 Observe these laws and customs that you may have life

James 1.17-27 Accept and submit to the word

Mark 7.1-8, 14-15, 21-23 You put aside the commandment of God, to cling to human traditions

 

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Running through our three readings this morning a clear theme, that of considering the word of God in the scriptures, and how believers are to relate to that word.

 

They’re hard hitting readings that invite some probing questions.

 

Do the scriptures so capture our minds, bodies and spirits that we seek ‘to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest them’?

 

Are they, as Psalm 119 says, ‘a lantern unto my feet : and a light unto my paths’ (Psalm 119.105)?

 

Can we say of scripture, ‘O how sweet are thy words unto my throat : yea, sweeter than honey unto my mouth’ (Psalm 119.104): in other words, is reading scripture a source of delight, wonder and sweetness to you?

 

Do we, as the letter of James commends, place ourselves under the word of God and not seek to impose our own wills upon it?

 

It even leads us to consider what, if anything, can we dispense of; when are we abandoning the commandment of God and holding to human tradition.

 

We ask all these questions with the conviction that Holy Scriptures are the ‘lively oracles of God’ are they’re referred to in the Coronation Service.

 

The Bible is not one inspired book among many or simply a guidebook of a moral or ethical way to live.

 

To call a book, or collection of books, Holy Scripture, as we do the Bible, is to say something profound about it: it is the conviction, and assertion, that the text conveys more than simply what is written.

 

It’s to say that - in the case of Holy Scripture – the texts bear the intentions, teaching and commandments of God: it is a revelation of the will and purpose of God.

 

This is what Moses is doing in our first reading: revealing the commandments of God.

 

The teaching he gives is something complete in itself, hence why the people are commanded not to add to it or subtract from it.

 

And the commandments in the scriptures are to be transmitted through the generations: ‘make them known to your children and your children’s children’ (Deuteronomy 4.9): they’re worth passing on.

 

The task of the Church’s proclamation through her preachers, her teachers, through parents, grandparents, through all of us, is to enable that word to reverberate through the generations.

 

So, the word is announced: announced to us a gift from God, that is in turn to be announced to the community of faith and to the world.

 

That’s why scripture is the heart of the first part of the Eucharist: it is announced.

 

So too it is accepted and received.

 

The letter of James tells us, ‘…rid yourself of all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness and welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls’ (James 1.21)

 

There’s a quite a bit to unpack!

 

The preliminary to welcoming the implanted word is to rid ourselves of sordidness and rampant wickedness. To be able to welcome God’s word we place ourselves under its authority.

 

Again, the Eucharist mirrors this by calling us to confess our sins so that we can be both reconciled to the Lord and to one another, but also so that we don’t impose upon scripture our own projections, but we wait - like Samuel and St Peter, in the words of a gospel acclamation - whispering, ‘Speak, Lord, your servant is listening, you have the words of eternal life’

 

It is in that spiritual state that we come to accept and receive the word before us.

 

Welcome with meekness the implanted word. I guess many of us don’t like the word ‘meekness’, it sounds a bit pathetic, simpering, weak.

 

It is, though, the posture of humility, in which we use our two ears in proportion to our one mouth: the word is to be heard above the clamour of personal priorities and whims.

 

Meekness is the spiritual posture of the Blessed Virgin Mary, receptive and willing, that says, ‘I am the handmaid [the servant] of the Lord; let it be unto me according to thy word’ (Luke 1.39)

 

And this word has ‘the power to save your souls’.

 

There’s the crux of it.

Fidelity to the scriptures has the power to save your eternal identity before God, to restore you, to heal you, to open you up to the ways of heaven now and in the life of the world to come.

 

Wow. Wow. Wow.

 

So, we have the word of God announced; the word of God accepted.

 

But let’s just catch our breath.

 

The word of God refers to texts on the written page and also to the Word (capital ‘w’) of God, Jesus Christ: indeed, one bears witness to the other.

 

Jesus Christ, who is soaked in scripture, is the fulfilment of it.

 

Our fidelity first is to the person of Christ. As he himself says:

 

You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life. (John 5:39–40).

 

One of the great problems of contemporary Christianity, perhaps the biggest challenge for the Church, is that so many people don’t actually read their Bibles: ‘is this not the reason why you are wrong,’ Jesus says to the Sadducees elsewhere, ‘because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God?’ (Mark 12.24)

 

Let’s get back to our Bibles!

 

So, the movement in our readings today is that the scriptures are announced and accepted; and they are also actioned.

 

The spirit of the scriptures is put into action when we seek to orientate our lives to God and remain faithful to Christ; when our hearts are moved and cleansed from all defilement, and are presented as a holy and living sacrifice to God.

 

The gospel reading reminds us that we can do all sorts of external actions to give the impression that we are following the commandments of God, we can even honour Christ with what we say, but our hearts can remain far away.

 

Left to our own devices we slip readily into evil intentions, ‘abandoning the commandment of God and holding to human tradition’ (Mark 7.8)

 

When scripture is actioned then we see the fruits true religion, as James puts it, ‘pure and undefiled before God, the Father’ which he describes as ‘care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world’. (James 1.27)

 

That’s why we need to interpret the world - culture and society - through the eyes of scripture and not interpret scripture through the eyes of the world.

 

So we have the word of God, announced, accepted and actioned.

 

Announced by God through revelation and inspired authors.

 

Accepted by believers as the lively oracles of God.

 

Actioned by those who seek to serve the will of the living Word of God, Jesus Christ.

 

There’s the commission for the new week, to pick up your Bible and be soaked in the living word of God and invite the Holy Spirit to lead you to the ways of Jesus Christ, the Word… made flesh.