"For all the Saints"

 

Sunday 1^st November – All Saints day

Revelation 7: 9-17. Who are the great multitude John sees in heaven? If the 144,000 just referenced in verses 4-8 are Jewish, the great multitude by contrast would be gentiles. God’s true chosen people are from all the nations on earth and most importantly they are all Martyrs who hold a special significance for the seer. John extends the meaning of the Greek word “Martus” meaning a witness, to mean specifically someone who witnesses through death, who has shared in the suffering of Christ and have won salvation.

1 John 3: 1-3. However fully “realized” the fourth gospel may be, meaning that the presence and salvation of God are fully here now – the first letter of John holds out the vision of a future yet to be revealed. And that future aspect holds out the glorious hope of a spiritual union with the divine (“We will be like him”). This doctrine of growing more God-like ending in unity is known as Divinization or theosis in the East and as Sanctification in the West.

Matthew 5: 1-12. The statements in the first half of the beatitudes refer to everyone who is to enter the coming age, not a set of alternatives – we are all poor, meek, mourning for the way things are in the world, longing for God to rule, abandoning status and privilege, peacemakers and you will be persecuted. Similarly, the reward contained in the promises are in effect all one reward, entry to the kingdom of heaven!

 

 In the Apostles creed we currently recite every Sunday we all affirm that we believe in the “communion of saints” but it is not something we pay too much attention to on a day to day basis.

The communion of saints is the church triumphant – those who have died and the church militant – an old-fashioned way of referring to ourselves, the church still here on earth.

So, it is a communion of the still alive and the faithful departed and no-where is this more true than in the sacrament of Holy Communion – where we enact the mystical union between God and ourselves through Jesus Christ.

This mystical union joins us with God and “us” in this case includes all those who have gone before us in this spiritual union.

This is brought alive to Orthodox Christians every time they step inside a church because the Sacred architecture of an Orthodox church.

Every Orthodox church is a representation of the entire universe, with the Dome representing Heaven usually resplendent with a icon of Christ Pantokrator (meaning almighty or all powerful.)

Then depicted are the saints and Angels cascading down the walls, a riot of colour to enclose the congregation who are joining in with what is happening eternally in heaven here on earth.

You are enclosed, held, safe, in the ever-loving embrace of Christ and it is in this arena that the participants commune with Christ which is a communion with everyone standing around you and everyone symbolically depicted on the walls.

Christian experience of communion is expanded beyond the purely private and personal and becomes corporate and the church becomes what it declares itself to be – the body of Christ.

In the letter to the Hebrews the author describes in chapter 11 all the heroes  of the faith starting with Abraham running through Isaac, Jacob, Joseph through thousands of years of Hebrew history and all the prophets, who despite their faith never saw the true messiah, and in chapter 12 he describes them as a great cloud of witnesses surrounding us.

So who gains access to the kingdom of heaven?

Well in the gospel reading today Jesus gives us the characteristics of a follower of the way of Christ and they share these traits;

The poor in spirit, the meek, those who are constantly mourning for the way things are in the world, those longing for the rule of God, those who don’t depend on status and privilege, those who are peacemakers.

Jesus in the beatitudes is describing the disposition of people who want to follow him on the way that leads to God.

Jesus says himself that it is a narrow way and few find it as he says a little later in chapter 7 of Matthew.

Those that are not sharing those characteristics shown by his followers logically need to “repent” which means we should change our hearts and minds so we too start to become more Christ-like, that is exhibiting the same character that Christ describes in the blessings. But repentance is a process not a once for all event so what helps to encourage that change?

You encourage that process of change by doing what we are all doing here this morning – hearing and responding to the word of God and participating in the life of God through communion and practising the presence of God in our prayer lives.

It is a short step of faith to realise that in Holy Communion we are communing not only with God and your neighbours but everyone that has died and gone before us in a mystical union.

Amen

Love is a many splendored thing

SUNDAY 25th OCTOBER 

Leviticus 19: 1-2, 15-18. A Dictionary defines Holiness as “perfect in goodness and righteousness” and the attempt to define what this means when it is lived out is spelled out in different parts of the Bible including Leviticus. Verse 18 carries the most important meaning identified by Jesus because he quotes from it in our gospel reading today – Love your neighbour as yourself as the natural corollary to “Love your God”.

1 Thessalonians 2: 1-8. The watchwords that describe what Paul is saying here are courage and integrity. We need the courage of our convictions to “preach the gospel”, a very grand way of saying that we owe it to God to not be cowed or embarrassed when asked what we believe – to be strong . We can “preach the gospel” through our actions as well of course, which requires integrity of thought, word and deed.

Matthew 22: 34-46. The centre of the law – the greatest commandment – is to love God with all your heart, soul and mind (or strength). A Jewish teacher would expand this by saying that to Love God was to obey the law from the heart (i.e. The will), to risk one’s life (or soul) in defence of the faith and to put ones strength (property and resources) at the disposal of Israel. This way love is not an emotion but a programme of action. Thus, love can be commanded. And the second commandment is like it. Love is commanded towards one’s neighbour.   

 

"Love is a many splendored thing" as Nat King Cole sang all those years ago and defies adequate definition because it encompasses so many different things; such as a mother’s love, which is different from the love of a husband or wife which is different from me saying I love wine! The Greeks had five different words for different kinds of love, but in English we only have the one. Consider this statement from the gospel;

"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your mind and you shall love your neighbour as yourself.

On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."

To which a modern person brought up in our secularised western culture would have a right to ask.

“Hold on a minute – you can’t command someone to Love – love is an emotion which you have or don’t have for another person”.

They would feel justified in asking the question because in western culture the meaning of love has narrowed to mainly describe the emotion of romantic love, excluding every other meaning. Where it is used in a wider context to describe familial love that would still be seen as an emotion, purely an instinctual one that again, cannot be commanded.

Yet the Bible and more particularly Jesus himself who is the arbiter of Christian belief after all, insists that Love can be commanded.

Which must mean of course that Love is understood in the Bible rather differently to the way we normally understand it.

In the Bible, Love covers the full range of meanings but in the New Testament it is seen more as a “programme of action” than a simple emotion which is how Love can be commanded.

The command to Love one’s neighbour doesn’t mean having a warm fuzzy feeling towards Mr. Bloggs who has just insulted your wife/child/husband. You are justified in disliking him intensely (or disliking his actions more properly) but still commanded to Love him – which means acting justly towards him, helping him if he is in need, being patient and kind towards him, wanting the best for him, treating him as you yourself would wish to be treated – loving him AS yourself.

Love in this light is more an act of the will, than a simple emotion. Incidentally that doesn’t make it any easier, humanly speaking to love one’s enemy so we should ask for God’s help when our resources are exhausted. Consider this seminal verse from John’s gospel;

“God so loved the world that he gave his only son that everyone who believes in him shall not perish but may have eternal life”

Love here is given flesh in an act of sacrifice – an act of the will – and as Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane “Yet not as I will but as you will”

None of this excludes romantic or filial love or seeks to replace one understanding with another. But the Christian understanding of love is an expanded vision of Love that always seeks to embrace a wider understanding that includes a total response of mind body and spirit.

Preaching the gospel – which is simply letting people know that they are loved by God - is an act of service, which is an act of the will.

Pray for the courage to be able to do so and pray also for the gentleness and wisdom to communicate that knowledge in a meaningful and straightforward way which will look different in different contexts and with different personalities.

And all the time remember that the reason we are commanded to love others is that God loved us first. We are simply sharing his love with people who don’t know that they are loved.

Amen

 

St. Luke

 

Sunday 18^th October – St. Luke

 

Isaiah 35: 3-6. If it is true that “without a vision the people perish” (proverbs 29:18) it is essential that God’s messengers make God’s certain salvation the centre of their message. Isaiah writes about a wonderful inspiring vision of salvation, the kind of inspiring vision that Luke emulates centuries later in his gospel.

2 Timothy 4: 5-7. A forlorn Paul sounds beleaguered. The one bright spot – humanly speaking – is that Luke has remained faithful and is with him, giving him support. Loyalty is a devotion or faithfulness to a person or concept or entity.  Luke here is showing loyalty to Paul but both Paul and Luke are together loyal to the revelation of God in Jesus Christ.

Luke 10: 1-9. Luke writes of Jesus sending out evangelists to preach that “The Kingdom of God has come near”. In Christian theology the content of the kingdom is co-terminus with Jesus Christ himself. Jesus instructs the missionaries to travel light, accept hospitality when it is offered and demonstrate the difference that the healing power of God can have when his reality is introduced to any situation. Some scholars believe that Luke himself was one of the seventy sent out.

 

St. Luke has a very distinctive contribution to Christianity. He was a friend and pupil of St. Paul and in the material he selected for his gospel he showed that the truths that Paul proclaimed were not novel ideas but rooted in the life and teaching of Jesus himself.

His gospel is good news – not biography. It should be read as a message of what God has done for us in Jesus. So what are the distinguishing characteristics of his gospel that shine through his text.

Perhaps the most marked characteristic of Luke is his emphasis on the universality of the Christian faith. From Simeon’s song about Christ being a light to the gentiles to the end where repentance and forgiveness of sins should be preached to all nations, the central theme is that Jesus is the saviour of the whole world.

Rather than trace Jesus’ ancestry back to Abraham, the ancestor of the Jewish people as Matthew does in his gospel Luke traces his ancestry back to Adam in chapter 3 stressing that he is of significance to anyone ever born. For the same reason Luke gives such a prominent place to the Samaritans in the gospel

Jesus is good news for the whole world.

In that light we see the special emphasis Luke gives to the outcasts of society. in the parable of the female sinner who anoints his feet with ointment, the lost sheep, the lost coin, the pharisee and the publican, the thief on the cross all work together to emphasise that we are not saved by works but by the grace of God.

His gospel gives more emphasis than the other gospels about Jesus’ special compassion for the poor and the danger of riches. It is Luke who puts these words into Mary’s mouth “he has filled the hungry with good things and the rich he has sent empty away”.

So Luke relates Jesus’ teaching to the problem of materialism because  it pushed God from the centre of life.

Another special characteristic of Luke’s gospel is the prominence he gives to women. While the birth narratives in Matthew centre on Joseph, in Luke Mary is at the centre and women feature prominently in the stories, including those about Mary and Martha. We can trace back to Jesus here Paul’s doctrine that in Christ there is neither male nor female.

Finally Luke gives more stress to the Holy Spirit and prayer both in the life of Jesus and in the continuing witness of the church. The Spirit is present with the people who are prophesying both John the Baptist and Jesus and Jesus’ career is started “in the power of the spirit” and he interprets his mission in Isaiah’s words “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me” and of course Pentecost is the important emphasis of the book of Acts but they are prepared for that event in his gospel with the words “stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high”.

Luke connects prayer with Jesus baptism, his calling of the twelve, the great confession, the transfiguration. This links Jesus to Paul’s injunction to “pray at all times” (Ephesians 6)

 Luke never claims to be an actual eyewitness to the risen Christ but his writings became instrumental in binding the young movement of people together who witnessed to the effect that his Spirit had on them.

In modern parlance we might call Luke an influencer and a theological educator.

He helped change hearts and minds, and even if he was one of the seventy sent out in the gospel story, or helped Paul on his missionary journeys, like Paul, he changed many millions more hearts and minds through the written word – many more than anyone could have done in person.

So by emphasising the universality of the gospel, the compassion for the poor and lost, the special emphasis he gave to women and the centrality of the Holy Spirit and prayer, Luke has helped mould the character of Christianity and provides the letters and theology of Paul with the grounding these principles had in the life of Jesus.

Luke’s gospel is good news and is a message of what God has done for us all in Christ. It is a testimony of faith to be interpreted by faith. The good news will only have the power of good news when it becomes good news for us.

 

Walk this Way

 

Sunday 11^th October – Trinity 18 – Proper 23

Isaiah 25: 1-9. A text rich in itself and with strong echoes in the New Testament which speaks of the salvation of God destroying even death itself. Death being the greatest thing that prevents us making sense of the world. Jews knew this day as “The day of the Lord” and is represented in both old (as here) and new testaments as a great feast or wedding banquet as in Jesus’ parables in Matthew and Luke.

Philippians 4: 1-9. Peace is the keynote of this passage and it amounts to the same as the protective shield of salvation. Healing, peace, health, salvation are all synonyms of each other. It includes the famous injunction not to worry but to place all our cares and faith in God. If only we could all take this to heart – me very much included – how different the character of our community would be!

Matthew 22: 1-14. This parable recounts how the Jews (the original guests) rejected the gospel and were destroyed (possibly a reference to the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in AD70) and then the people from the street (good and bad) representing us – the gentiles – were invited. The most perplexing thing is how one guest was upbraided for not having the correct wedding clothes. The generally accepted explanation for this is that the wedding clothes represent “doing” the will of our Father in heaven and not just giving lip service to faith. The point here is that this person was subject to God’s judgement not human judgement here on earth.

 

In the parable there is a man invited to the wedding banquet who is then attacked because he isn’t wearing the right clothes! That’s a bit strong in anyone’s language so what is going on? As ever we have to understand the symbolic language to get what it really means.

A clue comes earlier in Matthew’s gospel Chapter 7 verses 7 to 23 where there is a passage that I think is what the parable means when it says that he wasn’t wearing the right wedding clothes. It goes like this and it has always sent a chill down my spine.

²¹ ‘Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord”, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only one who does the will of my Father in heaven. ²² On that day many will say to me, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name?” ²³ Then I will declare to them, “I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers.”

I always automatically think “is that me?” What did that man lack? He seems to be preaching and prophesying in the name of Jesus.

What the man doesn’t have, even while he is doing all those things is the most fundamental Christian attribute of Love. And we know from Paul don’t we that if we have not love then we are just a clanging cymbal.

The parable says that if you talk the talk you must walk the walk. Words and actions have to match which is why when they don’t match the shock is amplified – which is why when Christians go off the rails or are caught out doing something they shouldn’t, it is always big news.

Probably the most shocking and distressing scenario is the story of abuse in the church that raised its ugly head again during this week. All the priests that have ever been caught abusing youngsters, so much in the news again this week were missing that great attribute of real Love. What they had was perverted lust – a very different animal indeed.

Love doesn’t and wouldn’t force, coerce, trap, demean, abuse or exploit for personal gain.

One of my duties in Romania was visiting British prisoners in Jail. Paedophiles were well represented because of the poverty and neediness in Romania at that time and it was cheap to get to and corruption was endemic. One of them was a priest. A truly pitiful case because he couldn’t discern the difference between real Love and sexual lust. Or perhaps he deliberately blurred the difference in his mind to try and convince himself that he really wasn’t doing anything wrong.

But his words of love were clothed in sin, and abuse. He wasn’t wearing the right wedding clothes, to use the symbolism of the parable

Now admittedly that is an extreme example I have used to make the more generally applicable point that our words proclaiming love of God and neighbour must be given substance if they are to have any reality to them.

1 Corinthians 13 is read at weddings and many other occasions and I think because of that we have become immune to its hard edge.

Read it again. It doesn’t matter what else I do, or achieve, without love I am nothing and I gain nothing.

When someone dies, the only reality we have left is the love that existed between us. That can never be taken away and besmirched or belittled.  

Love is the binding force of the universe and as John says in his first letter this is because quite simply – God is Love.

Offensive Grace!

 

Sunday 20^th September – Trinity 15 – Proper 20

Jonah 3:10 – 4:11. Jonah is angry with God because he shows mercy to the people of Nineveh when they repent. Nineveh was the capital city of the hated Assyrian empire who had conquered Israel in 722BC and sent the people into exile. This exposes an all too human trait towards exclusivity that expects God to favour only them or their sect while everyone else is Damned. This natural human reaction exposes a basic insecurity, a desire to possess God for one’s own benefit, so anyone outside your “club” becomes an unwelcome competitor.  

Philippians 1: 21-30. Paul is writing this letter from a prison cell and his future fate is uncertain – will he live or die? Paul assures the recipients of this letter that whatever happens, neither option does he see as failure or loss because “living is Christ and dying is gain”. But whatever happens, he wants them “to live your life in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ”. The gospel is freely given to human beings and this is our appropriate response.  

Matthew 20: 1-16. The jealousy, nay anger, of people at the extent of God’s generosity exhibited by Jonah (see above) is in some sense natural but ultimately groundless. This sense of natural justice is exhibited in this parable of Jesus by the labourers who had worked all day for their wages and got no more for their efforts that those who had just worked an hour. The point is that we all get the same – boundless love, mercy, and redemption – no matter when we respond.   

 

This week the theme of God’s generosity and Mercy continues by underlining two further elements that have always bothered people, then and now.

Jonah is so angry with God because he shows mercy to the people of Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian empire. The Assyrians had conquered Israel in 722BC and so of course were hardly in the good books of the Hebrew people.

The natural enmity that Jonah felt for them, he naturally thought God should show for them too – but in a little acted parable God demonstrates that Jonah in fact has more care for a shady bush shielding him from the hot sun than he does for a large city full of people.

God himself of course is Lord of all people, whether he is recognised and acknowledged or not.

The same natural instinct is true for us. We find it very hard to recognise that God could care just as much for our enemies and rivals as he is for us.

Whether that be Germans in the second world war, Russians in the cold war, Chinese in a trade war or on a much more personal level, our adversary in court, the person who robbed our house, or just given us a parking ticket.

Surely God must prefer us and be completely on our side, mustn’t he?

I’m the good guy here. But all sides think the same. During WW11 the belt buckles of German soldiers carried the slogan “Gott mit uns” – God is with us.

God cares for all creation.

Sure, he cares about me but he also cares about all other living things as well because nothing in creation exists beyond his orbit of love and mercy.

The gospel story highlights another aspect that bothers us about God’s mercy.

We can be fervent and observant Christians all our lives but apparently, according to this parable, we get nothing more than a rogue who lives a dissolute life and who makes a deathbed conversion.

Our sense of human Justice kicks in and thinks we must deserve much more than them?

But you can’t get more than everything – that is what God gifts to all people that turn to him no matter when that happens.

As the parable says “Are you envious because I am generous?

An important point to mention is that this parable wasn’t told to the crowds but to the Disciples themselves and so was a warning to people who were already insiders about the reality of Divine Grace.

Grace doesn’t rest on the merit system and because of that we insiders can grumble, inwardly if not openly,

“Doesn’t grace undermine the whole reason for being good, for having standards, for keeping rules, and living justly?”

We romanticize the notion of Grace without taking seriously how it undercuts our entire system of merit and justice, which Grace offends against.

We are not against Grace as such. We are against Grace being shown to others.

It’s an old story. From Jonah resenting Mercy being shown to the people of Nineveh, the elder brother resenting the love shown to the prodigal son, the pharisee thanking God he is not like the sinful publican.

When we have invested so much in the merit system and want to see a reward for our labours, Grace shown to others we consider less deserving cuts deep.

Grace no longer seems to be so sentimental. It has a hard edge we can find offensive.

But as God affirms in Isaiah 55: 8-9

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
    neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the Lord.
⁹ “As the heavens are higher than the earth,
    so are my ways higher than your ways
    and my thoughts than your thoughts.

Forgiveness

 

Sunday 13^th September – Trinity 14 – Proper 19

Genesis 50: 15-21. After detailing various family tensions throughout this first book of the Bible, the last chapter ends in reconciliation between Joseph and his brothers. Unfortunately, our lection does not include the very last words which are words of promise to the Hebrew people – of a new beginning in the promised land. This speaks into a wider spiritual truth that reconciliation always changes a situation for the better and creates new possibilities.

Romans 14: 1-12. What is remarkable in this passage is that Paul does not adjudicate between different points of view of how Christians should observe food laws or feast days. Instead he says that we are all servants of God and this is the most important thing and in recognizing this reality we are led towards reconciliation. So, the health of the believing community takes precedence over “right” belief or “right” observance. True there are limits of course, but as long as our belief and practice are held with integrity, we should not pass judgement on those whose attitude to faith and worship differ from ours. 

Matthew 18: 21-35.  The central point of this passage is the incredible Mercy of God. Jesus makes clear to Peter in his response “not seven but seventy-seven times” that forgiveness is not a commodity that can be measured out or have limits. That same point is made in the parable where the man is forgiven by the king (God) the debt of ten thousand talents – which represents the wages of a day labourer for 150,000 years! There is simply no way of measuring the extent of God’s generosity when it comes to his forgiveness. When examining our own personal capacity or incapacity to forgive others, this is our starting point!

 

 We all know that we are supposed to forgive people.

It is fundamental to Christianity and one of the few things people outside the church know about the faith if they know anything at all.

We pray in the Lord’s prayer “Forgive us our trespasses or sins and we forgive those who trespass against us”

Readings like today’s offering instructs us to forgive seventy times seven ties and Jesus tells us to turn the other cheek in another part,

Forgiveness is commanded and expected.

None of that makes any allowance for the fact that forgiveness is one of the hardest things in the world to do.

We know we are supposed to and intellectually we probably also see that there will be a psychological benefit to us doing so, and yet..and yet..I’m sure this congregation is full of people who find or have found it nigh on impossible to do in some circumstances.

Being cheated on by your husband or wife, or double-crossed by someone you thought was a friend, intentionally hurt or abused by a relative, are things that produce shame and rage, and leaves us feeling diminished, defective and defeated.

To be told, on top of that that you really ought to forgive someone doesn’t effect any change. In fact sometimes, all that does is heap guilt on top of an already shamed and hurting person.

So let’s look deeper at these two exchanges in the gospel. In the first one between Jesus and Peter, Jesus uses the expression “seventy times seven” which is a way of conveying the fact that forgiveness is not a commodity that can be calculated but is limitless, because the language of numbers is inappropriate when one contemplates forgiveness.

The parable that follows, about a king who forgives a slave his huge debt, who in turn holds to account a man whose tiny debt to him is vivid.

The king, hearing about this then reacts furiously and tortures and imprisons the man.

Does verse 35 mean that God won’t forgive us if we can’t forgive?

Is divine forgiveness conditional on whether I can let go of all my grudges and hurts? Let’s look again at the parable.

The most obvious point is that human forgiveness is rooted in divine forgiveness and God’s forgiveness is limitless. Ten thousand talents is the equivalent of a day labourers wages for 150,000 years – an infinite capacity for forgiveness is what is being conveyed. Seventy times seven or ten thousand talents can’t begin to express the extent of God’s mercy and forgiveness.

But there is a gap in the parable. Note that after the first slave had been forgiven his enormous debt, the servant shows no appropriate response – no rejoicing, no gratitude, no celebrating with wife and children. We hear only of the way he then refuses to forgive the debt of another servant.

The gap is explained by the fact that although forgiven he has not “discovered” forgiveness – not allowed the enormity of what has been done for him to seep into his very soul.

It is clear that he thinks he is dealing with the king on the basis of Justice and even says in his initial exchange with the king that he will repay everything that he owes – 150,000 years of his wages don’t forget.

He is not dealing with the king based on Justice but of Mercy. Forgiveness is very different from Justice. Because the first slave still thinks of forgiveness as purely a spread sheet issue he never views himself as being a truly “gifted”  person, one who received Mercy, so he is unable to show mercy to the second slave. What verse 35 makes clear is that forgiveness is a matter of the heart. We need to be transformed by the knowledge of how much we have been forgiven and the first servant hasn’t discovered that.

How does this help seriously wronged people to forgive?

It presents us with a picture of the incredible kindness of God, who doesn’t deal with us on the scale of Justice, even though we all seek that but by showing mercy, which we find hard to accept and fathom.

It invites all of us to see ourselves as forgiven sinners in community with other forgiven sinners – as good a description of the church as I know.

 

 

Justice tempered by Mercy

Sunday 6^th September – Trinity 13 – Proper 18

Ezekiel 33:7-11. A sentinel is the gender-neutral way the NRSV translates the more familiar “Watchman” who would warn a city of an enemy coming to kill them. If he failed in this task the watchman would be held responsible. This is Ezekiel’s explanation of what a prophet is for, but is it right to hold a prophet responsible for the evil actions of others? A form of answer in the text is that God gains no pleasure in the death of the wicked (Verse 11) for he is a God of compassion as well as justice and He wants as many people as possible to turn and live and sharing in that mission is a huge responsibility.

Romans 13: 8-14. For all Paul stresses that you cannot be saved by following the law, he still wants it fulfilled, and it is fulfilled by loving our neighbour as yourself (verse 9). He also stresses that Christians should “put on Jesus Christ” and live for God (having started a new life) rather than living a life enslaved to sin. He does so in the light of the common belief in the early church that the end times (The day of the Lord) was near (verse 11) and this is given as a motivating factor.

Matthew 18: 15-20. This is a formula for limiting the damage to unity in the church, moving from personal confrontation to one where you have two or three witnesses (following Jewish tradition) and finally if no positive outcome is forthcoming, letting the local church community as a whole make a decision. The most surprising thing is the derogatory way the phrase “gentiles and tax collectors” is used. Elsewhere in the gospel, they are characterised as responsive to the word of God. The familiar “where two or three are gathered together in my name” may be a Christianized version of the Jewish saying “If two sit together to discuss the law, the shekinah rests between them”. The shekinah is the glory of the divine presence.

Ezekiel the prophet being held responsible for the actions of the Israelite people seems tough.

But it is an insight into the awesome responsibilities that God lays on his follower’s shoulders.

I recommended a video sermon by Bishop Barron a couple of weeks ago which talked about us being “chosen people”. The deepest insight the Bishop brought to the fore about “being chosen” is the huge responsibility that this brings, for being chosen brings huge gifts but also huge responsibilities.

If we thought that we being held responsible for whether or how the world responds to God I’m sure this would instil in us a greater eagerness and fervour for trying to spread the gospel than we would normally have.

And while I’m sure there would be a hint of resentment at being held responsible for the actions of others, the reason God would lay such a burden on our shoulders is borne of compassion, is that he doesn’t want anybody to die before knowing that they are loved and secure in his embrace.

His justice is always shot through with compassion and mercy.

In Micah (6:8) it says this, “He has showed you O man, what is good. And what does the law require of you? To act justly, and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God”

Jesus as the incarnation of God showed this magnificently in the story of the woman caught in adultery – a late addition to John’s gospel.

There is no doubt that the woman was guilty, and the law decreed that death by stoning was the punishment. But what shines through this story is the compassion of God for this woman – this sinner caught in the very act of adultery. Jesus does this first by convicting the angry crowd that they were also sinners, just like this woman and none of them were worthy to cast the first stone. And ultimately she is spared the punishment decreed for the crime but his parting words to the women were “Go and sin no more”.

This attitude to Justice is written about in Paul’s letter to the Romans today as well.

Whilst stressing that you can’t be saved by following the law, nevertheless, paradoxically perhaps Paul is certain that God wants the law to be fulfilled and that love is the fulfilling of that law.

Paul stresses that as Christians we have started a new life, living our lives according to God, what Paul calls, “putting on Christ” as opposed to living our lives as slaves to sin.

Forbearance and tolerance and living together in a workable unity within the church would be an observable sign that the commandment to love others as you love yourself is being adhered to within the community of believers. That is not to say there won’t be dissention and arguments, but they must be worked through with love and compassion being the watchwords.

The pattern in the gospel talks of a gradual escalation from tackling problems in person through to a meeting with witnesses to finally the church as a whole making a judgement if the two warring parties can’t come to an accord.

What the specific difficulties might have been is not spelled out but the general idea is to keep things contained as far as one can without upsetting the church as a whole.

And underpinning all these decisions is we are aiming for justice laced with a healthy dose of compassion just like God exhibits in his dealings with mankind.

How we deal with each other and treat each other is a good way of telling how we will deal with people outside our ranks.

Everything from the small things to the big things should bear the hallmark of the same approach and rationale. Justice shot through with mercy..

It is not easy. We are not God and don’t presume to possess his wisdom  but we do have the Bible, we have communal worship and prayer and we have private prayer where we seek insights into God’s wisdom. That is the best reason to read the scriptures.

A good place to start is the old evangelical acronym WWJD – what would Jesus do? - when we have difficult decisions to make and the way forward looks uncertain. Consult scripture, the traditions of the church, and pray and contemplate upon what you receive.