Jesus saves!

The  parable of the sheep and the goats is about salvation but let’s backtrack a little and start at the beginning.

 First of all God wants us to be sure of one thing as Christians. There is life after death. Ours is a resurrection faith, based on the fact that God raised Jesus to a new transformed mode of existence. Jesus, when debating life after death with people who did not believe in it said “You are quite wrong, you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God”

Secondly  We also know that we are all sinful to some degree and need to repent of our sins and if we do then we are absolutely  assured of forgiveness. Of this fact a Christian should be secure. We believe in a merciful and forgiving God.

Thirdly, regarding the wider purposes of God We also know (Ezekiel 18:23 & 27) that God desireth not the death of any wicked but that he should turn from his ways and live”

The eternal message of God as enshrined for us most potently in the parable of the prodigal son is “Draw near to God and he will draw near to you” no matter how estranged and distant from God and his righteousness we have strayed. Jesus himself said “I come not to judge the world but to save it so the disposition of God is absolutely clear. He doesn’t want to condemn anyone so it stands to reason that people condemn themselves.

That much is clear. We are secure. We are saved and like the penitent thief on the cross we can be sure that when we die Jesus will say “This day you shall be with me in paradise”

But that still leaves a vast ocean of people. What about people who never knew anything about Jesus, or whose exposure to Christianity was so poor that the message never had a chance to settle in their souls?

Here too, our default position is that we have to believe that God is a perfect judge – a God of Justice willing to forgive, not wanting anyone at all to perish.

This is where the parable of the sheep and the goats comes in. By what criteria are people like that conceivably judged? The answer is by by their acts of goodness and mercy

There is also of course evil people committing evil acts with the question hanging over them “So what happens to them?” What about people and systems whose unrepentant crimes are worn as a badge of honour – what happens to them? Well by the same token, by their fruits.

Simply because he is currently in the news I will ask us to consider the fate of “Jihadi John”. In our Christian worldview, what happens to him if he does not repent?

From all the Biblical evidence we can muster, I can say with confidence that he will pay for his crimes and he will suffer for the evil he has done.

And this is what I interpret the parable of the sheep and the goats to actually say to us.

We have already heard in our first reading that God’s redemptive scope is cosmic and that his presence is all in all. So in this way, our actions towards others can legitimately also be seen as actions towards Jesus himself because Christ is in all things.

“Just as you did it to the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me”(25: 40)

When Jihadi John decapitated Peter Kassig, a man completely under his power he was in a real Christian sense doing that to Jesus himself.

Yet the impulse of God is still to forgive John. Remember on the cross Jesus said “Father forgive them, they know not what they do”

As an act of faith I believe that in the end as Peter Kassig’s parents said, eventually there will be a healing of the whole world and our merciful God the perfect judge will transform all things and set things right and we have to believe that it is at least possible that a repentant and transformed John will have a part to play in that new heaven and new earth.

But until then I think that without wanting to second guess God the Biblical record is pretty clear that unrepentant sinners of that magnitude will experience much torment, punishment and wailing and gnashing of teeth. This punishment will not be physical of course because the physical body will have died but their soul, the essential part of them that makes them “them” and not someone else, will be separated from God, not by God himself, who desires not the death of a sinner, but condemned by their own hand – their own actions.

The final comment on this for ourselves is this; Life after death means that what we do now has eternal consequences so what we build in our life, in the shape of good deeds matters. St. Paul as ever says it much better 

Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— each one's work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.(2 Corinthians 3:12-15)

We have a gospel to proclaim

When I was a fresh faced young curate my training vicar took this parable very literally and every year on a certain day everyone who wanted one came to the front of the service to receive a £1 coin. The idea being that they take that coin, putting it together with other money do something novel with it to make it grow and six months later bring the money that had been made back to church in a special service.

Now I have to admire his pluck and entrepreneurial spirit but actually that is about as far away from the meaning of the parable of the talents as you can get unless you continue to use the money as a metaphor for something else.

It is admittedly a very strange parable and difficult to interpret without prior knowledge of the context and the wider Biblical canon but suffice to say here that the subject of this parable are the Pharisees. In particular the hapless third servant who hid his talent in the ground who had even what he had taken away from him.

The way of the Pharisees had resulted in a spiritual exclusivity that had resulted in the light and goodness of God that had been entrusted to them being hoarded so what had been meant as a gift for the whole of mankind lay withering on the vine.

So you can see how Jesus equated this attitude resulting in God making metaphorically "no interest on his capital". It was tantamount to defrauding God. Through their very zeal for the purity of their religion they had inadvertently sterilized it and kept God’s light from the people.  

That may have been the original context but as I noted in my weekly email the gospel only ever comes alive when we ask the question - what does God want me to hear through this passage today? 

Well once we understand the original intent it becomes rather obvious.  it means that our faith in God is to be shared and not hoarded.

As we sometimes sing “We have a gospel to proclaim” But do we? Do we, when we look honestly at our manner of life and in what we say and do proclaim the gospel to others?

I think that when all of us, myself included, ask ourselves that question and seek to answer it honestly we might be a bit embarrassed by the truth of the matter.

It is at those times that I am glad that when I became a Christian I didn’t become a Saint, I became a forgiven sinner.

We have a gospel for the whole world, not just for people who happen to come to church. God’s salvation is for all people. As St. Paul wrote "As in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive" (1 Corinthians 15: 22). We have a responsibility to share the good news and the spiritual treasure that we have been given to enrich the lives of others.

We have to sow seeds. I seem to remember a parable about that somewhere! Of course not all or even most of what we sow will result in a good crop as that parable informs us but we don’t sow anything at all then we guarantee that nothing will grow.

The parable of the talents is not about money or “talents” as we understand the word in modern English, it is about having an open evangelical heart, unashamed of  God and willing to share what we have known and experienced and believed about Him. If we don’t the church of England will certainly die.

We will remember them.

This is an act of remembrance. “Remembrance” in the Christian tradition means far more than a simple recollection of past historical events - it means to make those events present  to us by immersing ourselves in those events and the people and their experiences  in order that they may have an impact on us today – to move us, to challenge us, to affect us emotionally and to inform and change us.

An act of remembrance such as today involves engaging with the events that took place around a hundred years ago and make them present in our hearts for a purpose.

That is a tall order, because the magnitude of those events is so huge. Trying to connect fully with the pain, suffering and sacrifice, the fear and the loss, broken bodies and broken hearts is a huge task.

And that is before we also engage with the heroism, nobility, self-sacrifice and bravery. All those are huge concepts and they can only really be engaged with when they become personal.

When all those names carved into cold stone on that war memorial have flesh put on them and they become real people with real and remarkable tales to tell. An awful lot of work has gone into the task of investigating the real lives of all those names on our war memorial and eventually I trust that all that research will soon provide a permanent exhibition of their lives here in St. Mary’s.

In a personal trip to France this Summer we visited the grave of a relative of my wife, a certain Corporal Thomas Brook who died aged 21 on 12^th September 1916. His grave had as far as we know never been visited by a member of the family in all these years so it felt like a very special moment laying flowers on his grave in a beautiful little Commonwealth war cemetery near Albert on the Somme.

As we did so I couldn’t but help remember those famous words “A corner of a foreign field that is forever England.”

Standing amongst those rows and rows of tombstones  is a haunting experience – an immersiion in the enormity of it all – much like the display of poppies at the Tower of London – and is deeply affecting

Where does this act of remembrance lead us I wonder?

It leads some to pacifism. I respect their decision but the Christian church has never gone down that path.  To use what might sound like an old fashioned term to many, humanity is sinful, we know that evil exists – evil people with evil motives and so regrettably but inevitably there will be wars and there will be occasions when it will be necessary to fight to defend ourselves, our civilisation and protect all that we hold dear. 

I believe the maxim -All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. When evil raises its head it must be confronted. And when we do - that is when we turn to the brave, heroic, sacrificial service of the men and women in our armed forces.

What our remembrance tells me is that when we ask our young men and women to risk their lives on our behalf we must be sure that the cause is just, and that our reasons for going to war are not trivial or governed by vanity and that all reasonable attempts to avert war have been taken, and if despite all those precautions we are taken into war we go regardless we go with heavy hearts but with heads held high, well trained, motivated and well equipped for the fight.

We have to go with our eyes wide open and will be saddened but not be surprised at the death and destruction that will inevitably result.  Our remembrance if it tells us nothing else tells us there is no such thing as a clean war without loss and heartache. They are inevitable.

Waste of young life, Grief, hatred and recrimination will all be there. We know that. But so will honour, nobility and bravery and mercy.

And let us not entertain for a moment the notion that this nation of ours is not worth fighting for. Our nation, our people, freedom, democracy and culture is worth defending, worth fighting for and ultimately worth dying for.

This act of remembrance should bring us face to face with the reality of war and its consequences. We should allow the reality of the sacrifice of all those names read out outside to affect us. We know that war is brutal and costly. But we also know that their backbone and resolve, their bravery and sacrifices made by countless men and women to confront the evils that we face in this dangerous world is something to be proud of and seek to emulate.

A Christian is what a Christian does.

Cutting through all the symbolism of this parable I want to assert straight away that this parable is about integrity, and a warning against smugness and complacency in our faith. Essentially it is about “cheap grace”.

The original guests that had been invited to the wedding banquet but found every excuse under the sun not to come represent the Jews who had rejected the gospel of Christ.

In the parable the wedding guests were the ones both good and bad who had been invited to the feast in their place. These people were the young church that included many gentiles outside the original “chosen people”.

So we have been invited to join the wedding party – which is the church! We are those wedding guests and we are here by right. But just as in society with rights also comes responsibilities which is the thrust of the final part of the parable.

We may recall that one of the guests was thrown out of the wedding party because he wasn’t wearing wedding clothes.

Now on the face of it that seems an extraordinary thing to do. What does it mean? It means that it is not enough to just be invited and come to the party. We need to adopt , to metaphorically “wear the clothes” of a Christian.

We should walk the walk rather than just talk the talk. In my sermons from Matthew’s gospel  over the past few weeks have been talking about bearing the fruit of the gospel. The fruit of the gospel is our outward vesture. These are the “clothes” that we wear. It is what people see and react to.

The hard meaning of the parable is that a true disciple of Christ is one that exhibits in their life that the gospel is truly working in their life and affects the way we live and relate to God and our neighbour.

In Christianity this is achieved not by simply following the rules as presented in the Law in the Old Testament but is achieved by an inner transformation of our disposition by the Holy Spirit.

That incidentally, contrary to popular opinion, doesn’t mean a loosening of those rules. If anything the law of love is much tougher than the written law. Anyone who disputes that should consider the difference between “an eye for an eye” with Jesus’ command to “Love your enemies”. Which do you think is the harder requirement?

Jesus incidentally recognises that walking where he has walked before us is not easy. The way is narrow and few find it. People who do are those people we regard as the saints, and we remember them as an inspiration to us when we find ourselves tested.

Few may find that narrow way, but we are still asked to look for it. We must be pointing in that general direction and want to find it even if we don’t.   

To use the picture language of the parable, we should be wanting to wear the wedding clothes even if they are sometimes ill fitting, makes us feel slightly uncomfortable and we have metaphorical stains all down our lovely white shirt or dress. There is a massive difference between trying and failing and not even trying.   

They know not what they do

The parable of the workers in the vineyard can seem quite offensive to us who are brought up to believe and expect that you should be justly rewarded for the amount of work and effort you put in.

But I think the context of this parable is very important. Jesus wasn’t addressing the crowds or even “seekers” he was addressing his own disciples – people who naturally enough would have considered themselves as insiders.

It is a parable that seeks to tell the disciples that although they do have an important place as the people who responded first and boldly, they don’t have any special privileges for being first and working harder and longer. Those who will join them later will be receiving the same amount of generosity as they do. In terms of salvation, no-one gets more than anyone else. All who turn to the Lord are saved no matter when they turn to God.

And that phrase “when they turn” has become more important to me lately.

One of the greatest theological conundrums I have faced and had to work through over the last ten years is this notion that God forgives everyone no matter what they have done or how they feel about it. To be true to myself though I can no longer hold to that position where to cite a recent example; That is, a man cuts off the head of another man in cold blood and sees it not as a crime but a good thing. Is he automatically forgiven? No he is not - not automatically at all. To be forgiven, to seek God’s forgiveness one has to repent. In the most famous parable of God’s Grace even the prodigal son had to turn back nervously towards his Father. Of course his Father was waiting for him and rushed towards him to hug him overjoyed that he had decided to return....but the Son had to want to return.

Of course If true repentance is forthcoming, then we can be confident that the graciousness  of God will elicit God’s mercy.

What I realise after all these years is that I have been looking at “Grace” in a vacuum divorced from the righteousness of God who seeks righteousness in us.

I looked again at the words in the penitential rite I say every Sunday and the words I say are not, “Almighty God who forgives everyone no matter what”. What I say on God’s behalf is “Almighty God who forgives all who truly repent”. God forgives those who are truly sorry and who turn and want to sin no more and want to transform their lives.And then, through the merits of Jesus we are treated not according to the laws of Justice, but with mercy, and then forgiven and accepted.

Grace, if it is not to descend into what is known as “cheap grace” and perverted into a license to do whatever you like, must not be divorced from repentance and the righteousness of God. But of course not everyone by a long chalk does repent in this life.

So where does leave the Biblical hope that “For God has consigned all men to disobedience, that he may have mercy on all” (Romans 11:32)

Where I differ from many people is that I don’t believe that death is the cut off point for repentance. This is entirely Biblical. We know from Paul’s letter to the Romans that neither “death nor life” can separate us from the Love of God in Christ Jesus but easily the most startling tract from the New Testament is in  1 Peter which states boldy “For Christ who died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteousness, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the Spirit; in which he went and preached to the spirits in prison, who formally did not obey,

when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons were saved  through water”.

Saint Peter is convinced that Jesus reached out his hand to all those people who had already been judged and killed many years ago to save them! The Spirit of God transcends time and place. Grace and mercy to the dead is also always on offer. To turn and be saved in this life is preferable obviously, as this will make this a happier more just and righteous world, but if not, God never retracts the offer of eternal life.

And even then, in death as in life, the outstretched hand needs to be sought and grabbed hold of.

Repentance has to be genuine. And for genuine repentance there will be much pain in the soul when the full realisation of the monstrous things you have done is brought to light and you are forced to face their reality in the seering light of God’s sight.

I think this is what St. Paul meant when he wrote “If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.” (1 Cor. 3:15)

In the act of retaining the relationship between Grace and repentance to avoid it becoming a cheap excuse and a licence to do whatever we like and just expect forgiveness  I am constantly reminded of the words attributed to St. Augustine and which provided the strap line to the recent film “Calvary”.

Do not despair. One of the thieves was saved.

Do not presume. One of the thieves was damned.

Forgive them Father.......

Who finds it difficult to forgive? I thought so – because so do I. We all know we are supposed to forgive. It is ingrained in everything from the Lord's prayer to passages like this one in Matthew. Our churches are full of people who know they are supposed to forgive, who know intellectually that letting go of hurts is a positive and life enhancing thing and yet find it nigh impossible to do so. In fact telling people who have been hurt and shamed and left feeling worthless that they "ought" to forgive someone can just heap guilt on to them as well as all that bitterness and hurt when they find that they cannot do it.

This parable appears, at face value, to say that those of us who cannot forgive others who have wronged us will not be forgiven by God. But is that really what it means? We possibly need to look at the parable a little closer

The first exchange between Peter and Jesus concerns the extent and nature of forgiveness. "Seventy seven times" is Jesus' way of telling Peter that forgiveness is not a commodity that can be reckoned on a calculator. Not only is it limitless but it cannot even be quantified, so the language of numbers is completely inappropriate when contemplating forgiveness. This particular point is rammed home with the absurd amount that the first servant is indebted to the king. "Ten thousand talents" represents the wages of a day labourer in Jesus’ time for 150,000 years!!

The second piece of the reading is the parable where the king forgives one servant that absurdly huge amount who is then unable to forgive another servant a reasonable debt. This heartless ogre is then justifiably imprisoned and tortured by the king. But if we look on this parable whilst reflecting on the difficulty of genuine forgiveness it takes on a different tone.

The first point to note is that human forgiveness is rooted in divine forgiveness. The king forgives the servant an incalculable amount. There is no way to measure divine forgiveness. Saying "seventy seven times" doesn't even come close.

Now when looking at the parable we note that there is an incredible gap in the parable. On hearing of his release from his obligation to pay this incalculable sum, the servant shows no appropriate response - no rejoicing, no gratitude, no celebrating with wife and children who are spared imprisonment, no reflection on the meaning of freedom. We know only that on the way out he refuses the plea of a colleague.

That "gap" in the parable has to be taken seriously. That first servant has not "discovered" forgiveness. We see that in the fact that although the debt is way beyond his capacity to pay he says "I will pay you everything"(18:20). It would be like me being presented with a bill for ten trillion trillion pounds and me saying “Oh I’ll repay that” when I won’t earn that in a hundred lifetimes.  He imagines he is dealing with the king on the basis of Justice, but what he receives but doesn't grasp is the king's mercy. The parable wants us to know that Justice and mercy are different beasts.

The first servant sees indebtedness and forgiveness as a power game. He hasn't seen himself as a "gifted" person, as a recipient of mercy so is unable to see himself as being in the same situation as the second servant. He has no empathy. The final verse (18:35) makes it clear that forgiveness is a matter of the heart, a transformation of the inner disposition of the recipient of mercy, something that first servant has not yet discovered.

"How does this passage address seriously injured persons, battling with shame and alienation? It portrays the incredible kindness of God who doesn't deal with us with justice but with mercy. It invites us, the listeners to think of ourselves as forgiven debtors - no more or less - living with and among other forgiven debtors. To be forgiven means to give up the power game of innocent versus guilty and to join a fellowship of forgiven sinners.

Only then, the parable would appear to be saying, can we even begin to start to rid ourselves of the self-destructive rage and sense of injustice that keeps historic hurts and trespasses alive and unforgiven in our hearts.

Until I or you accept ourselves as forgiven sinners we will always find it difficult to have empathy with someone who trespasses against us.

This I accept, but it still takes a lot of prayer and a lot of time...perhaps a lifetime...to accomplish. And does scale matter? Someone is rude to me. I can forgive them quite easily (mostly). But If a spouse cheats on you? How easy is that? How about the family of David Haines who was beheaded by Islamic state yesterday?

Where two or three are gathered......

In Matthew’s gospel today we have very practical advice as to how disputes amongst church members, and how matters of moral conflict are to be settled.

First, you are to try and solve things privately. If that doesn’t work then you call on two or three other members of the church, probably the elders to get involved and make a decision on one side of the other. If the dispute continues then the whole community is supposed to get together and come to a judgement. If someone’s actions are condemned; they are an offense to the community they are to be shunned, excluded from the church. Now to get to that stage, the behaviour must surely be wilful and pretty awful!

The word “church” here refers directly to the local community rather than the massed ranks of Christians so can be seen as a process of damage limitation and gradual escalation but the interesting thing is that the local church has the authority “to bind or loose”.

This is a Jewish term that can apply a general prohibition to a particular action or behaviour. We can have confidence that we are acting under God’s guidance when the whole church has come to a mind on a particular thing. This confidence is built on the rock of faith in the revelation of God’s saving work in Christ.

A consequence of our faith that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself is that all Christians are to be ministers of reconciliation as far as humanly possible in situations  from the personal face off between two people right to the whole church getting involved.

As in all disputes, large amounts of give and take and forgiveness are usually required but also the backbone to name and condemn certain behaviours. This leads to a church that is meek and mild, wishy-washy and loses its cutting edge.

Of course we are a church that believes in Grace and boundless forgiveness but quite often we misuse that to mask and excuse our moral cowardice and the inability to name and shame bad behaviour.

When we are too embarrassed to face something or someone Grace can become a very convenient excuse for doing absolutely nothing. Grace then becomes a licence to whatever you like and we are straight back to St. Paul who railed against this attitude in his letter to the Roman church and I quote “What are we to say then? Are we to continue in sin so that Grace may abound? By no means”

Of course Jesus also said “Judge not lest ye be judge” . Again if we took that at face value then we would have no laws – we would have anarchy and no Christian judges or magistrates would be permissible.  I submit that what that in effect means is  “Am I willing to be judged by the same measure by God as I am using to judge someone else? And am I ready to face the consequences of that judgement?”

To use a deliberately extreme and hypothetical example: If there was a paedophile intent on preying on children in this church and  they saw nothing wrong in what they were doing and were intent on continuing  then I would have no problem in excommunicating them from this and any other congregation as well as reporting them to the police. Doing nothing out of a misguided understanding of grace and forgiveness is just not an option.

In bringing such a person out into the open and safeguarding children and making treatment for the offender more likely is the far greater act of love. As some of the hard sayings of Jesus make clear, tough love is still love. Compassion for an offender is far outweighed by the compassion for any potential victims.

Personally I don’t think that the “Live and let live” mentality is particularly Christian, it is weak and cowardly secular approach that sees all people, morality and situations as relative. Right and wrong has no place within it. Christian morality and ethics is played out within a complex but clearly defined set of checks and balances that includes love compassion and forgiveness but also has a clear sense of right and wrong, goodness and sin.

In discerning the right and wise path in any undertaking, Christians must pray for the guidance of the Holy Spirit and for unity in their deliberations and judgements. 

For we may be confident that  “where two or three are gathered together in my name, I am there among them”.