Category: Ordinary Time

The message contained in yesterday’s reading  was so important that that is where we start today.  Today it is summed up in just a few well-known words: You cannot serve God and wealth.

The readings this week have challenged us to examine our relationship with our God and with those amongst whom we live out our daily lives.

Jesus understands that all this will require an enormous leap of faith.  All of our human instincts fight against putting ourselves in such a vulnerable place as Jesus describes in his Sermon on the Mount.  Two thousand years on, we are just the same, if not worse, than those amongst whom Jesus lived out his earthly life.  We have more personal wealth and we have developed an even greater sense of greed.  Our wealth and our ‘need’ for more and more things has evolved to a stage that would have been far beyond their wildest imaginings.  We also live in a society where commitment to God, even a superficial commitment, is not seen as important by so many.

Of course, that is the spin we are constantly being offered by the media, but is that true?  During our period of lockdown many churches, including those in our own benefice, have gone on-line. We have journeyed into the world that encourages us to put wealth before God.  Perhaps you are one of those who think that the church does not belong there, but, during these times, contact with church websites, and the wide range of spiritual resources that have been made available through them, have been accessed by many, many more people than normally attend our churches.  There is a spiritual need in this world, and there are still so many who want to come to know God, even if they do not put that desire into words.

In today’s reading Jesus gives us a recipe for supporting those who worry about the challenges of the Sermon on the Mount.  Jesus is telling us to stop worrying, even though he knows that that is one of our favourite pastimes.  Jesus is telling us to trust God and to keep everything in the perspective he sets for us.

Our challenge is to live God’s life of humble generosity and love.

Our challenge is also to lead others along the same path.

Are we up to the challenge?

As in our modern culture, Jesus’ first century world was obsessed with wealth.  In today’s reading Jesus invites us to consider our priorities.  Jesus invites us to consider the value of a life faithful to God as opposed to a life focused on acquiring more and more worldly riches.

Today, many people make a hobby out of window shopping.  During the weeks and months of lockdown, that pastime has become even easier to indulge in.  Thanks to internet browsing and on-line shopping we have not had to stop acquiring all those ‘things’ that make us feel so good.  Of course, we wrap it up in the language of need, but …  we are so easily tempted down the path of acquisition and greed, aren’t we!?

My grandmother, who like many of her generation lived through periods in our modern history when there was great hardship, used to have a saying about greed: there are no pockets in a shroud.  This simple saying is not a bad summary of what Jesus is saying to us today.

We all want comfortable lives, but that desire can so easily confuse us.  Living a comfortable life is not about hoarding as much ‘stuff’ as possible.  Living the truly comfortable life is about achieving the balance God wants us to know, and understand, and enjoy.  That balance is about putting God first in our lives, even if it means, as we are taught in the Sermon on the Mount, setting aside all that we thought was important.  

Our comfortable lives of excess make no sense to so many people in the world.  Even that which we would cast aside as rubbish would be classed as riches by the vast majority of our fellow human beings.  Why do we struggle so much with this issue more than so many others in our lives?

Today’s challenge is real, and it is important.

Lord, help us to set aside the trivial and the superficial, that we may draw closer to you, the one true God.

We all find it difficult to pray.  There are so many distractions that clamour into our minds no matter how determined we may be to focus solely on God.

It was the Jewish tradition to indulge in wordy formulaic prayers.  In today’s reading we see Jesus  introducing us to a new style of prayer.  This newness is seen in his prayer’s opening phrase: Our Father.  These two words (originally contained in the single Aramaic word: Abba, meaning ‘daddy’ in our modern way of speaking) points us towards a more intimate relationship with God, the God who is Jesus’ Father and ours.

Jesus tells us that God knows what we need before we ask, there is no value in wordy, formulaic prayers.  Jesus also tells us that God will answer our prayers if we work on developing that very special relationship with Him; if we make the step into a committed Christian life.

The Lord’s Prayer, as we know Jesus’ radical new style of prayer, could also be thought of as The Disciples’ Prayer.  By using this prayer we are expressing Praise, Hope, Intercession, Penitence, our need for Deliverance and Praise.  In these few words we are entering into the totality of prayer in a direct and faithful way.  In this most special of prayers we are turning our backs on the many diversions that distract us when we pray.  In this most special of prayers we are following the lead of Him who knows God better than any of us.  In this most special of prayers we are allowing ourselves to focus on the God who loves us.

Today’s challenge is simple.

How often do you find it hard to pray?  Here is the solution.  Say The Lord’s Prayer (or The Disciples’ Prayer) and allow those words to transport you into the nearer presence of your God and Father.

Jesus’ teaching on almsgiving, praying and fasting presents us with further challenges from his teachings in The Sermon on the Mount.

People like recognition for doing good.  People like to talk of their generosity, even when they are not at all generous.  People like to talk of their strength of will and character, even when they have little or none.  Basically, most human beings crave the recognition of those around them, they like others to know that they are good people, even when they display few characteristics of goodness.

Today’s reading, like the others we encounter during this week, is really about our relationship with God.  It is also a challenge for us to set aside our ‘puffed up’ ideas about ourselves and reflect upon the more humble way in which God wants us to live our lives.  We are being urged to set aside our need for the honour of our friends and neighbours, and focus on developing a closer relationship with God.

It is so easy to deceive those with whom we live out our daily lives.  It is not possible to deceive the God who created us, who redeemed us, who loves us with a love that is way beyond our human understanding.

God calls us to set ourselves aside, out of the limelight, and into the deepest possible relationship with him.

We are being called to reflect on the generosity of God’s love.  The love of a God who does not require worldly pomp and display, but rather the intimacy of a personal relationship.  The love of a God who gave not a pittance but everything for the good of the totality of humanity.

How do we face up to today’s challenge?

Today’s reading continues on from yesterday’s message of generosity of wealth and spirit.  Today Jesus’ teaching moves on to the key Christian message of love.  Again Jesus is flying in the face of traditional Jewish teaching.  By quoting once again from the Old Testament Jesus is reminding us of the limitations of the ancient ways.  It was commonly known that we should not only love ourselves, but that we should also love our neighbours.  Of course, this teaching contains an element of ‘being able to please ourselves’.  We choose the neighbourhood in which we live; we can choose those whom we would class as our neighbours.  This is not good enough for Jesus.  Jesus goes on to subvert the self-interest contained in the old law by urging us not only to love our neighbours, but also to love our enemies, even those who would persecute us.

We often hear it said that the sun shines on the righteous, Jesus takes us one step further than that.  Jesus reminds us that the sun does not only shine on the righteous, it also shines on the unrighteous.  The wonders of God’s creation are for all, and not just for those with whom we feel some affinity.  

Jesus’ message is simple: God loves us all.

We are all made in God’s image, and we are all called to love as God loves.  We do not have the right to decide that some are more righteous than others, on whom the sun may or may not shine, who is more deserving of love.

Today’s point of reflection is both simple and challenging.

Think not of those we should love out of duty or mutual affinity.  Rather, think of those we should love but do not.  Think of those whose way of life or whose manner repels us.  God loves them just as much as he loves us.  God calls us to love them too.  How open are we to God’s call to love even our enemies?

This week’s readings in our services of Daily Prayer are all taken from Jesus’ great Sermon on the Mount.  Jesus’ teaching begins with The Beatitudes and goes on to consider many different aspects of the Christian life, including how we should prioritise our relationship with God over the temptations of worldly wealth and success.

Today’s reading contains a difficult message for many of us, just as it was a difficult message for Jesus’ first century Jewish audience.  In the Jewish scriptures, that we know as the Old Testament, there was an ancient tradition of justice being represented by the gaining of vengeance.  Indeed, this reading begins with Jesus quoting from three key books in the Old Testament: Exodus, Leviticus and Deuteronomy.

Of course, the concept of vengeance is contrary to all the teachings of Jesus.  Jesus guides us away from this primeval model of justice.  But, where he leads us, is still seen by many as the path of weakness and submission.  Not only does he urge us to set aside the old ways, he goes on to urge a level of generosity that is counter-cultural to many of us. 

For Jesus, the notion of Charity begins at home is synonymous with meanness – meanness with our worldly wealth, and meanness of spirit.  We have all avoided the beggar, making many excuses to justify our unwillingness to help those poorer than ourselves.  Unfortunately, many church committees have been similarly mean of spirit when it comes to considering our duty to support those who live in unimaginable poverty.

So, today, in our short reading from the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is challenging us to set aside those old ways and take up the challenge of living the true Christian life.

Where does that leave you and me?

That is the question for us to reflect upon today.