Something of a tonic.
Ordinary Sunday 9: 2nd June, 2002
Fr John Davis, Vicar of St Peter's, Eastern Hill
...only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven...will enter the kingdom of heaven. (Mtt 7:21)
So now the Church year has moved us back to the Sundays of ordinary time. We have finished the Easter season. We have rejoiced in the celebration of Pentecost and this year how we rejoiced! We have honoured our experience of God as Holy Trinity and last Thursday we gave thanks for the gift to God's people of the sacrament of the Holy Communion, which we celebrate in this and every mass.
Now we pick up where we left off, just before Lent began. In this year of Matthew, we are working steadily once again through that first gospel. And today, as it happens, we find ourselves in receipt of two warnings relating to the intimate connection being our believing and our doing, between our alleged faith and our actions, which may well be the truer indicator of how things stand.
The Old Testament reading, which is here to give us a context for the gospel, has the choice even more distinctly expressed: "See I set before you today a blessing and a curse: a blessing if you obey...a curse if you disobey...by going after other gods...." (Dt 11:26,32) We do know well enough that there are many other varying life choices that stand before us all the time. For instance: the ruthless pursuit of position or power, either personally and domestically or professionally – that can be going after another god. Or a life that sees value only in the material – that can be going after another god. A bit of our creative imagination can discern the point that is being made in this first lesson here.
And then the gospel takes us to a reasonably familiar part of early Matthew – indeed it takes me back to a song that I was taught to sing as a child. I wonder how many of us can remember that fun children's song about the house on the rock and the house on the sand? I can still do all the actions required. "The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell – and great was its fall!" (Mtt 7:27)
So ends Matthew's telling of the Sermon on the Mount. It began with the blessings of the Beatitudes: The first of those is the very familiar "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom if heaven." The Sermon ends in today's gospel with those two warnings.
One is of false prophets – The Lord says: "Not everyone who says to me 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven" – mere words about commitment and faith are not actually enough. The other warning is about this same area of the life of discipleship: "And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand". To hear and not to do: to listen and yet not to take into account what has been heard, is to invite collapse. This is a good lesson to try to take on board.
So this basic collection of the Lord's teachings that is the Sermon on the Mount comes to a close. Matthew tells us that the hearers were impressed with the authority of the teaching. And they went on their way, filled with the experience they had shared – off to continue with the rest of their lives. For some everything would have been changed. For others – well maybe not.
Without putting too much of a gloss on things, perhaps there is a little of that sense of experience that many of us are talking about because of what we have seen and heard during the two weeks that the Archbishop of Wales was with us in Melbourne. Many of us have found the opportunity to sit at the feet of such a teacher and leader most invigorating, most encouraging. There is yet hope! Perhaps these bones can yet live. Perhaps the institutional Church, so battered in these difficult times, can yet throw up the sort of top level leadership that is so desperately needed and yet is in such clear short supply.
We were given a feast in those two weeks. There was a most wonderful opportunity, especially for us in this parish, because of the generous provision of the Hughes-Cheong Trust honouring two of our own greatest priests. The fact that so many – almost overwhelming numbers in our terms – did grasp this opportunity was very pleasing indeed. The word was definitely out. This is one worth coming to hear. This is one who speaks of God, who shows God, who shares God. Not only the authority of the teaching, but also the freshness of the approach, the unpretentiousness, the openness, the humour – all of this came together to engage most of those who heard, I think, with the very real issues of life and faith and love and hope that were and are at stake. In lectures, seminars, discussions and sermons, Rowan Williams offered to the people of Melbourne another Sermon on the Mount. In time, for those who would like, both tapes and texts will be available, including on our own parish website. Work is continuing with that.
But the challenge is not only to listen or to hear or to say – but also to act and to live in a changed way. That was the issue confronting those who sat to hear the first Sermon on the Mount. It is the challenge for those of us who found what we heard from Rowan Williams truly heart-warming and want somehow to keep this warmed heart well and truly beating. We know the difficulties well enough. We are easily disappointed, easily discouraged. There are corners and choices always just ahead.
We have been given something of the tonic of a good parish mission. Big crowds, the excitement, the sense of occasion, the joining in fine worship, the stimulation of mind and soul. Do we now then have just a few more resources, just a little more careful discernment than before? Have we indeed been given a few precious further glimpses of the ways of God that can also be our ways, our approaches, and our attitudes? That is our hope. And from what I know, some of us at least have been quite consciously trying to work at this.
So that rain will come down and those floods will come up. And where might we be either as individuals, or as a parish church, or as an institution? There are interesting questions there. We remember Paul when he was talking about new life and hope, in those words about the resurrection that are so often used at funerals. He spoke of the grain of wheat needing to die before new life could come. We use the same language of the mystery and wonder of Good Friday and Easter Day. Old patterns of ingrained negative behaviour have to die away before new life can be experienced. An individual person can on a good day recognise that truth. We should not be too frightened to acknowledge that the institutional Church is also in need of something of a shake up, if the life that we speak of is to be truly apparent and engaging to more of God's world and people.
What is clear to many is that the Archbishop of Wales is just the sort of person to be the agent of such a shake up – but in a way that comes from within the living heart of the faith. The part of me that is really not expecting such a turn of events says that it is precisely because he would be perceived to be too dangerous, too unsettling, too much of a breath of fresh air, that the likelihood of him taking a prolonged trip to a cathedral town in the south east of England is very remote indeed. Something of the level of the likelihood of that proverbial big freeze in the infernal regions. But then, in this I make a clear distinction between what I expect and what I hope. And our language allows us that distinction. So we shall see.
In the meantime, today's gospel also leaves us with a promise. Those who do try to listen to the words and teachings of the Lord and to act on them and to live by them, then the kingdom of heaven is theirs, as it is for
The poor in spirit
Those who mourn
The meek
Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness
The merciful
The pure in heart
The peacemakers
Those who are persecuted.
The Lord ended that first section of the Sermon on the Mount with words of great encouragement: "Rejoice and be glad." Mtt 5:12 Appropriately they are also the words we can take with us at this consideration of the end.
Rejoice and be glad.
The Lord be with you.
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