Sunday's Sermon

By The Revd Keith Stephenson
Lent 3
7 March 2010

Readings:
Isaiah 55.1-9
1 Corinthians 10.1-13
Luke 13.1-9

Gracious God, may the spoken word and the written word be for us today your living word.

“If you do what you’ve always done, you get what you’ve always got.” This was a favourite phrase of a former colleague. We worked together at Transform, whose strapline or slogan was changing business by changing behaviour. Maybe here, business is changing behaviour by changing belief.

Lent is a time for change – indeed the very word is short for lengthen, indicating the lengthening of the days in Britain, as we draw toward Easter.

Let me be true to Lenten change - in the past I’ve preached from the pages of the Financial Times, but today I’ll preach from the London Evening Standard - which, like the water at the start of our Isaiah passage, is now offered free in the streets. Last week the Standard ran features on the dispossessed, a tale of two cities within London now – babies buried in paupers’ graves; doctors in the East End describing patients as Third World victims, with bloated stomachs and lacking nourishment; a family of grandmother, mother and four children living in a hair salon. Shocking, even allowing for journalistic licence. All the more shocking because 15 years ago the Standard published reports on the same themes – and found the same things. “If you do what you’ve always done, you get what you’ve always got.”

The Standard also reported on the efforts of the teachers, youth workers and doctors fighting the effects of poverty. Some of us are involved with such work, or support such work – Judith talked about the West London YMCA a fortnight ago. The problems are easily identified, the solutions less so, as in the case of the mother of eleven children by five fathers; she has never worked. The Standard’s end of week comment on the dispossessed was, Many – children above all – suffer through no fault of their own; others have made irresponsible choices in their relationships and lifestyles. We need government policies that encourage greater responsibility. But does the whole solution really lie in the elaboration of government sticks and carrots?

Now I don’t know if it was deliberate editorial decision at the Standard, but the end of the week also saw an interview with Talitha Stevenson, a young novelist and ex wife of a hedge fund manager. It highlighted another type of dispossessed. The headline was Drink and drugs in the hedge fund world? It was their way of coping – I’ve never met a rich person who was happy. Talitha and her husband had plenty – more than plenty. The interview reads - It must have been fun sometimes, though, right? She pauses a long time. “It was beautiful. It was Great Gatsby-ish. My ex had properties outside London, and we travelled all over the world, we had a lavish lifestyle in Portobello. We had a lot of material ‘stuff’. Now I just have a suitcase of clothes and books. I find it reassuring that nothing that was important about that time was to do with geography or things. I am just the same person without the chandeliers. I don’t have an attachment to money or possessions and I’ve fought hard not to. I fill my life with stuff that leads away from that.”

So if poverty doesn’t lead to happiness and fulfilment, it seems neither does great wealth. And the reference to Gatsby, published 1925, suggests once again, “If you do what you’ve always done, you get what you’ve always got.”

All of which might be very interesting, dispiriting or shocking – but maybe not very meaningful for most of us. Well, look again at our Bible readings. Isaiah asks us, “why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labour for that which does not satisfy?” Maybe Talitha Stevenson asked herself that question when she reduced her possessions to a suitcase. Isaiah is illustrating the true values of God’s kingdom: bread and water freely available to all who need them; priceless love for those who are disappointed by what money can buy. And Isaiah explains that God’s everlasting covenant, his steadfast, sure love extends from David to the Jewish people and beyond to all peoples. Isaiah calls on us, “Seek the Lord while he may be found ... ; let the wicked forsake their way ... ; let them return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them, ..., for he will abundantly pardon. For your thoughts are not my thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.” God’s ways are shown to us in the life of Christ, and particularly in Christ’s prioritising relationships over possessions. And Christ’s priority relationship was with God his father.

Our passage from Corinthians tells us there are consequences to our actions – when Moses led the Jewish people through the wilderness, they did some dreadful things and dreadful things happened to them. The mother of eleven children by five fathers doesn’t need the Standard or me to explain why her domestic life is difficult. But maybe she has sought God’s pardon and found, as Paul states, that she is not tested beyond her strength. She said in a follow up interview, I had a traumatic childhood and as a result was unable to form proper relationships with men. I’ve made mistakes, but at least I’m here for my children, teaching them the right way so they don’t make the same mistakes I did. My pastor warned me some people might respond negatively but that I should hold my head up high. ... I woke up this morning feeling transformed. I will use the negative energy to make a positive change and get myself off state benefits and into a job.

Dreadful things can have dreadful consequences. But Paul also warns us that even if nothing dreadful’s happened to us, it doesn’t mean that all’s well between God and us – So if you think you are standing, watch out that you do not fall. Or in the words of Leslie Morphy, chief executive of homeless charity Crisis, In our experience many affluent Londoners are just a job loss, a relationship breakdown, an unforeseen catastrophe away from homelessness.

And in our Gospel reading, Jesus tells us that dreadful things are not always a consequence of dreadful lives – Pilate didn’t murder his victims because they’d offended God; the Siloam tower didn’t fall because the people standing under it were dreadful sinners. As Mark preached a few weeks ago, natural disasters and evil are not unleashed in the world by God. Isaiah calls the people to repentance and Christ calls his listeners to repentance for there will be a time of reckoning with God. And while our readings indicate that God is patient – waiting for us to prioritise him and his people – we will run out of time. Jesus tells us the fig tree was to be cut down but was given a reprieve, and God has plenty of time – He made time. It is we who are running short of time.

“If you do what you’ve always done, you get what you’ve always got.” For the fig tree the change was more manure. Far be it from me for propose that for any of us! But let us use the time of Lent to strengthen our relationship with God and our relationships with his people. And who are God’s people? Matthew’s Gospel tells us - the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick, the imprisoned. Our Traidcraft stall tells us of them far away. The London Evening Standard told us about a lot of them here in London last week. And to all of these we are not just bringing food, drink, friendship, clothing, healing and care – just as importantly, we are bringing God’s love.
But first, let us strengthen our love of God and take our prayer from psalm 63, O God, you are my God; eagerly I seek you; my soul is athirst for you.

©Keith Stephenson
7th March 2010

Top

Copies of the weekly sermon are now available by email.
Please contact the Administrator if you wish to receive these on a regular basis.

This page is updated weekly unless there is a visiting preacher who does not leave a copy of the sermon.

Links