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1^st Reading: Hebrews 11:29-12:2 29 By faith the people passed through the Red Sea as if it were dry land, but when the Egyptians attempted to do so they were drowned. ³⁰By faith the walls of Jericho fell after they had been encircled for seven days. ³¹By faith Rahab the prostitute did not perish with those who were disobedient, because she had received the spies in peace. 32 And what more should I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets— ³³who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, ³⁴quenched raging fire, escaped the edge of the sword, won strength out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. ³⁵Women received their dead by resurrection. Others were tortured, refusing to accept release, in order to obtain a better resurrection. ³⁶Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. ³⁷They were stoned to death, they were sawn in two, they were killed by the sword; they went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, persecuted, tormented— ³⁸of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground. 39 Yet all these, though they were commended for their faith, did not receive what was promised, ⁴⁰since God had provided something better so that they would not, without us, be made perfect. 12 Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, ²looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.

Gospel: Luke 12:49-56

49 ‘I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! 50 I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed! 51 Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! 52 From now on, five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; 53 they will be divided: father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.’ 54 He also said to the crowds, ‘When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, “It is going to rain”; and so it happens. 55 And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, “There will be scorching heat”; and it happens. 56 You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?

Reflection

Today’s readings are not easy to listen to. The first one from  the Letter to the Hebrews is downright ‘Hammer Horror’ stuff and the Gospel talks about Jesus causing division in families and communities. They are certainly not the most joyful of readings! Yet, in their own ways, they actually speak of faith. The faith of our ancestors who stuck with God through thick and thin and eventually saw a better time. This is most especially true with the passage from Hebrews. The epistle begins by re-telling the stories of the early Hebrews and how their faith in God led them out of slavery in Egypt and out of the hands of those who sought to oppress them. Not all of them survived this persecution but as the author of the epistle suggests those who died won a place in heaven because of their unwavering faith in God. As you read this passage from Hebrews you do get the impression, that although they had a miserable time of it all their faith gave them hope for a better future in the world to come.  It is the first two verses of chapter 12 that seem to give us the most hope for the future:

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, ²looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.” Hebrews 12:1-2

'So great a cloud of witnesses surround us.' This phrase finds its way into the Scottish Prayer Book (1929) in the proper Eucharistic preface for saints days. It seeks to tell us that we inhabit a world in which the living and the dead come close in Christ:

“Who in the multitude of thy saints hast compasses us about with so great a cloud of witnesses, to the end that we, rejoicing in their fellowship, may run with patience the race that is set before us, and together with the receive the crown of glory that fadeth not away.” 

This is the concept that we come closer to those both living and departed is most strongly expressed in the celebration of the Eucharist. For in that celebration and commemoration both Earth and Heaven embrace each other in the bread and wine which in turn represent the body and blood of Christ. As we pray together in the Eucharist, we bless and hallow the bread and wine; and in doing so it comes to signify the presence of Christ among us. In the Eucharist we unite our prayers with those of Christians around the world not only of today but of all those who have gone before us and now reside in the full presence of God continually praising him.

‘Holy, holy, holy Lord!

Is the song that is sung both in heaven and here on Earth. It is the song of that; ‘great cloud of witnesses’. The prayers of those who have gone before us envelop us and our prayers just as much as our prayers envelop them and in the Eucharist the reality of the voice of prayer that is never silent is heard at its loudest.

We all look up to and admire certain people in our lives and in our nation for a whole variety of reasons. These people form part of the cloud of witnesses that we can know and see now and their examples can encourage us in our times of trial. In the Epistle to the Hebrews, the author reminds us to look to the saints and martyrs of the past for encouragement in those difficult times we face, as well. Stick with God, the writer says; follow Christ’s ways and you will be able to run the race that is set before you. In doing so you will be able to cast your sins aside and as you run the race of life and faith you will be drawn closer to Christ, who sets before us the ultimate example of self-sacrifice and self-giving.

When the going gets tough, don't give up but remember those who have gone before you and keep on going or have another go because it is in the times of difficulty that the example of the  ‘Cloud of Witnesses’ will help you the most.

“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Luke 12:34

Jesus’ words as recorded by Luke this morning call us to be ‘prepared’, always ready to meet our God face to face or in the face of his Creation. The writers of Genesis and Hebrews also do the same, they too tell to be prepared for what God might do for us, even and perhaps especially when we least expect it. God is good at talking us by surprise as the late Fr.Gerard Hughes said in his book; ‘God of surprises’ . When we had perhaps given up hope for something to happen or to change, they suddenly do - an unexpected blessing. 

Abram and Sarah, longed for a child and had given up hope but God more than surprised them, especially at the ages they were. Mind you I’m not sure I would want to be a parent in my 80’s or 90’s! But that was Sarah and Abram’s hope.

I think in light of today’s readings that ‘hope’ could also be interpreted as ‘treasure’. The hope of a child was the treasure they longed for. They did not seek riches or wealth our conventional idea of ‘treasure’ they sought something which was beyond price or value to themselves, a child. 

“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” 

Luke’s phrase, I think, can also be read the other way round:

‘Where your heart is, there will be your treasure.’

The question before each of us this morning is: 

“Where is your heart?”

What do you see as your treasure? I would suspect that for most of us our treasure or treasures will be the ones we love the most. We might appreciate the material things we have or the passions we enjoy but its is probably those we love whom we would count as our greatest treasures. If this is the case I suspect we make God smile. 

We have to acknowledge, though, that some people will not have loved ones at the centre of their lives. For some material gain, power or status can be their over-riding treasure. That I think makes God sad or perhaps despair. I sometimes wonder if God ever thinks that despite the sacrifice his Son made for us there are some among us who can still see nothing but their own wants. I often have a vision of God banging his head over the things we humans do and wondering quite how we can be the most caring and self-sacrificing of creatures and the most awful and self-obsessed!

As Christians, we need to regularly challenge ourselves as to where our hearts truly lie. What is really our treasure in the depths of our being?  Is there anything we might need to change? Is there anything we can do better and is our treasure something we can share? If our treasure is built around ‘love’ then it is something we can definitely share for love is not a finite thing. There is always more than enough to go round; just think of the love you have for your loved ones you don’t love to a percentage you just love and love and love. Just as God does with us, even when he might despair of us! We are still God’s treasure and that’s where his heart will always be. 

If anything, today’s readings remind us that; ‘You can’t take it with you’. As much as we may enjoy our possessions or the opportunity to save our income for that rainy day, when the Lord calls us we just go as we are taking nothing out of the world, just as we brought nothing into the world. It is or can be a sobering thought. The ancient Egyptians and other who filled their tombs with ‘stuff’ thought that they could take their property with them into the afterlife. The discoveries made over the last few centuries proves they were wrong. What we have in this life is for our enjoyment and satisfaction what we are offered by Christ in the next world needs no goods and chattels to accompany us for what could be more fulfilling that to be eternally in the presence of God.

Both Paul and Luke quoting Jesus reminded the Colossians and the first century followers of Jesus that no matter how much you might want to take it with you, you can’t and that you are better off sharing what you have and helping others than filling your barns with perishable things. Enjoy what you have and give thanks to God for it, share what you have and seek to improve the lives of others and know that it is better to do so in this life than to think you can take it to the next!

“…puffed up without cause by a human way of thinking…”                         Colossians 18.b

I almost missed this short phrase when I read through the readings for this morning. I’m glad I noticed it as I think it gives us a link between the three readings set for today. Basically, what the phrase says; is ‘don’t let your ideas make you proud or arrogant’. There are echoes here of Christ’s teaching; that human ways are not necessarily the ways of God. Yet, all too often, the Church over the last two millennia has forgotten this and has tried to assert human ways over the ways of God. One only has to ponder on the commandment to:

‘Love one’s neighbour, as one’s self’ 

and how that has been used and misused by Christians. For example, many ‘God-fearing’ practicing Christians owned slaves; and many male Christians believed it was right to subdue and treat women as inferiors. We humans can be very good at deciding that our ways are better than God’s. It’s something Genesis tells us that we have always done.

The sin of Sodom was inhospitality. The young men were not welcomed to the city as God would have expected. There were those who sought to ‘use’ them for their own ends. To be blunt the mob wanted to rape them. An act used by men to subdue and humiliate enemies and those they did not know. Rape has nothing to do with an individual’s sexuality, it is a violent act of aggression and in Sodom’s case inhospitality to strangers. In fact if you read the tale in Genesis it gets worse with Lot offering his daughters to the mob to stop the ill treatment of the male visitors. You could not be inhospitable to men but women!!!  A human way of thinking where women, were not valued as much as men. 

Abraham, pleads to God that he might save the city if 10 good men were found to dwell in it. Sadly, those 10 could not be found and only Lot and his family escape and to be frank Lot had plenty to be ashamed about but God was prepared to give him a second chance because of Abraham’s pleading. 

God is very good at giving us second chances and we can see this all the time in our lives but the ultimate second chance he has given us is Jesus, his Son. The one we rejected and ill treated but who still saved us. We humans, need to remember who Jesus is and what he has done for us, what he has taught us and what he continues to teach us but we also need to beware. St.Paul says:

“See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe, and not according to Christ.”                   Colossians 2:8

Simply put; ‘Prefer nothing to the ways of Christ’. False prophets and social media influencers, self-obsessed politicians and the like all try to sway our minds and show us their ways, rather than the ways of God. Ways that they convince us are the true path but are in reality ways of controlling others and destroying hospitality and goodness. 

This sermon has been rather gloomy thus far and you might be thinking that we are doomed and we can do nothing to change things. we can always change things and Jesus tells us how - by prayer. Prayer is something we Christians are called to do daily, and I suspect all of you here this morning do this. As St.Luke tells us Jesus taught his disciples and followers how to pray in the words of the Lord’s Prayer. Obviously, Jesus didn’t call it that it is a name  we have given to his words and instructions. It’s a good name and one that we can relate to easily and it’s a prayer we can remember. 

It was probably the first prayer you ever learnt, as it was me and it remains a prayer I say more than daily. It is a prayer that encourages, comforts, and sets our cares and concerns before God in a succinct way. It is also a prayer with the power to change things by the hope it can give us. As we pray the Lord’s Prayer we are opening ourselves to God and those for whom we are praying too. God always has an ear open for our prayers and is always will send his grace upon his Creation. As Luke reminds us:

“If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”             Luke 11: 18

There is nothing God cannot do, especially when we ask him on the behalf of others and he even doesn’t mind us asking for ourselves too. When we pray, for others we are caring for them and not forgetting them. This is a form of hospitality and God loves a generous giver, one who is welcoming to the stranger, the widow and the orphan to quote other passages of Scripture. 

So don’t leave Church today, gloomy after this sermon; instead take heart and know that when we welcome and pray for others we meet God in them and we follow the ways Jesus taught us. 

To find an illustration of today’s Gospel all you need to do is to catch a bus down to the Mound and enter the National Gallery. There you will find a painting by the 17^th century Dutch artist Jan Vermeer entitled Christ in the house of Martha and Mary. He was only 23 years old when he painted it and it’s very different from the serenely detailed domestic interiors for which he is best known. The room in which the scene is set is only sketchily painted, and because of that our attention is focused on the three figures. Jesus is seated and his face is the only one which is fully lit. Martha is bending over and placing a basket containing a loaf of bread on a table. Her face is half in shadow, her lips are pursed, and her eyes are downcast. Vermeer captures the moment just after Martha, while acknowledging Jesus as Lord, has questioned him in a distinctly critical tone of voice:

“…do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone?”

Jesus is looking towards Martha, but with his right hand he is pointing towards Mary, who is seated on a low stool at his feet. Her face is completely in shadow, yet we can see that her eyes are open and that her attention is focused on Jesus. And there’s another telling detail, something that isn’t in the Gospel account. Mary’s feet are naked. She recognises that she is in the presence of the divine, remembering perhaps the story of Moses and the burning bush, and how God commanded Moses:

“…take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.”

Today’s three Bible readings all reflect in different ways on two linked themes – recognition and response. 

In the Genesis reading, Abraham somehow instantly recognises that the three men who have arrived at his tent, three strangers, are in some mysterious way God. He addresses them as “Lord” and offers hospitality. The actual job of providing the hospitality falls to his wife Sarah and the unnamed young man who has to slaughter, dress and cook the calf and we can instantly see a resemblance to our Gospel story of Mary and Martha. Abraham, like Mary, stays with the divine visitors, while Sarah and the young man, like Martha, do all the practical preparations which enable Abraham to act as host. It is Abraham who does the recognising, but the responding is left to others. There’s an enjoyable irony in the fact that the message which the mysterious strangers have come to deliver is as much for Sarah, confined to the tent and to housewifely duties, as for Abraham. God’s earlier promise to Abraham will be fulfilled and Sarah, though advanced in years, will bear him a son.

Martha and Mary both recognise Jesus as someone special. Martha not only welcomes him but addresses him as “Lord”. Yet her responses aren’t appropriate. We hear that

“she is distracted with much serving”

Mary’s response to Jesus is shocking in a way that isn’t at first obvious to us. We are told that

“Mary sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching.”

By doing so, Mary is choosing to be a pupil, to be a disciple and that was something that women were not permitted to do. Martha’s irritation with her sister arises not only from the fact that Mary isn’t helping in the kitchen, but that she is defying convention.

What then are we to make of Jesus’ response to Martha?

“Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.”

He isn’t criticising Martha for busying herself preparing the meal. We need to remember that this story comes immediately after the parable of the Good Samaritan, in which Jesus emphasises the practical, helpful nature of the love that we are called to show to our neighbours. Martha’s problem is that that she is “anxious and troubled about many things”. The Greek word translated as troubled is very strong, suggesting inner turmoil and disturbance.

St Benedict, whose Rule, almost fifteen hundred years after his death, still shapes the lives of monks and nuns and others who have encountered his teachings, believed that work can be a form of prayer and famously taught that:

“To pray is to work. To work is to pray”

By getting into a tizzy of the kind that we all fall into from time to time, Martha has failed to respond to the presence of Jesus by being just as attentive to the preparing of the meal which she will serve to Jesus as Mary is attentive to what Jesus is saying. 

In today’s Gospel Martha and Mary both recognise that Jesus is special, but it is Martha who will, shortly before Jesus’ death, express that recognition in a more precise way.

“Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”

Her words point us forward to today’s Epistle, which is also about recognition and response. It was written at most thirty years after the Resurrection, and it shows how quickly and how fully Christians came to articulate their beliefs about the divinity of Christ, recognising Him as:

“…the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.”

“…by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible…”

And the response for which Paul calls is that his readers should

“…continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard…”

That stability and steadfastness can be expressed in work, if it is done attentively and to the glory of God and for the benefit of others, as well as in prayer. George Herbert expressed that beautifully in a poem which we use as a hymn, a poem which is all about recognition and response.

Teach me, my God and King,

In all things Thee to see

And what I do in anything, 

to do it as for Thee.

And I can’t help wondering whether Herbert had Jesus’ words to Martha, fretting about her domestic duties, in mind when he included these lines:

 A servant with this clause 

 Makes drudgery divine: 

Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws, 

 Makes that and th' action fine.