Ss Peter & Paul, Kettering
What does scripture say
What does scripture say?
Well - you heard it! What does scripture say? Well, if you paid attention to that snippet of Paul’s magisterial letter to the Romans that was our second reading, you should have heard it. Scripture says - at least in that brief but glorious portion - Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. That’s pretty good, isn’t it?!
What does scripture say? Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. Great! And why? Why is it that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved? It’s very simple - and it’s about the nature of God. And, once again, it’s right there: the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him. That’s why, according to Paul, everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.
And if I was a better, more sensible, more confident preacher, I would simply leave it at that! If I had the nerve, I would simply pick up the opening and the ending of our second reading, to ask you, like Paul, what scripture says - and make sure you have heard the good news, the glorious Good News of the gospel - that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. Because if you want to know what scripture says - if you want to echo that rhetorical question of St Paul - well, there’s hardly a better and more succinct answer.
The letter to the Romans is a great letter, and Paul is at a great point in that letter, and there he is, writing to a divided church community (such things existed even in the first Christian decades, and not just in the Anglican Communion of the 21st Century!), and he wants them to know - he wants them all to know (Jew and Greek is how he puts it - the primates of the Anglican Communion would probably talk about African and gay, but the point remains the same) - he wants them all to know that the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call upon him. For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.
Sorry! I’m going on a bit. I seem to have said that five times, and I’ve only just got going. But there’s a reason for that, I guess... And the reason is that God’s generosity is - at least to my mind - astonishing. And, like St Paul, I think it’s worth going on about. But... what does scripture say? Or, at least, what else does scripture say?
Well, Moses has something to say about generosity as well this morning, doesn’t he. He has something to say about God’s generosity, as applied to God’s first covenant community, the Israelites. He had this to say: The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey.
Way back then, at the time of the stories of Moses and the Exodus, there weren’t many many nations calling upon the name of the Lord; but the Israelites did, and they, too, saw something of God’s abundant, astonishing generosity - he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with mild and honey. That’s what scripture says about God and the Israelites in today’s reading.... But there’s just a little bit more: The Lord brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. So now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O Lord, have given me.
What’s that scripture is saying? God is generous - God is astonishingly and abundantly generous. God answers all who call on him through his generosity.... and just maybe he expects us to model our behaviour on his, and give a little back...
And if you want to know what Moses means by that slightly quaint phrase give a little back, read on only as far as the very next verse. But you don’t need to do that, I’m sure, because you are not complete strangers to the Bible - Moses is talking about the tithe. That venerable custom we find dotted throughout both the Old and the New Testaments and, indeed, throughout the history of the Church - that venerable custom that has something to do with acknowledging God’s astonishing generosity... and giving something back.
I wonder if there’s anything else that scripture is saying this morning? I wonder what else does scripture say? Well, we’ve looked at St Paul and his correspondence with the various, wonderfully diverse churches in Rome; we’ve jumped back many hundreds of years to look at Moses and his understanding of God’s generosity. What about today’s gospel reading?
Well, the story says something about Jesus, and, more relevantly, it also says something about the devil. So let’s just look at what the devil is really on about in this story. What the devil is really doing is putting worldly values and ideas in place of God’s ideas. The devil is offering a subverted form of generosity - a form of generosity that is almost pornographic in its gripping appeal to a baser nature. Become Superman, he says - I can do that for you; Become the President of the most powerful country or countries in the world - I can do that for you; Become a great conjuror and solve the world’s problems - I can do that for you.
But, as I say, this is subverted generosity, because it is not appealing to the simple abundant love of God and asking for a response. It is putting something in the way of God’s love and God’s call to us to respond to his love. In the case of Jesus, it is putting in the way the temptations to use the powers God has given him to offer cheap, quick-fix solutions that are based on a world view that is simply wrong: If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours says the devil. Quick, easy, seductive - but utterly misplaced. And do you know why it is misplaced?
Worship God and learn from him, and you might just start becoming more and more like God; the Fathers of the early Church often said that God became human so that humans might become divine. Or you can take the devil’s approach and worship him - but then the risk, if not the very consequence, is that you start to become like him, and turn your back yet further on God...
So - what does the scripture say? Recognize God’s generosity. Enjoy God’s generosity. Call upon him - whoever and whatever you are, Jew or Greek, African bishop or gay bishop - or even you and me here in Kettering. Call upon God and be saved.
And, as you do, out of the joy and gratitude you experience from God’s generosity - just give a little amount back, and ignore what the devil is asking you to do with your resources.
Back at the start of this sermon, I said that if I was a really good preacher I would just have left it with those wonderful words from Romans and called it a day. I would have done no more than remind you that the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him. And so everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. But I have gone on further than that - I wanted to see what scripture had to say not just in the context of Paul, but also of our Old Testament and Gospel reading. And perhaps I should leave it there.... But I’m afraid I can’t...
I can’t, because it wouldn’t be honest of me. I can’t because I don’t always respond properly and fully to God’s generosity in my life, and writing this sermon is therefore a challenge to me. I can’t leave it there, because, to take one specific and important thing, I am not yet at a point where I fully tithe my income and give half of that tithe to the church. I am close, but I’m not yet on the target, I realize.
And I am not alone. In 2005, you - that is, the regular worshippers at this church - gave the church very close to £70,000. In 2006, with a slight upturn in the number of our worshippers, and with - in particular - that extraordinary and moving week of mission and renewal last summer - in 2006, that figure dropped by almost £3,000. And, on the basis of the response that you made to our stewardship appeal in the autumn, it does not look as if we are likely to recover lost ground.
And that’s because far too many of you simply didn’t make a response to the last stewardship appeal. And it’s because, for whatever reason, the joyous response you - and I - ought to make to God’s generosity is not happening like it should. This is a growing, thriving church; the average age of our worshippers has dropped in recent years; more and more is happening that draws people into this community, from Songs and Stories on a Wednesday morning that is now almost bursting out of the Parish Hall, through to our monthly Oremus service. We have the resources - currently - to be offering one of the most remarkable Lent programmes you will find in this diocese. We have one of the most distinguished Christians in Britain coming to be our guest preacher tonight.
But somehow, despite all this, and despite a deep and passionate desire to see this church community and building serve our community more and more (and with the pending redevelopment of the town centre, that role will be thrust upon us much more urgently than has been the case for some decades), the devil is getting in the way. Somewhere, the devil has popped up and told you that he thinks you should do things differently and simply try and turn stones into bread, or find another way of worshipping him. Even amongst the PCC - those people you elect to co-operate with me in the mission of this church, and who ought to be the keenest of all to build this church - even amongst the PCC, a shocking proportion of its members simply did not respond to the stewardship appeal, and some people have actually withdrawn from it.
It was suggested in the PCC meeting this might be because I don’t visit all of you enough, and I admit it - I don’t. There’s much I don’t do that I would like to do - but, if I am honest, the idea that you might want to run your church down because visiting is not one of my ministerial strengths is pretty barmy. The idea that you might to want run your church down because of any of my attributes is really pretty barmy. That’s a logic that is a false logic, just like the devil telling Jesus to worship him and he will give him all the power he wants.
This Lent, you and I, together need to remember some simple facts: God is giving you and me, and has always given you and me, more love and more life in all its glorious abundance than you and I will ever fully come close to understanding. And he hopes that in exchange you will put 10% of your time, and 10% of your thoughts, and 10% of your money (yes, all three!) directly to his service - half of that to other charities and half to the community that you call Church.
And if you did that, what this church could do in this town centre would be front page news not just on the Kettering Evening Telegraph, but on the world stage.
For the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him, and everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. That is good news - it doesn’t get any better news than that. So I want to suggest to you that unless you that you see the start of this Lent as being the tail end of last year’s stewardship campaign. If you are one of the many who never responded - possibly for very innocent reasons that you lost the form, or that life got in the way - or if you are even vaguely realizing that your financial response to God’s love is even a tiny bit less than it ought to be, then don’t wait. Grab a standing order form at the back, fill it in this week, and give it back in a sealed envelope to one of the churchwardens - or simply review properly what you are putting in your envelopes and drop the wardens a note saying you want to change it.
What does Scripture say? This Lent, let’s go and figure it out a bit more closely. Amen.
Dominic Barrington, February 25th, 2007
Office Address:
The Rectory
Church Walk
Kettering
NN16 0DJ