There were these two men.....

Readings for Sunday 28 October Proper 24 of Year C the 22nd Sunday after Pentecost. Joel 2:23-32 and Psalm 65 [or[Sirach 35:12-17 or Jeremiah 14:7-10, 19-22] ]and Psalm 84:1-7
2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18 Luke 18:9-14

One of the great delights of being an Anglican is the permission we have to be different!

This may seem strange to those who are not of this stock, but is probably fairly familiar to the modern person. We treasure the right to be different and to have our say.

The gospel story this week tells of two men who are worshipping and praying at the same time.

Though they are engaged in the same activity, the story highlights that they are coming at it from radically different standpoints.

One is well-schooled in the language and practice of prayer and stands boldly and, I suspect, thankfully, in the presence of God giving thanks for all that he has been able to receive at God's hand.

This is not usually the way that we view this man..who we generically and almost always disparagingly refer to as The Pharisee.....we are inclined to say that this man is pompous, and a poor representative of what true faith is supposed to be. And he is. Well we all are.

But he is, unfortunately, a typical product of the faith machine...he is rather like you and me

He has, no doubt, struggled for many years to make his faith work and to get it right. he then is able to stand up and say....I know something about what it means to be a person of faith and he slides into

'God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.'

He may indeed have understood something of what it means. But we all see that he has actually missed the essence. He has not understood about: humility, about not being judgmental, about recognising the need for dependence on God, even about being cautious in self-assessment, and even more cautious in ascribing motives to other people. He has not understood about learning gently from others

We get this because it is contrasted with the desperation of a man in real trouble. And we see in the heartfelt prayer something authentic, that is lacking in the prayer of the Pharisee. His fault is not so much that he is harsh, but that he is blind.

This is what is called in literature a cautionary tale designed to warn us about what might happen to us if we are not careful.
We can become well-pleased with our own efforts.
In our affluence and ease, We can be blind to the pain in others life caused by poverty and abuse.
In our comfortability we mistake an easy life for God's blessing and sink into apathy and mediocrity.

How do we heed this in our life today?
How do we heed this as church?

THIS WEEK

• Try to identify a situation where we are tempted to be judgmental, and ask how it also invites us to view things differently
• Where have we sunk into apathy and self righteousness, and miustaken this for faithfulness and blessing?
• Where is God inviting us to change and to be more compassionate?
  

Disturb us gracious God when we are too well pleased with ourselves, when our dreams have come true because we have dreamed too little, when we arrived safely because we sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, gracious God, when with the abundance of things we possess we have lost our thirst for the waters of life; having fallen in love with life, we have ceased to dream of eternity and in our efforts to build a new earth, we have allowed our vision of the new heaven to dim.

Disturb us, gracious God, to dare more boldly, to venture on wider seas where storms will show your mastery; where losing sight of land, we shall find the stars. We ask you to push back the horizons of our hopes; and to push into the future in strength, courage, hope, and love. Attributed to Sir Francis Drake, 1577

YOU TUBE PRESENTATION

reviewing the situation

Readings for 30th September 2007 Proper 21

can be taken from:

Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15 and Psalm 91:1-6, 14-16 (or Amos 6:1a, 4-7 and Psalm 146) &

1 Timothy 6:6-19 & Luke 16:19-31

What sort of heart do you want to have?

Most of us think that people who are soft-hearted are weak,

yet we don't want to be thought 'hard hearted'.

When we look at the way God deals with his people in the Old Testament

we see both of these sides

he is sometimes hard because the people constantly turn away from him.

But I don't think that is the predominant way we see him,

rather time and time again

God is persuaded to NOT punish his faithless people.,

Here this morning right at the end of Jeremiah remonstrations we read quiet words,

sealed by a notary and stored in a vault

thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land.

that is, God promises after almost a whole book of despair and disillusionment

that he will re-establish his covenant promise.

God will be tender-hearted towards his people

and not cruel and vindictive.

The curious story of the Gospel reminds us that

unlike God

we are often not tender or soft hearted at all

we are often hard hearted

Worse than that

we just don't care.

It is role-reversal story of Lazarus and the Rich man

( one of the seven familiar stories to us from literary tradition)

A poor man, Lazarus, who has been ignored and brutalised

during his lifetime

is called upon to be kind

to a rich man who has simply ignored him.

[This is not, I would suggest

a commentary on what happens to us after we die.]

It is, like all the parables of Jesus,

an invitation for us today.

To change

to stop being hard-hearted

and start being tender-hearted.

The tragedy of the way this rich man (now cast out) has treated Lazarus

is not that he has been particularly harsh

it is that he has ignored him

which is a different sort of harshness.

He has stepped over his suffering

every time he has driven out of the house.

This is what gets us too.

It is not that habitually we are unkind or uncaring (by and large)

it is that we choose to ignore.

This is more subtle and more serious,

to combat it

it requires

that we actually choose to act differently

to not just step over the problem

and/or pretend it is not there.

We have to choose to be people

who are not disengaged

who will try and make a difference

visiting Churchman Steve Chalke said this week

somehow over the course of the 20th century, post-Wilberforce and friends, the church began to shrink and it began to shrink back from active public service into its own buildings and as I often say, has spent, in the UK at least, the last kind of 80 years singing itself to death. I've nothing against singing and songs and I think music and art is a part of the richness of what the church is, but we moved indoors and we've been entertaining ourselves to death,

I think he has a point

one of my major concerns for us,

for the church

is that we have ceased to be a vibrant, caring, world changing community

and chosen to be inward looking & self-indulgent

"singing ourself to death".

The warning of this parable

is that this is exactly what this rich man chose to do

and it is the wrong choice.

It is the choice of apathy and carelessness

In the end it is hard-hearted and cruel.

We do not have to do everything

We do have to do something

At the very least we have to respond to what is lying at our doorstep.

What is the need that God is asking you to respond to,

what is the need that God asks us to do something about?

This week

• We ask ourselves the brutal question--where have I become hardhearted?
• Where can I respond to genuine need?
• Pray for courage to do it!