Sermon: Trinity 19

Preacher:

Date:

Sunday 14th October 2012

Service:

Evensong

Readings:

Matthew 11.10-20

Joshua 6.1-20

Woe to you Chorazin! Woe to you Bethsaida!...and you Capernaum.

The boat engine was off, and we were yet to dance. Some fishermen were visible in another boat in the distance and the sounds of their voices were just audible over the sound of lapping water. The lake, which only a couple of hours before had been covered in mist, was now visible in its entirety and the towns of the distant shore were discernible as the dawn gave way to a bright day over Galilee. That is my somewhat romantic recollection of being able to see the towns of Chorazin and Bethsaida some 18 months ago.

To be quite honest as a pilgrim on that day I’m not entirely sure that I could pick out exactly where our lovely local guide said the towns were, but it was somewhere in that direction. And there was something terribly evocative singing the hymn ‘Dear Lord and Father of Mankind’ on that lake, not least the line, ‘O Sabbath rest by Galilee, O calm of hills above’. One thing I and my fellow pilgrims could be certain of when back on dry land was that we were in the site of the town of Capernaum, where in the gospels Jesus spends somewhat more of his time than Nazareth or Jerusalem, as we stood in the synagogue there, as he had, and walked the streets, as he had.

Those three towns are singled out for special condemnation as being unwilling to repent and for refusing ‘the deeds of power’ he had done in them. In that we see perhaps that it has always been the case that the gracious, healing generosity of Christ has not always been acknowledged, recognised or acted upon. That in itself should diffuse some of the anxious and neurotic behaviour of the church angsting over numerical growth or decline, and seeking ever more desperate strategies to address it: the generosity of Christ flowing from the generous heart of the Father has been snubbed and spurned throughout history, such is our human condition.

Last Sunday in the Cathedral we reflected on the place of Stewardship within the Christian life, and were encouraged to see that it is not about a subscription fee to a private members club or interest group but that giving is part of the joyful response we make to the bounty of God’s world. Today we have celebrated the harvest, which further arouses our senses us to the giftedness of creation.

As part of the cathedral’s broad vision and purpose we acknowledge that we exist for things that lie outside ourselves, God, in the first place, and our neighbour and the stranger at our door, following on quickly behind. What also lies outside us as a community is the world created and hallowed by God into which we bring to bear our lives as Christians, what we might call the pursuit of the Common Good, and, to frame it in the language of the Gospels and the language that we should be very comfortable with in the Church, the Kingdom of God: a kingdom that is in our midst, that we seek to uncover and that we long for; yet a Kingdom that is not our possession.

At the heart of harvest is gift. At the heart of stewardship is response: a giving response to a gift given. We respond to the gift of our life. We respond to the gift of the harvest of creation. We respond to the gift of the people around us.

In the Hebrew Scriptures the supreme gift of God to the people of Israel was their freedom and the gift of the Promised Land, a land flowing with milk and honey. The fall of Jericho to the Israelites seems to have been the icing on the cake of that gift, there was mopping up to be done, but the ritualised account of the priests and the rams horns and the seven days all hint at its defining place in the Israelite experience and narrative.

The city is essentially placed into the hands of the Israelites without them lifting a finger; it is a gift. The Israelites did not struggle for Jericho; they only received it by the grace of God. And whilst destruction would abound, which is deeply unpalatable to our ears, there is the intriguing reference that all the bronze, silver and gold is not to be coveted but to be devoted to the LORD; ‘they shall go into the treasury of the LORD’ (Joshua 6.19b).

Even the book of Joshua demands of Israel, and us, that we see all our apparent achievements as God’s, and that the gift of God is precisely that, a gift. Our response is not to plunder the gift, but to pause and to acknowledge: ‘strive first for the Kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.’ (Matthew 6.33)

Chorazin, Bethsaida, Capernaum, placed themselves under condemnation before Jesus had to utter a word in their refusal of God’s generous, healing power. Stewardship, harvest, is a call to open up, to allow the mist to clear, to look up and beyond ourselves and rejoice in the source of all that goodness and abundance and to take hold of the life that really is life.