Sermon at Parish Mass Trinity 15 2025

Amos 6:1a, 4-7

1 Timothy 6:6-19

Luke 16:19-end

 

“If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.”

The gospels, from beginning to end, are the story of the Resurrection of Jesus. They would not have been written if the first disciples had not had the experience of Jesus, crucified and raised from the dead. Everything in them was written in that light. And they were written, some 40 to 60 years after the Resurrection, because the risen Lord was still a living experience transforming the lives of believers. People were still meeting Jesus and finding their lives changed by that encounter. Therefore, what he said and did in his lifetime mattered, and needed to be written down.

The experience of the Risen Lord was and is the most important fact in the life of the Church. The Church which wrote the gospels, and the Church which reads them. That’s us. For us, as for Christians in every age, meeting the risen Lord changes everything.

It changes where we see God at work. Not in the centres of power and wealth, but in the outcast, in the marginalised, in the victim who was rejected, cast out, crucified, buried. And who was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father. God is at work where the world thinks everything is over and done with, worthless, finished, and forgotten.

And that is the meaning of the parable in today’s Gospel. The story of a heedless rich man and a pious poor man, and how their situations are reversed by God’s judgement after death, was a well-known moral fable at the time of Jesus. But Jesus changes it. In his story, Lazarus is not obviously religious. It is his poverty and need, not his piety, that we are to notice. And then comes the twist in the tale: “neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.” We see that this parable needs to be read, like the whole of the Gospel, in the light of the Resurrection. Because Jesus is, pre-eminently, the one who rose from the dead. 

The Resurrection changes how we understand God. The humble and meek are indeed lifted up, raised even from the death that human violence inflicted. The resurrection is God’s judgement on a society which survives by creating victims. But it is also God’s inauguration of a new society, of his kingdom. The old order of sin and death gives way as God exposes and reverses the extent to which we have been complicit in it. 

Jesus, like Lazarus, was counted as nothing by the world which rejected him and put him to death. The rich man simply didn’t see Lazarus when he was alive, or if he did just assumed that he was getting what he deserved. The rich man is someone who does not understand what God is like. Even in the afterlife of this parable, which is the truth about Lazarus and the rich man seen in the God’s light, he thinks that Lazarus is someone who can be ordered to come to him, like a slave, with a drink of water.

Today in our great city, it is too easy to ignore those who are on the margins. The poor, the homeless, the hungry, those with no opportunities, victims of people trafficking and modern slavery. Those who are excluded tend to become invisible. And in this one world, our global home, how easy it is not to see those who suffer from war, poverty and injustice, in our relentless exposure to calamitous news from distant places.

But for us who believe in the Risen Lord, who are being transformed by the power of his risen life, we cannot let our brothers and sisters be invisible. We cannot turn away. Because that would be to turn away from where God is at work, from those whom God most values. For the face of Jesus, the outcast and the Risen Lord, shines out most clearly in our brothers and sisters who are on the margins and most in need.

On the last two Sundays we have had two feast days, which meant that we departed from the readings from Luke’s Gospel set for those two weeks. But in fact the readings for those feast days, and for today, have a common message, which has even developed in a coherent way. 

On Holy Cross Day, we saw that the saving work of Jesus, in his death and resurrection, reconciles humanity with God and with one another, creating one new humanity in which there is no distinction of race, nationality or culture. On Saint Matthew’s Day, we saw that even people of the same race and nation, bitterly divided by politics and social position, could find a new unity, a new belonging together, in Jesus. 

Today, the story of the rich man and Lazarus teaches us to notice those who also belong, but whom we would not see, unless Jesus were walking with us on the path of discipleship, showing us his presence in those most marginalized and most in need. Our vision and understanding are enlarged to embrace all of humanity. All are called into the new reality of God’s kingdom. 

It is true that problems of exclusion and marginalization can have complex roots and we cannot ourselves personally solve all of them. But we can give of our surplus to those agencies that have the means to help. And we can build a better world by being citizens who see, and draw attention to, Jesus in the most excluded. Because the first in the Kingdom will be Lazarus and all the marginalized and ignored ones of the world, who in fact show Jesus to us most truly. Then even those who are comfortable and secure can find a place at the table alongside them, through God’s mercy, through learning to see.

The Church always looks to Jesus, and is constantly being taught by him, the risen Lord, the living reality in our lives. Jesus risen from the dead alone undoes the sinful ordering of human society and makes new life possible for everyone – for the poor and dispossessed at our gates, and even, if they can but believe, for the rich and powerful. Because, through God’s infinite love, the gate of mercy stands open even for them.

Sermon for the Feast of Saint Matthew, 21st September 2025

Proverbs 3.13–18

2 Corinthians 4.1–6

Matthew 9.9–13

 

Saint Bede, known as the Venerable Bede, was one of the great jewels of northern English monasticism in the seventh and eighth centuries. He wrote commentaries, histories and sermons, and had this to say about Saint Matthew in today’s Gospel reading:

“Jesus saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax office, and he said to him: Follow me. Jesus saw Matthew, not merely in the usual sense, but more significantly with his merciful understanding of men… He saw the tax collector and, because he saw him through the eyes of mercy and chose him, he said to him: Follow me.”

Jesus saw the tax collector through the eyes of mercy and chose him. Most people at the time of Jesus would not have looked at tax collectors with mercy. They were collaborators with the occupying Roman empire, collecting, or extorting, money for far-off Rome, backed up by Roman military force, and often adding their own mark-up to what they collected. Many people hated them with a passion. When we hear in the Gospels the phrase, “tax collectors and sinners”, as we did today, that is all the bad people lumped together. 

There were opponents of collaborators and tax collectors. People like the Zealots, a fierce political movement of religious nationalism that sought to incite the Jewish people to revolt and drive out the foreign Roman invaders. The threat of violence was never far away, and could be brutally repressed.

Obviously Zealots and tax collectors wouldn’t be seen in each other’s company. Except, when we read the lists of the Apostles, we see, amongst the others, Matthew the tax collector, and Simon the Zealot. 

It would seem that the only thing that these people had in common was that Jesus had looked at them through the eyes of mercy, and chosen them. That look, and that choice, was so powerful that it drew the first disciples immediately to Jesus, no matter who they were. No matter that they then found themselves, by the choice of Jesus, in the company of others, equally chosen, whom they would never normally have associated with.

The choice of Jesus creates a new reality in which irreconcilable opponents, even enemies, suddenly find themselves united. The attraction of Jesus overcomes every human division.

Last week, on Holy Cross Day, we noted that the Cross is the sign of reconciliation: the saving work of Jesus who reconciles humanity with God, and with one another. Our enmity is overcome, and one new humanity is created in Christ in which there is no barrier or race or nation or culture.

On St Matthew’s Day, we see people of the same race and nation who are nevertheless radically divided by their different social and political positions. And these too are drawn together in unity in the new reality created by Jesus.

And this is the beginning of a movement that is meant to spread. As Saint Bede says, further, on today’s Gospel:

“ ‘As he sat at table in the house, behold many tax collectors and sinners came and sat down with Jesus and his disciples.’ This conversion of one tax collector gave many men, those from his own profession and other sinners, an example of repentance and pardon. Notice also the happy and true anticipation of his future status as apostle and teacher of the nations. No sooner was he converted than Matthew drew after him a whole crowd of sinners along the same road to salvation.”

As we have often noted, the Church is not a club for good people, it is the community of forgiven people. The task of the Church is to draw after us a whole crowd of other sinners along the same road to salvation. 

And in this new community, following the way of salvation, all are united. All races, nations and cultures are drawn together in one new humanity in Christ. And the polarity of different political and social positions is also overcome, because Jesus looks on us all with the eyes of mercy and chooses us. The Church is therefore not only the community of forgiven people, it is also the union of people who are not like each other, not like me, except for this one thing: that Jesus has looked at us through the eyes of mercy and chosen us.

We live in a world which seems to be becoming increasingly polarised and divided. The echo chambers of social media amplify their own messages and drown out anything else. In this toxic environment disagreement is not far away from enmity, and violent speech gives rise to violent actions. 

In this world the Church needs to be a visible sign of reconciliation and unity. A sign that Jesus looks at every person through the eyes of mercy and chooses them. And therefore chooses them, and me, and all of us, to belong to a new reality in which our divisions are overcome. 

Of course, the Church must also be a sign of truth in a world that is forgetting how to tell the truth, for we follow Him who is the way, the truth and the life. The Church must challenge false narratives that undermine the God-given humanity and dignity of every person. The Church must call out and stand against messages of fear, hatred and exclusion.

But this also means recognising the truth of the person who is different from me, who radically disagrees with me. Not necessarily the truth of what they say, for the Gospel sets out a clear law of love that is contradicted by those who preach hate. But, certainly, we must recognise the truth of who they are, the dignity of human persons made in the image of God. People upon whom Jesus looks with the eyes of mercy, and chooses them. Just as he looks upon me and chooses me. And so gives us to each other, in the new belonging that he creates, and which it is the Church’s task to live and proclaim.

The Cross, the Banner of Another Country

 

Andrea di Bartolo (1360-1428) - The Resurrection. Walters Art Museum, Wikimedia Commons 

Sermon Holy Cross Day 2025

Numbers 21.4-9

Philippians 2.6-11

John 3.13-17

 

The Cross is known universally as the Christian symbol. It appears publically on churches throughout the world (although ours is awaiting replacement). Many Christians wear a small cross, or have one in their home. We make the sign of the cross on ourselves in our prayers. 

The Cross also appears on the flags of a number of nations and institutions that have a Christian heritage. We saw the Flag of St George and the Union Flag quite a lot yesterday. There was the usual exuberant celebration of the Last Night of the Proms, where clearly everyone is welcome under these waving banners. Rather more troublingly, we also saw flags, and indeed crosses, carried through our streets in an anti-immigration protest in an attempt to claim Christianity as some kind of cultural identity badge, with apparently no understanding of Christian teaching. The Church is one over all the earth, and Christian identity can never be conflated with any particular race or nation. 

What we now call the Flag of St George, a red cross on a white background, appeared in the Middle Ages, long after the historical Saint George, when it began to be used as a flag by a number of countries, of which England was a relatively late arrival. At around the same time, it appeared in art in depictions of the Resurrection, as a banner held aloft by the risen Christ. 

This gives us a clue to its symbolic meaning. The red cross, the colour of blood, symbolises the passion of Christ, his death, and the white stands for the new life of his resurrection. So, carried by the risen Christ, it is a symbol of the Paschal Mystery, the victory of the Cross through his death and resurrection.

This is the heart of the Christian faith, summarised in Philippians this morning. Christ has emptied himself to share our humanity, even to death, and therefore has been raised to the glory of God. It was necessary that the Messiah should suffer and so enter into his glory. Because God in Christ has shared our death, death has been defeated, and the resurrection revealed. Humanity, united with Christ, is raised with him.

The pattern of dying and rising is the shape of the Christian faith, and is imprinted on us by our baptism, in which indeed we are marked with the sign of the Cross. We died and were buried with Christ in the waters of the font, so that we might be raised with him to eternal life. 

The grace we received in the font at our baptism is renewed in our life from day to day. Yet we cannot avoid the Cross, we are marked with it. There is no resurrection without death. Repentance, the conversion of life to which we are called, is a continual dying to self that we might live to God. The sufferings and sorrows of life are not avoided or cancelled out by the resurrection, but are transformed, the light of the resurrection shines through the Cross.

The Cross is both the sign of reconciliation, and the mark of its cost. Reconciliation between humanity and God, first of all, and therefore also the reconciliation of all divided humanity. Colossians says “through Christ God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross”.  Ephesians says, “He is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us”. 

How the cross saves and reconciles us is a mystery, which is not a puzzle to be solved but rather a truth whose meaning can never be exhausted. In the Cross, we see the infinite love and mercy of God, who alone can save us, meeting the depths of human sin and division and need and the disaster of death, and overcoming them.

And this is for everyone. Colossians says, it is the reconciliation of all things. The Gospel says it is the lifting up of the Son of Man, so that “everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life”. The Cross reconciles us with God and with one another, creating one new humanity in which there are no boundaries of race, nation or culture. 

We should not therefore be ashamed of the Cross. What if some people misuse it as a symbol of culture wars or toxic nationalism? Christians know better, and it is our symbol. Here we have no abiding city, but we seek the City that is to come, as Hebrews says. Whatever flag may fly over us in our exile here on earth, the Church unites, in one, people of every race, nation and culture. And we look to the Cross as the banner of another country, in which we have our true citizenship, the City of God in which all peoples will be gathered into one new humanity in Christ. 

The Cross is the sign of Christ, the sign of salvation. It is God’s hope breaking through into human tragedy. It is death defeated and the resurrection revealed. It is the sign of reconciliation that overcomes all barriers of race and nation and culture. The Cross proclaims to all people, as Ephesians says: “You are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and… members of the household of God.”

As Christians, we will best honour the sign of the Cross by living according to what it means. In lives of sacrificial self-giving love. In reconciling, because we have been reconciled. In welcoming, because we have been welcomed. In forgiving, because we have been forgiven. In faith that the worst this world can do can never equal God’s power to bring new life and hope. By always being ready to point to that hope amid the dreadful wreckage of human sin and death. It is through lives marked by the Sign of the Cross that we will best lift high the Cross, and the love of Christ proclaim, in a world that stands so much in need of that love.