I wonder how many of you realise that there are now just 116 days until Christmas. Yes, as we stand here on this hot and sunny summer’s day we can start planning for Christmas. We are more than 2/3 of the way through the year, and we are more than 2/3 of the way through the Trinity Season, the longest season in our Church calendar.
The Trinity season is one in which we traditionally seek growth – in our relationships with God and with one another, and we seek to develop a greater understanding of the gospel message for ourselves and for the world. And today’s New Testament Readings (Romans 12:9-21 & Matthew 16:21-28) show what an incredible message this is.
In a world so often driven by power, money and success, we find the message of Jesus to be one that turns those things completely upside down. In Paul’s letter to the Romans he writes, ‘Let love be genuine, hate what is evil…’ A little later, ‘Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in Spirit, serve the Lord… rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer…’
And then he goes on to echo the teaching of Jesus, ‘if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink…’ and then, ‘do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good…’
Paul wrote this letter to people in the most powerful City in the world, he wrote it to people used to success, used to the trappings of wealth, used to seeing failure of any sort punished, usually by death, but what he wrote about was not instant success but hard work and suffering as well. As he writes you can sense the knowledge that he already has that much of the work that the Christians would do would not bring an easy life for them.
The recent Olympics have been widely hailed as a great success, not just for Britain but for the Olympics in general, but there have been signs that things may not all be as rosy as it seemed – the little girl singing at the opening ceremony wasn’t really singing – somewhere a little girl with a beautiful voice was not considered pretty enough to be shown around the world – and so her voice was used whilst an appropriately pretty girl was pictured around the world pretending to sing.
And then there was the Chinese athletes who didn’t do as well as expected, put on national television to be humiliated as they apologised for letting down the State…
It’s not as nice a picture as perhaps many we have seen from the games, and yet this is nothing compared to the traditions of Roman society at the time of Jesus. It was a ruthless, bloodthirsty society, built on war and fear, built on the wealth of a relatively small number, and this is the place where Paul knew he had to share the gospel message.
A message of love, a message of turning the other cheek, a message that said to help those unable to help themselves, was one that was not going to be popular. But Paul knew it was the right message. A message that turned the usual upside down… And this is what Jesus himself had done as he spoke in today’s gospel reading about the need for him to go to Jerusalem where he would undergo suffering and die…
Stop fighting for rewards in life, Jesus was saying, because they will ultimately mean nothing – do the right thing, do the thing that may not make headlines nationally, but will make a real difference to perhaps just one individual – feed the hungry, give a drink to the thirsty, don’t let those who seek to hurt you with words or anything else stop you from loving them !
It was a dramatic message then, and it’s a dramatic message today. One of the things that perhaps the Western Church has lost is its radicalism – the gospel of Jesus isn’t one of a comfortable, easy lifestyle, but one of determination to do the right thing in God’s sight, to love when all of our instincts are perhaps pointing us to something different.
And as we look at the words of Paul, and think of his determination in sharing the gospel, as we look at the lives of so many people in the early Church, and as we look at the life of Jesus himself, we will know that it is not easy to live the Christian life… If we’re doing it properly we will be challenged, we will face criticism, we may even be laughed at, but if we’re doing things God’s way, then however hard it is, it is the right way…
Yakov Smirnoff, a Russian comedian, who emigrated to the United States made a good point. He said he wasn't prepared for the incredible variety of instant products available in American grocery stores. He said, "On my first shopping trip, I saw powdered milk - you just add water, and you get milk. Then I saw powdered orange juice - you just add water, and you get orange juice. And then I saw baby powder, and I thought to myself, what a country!"
So many things can be dramatically changed today, and our lives are certainly dramatically changed by Jesus – if they’re not we’re missing something, but it will still take a lot of work to always do this right thing…
Many people would have been like Peter and wouldn’t have understood the need for Jesus to go and die on the cross, just as many of the people to whom Paul wrote and spoke would not have understood his message, and today there will also be people who won’t listen or won’t understand, but the message of this morning’s readings is that we must persevere in doing right, persevere even when we think nothing’s happening, persevere even when it seems nobody’s listening, persevere even when people mock us or criticise us…
Doing God’s work is always doing the right thing… That work is to look for need around us, and to seek ways of addressing that need, it is to look for the good in everyone, not just those from whom good instantly jumps out. It is to overlook the person who criticises us, or who says nasty things about us behind our backs, and just keep loving that person and praying for them, it is to stop being nasty, in thought, word or deed, to the person we find it difficult to like or understand. God’s work is to love, even when loving seems the hardest thing in the world to do… that is our work too…
And there’s a wonderful story which illustrates this fact that we gain love by giving it away… Someone once asked the famous psychiatrist Dr. Karl Menninger what to do if he felt a nervous breakdown coming on. Menninger said: "Lock up your house, go across the railroad tracks, find someone in need, and do something for them." There's a beautiful saying (I don't know who said it): "Those who bring sunshine to the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves."
Following God won’t necessarily be easy, but when all is said and done, there will be no value to us in all those things we think are so important now but will not last. On the other hand, when we follow Jesus, we know that we live in the company of the One who forgives sin, who destroys death, who gives hope and purpose even in life’s most difficult moments. When we follow Jesus, we follow the One who promises eternal life.
For some Christians, the way of the cross might indeed lead to suffering and death. But, for many of us, the way of the cross is lived daily, quietly, faithfully.
The American preacher Tom Long said, “although the cross may look insignificant and foolish to the world, bearing a cross counts in the kingdom of heaven, counts to God. A life that is spent soothing the pain of the sick, caring for children in need, hammering nails in houses for the homeless, sharing bread with the hungry, visiting those in prison, and denying oneself may seem like a squandered life in the economy of a self-centred age, but in the storehouse of heaven, it is a lavish treasure… Following Jesus may be hard. But it’s also very, very good!” AMEN
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