St Mary-le-Tower, Ipswich Lent 2014 Sermon Series (1 & 2) Living in Grace Responding to the Grace and Generosity of God Revd Canon Charles Jenkin BSc, Vicar Based on the Sermon Series, Preaching Matthew Giving in Grace Diocese of Liverpool Sunday 9 th March 2014 Matthew 18.21-35 The Parable of the Ungrateful Servant Peter came and said to Jesus, Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times? Jesus said to him, Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times. For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. When he began the reckoning, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him; and, as he could not pay, his lord ordered him to be sold, together with his wife and children and all his possessions, and payment to be made. So the slave fell on his knees before him, saying, Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything. And out of pity for him, the lord of that slave released him and forgave him the debt. But that same slave, as he went out, came upon one of his fellow-slaves who owed him a hundred denarii; and seizing him by the throat, he said, Pay what you owe. Then his fellow-slave fell down and pleaded with him, Have patience with me, and I will pay you. But he refused; then he went and threw him into prison until he would pay the debt. When his fellow-slaves saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their lord all that had taken place. Then his lord summoned him and said to him, You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not have had mercy on your
fellow-slave, as I had mercy on you? And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt. So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart. SERMON The Christian journey, being a Christian, is about an encounter with the grace of God, a grace which is not just loving and generous but overwhelmingly extravagant. Grace assures us that we are loved, valued and held beyond measure. This grace is offered to us, not because of who we are, or what we have done, or who we are not, or what we have not done, but because of our potential to become children of God; a potential that every single one of us has, without exception. It depends only upon us learning to accept and live the grace of God. This is the heart of what today s Gospel reading is about. Yes indeed it is about the priority of forgiveness in the Kingdom of God, but it goes even deeper than this. It goes deeper to a whole way of life based on the generous grace of God. God s grace is often expressed in terms of forgiveness, but it goes deeper to something that affects the whole of our lives, even to how we handle money, which is why the financial theme the Parable of the Two Debtors is important. Today s sermon is the first in a series of Four Lent sermons, that focus on the loving generosity of God and our response, and which will make some of the links with our Giving to the life of Christ s Church. In today s Gospel, Peter has begun to get the message. He realises that he must move beyond a kind of calculated generosity. A devout Jewish man in his day would have felt called to forgive three times, so Peter chooses the holy number of seven, which seems to him to be really going the extra mile, a really rich expression of divine generosity. However Jesus calls him to go beyond generosity to overwhelming extravagance, for extravagance is the real joy of generosity. It is God s joy to be extravagantly generous to his children, and what parent does not know this! And so the first slave is extravagantly forgiven an impossibly huge amount of money. And yet he doesn t get it. He doesn t get what is lord has done for him, and so he sees no conflict in how he then treats a fellow slave. He has encountered the grace, but he has not understood or been open to it. For the grace of God is actually an invitation; an invitation to enter and participate in that community of grace that Jesus called the Kingdom of God.
This is what the Church is meant to be, a community of God s grace, learning to live in the grace of God; in the grace that looks not on what we are, or what we have done, or on what we are not, or what we have not done, but always upon our potential to grow as a children of God. But the parable also has a warning, a warning against encountering the grace of God yet being unwilling to be open to it. This is why the slave in the end is cast out, because he has not learned to act in grace himself. We encounter the grace of God actually in so many good things, for it is something that overflows. But the really vital thing is to become open it, to be learning to live in it, to become part of that community of the grace of God that is the Church; where people are valued, loved and accepted, not because of who they are or what they have done, but for their potential to become true children of God, a capacity everyone has without exception. All that is needed is to be open to the grace of God, and to be learning to appreciate ourselves the extravagance of God s generosity. Being part of the community of God s grace, is about learning to love like God does, to be generous in all sorts of ways, with friendship, affirmation and forgiveness, with money too, indeed with all that we have, all that God has given us in his generosity. It is not a measured or restrained thing. It is extravagant, like God s own love; and it is the extravagance that is the joy of it. So what might all this mean for the ways in which we give financially to our Church, and not just financially, but of our time, our effort and our good will too. We need to recognise that this is deeply spiritual matter; spirituality is not about a flight from the mundane; rather it is about engaging deeply with who you are and who God is. Money for most people goes pretty deep; how we handle money is unavoidably a spiritual matter too. The grace of God calls us to discover the joy of generous giving, indeed extravagant giving. The grace of God calls us to learn to share more and more in the generosity of what God gives, and to move beyond what might be called calculated or measured generosity. God does not measure is generosity to you and to me. It is about living the Grace of God, not just hearing about it but living it. And in giving to the Church, Christ s Church, we are giving to sustain that community of grace which, despite its all too human faults, is called to live it and proclaim the grace of God anew in every generation. We give in grace to sustain God s community of grace in this place; a community that is called to keep alive, to be agents of, to celebrate beyond all else the loving and extravagant generosity of God.
If we have encountered the grace of God, if we are truly open to the grace of God, if we are learning to live the grace of God, giving to the life and work of this community of grace, will not just be one of the most important things we do, it will be one of or chief joys. Amen. Sunday 16 th March Matthew 20.1-16 The Parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard Jesus said to his disciples: The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire labourers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the labourers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard. When he went out about nine o clock, he saw others standing idle in the market-place; and he said to them, You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right. So they went. When he went out again about noon and about three o clock, he did the same. And about five o clock he went out and found others standing around; and he said to them, Why are you standing here idle all day? They said to him, Because no one has hired us. He said to them, You also go into the vineyard. When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, Call the labourers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first. When those hired about five o clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage. Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage. And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, saying, These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat. But he replied to one of them, Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous? So the last will be first, and the first will be last.
SERMON What makes people content? It s an interesting question in a consumer society, where we are constantly bombarded with advertising that is designed to make us discontented and to want more. And then human beings have very good peripheral vision. We are constantly comparing ourselves with others; people have a highly tuned sense of fairness; and when we think we are missing out, or someone is unfairly getting more than ourselves, well it s very upsetting! We may have all sorts of resolutions about being contented with what we have, but at any point we can be overwhelmed by a deep sense of discontent, like when a river bursts its banks uncontrollably. We ve seen a lot of that this winter. One of the criticisms is that river authorities have not kept the channels clear enough to drain the water away quickly. So what are the channels of grace that are needed to drain away the floods of human discontent? The question of what makes the people of God content, is what lies at the heart of today s Gospel reading, the parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard. This is the second in a series of Lent sermons that are focussing on the grace and generosity of God, in which we are also making the connections with how we handle money, how we give for the work of Christ s Church. These sermons are a preparation for a renewal of our planned giving as a Church in April. It s a good subject for Lent, because it is often the case that people s attitude to money is a good indication of how deep their Christian discipleship really goes. Money goes deep. The question is whether Christian faith goes deeper. In the parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard, it s pretty understandable how those who have laboured all day feel. To pay them no more than those who have laboured only one hour offends against any standards of fairness or justice in employment, and frankly the owner s response seems hardly satisfactory. We can all understand why some of the labourers are not content. However the point of the parable is, like so many of the parables of Jesus, that the loving generosity of God is just not like the normal ways of the world, even those ways we would regard as good and just. The ways of the Kingdom of God are something else. They reflect the Christian vision of the God who constantly gives himself away in love, who seeks to serve rather than to dominate, and calls us to do the same. The question that the parable is asking the disciples of Jesus, and that includes us, is, are you ready to live in an economy of grace, in the kingdom of God s grace? And the message is that if you are ready, then your true contentment will come from the sheer joy of being generous, because this is the divine way, this is
the character of God, this is what the Kingdom is like, this is what heaven is like. And the greatest joy and contentment in the Kingdom is the opportunity to be extravagantly generous. But frankly, is it actually reasonable to ask people who actually have to live in the real world, to be as generous as this. Is it reasonable for God to ask such a thing from us? The first of these sermons was about generous forgiveness, and so much Christian spirituality relates to forgiveness. Christians celebrate all the time God s amazing capacity for forgiveness, so much so that we can sometimes just take it for granted, and forget how radical a thing it actually is. However, often it is only when we ourselves take seriously the call to reflect the forgiveness of God in our own lives that the full force of it comes home. It is certainly a challenge to learn to be extravagantly generous like God is, but the point of this week s parable is that fairness doesn t have anything to do with it. God s kingdom is not about fairness, it s about overwhelming grace and generosity. One of the keys to this parable, the parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard, is actually the character of the vineyard itself. It is a deep Old Testament image. The Jewish people listening to Jesus would have instantly recognised the connections. In the Old Testament the vineyard is a metaphor for the Promised Land, the Kingdom of God; and the point is that the Land, Israel, the Kingdom, is itself a generous gift. When in the parable the Labourers are invited to work in the vineyard, they are being asked to take part in something that is already fundamentally a gift of God. And in respect of those who come late to labouring in the vineyard, the right response of the others who have long been there is joy, when all these too receive all the full benefits of working in the vineyard. The whole thing, everything about the vineyard, is actually gift. The challenge of this parable goes to the heart of what it means to be content as a child of God. Are we still being dominated by worldly concerns of fairness? Is our peripheral vision still in overdrive? Are we still worried about missing out? Is our own generosity still just measured and calculated? Or do we know ourselves to be so deeply affirmed by God, so closely held in God s love and grace, that we are ready to be extravagantly generous with all that God has given us? How do we train ourselves, discipline ourselves, to be content in such a way. Lent is a time for renewing our spiritual disciplines. How do we stop the floods of discontent from overwhelming us, from bursting their banks and sweeping away all our good intentions? Well, we need to dig those channels of disciplined generosity,
channels of grace, and one of the ways we can do this is through our financial generosity. How we handle money goes pretty deep, and a generous financial discipline is quite an effective spiritual discipline too. It can help us move from timid generosity to extravagant generosity. It can help us to share more and more deeply in the generous heart of God, moving us on from generosity that is merely measured and calculated. It is about learning to live in the grace of God, and not just hearing about it. And where better to give than to that community of grace that is the Church, where constantly in word, song and sacrament, we celebrate the generous heart of God and find true contentment. Amen.