Sunday Sermon: Luke 12.13-21 - The Rich Man and his barns.

Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” But he said to him, “Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?” And he said to them, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” Then he told them a parable: “The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, ‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ Then he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”

 

What’s Jesus’ attitude to wealth?

Just when you think Jesus is negative on having wealth, you hear him tell stories praising those that are clever with money and those that are excellent stewards.

Jesus doesn’t say that it’s wrong to have wealth or to be wealthy. He doesn’t say that you can’t be his disciple if you have wealth. He doesn’t propose a target income that is acceptable and then beyond that we’re in trouble. Rather he says, “Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” So…let’s be clear. Jesus doesn’t say it’s wrong to have wealth but he constantly warns that obsession with wealth can become an idol. Jesus is not against wealth as such – he’s against greed and against hoarding what you have as if it were yours. Jesus is reminding us that God is the maker and owner of everything. We’re just managers of God’s things.

Now I know plenty of Christians who think that Jesus is very opposed to wealth. Most of those live by a scarcity approach to life which acknowledges that there are a limited amount of resources in the world. Because of that, they say, a Christian ought not to acquire wealth. The goal, then, is to take only what you need and leave the rest to others. Don’t buy a new car until you’ve run the old one into the ground. Don’t buy new clothes until you look like you’ve been dressed by Man at Oxfam. Don’t live in a house with more rooms than you need. Don’t eat out in posh restaurants. Live a simple life so that others can have some of the world’s limited resources too. I find that a very attractive set of ideals … but not so attractive that I’m prepared to apply it wholesale to myself, but I admire them, nevertheless.

I also know some Christians who think that God has blessed them with wealth because they have somehow been more faithful disciples than others. In a sense, they see wealth as a divine reward for having been good. Just so long as they go to church, keep their nose clean, and give away 10% to the church, then God is pleased to bless them even more. For these people, wealth is a sign of divine favour – regardless how they made it. I’m not so attracted to that view myself.

I also know quite a few Christians that live very compartmentalized lives when it comes to money. They don’t think seriously about God and wealth at the same time. Perhaps it that British thing: like politics and religion, talking about our money is considered a bit of an anathema.  

Well…Jesus doesn’t actually say there are limited resources in the world and he doesn’t say that if you give God 10% the rest is yours as a reward and he most certainly doesn’t say that you can live as if God and money were separated from one another. Rather he says that greed, not wealth, is bad and being consumed with possessions is worse. If we become obsessed with having more and more, our possessions will possess us and we’ll forget that God is the maker and owner of all things including everything we have and all that we are.

So, whilst this isn’t a polemic against wealth, I do believe this passage is challenging us to seriously reflect on how we are using our God-given resources and could even be inviting us to a change of attitude when it comes to dealing with our apparent abundance, particularly in this highly developed but incredibly throw-away nation where we are tempted to live for the moment without consideration for the less fortunate both here and elsewhere.

When I was thinking about this I remembered watching a TV programme called Hoarders. It’s actually quite uncomfortable viewing because, like many fly-on-the-wall documentaries, you wonder whether you are being manipulated into judging people you really know very little about.

Anyway the premise of the programme is that there are people who hold onto a large number of items that most people would consider not useful or valuable: junk mail, old catalogues and newspapers; clothes – clean but more often dirty - that might be worn sometime in the future but probably won’t be; broken things and freebies from various retail promotions. Their homes have become so cluttered that parts of them are inaccessible and can’t be used. There are beds that can’t be slept in and kitchens that can’t be used for cooking or eating with fridges full of rotting food and every surface covered in random junk, take-away containers and dirty crockery. The tables are so overwhelmed that no one could sit at them or eat from them and there are chairs and settees that no one can sit on. There are unsanitary bathrooms with baths, showers and sinks that are unusable because they are full of random stuff that might, just, one day come in handy. And very often these people have also collected a large menagerie of animals they can’t really look after – watch your step!    

It’s a pattern of behaviour characterised by the people concerned’s obsessive acquisition of stuff and an unwillingness or inability to part with any single item while at the same time generally hating themselves and the mess they have got into.

In today’s Gospel passage Jesus is confronted by a man at the rough end of a dispute about a family inheritance: Tell my brother to share the family inheritance with me - quite a common cause of family disputes today with acrimonious squabbles over furniture, valuables, houses and, of course, cash.

Jesus refuses to be drawn in to this dispute. Rather, he warns be on your guard against all kinds of greed. Greed, he seems to imply, is at the root of this family feud.

Well, I may watch Hoarders with a kind of voyeuristic fascination, but I don’t identify with the people, even though I sympathise with them. But what’s enough anyway? How do we know what’s enough? What does enough look like? So you get a pay-rise and treat yourself to a new car or book that holiday you’ve always wanted as rewards for your hard work. Is that greed? After all aren’t greedy people usually further up the financial pecking-order than we are?

There was another programme I watched recently dealing with the work of interior designers for the fabulously wealthy: these people had so much wealth they had lost all sense of the value of money. There were gold bath taps, hand-painted silk wallpapers and the biggest one-off chandeliers you’ve ever seen. And then there was the programme about the travel company who designed tailor-made holidays for those who took just the eight holidays a year and only the best – and I mean the very best, and therefore most expensive, would do. Hoarders of a different sort, but hoarders nevertheless.

Now I know this probably tells you more about my viewing habits than perhaps I’d like, but we sat there mesmerised by these ostentatious displays of wealth and yes, we talked about greed but, at the time at least, without any sense of irony that there are people lower down the financial pecking order than us who would say that what we have is well beyond our needs.

When is enough enough?

You see, I see the rich farmer in this parable as being cut from the same cloth as those who were buying in the services of the interior designers and bespoke holiday creators. Others might see me – or you – as being cut from the same cloth as the rich farmer.

It’s a challenge isn’t it? Are we the hoarders – not to the extent of the obsessive types, but are we hoarders? Doesn’t modern culture encourage us to believe that we measure our status by the abundance of our possessions? How do we deal with our disposable income? How do we know when we are being greedy? How do we know when enough is enough?

The rich farmer appears to be a good businessman whose land has produced an abundance so he plans for the future by building bigger and bigger barns as the possessions that came with his wealth grow. He’s looking forward to a retirement when he can relax, eat, drink and be merry. And why not? We aren’t given the impression that he’s been a bad employer or has come by his wealth through dodgy dealings. Why shouldn’t he enjoy the fruit of his labours?

Yet Jesus calls him a fool.

Why? Because the clock is ticking down to this man’s death: this very night your life is being demanded of you. He was so obsessed with his possessions that he was only concerned about tomorrow rather than the concerns of today – and for him tomorrow would never come.

And what the passage says by its very omission is that the man was selfish: it says nothing of his awareness of those less fortunate or his charitable giving. A learning point here is that even if we can’t identify at all with this rich, obsessed and selfish man, we each need to become much more responsible stewards of what we have been blessed with, and this becomes especially true and personal when we begin to realize that our abundance is not meant to be consumed solely by us, but must be protected, cared for and properly distributed.

There’s a sermon in itself there for another day but maybe it’s sufficient just to say at this point that we all need to ponder the personal challenge involved in that.

Of course I’m guessing very few of us here need to be reminded that even when we think we have it all, we can lose it in a moment: a heart attack or stroke; a car accident – death is indeed a robber who comes unexpectedly and we all go to the grave empty-handed.

I think the point of the parable is that in ignoring the present the man ignored all that the present implies and one aspect of that was his status before God: his wealth and possessions became a form of idolatry and took the place of the proper object of his yearning: God.  

Put that way, a passage which started off sounding like the story of a man being circumspect about his retirement takes on an altogether different meaning: no longer a cautious man but an obsessive hoarder focused on his wealth to the exclusion of all else. As Luke goes on to say later, where your treasure is, there your heart is also.

It isn’t that the material world is unimportant, but Jesus reprioritises what is really important in life. It is possible to have everything but still lead an empty life. So is there an abundance in life that we can still seek? St. Paul tells us in Romans that nothing can separate us from the love of God which is itself infinite beyond our imaginings, but we need to connect with it first. Once we have, we begin to appreciate that we don’t need to worry or be greedy with a hoarder disorder because we begin to recognise that God is the true object of our desires and the one who in return loves us beyond our comprehension. So when we realise that this very night your life is being demanded of you, we can be at peace because we would already have known God and have been known by him in return.

At the same time, when we come to terms with the fact that God's generosity is great, we begin to realize how much more generous we ought to be towards others who are also created in God's image and likeness.  

The rich farmer was right about one thing though: Relax, eat, drink and even be merry, because what follows is a Eucharist, a table of thanksgiving. Taste its abundance and see that the Lord is good.

 

Sunday Sermon: Luke 12.13-21 - The Rich Man and his barns.

Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” But he said to him, “Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?” And he said to them, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” Then he told them a parable: “The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, ‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ Then he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”

What’s Jesus’ attitude to wealth?

Just when you think Jesus is negative on having wealth, you hear him tell stories praising those that are clever with money and those that are excellent stewards.

Jesus doesn’t say that it’s wrong to have wealth or to be wealthy. He doesn’t say that you can’t be his disciple if you have wealth. He doesn’t propose a target income that is acceptable and then beyond that we’re in trouble. Rather he says, “Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” So…let’s be clear. Jesus doesn’t say it’s wrong to have wealth but he constantly warns that obsession with wealth can become an idol. Jesus is not against wealth as such – he’s against greed and against hoarding what you have as if it were yours. Jesus is reminding us that God is the maker and owner of everything. We’re just managers of God’s things.

Now I know plenty of Christians who think that Jesus is very opposed to wealth. Most of those live by a scarcity approach to life which acknowledges that there are a limited amount of resources in the world. Because of that, they say, a Christian ought not to acquire wealth. The goal, then, is to take only what you need and leave the rest to others. Don’t buy a new car until you’ve run the old one into the ground. Don’t buy new clothes until you look like you’ve been dressed by Man at Oxfam. Don’t live in a house with more rooms than you need. Don’t eat out in posh restaurants. Live a simple life so that others can have some of the world’s limited resources too. I find that a very attractive set of ideals … but not so attractive that I’m prepared to apply it wholesale to myself, but I admire them, nevertheless.

I also know some Christians who think that God has blessed them with wealth because they have somehow been more faithful disciples than others. In a sense, they see wealth as a divine reward for having been good. Just so long as they go to church, keep their nose clean, and give away 10% to the church, then God is pleased to bless them even more. For these people, wealth is a sign of divine favour – regardless how they made it. I’m not so attracted to that view myself.

I also know quite a few Christians that live very compartmentalized lives when it comes to money. They don’t think seriously about God and wealth at the same time. Perhaps it that British thing: like politics and religion, talking about our money is considered a bit of an anathema.  

Well…Jesus doesn’t actually say there are limited resources in the world and he doesn’t say that if you give God 10% the rest is yours as a reward and he most certainly doesn’t say that you can live as if God and money were separated from one another. Rather he says that greed, not wealth, is bad and being consumed with possessions is worse. If we become obsessed with having more and more, our possessions will possess us and we’ll forget that God is the maker and owner of all things including everything we have and all that we are.

So, whilst this isn’t a polemic against wealth, I do believe this passage is challenging us to seriously reflect on how we are using our God-given resources and could even be inviting us to a change of attitude when it comes to dealing with our apparent abundance, particularly in this highly developed but incredibly throw-away nation where we are tempted to live for the moment without consideration for the less fortunate both here and elsewhere.

When I was thinking about this I remembered watching a TV programme called Hoarders. It’s actually quite uncomfortable viewing because, like many fly-on-the-wall documentaries, you wonder whether you are being manipulated into judging people you really know very little about.

Anyway the premise of the programme is that there are people who hold onto a large number of items that most people would consider not useful or valuable: junk mail, old catalogues and newspapers; clothes – clean but more often dirty - that might be worn sometime in the future but probably won’t be; broken things and freebies from various retail promotions. Their homes have become so cluttered that parts of them are inaccessible and can’t be used. There are beds that can’t be slept in and kitchens that can’t be used for cooking or eating with fridges full of rotting food and every surface covered in random junk, take-away containers and dirty crockery. The tables are so overwhelmed that no one could sit at them or eat from them and there are chairs and settees that no one can sit on. There are unsanitary bathrooms with baths, showers and sinks that are unusable because they are full of random stuff that might, just, one day come in handy. And very often these people have also collected a large menagerie of animals they can’t really look after – watch your step!    

It’s a pattern of behaviour characterised by the people concerned’s obsessive acquisition of stuff and an unwillingness or inability to part with any single item while at the same time generally hating themselves and the mess they have got into.

In today’s Gospel passage Jesus is confronted by a man at the rough end of a dispute about a family inheritance: Tell my brother to share the family inheritance with me - quite a common cause of family disputes today with acrimonious squabbles over furniture, valuables, houses and, of course, cash.

Jesus refuses to be drawn in to this dispute. Rather, he warns be on your guard against all kinds of greed. Greed, he seems to imply, is at the root of this family feud.

Well, I may watch Hoarders with a kind of voyeuristic fascination, but I don’t identify with the people, even though I sympathise with them. But what’s enough anyway? How do we know what’s enough? What does enough look like? So you get a pay-rise and treat yourself to a new car or book that holiday you’ve always wanted as rewards for your hard work. Is that greed? After all aren’t greedy people usually further up the financial pecking-order than we are?

There was another programme I watched recently dealing with the work of interior designers for the fabulously wealthy: these people had so much wealth they had lost all sense of the value of money. There were gold bath taps, hand-painted silk wallpapers and the biggest one-off chandeliers you’ve ever seen. And then there was the programme about the travel company who designed tailor-made holidays for those who took just the eight holidays a year and only the best – and I mean the very best, and therefore most expensive, would do. Hoarders of a different sort, but hoarders nevertheless.

Now I know this probably tells you more about my viewing habits than perhaps I’d like, but we sat there mesmerised by these ostentatious displays of wealth and yes, we talked about greed but, at the time at least, without any sense of irony that there are people lower down the financial pecking order than us who would say that what we have is well beyond our needs.

When is enough enough?

You see, I see the rich farmer in this parable as being cut from the same cloth as those who were buying in the services of the interior designers and bespoke holiday creators. Others might see me – or you – as being cut from the same cloth as the rich farmer.

It’s a challenge isn’t it? Are we the hoarders – not to the extent of the obsessive types, but are we hoarders? Doesn’t modern culture encourage us to believe that we measure our status by the abundance of our possessions? How do we deal with our disposable income? How do we know when we are being greedy? How do we know when enough is enough?

The rich farmer appears to be a good businessman whose land has produced an abundance so he plans for the future by building bigger and bigger barns as the possessions that came with his wealth grow. He’s looking forward to a retirement when he can relax, eat, drink and be merry. And why not? We aren’t given the impression that he’s been a bad employer or has come by his wealth through dodgy dealings. Why shouldn’t he enjoy the fruit of his labours?

Yet Jesus calls him a fool.

Why? Because the clock is ticking down to this man’s death: this very night your life is being demanded of you. He was so obsessed with his possessions that he was only concerned about tomorrow rather than the concerns of today – and for him tomorrow would never come.

And what the passage says by its very omission is that the man was selfish: it says nothing of his awareness of those less fortunate or his charitable giving. A learning point here is that even if we can’t identify at all with this rich, obsessed and selfish man, we each need to become much more responsible stewards of what we have been blessed with, and this becomes especially true and personal when we begin to realize that our abundance is not meant to be consumed solely by us, but must be protected, cared for and properly distributed.

There’s a sermon in itself there for another day but maybe it’s sufficient just to say at this point that we all need to ponder the personal challenge involved in that.

Of course I’m guessing very few of us here need to be reminded that even when we think we have it all, we can lose it in a moment: a heart attack or stroke; a car accident – death is indeed a robber who comes unexpectedly and we all go to the grave empty-handed.

I think the point of the parable is that in ignoring the present the man ignored all that the present implies and one aspect of that was his status before God: his wealth and possessions became a form of idolatry and took the place of the proper object of his yearning: God.  

Put that way, a passage which started off sounding like the story of a man being circumspect about his retirement takes on an altogether different meaning: no longer a cautious man but an obsessive hoarder focused on his wealth to the exclusion of all else. As Luke goes on to say later, where your treasure is, there your heart is also.

It isn’t that the material world is unimportant, but Jesus reprioritises what is really important in life. It is possible to have everything but still lead an empty life. So is there an abundance in life that we can still seek? St. Paul tells us in Romans that nothing can separate us from the love of God which is itself infinite beyond our imaginings, but we need to connect with it first. Once we have, we begin to appreciate that we don’t need to worry or be greedy with a hoarder disorder because we begin to recognise that God is the true object of our desires and the one who in return loves us beyond our comprehension. So when we realise that this very night your life is being demanded of you, we can be at peace because we would already have known God and have been known by him in return.

At the same time, when we come to terms with the fact that God's generosity is great, we begin to realize how much more generous we ought to be towards others who are also created in God's image and likeness.  

The rich farmer was right about one thing though: Relax, eat, drink and even be merry, because what follows is a Eucharist, a table of thanksgiving. Taste its abundance and see that the Lord is good.

 

Sunday Sermon: Luke 11.1-13 Jesus teaches how to pray.

He was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” He said to them, “When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial.” And he said to them, “Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have nothing to set before him.’ And he answers from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door has already been locked, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.’ I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs. “So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

I don’t know about you but I struggle with prayer. When I was doing my ordination training I spent some time looking at the nature and practice of prayer. I found it rather depressing to be constantly confronted by authors who seemed to have prayer all sewn-up and sorted.

That didn’t reflect my experience at all: and then I came upon an author called Barbara Brown Taylor and her book, An Altar in the world. If she’s been physically present in the room I’d have hugged her! She wrote, I know a chapter on prayer belongs in this book, but I dread writing it. I have shelves full of prayer books and books on prayer. I have draws full of notes from courses I have taught and attended on prayer. I have a meditation seat I have used twice, prayer mantras I have intoned for as long as a week, notebooks with column after column of names of people in need of prayer (is writing them down enough?). I have a bowed psaltery - a Biblical stringed instrument mentioned in the book of Psalms - that dates from the year I thought I might be able to sing prayers easier than I could say them. I have invested a small fortune in icons, candles, monastic incense, coals and incense burners.

I am a failure at prayer. When people ask me about my prayer life ... my mind starts scrambling for ways to hide my problem. I start talking about other things I do that I hope will make me sound like a godly person. I ask the other people to tell me about their prayer lives, hoping they will not notice that I have changed the subject.

That’s me. I am firmly in the camp of Barbara Brown Taylor, although I do not (as yet) own a bowed psaltery!

I also identify strongly with Teresa of Avila, who said there was a time when the set periods of devotion were more than enough for her and almost more than she could stand; that during these times her mind fell out and wandered; that she felt bored, restless, and fidgety, and kept looking again and again at the hourglass - it must be nearly done - and marvelled at how slowly time crawled away.

However, perhaps this is what former Archbishop of Canterbury Michael Ramsey meant when he talked in a more upbeat assessment of “wasting time with God” and noted that such time is never actually wasted.

I have some neighbours a door or two away who own four yappy little dogs. She’s too lazy to take them for proper walks so lets them into the back garden where almost immediately they stand at the closed back door and yap, and yap, and yap, and yap to be let back in. She has been known to go out and leave them there for long periods of time. Of course dogs aren’t that bright and it never occurs to them that they are wasting their breath and energy because there’s no one there to hear them.  So they persist.

Perhaps many of you feel like those dogs. You have prayed and prayed for something and there seems to be no answer - there seems to be no one at home!

Well, we aren’t alone! Throughout Scripture we see instances of followers of God who cried out and did not seem to have their prayers answered. The two biggest examples were Jesus and Paul. Remember, Jesus pleaded for God to take this cup from me, but to no avail. The Apostle Paul begged God to take away the thorn in his flesh, but God never did. Obviously, their prayers were not answered to their satisfaction.

But perhaps you’re thinking, "Hang on, didn't I just hear Jesus telling us that if we ask, seek, and knock, we will receive an answer?" Yes. That’s what he said, and his words are true. But first we must understand what prayer is before we can understand the truth and power of Jesus' words. Prayer is one of the most misunderstood and misused practices of our faith and like the dogs I mentioned earlier, until we understand the nature of prayer and how God answers prayer, all of our barking and praying for an answer will leave us frustrated. The truth is, our wondering about unanswered prayer is often about a misunderstanding of what prayer is. For many, prayer is understood almost as an exercise in magic: people often believe that if they say the right phrases or have the proper technique, they can persuade God to answer their prayers.

But prayer is not rubbing a magic lamp. It is not presenting some Santa Claus in the sky with a list of things we want. We don't often think of prayer as a conversation. Don't we really think of prayer as monologue - as in talking to God, telling God how we feel, what we want, confessing our sins, seeking God's forgiveness, petitioning in behalf of others, reaffirming our praise and devotion? Usually, what we mean by prayer is a monologue. But prayer should be an intimate communication with God which should be as natural as speaking to a friend. Then, more importantly, it’s about being quiet and still and listening to God and being transformed by what he is communicating to us. Prayer is vital, because how can we expect to be in relationship with God if we don't communicate with him?

We can certainly receive comfort from the fact that even Jesus and Paul went through times of fervent praying for God to do something, and God did not complying with their requests. We are not alone.

But Jesus taught us a lesson. As we read through Luke’s gospel we find Jesus praying consistently at every turn in his life. He prays as he senses God's call on his life; he prays before choosing his disciples; he prays as he serves and heals other people; he prays as he feels the demands and pressures of his ministry; he prays as he faces the cross; he prays as he finishes his work on the cross. Jesus was continually praying. You could say that prayer for him was as vital as taking his next breath. He knew that in order to live out the life God called him to live, he needed to be continually connected to God in prayer; God was at the heart of his very being.

It was out of his own consistent prayer life that Jesus gives us this teaching in our reading for today. The disciples notice Jesus praying all the time, and they finally ask, "Teach us to pray." They understood that prayer is a vital practice for Jesus, and they wanted to learn how to do it. And in response to their request, Jesus did two things. First of all, he gave them an actual model that they could begin to emulate directly. He said, "When you pray, here is how to do it," and what follows is a shortened form of what we call The Lord's Prayer. This is simply a basic outline of the kind of concerns that make up authentic prayer. This is just like a piano teacher giving a set of scales to a new pupil and saying, "If you will follow this directly, it will increase your capacity to become a musician." And I would suggest that one of the finest ways to deepen our capacity for prayer is to take the famous words of the prayer that Jesus gave us and make them our own. In other words, we can begin to learn to pray by letting Jesus direct us into how this should be done.

Jesus’ prayer template is not a lesson in right technique. It’s not a lesson in right phrasing. It’s not a lesson in how to persuade God. It’s a lesson in persistence. Through the story of the man banging on the door all night, and the repeated words, ask, seek, and knock, Jesus is telling us that effective prayer is consistent prayer. Effective prayer is a continual connection to God. And if we look closely at today's reading we’ll also notice Jesus telling us that effective prayer is not about what we can get from God, but what we receive from God. There is a big difference because too often what we want from God and what we receive from God are two different things. We need to bear in mind that what is implied in Jesus' words for us today is that God always answers prayer. Now, God may not give us the answer we want or answer us at the time we want, but God always answers us.

Many of us here are parents or grandparents and as such we can remember times when our children or grandchildren bothered us – harassed us, even – about wanting something. Did we always acquiesce? Of course not. Sometimes we did but more often than not we didn’t: we said a clear “no”, or a “not yet” and sometimes even a “you must be joking!” Why? Because we had an overview based on our own experience, our knowledge of the children and the balance between their wants and needs.

Do we expect God to be different?

When my children were younger one of their favourite films was Bruce Almighty. In it God gave someone the chance to take on his role for the day - and he made a complete mess of it, answering people’s prayers without regard for the consequences. It was funny – if you were nine – but it made an important point about prayer: what we ask for is not always right for us and God will always answer us with our best interest at heart. Remember, Jesus said: "If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?" This is a great promise that should encourage us to pray more. I believe this is what Jesus is getting at in our Scripture reading for today. When we ask long enough, seek hard enough, knock loud enough, and pray persistent enough, something happens to us. The discipline of prayer begins to connect us more and more to the Holy Spirit, and our motives and desires begin to change in line with the will of God.

Well, that’s fine then as far as our personal intercessions are concerned, but surely there are prayers for those in need where the desired outcome is obvious. When we pray for the poor and needy; for the sick; for war-torn countries; for victims of natural disasters we are surely asking God to do what must be within his will and desire for those people.

Pope Francis has commented on this sort of prayer: You pray for the hungry. Then you feed them. That’s how it works. He also said, Persevering in prayer is the expression of faith in a God who calls us to fight with him every day and at every moment in order to conquer evil with good.

For Pope Francis, prayer becomes a risky strategy because in praying for the needs of others we aren’t informing God of events and situations he’s not already aware of, we’re telling God that we have an understanding of the needs of others. How many times have we been involved in conversations where the conclusion is that “someone needs to do something about it”? When we pray for the needs of others God is surely saying to us, “Who do you think that someone is? You recognise the need. You do something about it.” As the Pope says, “That’s how prayer works.” Otherwise we abrogate any responsibility by turning God into the eternal Santa in the sky who we expect to solve all the world’s problems, many of which are of our making.

I pray for the sick: am I a doctor? No. Do I have a car? Yes.

 I pray for the homeless. Do I have a spare room? No. Do I have a wardrobe full of clothes I no longer wear and could give to OXFAM? Yes.

I pray for the victims of natural disasters. Am I able to rebuild homes? No. Can I give money to a credible charity? Yes.

I pray for war-torn countries. Am I a peacemaker? No. Can I lobby my MP about the ethics of the arms trade and our dealings with dodgy regimes abroad? Yes.

As Pope Francis has said, “That’s how prayer works.” I am aware of the situation and I’ve told God so, so what’s my excuse for doing nothing while expecting him to act?

So, this is what persistent prayer does: it pulls us closer to God and as we move closer to God, we find that we don’t get what we want from God, we get what we need and we get what God wants. We find that as we move closer to him, we begin to desire what he desires, so that what we ask for, knock for, and seek after becomes what God so desperately wants us to have and to do. Then the truth of Jesus' words come to life so that what we pray for we truly receive.

Sunday Sermon: Luke 10.25-37 The Parable of The Good Samaritan

                                                                   Luke 10.25-37

Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself.” And he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.” But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbour?” Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, ‘Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.’ Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”

So, today we have one of the most famous parables of Jesus: The Good Samaritan. When I was teaching Religious Studies, this was always a key text in the GCSE unit on Religion and Prejudice and when I was trawling back through documents on my computer I was mildly surprised to discover that I have never before preached on this most familiar of Gospel stories.

I have to say, though, that its very familiarity can be problematic: we all know it; we’ve heard it countless times. We know the story well and, as we listened to it today, I wonder whether we fell into the trap that is always there with those things that we know so well: “I know this one. I could stand up and preach from this text.” – and we probably all could, in fairness, and make a reasonably good effort. Goodness me, if we don’t know the moral of this story as disciples, there’s surely no hope for us. We could stop now really and take its message as a given, carry on with the service and have an extended coffee time.

Don’t get me wrong: there’s nothing wrong with the reassurance of revisiting the familiar. But – and it’s a big but – the danger lies in assuming that because it is a staple of our application of Christian ethics, there is nothing new for us here. But there is a difference between head knowledge and heart knowledge. One we know factually, the other we internalise and it becomes part of who we are and the way we live our lives, particularly in relation to others.

It’s with some trepidation, therefore, that I continue.

I mentioned Christian ethics before and this parable sits firmly and consistently within Jesus’ wider teaching on the care of “the other” in society: we know that Jesus welcomed the outcast and the marginalised in his society: women, the poor, the sick and disabled – mentally and physically, tax collectors, prostitutes and foreigners. In Matthew chapter 7, Jesus taught people to “Love your neighbour as yourself.” – The Golden Rule which, put another way, means that we should treat others as we would like others to treat us. Let’s be clear though: such teaching challenged the attitudes of the day by being inclusive in an environment when being inclusive was a novel, if not revolutionary, idea. If you weren’t able-bodied, self-sufficient, Jewish and ideally male in Jesus’ society you weren’t anybody. You didn’t count. It was a very hierarchical society and perhaps the first challenge is to ask ourselves if we can see any parallels in our own society. Who is at the bottom of the pile today? Who doesn’t count? Who is, effectively, a non-person today? Once we begin to recognise those parallels we can, perhaps, begin to see what the application of this parable is for us today.

So, let’s revisit the story.

The introduction is itself very important: Jesus is approached by a lawyer – an example of that able-bodied, educated, self-sufficient Jewish male. Now in the context of the story commentators generally see him as being a bit full of himself, a bit arrogant, blinkered and rather self-congratulatory. Has he come to Jesus as a true seeker of the truth or has he come hoping for praise and affirmation about what a good, upstanding example of Jewish discipleship he is? A bit of a smart-arse, dare I say? He knows the Jewish code backwards. A lawyer in Jesus’ day was generally an expert on the religious law, so when in answer to Jesus’ question he responds that the key to salvation is to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself.” he is absolutely right and Jesus tells him so. Brownie point to the lawyer! But he blows it in his next question, “And who is my neighbour?” Head knowledge not heart knowledge, so Jesus feels obliged to spell out the practical application of loving our neighbours as ourselves.

Now the story Jesus tells is not an actual event but, like so many of his stories, is based on possible realities. I’ve been to Israel and the journey Jesus describes from Jerusalem to Jericho is a real journey. Even from the comfort of my air-conditioned coach I could see the amazingly bleak and inhospitable landscape of that journey, unchanged down the years. When Jesus starts his story, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho ….” he pulled his audience in: they knew that journey. Many would have undertaken it themselves or would have known someone who had and it was not one for the faint-hearted and certainly not one to undertake on your own. The solo, unwary traveller might well find himself the victim of an armed gang. Only a foolish man or someone in a dire emergency would set off on that journey on his own. At dawn the marketplaces of both cities would be a gathering point for people to set off together in a group because there is, indeed, safety in numbers. You just did not go on your own. No doubt his audience was already ahead of Jesus in assuming the downfall of the traveller.

Like so many of the Gospel stories this one is light on detail so let’s just fill in some of the gaps: the man is beaten to the point that he cannot continue; they take everything from him and that includes clothing, food and water and he is left in an environment without shelter from the heat of the day. Concussion, dehydration, blood loss, sun burn – this man is going to die. But through the heat-haze he sees a distant figure approaching. He’s going to be alright, particularly as, when the figure gets closer he can see by his clothing that he is a priest, presumably from the Temple in Jerusalem: surely the sort of person who because of his calling would offer help. Salvation is at hand. Not so, and neither with the second passer-by, a Levite, another religious leader. Why didn’t they stop? Fearful of becoming ritually unclean through contact with blood, or fear that the robbers might still be at hand? We’ll never know but Jesus’ audience were probably quite pleased about this implicit put-down of the religious classes, “They swan about thinking they’re better than everyone else but when push came to shove they were found wanting. Hypocrites!” But that audience would have been less pleased by the outcome of the story. Having been failed so miserably by his own, the man is helped by a foreigner, a despised Samaritan, deliberately chosen as the hero of the story to make Jesus’ key point. No doubt the unfortunate man expected nothing from this man once he had recognised by his clothing who he was.

So, when Jesus asked the lawyer who in his story was the true neighbour, the inescapable conclusion was that it was the least likely of the passers-by. It was an enemy who showed that true spirit of neighbourliness through his compassion: not just a bandage and a swig from his water bottle, but long-term recuperation at his own expense. Being a true good neighbour can be costly.

When I used to look at this passage with my pupils I often asked them to rewrite the story in an updated version to help get the point across. They invariably came up with some version of a football match involving a Leeds United fan, a vicar, a nun and a Manchester United fan. Occasionally we would get two soldiers from opposing armies or some gang-related event. The point was that they were able to identify with the parable and make practical, up-to-date applications from their own experiences and imaginations  – and that’s what the parable is designed to do because it is a universal story. Because it is applicable to each new generation its function is to challenge our innate prejudices by encouraging us to recognise who our own Samaritans are, “the other” in our society.

Who is your Samaritan – and it will be different for each of us? This is where head knowledge becomes heart knowledge because the moral of this parable is that neighbourliness is defined quite simply as the need of one person balanced against the capacity of another to help, regardless of who either person is.

Who, then, is “the other” in our society? Who are the ones Jesus tells us we should treat as we would like to be treated? Is it about race, class, sexual orientation? Love your neighbour as yourself: your homeless neighbour? Your black or Asian neighbour? Your Muslim Neighbour? Your gay neighbour? Your immigrant neighbour? Your refugee neighbour? Your addicted neighbour? Your disabled neighbour? Your Labour/Conservative/Lib-Dem/UKIP neighbour (delete as appropriate)? It’s a potentially long list. Who is my neighbour? Who is the neighbour Jesus is challenging us to recognise today in an increasingly divided and polarised society?

When we think in these terms and break it down like this, what was once a nice feel-good story we may have known since childhood becomes instead an immense challenge about how we relate to others today. "Go and do likewise" Jesus said. It's an imperative not an option. This is Christian discipleship in action.

Given that in reality we aren’t very likely to come upon the victim of violence on our streets, it speaks to the conversations we have with family, colleagues and friends and the attitudes we collude with or allow to go unchallenged; to the terms we use when talking about others – or to others; to what we accept from our politicians and print media. It speaks to our willingness - or otherwise - to engage with others we are fearful or suspicious of; it speaks to our willingness – or otherwise – to stand up and be counted in defence of “the other” in our society. Are we like the lawyer in terms of head-knowledge, or the Samaritan in terms of heart-knowledge?

There is another parable of Jesus which could well be the follow-up to the Parable of The Good Samaritan. It’s the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats in Matthew chapter 25,

“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’

“They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’ “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’

Amen