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A sermon preached in Salisbury Cathedral by Canon Mark Bonney, Treasurer on Sunday 28 February 2010
"ARE WE WILLING?"
“How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you were not willing.” (Luke 13:34).
We can have all sorts of fantastic ideas – we can have all sorts of sound advice; we can know exactly what someone else should do: we can even know for ourselves what would be a good thing to do. I really know that for me to go on a diet would be a very, very good thing… even better than getting more games of golf in. But unless we are, unless I am, willing we get nowhere. It’s that challenge of the need to be willing that struck me from this morning’s gospel.
Last time I preached it was about love – there’s not many a sermon that goes by without a mention of love and I don’t want at all to knock this. Luke’s gospel is my favourite gospel because it has those wonderful parables like the Good Samaritan, and the Prodigal Son which appear nowhere else but which speak of unlimited care and unlimited forgiveness – and I thank God daily for that.
But alongside that love, that unlimited care and that unlimited forgiveness we can’t escape those other moments in Luke’s gospel when there is an edge to the Gospel message – when the element of challenge and call to change is put before us – and it’s one of those moments that confront us in this morning’s gospel –Jerusalem is berated for failing to listen – the loving forgiving side of God is imaged by the hen gathering her brood – “but you were not willing” – the hand was extended but it was refused. Love is on offer, forgiveness and care is indeed unlimited but “you were not willing” to receive it.
Therein lies the challenge and the edge.
At General Synod the other day I was made very aware of the challenges and edge of the Gospel when I listened to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s presidential address. He spoke about liberty and freedom – and the freedom of the children of God is something we want to proclaim – but there are hard edges to this and challenges to what this freedom means. There are no easy ways out of certain dilemmas as he spelt out when he said “The freedom claimed, for example, by the Episcopal Church to ordain a partnered homosexual bishop is, simply as a matter of fact, something that has a devastating impact on the freedom of, say, the Malaysian Christian to proclaim the faith without being cast as an enemy of public morality and risking both credibility and personal safety. It hardly needs to be added that the freedom that might be claimed by an African Anglican to support anti-gay legislation likewise has a serious impact on the credibility of the gospel in our setting.”
To live with the tensions that these situations place upon us is far from easy – and often we’re not willing to do it. Or we’re not willing to do it very well - but how we do that is part of what today’s gospel is about. It’s about the nature of our response – in theological terms the word is rather unfashionable – judgement. Luke very often makes us judges of ourselves – how we respond – rour willingness or otherwise is judgement – a judgement we make on the offer of love and care that God offers us – it’s not God putting on his wig and pronouncing judgement on us. Rather, our response, our willingness is judgement on ourselves. Today’s gospels passage follows directly on from Jesus telling people that that the door is narrow and few will enter it….. paralleling in a way today’s desire to gather people together “but you were not willing.”
There’s a wonderful description of judgement at the end of CS Lewis’ The Last Battle - I will read a bit “The creatures came rushing on, their eyes brighter and brighter as they drew nearer and nearer to the standing Stars. But as they came right up to Aslan one or other of two things happened. They all looked straight in his face, I don’t think they had any choice about that. And when some looked, the expression of their faces changed terribly – it was fear and hatred: except that, on the faces of the Taking Bears, the fear and hatred lasted only a fraction of a second. You could see that they ceased to be Talking Bears. They were just ordinary animals. And all the creatures who looked at Aslan in that way swerved to the their right, his left and disappeared into his huge black shadow which streamed away to the left of the doorway. The children never saw them again. I don’t know what became of them. But the others looked in the face of Aslan and loved him, though some of them were frightened at the same time. And all these came in at the Door, in on Aslan’s right. There were some very odd specimens among them.”
The powerful image there is that of being able to look Love in the face and accepting what Love has to offer or not. There’s a choice at the heart of the gospel – God overflows with desire but how far are we willing to be gathered to him? Love will not turn us away – but the warning is there - Jerusalem killed the prophets and stoned those that were sent - Love will not turn us away, but we could refuse.
The Good News is certainly about the love of God for all of us – unmerited overflowing and all-embracing: - the challenge of the gospel alongside that nice cosy stuff is the call to be willing – to be willing to accept that love and the demands that will follow on – the demands to live with the many tensions within the Church to name just one.
The demands of that love are made real for us in this eucharist in broken bread and wine outpoured – “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord” we proclaim at the centre of the Eucharistic prayer as we echo the cry of those who greeted Jesus as he entered Jerusalem for his Passion. We receive the outward forms of bread and wine – may we be willing to go out and live the demands of that love – and to live that love to the glory of the one and only living God who is Father Son and Holy Spirit? Amen.
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We can have all sorts of fantastic ideas – we can have all sorts of sound advice; we can know exactly what someone else should do: we can even know for ourselves what would be a good thing to do. I really know that for me to go on a diet would be a very, very good thing… even better than getting more games of golf in. But unless we are, unless I am, willing we get nowhere. It’s that challenge of the need to be willing that struck me from this morning’s gospel.
Last time I preached it was about love – there’s not many a sermon that goes by without a mention of love and I don’t want at all to knock this. Luke’s gospel is my favourite gospel because it has those wonderful parables like the Good Samaritan, and the Prodigal Son which appear nowhere else but which speak of unlimited care and unlimited forgiveness – and I thank God daily for that.
But alongside that love, that unlimited care and that unlimited forgiveness we can’t escape those other moments in Luke’s gospel when there is an edge to the Gospel message – when the element of challenge and call to change is put before us – and it’s one of those moments that confront us in this morning’s gospel –Jerusalem is berated for failing to listen – the loving forgiving side of God is imaged by the hen gathering her brood – “but you were not willing” – the hand was extended but it was refused. Love is on offer, forgiveness and care is indeed unlimited but “you were not willing” to receive it.
Therein lies the challenge and the edge.
At General Synod the other day I was made very aware of the challenges and edge of the Gospel when I listened to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s presidential address. He spoke about liberty and freedom – and the freedom of the children of God is something we want to proclaim – but there are hard edges to this and challenges to what this freedom means. There are no easy ways out of certain dilemmas as he spelt out when he said “The freedom claimed, for example, by the Episcopal Church to ordain a partnered homosexual bishop is, simply as a matter of fact, something that has a devastating impact on the freedom of, say, the Malaysian Christian to proclaim the faith without being cast as an enemy of public morality and risking both credibility and personal safety. It hardly needs to be added that the freedom that might be claimed by an African Anglican to support anti-gay legislation likewise has a serious impact on the credibility of the gospel in our setting.”
To live with the tensions that these situations place upon us is far from easy – and often we’re not willing to do it. Or we’re not willing to do it very well - but how we do that is part of what today’s gospel is about. It’s about the nature of our response – in theological terms the word is rather unfashionable – judgement. Luke very often makes us judges of ourselves – how we respond – rour willingness or otherwise is judgement – a judgement we make on the offer of love and care that God offers us – it’s not God putting on his wig and pronouncing judgement on us. Rather, our response, our willingness is judgement on ourselves. Today’s gospels passage follows directly on from Jesus telling people that that the door is narrow and few will enter it….. paralleling in a way today’s desire to gather people together “but you were not willing.”
There’s a wonderful description of judgement at the end of CS Lewis’ The Last Battle - I will read a bit “The creatures came rushing on, their eyes brighter and brighter as they drew nearer and nearer to the standing Stars. But as they came right up to Aslan one or other of two things happened. They all looked straight in his face, I don’t think they had any choice about that. And when some looked, the expression of their faces changed terribly – it was fear and hatred: except that, on the faces of the Taking Bears, the fear and hatred lasted only a fraction of a second. You could see that they ceased to be Talking Bears. They were just ordinary animals. And all the creatures who looked at Aslan in that way swerved to the their right, his left and disappeared into his huge black shadow which streamed away to the left of the doorway. The children never saw them again. I don’t know what became of them. But the others looked in the face of Aslan and loved him, though some of them were frightened at the same time. And all these came in at the Door, in on Aslan’s right. There were some very odd specimens among them.”
The powerful image there is that of being able to look Love in the face and accepting what Love has to offer or not. There’s a choice at the heart of the gospel – God overflows with desire but how far are we willing to be gathered to him? Love will not turn us away – but the warning is there - Jerusalem killed the prophets and stoned those that were sent - Love will not turn us away, but we could refuse.
The Good News is certainly about the love of God for all of us – unmerited overflowing and all-embracing: - the challenge of the gospel alongside that nice cosy stuff is the call to be willing – to be willing to accept that love and the demands that will follow on – the demands to live with the many tensions within the Church to name just one.
The demands of that love are made real for us in this eucharist in broken bread and wine outpoured – “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord” we proclaim at the centre of the Eucharistic prayer as we echo the cry of those who greeted Jesus as he entered Jerusalem for his Passion. We receive the outward forms of bread and wine – may we be willing to go out and live the demands of that love – and to live that love to the glory of the one and only living God who is Father Son and Holy Spirit? Amen.