10:30 | 
Posted by
Dr Platts |
‘THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK’ FROM THE REVEREND
STEPHEN GUISE, PRIEST IN CHARGE: SIXTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY, 27 SEPTEMBER
Dear
Friends
Today’s
gospel has much to do with authority, and particularly the authority of Jesus
vis-Ã -vis the authority of the scribes and Pharisees. Jesus fearlessly goes straight into the
lions’ den, so to speak – the Temple was a grandiose place, and the seat of
religious authority, so a reaction was to be expected as the chief priests and
the elders of the Temple ask him by what authority he teaches the crowd which
has gathered around him, and also by what authority he performs acts of
healing.
Jesus cleverly uses the rabbis’ method of asking a question, rather than providing a direct response, as he enquires where, in their opinion, St John the Baptist’s baptism had come from – was it from heaven, or from some human origin? This puts his interlocutors on the back foot, and sends them into a huddle to work out their best line of defence. A political situation presents itself – they sense a trap whichever way they answer, and so reply that they do not know. Jesus, in turn, replies, ‘neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.’
It is worth noting that Jesus uses the ‘I am’ phrase here and, if this narrative had been in St John’s Gospel, it could be interpreted as pointing, by implication, to his divine credentials – and thereby to the authority which is his. However, Matthew may not be using the ‘I am’ phrase in this way. In Jewish fashion, he tends to side-step the use of the holy name, which was considered dangerously irreverent, by referring instead to the ‘kingdom of heaven’.
After this episode, and almost as an afterthought, Matthew adds the parable of the two sons. It probably does not matter what their motives were. The first son refuses to go into the vineyard, whereas the second, in rather ‘good goody’ vein, exercises one-upmanship by saying that he will go. However, the message of the parable is that it is what the sons actually did, rather than what they said, that matters – the first son changes his mind and carries out the will of their father, whereas the second defaults on his promise. Is Jesus saying here that we should not forfeit our place in the kingdom of heaven by capriciously changing our minds, and failing to carry out the will of God?
Fr Stephen.
COLLECT FOR SIXTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY
of your people who call upon you;
and grant that they may both perceive and know
what things they ought to do,
and also may have grace and power faithfully to fulfil them;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Dear Friends
Both our readings this morning, from the third chapter of Jonah, and the parable about the landowner who chose to pay all his labourers equally (Matthew 20:1-16), are, among other themes, about God’s freedom to be merciful to whomever he chooses. There are, as some commentators have noted, elements of comedy, or even pantomime, in the story of Jonah, the ‘reluctant preacher’, who, rather than being delighted with the positive response of the people of Nineveh to his message, goes into a sulk because God has decided not to inflict the city with the punishment which had been threatened.
In today’s reading, we join the narrative in the middle of a battle of wills between God and Jonah, with Jonah lashing out furiously, insisting that it is now better for him to die rather than live. He is sitting in a self-made booth, in a desert area outside the city, waiting to see what will happen, when, in an almost ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ episode, God causes a large bush to grow which provides shade and, for a while, makes Jonah happy. But then comes a reversal when, the next day, a worm attacks the bush which withers as fast as it grew. And the reversal continues as the sun’s heat increases, augmented by a sultry wind. Inevitably, Jonah starts to complain again and insists, when God asks if he is right to be angry, that he certainly is. God, however, has the last word, pointing out that, just as Jonah is upset about losing a bush, which he had not caused to grow, so God can be upset about a city full of people and animals (it seems that the writer is an animal-lover) who do ‘not know their right hand from their left’. It is a vivid story, which certainly highlights God’s boundless compassion – but it leaves us, perhaps, with unanswered questions. We never hear what happened to Jonah, who is left sulking in the desert. Did God get to the bottom of his anger and resistance to the people of Nineveh’s repentance? Why did God choose Jonah to carry his message to the city, when it might have been easier to choose someone less stubborn?
Perhaps, in addition to the generosity and compassion of God, the story carries a further message for us. God has a way of undermining our religious trappings, to get at what is really underneath. Even if we appear to be faithful disciples, what about our underlying motives and driving forces, our own besetting sins that we manage to cover up most of the time? What are our equivalents of Jonah’s simmering and raging anger? Jonah’s attitudes, after all, were not without foundation and were rooted in something deeper than mere chauvinism, since Assyria’s strategy for expansion was to deport the surviving peoples of conquered lands, including Jonah’s own people. Nevertheless, God extends his sovereign mercy to the people of Nineveh, as well as to Jonah himself, and this, surely, gives us hope when we consider our own need for repentance.
Fr Stephen
COLLECT FOR FIFTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY
God, who of thy generous mercy didst send the Holy Spirit
upon thy Church in the burning fire of thy love:
grant that thy people may be fervent
in the fellowship of the gospel
that, ever abiding in thee,
they may be found steadfast in faith and active in service;
through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord,
who liveth and reigneth with thee,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Isaiah 45:9-22
This morning we met at 10am for a celebration of the Eucharist. Father Stephen was the Celebrant, and for the first time since March we were able to have a small group of the choir sing part of the service. Seated at 2 m distance from each other and wearing visors and positioned in the south transept away from the rest of the congregation they were able to sing the Gloria, the responses the Sanctus, Benedictus and Agnus Dei using the setting by Dom Gregory Murray. It was lovely to hear voices singing in praise again in our church.
We were delighted to have the family of the couple who were having their Banns read with us, especially as the Grandparents of the Groom were with them, whom we know well, as the Grandfather is a former Church Warden!
So we give thanks to God for our church, and the ability to worship in it, as we pray for the control of the pandemic and the safety of every one.
‘THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK’ FROM THE REVEREND STEPHEN GUISE, PRIEST IN CHARGE – FOURTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY, 13 SEPTEMBER
William Blake, ‘Jacob’s Ladder’, c1799-1807, British Museum
Dear Friends
We come into church Sunday by Sunday, if we are able to, and one of the first things we do is to prepare ourselves for worship by saying the Collect for Purity, asking the Lord to cleanse our hearts by the inspiration of his Holy Spirit, and then, almost straight away, ‘confess our sins to Almighty God’ – a similar act of preparation and repentance.
This is not the same as a detailed examination of conscience such as is made during a personal ‘confession’ to a priest, but is part of the congregation coming together for worship. It is a recognition that, as fallen humanity, we are all in need of forgiveness, something our Gospel reading for this Sunday (Matthew 18:21-35) is all about – if we wish to be forgiven, then we likewise should forgive those who are ‘indebted to us’.
Like prayer itself, this can be done anywhere, but somehow coming to church seems to help us to focus, and gives the act gravitas and particular meaning. The Latin hymn ‘Locus Iste’, which is quite often heard in church of the feast of dedication, recalls the story of Jacob from the book of Genesis. Jacob is making his way to his ancestral land and goes to sleep in the open with a stone on which to rest his head. He dreams that a ladder is set up between earth and heaven, with angels ascending and descending upon it. When he wakes he exclaims, ‘This is none other than the house of God; this is the gateway to heaven.’ He anoints the stone he has used as a pillow and sets it up as a shrine. Like his forefather Abraham in the narrative of the burning bush, he realises that certain places are holy because of the presence of God, and, from time immemorial, humans have established churches and places of worship which are reserved for prayer and ceremony, with the specific intention of giving the glory to God.
The current pandemic has given us a sense of deprivation as we can no longer gather in our normal way to worship together, but we can still pray and receive Holy Communion, albeit in one kind only for the time being.
It has been very gratifying to see some of our regular worshippers from the 8.00am services, as well as those who normally attend at 10.00am, coming along loyally and faithfully, devoutly receiving the host (from the Latin ‘hostias’, meaning ‘victim’, thus recalling Good Friday as well as the mystery of the Resurrection of Easter Sunday).
I’m sure that such loyalty and faithfulness will be repaid once the current crisis has passed, and that we shall appreciate all the more receiving Communion in its fullness Sunday by Sunday as soon as restrictions are lifted.
Fr Stephen
PS: Perhaps the best-known setting of ‘Locus Iste’ is by Anton Bruckner.
Almighty God,
whose only Son has opened for us
a new and living way into your presence:
give us pure hearts and steadfast wills
to worship you in spirit and in truth:
through Jesus Chris your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Romans 14:1-12
A reading from the letter of Paul to the Romans
