Here Is The News…

(Isaiah 40:1-11, Luke 3:1-6)

Today, we have heard about the proclamation of God’s message.

The message is that people need to repair their lives and prepare for Christ’s coming. John (the Baptist) proclaims this by calling the people to repent and be baptised.

We also have the beginning of the end before the new beginning.

We have the introduction of four men who will play significant roles in Jesus’s crucifixion. In fact, the seven people Luke mentions at the beginning of our Gospel reading, are only remembered today, despite historical records, because they are mentioned here in Luke’s Gospel.

God chooses unlikely people. We sometimes wonder about our calling, but God knows what He is doing. He knows the right people to call. God often calls the lowly.

And John fulfils the prophecy from Isaiah quoted by Luke. “A voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord…'”

But why in the wilderness and not Jerusalem? The wilderness is sparse whereas Jerusalem was highly populated and held the Temple.

Yet, throughout history the wilderness has been a place where God has shaped His people and forged the nation of Israel. It is where God’s prophets did most of their work and where Jesus was tested. God continues to work in the wilderness; for the wilderness is where and when life seems bleak and barren. It is when we are most open to hearing God. God works in the wilderness of our lives.

The baptism of repentance for the remission of sins is the type of baptism that John introduced to the Jews. They were already familiar with a different type of baptism – a type called Proselyte Baptism which was a ritual required of any Gentile who wished to become a Jew to cleanse sins.

But John was introducing a baptism which required all to repent and be baptised for the forgiveness of sins.

This concept was unfamiliar to the Jews and so the prophecy that John would give the people knowledge of salvation was fulfilled through his teaching of this concept.

John taught the ethical requirements of repentance. It requires bearing fruit worthy of repentance and sharing with those in need. To deal honestly with people and not use power in an abusive way.

Advent is a time of preparation. Here we find the way to prepare – bearing fruit worthy of repentance -sharing with those in need – dealing with people honestly – using power justly – turning around and facing a new direction.

Repent and turn around away from the sin. Turn away from worldly compulsions and turn towards Godly affections.

The reward of repentance is remission of sins. This is more than just forgiveness. It is also freedom from compulsions and addictions and habits that threaten to undo us.

Repentance is called for by John at both personal and national levels for without it Israel was heading towards destruction.

At the end of this Gospel Luke emphasises again repentance and forgiveness . “Thus it is written, and thus it was necessary for Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day, and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name to all nations…”

People still need forgiveness. God still forgives.

People know they are sinners. Dealing with sin seriously can be a relief because if sin is not ignored but is addressed then forgiveness can be believed.

Just as Israel needed repentance, we also need to prepare our hearts and minds to receive the Lord and to help our friends and family prepare their hearts and minds as well.

The important work and the real goal is the preparation of our hearts and minds to receive God and the work of the Holy Spirit.

We can contribute to the Spirit’s work in many ways but especially through prayer and the preparation of our hearts.

ALL will see God’s salvation.

Jesus has eliminated barriers to the salvation of all people.

We live in a highly divided world. God calls ALL people in every land, every race, every persuasion, every circumstance.

ALL are called. ALL will see the salvation.

No-one is excluded. The call is to repent and receive forgiveness of sins.

Advent Is For Life Not Just For Christmas

Our reading from Luke (Luke 21:25-36) today is part of a longer apocalyptic teaching. So, why are we starting Advent with these warnings instead of with the message that a baby will be born?

Well, Advent doesn’t just precede Christmas when we remember the birth of Jesus. Advent is that time of waiting, of preparation, of making sure we are ready. It is about preparing our hearts and opening our minds.

But we are not just ensuring we are ready for baby Jesus. We also need to be ready for when Jesus comes again.

Advent is for life, not just for Christmas!

It is about being ready for Jesus, for watching and waiting and preparing for Him to come, both as a baby and when He comes again in glory. We must be alert, ready for the coming of the end. Not caught up in the commercialisation, the excess and the worries of the day but remaining ever watchful, confident and eager for the events Jesus tells us of – the signs that our deliverance is nigh. That He IS come again.

We all know what waiting is like. In smaller concepts there’s waiting for a bus, waiting for an appointment, waiting for the right vicars to be called to Sheppey. Sometimes the wait seems interminably long…

… and yet it does come to an end with fulfilment as that bus, appointment, those vicars, anything else we’re waiting for … Ashley’s Amazon parcels, the shopping, all arrive.

And they don’t always arrive when we expect them – sometimes the waiting is dragged out and they are a bit (at least in our eyes) late.

But then they arrive and that moment of waiting, that moment of expectation, changes into certainty, realisation and fulfilment of what we have received. No one waits without good reason. How long we wait is determined by the reward at the end. And Jesus is the greatest reward!

So we wait, patiently, trusting in God as we wait.

Waiting faithfully and being prepared, for our Lord will come again – but only God knows the exact day and time. We wait patiently through suffering for the wait is worth it.

Often people fill the waiting with distractions and keep busy to avoid the waiting. How easy it is to miss the very thing we are waiting for if we do that; because we are paying attention to the distractions instead of watching and waiting.

Advent is taking time, slowing down, opening our minds, being prepared to change.

It is the chance to wait and change our lives. Don’t miss that by running around. Instead get our hearts ready for Jesus to be in our lives more fully that ever before.

We must trust and be prepared to trust.

We must trust God in both the good and the bad times.

Take a step back, let God into every situation, listen to His guidance, pray on it, trust and wait.

We know God’s promise will be fulfilled. We must trust in His promise with faith and prayer.

We must be ready as we wait.

If Jesus returned tomorrow, or even this afternoon, are we prepared? Do we put enough planning and preparation into being ready for Him?

Make time for God. Live how Jesus wants us to live. Ask yourself what would Jesus do? Are our hearts and minds focussed on Him? Are we ready?

Tradition is actually the passing on of belief – despite the vernacular it isn’t staying the same or doing things this way because that’s how they were done 20 or 30 years ago. No! It’s actual meaning is the passing on of belief. If we are not ready we could miss out. Pass on the belief so all God’s children can be ready. Keep an open mind. Think and be prepared.

Faith is about going deeper in our personal journey with Christ. Know Jesus and be open to Jesus.

Ensure we have what we need to be prepared so that, no matter what day or hour He returns, we are ready. Don’t be complacent.

Keep relationship with God, and work on it doing God’s will every day.

Advent is a time when we have to look at our lives. Do we accept forgiveness and follow Him?

Humans are very good at procrastination.

Procrastination is very different to waiting.

So, humans procrastinate, run out of time and think I’ll do it tomorrow. But tomorrow might not come, the chance might never come again.

We must respond to God immediately when He calls us.

We must NOT be resistant to change or let rituals become idols.

Don’t procrastinate. Prepare now and keep the preparation ongoing.

Be ready and continue to be ready.

For God’s time is not our time but His promises are always kept. Jesus came, Jesus IS coming again!

So again I say, Advent is for life not just for Christmas!

Remembrance

This morning we have two key elements. We have the good news which is the gospel and we have Remembrance.

Our gospel¹ this morning recounts an event which took place at the Sea of Galilee. Now, in Jesus’s time this was the centre of a prosperous fishing industry. The importance of knowing this will become clear shortly.

And the event Mark is recounting is the pivotal moment of Jesus calling His first disciples. Relevant both then and now is that the call to follow Jesus was a call to BE with Jesus as well as to learn and be Jesus’s representatives, carrying out the ministry He gives. The disciples were with Jesus and learning directly from Jesus.

So Jesus calls to those He had chosen, and immediately they left their nets, their boats, their fishing businesses, their families, everything. No hanging back, no hesitation, no requests for extra time to finish what they were doing or to pack their equipment. Immediately! Leaving everything! To follow and be with Jesus!

These were just ordinary men, the same as you and me. They heard the call, calling to something deep inside them, and they knew they must heed it. They followed Jesus. They made mistakes just like all of us and they learnt from these, repented and were forgiven. They went on to do great work spreading the good news of Jesus all around the world and this was not without suffering and death but Jesus was with them and had prepared them for this work. They did not follow blindly but with eyes which had been opened.

God calls every single one of us and our whole lives must come under His rule. Our money, our relationships, our work, our time, our everything should be under the rule of Jesus – not because we accept Him as king but because He IS king. And what we are called to do is to repent and believe. To turn away from sin and accept the forgiveness freely offered to us by Jesus.

Believing that Jesus is king who brought God’s kingdom to us and embracing it in faith, turning from sin and embracing forgiveness is the very starting point of discipleship. We are unable to move forward without repenting and submitting to the rule of Jesus.

Belief is not merely accepting something as true. Belief involves a response from our whole being in complete obedience.

Just like in Jesus’s day when the people trusted in all sorts of things: their ancestry, land, temple, and laws are just a few examples of many, people today trust in many differing things. Jesus was calling them and calls us to trust the good news that God was and is doing something new through Jesus. To be part of His kingdom requires letting go of all these earthly ties that distract us and putting our whole trust in Jesus. Repent and believe because God has come and you can belong to His kingdom and have your sin taken away.

But that doesn’t mean we have to forget.

Remembrance Sunday is an opportunity to remember and honour those who have lost their lives in conflict and those who were left physically and emotionally scarred.

It is an opportunity to all join in the silence together and allow our remembrances to help us face more honestly what it means to be human and to deepen our commitment to peace.

In all of this we seek God’s everlasting and all encompassing love.

War brings much death and trauma. There are those who cannot speak of the horrors they experienced. The silence we hold today also honours them.

As we struggle to find words to speak into the silence and horror of loss and trauma, we make Christ known. In the depths, we discover, He gives us words to speak of healing, forgiveness, and the knowledge that in Christ death is not the end and that love not violence is the final word.

God takes from us all our raging and bitterness, if we just let Him, and in the resurrection He shows us the way to peace.

The hard won, costly peace of the sacrifice of His son, who faced war yet did not respond with retribution and retaliation but with mercy, forgiveness and love.

We hold silence and remember, not so we can forget for the rest of the year, but so we can be reminded of a call to speak and recommit to live as peacemakers, as people who through the love and passion of the self-offering and sacrifice of Christ, God has come near.

And we live into the hope of a world where war will be no more.

We will remember them.

(Mark 1:14-20) ↩︎

… for life not just for Christmas …

I wonder how many already have put all the decorations away? I wonder how many will rush to put them away on twelfth night? I wonder how many will keep them up until Candlemas when Jesus is presented at the temple? I wonder how many still have turkey and excess food to eat?

I further wonder how many of those who’ve already put their decorations away, excitedly got them out in November, and on putting them away said something along the lines of “thank goodness they’re away for another year”? I also wonder how many of those who have not yet put the decorations away will be saying something similar when they do?

And all this wondering is because I wonder how many put Jesus away with the decorations? How many try to box Him up and leave Him in the loft with a “thank goodness that’s done for another year”?!

We see the slogan, “A dog is for life not just for Christmas”. Something which is very true – they are a life long commitment!

Jesus is a life long commitment. Not only that, He is for life in more ways than one.

Jesus was born as that tiny baby at Christmas for our salvation. He came to save our lives. His sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins for us to have life. Jesus is for life.

When we commit ourselves to Jesus and let Him into our lives; this is a life long commitment. We spend each day trying to follow Jesus’s example.

So this year I pray that, instead of putting Jesus away with the decorations for another year, we open the door to Him – letting Him in for life!

Jesus is for life not just for Christmas!

God is Love

God is Love, let heaven adore him;
God is Love, let earth rejoice;
Let creation sing before him
And exalt him with one voice [.]
God is Love, eternal Love.

God is Love; and love enfolds us,
All the world in one embrace:
With unfailing grasp God hold us,
Every child of every race [.]

God is Love; and though with blindness
Sin afflicts all human life,
God’s eternal loving kindness
Guides us through our earthly strife.
Sin and death and hell shall never
Over us final triumph gain;
God is Love, so Love for ever
Over the universe must reign.
Taken from God is Love by Timothy Rees

Today is, nowadays, known as Christ the King Sunday. If we looked at Christianity on a timeline, it is a fairly recent feast day. It was introduced by the Pope around 1925 due to the aftermath of the First World War to remind people of their allegiance to God.

So, why did I start by quoting parts of a hymn called “God is Love”?

The other week I was part of an interfaith panel answering questions about faith. One of the questions was about whether we can love certain groups of people and my answer – which is one I firmly believe and say a lot is, “God is Love and we should love others as God does”.

Let us recollect for a moment the events of Jesus’s lifetime and His teachings. He did not come to be served but to serve. He did not come to overthrow the Roman Government or depose Caesar. He became human, to find out what it was like to be human, to experience every range of humanity, to show us the way, the truth and the life and ultimately to sacrifice himself for the sins of all so that we might be forgiven and reconciled with God.

Where in all that does Jesus call Himself a king? Even when He is questioned at His trials before His crucifixion Jesus does not actually call Himself a king – instead His reply when asked if He is King of the Jews was “You say I am”.

Jesus was fully human as well as being fully divine. But we tend to give human imperialistic titles to Jesus’s divinity. Sometimes we forget that He was also a great human.

Remembering that Jesus was also a human does not diminish his power or significance.

Sometimes, however, we fall into the trap of thinking of Jesus as being up there and us as being down here. By doing this we separate us and Jesus; we separate us from God.

Jesus is with us, He walks with us, He carries us – think of those footsteps in the sand. He has not and does not abandon us.

God made us in His own image. That does not mean that we all look the same visually – like a colony of clones in a sci-fi drama. It means that humans are in the image of God in their spiritual nature. We are God’s masterpieces and have the potential to become that again.

We are not worthless! We are loved by God!

God is love and compassion and Jesus showed us this when He came to earth. He showed us our capacities: for God, for compassion, for empathy, for courage, for seeing possibilities even when there seem to be none, for resilience, for imagination, for heroism, tenderness, healing and transformation. He showed us that we do have the capacity to change the world.

Jesus is real – there is historical evidence of His existence. He was and is one of us. He is our hope and hope is that God is with us.

In God’s eyes we are all of equal value and we all matter. To go back to the Gospel, the lesson is simply that God will judge us on our reaction to human need; on the help that we have given. It also teaches us about the type of help we must give.

The type of help we must give is not complicated. It is simply doing what we can for those in need without having to think about it first, without calculating what is in it for us if we help, without helping for recognition or glory.

It is simply giving someone who is hungry something to eat, welcoming a stranger, giving comfort to someone in distress, visiting the sick, visiting prisoners, giving a smile or a wave or a hello or asking how someone is.

It is pure and simple. It is giving simple help to those we meet, pass, see everyday. But it is to give that help without any thought of self. It is to be the natural, instinctive reaction of a loving heart. The help that is given freely for the sake of helping, out of love, with no expectation of reward.

Francis of Assisi found blessings in this parable. He was high-born, high-spirited and wealthy but he was very unhappy. One day he was out riding and saw a very disfigured leper. Something made Francis stop and jump off his horse. He went over to the leper and hugged him. Whilst in his arms, Francis saw the face of the leper change to the face of Christ.

Martin of Tours was a Roman soldier and Christian. One cold day as he was entering a city a beggar asked him for alms. Martin of Tours had no money but the beggar was freezing and shivering. He took off his soldier’s cloak, cut it in two and gave half to the beggar man. That night he had a dream where he saw Jesus surrounded by angels wearing half a Roman soldier’s cloak. One of the angels asked Jesus “Master why are you wearing that old cloak? Who gave it to you?” Jesus answered, “My servant Martin gave it to me”.

The generosity of helping in the simplest of things from the heart without calculated thinking gives us the joy of helping Jesus. It helps us make a difference and it changes the world.

God is love. He loves us. And just as He loves us let us go out into the world loving Him and our fellow humans.

All Saints*

Wednesday was All Saints Day and so we are celebrating all saints today. Hence, we have the reading from John’s Revelation describing the multitude of saints in Heaven and The Beatitudes from Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount.

When reading, some of you may remember seeing a child learning to read and recognise this, sometimes there is a word which is slightly more unusual and which the reader may not have heard pronounced. In this circumstance, the knowledge the reader has accrued from what they do know about letter sounds and similar words to work out a way of pronouncing it. Sometimes the result is correct and sometimes it varies to how others may pronounce the word.

Some of you may have guessed where this is going.

When I was little I pronounced beatitude as “beautytude”. Now the thing is that whilst my church read the Old Testament, the Epistle and the Gospel at all services, the reading would be announced and then read without the title headings that some passages have. So it was a long time before I actually heard anyone else pronounce “beautytude” as “be attitude”.

Beatitude comes from the Latin word for blessedness and The Beatitudes have been interpreted many times by many different scholars. The highlight the human state and God’s righteousness. They depict the ideal heart condition for a disciple of Christ, a member of God’s kingdom.

But they are also much more than that. Remember what I used to call them – “beautytudes”. There is a further reason to that and it is simply that the beatitudes are beautiful. The are beautiful, uplifting, words of encouragement. They show us the truth of God’s kingdom. They help uphold us when times are hard.

Feeling lost? You are blessed – God will show you the way. Carrying sadness, grief, loss, pain? Joy will come. Feeling unheard and not valued? God hears you. You are precious to Him. Hungry? Homeless? In need of respite? God the Comforter is with you. Desperate for peace and righteousness? Trodden down by war and persecutors? God is by your side sharing your pain.

The saints are not those who have it all figured out. They are not perfect, they are not irreproachable, they have not set unattainable examples.

They are sinners! They suffered! They know grief and pain! They love God and their neighbour. They find ways to seek and serve Christ and praise Him!

Charles Wesley, who incidentally loved All Saints Day, wrote many hymns, including O For a Thousand Tongues to sing. The conclusion to which is:

“To God all glory, praise, and love
be now and ever given
by saints below and saints above,
the Church in earth and heaven. ”

Here on earth we are too fond of canonizing to officially grant the title of saint. There are even five stages that have to be followed to enable this to happen and generally this process can’t even start until 5 years after their death.

At the risk of being struck down, I don’t think it is our right to decide who is a saint. In my opinion, that right is God’s. Only God knows what is truly in our hearts. I also think that there is a huge flaw with canonizing. This is that I don’t think someone has to be dead to be a saint. I’m not saying that those who have already passed into light perpetual are not saints – just that there are also some still breathing.

How many times do we say to someone “you’re a saint” when they help us in a time of need?

Look around.

Saints are sinners! Saints love God and their neighbour. They have chequered pasts but have repented, serve Christ and strive to walk in His footsteps. They are filled with the Holy Spirit, and no matter what the circumstances are still able to lift their hearts in prayer and praise to God.

Saints are found in the most unlikely of places, in the street, in the supermarket, everywhere. And today we celebrate them all.

There is an old hymn that used to be sung a lot but which I haven’t heard sung for many years by Lesbia Scott which I feel is very poignant today and so I’m going to finish by reading it to you:

I sing a song of the saints of God,
patient and brave and true,
who toiled and fought and lived and died
for the Lord they loved and knew.
And one was a doctor, and one was a queen,
and one was a shepherdess on the green:
they were all of them saints of God, and I mean,
God helping, to be one too.

They loved their Lord so dear, so dear,
and God’s love made them strong;
and they followed the right, for Jesus’ sake,
the whole of their good lives long.
And one was a soldier, and one was a priest,
and one was slain by a fierce wild beast:
and there’s not any reason, no, not the least,
why I shouldn’t be one too.

They lived not only in ages past;
there are hundreds of thousands still;
the world is bright with the joyous saints
who love to do Jesus’ will.
You can meet them in school, or in lanes, or at sea,
in church, or in trains, or in shops, or at tea;
for the saints of God are just folk like me,
and I mean to be one too.
Source: Glory to God: the Presbyterian Hymnal #730

*Talk from Holy Trinity Sheerness 5th November 2023

To Pay Or Not To Pay

There is an old, well known saying about not discussing money, religion and politics. Yet, in this passage, we have all three!

On the surface, this passage gives the appearance of being relatively simple to understand, and consequently we can be tempted to fall into the trap of simplifying it.

Do we think we are being kind when we sugar coat things or is it that we are scared of giving hard answers?

It is easy to make the mistake of telling people what we think they want to hear instead of what they need to hear. It is easy to make the mistake of overly simplifying.

Jesus does not sugar coat the truth.

The Pharisees do not like this. The Herodians do not like this.

Two opposing factions, whose only common ground is their dislike of Jesus, joining forces to try and catch Jesus out. They send their disciples to Jesus – after all this way if their plot fails the leaders won’t look as silly.

Hoping to distract Jesus and lower His guard, they start with flattery before asking their question: “is it lawful to pay taxes to the Emperor?” Not is it right but is it lawful!

They were trying to manipulate Jesus. They were expecting the answer to be either yes or no.

The coins the taxes were paid with had the Emperor’s image engraved on them. This was an issue for the Jews who were not allowed graven images.

So, if Jesus answers yes then He offends the Jews and the Pharisees can charge Him with breaching and promoting breaching the commandment regarding graven images.

On the other hand, if Jesus answers no He can be arrested for insurrection and treason.

Ultimately, the question was not really about a concern regarding paying taxes, it’s an agenda. The Pharisees and Herodians are not bothered whether Jesus says yes or no because both these answers will give them what they want.

Despite the teaching as this passage from Matthew plays out, this scenario of trying to manipulate Jesus continues to happen today when we over simplify complex issues, label and categorise people and groups.

Jesus does not allow Himself to be manipulated. Instead of the yes or no answer the question calls for He asks for His questioners to bring Him one of the coins used to pay the taxes with. Once this has been provided to Him, Jesus asks whose image and name are on the coin. This time they cannot get away with their “I don’t know” answers and reply “Caesar’s”.

In the beginning God made us in His own image. He patented us if you like – we are stamped with His mark.

And so, Jesus again transforms the question into one of faith. He answers the question but not how they expected.

Jesus answers that the coin has the mark of Caesar and we have the mark of God. “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and give to God what is God’s”.

Faithfulness is the work of a lifetime with us continually learning to give ourselves to God and one another.

Love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength and our neighbours as ourselves. Trust God with our whole lives. Walk in the footsteps and image of Jesus.

There will always be issues to deal with but, instead of forgetting whose image is marked upon us we can put these issues into God’s hands.

Jesus is inviting us to be the currency of God’s life in the world.

Talk from Holy Trinity Sheerness 22nd October 2023 (Matthew 22:15-22)

Denarius Roman Coin

Rules for Life

“Do not be afraid; for God has come only to test you and to put the fear of Him upon you so that you do not sin.”

God wanted to help His people – not destroy them. But when they heard the thunder and the trumpet, when they saw the flashing and the smoke on the mountain, they were afraid.

Because of their fear, the people wanted a mediator; yet God had already granted them one in the form of Moses.

We, also, already have a mediator – Jesus.

The word fear has more than one meaning. There is the type of fear the Israelites had – that of being scared, afraid, terrified – but that is the wrong type of fear to have of God.

Then there is the right kind of fear to have of God, and that is one of awe, respect and reverence. It is through this that we are granted the boldness to approach God through Jesus Christ.

God gave Moses the Ten Commandments. The purpose of these is how to have healthy relationships with God and each other.

God invites us to have a personal relationship with Him.

The deep significance of the gift of the Ten Commandments has been obscured by society. As a result we lose the religious awe found in this passage of Exodus and lessen our understanding.

They are not “maxims for a good life”. They ARE the living words of the living God. The God who has redeemed us. It is not the Ten Commandments which save us. Salvation is a gift of God – which He gives us freely through His grace.

There are some who try to use the Ten Commandments to conclude that we have to somehow earn God’s love and care. But actually it is the opposite. They demonstrate God’s continued love and care – giving us the law in the first place proves God’s love for us.

Our obedience is a loving, grateful response to all that God has done and continues to do.

So what is the essence of The Ten Commandments?

Jesus already gave us the answer to this when He told us that the greatest commandment is this, “To love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and to love everyone else as we love ourselves”.

Baptism is the act of making a God choice. The making of the promises is choosing faith in God above any other life. Living our baptism means living by a single loyalty to God.

Remembering our baptism, who we are and who God is, in the inner recesses of our hearts and in the life we share together makes us grateful that God has given us these commandments, that we might find strength and shelter in our darkest times – helping us to remember that even in our darkest times we are not alone.

Talk from Holy Trinity Sheerness 8th October 2023 (Exodus 20)

Testing

This morning’s Gospel is just like my children…

… they ask testing questions and … yep – when they are asked to do something they either don’t do it or … if it’s the youngest anyway … they say “No!”; then they go away and think about it and then get on with it.

The chief priests tried to trick Jesus, testing Him, by asking where His authority came from.

Jesus, of course, did not fall into their trap. Instead, He turned it around by asking whether John’s baptism came from heaven or from human origin. They refused to answer Him, out of fear of recrimination from the crowd and damage to their reputation.

So Jesus tells this parable of the first son who refused to do what his father asked but then changed his mind; and of the second son who agreed but then did nothing.

A lesson about obedience and disobedience. The chief priests claimed to accept God’s message and would put on a show for the people – but that’s all it was – just a show. Jesus is saying they are like the second son who said “yes” but then did not obey.

The point is that those who refuse God but who later repent and follow Him, obey Him, can enter the Kingdom of God. Those who say “yes” but do not repent (which includes following through with their actions) can’t.

If the chief priests are the second son, who are the first?

Jesus answered that for us too – He points out to the chief priests that the tax collectors and prostitutes (those who were considered at the time to be the biggest sinners) were the first son and would enter the Kingdom of God first because they believed, repented and returned to God. The chief priests, who only claimed to follow God with their words but not with their hearts or actions, would not get to enter God’s Kingdom unless they truly repented.

Turning to God with repentance is the key to our salvation, no matter what our past sins might be or how many times we’ve disappointed God. He can see what is in our hearts and forgives us when we are truly sorry.

It’s what we do, not just what we say, that counts.

Let’s renew our own commitments to be faithful followers of Jesus.

Let us thank God for sending His Son who truly is who He says He is.

Let us be genuine in our actions and live in love serving others.

Talk from Holy Trinity Sheerness (Matthew 21:23-32)

First or Last

One of the things that this country is famous for is queuing. We’re all guilty of it – we all end up queuing at some point or other. From what I’ve been told, and seen on the news, some people will queue for hours – many many hours – for something they feel is important to them. For example, paying respects to our late queen.

And we’re not happy when people queue jump, are we? Remember the backlash to those two ITV morning television hosts doing it.

Yet here Jesus says the last shall be first and the first will be last. Not only that but He tells us that the workers all received the same pay. Those who only worked for one hour received that same amount as those who worked for the entire day!

If we take this literally, to us, it seems a bit unfair and contrary to our knowledge of God as a fair and generous God.

But! We are not supposed to take this passage literally. It is important to remember that Jesus taught in metaphors and stories. And, Jesus us telling this parable to explain several things:

Jesus uses this parable to further explain what the Kingdom of God is like and to highlight God’s continuing care for His people. He is also highlighting the importance of choosing eternal life with Him over the temptation of worldly wealth whilst teaching His disciples to serve others. Greatness is not ruling over others but serving others. Jesus came to serve – not to be served.

In the Kingdom of God all are treated the same.

Everyone comes to faith (the vineyard) at different times of life.

Some are “lifelong” followers, or disciples, of Jesus. Some find Jesus much later in life.

It is never too late to find faith, belief in Jesus, and to begin living faithfully.

God wants ALL people to have faith in Him and return to a life with Him. Not all do; but that does not mean we should give up. We should continue to persevere, to spread the word, to live by Jesus’s example and plant those mustard seeds to continue to draw others back to Christ.

ALL believers, who repent, no matter how long or how hard they work during this lifetime, will receive the same reward:

eternal life
God’s grace
God’s forgiveness and reconciliation with Him

However, we must be careful not to compare and become envious of others and what we perceive they have been given (thinking they are being given more that they’ve earned).

It is not really possible for us to see what others have experienced as they serve God. We cannot see their inner conflicts or their background struggles. Neither can they fully see ours.

In the end, all of us truly need to trust God and know that all we have is from His grace, which He has freely given.

So, going back to that queue, it doesn’t matter if we are at the front, the back, or in the middle! It doesn’t matter at what age we found Christ. God freely gave us His grace and what matters is that we did find Him. Regardless of where we are in that “queue”, if we turn to Christ, follow Him, reject evil and repent our sins then God forgives us and we are reconciled with Him.

Talk given at Holy Trinity Sheerness and Minster Abbey 24th September 2023 (Matthew 20:1-16).