The First Sunday
after Trinity
25th May 2008 : 9:00am & 11:45am
Preacher: The
Today we begin the long season
of Sundays after Pentecost often called Sundays after Trinity or Sundays in
Ordinary Time.
You will notice that our colour has changed to green a symbol for growth and nurture
and over the next twenty three weeks, we will endeavour
to grow as Pentecost people trying to live out the teachings of our Lord and Saviour, as we put them into everyday practice.
On Pentecost Sunday I concluded
my sermon with the challenge of Pentecost with the words:
There are situations where the
word is easy and the deed is costly
There are situations where the
deed is easy and the word is costly
Whether in word or deed, what
is required in every situation is that we be faithful to him who said to his
disciples As the Father has sent me, so I send you…………and showed them his hands
and his side.
All three readings today talk
of this cost and what we should do as Christians.
Since God is Holy, we are to be
holy. We are Holy when we imitate the generosity of God by not exacting
vengeance, or bearing a grudge against another.
In Leviticus, the commandment:
You must love your neighbour as yourself is
restricted to fellow Israelites.
Bit Jesus broadened it to
include everyone, Gentiles as well as Jews, enemies as well as friends.
Why? Because this is the way
God acts. God shows equal love towards good and bad, not because God is
indifferent to morality, but because God loves without limit.
The trouble is many people do
not believe this.
Paul gives us a profound reason
why we should respect one another: we are the
Individually and collectively
The Holy Spirit dwells in us. This is the basis of our unity.
When Jesus says “offer the
wicked man no resistance,” he is not telling us to be passive in the face of
physical danger or abuse.
He is rejecting retaliation of
any kind. We are not allowed to have hatred in our hearts for anything, even
our enemies.
Hatred is a very dangerous
thing. It must be handled with great respect. It should be kept for a cause
such as intolerance or injustice, not for an individual. This was the key to
Nelson Mandela
Mandela spent over twenty seven
years in South African prisons.
When he was finally released , he had every reason to feel bitter, and to come
out vowing to get revenge on those whose unjustly deprived him of his freedom.
Instead, he came out smiling
and seeking reconciliation with the leaders of the regime that had put him in
prison.
Thus he became the cornerstone
of a new
If he had harboured
bitterness, who knows what would have happened?
In his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom (1994) he tells us:
I knew people expected me to
harbor anger against whites. But I had none. In prison, my anger towards whites
decreased, but my hatred for the system grew.
I wanted
You see when we hate we expend
far more energy than in any other emotion.
We must save our strength for
better things. Hate drives out everything else and corrodes and warps the soul.
When Jesus talks about “the
enemy” he is not necessarily referring to an enemy of war
. He is talking about someone
who is close to me ----someone in my family, my community, my church, my neighbourhood, my work place, who is making life difficult
for me.
Who are the people whom we seek
to avoid at all costs. Whom we find hard to forgive, who awaken in us feelings
of unease, fear and anger, which can easily turn into hatred?
The enemy can arouse hatred in
us. When we discover our capacity to hate and harm, it is very humbling.
At the same time this can be a
good thing. It puts us in touch with our poverty. Then we discover perhaps that
the enemy is not outside us but inside us.
The problem is not with the
other person but in ourselves. It is only when we
recognize and look at the world of shadows, the chaos within us,
that we can begin to travel towards freedom.
Only the truth can set us free.
Our enemies are not those who
hate us, but those whom we hate.
Jesus command, “love your
enemy” is a radical rejection of violence.
Returning love for hate is one
of the most difficult things in the world.
It’s a very high ideal, and a
very difficult one, but it makes sense.
As Christians, we are on the
side of non violence. However, this is not an option for weakness and
passivity.
Opting for non violence means
believing more Strongly in the power of truth, justice
and love than in the power of war, weapons and hatred.
WE must try to respond to the
worst with the best.
As Christians we must try to
imitate the generosity of God in our readiness to forgive, not to exact
vengeance, or to bear a grudge against another.
Unless Christians seek to
imitate the all embracing love of God, we are no better than others.
Mandela suffered much and
suffered unfairly. Yet he achieved the only triumph worth achieving,
That of not
being soured by his suffering or tempted to the ultimate surrender of dignity
by seeking revenge.
What is required of us is
faithfulness in word and deed, at whatever cost:
Faithfulness in action and
truth
For justice
For mercy
For compassion
Faithfulness in speaking the
name of Jesus when the time is right
Bearing witness, by explicit
word as occasion arises
To God whose we are and whom we
serve
There are situations where the
word is easy and the deed is costly
There are situations where the
deed is easy and the word is costly
Whether in word or deed, what
is required in every situation is that we be faithful to him who said to his
disciples: As the Father sent me, so I send you
And showed
them his hands and his side.