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Not I but Christ
Sermon preached by the Revd David Parsons in Street Mission Church
5 August 2007
The readings were:
Col. 3:1-11 ; Luke 12:13-21
Some of us can remember the time when there was a noticeable difference between the Tories and the Labour Party. The Tories stood for the politics of greed, making sure that those who had made, or inherited, a lot of money could keep it and flaunt it, and the Labour Party stood for the politics of envy, wanting to take money from the envied rich and redistribute it among the envious poor.
There was a real difference between the two parties in those days. But the even more important difference was and is between both sets of policies and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Because both Old Tory and Old Labour assumed that the best possible thing for their particular supporters was to be richer. Perhaps they haven't changed entirely, even now. But Jesus told the story of the Rich .... Fool, the man who told himself: `You have stored up enough good things to last for years to come. Live it up! Eat, drink, and enjoy yourself.' " But God said to him, "You fool!"
It's still going on. This is news from last August - I expect this August's figures will be similar:
Bankers and traders are celebrating after city bosses paid out record bonuses of 19 billion in the last year.
Figures from the Office for National Statistics revealed ... More than half of the payment, some 10 billion, went to financial services workers in the City of London and Canary Wharf.
But God said, "You fool!"
Amazed by another increase in bonuses TUC deputy general secretary Frances O'Grady said:
"Many working people can only dream of earning [in a lifetime] what a small number of City high-fliers receive each year in their annual bonus."
But God said, "You fool!"
And, surprise, surprise! Surveys (I quote) have found virtually the same level of happiness between the very rich individuals on the Forbes 400 and the Maasai herdsman of East Africa. Lottery winners return to their previous level of happiness after five years. Increases in income just don't seem to make people happier.
As the Lord Jesus said: "This is what happens to people who store up everything for themselves, but are poor in the sight of God."
But knowing that money doesn't make you happier, people still hanker after more money and possessions, if only, as they say, to be miserable in comfort.
So what is it that the Lord Jesus recommends instead?
Well, even secular surveys give a clue to the right way. Apparently buying a barbecue can bring lasting happiness - not in itself, but when you use it and invite people round. Because people who have a good circle of friends are genuinely happier than those who have few or no friends. As the Lord Jesus said. 'I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.'
It's people, it's relationships that make the difference. And above all it's your relationship with God, your relationship with Jesus.
With that in mind, listen to St Paul:
You have been raised to life with Christ. Now set your heart on what is in heaven, where Christ rules at God's right side. Think about what is up there, not about what is here on earth. You died, which means that your life is hidden with Christ, who sits beside God. Christ gives meaning to your life.
This doesn't mean being so heavenly minded that you're no earthly use. It means living in heaven's mind-set, which is surprisingly down-to-earth, even though it's a million miles from the greed of those 19 billion bonuses. God is love, heaven is the kingdom of love. If your life is hidden with Christ, it is hidden with the man who came right into the middle of human life and gathered friends around him and made a difference to the everyday world.
Someone whose life is hidden with Christ may well be found taking young handicapped men off the streets of Nanchong and training them to earn a living. Someone whose life is hidden with Christ may well be found talking to two ladies at a Nigerian petrol station, ladies with deformities from leprosy and needing shoes, and supplying them with some new style shoes with bright red straps.
There is such a huge difference between such people as these and the Canary Wharf financial fat cats sharing £10 billion of other people's money among themselves that we are bound to ask: If these are the extremes, as it were, of the two ways of living, how do we get from one to the other?
AUGUSTINE was one day after his conversion seen in the street by a woman with whom he had associated in his life of sin, and when he saw her he started to run. She ran after him, and cried: "Augustine, why are you running, it's me!" And Augustine replied: "I'm running because I'm not me."
Augustine knew he was a different person now. Here's how St Paul thinks of it:
You have been raised to life with Christ.... You died, which means that your life is hidden with Christ... You have given up your old way of life with its habits. Each of you is now a new person. You are becoming more and more like your Creator, and you will understand him better. It doesn't matter if you are a Greek or a Jew, or if you are circumcised or not. You may even be a barbarian or a Scythian, and you may be a slave or a free person. Yet Christ is all that matters, and he lives in all of us.
I recently spent time with a couple who go to their village church, not so much because they believe all the Christian gospel, but because it fosters community - and, they said, we're in favour of most of the Christian moral code. It didn't seem the right time to challenge them with the drastic change that the Lord Jesus and St Paul are talking about.
The trouble is that so much of the time we preachers blunt the cutting edge of Jesus' message. We easily fall back into what one critic said some years ago about preachers in the American church. Their message, he said, could be summed up as 'May I suggest that you try to be good.'
That's not what I understand when I read the New Testament. I read that no amount of trying to be good is good enough for God. I read that we need to be raised to a new life, here and now. I read that our innermost motives need to change, so that it's not I but Christ. And I read that we can't make these changes happen ourselves. It has to come from outside us, from God.
It's God who loved us first. It's God who sent his Son to live and die for us. It's God who offers us a new birth and a new life. All we can bring is our need.
If we have eyes to see it, this is exactly what this Holy Communion tells us every time we celebrate it. Perhaps it was clearer in the Book of Common Prayer. But whatever the words, the actions speak loudly. The bread is broken, as the body of Jesus was broken on the cross, and then we put out empty hands to receive the Lord Jesus. Only after that do we dare to offer ourselves to him.
And the result? You have given up your old way of life with its habits. Each of you is now a new person. You are becoming more and more like your Creator, and you will understand him better. It doesn't matter if you are a Greek or a Jew, or if you are circumcised or not. You may even be a barbarian or a Scythian, and you may be a slave or a free person. Yet Christ is all that matters, and he lives in all of us.
Not I, but Christ. So be it.
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Thursday 28th of August 2008
