The Gray Monk

Tewkesbury Abbey
3rd before Lent (Septuagesima) 2004
Evensong

+ In the name of God,
Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
Amen

“Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things”.

There are definitely occasions, as a preacher that I open the lectionary, look up the lessons set, and think why me? What can I possibly say about any of this? Tonight’s readings are a prime example. What can I possibly do with readings that start with God instructing his prophet to marry an adulterous woman? And how do you pull this into something comprehensible with Paul on a rant about sexual impropriety? And before the sacred nine o’ clock watershed!

The Psalms from the lectionary don’t help much either and nor does the Collect, so the lessons it has to be.

Father Richard reminded me of a Punch cartoon in which a couple leaving the church are in conversation against a background of a notice board declaring the sermon topic to be “living in decency”. The woman says to her stunned looking partner “How did the Vicar know about that?” You may well want to ask the same sort of question later!

Hosea was a contemporary of Isaiah, but where Isaiah spoke to Judea, Hosea was a Northerner and spoke to an Israel that had become so lost to the word and faith of God, that it was in a really sorry state morally and spiritually. In a sense the sins of Gomer, Hosea’s wife, are representative of the sins of the nation. Each of the three children are named in a manner that speaks a message to the people. Each is, in effect, a message.

Hosea is trying to draw Israel back from the brink, a nation bent on self delusion and self destruction who neither want to hear the message of the prophet nor give up the corrupt and degrading lifestyle they have sunk too. It is a plea to turn back, to embrace the bounty of God and to use it wisely. History tells us that the message was ignored, and the Assyrian and Babylonian armies swept the nation away.

A sub-text of this story is perhaps as telling for us as the warning which is the main text. It is striking that the people used by God in this sorry tale of betrayal and faithlessness, are equally flawed and – in a pharisaic sense – totally unsuitable for the work of God. Yet God chooses to use them, and uses them caringly and lovingly to bring his purpose to the world.

Hosea’s call to the nation of Israel is in effect a call to a new beginning. This is the theme that our reading from Paul draws down,
“you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.”In short, you are made new in Christ, make a Christ-like beginning in yourself. For this is part of the call of the Christian, we are called to live and work in the world, to be part of the world, but to bring to the world that grace that God has given us to show his mercy, his love and compassion and to live without self destructive behaviour.

In a career spanning, now, almost thirty-three years I have had to deal with almost every condition of humanity. Some of it is pretty hard to deal with at any level. Without going into detail, suffice it to say that some of the people I have had to retrieve from whatever disaster have arrived there by their own self indulgence and self deceit. It is a road that goes downhill gently at first, but becomes ever steeper and more difficult to draw back from as you go on. Drug abuse is one area, prostitution, so much on Paul’s mind in this letter, is another. In that context, these to readings speak to me at one particular level, to you, they may suggest something different, it amounts to the same thing. If we degrade ourselves, we lose our ability to see the path God wants us to follow and follow instead the false trail of self indulgence and whim.

The congregation at Colosse was struggling with conflicting messages, on the one hand the call to adhere to Jewish custom, practice and observance and on the other, the new way of the Last Supper and the Cross and Resurrection. Mixed into all of this is the siren call of some of the more pleasure centred pagan rites and practices. Paul is therefore adamant! If you are a Christian, then Jew or Gentile, there is only one way! Christ’s way, the new way as we are all made new in him.
“For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.”In Paul’s words this is a call to prepare ourselves in a new way, a way which is more suited to the life to come than the one we currently enjoy. This is the essence of Hosea’s message. Read on and you find that Hosea repeatedly forgives his wife’s indiscretions, even at one point apparently buying her out of slavery and reinstalling her as his wife. It is about being prepared to make sacrifices and about being prepared.

As our Collect from this morning reminded us in the opening words,
Almighty God, who alone can bring order to the unruly wills and passions of sinful humanity.
It is God who gives us the grace to live without sin, Only in Him can we hope to be able to overcome our natural tendency to always want to be self indulgent. Only in Christ do we find the grace to strive to be better and less sinful.

The underlying message from both readings is less about the nature of the sins and more about the need to live as closely as we can in God’s grace and protection. To do this we must be constant in our faith, constantly seeking renewal of our spiritual grace and constantly on our guard against the things that come between us and that grace – whatever they may be.

In traveling to many poorer countries I have been struck by two things. The first is that poverty is something that we, in this country, do not fully appreciate; the second is that when someone exploits another for their own gain, they degrade themselves and the person exploited. In Hosea’s day the wealthy surrounding the court of Jeroboam, were failing to observe the Law of Moses and worse, were actually enslaving and exploiting their own people. The wholesale adoption of pagan worship, erection of temples and abandonment of Judaism led to a rapid downward slide in the spiritual and moral health of the nation. No doubt there were people trumpeting then as in our own age, that this was the “modern” thing to do. By the time they turned to God again it was too late.

For us and for the Colossians, the message of Paul is the same. Down this road of abandoning the Good News of the resurrection, by turning back to the ‘Old’ ways which exclude so many, and by turning away from God we fail to grasp the core of our faith.

“Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.”

In Colosse there were those who wanted to make all converts undergo the full Jewish initiation. They wanted to turn the Good News into an exclusive Jewish message and Paul and Peter and others were arguing against this. This is the thrust of our reading tonight. Salvation lies not with the Jewish way or the Gentile way, but in Christ’s way.

In being “made new in Christ” we have the grace to avoid falling into these traps – provided we maintain the faith!

Today is Septuagesima Sunday in the “Old” calendar, the Third Sunday before Ash Wednesday and the start of the Lenten fast. In yet another subtext both Paul and Hosea are calling to their respective flocks to be prepared and to prepare properly. This call is for us as well. As we approach Lent and begin to prepare ourselves for Easter through that season, let us consider carefully how we can better serve the Lord and those who we meet. Let us ask ourselves the important question of why? Why are we here, why do we believe, and perhaps even what do we believe.

More importantly do we believe and have faith that God our Father, working through the medium of the Holy Spirit is able to use all of us and all the talents we share for the greater good of all we meet and through us, the world?

We should, because if you look carefully at the readings we have heard tonight you can see that for those who have faith in God, who nurture that faith and are prepared to trust God, all things become not only easier, but far more rewarding than anything else we can do.
“Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful.”
Amen