Sermon for Third Sunday before Lent 2025 Year C
 |
| Sermon on the Mount, by Laura James |
Sermon on Jeremiah 17:5-10 and Luke 6:17-26, preached at Sydling St Nicholas Parish Eucharist on Sunday 16th February.
I the Lord test the mind and search the heart, to give to all according to their ways, according to the fruit of their doings.
May I speak in the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Our passages today are, honestly, two of the passages I’ve struggled with most in my Christian life. Thanks to some poorly translated bibles, I’ve long equated the word ‘blessed’ with a sense of being happy. And as I look around the world and see people who are poor, people who are afflicted by corruption and injustice, people who are persecuted, or hungry, or grieving, and even where there is an immense amount of faith, I struggle to call them blessed. But that’s because I’m focussed on what I can see, on the here and now, not on how God sees them, not on their hearts, and their minds, and their faith, not on the reward that awaits them in heaven.
We might relate the word beatitudes to the sermon on the mount, but in both of today's readings we're missing the mountain. In Jeremiah’s prophecy, he introduces some beatitudes, proclamations of blessings and woes, and his focus is very much on the heart and on where we put our faith.
"Cursed are those who put their trust in mere mortals, in the flesh", he says, whose hearts turn away from the Lord, because they will dry up, and wither, and being so turned away, they wont even notice when God tries to rescue them. They have turned away from the eternal source of life, and put their trust in created things that have a beginning and an end.
But blessed, says Jeremiah, "are those who trust in the Lord", who is the source of all life, because planted in that source, they will always flourish, and even when they’re in a season of drought, they will bear fruit, because they are rooted in the living water that is God.
I wonder if you’ve ever been through a period of spiritual, or emotional drought. It could have meant your prayer life feeling tiresome, or your relationship with God a struggle, it could be that your marriage has felt dull and unaffectionate, that a child has told you that they hated you, or a friendship has turned into resentment, it might be that you’ve been feeling isolated and alone. In all these things, God being an eternal spirit who doesn’t put the kettle on and provide hugs, means that praying doesn’t always appeal to us as the obvious solution.
I could say that we need to work harder, but what Jeremiah really says, is that God sees our hearts and minds, God knows our sin and struggles, and God still loves us as abundantly as ever before. If that isn’t a reason to start again, to run into God’s ever open arms, to put the kettle on ourselves and curl up with our bible or holding cross and pray, then I don’t know what is. The desire to be closer to God, so long as it’s really there, is all that we need to draw near to God, and gradually move into a place where we know God’s abundant and transformative love for us.
Often, it’s these harder times in life that make us stop and re-evaluate our faith. But in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus is not speaking to the disciples out of a place of need, or difficulty, but out of a time that appears to be quite prosperous. His reputation is such that large crowds of disciples and others are following him, everyone who so much as touches him is healed from whatsoever afflicts them, they’re being cured of physical and mental illness, and they’re pushing in, trying to be close to him. The mission appears to be a success.
But Jesus looks up at his disciples, from that place of being needed, or loved, or even popular, and says:
Blessed are you who are poor
Blessed are you who are hungry
Blessed are you who weep
Blessed are you when people hate you,and when they exclude you,revile you, and defame youon account of the Son of Man.
What he’s saying to them, in essence, I think, is ‘this is not what success looks like….. to God’. He’s challenging their perception of the fruitfulness that Jeremiah talks about. And he continues that challenge further with his woes:
Woe to you who are rich
Woe to you who are full now
Woe to you who are laughing now
We’re living in a time when politicians around the world are once again claiming that God is on their side. We’ve heard Putin claiming that God is on his side for three years, you may have heard Trump's scathing responded to Bishop Budde’s sermon at the first prayer breakfast after he became president, or how Vance has been twisting scripture into Christian nationalism. You will, I hope, have been horrified at the sheer number of priests and bishops in our own church who have failed, repeatedly, to listen, give voice to, or act for the abused and oppressed. You might have heard stories from victims and survivors about how they thought these people were "men of God".
But God sees the heart. God knows what those who are powerful are hiding, and what or whom they are hiding behind. God knows the suffering of those facing injustice and persecution, even when no one else can see it. What we can do is speak truth, model integrity, pray for justice, and ask God to open our eyes to see those things once hidden in darkness.
This is the third Sunday before Lent. In three and a bit weeks’ time, on Ash Wednesday, at 6pm in Stinsford Church, we will step into Lent together. Ash Wednesday is an essential part of our Christian cycle, where we come to be reminded of our sin and our mortality, and then, importantly, to receive the Eucharist, because nothing can separate us from the love of God. My wonderful spiritual director once said 'we are dust, but we are dust that God has loved into loveliness’. Ash Wednesday is not a day of misery, but a day of recognising the transformational importance of God’s love.
That means that we have three weeks, now, to examine our conscience, our prayer lives, our relationship with God, with others, with our community, and with strangers, and gently notice if there are areas in our lives that need some attention, before we step deliberately into Lent. Take a text to guide you, like the beatitudes in Luke or Matthew, or indeed in Jeremiah, or the words of Micah ‘Do justly, love mercy, walk humbly’, or the Ten Commandments in Exodus, and ponder each verse slowly, and work out what you can give up, or take up, or read, or do, or give, this lent, to help your heart in God’s work of transformation.
Let us pray.
God you have searched the depths of our hearts and know us better than we know ourselves. In your mercy, heal our brokenness, restore our faith, and give us courage to walk in integrity, and truth. Amen.
