Sermons from St Faith's
Waxing Lyrical (apologies.
Ed!)
Rev Sue Lucas, Sunday, July 13th, 2014
I get my hair done on the South of the city – where we used to live
before I was ordained – and, by the way, get the legs waxed and the
toenails painted! The little salon that I use is in the gym I
used to belong to. It’s run by a very able, slightly
formidable lady who has built up a really good business,
particularly as Liverpool has apparently become quite a venue for
hen parties! And it’s been a good business for the gym – the
parties getting day membership while the beauty salon does the
‘pampering.’ But, the gym itself has been taken over by one of
the 6 largest health care providers – and, yes I am naming and
shaming. The last time I went, the Salon wasn’t taking new
appointments- because their landlord had given them 2 months’ notice
to quit – they want the rooms to do occupational health assessments
– which will bring in a great deal of money, for little effort.
Well, with the help of some gym members who are lawyers – the
Salon’s formidable owner took them on – and has at least enforced
the six months’ notice to which she is entitled, and will now be
able to give her staff proper redundancy packages.
But it is interesting that the healthcare company – who must have
known it was a try-on – did try it on, but had they not been
challenged, would have got away with it with impunity.
It is one example of the assault on the commons – health, nature (in
the shape of water and utilities),education and public services that
we have seen over the last 30 years, and that has accelerated
dramatically. And it is iniquitous – it has increased the
divide between the rich and the poor in this country, between the
powerful and the power-less; once the commons are privatised, the
interests of shareholders are put ahead of the common good. It is,
in fact, a land grab – an annexing of what properly belongs to all
people in common.
Our parable today seems familiar – all too familiar. But it is
too familiarly allegorised – and seen in purely spiritual
terms. Yet, to the Galilean peasants who heard it, it was all
too literal – all too familiar in a very concrete way.
All the things in this parable – stony, difficult ground; scorching
sun; birds and insects, were all too real to those trying to eke out
a precarious living from the soil; and – what else? Well, a
land grab - the Romans –took their cut of the harvest in punitive
taxes; and if the people could not pay, their land was annexed, and
they were forced to work it for their overlords, effectively
enslaving them; what was Joseph, Jesus earthly father, doing in
Nazareth? His family was, after all, from the South – from the
family of David. It is likely that he had become landless in
the Roman occupation, and forced to seek work as a day labourer – a
jobbing chippy if you like – in the Roman building projects in the
North – like Caesarea Philippi. And, of course, let’s not
forget, the religious authorities, who all in some form colluded
with Rome, got their share as well.
No wonder there was sometimes a lot of year to be got through when
the harvest was at the end.
So let’s not be too fast to allegorise – which, let’s not forget, in
Greek means to ‘speak other’ – for Jesus’ peasant audience, this
parable is a very literal rendering of the harsh reality of their
life under Roman rule.
But Jesus encourages the crowd to imagine a different reality
– a reality in which the fruits of their labour really were for them
– even a thirty fold harvest was exceptional – sixty fold or a
hundred fold was almost unimaginable excess – it is enough to feed
the children, keep a roof over everyone’s head, put a bit by for
emergency, and still have a big party!
And, impossible though it seems, this is reality – because it is
what is brought about by God’s faithful word, and God’s word cannot
fail. Like Isaiah before him, Jesus in our Gospel links
together in one astonishing image two themes that run right through
the Hebrew bible – the land, that is promised to God’s people, the
Israelites, in the covenant – land not simply as territory, but as a
symbol of people flourishing, living as fully as possible – and
God’s word. It is not a surprise they are linked – God after
all speaks nature into being through his word – and the prophets,
like Isaiah, continually speak God’s word to power – to those whose
control of the land, of resources, of stuff, means that some have to
struggle.
So those who are the stony ground recognise with joy the power of
God in personal transformation – but it stops there – it never goes
deep enough with them to challenge the stony structures of wealth
and power that blight our world. Those who are the weeds are
so up to their necks in that wealth and power that the Word cannot
get in – even edgeways!
It is the ordinary people – who know, in bones, that this is not how
it is meant to be – and this knowing allows the word to begin its
transforming work.
What about us, then? We, as the church, are those who are
called to know that God’s word is faithful and cannot fail; God will
accomplish his purpose, slowly, silently like the seed in the
soil. We are called to live – not in the delusions of the
present age, that the divide between those who have plenty and those
who struggle is inevitable – but in the rhythms of God’s time, the
slow outworking of God’s faithful promises. We’re called to do
so by speaking truth to power, when we must; and challenging the
view that these divisions are natural and inevitable; by living
differently, by living generously, not for ourselves alone, but in a
way of being together that means our own good is not separable from
the good of all our brothers and sisters, particularly the most
vulnerable; and we’re called to do by just being ourselves – feeding
faithfully on Christ in word and sacrament, and in our ordinary
lives, being signs of the kingdom, of God’s generous love for all
people, thirty, fifty and a hundredfold.
Amen.
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