(A sermon by James on Luke 12.32-40 Hebrews 11.1-3, 8-16, . August 7th 2022. 8am, 9.30 St Lens.)
Don’t be afraid little flock, don’t be afraid. That’s today’s sermon! Don’t be afraid Little Flock, but Live Generously and Love generously.
What does faith look like? Each day there’s a moment when you will find yourself having to show your faith your trust, in a person, a system, a chair, a god – through your actions, through what you say. And we will have a moment of being afraid.
That feeling of fear is good. It’s a moment that causes us to pause and just check this isn’t a scam and that we’ve thought this through,
and then comes this moment of faith where we take the fear and we whisper to ourselves, ‘This is okay, Don’t be afraid’, and in we plunge.
For Abraham, his faith looked crazy, he felt that God was calling him to move away to make a new home to start again and that meant giving up his comfortable life. But by faith he trusted in God’s promises, worked through his fear and took that step.
For Sarah, her faith was brave – she went with Abraham. That cannot have been easy when your other half really believes that this is what we should be doing – hats off to Sarah for her faith – But she had to trust in the promise that God made to her husband, that’s hard.
She got her own promise, of a child,
but I note that the book of Hebrews, our first bible reading, skipped over the bit about Hagar – If you don’t know the story of Hagar or if you can’t remember it, then that’s great, as Jane Austen wrote in Pride and Prejudice (or one of those) ‘Sometimes a good memory is unpardonable!’
I like the way the book of Hebrews doesn’t invite us to dwell on the Hagar incident and passes straight onto the good stuff where Sarah holds on to the promise and she sees the promise fulfilled.
God promised Abraham that God would give him Land, a Family and Make him a blessing to all Nations.
But Abraham won’t live to see the fulfilment of the Land – you can read about that in the book of Joshua which is at least 400 years later. That’s a long time to wait for a promise. Lesser people would have given up after the first hundred years?!
God promised Abraham a family but at the end of Abraham’s life there’s just Ishmael and Isaac – not quite the promise that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars of the sky.
And by the time that Isaac dies, there’s just Esau and Jacob – it is Jacob who dies leaving the beginnings of the 12 tribes. Jacob will just live long enough, three generations, to glimpse the promise coming through.
There’s a joke that goes: When is the best time to plant a tree? 25 years ago! When’s the 2nd best time to plant a tree – Today!
Its not easy holding onto promises, especially when fear whispers to you to give up, to quit.
Jesus says ‘Don’t be afraid little flock’.
It’s a unique phrase ‘Little Flock’ – I like it because it has about it a sense of family, of mutual responsibility, we together are a flock.
SO ‘Don’t be afraid, little flock’.
What are we to not be afraid of? In this particular context he’s talking about Money, and about what it means to serve.
What does faith look like for us as a little flock? Jesus urges us not to be afraid of money. I would be genuinely interested to know, those of you who are not English, those of you who have lived in other countries and cultures, are we English as uptight about not talking about money as everyone else or are we uniquely brilliant about avoiding the subject?
I think we don’t talk about money because we’re afraid of it. We preachers dread asking you to give money. We know that things are tight for you. We know that you know that we’re running a £45k deficit budget for the third year in a row. We know that you know that at this rate we will be bankrupt in three years. What we do not know is what on earth that looks like.
And so we understand why some feel the fear, why others bury their head in the sand and say ‘Oh it will never happen’. I have a lot of sympathy with both options.
So the place to start is to Not be afraid. God has given us so much. Jesus reminds us that our heavenly Father is pleased to give us the Kingdom.
Perhaps the first step could be when you have counted your coins – to count your blessings.
And then step 2 is to show money who is the boss. Jesus calls us to this radical life of poverty, of selling our possessions and giving to the poor.
Some people have really gone for this and its really paid off – Francis of Assisi would the best example that springs to mind, perhaps you can think of others.
But for others they’ve been able to work out what they do really need and live a simple life, reducing their stuff – and even though Lucy and I have recently moved house and we went to great lengths to chuck loads of stuff out – we still seem to have vast amounts of stuff.
That’s the funny thing about going on holiday. We’ve just had a week of Camping at New Wine (it was fabulous and I will tell you more later) we’re in a tent surrounded by much smaller flock from Seaford but we had everything we could have wanted and more and that’s just in our little tent. We have too much stuff.
Stuff, Money, has this fear over us. It keeps us insecure. But the Gospel is keen for us to know the love of God, to know that we’re loved and held and that we’re part of a family, a little flock, who loves us and holds us.
So my point one is Don’t be afraid Little Flock
My point two is Live Generously – to confront your fear of money then every so often have a review of your giving, your spending, and Live generously and you will find that it is liberating.
Where your treasure is, says Jesus, there your heart will be also. And the problem is that when our treasure is where our fears are then we are all in a flutter and a mess.
Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, they all held on to the promises and God came through, often not in their life time. But God’s promises held true, and their faith held true.
Jesus goes on to talk about what a life of faith might look like – and the example He gives is that of looking after each other – of being a servant, of being ready for the needs of the master, for being attentive to the needs of others.
I think it’s only the Church that uses this sort of language, of serving others as a way of liberating yourself. Its so counter cultural.
I went to Damien’s Ordination a month ago and Bishop Ruth preached – she said ‘Why is it that we fight over the throne but we do not fight over the towel?!’ – Please remind me to repeat that sentence especially when we come back round to Maundy Thursday. Why do we fight over the throne but not over the towel? Because we love to be in positions of comfort and security and importance and we fail to see that in serving one another we find that freedom, free of so much fear, we have been able as a Little Flock to be there for each other, to answer each other’s’ prayers.
So Don’t be afraid, little flock, Live Generously and Love generously. Love generously.
I was tempted to throw in the line ‘and Leave generously’ meaning to sort yourselves out a Legacy – in your will – so that when in due time God calls you home, then do remember the little flock you’ve been part of and leave a legacy – I even think there are forms at the back about how to adjust your will accordingly. But I wasn’t sure if Live Generously, Love generously and Leave generously ended the sermon on a the right note.
Don’t be afraid, live generously, love generously.