{"id":3391,"date":"2019-10-06T19:20:21","date_gmt":"2019-10-06T19:20:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pattinghamchurch.org.uk\/web\/?page_id=3391"},"modified":"2019-10-06T13:20:58","modified_gmt":"2019-10-06T13:20:58","slug":"sermon-6th-october-2019-evening","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.pattinghamchurch.org.uk\/web\/information\/sermons\/sermon-6th-october-2019-evening\/","title":{"rendered":"Sermon – 6th October 2019 – evening"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Sermons index<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity \u2013 evening<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n

Sunday 6th October 2019 <\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Trininty 16 – Proper 22 \u2013 evening
\nNehemiah 5. 1-13
\nJohn 9.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Revd Preb Maureen Hobbs<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n
\"Maureen<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\nWe are in the midst of\nCreation Season for the church. These latter weeks of Trinity when\nthe autumn is upon us; harvest is just past and we are surrounded by\nsigns of the hard days of winter to come \u2013 just ahead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nBut for now, all is relatively\ncomfortable. Most of the crops are in, there is plenty of fruit to be\npicked. No-one need go hungry. And yet we know that \u2013 not far from\nhere, there are those who will be hungry this night. Families who are\nnot sure where the next meal is coming from; mothers who are grateful\nthat tomorrow is a school day and the children can look forward to a\nhot meal there if not at home. God has created a bountiful world for\nus to share, and yet we are, it seems, incapable of sharing it\nfairly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nAh, you may ask, but what\nabout the undeserving poor? The feckless who refuse to work; the\naddicts who waste their resources on drink or drugs: the alcoholics\nwho cannot hold down a steady job and get evicted from their\naccommodation as a result? They should not receive our hard-earned\nand generous charity should they?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nShouldn\u2019t they? Who are we\nto judge between the deserving and the undeserving? Wherever there is\nneed, that is where we are asked to be generous. It is poverty itself\nthat we should battle \u2013 and the institutional\ncauses of poverty if not the individual ones. As others have said \u2013\n\u201cyou can keep rescuing drowning people from the river \u2013 but\nperhaps it is better to go upstream and see who is throwing them in!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nNehemiah in our first reading\ntonight was in a difficult situation. He was one of a group of\nhigh-status and wealthy Jews, newly returned from exile in Babylon.\nAlthough taken there in captivity following the defeat of the nation\nof Israel, they had prospered among the Persians and were now come\nback to rebuild the broken walls and palaces and the Temple of\nJerusalem. But all that took money and manpower.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nThe poor peasants who had been\nleft behind in Judah eked out a subsistence economy on land that was\nnot the best. Wars and heavy taxes took their toll and there was\nfamine in the land \u2013 leading to the threat of civil unrest. As the\nnewly appointed and not overly popular governor, Nehemiah had to take\naction. And he did \u2013 shaming his fellow nobility for their action\nin exploiting the poverty of their poorer kinsmen and women. So lands\nwere to be restored, debts cancelled and children sold into slavery \u2013\nbonded labour \u2013 were to be redeemed. To do otherwise would be a\nbetrayal of God\u2019s faith in them to rebuild their homeland and give\nhim worship worthy of the name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nA couple of days ago it was\nthe commemoration of the Festival of St Francis of Assissi \u2013 one of\nthe most famous of the medieval saints who founded monastic orders\nthat have survived and thrived to the present day. Franciscans have\nalways embraced the concept of living simply that others might simply\nlive. But Francis was not always such a good example of godly\nliving. As a young man he had enjoyed a very privileged upbringing\nand spent a small fortune of his father\u2019s money enjoying the finer\nthings of life. His father was a successful merchant of fine cloth \u2013\nnot perhaps of the top nobility, but with aspirations that his son\nwould rise in the social scale and bring honour to his family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nInstead Francis \u201cGot God\u201d\nin a big way. He began by taking some bolts of cloth from his\nfather\u2019s stores to sell in order to rebuild the ruined church of St\nDamiano. In his dreams he received a vision from God in which he was\nto be instrumental in re-building God\u2019s church. Waking and seeing\nthe ruins around him. Francis assumed it was this building, but in\nfact God had a much bigger project in mind. Francis would go on to\nfound monastic orders for both men and women that would have a\nprofound effect on the popular imagination and on the governance of\nthe church. But it all began by Francis renouncing his former way of\nlife \u2013 making himself homeless and even throwing away his fine\nclothing when his family \u2013 especially his father \u2013 remonstrated\nwith him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nToday we hail Francis as a\ngreat figure in church history who had the courage to live out the\ngospel imperative \u201cGo, sell all that you have, and follow me!\u201d .\nAt the time he was seen more as a dangerous lunatic suffering from\nreligious mania. But without him and his vision for a more equal\nworld, we would all be the poorer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nNehemiah\u2019s attack on abusers\nof the poor succeeded. Those in the wrong agreed to compensate all\nwho had been exploited. Nehemiah, while not a priest or a prophet had\nfound the voice of prophecy. He exposed injustice and called for\nreparation to be made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nFrancis devoted his life to\nserving the poor and the sick \u2013 he was renowned for his work\namongst the lepers of his day \u2013 who were the ultimate outcasts of\nsociety. And of course he also became famous for seeing humanity as\nfellow creatures of a loving God \u2013 along with the birds of the air,\nthe fish of the sea and the beasts of the field and forest. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nYou cannot care for and love\nthe beauty of the earth that God has given us, without also caring\nfor and loving those who are struggling to survive. As Jesus told the\nPharisees and now tells us, \u201cIf you were blind, you would not have\nsin. But now that you say, \u201cWe see, \u201c your sin remains.\u201d Lord,\nsave us from our blindness to the beauty of your creation and our\nblindness to the need of all your children. Amen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity \u2013 evening Sunday 6th October 2019 Trininty 16 – Proper 22 \u2013 evening Nehemiah 5. 1-13 John 9. Revd Preb Maureen Hobbs We are in the midst of Creation Season for the church. These latter weeks of Trinity when the autumn is upon us; harvest is just past and we are … <\/p>\n

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