Sermon by Rev Sydney Maitland for Sunday 16 February 2025.
The beginning of the Gospel of Luke from the Codex Petropolitanus, 9th century (Source)
• First Reading: Jeremiah 17: 5-10 (Cursed is the man who trusts in man, who draws strength from mere flesh)
• Epistle: 1 Corinthians 15: 12-20 (If there is no resurrection of the dead then not even Christ has been raised – our preaching is useless and so is your faith. But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep)
• Gospel: Luke 6: 17-26 (Sermon on the plain – to people from Jerusalem, Judaea, Tyre and Sidon. Blessings and woes)
If I ask who are you, I expect that you will tell me not just your names but the things that are most important to you. Here, I would hope that your starting point is your faith in Jesus Christ and coming from that your Christian faith and your membership of All Saints.
Others may start with their families, occupations, political and social loyalties. If this is the starting point then their faith in Jesus Christ is incidental to it all and is modified by their personal background and circumstances and the trends of the day.
Church life is then that of an institution and subject to all the political manoeuvres that you find in any secular organization. It has no depth or resilience and withers away in adverse times.
Like today’s lessons, I have to ask just what is the starting point for your life and sense of being.
Now look at Jeremiah who sees all the human institutions around him – the kings, armies, courts and trading patterns. For him, it is not politics or military strategy which safeguard him but his personal faith in God. This gives purpose and direction to all the institutions of society, and without them they are rootless and fruitless. Exercises in performance art, but without real content or foundation.
If you will, boats without a keel or ballast, at hazard from any gust of wind or tidal current.
But for him there is an alternative: it is to trust in God, to place confidence in Him and to direct his life, loyalties and transactions to follow His law. It means integrity in all encounters, without pretence or performance. Even adverse times are faced with a faith in the Lord who provides, the Lord of armies, the Lord who saves him.
And this is an agenda that is based in a set of spiritual loyalties as opposed to the fashions of the time.
Looking at Jesus’ Sermon on the Plain – told by Luke and comparable with but different from Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount, these are similar but different without being opposed to each other.
Both were delivered in Galilee to a mixed audience of people from Galilee and Jerusalem but also from further afield as well.
It included people from Tyre and Sidon, on the coast of Lebanon: those looking for the teaching of minds and spirits as well as the healing of bodies.
Again the starting point is God: not personal wealth or standing. It is those who are least self-sufficient who are closest to the mercy and abundance of God. They may not have political or media influence but that does not set them back in the sight of God.
Rather, it is those most willing to look to Him who are most ready to receive His mercy and blessing. Being least well placed in terms of the bounty of the land or the market-place or the courts of the king, made them all the readier to come before Him in prayer and to be sensitive to the needs of their neighbours.
That shared sense of need and vulnerability would themselves bind them into a kind of community life.
Equally, those who trusted to their own wealth and skills and connections were already impoverishing themselves before God. To rely on the doctrine of ‘survival of the fittest’ is to put oneself beyond asking for or expecting to receive aid in times of need.
Above all, it would only be used to justify every kind of sharp practice or deception in every kind or relationship and transaction.
It is certainly to distance oneself from that first and greatest of commandments: Love the Lord with all your heart and soul and mind and strength: and your neighbour as yourself.
St Paul faces the same issue but from a different angle. The church is defined by its faith in Jesus Christ – crucified and risen.
Being fully human, He was subject to all human issues and events. That included death – but it also included resurrection from the dead.
But Jesus could never have risen from the dead if this not part of the plan of God for all of human life. Either resurrection was part of His plan or it was not. It was never intended only for Jesus. Rather, He experienced death for us as the gateway to His resurrection and if this was true for Him then it was also true for all who believe in Him.
And not only these, but also all who rejected Him would also find a resurrection – this time to judgment rather than to being justified before God.
But the personal faith of the church was in Jesus as a resurrected being and not as a memory or a historical figure.
Either Jesus is alive or He is not. There are no alternatives. Either their faith is valid or it is not. Again, no other options.
For if the resurrection of Jesus is real, then so is all His teaching and all His acts of power.
So also His power to heal and to forgive sins. So also His promise of a new life – rooted and grounded in Him.
Hence: blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord.
