Sermon by Rev Sydney Maitland for Sunday 16 March 2025.
• First Reading: Genesis 15: 1-12, 17-18 (The Lord’s covenant with Abram)
• Epistle: Philippians 3: 17 – 4: 1 (But our citizenship is in heaven and we await a saviour from there, the Lord Jesus Christ)
• Gospel: Luke 13: 31-35 (Lament over Jerusalem)
During the week at our home celebration of the Eucharist, the subject of cricket came up. Having played the game with a spectacular lack of success I was able to offer some comments. Even so, there were some terms like ‘silly mid-on’ which still completely escape me.
Maybe the mast-abeam rule and the five-minute-gun in sailing are equally confusing to others not in the sailing fraternity.
But there can be that feeling of being there but not really engaged in a conversation. Discussion of a sport or play or piece of music which we know absolutely nothing about. Present in body but the mind in on another planet.
Now look at the situation facing Abram. Already living in a completely different part of the world from his home. A visitor, one just passing through, not really belonging.
Already a stranger and then the Lord speaks to him, and not for the first time. He had already been called to leave Haran, and promised a great heritage; he had already visited Egypt and had his contest with the four kings, and had then been blessed by Melchizedek, priest and king.
Now it was going a stage further. The promise was made more explicit. There would be an heir. He could have laughed the whole thing off and dismissed it as wishful thinking, or an over fertile imagination.
But this time Abram did something else. He listened, pondered and believed. He was now in a conversation with God, and the Lord treated that attention and obedience as righteousness. Abram could never, ever earn the blessing and goodwill of God, and yet God treated that serious and considered faith as something unique in His sight.
Abram was now a holy one. Not perfect and still prone to error and misunderstanding. But Abram had found favour in the sight of God.
And that was the point of departure. Now he was living in a different realm: resident in the world but also a citizen of heaven. Now he was passing through this world and all its allurements and enticements, all its demands and pressures.
He was there but he did not belong. He was living as a citizen of another country and another dimension. That of the Spirit was now not just a factor but the guiding principle in his life.
His permanent sense of being was in the presence of God who would later say: ‘Be blameless and walk before Me.’
Looking at Jesus, there is again the sense of an alternative agenda. Herod might be after Him, but Jesus was treading out His own path.
Whatever plans and strategies Herod might have, Jesus was going to continue on the path before Him as set by God and knowing that this was leading to the cross.
So Herod’s threats and blandishments did not mean much to Him. If anything came of them then Jesus would deal with them and if not then there was nothing to get excited about.
Jesus would continue that ministry of preaching the gospel and healing the sick. He would challenge error and wrong-doing, but would bring His own kind of peace and forgiveness to those who wanted it.
But there was a kind of sorrow bound up in all of this: not for Himself but for Israel as a whole and Jerusalem in particular. This was the centre of worship and of teaching. It was where the greatest minds studying the Law of Moses were to be found.
It was the place where the ultimate confrontation between the Law as given to Moses and the later customs and practices of the lawyers and elders and priests would take place.
It was above all, the place where the fullest and most complete sacrifice of atonement would be found, never to be repeated.
Jesus could see the coming clash and grieved over the coming judgment of Jerusalem. Not a final and total destruction but a judgment for generations to come, and the epicentre of an even more devastating dispersal and exile of the Jews would take place.
Until, that is, it was time to bring them home.
And so Paul, writing to the church in Philippi, urges them to continue in the presence of the Lord. Others may be distracted by the allurements of the cults around them, the excesses of food, drink and every other kind of indulgence.
They might justify this in terms of maintaining a presence and witness in society. But the truth was that their allegiance had slipped and was being corrupted. It was one thing to be engaged with society – another to be seduced by it.
Minds set on earthly things, glorying in their shame, prisoners of their own appetites.
But there was another agenda – the citizenship of the believers in heaven and the Kingdom of God. The Saviour who would finally come but who meanwhile was present in the Holy Spirit and the fulness of the Body of Christ.
And so they are urged to stand firm. To stand in their faith, their confidence in Jesus Christ, in the glory of the scriptures and the sacraments.
For these are the things to last, when all appetites and pleasures fall away.
