Sermon on the Third Sunday before Lent Sermon - Fr Sam Rossiter-Peters

May be given to me to speak in the name of the Father and the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. Please do be seated. "Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep. Where to you, when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets. The Beatitudes, the list in which Jesus declares that those who are poor, hungry, weeping and hated for his sake makes for challenging reading. And the woes which I've just recounted do as well, not least because we're not very used to hearing them. The Beatitudes are hard because they seem like platitudes. They're nice to say, but are they just a pat on the back, a chuck on the arm, and a cheery instruction to keep on going? Blessed are those who are so poor they can't eat, or so discriminated against because of their faith that they can't stop mourning Blessed in what sense? And the woes are hard because they just seem untrue. Woe to the rich, those who are full, those who laugh, those who are praised. We see plenty of those sorts of people, but their lives don't seem also waffle. They're in positions like the President of the United States of America, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, the owner of Tesla, the CEO of Amazon. Again, whoa, in what sense? These frustrations might cause us to read the Beatitudes as mere, soapy, spiritual sayings. Oh dear, you're not really sad for your hungry. Actually, you're really blessed by God. Or, you know, you're not really happy that you make more money in a day than most people do in a lifetime. Actually, you're really suffering, aren't you? What stops us reading the Beatitudes in this way is that Jesus was not ever soppy. Throughout the Gospel Jesus's teachings can be described as radical, mystical, challenging, enlightening, hopeful. But we don't have a single instance in the Gospels of Jesus pandering to the crowds. In fact, he actively found the people who needed to hear his teaching the most, and he taught them to the point that they were so angry they wanted to kill him. He taught things that were unpopular enough, that crowds of his followers left him behind. And instead of running after them, he asked those who remained if they wanted to leave as well. So instead of thinking that of these Beatitudes, "Sopi are meaningless," we have to catch the key words and hear what Jesus is actually saying. "Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. Jesus wasn't talking about how things are, but how they will be. Indeed, he ended his Beatitudes with rejoice on that day and leap for joy. For surely your reward is great in heaven. So Jesus wasn't even talking about imminent just desserts. He was talking about the day of the realization of the kingdom of heaven. This sort of promise relies on what's called, and get ready, this is a good Scrabble word, eschatological verification. That's a promise that will only be verified as true after it's happened. Moreover, the event of it happening is very likely to be the eschatom or the final day of judgment when all things are finished. Eschatological verification is a tough pill to swallow. Usually when someone makes a promise there's a sort of quid pro quo involved. If you do X for me then I promise that I'll do Y for you and we only usually do X if we're likely to receive Y immediately or at least very soon after. The longer we have to wait for our payment, the more we have to trust the person doing the promising. For example, it's pretty easy to hand over money for groceries, which will be delivered in a couple of days, especially if it's to a reputable company. But I don't imagine that many of us would want to hand over money to someone on the promise that they'll give us what we've paid for in three or four years, especially if we're walking over a large sum. In a sense, Jesus was suggesting that we hand over our entire lives, our livelihoods, our futures, our happiness, on the promise that it will be worth it in the end. Those who are blessed in the Beatitudes are those who follow Him and carry the cost of doing so. And we can tell this because Jesus references treatment of the prophets at the end of the back Beatitudes and the false prophets at the end of the woes. Those being blessed, are described as being treated like the prophets, being treated like the people of God who brought the message of God. Those who received well are treated like the false prophets. Those who spoke what other people wanted to hear in order to achieve their own ends. So the Beatitudes are a big ask. The price is high and the weight is long. So why would we accept? Because the states are as high as they can be. To be the people of God or to be the ones who reject Him. But as with all eschatologically verifiable stakes, the people of God will probably only definitely know that they are the people of God at the end when they meet God. In the meantime, they'll have to watch the people who reject Jesus' call, having a rather jolly time of it all. This flies in the face of human instinct. As humans, we like our rewards where we can see them. Otherwise, we might be risking a lot and getting absolutely nothing out of it. More than that, we tend to hate seeing other people otherwise we might be risking a lot and getting absolutely nothing out of it. More than that we tend to hate seeing other people getting ahead by behaving badly. Now this isn't just because that seems unfair but also if we're really honest with it, with ourselves and with each other it's usually partly because we wish we behaved badly as well and got the same rewards. You only need to look at the boarding for a Ryan air flight to see that this is the case. A crowd of people who were in any other circumstance very happily wait, calmly for their assigned seats will. When there's a battle not to be next to the Lou arrive at the gate hours before they need to then nudge people out of the way or do more than nudge to make sure that they are first in line. After all, if everybody's going to behave badly and get their reward then why shouldn't we? Why should we be the ones that leaves out? So in the Beatitudes and the Woes, Jesus asks us to overcome our inclinations, our desire to be first and to trust on a promise which will come in the end but not for some time and which may be of a nature that we can't quite currently comprehend. The difficult ask. But in asking Jesus lays out a challenge, a simple challenge, but a tough one. Do we trust Jesus enough to go along with him? Do we trust that the end he described will in fact come? That the blessing that we can't quite imagine and we don't know when it's coming, but it's some time at the end, will in fact be, that the blessing that we can't quite imagine, and we don't know when it's coming, but it's some time at the end, will in fact be worth the effort. That it's not worth going for the easy solution of getting what we want now by doing what we want now. Do we trust him when he says that won't pay out in the end. Of course, Christianity isn't, and it shouldn't be a quid pro quo. We don't follow Jesus, because he's giving us something nice in the end. We follow him because he is worthy to be followed. But the eschatological nature of it all remains the same. For us, the person of Jesus is a matter of faith. As St Paul says, "Now we see through a veil darkly." We know Jesus, but not as we hope to, we only have access to historical documents and the spiritual life of prayer. But as St Paul promises, then we will see face to face. So Paul was addressing this challenge of trusting that Jesus is who he said he is in our excerpt from Juan Corinthians this morning. The question of being raised from the dead was troublesome for some Jews and lots of Gentiles and it would have been Gentiles who made up the majority of the community in Corinth. For Jews who had been taught by anyone who leaned in a majesty way of interpreting the Scripture, they would have felt that there was in fact no life after death. That's what the Sadducees taught. For the Gentiles, the idea of the resurrection of the body was the problem and it was laughable as some Paul described it as stumbling rock to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles. But, some Paul goes on. If there is no resurrection from the dead, then Jesus wasn't who he said he was. He didn't achieve what he promised to achieve. If Jesus wasn't resurrected then he wasn't God. He was just a nice teacher who came to an unfortunate end. That means that there was, there is no salvation because there is no saving hope in a nice guy who annoyed the wrong people. More than that, the resurrection is the heart of what it means to be saved. And we very often get this wrong and pick up on the rather not stick idea, not just a sort of heresy, that Jesus' salvation was about making sure that our souls go to the nice place once they're released by death from the physical shell of our bodies. Jesus never taught this, nor does the church. Human beings are made by God, body and soul. And our hope isn't in some ethereal, spiritual heaven amongst the clouds playing harps. It's the resurrection to eternal life of being raised, body and soul, just like Jesus was. So simple puts the case plainly. Either Jesus was, who he said he was, did what the church says he did, and gave what he said he had come to give, or our proclamation has been in vain. Your faith is futile, those who have died in Christ have perished, and we of all which all people are most to be pitied. In other words, if Jesus didn't physically raise from the dead, then let's stop wasting our time and go home. Those are blunt terms, but they are helpful because in the end, Christianity comes down to this single choice. Do you trust that Jesus was who he said he was? Or not? Because if you do, there's only one sensible course of action. that Jesus was who he said he was or not. 'Cause if you do, there's only one sensible course of action, you have to follow him. You have to trust that the one who is God will bring about the future he said he would, no matter how impossible that future seems, because God is God and you are not. If you don't trust that Jesus was who he said he was, then the question is, "How Shory?" because the Beatitudes place across roads in front of each one of us. They say, there is a hard road and it will lead to God. And there's an easy route and it will lead nowhere. One way or another you've got to decide. Amen.