Sermon from Sunday 16 March

 

Reading(s): Genesis 15.1-12, 17-18, Philippians 3.17 - 4.1, Luke 13.31–35. This sermon was given by Keith Atton at St Mark and All Saints.

It is hardly surprising that people of an earlier age were concerned about their ultimate fate, much more so than people are today. When you are young today, life stretches out before you and you have no need to feel concerned with life after death. In the past, a focus on the afterlife was fostered by doom paintings in churches. Today very few remain in England (sixty according to Wikipedia with only one in Hampshire). It was also fostered by the early deaths of so many so young; Queen Anne’s seventeen pregnancies resulted in only one child who survived childhood and he died aged eleven. Queen Anne’s experience was extreme but even in my paternal great grandparents' day at the end of the 19th century, in addition to their eight children, one of whom died just short of six years of age, there are three more of their children buried in the cemetery without living long enough to be given first names.

According to M.R.D Foot who edited the first volumes of the diaries of W.E. Gladstone, who was Prime Minister at the later part of the 19th Century, the diaries were written as a sort of aid memoir so that, when he needed to justify by his works his right for admission into heaven, he would have ready answers for St. Peter. I remember a time long ago when I thought listening to boring sermons in the village Methodist Church would gain me credit too.

Our readings this morning are about being set right with God or not– “Abraham believed in the Lord and he credited to him as righteousness”, but those who set their their minds on earthly things are heading to destruction according to St. Paul and in Luke’s gospel, Jerusalem’s downfall is because of her rejection of the prophets, which is a rejection of God. Even without Paul’s words written to the Romans, for example our epistle reading from last week, our readings today suggest it is by faith that we are justified or put right with God; this is what Martin Luther argued at the Reformation. Even in some present day Protestant statements of belief, justification by faith alone figures prominently.

At the beginning of Elizabeth 1’s reign an attempt was made to combine both justification by faith and doing good works in The 39 Articles of our church; we are justified by faith but good works or deeds, whilst they do not give us brownie points with God, do show that our faith is real.

There are those who argue that in the end everyone will be saved. Some wonder how the God who is love could condemn any person to eternal damnation. Certainly, it seems not right that those who had never heard the gospel message, because they never had the opportunity to do so, would be damned because of their lack of Christian faith. At the extreme, I remember a speaker arguing with himself over whether Hitler would be saved.

Last week on “Thought for the Day”, Rev Dr Giles Fraser mentioned that within the Jewish tradition was a statement of beliefs which gave a series of conflicting truths from different rabbis. These conflicting truths could both be true at the same time. In this case these two conflicting truths would be justification by faith alone versus justification by good works alone.

A few years ago I bought a book called “Heaven: A History” by McDannell and Lang. They described how views about what heaven is like have changed over time. They give an imaginary example of an Inuit/Eskimo who went to Hawaii and ate pineapple and loved it. On return, he tried to describe it to his fellow Inuits. All he could say was that pineapple was like sweet and sticky blubber; we cannot describe accurately things that are beyond the experience of those who hear us and heaven and how to obtain entry to it is beyond the direct experience of any living person.

So what do I think? All I can say is that some years ago I was involved in a fatal road accident where I could have very easily died. In the perhaps three seconds where I could see the accident was about to happen, I felt surrounded, indeed protected by something – even although I thought I was going to die. Afterwards, thinking about the experience, the words of Paul in Romans 8 31-38 came to me. I will read just the last two verses: “For I am convinced that neither life nor death, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord”. If you believe that, there is no need to worry about how you might be put right with God; by God’s grace it is already done.