On this Remembrance Sunday, we bring before the God of peace our prayers for the world, the church and all his people. Merciful God, we pray for peace in our hearts, In our nations and our world.
Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.
Dear Lord, today we remember especially the victims of the two world wars and the sacrifice of so many for so many. We remember those who came home with terrible injuries, both physical and psychological and those whose loved ones never returned. We remember all those have died in the many wars since 1945 and the innocent people caught up in conflicts. We give thanks and pray for the Royal British Legion, Combat Stress, Help for Heroes and all organisations which give their time and skill to care for and restore those faced with a lifetime of disability or post traumatic stress disorder.
Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.
Lord God, we pray for the leaders of the nations at this time, and for a spirit of reconciliation. Give strength and courage to those who bear heavy responsibilities for the peace of the world. Give them wisdom to cooperate in the response to Covid 19 affecting so many throughout the world and to coordinate the search for treatment and a vaccine.
We pray also for your Church here and throughout the world. May Christians work to break down the barriers which divide people. May those who profess one faith respect those who sincerely hold another faith and build a community where there is harmony and mutual understanding.
Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.
Merciful God, we pray for all who face difficulties in their lives – problems in their families, in their friendships, in their neighbourhoods or in their workplace. Let us be prepared to give help and support to others around us.
We pray for all who work in our caring professions and thank you for their dedicated service. We ask that you hold in your loving arms all who are suffering through ill health, chronic painful conditions or facing anxious waits for diagnosis or treatment.
We pray especially for: Grace Hay, Alan Hay, John Lynch, Roger Mason and anyone known to us.
Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.
On this day of remembrance our hearts and prayers go out to all who mourn the loss of a loved one. Almighty and eternal God, from whose love we cannot be separated, bring comfort to the bereaved and hear our prayers for all whom we have loved and lost and bring them to rest in the light and peace of Christ.
We pray especially for Peter Fiddick, Rupert Webster and all whose anniversary falls at this time.
Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.
Dear Lord, we pray for ourselves. Free us from fear and anxiety and let us remember the words of Jesus from John’s Gospel:
“Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid”.
Were we in church today we would hear this Post Communion prayer:
“God of peace,
whose Son Jesus Christ proclaimed the kingdom and restored the broken to wholeness of life, look with compassion on the anguish of the world, and by your healing power make whole both people and nations, through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.”
Merciful father, accept these prayers for the sake of your son our saviour Jesus Christ.
Amen
The Dean of Southwark, The Very Revd Andrew Nunn, has written a prayer for the second lockdown which you might wish to use as you pray during this time.
All are welcome to reflect and pray in a peaceful and safe setting. There will be an extract of Laurence Binyon’s ‘For the Fallen’ Poem known as the ‘Ode of Remembrance’ available by the South door war memorial.
They shall grow not old as we that are left grow old: Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning We will remember them. We will remember them.
Matthew 5 v 1-12; 1 John 3 v 1-3; Revelations 7 v 9–end; Psalm 34 v 1-10
Today is All Saints Day or All Hallow’s Day. The day after Halloween, which now has much more secular than religious significance in our society.
Saint is not a term we see in the Gospels, except for one mention at the end of Matthew, where there is a reference to the Saints and, in this context, holy people who had already died. Jesus does not talk about Saints.
So, who are Saints? In the early church it was a term used for the Christian community as a whole. It was only as the church gained in size and influence that it began to be used for people of particular sanctity as a specific title. The Catholic church still creates Saints to this Day.
Over the centuries it has been used occasionally to talk about Christians in general – as Charles Wesley did in his famous hymn, Let Saints on Earth in concert sing.
A true saint is not really someone who is just good or kind or who has had a hard life and coped well. In the Christian tradition it is now usually used to refer to someone who is recognised as being holy, worthy and a good servant of Christ
When researching this sermon, I came across a no doubt apocryphal story of a man who went to see his parish priest after the death of his brother. ‘I’d like you to conduct the funeral service, he said, and I would like you to say that he was a saint. If you do so, I will give you a cheque for £10,000 for your church roof appeal.’ What to do? The Vicar knew that the brother was certainly not saintly, but the roof was leaking and the money would be welcome for the appeal. The day of the funeral came. The Vicar stood to speak, ‘Everybody knows he had a colourful life, he said, but, wicked and sinful though he was, compared with his brother he was a saint.’ It is not known whether the £10,000 arrived in the church coffers!
Christians do not have a monopoly over goodness, in fact for the most part we are all sinners and often fall short of the calling we have to be children of God. The sermon on the Mount, which we heard in the Gospel this morning is Jesus’ call to us all to lead righteous, kind, good and Christian lives: to strive to be Saintly.
As Christians we should all do our best for Jesus, try to keep to his commandments, to love one another and to work for the benefit of our fellow humanity. But we can and do fail and, even then, we are redeemed through God’s love for us all.
Tomorrow is All Soul’s Day, the day when we commemorate and pray for all those who have died. The ordinary people, who led ordinary, hopefully decent, faithful and good lives and passed on into the arms of our Saviour. I feel perhaps a little more comfortable with those commemorated tomorrow. The majority of humanity, uncommemorated except by those who loved them, the sinners and the triers, the sort of people Jesus liked to mix with.
All Souls Day is a big event in Latin America, where it is known as the Day of the Dead or Dia de los Muertos. I remember it well from when I lived in Panama. In Mexico especially it is huge and they entertain their dead relations and friends with feasts and dancing. It brings memories alive and gives opportunity for prayer for those who have gone before. I chair a small charity here in the UK called the Anglo Latin American Foundation, which works to support projects for disadvantaged children in South and Central America. Usually we have a big Dia de Los Muertos fund raising fiesta – this year sadly it is only an on-line bingo night! But we continue to try to help the living by commemorating the dead.
Moving on; Oscar Wilde once said: ‘The only difference between a saint and a sinner is that every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.’ Flippant perhaps, but every sinner does have a future, if they accept the loving forgiveness that God offers them.
In conclusion: ‘Saint’ is not usually a word that we would use to describe ourselves these days. But in the early church it was a term for the community of believers, trying to live out the Christian life. We are trying to do this, so there is no reason for us not to think of ourselves as Saints as a collective noun or group, who work together to fulfil God’s will for his world. This is a work in progress as it has been for two thousand years and we must keep on trying, supporting and helping each other.
Jesus said ‘I will be with you to the end of the age’. Through his love and by listening to and obeying his commandments we are part of his body on earth: his Saints. Let us be proud to be these Saints on earth working together to fulfil God’s wishes for his World.
Luke 10v 1-9; 2 Timothy 4 V 5-17; Psalm 147v1-7; Isaiah 35v3-6
Sermon
The Gospel and New Testament readings today are both about mission and community. Jesus knew that the message of salvation needed to be passed on by his followers to the rest of the World – and we know that they did that as the message of salvation flooded across the Middle East in a very short time after Jesus’s Ascension.
A few weeks ago we had Harvest Festival, when we gave thanks for all the good gifts produced by the Earth for us through God’s generosity. And, here we are, thinking about harvest again. But this time in terms of the work God has for us to do as his disciples in the World.
God has a wonderful message for the World and it is the responsibility of Christians to spread it. This is much more of a challenge now than it has been in the past. Even fifty years ago it was still the norm to go to church in this country and even if people did not go, most of them knew the basics of the Christian faith. Now we read in the media that about only 1 million people attend a Church of England service on an average Sunday. This does not of course mean that only one in 65 people go to church. There are many other churches – the Catholics and Pentecostalists among many. But church going is no longer the norm and many people do not even know what we believe. Just as in Biblical times, it is our responsibility to tell them.
Jesus sent seventy of his followers to spread the Word. These are described as “others”, so we can assume that they were not of the twelve disciples. We know little of these people except that they were joined together by a shared task, having all received the same instructions from Jesus. They were sent in twos, no doubt so that they could encourage one another when the going got tough.
Jesus was sending out those who had been his followers, people who had seen his miracles, heard his words, and responded with faith and enthusiasm, asking questions to which they did not necessarily receive answers that were easy to understand. It was quite a tough commission. This was before the passion, before Jesus’ death and resurrection. It must have been taking them outside their comfort zones, when they did not perhaps themselves really understand what it was all about. What they had to so was to explain that in the person of Jesus, God was bringing his love and his peace to the World. They needed to bring this message simply and openly. And clearly. It was quite a challenge and quite a sacrifice to ask of them and it required them to be brave.
Sacrifice and bravery. Being a follower of Jesus is not for the faint-hearted. Jesus sent out these anonymous disciples to spread the Word. And he sends us too and, similarly, we have to accept being sent out with only what he gives us, because he will give us what we need.
What struck me when I read the Timothy and Gospel passages together was that Jesus named no names – he sent seventy people. There was no favouritism, no compliments to one or complaints about another. We do not even know if he sent only men or if some were women. He was starting the massive work of Christian witness and mission that would follow over the centuries. Work for all Christians.
And then we read Paul writing to Timothy and he makes it all much more personal. He talks of several individuals. Those who had stayed with him and helped him and those who had not. We know that Titus and Tychicus were loyal followers away preaching the Gospel. Crescens is believed by Biblical scholars to have been a worthy missionary and perhaps even one of Jesus’ seventy. But Demas had fallen by the wayside and Alexander was a non-believer making Paul’s work more difficult. It all sounds terribly human – those who were useful and helpful and those who were indifferent or a hindrance. The contrast with the calling to all without differentiation of Jesus and the detail of Paul brings home to me the universality and yet the individuality of our faith.
We may feel small and of little value in spreading the good news. But we are all challenged by Jesus’ sending out of the seventy to spread his word. Are we willing to be sent out by Jesus as they were? They may not have felt safe or secure, they may have felt inadequate, they no doubt had their doubts and their fears, but they went for him nevertheless and so must we, bearing witness to our Lord and our faith in our everyday lives and contacts with the World.
Let us pray:
Dear Lord, the God of bravery and boldness, who encourages the weak and timid, grant us the courage to be your agents to those we meet in this World. For the sake of Jesus, in whose name we are sent. Amen
Matthew 22 v 1-14; Philippians 4 v 1-9; Isaiah 25 v 1-9; Psalm 23
When I was serving our country overseas, I received – and it has to be said – sent, many invitations to events. Most of these were to things like diplomatic dinners or other countries national days. I hosted the Queen’s Birthday Party on several occasions in both Panama and Mongolia. Invitations usually said RSVP or Regrets only – meaning you only had to reply if you could not come. But when people could not come this was accepted at face value without any further thought. I never received an invitation which had to be accepted on pain of death, I am glad to say! And I never served in another country which had a Monarch. But, had I done so, I think I would not have regretted an invitation issued by a King, I would have been there whatever!
Like many parables, on the surface the parable in today’s gospel all seems like a huge example of overreaction all round. But when we look at the serious message behind the story, it all makes much more sense.
God has prepared a wonderful place for us in heaven. All are invited and he hopes that all will come. But many reject him and his love and all that he offers us. Many do not believe or do not care or have much better things to do with their time than worship him or thank him. You cannot blame him for being at the very least disappointed.
One could think of the first people who were invited as the people of Israel, to whom Jesus was sent, but who rejected and killed him. Perhaps. But then we come onto the main point of the parable. God invites everyone.
I am reminded of the lovely song “The Holy City” – where it talks about the dream of the writer about Heaven, the new Jerusalem:
The light of God was on its streets,
The gates were open wide,
And all who would might enter
And no-one was denied.
Many are called, but few are chosen. God’s invitation is an open one, everyone is invited. This is the point the parable is making. The Gospel is for all people and all nations. Everyone is called to the heavenly feast. We ourselves are to help invite everyone. Not all will respond. Some will be ambivalent. Others will reject it with hostility. Many people may think that have autonomy to live their lives any way they want. Well they do, up to a point. But everything has a cost – we can reject the invitation, we can be luke-warm about it, but if we really love God, we will accept it with joy and enthusiastically. The chosen are those who take the invitation seriously and come with keenness and faith and true acceptance of the message they have received.
Hmm, but then we come to the man improperly dressed. Poor chap, he had been dragged in off the streets with no time to change or prepare. Bit rough perhaps to be cast into the outer darkness. But if we look at it another way – was he just perhaps treating his fabulous invitation a bit too casually. Was he hoping for the benefits without any effort or input or devotion? Worth pondering on.
So, let us examine ourselves today as we come to the holy table. Why are we here? Are we coming with the right motives? Are we ready? Are we thankful that Jesus died for us? Do we really appreciate that when we take the holy sacraments, we are placing ourselves at the commemoration of the most central part of our Christian lives and preparing ourselves for heaven? Jesus said: “This is my body” and “This is my blood” – the best banquet we could ever had as it cleanses our souls, puts us right with God and prepares us, not only for the week ahead, but for the joys to come. No better bread and no better wine have ever been offered at any banquet. The world often looks at this celebration with contempt or indifference. It has no appreciation of just how precious the body and blood of Jesus really are.
As Christians we look back to Cavalry, but we also look forward to the joys of the banquet in heaven. In this World we will have trails and obstacles. We need to prepare ourselves for the journey ahead with its bumps and problems. But, without a shadow of doubt, the goal and reward will be worth it all.
