Sermon for the Fifth Sunday before Advent

Sunday 23rd October 2005

Preached by Mervyn Kingston

Every time I hear this text, I think of the story of the young man who was
leaving the Ulster Breweries on the Glen Road in Belfast, to train for the
Church of Ireland ministry. One of the ladies in the office gave him this
advice. "I hope that you will preach the Gospel, and not any of this love
your neighbour nonsense."

If you wonder why we in Northern Ireland find it so difficult to love our
neighbours, remember that St. Paul didn't find it easy either. It would
seem that some of the Christians at Phillipi weren't an easy lot to love.
"though we had. been shamefully mistreated at Philippi, we.declare(d) to
you the gospel . in spite of great opposition."
(1 Thess.2:2)

When you are visiting a city you haven't been to before, an A to Z map is a
very useful thing to have. It's quite easy to use these maps: you look up
the place you want in the index, which gives a reference in letters and
numbers. Then you simply-turn to the map and look along the letters on the
bottom line and the numbers up the side of the map. Where the letters and
numbers of your reference intersect, there you should find your
destination. Once you know where you are going, then you can work out the
best way to get there. Of course, it is also essential that you know where
you are because if you don't know where you are starting from you still
won't know which way to go.

However, maps are only truly useful if you are really prepared to make the
journey They are a guide to the real thing: if you are not actually m the
relevant town or city, then your use of the map can only ever be imaginary
or academic.

In today's gospel, Jesus is giving us instructions, directions on
how to get to our destination in life. The Jews knew that God had given
them detailed commandments, covering every aspect of life, showing them how
to live as he wanted. The problem was that there were so many rules, and
even more interpretations of them, that often people got bogged down in the
details and so, as in today's Gospel, they often asked teachers of the Law
what was essential; what was the heart of the Law.

Jesus answer - to love God and to love our neighbour-is so familiar to
us, that we can miss the revolutionary impact it must have had on his
audience. Every Jew knew that their first duty was to love God, but Jesus
made the second, lesser known commandment, just as important as this first
commandment.

Many of the people of Jesus' time expressed their desire to love God by
their strict observance of the tiny rules of the Law. But many of them
ended up divorcing this from everyday life. Religion was one thing, the
rest of life something completely different. It is a temptation that is
present for us all. We can think that we are pleasing God by going to
Church, saying our prayers, putting money in the collection, but if this is
as far as our religion goes. then we are like people using a map that only
has letters along the bottom but no numbers up the side. It is useless and
we will be able to go nowhere with a map like this.

For at its heart, the Christian faith, is not about rules and regulations.
It is about relationship with God, which by definition is a relationship
with love. It is a relationship that involves every part of us and it
reaches into every aspect of our lives. As it does so, then our
relationships with other people become marked by this love also, and so
does our relationship with ourselves. We are not called to hate ourselves,
but to love ourselves and to know ourselves loved by God. We are not called
to hate others, but to love them and ensure that they too know themselves
loved by God. All this we can only do as we receive and respond to God's
love for us made known in Jesus Christ and his death on the cross for us
and for our salvation, which we have claimed for our own in simple faith
and trust.

It is of course very important to love God and to honour him. But Jesus
helps us realise that such idealism needs to be put into practice. The
scriptures make it very plain that what God wants of us is not grandiose
declarations of faith or
impressive religious observances, but the very ordinary things of life,
like taking care of the weak and the orphaned, visiting the sick, not
exploiting the poor, welcoming and respecting the stranger.

Two stories. When the good people of Ballynahinch Baptist Church recently
installed a new Pastor, The local Roman Catholic Priest was present and
spoke a word of welcome in the hall afterwards.

Three years ago, when a Church of Ireland clergyman had an interview for a
'nice' parish in north Armagh, he asked the nominators a question. "Is
yours the kind of congregation where inter-church couples would feel at
home?" There were two responses. The first man said "We mix with our
catholic neighbours at the golf club" and the second said "We don't exactly
invite our Roman Catholic neighbours for their tea. And if Roman Catholics
were to come to our church, there are some people in the congregation who
would not be back the following Sunday."

If the first story shows that some people have come a long way, the second
shows that some people still have a long way to go. Sometimes we need look
no further than our own attitudes. I can't help thinking that if we cannot
welcome others to our church, there is something wrong with us, rather than
something wrong with them!

When we realise that without the very ordinary ways of loving our
neighbour, our love of God is empty, then we are on the right track: we can
begin to use the directions Jesus gives, we can follow his example and so
please God and be welcomed by him into our heavenly inheritance. Some of
the rules and regulations act a bit like a map - they are a guide to the
real thing, not the thing itself. Religion is not something separate from
the rest of life. God is very close to us - as close as our neighbour, as
close as the person sitting next to you.