Sermon for the 17th Sunday after Trinity

Sunday 18th September

Preached by Rev Brian Parker

“What’s generous?”

The other day I was out with Miriam, our five-year-old granddaughter. Inevitably we ended up at the sweet counter and I asked her what she would like.

“ A Twix please”, she said. “There are two bars in a Twix so I can give you one of them”.

“Well”, I said. “Thank you Miriam, you’re very generous”.

She looked at me for a moment, with a puzzled look, before asking the question.

“What’s generous?”

In the past week we may well ask the question “what’s generous?” about blaming our police service for the mindless mayhem that has erupted on our streets over the re routing of an Orange Order parade.. Mayhem that has so obviously been orchestrated by criminal gangs intent on getting back at a police service that has been steadily bringing them to account.

What a narrow, sterile political game to play. What a mean response totally lacking in generosity of spirit and truth. What a shame and a stain on our society that community leaders should fail to show a generous and wholehearted concern and support for men and women who are dedicated to the service of our community.

Yes, of course there is the odd bad apple in the barrel. Yes, of course there is the reckless response on the front line when all reason has been lost in the face of murderous thugs.

But all in all, night after night, day in day out, people charged to uphold law and order in our society do so with great personal courage and sacrifice. We need to remember that clearly and to support them.

We need to show a generous and supportive will to stand for law and order in our society, not least by those who hold positions of leadership.

St Paul personified involvement in the society of his day. He lived out a vital involvement with the issues and sees Christian vocation in terms service in the community.

Today the service of those who uphold law and order is a vital one. It’s critical to our future well being. Let’s not be mealy mouthed or half-baked about supporting those who give such heroic and dedicated service. They need and deserve our generous support.



In the church too we need to question, “What’s generous?”

What’s generous about a spirit of churchiness that sees no further than a denomination? What’s generous about signing on to our particular brand of church to the point that anyone outside our company, who doesn’t speak our theological language, is more or less told there’s no God for you?

J B Phillips, the leading Anglican theologian in the 20^th century, observed that Anglo Catholics reckoned God was particularly pleased with them, Evangelicals regarded God as their party leader, Roman Catholics worshipped a God who was plainly a Roman Catholic and Non Conformists were absolutely sure that God disapproved of candles on the altar.

Phillips said: “The tragedy of all this is not a difference of opinion, which will always be with us, but the outrageous folly of trying to regard God as the exclusive backer of your particular point of view”.

He said: “There’s nothing generous about hoarding grace.” No denomination has a monopoly of God’s grace and none has an exclusive recipe for producing Christian character.



In this age of celebs and so-called superstars, Christ is thrust under the magnifying power of marketing techniques. We can get carried away with the notion of super Christians. They are a myth. A Christ wrapped in certainties and marketed to suit our preferences is an entertainment.

I remember a lady who once got a name for being a ‘scriptural machine gun’. She would mow down those who disagreed with her and condemn them outright. She mowed them down with her tongue. She had no compassion, no empathy, and no generosity. She could only criticise and ostracise those who didn’t measure up to her ideas of what being a Christian was all about.

Her attitude demonstrated that Christianity without generosity is at best suspect, at worst hypocritical and false.

God is not interested in balancing our virtues and our vices and meeting out punishments. God is interested in fashioning souls that can live and work with him in the world, in the community, in the church.

The Bible is renowned for the way in which it records people’s relationships with God, warts and all.

God’s generosity stands out. The most unlikely find in God’s qualities of compassion and gracious understanding new hope and a fresh start.

And often it’s this generosity that some find exceedingly irritating.

Remember the people of Nineveh. “God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways and he had compassion and did not bring upon them the destruction that he had threatened.”

But self-righteous Jonah who had warned them of God’s judgement was put out, indeed he was very angry at this generous decision.

Jonah expected God to condemn them. For Jonah it was a matter of pride. He had taken it upon himself to decide what God should do: he had boxed God into a corner, a tiny corner of his small mind.

Jonah had to learn that in the generosity of God there are no lines of demarcation, which label some, usually including ourselves, who are deserving and others who are decidedly not.

What’s generous? Jesus tells the parable of the landowner and baffles us with a story about a ridiculously generous God. The parable troubles us. As the Scots say, ‘It’s beyond our ken!’ It’s a McEnro moment: “Surely”, we say, “You can’t be serious”.




We would rather try and strike a pay bargain with God. We would rather get the economics right. We would rather get some rules on fair pay. We want to be certain but the parable teaches us that the uncertainty of grace is out of our control.

As someone said: “In our dealings we make God in our image as miserly as ourselves. We diminish the riches of God’s grace.”

It happened all the time when Jesus started living out the generosity of God. He attracted the anger and disgust of the religious leaders who thought they knew better. They knew how a prophet ought to behave and with whom he should spend his time.

But Jesus moves the goalposts. He takes away the fences that we use to exclude others. He tries to help us grasp something of the nature of God’s generosity, which is so much wider and more far reaching than we may ever understand.

So whenever we see God’s generosity, it may come as a surprise. But we have no right to question or quibble. Rather says Jesus, rejoice with the angels at the amazing love of God.

Jonah sulked at God’s generosity in restoring the people of Nineveh. The disciples were taken aback at Our Lord’s generous concern for the prostitute.

The truth is “God is gracious, full of compassion, slow to anger, of great goodness, generous in love.”

What’s generous?

Well it’s sharing a Twix bar for sure.

It’s also a character of unselfish service that protects the innocent to the point of great personal sacrifice.

It’s a measure of discipleship that is open to the unity of the Spirit that reaches beyond the demarcation lines of prejudice and bigotry and pride.

It’s Love that surprises us in its generosity.

William Barclay tells the story of a group of soldiers during the Second World War who had lost a friend in battle. They wanted to give their fallen comrade a decent burial.

So they found a church with a graveyard behind it, surrounded by a white fence. They found the parish priest and asked if their friend could be buried there in the churchyard.

“Was he a Catholic?” the priest enquired.
“No he was not”, answered the soldiers.
“I’m sorry then”, said the priest. “Our graveyard is reserved for members of the holy church. But you can bury your friend outside the fence. I will see that the gravesite is cared for”.

“Thank you, Father”, said the soldiers, and they buried their friend just outside the graveyard on the other side of the fence.

After the war, before the soldiers returned home they decided to visit the grave of their friend.

They remembered the grave was just outside the fence. They searched for it, but couldn’t find it. Finally they went to the priest to inquire about it.

“Father, we cannot find our friend’s grave”, said the soldiers.

“Well”, said the priest. “After you buried your fallen friend, it just didn’t seem right to me that he should be buried there, outside the fence.”

“So you moved his grave”, asked the soldiers.

“No”, said the priest. “I moved the fence”.


Amen.