Do not be overcome by evil

Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church

21 May 2023

Romans 12.9-21

Amos 5.14-15; Proverbs 10.11-12; 12.15-20; 25.21-22

Do you have a motto for life?

            You know, one of those phrases or mantras

                        that you find yourself repeating, over and over,

                        despite the fact that you already know it?

 

Winston Churchill’s was famously abbreviated to ‘KBO’,

            which I’ll leave you to look up for yourself

            because I don’t want to get into trouble on a Sunday morning. Again.

 

But there are lots of other options to choose from.

 

When I was at school, I was frequently told that,

            ‘You can’t win if you don’t play the game’,

which as a Rugby-hating pupil I swiftly amended,

            to the much more pragmatic and enduring personal mantra

            of ‘If you can’t win, don’t play the game’.

 

And then there’s the calls to perseverance, such as,

            ‘If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again’;

which sits nicely alongside,

            ‘Don’t let the whatsits grind you down’;

which you’ll notice I’m modifying,

            in accordance with that other personal favourite motto of mine:

            ‘Don’t get into trouble on a Sunday morning. Again.’

 

And so I could go on with any number of further mottos

            that inspire us to ‘keep putting one foot in front of another’,

            as the saying goes.

 

But there’s a downside to this as well:

            some of us here will have taken deep into ourselves

                        far more destructive messages,

            which surface in our psyches with monotonous regularity.

                        ‘I’m not good enough’; ‘I’m so useless’;

                        ‘They don’t like me’; ‘Nobody loves me’; ‘Everybody hates me’.

 

Sometimes, the voice in our head does us no favours,

            dressing up lies as truth and tormenting us from within.

 

Well, one of the most destructive mantras of our society,

            which permeates all of our lives one way or another,

is the assertion that we have an absolute right to revenge.

 

Often dressed up as talk of justice,

            the deep desire to have our wrongs righted

            lies at the heart of so much of our communal narrative.

 

We live for, we long for,

            the outworking of what seems like a universal and unquestionable truth:

            that ‘Someone, somewhere, must be made to pay’.

 

From the criminal justice system,

            to the witch hunt and the lynch mob,

the mantra that, ‘someone must be made to pay’,

            has become the bedrock of so much that we hold dear.

 

And it is against this that I want to draw our attention

            to Paul’s words in the last verse of our reading this morning

                        from his letter to the Romans.

            ‘Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good’ (v.21).

 

Interestingly, for a passage which doesn’t actually mention Jesus,

            these few verses from Romans 12 are one of the closest places Paul gets

            to referencing the words of Jesus as we know them from the Gospels.

The parallels with the sermon on the mount are striking,

            and this final verse could pretty much stand alone

            as a one-sentence summary of the life and teaching of Jesus.

 

‘Do not be overcome by evil,

            but overcome evil with good.’

 

This is radical stuff,

            and it was every bit as counter-cultural in the first century

                        as it is in the twenty-first.

Humans are well practiced at trying to overcome evil with evil,

            and we are very good at convincing ourselves that,

                        contrary to the popular saying,

                        two wrongs do indeed make a right.

 

The ideology of, ‘You’ve hurt me, so you must pay’, is very compelling,

            and determines everything from our interpersonal relationships

                        to our international politics.

Meeting evil with good is perceived as weakness and foolishness.

 

At school, we’re told that,

            ‘The bullies only understand one language: their own’,

and so in self-defence we learn to speak their language well,

            but then we carry that conviction into our adult lives,

                        and so we vote for a nuclear deterrent,

                        and for a strong defensive military capability,

                        and for proactive strikes on rogue nations

                                    who rattle their sabres a bit too loudly.

 

Well, if we are to listen to Paul on this one,

            we might need a re-think.

‘Do not be overcome by evil,

            but overcome evil with good’.

 

Of course, Paul isn’t speaking in a vacuum here,

            and neither was Jesus, when he suggested to his disciples

                        that those who are merciful peacemakers

                        are those blessed by God (Mt 5.7,9).

 

The Jewish wisdom tradition had a long history

            of wrestling with the futility of violence,

            and of trying to work out

                        what the appropriate response to aggression should be;

and Paul, highly educated Pharisee that he was,

            consciously echoes that Jewish tradition

            in the way he shapes the passage we’re looking at this morning.

 

The little miscellany of verses we heard earlier from Amos and Proverbs

            give us an example of the kind of thing I’m talking about,

and so we hear the precursors to Paul’s own motto,

            in statements like: ‘Seek good and not evil, that you may live’ (Amos 5.14);

                        ‘Hate evil and love good’ (Amos 5.15);

            ‘Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all offenses’ (Prov. 10.12);

                        ‘Fools show their anger at once,

                        but the prudent ignore an insult’ (Prov. 12.16);

            ‘Deceit is in the mind of those who plan evil,

                        but those who counsel peace have joy’ (Prov. 12.20).

 

These proverbs present us with an ancient call to another way of living,

            where the narratives of retributive violence are challenged and rejected,

                        where the right to revenge is forgone,

                        and where payment for wrongdoing is released.

 

So my challenge for us this morning is deceptively simple,

            because it is incredibly demanding.

 

It is for us to commit ourselves, individually and communally,

            to living our lives by Paul’s series of statements, mottos, and aphorisms;

and to allow the Spirit of Christ

            to bring those words of life to life in our lives.

 

So let’s spend a few minutes now with Paul’s wisdom,

            and it starts, of course, with love.

            ‘Let love be genuine… love one another with mutual affection’ (12.9-10)

 

Paul begins his great call to a new way of living

            by grounding himself in the one force on earth

            capable of instigating the kind of transformation he has in mind:

                        Genuine love which extends beyond the self to embrace the other.

 

Just as Jesus paired love of God with love of neighbour,

            so Paul pairs the genuineness of love,

                        with genuine affection and honour for the other.

 

It isn’t until we internalize the truth that God loves all God’s children equally

            that we begin to loosen our grip on the inner conviction

                        that there is something unique or special

                        about our own personal place in the heart of the divine;

            but once we dispel the myth that God loves ‘us’ more than ‘them’,

                        the path is opened for the radical reorientation of behaviour that is to come.

 

But Paul knows that, even with genuine love in our hearts,

            this will not be an easy path,

so in a biblical precursor to Churchill’s famous injunction

            to ‘Keep Buggering On’ (oops!),

Paul tells his readers to be zealous, ardent, patient, and perseverant.

 

This is the task we are called to,

            but as my father often says to me,

            ‘Simon, no-one said it was going to be easy!’

 

Remaining hopeful in the face of suffering;

            being zealous in serving others,

            and persevering in ardent prayer…

                        these are not easy tasks.

 

And neither is the topic Paul addresses next: financial generosity.

            It takes a conscious decision

                        to review our giving to the community of God’s people,

            but Paul is clear that we have a responsibility before God

                        to contribute to, as he calls it, ‘the needs of the saints’.

 

Let’s not be squeamish about thinking about money,

            but rather let us be generous as we are able

            in support of the mission of the church to which we have been called.

 

But of course, it’s not just about money,

            because Paul pairs money with hospitality.

If money is the mechanism, hospitality is the method.

 

Whether personally or corporately,

            our commitment to hospitality is a spiritual discipline

                        and a sacrificial calling every bit as demanding

                        as the call to ardent prayer or financial giving;

which means extending a loving welcome even to those we find difficult.

            As Paul says, ‘do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly’ (v.16)

 

But Paul then goes even further than this:

            Loving the other means loving those

                        who we would perhaps more naturally think of as our enemies.

            ‘Bless those who persecute you, bless and do not curse’ (v.14),

                        ‘live in harmony with one another’ (v.16),

            ‘do not repay anyone evil for evil’ (v.18),

                        ‘live peaceably with all’ (v.19).

 

This is where we start to find ourselves

            at that most difficult of Paul’s challenges in this passage:

            the call to nonviolence.

 

Sometimes people characterize nonviolence

            as the easy, passive, or even cowardly response to conflict.

But nothing could be further from the truth.

            Choosing to not ‘bite back’ is one of the most difficult choices we can make.

It is so utterly counter-intuitive

            to all that we think we know about how to live in human society.

 

We can only get to the point of proactive nonviolence

            once we have fully internalized all that has gone before.

 

We have to follow this passage through

            to get to the end with conviction.

 

Only once we have learned to love the other as we love ourselves,

            and learned to persevere in prayerful service of the other

                        through persecution and opposition,

            and learned to hold lightly to our money, time, and status;

only then are we ready to hear the command:

            ‘Beloved, never avenge yourselves,

                        but leave room for the wrath of God,

            for it is written,

                        “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.”’ (v.19)

 

And here I have my big problem, and it’s this:

            the vengeance of God

                        doesn't look much like vengeance as I understand it

            or as I want to see it.

 

Leaving room for the wrath of God is intensely problematic

            because God's wrath is not like my wrath,

            and God is not angry at the same things that attract my personal fury.

 

I want to take my revenge,

            but God takes the liberty of forgiveness.

 

I want to hate those who do evil,

            but God hates the effect that evil has,

                        not only on those to whom it is done,

            but also on those who do it.

 

The great scandal of God's wrath and vengeance

            is that they end up looking a lot like forgiveness.

 

But nonetheless, Paul tells his readers very clearly,

            that revenge is not theirs to take.

 

This short passage is a one paragraph summons

            to an entirely alternative way of being human.

 

I find it very interesting that this is primarily a passage

            that emphasises orthopraxy, rather than orthodoxy.

 

For those whose Greek is a bit sketchy,

            orthopraxy is about right action,

            whereas orthodoxy is about right belief.

 

And the central message of this passage is not, ‘believe in Christ’;

            it is more practical than that, it is ‘live like Christ’

 

So as we close, I want to come back to the observation I made earlier

            that our passage from Romans doesn't actually mention Jesus.

 

I have a kind of personal motto for preaching,

            which is that a church sermon really ought to mention Jesus

                        at least somewhere along the line,

            which is probably why I feel the need to return to this again at the end.

 

I think that Jesus, both his life, and his teaching,

            firmly lie behind Paul's re-invention of the Jewish wisdom tradition.

 

There are echoes here of the sermon on the mount,

            and the life that Paul is calling his readers to

            is one firmly patterned after the life of Jesus.

 

But he doesn't need to spell this out.

            Here is a call to living Christianly,

                        which is accessible to all,

            including those who don't consider themselves to be disciples of Jesus.

 

It's as if the person and example of Jesus

            has opened, for Paul, a doorway to a better way of being human

            which then transcends cultic and cultural boundaries.

 

So here's the thing, and don’t take this the wrong way:

            I don't really care what you believe.

Rather, it's what you do that matters.

 

As Jesus himself said in the sermon on the mount,

            a good tree will bear good fruit,

                        and a bad tree will bear bad fruit,

            and a good tree cannot bear bad fruit,

                        nor can a bad tree bear good fruit,

            and by your fruit you shall be known.

 

Little Christianity has spent far too long

            defending what people think and believe about the guy who started it all,

                        to the point where we have all too frequently lost sight

                        of the message he left us,

            which is that the door is now open to a different way of living,

                        to a new way of being,

            which is good news for those who hear it

                        because it releases us from those ultimately destructive

                                    mantras, mottos, compulsions, and convictions

                        that drive us into patterns of violence and retribution.

 

The call is very clear, it is to live like Jesus,

            it is to not be overcome by evil,

            but to overcome evil with good.

 

The Love of God

A sermon for Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church

14 May 2023

 

Romans 3.28-30; 5.1-11
  
A man fell into a pit and couldn’t get himself out.
 
A Subjective person came along and said ‘I feel for you down there’
            Objective - ‘Its logical that someone would fall down there’
 
Pharisee - ‘Only bad people fall into pits’
            News reporter wanted the exclusive story on the man’s pit
 
Confucius - ‘If you had listened to me, you wouldn’t be in that pit’
            Buddha - ‘Your pit is only a state of mind’
 
Realist - ‘Yep, that’s a PIT you’re in there, my friend’
            Scientist calculated the pressure necessary in PSI to get him out of the pit
 
geologist told him to appreciate the rock strata in the pit
            tax man asked if he was paying taxes on his pit
 
council inspector asked if he had a permit to dig a pit
            evasive person came along and avoided the subject of his pit altogether
 
self pitying person - ‘You haven’t seen anything until you’ve seen MY pit!’
            Charismatic - ‘Just confess that you’re not in a pit’
 
Optimist - ‘Things could be worse’
            Pessimist - ‘Things will get worse;
 
Jesus - seeing the man,
            took him by the hand and lifted him out of the pit
 
And this little parable takes us, I think, right to the heart
            of what Paul is trying to demonstrate in his letter to the Romans:
which is that the way Jesus responds to the depths of the human situation
            is quite unlike that of anyone else.
 
Jesus does not come along with helpful words of encouragement,
            he doesn’t muck around with solutions that won’t work.
 
Rather, God’s response to human sin, to human suffering,
            to our collective and individual ‘pits’
was to reach out to us at the moment of our deepest need
            by sending Jesus on a rescue mission for humanity.
 
In his death on the cross, Jesus opened the way
            for people to be lifted out of their pits of isolation from God.
 
This is what Paul was getting at
            when he wrote his letter to the Romans.
 
Paul’s letter to Rome can sometimes seem very confusing,
            and even a fairly short passage such as ours for today
            could sustain multiple sermons.
 
Famously, Martyn Lloyd-Jones preached every week for 13 years
            on the book of Romans,
            at Westminster Chapel.
 
Well, I promise not to do that,
            unless you ask really nicely!
 
But do you remember studying poetry at school?
            How you have to keep reading same small section over and over
                        and how you get more from the words, each time you read it?
            I’ve always been amazed at how much meaning can be generated
                        from so few words
 
Well, the letter to the Romans is rather like poetry,
            and on first reading it can be rather confusing,
            with careful word choice conveying whole rafts of ideas.
 
But this is also what makes it so interesting,
            and it repays careful and detailed study.
 
So, to set the scene for our passage for today:
            Paul has spent the first part of the letter looking at the story of Abraham;
                        exploring how Abraham came to know God,
                        and explaining how Abraham’s relationship with God
                                    was not something he earned
                                    but rather emerged from his faith in God.
 
The key issue that Paul’s addressing in the opening chapters
            is that of how it can be right
            for God to deal with Jews and Gentiles on the same basis.
 
The children of Abraham, the Jewish people,
            are the people of God, the heirs of the covenant.
So how, Paul is asking, can it be true
            that God is now also seeking a relationship with the gentiles?
With those who have not history of being God’s people,
            no story of covenant faithfulness to define them?
 
To begin answering this, Paul speaks of sin,
            and he frames sin as a universal plight, experienced by all people,
            regardless of their heritage, ethnicity, or behaviour.
 
And so Paul issues his great statement of human sinfulness,
            proclaiming that ‘all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God’ (3.23).
 
None of us, whatever our religious tradition or faith background,
            can attain the glory of God.
 
We are, each of us, whoever we are, broken people,
            and our relationship with God is correspondingly broken.
 
There is no-one who is righteous in their own right,
            not Jew, not Gentile, not even Father Abraham himself.
 
The keeping of the Covenant Law doesn’t make a person righteous,
            any more than any other moral code.
 
And so we come to the next step in Paul’s logical progression through the letter,
            and we heard it in our reading earlier:
 
‘For we hold that a person is justified by faith
            apart from works prescribed by the law.’ (3.28)
 
Whatever good the Jewish Law achieved,
            and certainly from Paul’s perspective as a Torah-observant Jew
            there were many good reasons to live within the demands of the Law,
but despite these goods, the law itself did not make a person righteous,
            it did not make a person in right relation with God.
 
And this is because there is nothing we can do,
            in and of ourselves, to make ourselves right with God.
 
Rather, the broken relationship with God, characterised by human sin,
            can only be mended by God’s action.
 
We cannot find our own way out of our own pit,
            only God can rescue us.
 
And so Paul says that a person is justified by faith, not by works.
 
This word ‘justified’ probably needs a little explanation…
            in modern colloquial language, we would often use ‘justify’
                        to convey a sense of ‘finding a good excuse for something’.
 
For example, I might come up with a reason to justify losing my temper,
            or being late for a meeting.
 
This isn’t the meaning Paul has in mind in Romans.
 
Rather, I think we can get closer to his meaning,
            if we think about how we use the word ‘justify’
            when we’re typing a document in a word processor.
 
Unjustified text has a raggedy right edge,
            whereas ‘justified’ text lines up neatly at both the left and right margins.
 
This sense of justify being to ‘make something right’,
            is closer to what Paul means
            when he says a person is justified by faith, not by works.
 
A person is made right, straightened out
            in their relationships with other human beings and with God,
            by faith, and not by works.
 
If ‘sin’ is a relationship with God gone wrong, with a raggedy edge,
            then ‘faith’ is that relationship with God straightened out, put right.
 
We are justified by faith, not by works.
 
And so, Paul takes pains to show that even Abraham,
            the founding father of the Jewish people,
                        knew God by faith first, not by works.
 
And, he goes on, if this is true for Abraham
            then it is true for all people, Jew or Gentile.
 
None of us know God by our own efforts,
            and none of us can lift ourselves out of the pit
            of our broken relationship with God.
 
The only solution on offer
            is that God first reaches out to us;
and Paul’s conviction is that God does this in Jesus Christ
 
He makes the point three times in our passage:
 
while we were still weak … Christ died for the ungodly (5.6)
while we still were sinners … Christ died for us (5.8)
while we were enemies … we were reconciled to God (5.10)
 
the mending of the broken, unjustified relationship between humans and God
            must begin with God reaching out to people in their pits of despair and sin.
 
What comes next, of course, is the human response,
            as people then have to learn to live in the light of God’s gracious act of mercy.
 
This, for Paul, is where the Jewish Law fitted,
            it was Israel’s appropriate response,
            to God’s calling them to be a holy chosen people.
 
But, as one might say,
            other appropriate responses are also available…
 
Do the Gentiles need to keep the Jewish law?
            Well, Paul will argue that they do not.
 
Rather, they must live by an equally demanding ethic,
            the ethic of the Spirit.
 
The person pulled from their pit,
            who has had their life restored to them,
has not been rescued to then dig new pits and fall into them!
            Rather they are rescued to live life as life should be lived,
            in renewed relationship with their creator.
 
The result of this, says Paul, is that
            “We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ”
 
Compare this with the basic human condition…
            Most people are not at peace with God.
Just look at the world around us:
            a world characterised by wars, arguments, and fighting.
The sad truth is that most people are not at peace!
 
And this is a symptom of the underlying problem,
            which is that humanity lives most of the time in rebellion against God.
The power of Sin over people’s lives
            separates them from God,
            and creates the context for all kinds of destructive behaviours.
 
Whereas Paul asserts that, through Christ
            a new relationship with God is possible – a peaceful one.
 
In dying for all people, Christ has broken the power of sin
            to dominate and distort human lives and relationships.
 
We are lifted out of the pit of conflict with God,
            and have the possibility of peace with God.
 
The sad truth is that as Christians,
            we frequently don’t live out the reality this relationship.
But it is still there,
            and we often need reminding of that
 
So Paul goes on to do just that:
            He underlines the new relationship available to those
                        who accept Christ as their Lord and saviour.
 
Paul says that those who have the grace and peace
            that comes from this restored relationship
            “rejoice in the hope of the glory of God”
 
Another word for “rejoice” here is “boast”,
            and so Paul says that we ‘boast in our hope of the glory of God’.
 
This good news of a restored relationship with God
            as something to be excited about,
            something we can boast of!
 
This is a proper response to what God has done
 
Often we read or hear great theological truths about God:
            Truths such as:
                        We are saved!
                        We have peace!
                        We have grace!
            And these truths inspire us!....
                        to nod politely and say “what wonderful theology!”
 
Well, for Paul, this is more than theology:
            this is a relationship, and a life-changing one
 
But Paul doesn’t leave it there (he rarely does)
            Not only are we to rejoice, or boast, when things are going well,
He also says that we are to boast in suffering and affliction.
 
The point here, is that the life of faith
            is not a life of guaranteed success.
 
Contrary to what preachers of health, wealth, and prosperity might assert,
            in either the first- or twenty-first centuries,
the true life of faith is a life after the pattern of Jesus,
            and that includes the suffering of the cross:
 
Against those who would try to shame him
            because of his sufferings for the sake of the gospel of Christ,
Paul rather asserts that such suffering
            is a clear indication that salvation is under way.
 
It is not a reason to renounce God,
            nor is it a contradiction of faith.
 
Rather, suffering strengthens patience,
                        and matures character
                        and leads to hope
and Paul assures his readers that this hope is not idle,
            that the process has already begun:
 
“Hope does not put us to shame,
            because God’s love has been poured into our hearts
            through the Holy Spirit” (v.5)
 
The love of God is already in our hearts through the Holy Spirit,
            and it is this concept of ‘the love of God’
            which ties together all the various theological and ethical concepts
            we find in this passage.
 
Note: it’s not our love of God;
            rather, it is God’s love for us,
            made known in sending Jesus to rescue us.
 
God’s love is unconditional, not earned.
 
And this love which God has for us,
            is expressed in his gift of Jesus, which gives us peace with God,
            and is expressed in a certain hope for the future
                        which in turn gives us a new perspective on suffering.
 
This hope, this confidence in the future, has a firm foundation:
            it is grounded in the death of Jesus.
 
We have already seen what this has achieved,
            as sin ceases to be a barrier between ourselves and God,
            and we enter into a relationship with God
            that would not be possible otherwise
 
The death of Christ, understood in this way,
            is an expression of the love of God.
 
On the cross, as Jesus dies,
            the love of God is satisfied.
 
God’s wrath is reserved for the twin forces of sin and death,
            at work in the world to diminish, distort, and demean humans.
 
Paul makes this point by building up to us:
            Someone might die for a good person
            they might even die for a righteous person
            but it is very unlikely that someone would choose to die for a bad person.
 
And yet… Christ died for sinners
            “God proves his love for us
            in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.” (5.8)
 
No-one can claim to be “good” before God,
            and thankfully none of us needs to!
 
God shows love for us by doing, through Jesus,
            what not one of us could do for ourselves.
 
We are, by God’s grace, reconciled to God,
            justified, declared righteous,
            gifted a restored relationship with God.
 
And this is not something that can be earned,
            it comes only because of God’s love for us.
 
And so Paul returns to the subject of rejoicing:
            Not only in the hope of glory,
            not only in afflictions,
            but also in God
 
He encourages Christian congregations
            to show their joy in their relationship with God.
 
“we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ,
            through whom we have now received reconciliation”
 
Our restored, renewed relationship with God
            is something about which we can be profoundly joyful.
 
And as such, it should affect our worship and the way we live.
 
This is not just something to try and tease out
            of a rather complicated letter
            which was written nearly 2000 years ago.
 
Because Paul’s letter was written to real people,
            in a real church, with real problems, facing real issues.
 
They were trying to share the Gospel of Christ
            in a community which was not really interested in what they had to say.
 
Does this sound familiar?
 
If so, then Paul’s message to the Christians in Rome
            is as relevant today as it was then.
 
If we want others to come to know the good news of Jesus
            if we want people to find the way out of the pit in which they are trapped,
 
Then we need to let the relationship we have with God
            affect our worship and the way we live.
 
What if we can grasp in our lives what it means for God to love the unlovely,
            to desire deep relationship with those currently far off,
            and to be willing to take the first step towards reconciliation.
 
What if we can live these godly values into reality in our lives?
 
Dare I suggest that if we allow God to work in us in this way,
            if our worship is real and joyful
            if our relationship with God in Christ by the Spirit is all-important to us,
then others too will be saved.
 

A time to be born and a time to die

A sermon for the funeral of Ron Gleed

5 May 2023

Ecclesiastes 3.1-8
Everything Has Its Time
3 For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven:
² a time to be born and a time to die;
a time to plant and a time to pluck up what is planted;
³ a time to kill and a time to heal;
a time to break down and a time to build up;
⁴ a time to weep and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn and a time to dance;
⁵ a time to throw away stones and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing;
⁶ a time to seek and a time to lose;
a time to keep and a time to throw away;
⁷ a time to tear and a time to sew;
a time to keep silent and a time to speak;
⁸ a time to love and a time to hate;
a time for war and a time for peace.
 
Our reading just now, from the Hebrew Bible,
            contains Ron’s last words to Liz.
 
We had phoned him on the Thursday evening,
            because we were flying off on holiday the following morning.
 
Ron said that he wasn’t feeling very well,
            and so I prayed with him over the phone,
                        and said we’d see him next week when we got back,
            before handing the phone over to Liz.
 
They chatted for a while, and as they said goodbye,
            Ron quoted from Ecclesiastes:
 
‘Darling’, he said, ‘there is a time to be born and a time to die’.
 
And so here we are.
 
Sometimes the task of the minister at a funeral
            is to provide those who are attending
            with a summary of the person’s life:
you know the kind of thing:
            where they were born, what they did, who they loved…
 
In other words, sometimes it is sometimes the task of the minister
            to talk about the person who has died.
 
But Ron wanted a sermon, not a tribute,
            he wanted words to be spoken about God, and not just him.
 
You only have to look at the way he has told the story of his life
            in his own words on the back of the order of service,
            which he left ready for us, created in his own inimitable style,
to realise that what Ron wanted for this occasion,
            was to point beyond himself,
to God who is made known to us in Jesus, by the Spirit.
 
So on this occasion, this Minister, who is also a son-in-law,
            will reflect for a few moments
                        on what it means to live a life before God,
            and for Ron to have lived his life
                        in the light of God’s love.
 
For everything there is a season
            and a time for every matter under heaven
 
Some of you will have been here with us in this place
            on the 3^rd September 2007,
when we said goodbye to Eileen, Ron’s wife for 45 years,
            after her long battle with Alzheimer’s Disease.
 
And today, we gather again because Ron has joined Eileen
            in the eternal embrace of God’s love.
 
All that is good in our lives,
            all the love we give, all the love we receive,
            all the grace that we embody:
all these are gathered by God and held fast for eternity.
 
But all the failings of our lives,
            the good we could have done but didn’t
            the love we might have given but which we withheld,
            the grace which we denied:
all these are forgiven by God,
            and remembered no more.
 
Because although life is fleeting,
            God is eternal,
and God’s love and mercies endure forever.
 
And so…
For everything there is a season
            and a time for every matter under heaven
a time to plant
            and a time to pluck up what is planted;

Throughout our lives, we each of us sow seeds in the world:
            seeds of love, hope, and joy.
 
We invest in relationships, friendships, and children;
            in projects, hopes, and dreams.
 
But in this sowing, we run a risk,
            because not every seed grows to maturity,
            and not every plant grows healthy
 
As Jesus himself put it in John’s gospel,
            speaking about his own death:
 
Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies,
            it remains just a single grain,
but if it dies it bears much fruit. (John 12.24)
 
Jesus knew that the promise of new life
            is always inextricably interwoven with the reality of death.
 
The American author Henry Cloud writes that,
            ‘Endings are part of every aspect of life.
                        When done well, the seasons of life are negotiated,
                                    and the proper endings lead to the end of pain,
                                    to greater growth...and to better lives.’
He concludes:
            ‘Endings bring hope.’
 
And here is a profound mystery for us,
            as we gather to contemplate the mystery of life and death:
the seeds we sow in the world,
            that fall into the ground and die,
            yet grow and bear fruit beyond our understanding.
 
And so…
For everything there is a season
            and a time for every matter under heaven
a time to kill and a time to heal;
          a time to break down and a time to build up;
a time to weep and a time to laugh;
            a time to mourn and a time to dance;

Ron was of an age where he did National Service,
            and he enjoyed serving with the RAF in Cyprus.
In fact, I always suspected that he was secretly of the opinion
            that his younger son-in-law
            might have benefitted from a few years of military discipline!
 
But this time of military service,
            during which he discovered his personal relationship with God through Jesus,
            was followed by a lifetime of spiritual service,
with the joys and trials of family life,
            set against a dedicated involvement in his local church here at Ranelagh.
 
Ron and the family shared the laughter and sorrows
            of being part of this church community,
rejoicing with those who rejoiced,
            and weeping with those who mourned.
 
And it is this community aspect of church life,
            that is so important to the journey of Christian discipleship.
We need one another, because we are incomplete without each other:
            it is through the body of Christ
            that we meet and are met by the risen Jesus.
 
Even in recent years,
            when ill health meant Ron could not attend in person,
            he threw himself into church attendance by Zoom.
 
Sundays were a whirlwind of online services,
            with Ron even diligently catching up
            on my own church’s services from London.
 
And so…
For everything there is a season
            and a time for every matter under heaven
a time to throw away stones
            and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace
            and a time to refrain from embracing;

Those of us who have spent time in Felixstowe, the Suntrap of the East Coast,
            will know that the beach here is one of stones, not sand.
 
And the stones of the Felixstowe beach continually shift with each new tide,
            sometimes gathered together against the breakwaters,
            sometimes thrown and scattered by the storms.
 
Ron loved to look out of his study window at the seafront,
            and Liz has often spoken to me about how, for her,
            the North Sea is an image of God: vast, unknowable, inexorable,
                        powerful, tantalising, and peaceful.
 
And within this metaphor, we are the stones,
            we are gathered together, and thrown apart,
we build our lives for a time, and then the tide turns,
            and all our efforts pass into memory,
and that is how it should be.
 
We do not build for eternity;
            that is God’s prerogative.
Rather our task is to play our part
            in building the kingdom of heaven in the here and now,
            living as if it were true, until it is true.
 
And so we come to the truth that Ron knew,
            which he spoke to Liz on the phone just a couple of days before he died.
 
And this is that for each of us, life is fleeting,
            and there is a time and a season for all things.
 
There is a time to be born, and a time to die.
For everything there is a season
            and a time for every matter under heaven.