St Matthew’s Day, Sunday 21st September, by Fr Jack

Proverbs 3. 13-18
2 Corinthians 4. 1-6
St Matthew 9. 9-13

Reverend Lucy and I were speaking with someone this week, and we were asked how political our preaching is. It was amidst a conversation about the state of things today in politics and public life. 

The lurch to the extreme in politics and society. 110,000 people marching in London last weekend. The decay of hitherto mainstream parties. 

I answered that I don’t preach on politics. I don’t preach on the news. Almost never. With ten minutes in a Sunday morning sermon, the most urgent thing to be done is to dig around in the readings for today, and to see what God is saying to us. 

And I said that I hope this gives people the theology which is the raw ingredients of their politics. I’m not going to preach a politics at you. Instead, I hope our preaching gives you the theological raw ingredients to do politics (and everything else) well. 

Because our theology, our relationship with God, is not like a quirky old sports car we only take out on Sundays for a drive in the country, but the rest of the week is locked in the garage, not really useful for anything. No, our relationship with God, our theological way of being, is the ground of our whole being. It is who we are as we open our eyes in the morning, as we work, and love, and exist in relationship with friend and stranger. If we act as if God isn’t there, in any aspect of our lives, then we are living a lie. 

I know how many of the people here this morning live from their faith beautifully - at work, home, the community, in so many ways. In this time of divisiveness and insecurity in public discourse, of people lurching to the extremes to find what feels like solid ground (even though it is nothing of the sort), we need to be renewed in our foundations and commitment. 

We also need to be reminded that Jesus is always leading us on, and that we are never the finished article ourselves. Our views, our work, our way of being, cannot become too comfortable, or closed off by self-satisfaction, but must always be open to God’s Spirit and to growth. 

It is to that Holy Spirit, under her name Wisdom, that the Book of Proverbs takes us this morning. More precious than jewels. Peace, prosperity: all these things are the gifts of wisdom. 

It seems so often our society, here in the City and at large, has made wisdom (like faith, as I have said) a nice trinket, a toothless luxury, for some. But what really matters is the bottom line or power or measurable results. Wealth, brute strength and cunning seem to hold sway in so many things. Wisdom? Truth? How quaint.

Not so, says the ancient wisdom of Proverbs. What do we truly value? 

How does the way we live together reveal what we truly value? 

A wisdom revolution is what we’re being invited to live. Wisdom is gentle, wisdom knows what it does not know, and wisdom is also tenacious, brave, and far-sighted. 

A moment ago we stood and chanted verses of Psalm 119. We prayed for God to fill our hearts and lives with His statutes, His wisdom, His ways. Pray the psalms at Morning and Evening Prayer here in St Giles’ and on your own using the free Church of England Daily Prayer app (we can show you how), and it will change your life. Live and breath these holy words that countless generations and Jesus Himself used as His prayer book, and together we will live this wisdom revolution. 

But you can be forgiven for losing heart. Just as St Paul writes to the Church in Corinth today in the epistle. You can be forgiven for losing heart every time you see the news. It is real.

Douglas Adams, writes in his Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy:

‘For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.’

Basically, I’m saying, 'twas ever thus’. We speak of progress, and in many ways it's true. But humanity is still humanity.

So, if we aren’t to lurch into an extreme (necessarily half-blind) ideological corner, and if we aren’t to simply become nihilists who sit back with a negroni (as bitter as our hearts) and watch Rome and everything else burn, until we go up in flames with it…what are we to do? 

Well, we have been here before. St Paul’s Epistles to the Corinthians, are just one example. He writes: we must refuse to practise cunning, or speak falsehoods, of God’s word or our own. We refuse to play the Devil’s game, even if others around us do - in personal and public life. 

A revolution of wisdom. A revolution of truth and goodness. Look again, he writes: we commend ourselves of conscience and truthfulness, not cunning or strength or the game playing that so often fills the lives of those who appear to be on top. And it may seem, as St Paul writes, for a while that the Gospel is veiled: that evil is winning, that the good guys just get walked over and the bad guys win. And we start to ask, do we need to play dirty just to stay in the game? No.

Because we do not proclaim ourselves, we do not live our own lives only, but we are part of the living Body of Jesus Christ. It is His life we live. And He went to the Cross, because He refused to be anything other than who He truly was. And for precisely the same reason, death could not hold Him. The victory of darkness and evil is always, ultimately, temporary. 

‘For it is God who says [writes St Paul today] ‘let light shine out of darkness’.

A revolution of wisdom, truth, and light. A Jesus revolution. 

And it is that call that St Matthew hears today on his feast day. His own Gospel records this moment. A local guy who has sold his soul to the Roman occupier. Who extorts taxes and his own corrupt slice on top from the poor folk around him, presumably with thugs to protect him from retribution. The ‘Matthews’ of this world are alive and well, and Jesus calls him.

The Pharisees, for all their sincere devotion, had lurched into an extreme corner. They could make a good case, their reactionary but well thought-out YouTube channels and podcasts, would no doubt have impressed many were they here today. They were just tragically detached from the fundamental realities of who God is. In a bruised and battered world, they offered a compelling narrative of how to live, but for all that, they had become strangers to the grace and life of the Living God. 

Jesus quotes Isaiah to them: ‘mercy not sacrifice’. 

In a way sacrifice is much easier. Go to the Temple, buy an animal. It will cost you and you’ll feel the sting, but once you’ve done the deed, you’re done. You have fulfilled your obligation to God and humanity. Sorted.

But mercy? Mercy is much harder. Mercy is an ongoing relationship that makes space for mutual transformation, for forgiveness and thanksgiving. Mercy requires us to be open to the danger of being truly human together; sat round this table with Jesus, and with all those we find most difficult. There is nothing and no one outside God’s love, and therefore there is nothing and no one that we are not called into relationship with. A revolution (in these readings for St Matthew’s Day, and in this holy meal in which we partake) completely the opposite of a prevailing narrative that constantly downgrades our obligations to others, shrinks the human family into tribes, and hardens hearts; that divides to conquer, and exploits rather than serves. 

But we here - we sinners - have been called to live (one moment at a time, one life at a time) a much more costly way. A Jesus revolution of wisdom, truth, and mercy.