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On Thursday I met woman at the morning Eucharist who set a whole train of thought going in my head. It’s been like an ear worm, troubling my conscience and provoking me to do my best to respond.

And I’m afriad the only way I’m going to be rid of this train of thought is to share with you…. which I hope you will also hear as a positive challenge this Lent, and do your best to respond.

The lady in question was visiting Winchester
as a niece was thinking about school here
And also because a friend was presiding at the Court
over a complex and serious crime.

It was a terribly crime for the victim and their family
(and, of course, that is where my thoughts and sympathies went to first)

But the case also revealed a group of young men- the accused-
who, as a consequence of their backgrounds,
were easy prey themselves
now likely indebted or indentured by other criminals
(higher up)
who used them to do their dirty work….

My new friend told this complex tale with intelligence and sympathy and it was a very moving account to which I would have listened
with interested detachment and sympathy of my own
and nodded and made some sage comment
about ‘how isn’t it tragic… and ‘we’re not doing enough as a society’

had not for the gospel reading we had just read together:

The story of Lazarus and Divas

Do you remember it?

Lazarus and Dives?

Dives is a rich man who detaches himself from the plight of poor Lazarus- 4
a poor man who lives destitute, and then dies, at his gate.

In the afterlife the tables are turned
with Lazarus being taken into Abraham’s bosom
and the Rich Man- Dives sent to torment below.

Dives asks Father Abraham if he will send Lazarus down to give him some water but Abraham gives him short shrift.
Then Dives says- ‘well will you at least send Lazarus to my family?
so that they do not share my fate?’

But Abraham said to him, “If they do not hear Moses and the prophets,
neither will they be persuaded though one rise from the dead. ” x2

Those words challenged me afresh- and they should challenge all of us to respond to respond Bible’s ever-relevant call- not for sympathy or detached interest, or sage advice- or even charity- but for justice.

It is a challenge echoed in our readings today
and by Jesus when, after overturning the temple tables
he said to the religious of his day

“But go you and learn what this means: I will have mercy, and not sacrifice:
for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance”

This morning- and this Lent as we pursue the theme of Healing Humanity-
I want us to hear that challenge for ourselves and let it sink in afresh,
and not to shrug it off….

How simple seems the issue of those days, when we look back upon it.

Every rich man a separate tyrant, every Pharisee and hypocrite, who could liberate if he liked, or if the prophet’s sermon got between his ribs.
We picture paint-by-numbers biblical baddies and imagine we’d never be like them…. but think again- are they any different to us?
Would this indignant Jesus be satisfied with us?

But are we too satisfied with sage comment and sympathy?
And do we sit too comfortably with
Or turn to readily away from injustice?

Religion, his forerunner, the prophet Amos, complained,
was nothing but a nuisance
which caused people to offer sacrifices instead of making restitution:
the very reason Jesus was in that temple
overturning the tables of the money-changers
who made, even that weak piety, impossible to access for the poor.

I guess what troubled my mind this week, and got stuck in my head
was the idea that Jesus might find exactly the same with me- with us.

You see, I think many of us may go through a great business deciding what attitude we ought to adopt towards various-
of which the only visible result is to ease our conscience.

Perhaps we give charitably- which is, I suppose-
a better sacrifice so long as we give enough…

But neither is what is really called for in Scripture.

Scripture challenges us at a much deeper level
to have a realistic understanding of how complicit we are
in the injustices of our own time
to recognise to our own indebtedness to others,
past and present, far and near.

Is not this the fast that I have chosen?
Says the prophet Isaiah- words echoed by Jesus himself-

to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens,
and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke?

From the 10 Commandments to the Temple Court
the Bible calls us not to sage counsel, not to sympathy, not to charity
but to the higher bar of justice

and to offer there a much more radical piety than is often comfortable for us:

“But go you and learn what this means”, says the prophet, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance”

This call to radical piety
set off a second memory in my head- bear with me!
of a visit I had early on in my time here in Winchester,

which is really just a way of saying the same thing….

A friend- a bit of radical themselves- came into our rather grand drawing room at number 8 the Close, and as he looked around,
,where others would have been impressed,
and said something like:
“you’ve landed on your feet” or “haven’t you done well for yourself”,

I just knew from the look on his face what was coming next!

He sighed disparagingly at me and observed caustically:

‘I always knew you were a pluto-aristocratic intellectual’

Hah! Sucker punch!

Well I can tell you it’s really not agreeable to be called a pluto-aristocratic intellectual, (whatever that means!)
by anyone, let alone someone
still busting a gut, working on an inner-London estate.

It may be not so bad as other things I have been called over the years,
but surely such a one is still an unfeeling parasite
who plays with prayer-books and liturgy
but like the Dives and like the Pharisees and all the other unfeeling baddies
forgets the poor man at his gate.

Aristocratic? Well it must have been the big lumps of dark wooden furniture that fill the vast rooms,
which we picked up at the tip because they wouldn’t fit in any normal house.
(one or two of the worse-for-wear may even be heirlooms).

Intellectual? It must be all the books, or the slightly dishevelled decoration.

As to the plutocracy-
I still don’t know what that means but I don’t think its good…1

Now being all those things he said-
I am obviously the kind of person who takes great pride that our windows have lovely old shutters on them…. And I am…

And I do like to draw them over our leaky windows to keep out the draft….

Even so, I couldn’t quite keep chilly force of my friends general observation.
and I want us all to take on its force this morning….

Imagine we are the ones sitting comfortably in our temple or temples
and along comes this guy- annoying and self-righteous-
overturning the tables and upsetting our status quo.

The Bible- like all the prophets God sends into our paths
often puts its finger on this awkward practical point-

The Pharisees, the rich man, the elite, the 1% could set free the poor,
and give them back their land, or freedoms,

And why don’t they? Because they have no knowledge of God.
For God is Justice. God is mercy.

Is it possible friends, that in this story we are not watching on
as Jesus turns the tables on others-
but that he is doing so to us?

Seeking to disrupt our easy peace and say to us?

“But go you and learn what this means: I will have mercy, and not sacrifice:
for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance”

And now, quickly, to the third and final part of my ear-worm
and something more familiarly Anglican….

George Herbert’s famous poem: Lent.

“Welcome deare feast of Lent:
who loves not thee,
He loves not Temperance, or Authoritie,
But is compos’d of passion.”

Like the Christ he seeks to follow, the truth is that Herbert is full of passion,
(albeit that he prays not to be not composed of it,
that is, consumed by it.)

Thankfully, Herbert’s measured challenge to Love Lent
offers us a hint of how we can realistically respond
to this important prophetic challenge
without being consumed by it either)

It is a simple call to a more radical piety, which I pass onto you:

We mustn’t turn away from the call the justice- like Dives, the rich man.

We cannot even be content with doing all the right things-
obeying the ten commandments for instance.

And we mustn’t just offer sacrifice in its stead-
simply easing our troubled conscience in the process.

But we must ‘do our best’.
do our best….

to love the Lord our God with all our heart and soul
and mind and strength,
and our neighbour as ourselves…

The question is ARE WE… doing our best?

And WILL WE?

The call to a more radical piety- to do our very best,
To Love God with all we have
and our neighbours as much as ourselves

This is a profound challenge,
but it is one re-offered this morning sincerely,
and with sympathy

Let us pray for Grace that our poor hearts might respond

Yet Lord instruct us to improve our fast
By starving sin and taking such repast,
As may our faults control:
That ev’ry man may revel at his door,
Not in his parlour;
But banqueting the poor,…..and among those his (own) soul.”