speaker-1: Jesus does the miracle. Our job is to bring things to Jesus and then distribute the fruits of his miracle. You know, we're stage two and stage four. He is stage three. That is the crucial part of the story. and Then you can say, let's look at the whole story of the Bible, particularly if you take a view of theological view that I struggle with, that the fall is sort of deter determinative. But you know, you start with the scarcity of the fall. In chapter one, in chapter five, you have the abundance of heaven. Two and four, Israel and the church, Old Testament and New Testament, and bang in the middle it's Jesus.

speaker-0: Hello and welcome back to How Then Shall We Preach from St. Martin in the Fields with me, Jolly Gosnell. Very good to be with you all. We are looking at the readings for Trinity 9 on the 2nd of August, and I am here to ask Sam all the questions that you can't. so I'm going to put some to him as we look through the readings and hear how Sam might approach.

speaker-1: And me Sam Wells.

speaker-0: preaching on these passages and hopefully it will unlock something for you. we said this for the 2nd of August, depending on when people are listening to this. Perhaps they're entering the summer holidays, kids may have, you know, broken up for school now, people going away. Particularly it's noticeable in London that our churches seem to get a lot quieter, a bit emptier. during the summer holidays. And I'm sure that's true in many different places. Although also as a result of that, I'm sure lots of new people come in. I'm wondering with that in mind Perhaps with lots of people missing, does that change in any way how you might preach on stu something? Obviously the truth remains the same and it's the it's the same gospel that you're trying to share. but perhaps if it's if you're thinking, quite a lot of people aren't here in August, maybe I'll save that for a time when more people are, or does it not really come into your mind?

speaker-1: I don't I don't think like that. partly 'cause I learned earlier as a preacher not to prepare sermons with individuals in mind 'cause you can absolutely guarantee they won't be there. Obviously in the way we live at St Martin's they can watch later if they want to, but of course you know, that sense of she really needs to hear this.

speaker-0: You've never pointedly sent your sermon on to someone afterwards.

speaker-1: not not in the sense of I think you might have some points to tell not in that way. If I've got something to say to somebody, I need to say it them. but I and this is a pet preacher's irritation is you know, I've very often, for obvious reasons, been in other people's churches on the Sunday after Christmas, on the Sunday after Easter, on one or two Sundays in August.

speaker-0: Yeah.

speaker-1: And my heart sinks when people say, it's you know, it's let's not it's a bit like when you go on a residential, so say a resident or you go on residential weekends for your course at the moment. And you you know, bust a gut to get there at a decent time, half past six or seven on a Friday. And people say, We've all had a busy week, we've just got a very light programme this year. And I think, I wouldn't have bothered, I'd just come on Saturday if we're not gonna do anything. We'll respect the fact that people have come to church. They want to hear the living word of God. I it's the second of August, but as far as they're concerned, they are still facing a divorce, they are still facing a terminal illness, they've just been told their son is autistic and they had no you know, no idea how to explain things, but you know, they're facing the big things in life. the fact that you think it's a bit warm outside and you couldn't be bothered to do much preparation is not a good enough reason for you not to give the full both barrels. Yeah. I'm I'm pretty uncompromising about that.

speaker-0: Good. Okay, well, we're gonna go into our readings then, and we're gonna see if we can find that living word of God and bring it to life today. And we're gonna start in Genesis chapter 32. We've got Jacob wrestling and his hip being pulled out of joint. feels pretty alive with imagery, you know. It's continuing this Jacob story, and we also get his name Israel. Wh where do we go with this? Where is the where is that living?

speaker-1: Well, I talked last week quite a a couple of times and it seems relevant to today to talk about the well, we t we talked about the Jacob story and about how deception is so much a part of the story and this is about struggle. But I think we also talked about titles for sermons, and how sometimes I can arrive at a title for a sermon before I you know, before the kind of exegesis and having worked through the passage. And the title that stands out to me for for this sermon is Which Battles to Fight, or as as it's sometimes put, Which Hills to Die On. because We spend a lot of our life in conflict, you know, fighting with somebody who supports a different football team. It's easy to fall into. fighting with people who voted a different way in the Brexit referendum ten years ago is something that s people still take delight in. most recently fighting about Gaza and and different, you know, what should we do in response to the ghastliness of of all of that. So th and and and we have our own views about which of those fights are productive and when it's best to sit down and listen. Always an interesting idea. and so on. But this is this is about a battle. But on this occasion, this is a battle ostensibly between Jacob and a man. but clearly from verse thirty, for I have seen God face to face, this is an angel, this is the Holy Spirit, to use a not very old testament term, this is God. and there is in other words this is a a a a a bat about a a battle that's worth fighting. I have preached on this passage. I try and make a habit when I'm asked at a funeral to preach and to choose a passage myself to preach on. I try almost always to preach on a passage I've never preached on before, certainly not at a funeral. But In the days when I used to do one or two funerals a week as a curate, and there was a similarity to some of the characters that I ended up with, or there were people I didn't know in the days when that was very common in parishes certainly in the northeast, for them just to ask the vicar for twenty five minutes at the creme. I th I probably preached on this passage more than any other because there were almost always men of a certain age who'd been a cranky old bugger and you know It was very difficult to talk about unless you actually said that. Yeah. And this was a way of redeeming that story and and and and for good reasons, because this is a way of redeeming Israel's story. It's, you know, it's been a bit of a nightmare for a lot of the time, and a way of understanding that is to understand that Jacob, aka Israel, has been striving to use the usual translation with God. and has got a a limp consequently, you know, that that things haven't turned out for Israel as everyone imagined in Genesis twelve. So so yeah, and and you know, there's little things going on. So Jabok is a s word that sounds very much like Jacob. You know, so there are some things going on there. You can go into the geography if you want to, but I don't think that's all that productive. that's the heart of it. Yeah. So I think there's a half a sermon that's saying, Come on, a lot of the fights we get into, we if we were a bit more grown up about it. You know, how much time do you spend passively, aggressively wittering on to somebody about somebody else you just need to have a cup of coffee with? You know, what are you frightened of? Why can't you do that? Where's all this conflict of us stuff stuff coming from, etcetera? And then the other half is to say, but actually some fights we do need to have. And they're fights. They really are. but let's talk about the most interesting one of those, which is your fight with God. And I think actually, pastorally, to actually spend a third of the sermon really getting into what our fight with God is really about, is could be really powerful for a lot people. And and to say that the that God is not always, you know, harps on clouds. that that the r you know, a real relationship with, as I would call it, involves disagreement, And conflict to a to a certain degree, and that's honest. just like a profound relationship is not going to be lovey dovey from beginning to end. There's gonna be some issues you've got to confront and and sometimes they be have to be confronted head on. So then I think the challenge at the end of the sermon is to present, shall we say, two or three things and say which of these is it? Is is this part of and of course that's where the real arguments are because you know take the most obvious examples in politics, Brexit I've already mentioned, is that worth a ding-dong to the death about? You know, in other words, is it about identity or is it about economic policy? and then most obviously in the church, LGBTQ, you know, is did we just agree to disagree or people well this is about my identity and therefore I can't compromise on it or you know, and that's where that's where it really becomes interesting. Yeah. And but I don't think you necessarily need to name that level of detail that I've just named. You can hint at that. Otherwise you're gonna sort of say, well, you know, I always say don't do glancing blows. So don't sort of mention LGBT stuff in the last paragraph of the sermon. If you do a whole sermon on it by all means. Yeah. but don't do something that's very, very hot button for a significant part of the pop congregation, maybe most of the congregation, and then just not resolve it. That's just cruel, it seems to me. That's tantalizing. Particularly if people don't know what you're really saying. But you I think I've hopefully I've given the i given the texture of what I think a really good sermon on this could and a really transformative sermon for people who have, you know, lived in conflict averse relationships or lives for decades. you know, helping them understand what conflicts you just have to find a way to to live with and what conflict is you know, actually is the only healthy way to engage with it is to is to name it and have a ding dong about it. Wrestle.

speaker-0: Yeah. Great. Okay. let's move on then to Isaiah fifty five.

speaker-1: Well, I did preach a sermon on this called God's Politics about eighteen months ago and actually I I preached it again when I was in Utrecht a few weeks ago at a preaching conference and talked about a number of things. And I I think I mentioned last week I didn't refer to Donald Trump, but I did obviously it was in the light of his early moves in office. Shall we just leave it at that? You know. So so I you know I talked in that sermon about people can go back and look at it if they want to, I think it was March two thousand and twenty-five, and I picked out a few key words. So everyone. You know, this is this is a politics for for everyone, and it's about things that aren't in short supply and of infinite value without price. you know, so those are a couple of sort of principles about politics. and i th you know, my my steadfast sure love for David, this is about a relationship. Mm. So, you know, you've got quite a lot of principles you're already getting into quite quick. It's very easy to look at a passage like this from Isaiah and think, it's generally about coming back from exile and everyone's gonna live happily ever after. I'm not gonna look at it too closely. But I think it can be really helpful, particularly with an old testament passage, really to borrow burrow down into it. and so those are kind of a few ways that you can you can burrow down into this passage that you know if you look at verse five, nations that you do not know, nations that do not know you shall run to you. Well that's interesting, isn't it? Because we're told by certain political parties that the fact that people want to come to this country is a major problem. Yeah. even though that means two things. Number one, it means that jobs that British people don't want to do might have people to do them. and number two, that's saying that there's something really good about this country and a lot of people run this country down and suggest there's nothing good about it. So these people seem to think something good about this country 'cause they're prepared to risk life and limb to come here. So, you know, that's another way of of you know, reading i into into this passage or out of this passage, you know, really significant things about architecture politics. So if you just took those four for example, you've got a lot to say. I don't really know what it's doing here.

speaker-0: No, I I was gonna Other than there just being food involved, perhaps.

speaker-1: that's probably what it is. well done. Yeah, you're ahead of me on that. Yeah, it probably is the food.

speaker-0: good. Okay, great. Well, obviously we will put that sermon, God's politics, in the show notes. So do keep an eye out for that if you'd like to have a read and go a bit deeper into that. we'll continue on though, and we're going back to Romans or in chapter nine. Just a small passage here. I always like it when someone says I'm speaking the truth. I'm not lying. I always have a slight doubt that maybe do they protest too much? no, I don't think he is lying. But what's going on here?

speaker-1: My lips. So this is one of the really difficult ones to in preaching and it's where, you know, I've got some sympathy for people who like to do a sermon series, because if anything needs a sermon series, it's Romans nine, ten, eleven. It's way too long. You know, those three chapters, it's way too long for a normal reading on a Sunday. Mainline Protestants or, you know, non-evangelical Church England members, for example, are always very nervous of Romans in general. They sort of think it belongs to the evangelicals and St. Paul's letters to the evangelicals, as it's sometimes known. And and also particularly nervous of Romans 9, 10, 11, because everyone knows it's a bit about Israel, isn't it? And obviously, not you know, difficulties in talking about Israel weren't created in the last three or four years, they've always been there. and and Paul explores them a great deal. I'd be very interested to know how many churches since October the seventh, you know, in the start of the latest chapter in the ghastly story of Israel and Palestinians have preached significantly about Romans nine, ten and eleven. I think I think, you know. I haven't, and I probably wish I had sitting here now. Although, you know, on October seventh we didn't know we'd be sitting here all this time later and nothing's really resolved, although some of the killing has stopped and to the extent that it was going on until not long ago. but the basic shape of Romans 9 is, hey guys, we've got a real problem. The Saviour, the Messiah has come and the children of God weren't interested or Most of them won't. That is a real problem. okay, well that's because they were stupid and perverse and ignorant and some of them were. I know you obviously gotta be very, very careful with those passages because there's you know a lot of anti-Semitism that draws its root from those passages. but isn't it amazing? God drew the the Gentiles in, and that's kind of maybe why God drew the Gentiles in to make Israel envious. so actually it's all part of God's wonderful providential plan. You know, that's roughly what those chap three chapters are saying. That's big and complex and very difficult to do in a twelve to fifteen-minute sermon. Yeah. But I think, you know, if this is coming up for Sunday's running or whatever it is, I haven't looked ahead, you know, a few more weeks, but it's gonna be that, you know. You've got to do something serious with it, it seems to me. And that's and and yes, obviously the theological place of the Jews and the modern state of Israel is a massive subject. And it's extremely emotive. You're going to get people walking out before you've even finished, and they haven't given you a chance to finish what you're saying. You've got to choose your words very carefully. You probably want to show your sermon to people from different persuasions to see what they're saying about it. And you're not going to solve Gaza by the end of 15 minutes. Just deal with it. You're not. I'm sorry. It's you know, it's too big for you, it's too big for all of us. however you can't you can't you know it it it this a a passage like the i is is is dancing around for Christians it's dancing around behind the current chapter in the in the long and painful story of the Middle East. So this you know, this is dealing with the first thing, which is Paul coming to terms with the fact that Israel has been given all of these wonderful things but hasn't taken up the invitation. so on its own, almost impossible to preach on because it i you you you've like you've got the first few paragraphs of a long letter. What do you what do you would do with that? but to to take on to sort of preach on to say, Okay, we've only got a few verses here, but I'm not gonna talk about the whole of Romans nine to eleven. You may not have heard a sermon like this before, but I'm just gonna talk about the shape of it and then pick out a couple of things that to help us understand and come to terms with and then you know, I usually end sermons. It's funny when I was in Utrecht a couple of months ago or six weeks ago, somebody pointed out that my way of dealing with these kind of really impossible issues is almost always to see in them some form of church renewal, a renewal to a greater faith before we sort of castigate a state of Israel and its ghastly cabinet or whatever, you know, to the extent the people of God need to hear that sermon. to turn it back to ourselves and say, Well we could we could do a bit better, couldn't we? And and this could inspire us to do that. You know, that tends to be the way I go with those sermons and as somebody pointed out who's obviously been paying attention to And you know, I I shrug my shoulders and say, Well I I can't think of a better way to do that but obviously if I'm becoming boring I need to I need to work on it.

speaker-0: You haven't bored me yet, Sam. So good. Okay. let's move on then to Matthew chapter 14. And we have the feeding of the five thousand. this feels to me, although I'm I'm sure you may have another way to go with it this time. but this feels like a classic Samuel's abundance scarcity. Yes. you're not boring me, honestly.

speaker-1: I'm so touched. It is the classic. I told you That's right, but it's nice you can see where it's going. yes, absolutely. So I mean the kind of way I want to talk about this passage would be say to break it into five. So at the beginning we have A kind of crisis of scarcity, and at the end in stage five, we've got an overabundance, twelve baskets left over, twelve, obviously very important words, twelve tribes of Israel. this is about Israel being filled through the th through th through the Gentile conversion as I as I as I see it, you know, they they were he w withdrew by a boat, so he's on the other side, he's gone, you know, he's gone across the Sea of Galilee, he's gone to Gentile territories. Sorry. So and then we've got the role of the disciples, and there's two roles of the disciples. first of all to bring what food there is to Jesus. they bring the five loaves and two fish and then in stage four, so that's stage two and then stage four they distribute. And then in the middle, he takes and he blesses and he breaks and he gives. Which should sound familiar. Yeah. So the two things it seems to me, the sermon kind of writes itself, if you like. Sorry, scarcity to abundance. Beg your pardon. don't get me wrong on that. you're you're then Identifying the difference between us and Jesus. Jesus does the miracle. Our job is to bring things to Jesus and then distribute the fruits of his miracle. You know, we're stage two and stage four. He is stage three. That is the crucial part of the story. and Then you can say, let's look at the whole story of the Bible, particularly if you take a view of theological view that I struggle with, that the fall is sort of deter determinative. But you know, you start with the scarcity of the fall. In chapter one, in chapter five, you have the abundance of heaven. Two and four, Israel and the church, Old Testament and New Testament, and bang in the middle it's Jesus. Do you see what I mean? So the whole, so this is the, you know, I like preaching sermons where this is the whole Bible. Look at this. And this is a classic passage, it seems to me, for preaching that sermon, where the whole thing unfurls in front of you. And then you can just make some little side comments about. How much a burnout is is actually thinking our job is to be number three. The humility of discipleship is we're constantly bringing things to Jesus and we're constantly distributing the fruits of his wonder and glory. And then your little clincher at the end is, isn't it funny that this is the shape of the Eucharist? we, you know, we bring up in an offer tree procession. Priest says the words of institution, the epiclesis, and the coming down of the Spirit, then the communion assistants, who get a big shout out in this conclusion to the sermon, you know, distribute, and then we have, in a sense, the the formation of the new Israel and the Gentiles at the end, the the superabundance of the kingdom of God, which we go go forward with, having started with the scarcity of the failures of our week and so on. So there you go.

speaker-0: like a really exciting actually a really exciting opportunity to preach on a passage like that in a Eucharistic service. Yeah. You know where we people then you know, it feels like part of the liturgy in a way that will lead you straight into into that as yeah. That's very good. Great

speaker-1: Right. so I I and I find it particularly enjoyable to say this is the whole of ministry, you know, those five stages and we concentrate on two and four and we can, you know, relax and let leave the other s bits to somebody else. it's the whole Bible. and ta-da, it's the whole of worship. Yeah. And that comprehensiveness I think is really compelling and inspiring and satisfying.

speaker-0: And it, you know, makes this passage feel very fresh, considering it's one that everyone might think, we already know that. Yeah, he gets he

speaker-1: I've had two two heard too many sermons saying, Well, maybe they brought some food with them. Yeah, yeah. And you sort of if you compare that to what I've just been describing, please don't compare us that sermon. I really you know, you I'm sorry. That's such a seventies sermon. I'm a bit embarrassed about the Bible and we can probably find out a way in which it's so normal that it there's no reason for it to have been put down in the Bible. Amen.

speaker-0: No well we don't want that. We don't want that. Very good, Sam. Okay. Thank you. Thank you everyone for joining us. Thank you for being with us. do keep listening, liking, subscribing, rating, sharing all the ings, all the things that you might do with podcasts. you can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and of course on YouTube if you'd like to look at our faces whilst we talk. also you can head to smitf.org forward slash preach and find out a bit more information about the podcast. Find the links to follow us in all those places, and you can send us your questions. And we would be very happy to hear from you if you're preaching in a couple of weeks' time and you're thinking, actually, I'd like a bit of focus on such and such. Yeah, head there and send us a message. But until next week, happy preaching!