FIRST SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY
25 May 2008

One of the recurring themes of our collects – particular the most ancient of them, which come to us from the earliest centuries of the Church's publc owrship – is that of our total dependence on God's grace. We need his help even to think, let alone to do what God expects of us.

We were reminded it a few weeks ago, when on of our Easter Collects talked about how God put into our minds good desires, and asked that with his help we might “bring the same to good effect”. And we're reminded of it again today, as we pray “because through the weakness of our mortal nature we can do no good thing without you, grant us the help of your grace that, in the keeping of your commandments, we may please you both in will and deed”.

This is an important principle. It warns us against the belief that we can save ourselves, the heresy known as Pelagianism, after the British monk who first taught it. But at the same time, it also marks one of the great fault lines in the history of Christian doctrine, as over and over again Christians have wrestled with the question of how God's grace and our actions relate.

In fact, you see the tension between the two even in the pages of the New Testament itself with Paul insisting that nothing we do can save us, only faith in God alone; while James says, it's all very well to say “I have faith”, but unless that faith is demonstrated by good deeds, it is in vain. And at the Reformation that fault line opened up into a great divide, with Christians on the Protestant side of the dividing line accusing the Roman Catholic Church of peddling salvation by rote – do this, do that, to be saved - and Catholics insisting that while we are indeed dependent on God's grace, he has appointed certain rites and ceremonies as the means by which we receive that grace. And while the gap has narrowed over the years, it is still there.

The question our liturgy today poses, is slightly different. It acknowledges that we are dependent on God's grace, but goes on to ask, How then should we live? And each of our appointed readings gives us a slightly different perspective on that key question.

Our Gospel is taken from the Sermon on the Mount, that great collection of Jesus' words that dominates the opening part of Matthew's Gospel, from which we read over the weeks and months to come in this Year A of the lectionary. And its message is simple: God offers his grace freely to all, just as the sun and the rain benefit good and evil alike. And so we must do the same, doing good not only to those we like, to those who are our friends, but – like our heavenly Father – also to those who wish us harm, or who are not part of our circle of fmaily and friends. God is gracious to all, and has no favourites ... and we must be the same, perfect, even as our Father in heaven is perfect.

In our Epistle this morning, we return to Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians, as Paul continues to challenge the Christians in Corinth for their factionalism and party spirit. He acknowledges the part that we play as individuals, talking ahout his own work, and the contributions made by Peter and Apollos, about whom we do not know a lot except that he was a powerful preacher and gifted in expounding the Scriptures. But, he says, whatever contribution any individual may make, once again the initiative is with God, who has laid the foundations for our salvation in Christ and Christ alone. While individuals must choose how to build on that foundation, no one can lay any foundation other than that which has been laid.

And Paul echoes Jesus' call to perfection, reminding us that God has made each of us into a temple of his Spirit; and has called us to that holiness that befits the dwelling place of the Sprit of God.

The Old Testament reading appointed to go with our two New Testament passages is at once both different, and very much the same. The Sermon on the Mount and Paul's letters to the Corinthians are, in effect, preaching; Leviticus is Law, the foundation of God's relationship with his people of the Old Covenant.

In particular, Leviticus is Law for an agrarian society, and among other things today's passage provided practical details for bringing in the harvest and paying the workers. But it's starting point is very different to the starting point for any laws we may live by: it is once again the holiness of God, which our human relationships are called to reflect. And just as in Matthew, generosity is the key, the generosity God shows to us. So in reaping the fields, God's people are to be sure to leave something behind, for the poor and the stranger to gather. Workers are to be paid promptly and fairly. Fraud, theft and slander are to have no place. Justice must be just.

There are implications here, of course, for our own society, today; a warning against the over-exploitation of nature, and the misuse of those, especially migrants, who do much of our dirty work for us. But the implications for us as Christians are the same as in our other readings: we respond to God's grace by lives that are themselves generous, open and gracious to friend and stranger alike, just as God is generous, open and gracious towards us.

In short, while God is always the starting point, his gifts to us the inspiration for all we do and his Spirit within us calling us to perfection, our response can never be one of complacency. Salvation is not a right. Grace demands a response. And we have to respond to God's initiative by striving for that perfection to which he calls us, praying that, despite the weakness of our mortal nature that will fight against us every step of the way, we may know his help.

Be holy as God is holy, perfect as your Father is perfect. It's a tall order, impossible to fulfil. Except we know that in Jesus Christ God has laid the foundation upon which we build; and by his Spirit living in us has given us the grace we need.