Sermon for the 3rd Sunday after Trinity – 16th June 2024

 

Fr Benjamin Drury – St Paul’s Athens

 

A man throws seed on the land..he sleeps, when he is awake the seed is sprouting and growing.

It is good to hear the Gospel of Mark with you on this my first full Sunday with you here at St Paul: planting seeds new beginnings are in our minds as we prepare next week for the formal beginning of my time with you and sharing with you In God’s mission here in  Athens.

I am delighted to be with you, and am enjoying meeting you all bit by bit. Sowing seeds has already taken place at the parsonage flat: some have even come up in the troughs of earth: I hope these green shoots bode well for the times we shall share ahead working for God together.

From a tiny seed mustard seed  grows the great tree

From a tiny shoot a tiny cutting of a noble cedar tree will come forth:

Such is the kingdom of God in all its fullness like a mighty tree described by St Mark in our Gospel as like that tree from a mustard seed, and by the prophet Ezekiel a noble Cedar of Lebanon.

These great tree analogies are to express the all encompassing nature of the Kingdom of God. Like great trees bearing much fruit or holding all the birds of the air. The kingdom of God is there both to nurture and shelter those that are within it, but also to bear fruit that is for others and draws them in turn in to the Kingdom of God.

We who make up the body of Christ as his Church are to be like this, both  being nurtured ourselves by the Great tree of Life who is Christ, and by being joined to him, and in his power to share that life, to be fruitful and aid in God’s mission to all people to draw them in to his kingdom.

St Mark’s gospel the shortest, earliest and sometimes most immediate of the Gospels:  perhaps the directness of the fisherman St Peter is behind it: St Mark is always passing on Christ’s teaching about the Kingdom of God: not of this world but able to transform this world: just as we are made Christ like, made more in to the image of the one who came to save us by his cross and give us life through his resurrection, so too that transformative power of God is to be put in to effect through God’s Church, his Kingdom, his body in the world.

 

We his body are to be a transforming presence: growing many branches, welcoming in drawing in the birds to roost in the branches of the church, offering the prayer and worship to God and for the world: being fruitful in prayer and acts of mercy.

We are in St Paul’s city, his zeal for the kingdom of God brought him here:

In his letter to our neighbour long ago down in Corinth St Paul speaks of making our home in the lord.

I have come to make my home among you, but yet we have a true home only in Our lord Jesus Christ

Some of us might feel exiles in this land, some may feel we have found our true home here or somewhere else.

Remember what St Paul teaches us, that we are all exiles whilst we live in the body: exiles from the Lord. That is to say that we should never be quite at home in the World, because we belong not to it but to God.

Lest we be downcast St Paul reminds us that we are all new creations: in this life not just the next: meaning we are new because we are regenerate: re- born in to a life with Christ from the time of our baptism at whatever age.

I pray that God’s will be done here in Athens in our small church and beyond its walls. That we assist with the other local churches in building up his Kingdom together. By proclaiming our Faith in Christ the Risen Lord: by whose death we are saved and healed from our sins, and by whose resurrection has shared his life with us.

It is good to give you thanks O Lord.. to proclaim your love in the morning and your truth in the watches of the night

The Just will flourish like a palm tree and grow like a cedar of Lebanon.. still bearing fruit when they are old, still full of sap, still green.

Let us embrace together our calling always as Christians… little anointed ones, little followers of the Christ, in proclaiming his resurrection, in truth and in love, and by doing his will in love and in truth, and in his strength build up the Kingdom of God together.