3rd Sunday after Trinity 6th July 2014
Civic Service in The Parish Church of St. James, Louth
Like all towns, Louth has, from time to time, issues that need to be discussed and dealt with that have a potential for dispute and division. In this it is no different from any other town. At the moment the topic that has this potential is the Cattle Market site, and the possibility of a supermarket coming to town. Here Louth joins a long list of towns that have faced this same question, and I am sure when this question is past others will follow.
I don’t know what the answer is, I leave that for others to decide. Nor is it my place to try and decide what God would want (nor to use the phrase that became common currency a while ago do I think I can give nan answer to the question ‘What would Jesus do?’). However, I do think that the traditions of Christianity can help us with how we come to a decision. And in doing this I think we can also learn something important about how we live our lives day by day – not just how we might live with difficult decisions as a wider community.
At the heart of the Christian faith are two teachings of Jesus – the Lord’s Prayer, and the Summary of the Commandments. In this second text – the Summary – Christians are told to ‘worship God with all we have, and put others before ourselves’. In other words we are told to remember that there is something greater than us, that we don’t have all the answers ourselves – and that we are not the only people who matter in life.
This is echoed in our second reading, where we heard that having material and earthly riches can blind us to the needs of those who are not so blessed as we are, and that therefore we fail to see what is needed by others. For this reason it is difficult for the rich man to enter heaven – not because his money will not buy him a place in some future realm, but because he will not see what needs doing to make ‘heaven’ a reality in the here and now of our world. And building heaven here on earth is the message that is at the heart of the other teaching given us by Jesus – the Lord’s Prayer.
But we are bidden to put others ahead of ourselves. If we are to truly live out life according to this teaching then the yes-no, right-wrong that we so often see in our world disappears, because we put ourselves in the position of listening to and learning exactly what it is that our potential enemy feels – and how the live, and understand this world. If those on each side of a debate truly place themselves in the other persons shoes then it becomes impossible to have winners and losers – for each person will seek the good of the other. In this dream world there will be no ‘yah-bo’ politics, less of the focus on winners and losers – and less resentment carried on into the future, to taint problems that are still to come.
The Christian faith tells us that this world is not perfect – whilst (in the words of our first reading) we are given a ‘wonderful inheritance’ we are still called to build a better place here on earth. In our terms this means that we have traditions and traditional ways of life that we should treasure – but these traditions need to live, and grow if we are to thrive. This means that there will be difficult decisions to make – and the Cattle Market will certainly not be the last for Louth! We will have to make the difficult decisions – and we will sometimes get it wrong.
And God doesn’t give us the answers – but in finding answers, we are called to put the needs and wants of others before our own. This may not change the answer, but if both sides of the dispute do this then it can transform how we get to an answer, and how we live with that answer.
It may be too late in the day for this to happen with our current debate as a town. But it is not too late for this to change how we live our own lives – and it is not too late for this to be how we come to difficult problems in the future – truly and deeply listening to others, and remembering that there is something greater than us, that we ourselves do not have all the answers ourselves.