May 2025

 

You must therefore be perfect. Matt. 5: 48

The harm I done by being me. Masefield

 

Everlasting Mercy

Matt. 16:21-28

What does Jesus want from you?

 It is in this text; ‘you must be perfect.’

 Now before you give up you must learn what it means - it means you must be all of a piece; like the writing in candy rock - you are what you are right through. Jesus asks not for good deeds; he wants good people. That's alright - but what about us and our small insignificant lives?

What's the point?

When my brother celebrated his birthday the other day he got to wondering what he'd done with his life what he had achieved - not much, he thought.

We've all had moments like that. wondering where the time has gone - and what we have done with it.

Hale-Bopp comet like Haley's comet - every 76 years. And what has happened since the last time - or before the next.

We busy ourselves away in our little house, in our tiny street, in the small town on this piddling little planet, round a third-rate sun.

Then we think of the long age of things and short our life is  and our life is over in less than a blink of the eye.

The great sweep of history - the momentous changes - leaving not much more than a pile of disturbed earth. And even in our own life time how things have passed and died.

Then we see all the great problems of our own time - that even in this short life there is little happiness for some - and we can do nothing to help - we stand helplessly by. And feel we are mere spectators; literally flies on the wall.

As my brother said what have I got to show for it?

And yet it is not all like that.

Everything from the smallest to the largest is connected. Did you know that a butterfly flapping its wings in Japan might set off a hurricane on the west coast of America. A small change but it sets in train a reaction and that another, until something great and momentous happens.

Jesus has no mention in the great events at the time he was born. We read of the overpowering cruelty of the Romans and this insignificant man preaching we must love each other. A tiny light in a very dark ad dangerous world. The Roman empire has faded but Jesus still wins people to a better kinder way of life.

Life is lived in the details

But Jesus understood something greater deeper than this. He understands that life is lived in the details not in the great scheme of the universe; in the great sweep of history.

Sorry for the man  who had researched the villages of the Borders before settling at Coldingham just in time to have a nasty bus garage built in his back garden. It is not the big things - like suns and galaxies, nor empires and politics, nor the great sufferings of mankind - it's that garage next door. We are all the same; it's the little things that create the aggravation and spoil life.

It is also true that the little things give us great pleasure. When we have lost a loved one - it's the little things - the things we hardly notice because they were so commonplace, that we miss and long for.

Jesus noticed the detail - the cup of water given to a thirsty traveller; the mite the widow tossed into the treasury; the visit when some was in prison, the meal when someone is hungry.

It is our task to supply the detail that helps the people around us.

The harm, the good, I do by being me

But there is something more. In the text we started with and the reading from Everlasting Mercy. It is what we are that counts.

To-day we have a very selective kind of morality. I can do what I like - as long I don't actually hurt anyone - then it's OK. It's my life and I'll live it the way I like.

Masefield understood it. In the Everlasting Mercy he writes of the hedonistic Saul Kane.  

‘For I was strong and given to sin

And welcomed weaker vessels in’

He runs into an old woman whose children’s lives he has spoiled. And concludes:

‘That old woman made me see

The harm I did by being me.’

Paul Eddington the actor understood, "I hope I have done no harm, and that is difficult to achieve".

For us all, there are people who when they turn up in our lives instantly lift us. they are good people - they don't need to say anything or do anything they are just good people - people who bring the grace of God into our lives just by what they are.

 

You can move mountains

Don't need to find answers to the big questions - we must just live the life.

James Barrie remembers tip-toeing round his mother while she prayed for them. She loved them and cared for them and prayed for them and that cast a glow of care over Barrie's life.

You are in the same position. In your life you touch the lives of those around you - the people you live with, the people you meet, the people who look to you and see you.

There is an old hymn which sums it all up - make me a channel of your peace. That's what Jesus wants from you.