A CHOCOLATE BAR

SERMON PREACHED BY FR. TONY NOBLE ON JULY 9, 2006

2 Corinthians 12:10

"My Grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."

Three weeks ago I went to Walsingham in England to spend some time at the shrine of the Blessed Virgin Mary. During the week I got a craving for chocolate. I went to the local store and there in the chocolate section I found what looked like a Mars Bar - but on the front it said: BELIEVE. I thought, how interesting - converting the world by chocolate!

When I looked closely on the bar it said: www.marsbelieve.com. So when I got back to London I went to the web sight. When I opened it I got excited there was the Cross of Christ. However, what it turned out to be was a web sight for English people to vote in support of England winning the World Cup!

In today's readings we have three preachers who had problems converting the world. No one would listen to them: Ezekiel, St Paul, and Our Lord himself. Each were great preachers of the word whom God had laid his hand upon. They were called by God to convert the world - and yet each of them was rejected.

Ezekiel was rejected by his own countrymen. St. Paul by the Christians at Corinth. Jesus by the people he had grown up with.

Most of us can identify with Ezekiel, Paul and Jesus because most of us have known rejection at some time. Perhaps in a marriage, or in our families, or by friends, or the community. When we encounter this rejection we hate it - along with its partner in crime, jealousy. These two things, rejection and jealousy, are most insidious - because we cannot do anything about it. It is beyond our control. So we become vulnerable.

Thus it was for Ezekiel, St. Paul and Jesus. Each of them responded in their own way. Ezekiel just got on with the job of preaching as the Lord commanded him - even if he was going to be sitting on a nest of scorpions. St. Paul, as usual takes the high moral ground. The Corinthians might think they know it all but Paul has done it all. And he is happy to tell them - except he is not boasting! All he wants to boast about is his own weakness. And so he points to his own vulnerability - and that interesting thing the 'thorn in the flesh.'

As he points to his own vulnerability he makes this wonderful declaration: "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is shown perfect in weakness."

If ever we feel vulnerable in the face of rejection or a situation that we cannot control this text is for us: "My Grace is sufficient for you."

It certainly was for Jesus. All those people back home - they knew him too well. They knew his family too. He wasn't going to get away with preaching at them! To put it plainly, they were offended. Jesus accepts the reality of it. He accepts his vulnerability and he moves on - the hardest thing to do in the situation.

So for each of these three, converting the world by a chocolate bar might have been easier. But it would never have worked because of their rejection. The fact is that the Christian faith, of all faiths and religions, is the most vulnerable. That is why it meets the needs of a vulnerable world and vulnerable people. Why? Because vulnerable people through their experiences refuse to accept a simplistic view of human life. We know that life is not always what it seems. Behind the smile is often a dagger.

The disciples of Jesus do not accept that creation, nor human beings, nor even ourselves, can attain by our own efforts perfection. Nor did Our Lord Jesus Christ think that. Unlike the Prophet of Islam, nor some ancient Jewish Prophets, Jesus did not think that an ideal world could be attained by outward conformity, either to religious laws or society's measurements and expectations. Thus it ever was.

Jesus understood the human dilemma. He knew that people do not invent themselves - but that all of us are vulnerable to forces we did not invent. Nature's ambiguities and changes, like hurricanes and Tsunamis. All the ambiguities that make up the individual man and woman which works against them and us. And, as the Book of Common Prayer says, the changes and chances of this mortal life.

Yet what Jesus taught us in his own birth, life, death and resurrection is that we are not nature's final subjects, nor bound by the ignorance of others. He told us, and demonstrated to us, that human life is more than what nature seems to determine - in general, and in each human life in particular. Each human life is of divine worth, says Jesus.

That is why "He was incarnate of the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary and was made man." He was destined to share our human life so that we could see that in his vulnerability there is grace abounding. He was destined to share our human life not only to make this truth known , that we are loved by God, but because he had to be where we are. This amazing fact causes us to kneel when we say those words in the Creed, if only because we are filled with gratitude.

As it was for Jesus in the synagogue, there will always be those who do not believe. We will not convert them with a chocolate bar! But only by our lives as they reflect that central message of Jesus - that God loves us. And in living that truth out we also affirm St Paul's words: "My grace is sufficient for you."