Sermon for the Patronal Festival – St Oswald – August 3rd 2025In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. AmenThis week I did a rather foolish thing. I wanted to fit in a short run one morning, but was a bit pushed for time. I got up, had a quick drink, got my running kit on and set out. The first 15 minutes were fine, actually I felt great. Then I started to flag. By 20 minutes I knew I was struggling, by 30 minutes I couldn’t go on. I was running on empty – there was no fuel in the tank. Luckily my route had taken me around Carnforth so I was able to pop into a shop and refuel. The return run was a totally different experience. My body, refreshed and refuelled, was able to run a lot better. Now physical fasting, done properly, is a wonderful gift for our physical bodies and for our spiritual growth, but my fasted state was simply a lazy oversight. A foolish mistake. If you want to run several miles, I do not recommend attempting it on an empty stomach.I tell you this because in our readings today we reflect on the wisdom of God, and the foolishness of the human will. And today we also thank God for our Patron Saint Oswald, who knew that running on empty was not an option. Who knew his physical form and his spiritual tank needed to be fit for purpose, ready for battle, ready to listen to God, to be faithful and obedient even to the point of death.What I want to share with you today is the idea that we too are living in times where we need to be strengthened to serve by the Wisdom of God, strengthened in our resolve to walk God’s ways, to live God’s truth, to have our spiritual reserves refreshed and renewed for, the race that God invites us to run and the battle that we need to be ready to fight – both images of the Christian life in the letters of St Paul.In the Old Testament, there are several books which make up what is collectively known as ‘the Wisdom literature’. These are Job, Ecclesiastes, Proverbs, some of the Psalms, and the Song of Solomon, as well as the Apocryphal books like the Wisdom of Sirach. I honestly think these are some of the most rich and rewarding books to read, because they were written by incredibly learned and mature scholars wrestling with the ultimate questions of meaning and purpose and truth. The appointed reading from Ecclesiastes today is the opening words of the book, which are almost also like the closing summary, as the teacher (Qoheleth) concludes that everything in this world is HEVEL – the Hebrew word meaning ‘a breath’, and translated as ‘meaningless, vanity, nothing, a waste’. I wonder at his observations – that everything he has seen and reflected on, all amounts to nothing. Nothing new, nothing gained, nothing of purpose or value or meaning. It all seems rather bleak. But somehow true and honest. But then the teacher turns his mind to a sense of divine order and purpose, and by chapter 3 we have his notion that in amongst this futility and apparent meaningless, God has ordained order – a time for certain things, a place for certain things, even that God works to instil humility, perseverance and joy in those who surrender to His ways. Qoheleth has a deep sense of the ultimate justice of God, of His right to bring judgement, to offer freedom and everlasting life, or to offer punishment and condemnation. Ecclesiastes is a really fantastic read because it utterly transcends its own time and place (4th century BC)speaking eternal truths, pondering eternal questions, and ultimately submitting to the eternal sovereignty of God – whose Wisdom we will never fully comprehend.It strikes me that it is really very easy to fill our minds with information that does not draw us into the life of God. That does not speak of the eternal reality of His Wisdom, of His plans and purposes, of His Kingdom, and of His call. I was here in Church the other day and went to get one of the pew Bibles. It had a strange coldness to it. Like it was a fixture of the Church, lying on the pew unopened and unread. Of course we currently print the readings on the weekly sheets so I suppose many of these Bible’s do indeed lie unread from week to week, but I felt something sad about this. How can we allow the Wisdom of God to seep into our souls if our Bible’s are not open, their pages thumbed from our times of devotion to the Lord? In fact if you are sitting next to a pew Bible now, can you pick it up, dust it off, and open it to page: Look – here is the book of Ecclesiastes, here is the invitation of the Teacher to dwell upon these questions of eternal life. Perhaps later today you might come back to this mighty book of wisdom.If we are to be ready to do God’s will, ready to serve Him, ready for the race and the battle that lies ahead, then the daily act of reading the Scriptures is the fuel for our souls that we need. Whatever else we read or listen to in our days will surely remind us that we do live in a fallen world. That God’s ways are not our ways, that we need more desperately than ever to offer ourselves as living sacrifices obedient to His will.This theme is picked up in the fabulous exhortation in Paul’s letter to the Colossians – which is all about inhabiting the new self in Christ. You can find it on page: The renewed life where we are transformed from earthly beings riddled with sin into those who have been raised with Christ, able to discern the things that are above. I love this playful image of peekaboo that Paul deploys – the self of sin which is hidden with Christ in God so that also through Christ God’s glory can be revealed in us. It’s a wonderful acknowledgement of the innate contradictions in the human form as we live the redeemed life yet become aware of the hidden shadows of our past, which the enemy continually seeks draw us back into. In this letter the theme of the battle is resonant: there is a clarity of direction, and our intentions ad our resolve and our strength are paramount to resist these earthly ways which are so impure and unholy that they must be eradicated completely from our lives. I love that Paul’s exhortation is for the Colossians to be ‘clothed with the new self which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator’. Again, this knowledge – this food, this fuel, this Word of God and Wisdom of God dwelling deep within us is the ONLY way that we are ready to fight the battle, run the race. Renewal in any form in God’s holy Church begins in the deepest places of our hearts. Begins with us quietly, decisively turning again to Christ. Choosing His ways. Inhabiting His Word. Singing His Praises. Following His ways. Only then are we strong enough to do the work of God establishing His Kingdom in a world which is fallen, broken, desolated and dark.I’m struck in the life of St Oswald about his commitment to prayer. His dedication to time with the Lord. His resolve to pray ahead of all decisions. His humility to accept God’s will and to surrender his own sin of pride, allowing God to transform it into the humble servanthood of discipleship. Sometimes in our Churches I think we haveforgotten how to pray. We’ve lost confidence in the quiet time with our Lord that we are invited to daily. We consider how we can transform our buildings into community hubs, drawing people in for hospitality or social events. But these buildings are consecrated to the Lord. We stand on holy ground. There is no point to this building other than to give glory to God. It is a place where we come into God’s presence, hearts and minds open and expectant to receive from Him, to find rest for our souls, to be fed by His Word and His sacrament. To offer and receive encouragement and prayer in our fellowship, and to be sent out again as pilgrim people to live the redeemed life – running the race that lies ahead and fighting the good fight. We need renewal in our buildings, renewal in our worship, renewal also in prayer so that the primary activity of our Churches is the strengthening of our relationship with Jesus Christ, our renewed commitment to Him. From this form of renewal, I believe extraordinary gains in the establishment of the Kingdom of God are possible.In our Gospel reading which you can find on page: Luke perhaps picks up on the most deceitful of all sin, the illusion of self-reliance and the sin of ultimate greed. This I think is absolutely the one thing that time and time again causes us as Christians to stumble and fall. The one thing that saps our spiritual strength is our desire for comfort and ease. The man in the parable makes the mistake of making his discernment with himself, with his soul. He replaces prayer to God with self examination according to his own will. And he concludes that his ultimate need and desire is to build and fill these barns with everything that he will need for many years ahead. The shocking conclusion of the parable is decisive in its condemnation of such a decision. For Luke there is absolute clarity that we need to let go of this ultimate desire for wealth and possessions. That we need to generous to God as He is to us. That we need to give Him our all, and seek to strengthen our reserves of the holy things – humility, simplicity, and the joy of serving others.I wonder how we respond to this challenge. In demographic statistical charts we are an extremely wealthy parish. In our personal lives most of us want for very little materially. But God’s desire for us is to be rich in love, abounding in mercy and compassion, reaching out with a passion for the poor, the sick and the lonely. There is so much work to be done in the name of Jesus in this place, and we must not grow weary in this, giving up or simply returning to our places of easy and comfort.You may consider all of this to be quite extreme, and perhaps it is. When I speak of the battle this may not be something that you can relate to. We are not in this country living through a time of national war. But I want to assure you that we are living in a time of spiritual war. There are enormous battles and enormous opposition to the proclamation of the good news of Jesus Christ, especially in handing on the faith to our children and young people. There is a battle for God’s sabbath – people are busy and activities and commitments come before worship. There is a battle for Christian ethics especially regarding decisions around life and death. There’s a battle for social justice, a battle for generousity. And a battle for the transformation of society through the love of God in Jesus Christ.If you are willing, as Oswald was, to fight in the name of Christ, then I can tell you it will be the hardest and yet the most fulfilling thing you will ever commit to. You will see darkness you have never seen, but also the dazzling brilliance of the almighty power of God. You will live the truth that the prophets narrate, that in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned. In the race analogy you will grow weary and considering many times giving up, and yet you will stand in the strength of Christ remembering that He has won for us the race and the crown of eternal life.This is the invitation to renewal that we are offered in Jesus Christ. A renewal of our hearts, our minds, our bodies, our money, our homes, our families – everything that we have.Maybe today, like Oswald, like Mary, and John and all the saints – we can even whisper a tentative, fledgling, timid or almost inperceptively audible ‘yes’ to the call of God.To walk in His ways. To indwell His Wisdom. To know His power to save. To commit to the awe filled journey of following him all the days of our life, and making the love of God in Jesus Christ known to all.A prayer of St Oswald:‘Let us all kneel together, and pray that true, the ever-living and almighty God to protect us in his mercy from the arrogant savagery of our enemies, for he knows that we fight in a just cause for the preservation of our nation’.Amen
Thank you to all at St John's who have contributed to St John's Eco Church Silver award.
From the 15th of September 2024, the times of services will change. 8am service at St Oswald's, Warton. 9:30am service at St Oswald's, Warton. 11am service at St John's, Yealand.9:30am service at St Mary's, Borwick, 1st and 3rd Sunday of the month.
