based on Lectionary readings for Sunday 2nd August 2026:
Isaiah 55,1-5; Romans 9, 1-5; Matthew 14,13-21
Pentecost 10
There is a long-established story summarising the history of Judaism and its relationship to Christianity that pictures this history as a sort of hourglass. It goes something like this:
God chose the whole nation of Israelites to be his chosen people with specific privileges and responsibilities, but most failed to keep his law and only a small faithful remnant survived, but they too failed again and again until the remnant was reduced to only one faithful Israelite, Jesus. From that narrow point of the hourglass everything begins to expand as the church comes into existence and truth spreads across the world. The Church is the new Israel with a true faith and true understanding, so much better at doing God’s will!
It’s a very triumphalist story and very popular at various points in history when the church felt very confident in its own superiority. It is possible to take today’s three readings as confirming that story.
(Isaiah 55,1-5; Romans 9, 1-5; Matthew 14,13-21)
The Old Testament passage from Isaiah highlighting an everlasting covenant between God and King David. Paul in his letter to the Romans pouring out his grief and disappointment that the majority of the Jewish people have not believed in Jesus, and have become alienated from the developing church. Here, supposedly, is the hour glass narrow point and it is followed by the story of Jesus saying to the disciples who want to send the crowds away to find food – You give them something to eat, commissioning them in other words, to feed the people, to take the gospel forward, and blessing what little they have so that it feeds 5000. All is well, the true faith has arrived and been given to the church which goes forward with the blessing of Jesus.
All so positive, optimistic and wonderful, but fundamentally untrue!
At best, an exaggeration of both Israel’s failure and the church’s faithfulness. At worst, a deliberate attempt to blacken the story of Judaism and gloss over persistent failures within all forms of Christianity.
One recorded saying of Jesus neatly summarises what he saw as a key failure of the religious leadership of his day:
‘You pay tithes of mint and dill and cummin, but neglect the weightier matters of the law; justice, mercy and good faith.’
Religious leaders focussing, almost obsessing about following rules on insignificant, minor matters which are also easy to obey, and pushing aside, conveniently forgetting the really important matters – which are also so much more difficult to put into practice.
And just notice those three weightier matters – justice, mercy and good faith / trustworthiness.
Justice is not something any one individual can deliver. A single person may try to be just in their own dealings, but if they live a very unjust and oppressive society then their ability to be just will be hemmed in and limited.
Something similar also applies to mercy and trustworthiness. If the society in which you live is unmerciful, punitive and vindictive, or if the company you work for is untrustworthy that limits the individual’s ability to be merciful and trustworthy. So the temptation, and indeed the worldly pressure, to focus on the trivial and neglect these important matters, is both strong and persistent.
Now Jesus applied this critique to the religious leaders of his day, because as society’s leaders they had much more power to influence the justice, mercy and trustworthiness of the whole of the society than its lowliest members.
But this does not just apply to the leaders of Jesus’s day. Exactly the same critiques of leaders were made by the prophets of the Old Testament who again and again berate self-serving priests, royal advisors, greedy and unjust landowners, false prophets and untrustworthy Kings. Read the books of Samuel, Kings and Chronicles and one phrase you will become most familiar with is ‘the king did what was evil in the eyes of the Lord.’ The whole leadership class is criticised.
And a quick glance at the history of Christianity, and of those societies and nations which have claimed to be ‘Christian Countries’, reveals exactly the same story. And throughout all western societies today we have a variety of groups, political parties and national leaders for whom Christianity means being deliberately oppressive, unjust, violent and merciless towards minorities, other religions and difference in almost all its forms – and in some places these tendencies have the encouragement and support of large numbers of churchgoers and church leaders.
But, that is all only a partial truth, of course. There are also countless examples in the churches of today, and those of past generations, of concerted efforts to make society more just and merciful, examples of Kings and Presidents, Christian leaders and church members who have devoted their lives to those weightier matters, and that was also true of ancient Isreal, and of Judaism at the time of Jesus and of Judaism throughout the last 2000 years.
Rather than the triumphalist hour-glass version of Judeo-Christian history what we really have is constant ebb and flow, a push and pull, a constant struggle between those who promote and practice the weightier matters as best they can and those who actively seek to do the opposite. And that same pattern can be seen within many other religions and societies.
We are all caught in that tension between the forces of good and bad as they ebb and flow and struggle against each other, and so we are never able to get it right, never able to be entirely just, merciful and trustworthy, never able to be perfect. As Paul put it
‘There is no-one righteous, no not one………..all alike have sinned’
But then he goes on to add:
‘and all alike are justified by God’s grace alone.’
So he is clearly saying that we are all failures, we are all in the wrong, we have all neglected or sidestepped the weighty matters, or been unable to do the right thing because there is no single right thing available to do!!
We’re stuck in that tension and struggle—
but Paul tries to reassure us with this idea of justification, we are counted as just by God’s grace, treated as righteous even though we are not.
That is a very odd idea and the way Paul expresses it really sounds strange to our ears. Basically, it simply means we are forgiven because God is eternally merciful, loving and forgiving.
But there is an important caveat and that has to do with faith, trust- we are forgiven in so far as we really and deeply believe that to be the case, and the test of whether we really believe that in our very depths is shown in our ability to forgive ourselves and others!
In reality we often find it difficult, if not impossible, to forgive those who have hurt us, and we often have the utmost difficulty forgiving ourselves.
But forgiving ourselves and others lies in the core of our faith. In the Lord’s prayer ‘Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who have sinned against us’ and in the summary of the Law – ‘love your neighbour as yourself’.
There is a crucial link between trusting, accepting God’s forgiveness, forgiving ourselves and forgiving others; the extent to which we fail in one of those three elements affects and limits the other two as well. That is the nub of Paul’s idea that we are justified by faith.
We have been on a long and convoluted journey since the beginning of this sermon. From the worldly pressure to keep trivial signs of good intentions and obedience to God and neglect the weightier matters that are so much more difficult, through to the particular responsibilities of religious and national leaders to pull society towards greater justice, mercy and trustworthiness and their failures and all those signs of failure brings us back to the core of our faith – forgiveness.
Experiencing God’s forgiveness depends on our ability to forgive and to receive forgiveness, our ability to forgive ourselves enough and forgive others enough, that a little of God’s forgiveness gets through to us and becomes rooted within us.
As and when that happens then we become more able to forgive and more able to receive forgiveness. It sounds simple, but deep within us critical, judgemental, mocking voices constantly condemn us and condemn others and hold us back from fully embracing the loving forgiveness that God offers.
From the old forms of Morning or Evening Prayer two lines to hang on to:
If we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.
If we confess our sins he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.