Sermon-Flipping Loyalties

The Pancake Bakery, Pieter Aertsen, 1560

A sermon given during a service of Holy Communion at St Olave Hart Street on Tuesday 4th March 2025 at 12.30pm based on passages from James 4.1-10 and Mark 10.29-31

 

The finger pointing, over-talking and disparaging remarks in the Oval Office - and the bear hugs and beaming smiles in Downing Street a day later - highlight the fickle nature of worldly friendships; which seem to flip more quickly than a tossed coin – or pancake - at present. Amongst male world leaders, at least.   

 

Friendship which we prioritise at our peril, according to the Epistle of James. A letter that seems to address the particular needs of humanity in every age. 

 

“You want something and do not have it; so you commit murder. And you covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts.”

 

Written not to a specific community but to the church as a whole and drawing on a lifetime of prayer and reflection, echoing the wisdom literature that he studied, the brother of Jesus offers timeless truths condensed into pithy prose. 

 

“Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you?” he writes.

 

Our brokenness lies at the root of our pain and suffering. 

 

There was nothing general about James’ experience of that. 

 

Leading a small band of followers of Jesus in Jerusalem in the years after the resurrection, James and his church were under attack by both Roman and Jewish leaders. And they had to endure a period of famine that led to great suffering, despite - or perhaps because of - their practice of living with their resources held in common and sharing them with those in need.

 

 

The season of Lent, which begins tomorrow, is a period of penitence, abstinence and repentance for our sins as we walk with Jesus into the wilderness for forty days and forty nights and journey with him to the cross. Where, through his death and resurrection our broken relationship with God was restored. 

 

James suggests that we are living in a perpetual wilderness when our lives turn away from that truth. Because we do not get what we truly desire - that which God desires of us. Relationship. Enduring, deep relationship.

 

“…whoever wishes to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. Or do you suppose that it is for nothing that the scripture says, ‘God yearns jealously for the spirit that he has made to dwell in us’?”

 

A statement that seems to reference a general theme in the scriptures rather than one particular passage. 

 

We pick up something of it in today’s short reading from the gospel of Mark, the conclusion of a section that begins when Jesus and the disciples encounter a rich young man who is ultimately unable to turn away from his worldly wealth. 

 

“Children, how difficult it is to enter the kingdom of God!” Jesus says after the man has walked away. “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.”

 

Peter, perhaps seeking reassurance, begins to say “See, we have left everything and followed you.”

 

To which Jesus replies that no one who has left their homes, their family and their livelihood for his sake and for the sake of the Good News will not “receive a hundredfold now in this age”. He goes on to describe this reward not in material terms but in terms of new relationships. Those who turn to Jesus will find a new family of brothers and sisters. And a new, fulfilling working relationship, spreading the Good News for the benefit of all. But they will also encounter fractious relationships with those who disagree with them and wish to persecute them. But these trials will not be in vain. The faithful will be reunited with God in eternal life. 

 

Unsurprisingly perhaps given his experience, the passage from the letter of James doesn’t hold back on the cost of discipleship either. 

 

Explaining that turning to God means cleansing and purifying our hearts of the temptations of this world; which will involve pain and suffering as we seek to overcome our “double mindedness”. But this mourning and weeping will turn to joy when we orient our lives to Him. 

 

This Shrove Tuesday, the scriptures call out the conflict raging within each of us. The double-mindedness caused by our flipping loyalties between our friendship with the world and our friendship with God. And they implore us to ask – to pray – that they land right side up. That we prioritise our relationship with our Heavenly Father. 

Image : The Pancake Bakery, Pieter Aertsen, 1560 - Museum Boijmans van Beuningen