The Fifth Sunday after Trinity – Reflection by Canon Leslie

This year the lectionary for Sunday services is taking us through Matthew’s Gospel. A distinctive and characteristic feature of Matthew’s Gospel is the way in which it contains five blocks of Jesus’ teaching. This Sunday’s Gospel reading brings us the third block of teaching. As a crowd gathers on the beach, Jesus gets into a boat, and sits down to teach. Here is Matthew’s ‘little book of parables’.
 
Jesus’ fascination with parables is much more than a cute way of getting people to listen to him. Jesus’ use of parables generates deep insight into how Jesus sees the world and how Jesus encourages us to think about the world. Jesus wants us to see the world through God’s eyes, Jesus wants us to think about the world theologically. Jesus calls us to be empirical theologians, people who look at the world carefully and critically, people who learn about God the creator from observing how God’s creation functions.
 
Matthew’s little book of parables opens with a well-known parable that he copied from Mark – the Parable of the Sower. If you really want to know what things are like when God reigns, go and observe the sower at work, and work it out for yourselves.
 
To prepare for this Sunday’s service, I invited those of you who want to do some thinking beforehand to focus on the image of the farmer, and perhaps even to imagine yourselves as the farmer, just as Teddy Horsley is doing in today’s picture. Seriously engaging with the soil opened Teddy Horsley’s ears to hear the Song of Creation, and opened his mouth to join in the praise of Psalm 148.
 
Next week the Cathedral is open for the first time after the lockdown and it happens to be Consecration Sunday, the day when we give thanks to God for the consecration of the Cathedral 96 years ago. This service will also be live streamed. The image to help us to prepare for this service, whether we are able to be there in person or to share in the service at home, is house of prayer. You can find out more about that theme here https://www.prayerforliverpool.org/prayer-resources.html. We would really appreciate you letting us know how you are using these materials. Please send us your ideas and photos of the things you may create; email them to [email protected].
 
The photo above is taken from the book, The Song: Teddy Horsley Sings a Song of Creation. To learn more about Teddy Horsley, follow this link to his website: https://teddyhorsley.org/. Check out his page on the St. Mary’s Centre website for more Teddy Horsley stories: http://www.st-marys-centre.org.uk/resources.html.
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We warmly invite you to join us for worship here: 
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​Teddy Horsley sends his Sunday greetings to all.
 
Canon Leslie