Sunday Sermon, 30 August 2026
The Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity, St Andrew’s Church, Sedbergh
You can read the sermon below, or listen here:
A reading from St Paul’s Letter to the Romans
Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honour. Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers.
Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” No, “if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
Romans 12:9-21 NRSVA
Over the summer holidays, I had the chance to catch up with a childhood friend. We were reminiscing about when we used to share a gardening job as teenagers. Every Saturday morning, we would cycle to a large house in the Lake District, and spend a couple of hours working on the grounds in exchange for some pocket money.
In truth we didn’t have much experience as gardeners, and there were a few times when I fear we did more harm than good. But overall, we enjoyed turning over the soil, mowing the grass, and tending to the flowerbeds. And crucially, despite our inexperience, the work we did was important. Without maintenance, a garden gradually becomes ramshackle, as weeds take over, grass goes to seed, and the rarer plants disappear.
This image of the garden came to me as I was reflecting on this morning’s reading from the book of Romans.
St Paul is addressing the small house churches in Rome that were probably only around 10 to 15 years old. Like a freshly planted garden, these churches are young, vulnerable, and are already facing challenge and persecution. They need to be actively maintained and nurtured, so that they will be able to grow and flourish.
And so in these verses, St Paul provides a kind of ‘Gardener’s Manual’. In just a short space, he gives over 20 different instructions for maintaining a healthy church. And these are not verses to be read once and forgotten – they are to be lingered over and returned to. As every good gardener knows, healthy growth takes time, and requires patience and continual care.
At the fountainhead stands the command to “Let love be genuine”. This is the central principle out of which all else flows. It is the good soil of the garden which the plants, flowers, shrubs, and trees rely on for daily nourishment and growth.
Of course not all soil is the same. Bad soil is sandy and dry, and becomes compacted and hostile to plants. In contrast, good soil is alive, full of nutrients, water, and living creatures.
That’s why St Paul gives us lots of instructions in his ‘Gardener’s Manual’. Over time, love may grow cold, become compromised, or superficial. It may look like the real thing, but under the surface, the good soil may have turned bad. His instructions are meant to show us what genuine love looks like, so we can seek to put this to work in our churches.
We can group these commands into four categories.
First, genuine love requires ethical action and decision. It requires “hating what is evil” and “holding fast to what is good”. Just as a gardener gets down on their knees to remove weeds and invasive species, so the church is called to be discerning, and turn away from that which is destructive and self-serving. Genuine love is active love.
Second, genuine love is to be expressed in community. We are to “love one another with mutual affection”.
A garden forms a whole ecosystem. Different parts of a garden are interconnected and mutually dependent. For example, bees and other insects feed on the nectar that flowers provide, and in so doing help pollinate the plants.
Similarly, a church community is woven together as one. We are called to be sensitive to the experiences and emotions of one another, rejoicing and weeping together at the appropriate time. This is a particularly important teaching in our privatised and individualised culture. The church is called to prioritise times of corporate worship and informal gatherings. Genuine love can only flourish when we actively meet together in mutual support.
Third, genuine love requires compassion and forgiveness rather than revenge. St Paul quotes a verse from the book of Proverbs, which teaches that if you do good to your enemies, “you will heap burning coals on their heads”. This has puzzled Christians over the centuries, as it can sound somewhat vengeful – surely it is not a nice experience to receive burning coals on one’s head. But most commentators agree that this is describing the experience of shame and surprise that can lead to repentance and to reconciliation between enemies. In other words, it is for the ultimate good.
I was surprised to discover how much animosity can be felt between gardeners, especially when there is a gardening show on the horizon. An article in the Independent titled ‘Allotment thefts: Digging up the dirt on allotment ‘vegilantes’’ reports on a number of contestants in the Torquay Allotment Holders Annual Competition who had their prize vegetables sabotaged for a number of years running! This led to recriminations and retaliation.
In contrast to this, the church is called to be a place of repentance and forgiveness.
Fourth, and finally, genuine love requires the renewal of our relationship with God, who is love. St Paul tells the church to persevere in prayer, and to be ‘be ardent in spirit’. This could be translated as ‘bubbling over’ with the spirit, just as a spring gushes forth with life giving water. Gardens require the rain and sunshine from above, and similarly our churches need to seek renewal from God in prayer and worship.
In these four areas then, the church is called to express genuine love. In our actions and ethics, in our care of the community, in our willingness to forgive and extend love even to our enemies, and in the renewal of our relationship with God.
I have been drawing on the metaphor of the garden as a way of understanding how these approaches can be cultivated in the local church. This is a slow and patient work. Just as a garden takes time to grow and flourish, so these attitudes take time to embed themselves in our community and our worship.
But there is one essential element that we must not leave out.
At the end of John’s gospel, in the garden of the resurrection, Mary sees Christ, and believes him to be the gardener.
This is one of those rich symbolic ambiguities in John’s gospel. At one level, Mary has failed to recognise Christ. But at another level, Mary has seen something quite profound. John is inviting us to see in Christ the true gardener. Christ fulfils all that was lacking in Adam, the first gardener. Christ is the one who tends and nurtures the church. And it is from him that the good soil of genuine love is renewed and nourished.
Let us look to Christ, the master gardener, as we seek to live out St Paul’s instructions for a healthy and flourishing church.
Amen.