May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable to you O Lord, our strength and our redeemer.

 

I had a very traumatic weekend last weekend and I wonder how many of you shared in that. If you are golf fans then I suspect that you will know exactly what I am talking about - yes the Ryder Cup. For those of you who are not familiar with golf or who have just returned from a trip to the  moon, let me explain brieflly what the Ryder Cup is.

 

Basically, it is a golf competition played between two teams of 12, one representing the USA and one representing Europe. It started in 1927 and was the brainchild of a St Albans seed merchant and keen golfer, Samuel Ryder, who bequeathed a handsome little gold trophy to be competed for by the best professional golfers from the United States and their equivalents from Great Britain and Ireland.

 

Now back in 1927, that probably seemed like a pretty fair fight since it wasn’t that long since we’d taught the Americans to play this game that we had invented and we felt pretty welln able to beat them - and so we did. The competition was played every two years alternating between courses in America and in Britain and for the first few years everything was fine and honours were pretty even.

 

Unfortunately as the century moved on, so did American golfing prowess. Sam Snead, Byron Nelson, and later Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Lee Trevino, Johnny Miller, and one or two other useful golfers meant that getting thrashed by the Americans became a pretty tedious and routine pastime for the brave lads from GB & Ireland.

 

Then in 1979, we found the answer - we changed the rules and expanded the competition to become one between the USA and Europe and so, in the early 80’s our handful of good home grown golfers like were supplemented by the likes of Bernhard Langer, Seve Ballesteros and Jose Maria Olazabal.

 

Suddenly in 1979, 1981 and 1983, we made a game of it and ran them close. In 1985, we struck gold and snatched the Ryder cup from the mantlepiece of the Americans where it had been since 195X. Better still, we did it again the following match in 1987 and retained it in 1989. Suddenly this little golden trophy meant quite a lot to the Americans who got so excited at winning it back in 1991, that they compared it to the Gulf War.

 

Having lost again 1993, we refound our winning ways in 1995 and in 1997, so last weekend’s match was another big deal for the Americans who looked like going down for another three in a row. On paper, you would not have given the European team a chance as the Americans had some wonderful and successful golfers. Even if you aren’t a golfer, you will have heard of Tiger Woods and he had some fairly powerful friends on his team.

 

Against all odds, the European team played magnificent golf for the first two days and established a lead of 10 points to 6 going into Sunday’s final day matches where a further 12 points were at stake. Unfortunately, the Americans came true to form when it mattered and the final result was Europe 13.5, America 14.5, just one cruucial point between the two teams.

 

Now I had spent many months leading up to this Ryder cup in intricate and delicate negotiations with my wife, to persuade her of the benefits of an investment in Sky TV to allow me to watch this biennial sporting spectacle and avoid having me reduced to a blubbering wretch with one ear glued to the radio. To my utter astonishment, she had relented from her unwavering opposition to this investment and so, I watched the whole match live on TV as it happened.

 

My emotions over the weekend were on a rollercoaster ride. When we were on top, I was elated, when we were beaten, I was desolate and had to remind myself, that it was, after all, only a game. When it was good, it was really good and when it was bad it was really bad. Now I don’t know for each of you of you can think of something that brings you through those emotional highs and lows. Maybe if you are a music lover, you can experience true joy when you hear a wonderful piece of music and true desolation when you hear the Spice Girls.

 

If you are a keen gardener, maybe that sense of joy comes in midsummer when you sit amongst beautiful blooms and appreciate all your winter work that got the garden to that stage over many years. Maybe the sense of disappointment comes when you see that an early frost has killed a precious plant that you’d forgotten to protect.

 

The more serious aspects of life give us many experiences of joy and disappointment. The joy of a new baby. The disappointment of a friend who lets you down when you are in need. The joy of sharing your life with someone you love, the desolation of losing someone you love.

Today’s two readings give us a wonderful contrast between these feelings of joy and disappointment in the context of our faith.

 

In our Old Testament reading, the prophet Isiah, creates a wonderful image for us as God the creator. He describes God as the owner of a vineyard. A careful and considerate owner who puts work and love into his vineyard. He picked a good site, a fertile hill. He cleared it of stones and planted it with the very best vines. He built a watchtower in the middle of it so that he could keep an eye on it at alll times.

 

He did everything he could to ensure that it was the very best that it could be and he sat back and waited for it to produce the most wonderful grapes. The result? Disaster - all he got were wild grapes, small, scrabby, bitter and useless and he asks himself - what more could I have done?   So the owner of the vineyard feels that awful sense of disappointment. In fact he is so disappointed that he decides he will break down the walls and let the wilderness take it over.

 

The story that the prophet tells us is obvious. The vineyard of the Lord, he says is the house of Israel and the people of Judah are his vines. He expected a harvest of justice but instead he reaped a harvest of bloodshed and he was disappointed. God had done everything for man to create the perfect environment and what did ungrateful mankind do?  Rejected it for a life of sin. Oh the disappointment.

 

But then, we contrast that disappointment with Paul’s letter to the Philippians, our New Testament reading. This letter from Paul to the church in Philippi (in modern Greece) was written by Paul at a very low point in his life - when he was imprisoned in Rome and under threat of death. And yet, this letter is actually known as the letter of joy.

 

Paul had a very specific reason for writing this letter when he did because the church in Philippi had a problem. Their problem was with a particular branch of the early church who became known as Judaizing Christians. This group believed that the only true way for Gentiles to follow the teachings of Jesus was to do so using the traditions and laws of the old Jewish church and this was the issue that Paul’s letter addressed. Paul, of course, disagreed and made this point forcefully.

 

He did not do this by putting down the Judaizing Christians but by proving them wrong. He told them first about his credentials as a Jew. He told them that he was a genuine Jew from birth, circumcised the eighth day. He was of the stock of Israel, directly descended from Jacob. Better still, he was of the tribe of Benjamin, Israel’s first king. He was a Hebrew of the Hebrews and he was concerning the law, a Pharisee, a very religious person, belonging for a sect known for their loyalty, patriotism and obedience to the law of Moses.

 

If anyone questioned his zeal as a Jew and  Pharisee, then he would point out his early life as a persecutor of Christians on behalf of the Jewish faith. So Paul had all the credentials to say that there was no-one who could doubt his commitment to the Law of Moses and the traditions of the Jewish religion.

 

But then Paul moves on and he says “But whatever I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ”. All these things which made Paul a very important person in the Jewish community, that gave him prestige and standing in the community, he gave all of them up when he renounced his Jewish faith to follow the teachings of Jesus. Compared to the knowledge of Jesus, all these things were to Paul - just rubbish. How would we feel about giving up our position and standing for our faith?

 

Paul considers our ‘fleshly accomplishments’ as ‘rubbish’. His compelling desire is to gain Christ and through that to achieve true and eternal joy. “For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as refuse, in order that I may gain Christ”  But what does this mean ‘to gain Christ’ - well Paul goes on to explain this for us.

 

He says that you have to ‘be found in him’ which he explains as not trusting in your own abilities but in your faith in Christ. He says that you have to ‘know Him’ meaning that you have to become acquainted with him, to have a personal knowledge of God - not some theoretical  or distant one. In particular, Paul tells us we must know the power of his resurrection and share in his suffering.

 

So this was the goal of Paul’s life and the source of his true joy and the rest of this letter to the Philippians goes on to expand on this feeling of joy. But what about us?  What is the goal of our lives?   Is there room for God in our plan?   Is God at the heart of our plan - as with Paul - or out on the periphery, getting squeezed in to the occasional gaps we might make on a Sunday morning.

 

Do we experience that ultimate joy that Paul describes from truly knowing God in a complete and personal way or is our source of joy more earthly?    Do we worship God by allowing his Spirit to rule over our entire lives?    Do we consider the relationship we are developing with Christ to be our primary joy and focus in life?    Have we begun to follow Paul’s example by beginning to submit to the working of God in our lives. If we do then we may truly experience some of Paul’s joy.

 

Tom Crotty