Faith without works is dead

A reflection given at morning worship with the Community of Brendan the Navigator on Tuesday 12th August 2025

In his Epistle, James urges Christians to break down the barriers of class and wealth in order to relieve the distress of the poor.

We can’t be certain who this James was, but an ancient tradition says it was James the brother of Jesus, a leader of the earliest church in Jerusalem. At the great council there, he and St Peter supported St Paul’s case that gentiles should be accepted into the Christian church alongside Jews without being circumcised.

Nor do we know what church or churches he is writing to, but in the verses immediately preceding today’s reading, it is clear they are riven by class divides – the wealthy are being treated better than the poor. He points out that God has ‘chosen the poor… to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him’. And he reminds them of the law proclaimed by Jesus, ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself’.

In today’s reading (James 2:14-26), James asks rhetorically, ‘What good is it, my brothers and sisters if you say you have faith but do not have works?’ By ‘works’ he clearly means good works, deeds of love and compassion toward those in need. He continues, ‘If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food… and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?’ ‘So’, he concludes, ‘faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead’.

The message is clear. We have no right to call ourselves Christians – our faith is dead – unless we seek to relieve human distress when we see it.

For us in modern Ireland, this means that we should not evade the taxes which fund the social welfare system and the health service. We must also be generous in giving to the organisations which support those who slip through the cracks, to the extent we are blessed to be able to do so - organisations such as St Vincent de Paul, Protestant Aid, the Simon Community, and Pieta House, to name a few.

And our Christian obligation extends beyond our own community and country to all those in trouble, need, sickness and other adversities, wherever that may be. We rightly pray for them, and we must also give generously from the riches God has given us to the aid agencies working on our behalf with the poor and hungry in all too many places around our shamefully broken world. 

Among them is Church of Ireland Bishops’ Appeal. Set up by our church to bring good news to the poor and relief to the suffering around the world, it has an excellent reputation for working with partners with the local knowledge and resources to ensure that funds reach the people who most need support.

Of Bees and Humans

A foraging honeybee

Address given at St Mary's Nenagh and Killodiernan Church on Sunday 10th August 2025, the 8th after Trinity

What wonderful creatures honeybees are!

I used to keep bees myself, but now I find lifting the hive boxes too much for me. I have given my hives away to a kind friend and neighbour, Caleb Clarke, who keeps a hive in my garden. I can still enjoy the bees visiting the flowers, and he gets a harvest of honey.

Wild bee colonies have become scarce in Ireland, killed off by the Varroa mite, an alien species inadvertently introduced from overseas. This is one of many examples of how human actions are damaging biodiversity. Our actions threaten to unravel the wonderful web of life which God has created on this planet through evolution, which is the mechanism God uses to continuously create new life.

Because of Varroa, beekeepers must treat their domesticated hives with bee medicines to keep them healthy. I have just come back from a holiday on the Isle of Man, which remains Varroa-free. The Manx government is making strenuous efforts to prevent its introduction. I hope they will succeed. Here in Ireland there are some hopeful signs that honeybees are evolving over time to resist Varroa infection.

We all love honey of course, and the finest church candles are always made from beeswax, but even more important is the service bees give the rest of creation by pollinating flowers.

Bees have evolved in an intricate three-cornered dance of life with flowering plants and animals including ourselves. In this dance, plants provide pollen and nectar to sustain bees, which in return pollinate the flowers so that they can produce fruit and seeds. These in turn sustain animals, which in wonderfully ingenious ways distribute seeds to start a new generation of plants.

God’s purpose in creating bees, I think, is simply that they should be good bees, playing their part in the dance of life alongside all the other creatures he has created to sustain the web of life. Their scarcity should shock us out of complacency. We thwart God’s purpose if we do not protect them.

In God’s eyes, I think, we are not so very different to honeybees!

Surely God’s purpose in creating us is simply that we should be good human beings.

Like bees we are small, vulnerable creatures, short-lived, subject to disease. Unlike bees, we are made in God’s image, as souls with consciences. We are able to reflect on what is right and wrong, and to plan for the future, in a sense to be co-creators of it with God. But with this privilege also comes our susceptibility to those spiritual diseases which we call sin - spiritual diseases like greed and selfishness which all too often lead us to hurt our fellow human beings and damage God’s creation.

Today’s readings tell us much about how to be the good human beings God wishes us to be - and how to resist our innate susceptibility to sin.

In the OT reading, Isaiah (1:1,10-20) proclaims a great insight.

God has no use for empty rituals and sacrifices, says Isaiah. From the dawn of our species people have sought to placate, even manipulate, gods they have seen as angry and untrustworthy, to benefit themselves – as many still do today. But all this is folly: ‘What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the Lord; … I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity’.

Instead, Isaiah tells us, the one true God wants us to ‘cease to do evil, learn to do good’. God will bless us when we behave as good human beings should, treating others as we would want them to treat us, if our circumstances were reversed – a principle often called the ‘golden rule’, which we Christians share with many others of different faiths and none. We are to ‘seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow’.

In the NT reading (Luke 12:32-40), Jesus reveals deeper truths.

Jesus understands that people are often selfish and greedy because they are anxious and afraid for the future. So he tells the disciples – and through them, us – that we should put aside such anxiety. God knows what we need, and God will give us all we need when we work for his kingdom – in other words, when we try to be the good human beings God wants us to be. ‘Do not be afraid, little flock’, he says, ‘for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom’.

God has given us all that we have in order that that we may be generous with it, not hoard it. What we give away, to those who need it more than we do, is ‘an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys’. If we want to be good human beings we must focus on that kind of spiritual wealth, rather than accumulating material wealth, ‘for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also’.

And we must be alert for opportunities to respond generously, as and when God prompts us to do so. As Jesus puts it, ‘Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit’. We should not put off calls on our generosity, waiting perhaps for a better time or a more pressing need to come along. We are mortal – we do not know when God will knock on the door to call us out of this life. ‘You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour’, says Jesus. And it would be shameful, quite shameful, when he does come knocking - as we know he will - to admit that we wasted the opportunities he gave us, the opportunities to act like the good human beings he created us to be.

One opportunity to be generous you might consider is this - to support our Templederry parishioner John Wallace as he walks the entire Beara-Breifne Way – 550km from West Cork to Cavan. John and his family lost their father William to suicide in 2015, a tragedy many here will remember. John is taking on this journey in his father’s memory to raise funds for mental health charities Aware, Jigsaw, and Pieta House. He’ll be walking between 30 and 50 km a day, unsupported, carrying his own supplies and relying on the kindness of local communities for food and accommodation, seeking to publicise the message: ‘Help is out there if you’re willing to ask’. You can support John by donating through iDonate – just google ‘Miles for Minds John Wallace’.

Of course there are so many other worthwhile causes, opportunities to respond generously to God’s generosity to us, but whatever you choose to support, ‘be dressed for action and have your lamps lit’!

Let me finish with prayer:

O God, grant us the grace 

to cease to do evil and learn to do good;

to be unafraid and generous with your gifts,

so storing up unfailing treasure in heaven;

to be always alert for opportunities

to be the good human beings you created us to be.

We pray in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen

Martha and Mary

Christ in the home of Martha and Mary, Johannes Vermeer, 1654-5

Address given at Templederry Church on 19/7/25 and St Mary's Nenagh on 20/7/25, the 5th Sunday after Trinity

What a contrast there is between today’s readings (Amos 8:1-12, and Luke 10:38-42)

In the 1^st reading, Amos pronounces doom on the people of Israel, because they have done evil in God’s sight. But notice that Psalm 52 reassures those who are righteous that they will be spared that doom.

But today I shall leave all that doom on one side. Instead I’m going to focus on the 2^nd reading from Luke, in which Jesus responds with sensitivity and compassion to Martha’s tiff with her sister Mary.

When Jesus visited his friends Martha & Mary, he walked into the middle of a family row.

I’m sure we’ve all had that kind of experience some time or another, to be a guest in front of whom the hosts quarrel. How embarrassing!

As Jesus was talking, Mary sat at his feet as the custom was then, listening to Jesus. Martha, meanwhile, was making herself busy, tidying and preparing refreshments – a banquet perhaps, for their special guest. I imagine that Martha must have been fuming inside for quite a while - perhaps long before Jesus’s arrival - feeling that Mary was not pulling her weight about the house. Now here was Martha, dashing around like a mad thing, while her sister Mary just sat and listened with rapt attention to Jesus’s every word.

Finally Martha’s self-control snapped. She rushed in to Jesus and burst out, ‘Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.’ She deliberately involved Jesus, their guest, in their family row. She didn’t have to. She could have come in and had a quiet, private word with Mary to ask for help, but in her anger she tried to show her sister up in front of Jesus. How embarrassing it must have been for Jesus.

Jesus answered her, ‘Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.’

It was a very mild rebuke. Jesus recognised that it was Martha’s worry and distraction that was the cause of her rudeness. But it was not for him to take Martha’s side in her row with Mary. He surely realised that what Mary needed at that moment was to listen to his words - her ‘better part, which will not be taken away from her’. And perhaps that is what Martha needed too.

‘There is need of only one thing’, Jesus tells Martha. I wonder what Jesus meant by this.

Was it that he didn’t want a big fuss made of him? No big dinner - just a single, simple dish would be quite enough. Well, possibly – but there’s more to it than that, I feel sure.

Many Christians, particularly from contemplative or monastic traditions, have interpreted the one thing needed as to listen to Jesus’s words, as Mary chose to do. Does this suggest that those who work hard at practical tasks of service like Martha have chosen a lesser part? I don’t think this is what Jesus meant at all. Service to others was very important to Jesus - we need only remember the example of service Jesus gave to his disciples by washing their feet in John’s version of the Last Supper.

The truth is, surely, that God has not made everyone alike. We are all individuals. Some are dynamos of activity who can spend their lives in service to God and other people, while others are naturally quiet and more suited to a contemplative life. God needs his Marys, and his Marthas too. And most of us alternate between these two poles at different times – when service becomes too stressful, we need to take time out, for recreation, to re-create ourselves, to listen to Jesus, so that we may return again refreshed to serve.

I think the one thing needed must be something else. I wonder if it could be this - that Martha and Mary should love one another, whatever their petty differences, just as Jesus loved them both – as in the ‘new commandment’ which Jesus gave to his disciples, again in John’s version of the Last Supper.

I am blessed to have a Martha at home – that is the name my wife Marty was given at her baptism.

I think she must be close to sainthood to put up with me. She spends so much more time than me looking after the house, while I lock myself away in my office struggling to understand Jesus’s words in order to preach about them. I don’t think I am very good at noticing when this starts to irritate her, and I fear I often fail to recognise her needs for time out.

Martha’s problem, I believe, was not too much service, but that she became ‘worried and distracted by many things’, to use Jesus’s words. I think this is often a problem for people who give their lives in service. They may feel unable to admit to themselves when they need to take a break, and those around them may fail to notice their rising stress-levels. When the stress becomes too much, something snaps and they can break down in anger, or depression, or even physical illness.

We should pray for those who minister and care for others, whether in their homes, or in hospitals and nursing homes, or social services and other caring professions, that the Holy Spirit may give them the strength, not only to serve, but to know when to take a break, or to ask for help when they need it. We should cut them some slack, and cultivate in ourselves the sensitivity Jesus showed to Martha and Mary. And we should show them our love, as Jesus loves us and shows us his love.

I shall finish with a prayer, a Kitchen Prayer, in recognition of all the Marthas in our lives. It was written by a retired schoolteacher, Klara Carlotta Munkres from Missouri, USA, and it goes like this.

Lord of all pots and pans and things, since I've no time to be
A saint by doing lovely things or watching late with thee,
Or dreaming in the twilight or storming heaven's gates.
Make me a saint by getting meals or washing up the plates.

Although I must have Martha's hands, I too have Mary's mind.
And when I black the boots and shoes, thy sandals, Lord, I find.
I think of how they trod the earth when e’er I scrub the floor.
Accept this meditation, Lord, I haven't time for more.

Warm all the kitchen with thy love, and light it with thy peace,
Forgive me all my worrying and make all grumbling cease.
Thou who didst love to give us food in room or by the sea,
Accept this service that I do - I do it unto thee.

Amen.

God seeks out our whole self

Reflection at Morning Worship with the Community of Brendan the Navigator on Tuesday 8th Juky 2025

In that reading (Romans 12:1-8), St Paul appeals to brothers and sisters in Christ to offer their whole selves to God. The old Greek word translated here as ‘appeal’ – ‘parakalo’ – is still used in modern Greek to mean ‘I beg you’, or simply ‘please’, as those of us who have enjoyed holidays in Greece will know.

Paul is speaking directly to those in Rome in his time, but also I believe to Christ’s disciples in our time, and in all times. His appeal to them - and to us - is twofold:

1.     ‘Present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God’. Most people today cringe at that word sacrifice, I think. It reeks of the blood and guts of animal sacrifice, which we rightly reject as barbarous, though in Paul’s day it was just a normal part of life. Don’t let the word sacrifice put you off, because Paul makes clear that what he is talking is a spiritual sacrifice. It is worshipping God, the source of our being who gives us life, which is just what we are doing today.

2.     ‘Be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good acceptable and perfect’. It is our whole self that God wants of us, both body and mind. Being holy, turning up to church and worshiping God, is not enough. We must also do our very best to understand what God’s will is for us, and act on it, in order to be acceptable to God.

It is when our whole self, body and mind, is accepted by God our loving father, that we will truly flourish as his beloved children.

Paul then goes on to warn his readers, and you and me, against individual pride. We must not think too highly of ourselves - none of us is any better than any other. Paul uses the metaphor of the human body, as he often does.

Just as a human body is made up of different organs, with different functions, ‘so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another’. We are not all the same, we are individuals. God has graced us with different gifts, and God needs each of our gifts if Christ’s body, those of all traditions who confess his name, is to function as it should. Paul gives several examples of things needed by Christ’s body: prophecy, ministry, teaching, exhortation, giving, leading, compassion. And there are so many more, aren’t there, from cleaning and flower arranging, through music and art, to buildings maintenance and financial management. All these tasks need specific gifts, not all given to any single person, but distributed among us.

Discernment is the word we use for perceiving God’s will. Discernment is a corporate, not a private thing, because God has made us to be social beings. When we seek to discern what God’s will is for ourself as an individual, it is not just about any sense of calling we might feel personally. We need to recognise and respect the gifts of other people, as well as our own. And we need the God-given wisdom of others around us to understand the nature of God’s call to us as individuals.

Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you

Reflection at Morning Worship with the Community of Brendan the Navigator on Tuesday 17th June 2025

‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you’, says Jesus in today’s reading (Matthew 5:43-48). It is part of Matthew’s collection of the sayings of Jesus we call the ‘Sermon on the Mount’.

It is relatively easy to love our neighbours, people like us, people who like us, people to whom we can turn for help in times of trouble. But every one of us finds it difficult to love an enemy, someone who has harmed us in some way, or seeks to do so, whatever the reason.

It is important to understand what ‘love’ means here. In Greek, it is the word agape, which means a deep concern for the good of the other that reaches out, even if it receives nothing in return. It is not sexual, physical love (eros), nor is it the mutual love of intimate friendship, nor that between marriage partners (philia).

Our God is love in this ‘agape’ sense. He loves us, and desires what is good for us, whether we are good or bad. As Jesus puts it, ‘he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous’. Jesus is teaching us that we can only be good human beings, can only be ‘children of our Father in heaven’, if we imitate God’s love, and that includes loving our enemies.

And is it so unreasonable to love, to care for, to have genuine concern for our enemies, and pray for them? My enemy may hate me, but what do I gain from hating my enemy back? Anyone who hates suffers mentally, doing more damage to himself or herself, than to the supposed enemy. And if my enemy harms me, they harm themselves as well. If I have a true Christian spirit, I will reach out in compassion to that person. I will want that person to be healed, healed of their hatred, healed of their anger, and to learn how to love. Surely it is much better, and makes more sense, to pray for that person than to hate them back - to bring about healing and reconciliation, rather than deepen the wound on both sides.

What Jesus is asking us to do is not something impossible or unnatural. It is the only thing that can bring peace to me and hopefully, in time, to the person who is hostile to me. As we proclaimed earlier, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God’. (Matthew 5:9)

Jesus tells us today, ‘Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect’. This is an ideal that we can only reach for with the help of the Holy Spirit. But it is a call to do our utmost to imitate God in extending our goodwill impartially and unconditionally to every single person. This is not just a commandment. When we reflect on it, it is simply common sense, and it is as much in our own interest as it benefits others.

 

Travelling together on pilgrimage

Article published in the June issue of Grapevine, the parish newsletter of the Nenagh Union of Parishes

On Saturday 24^th May I went on a day-long pilgrimage around ancient holy sites in East Galway. This was organised by Ms Valerie Raitt, a Pioneer Minister working to develop ‘spiritual tourism’, or pilgrimage, in our diocese, something Bishop Michael is keen to promote. Around 40 of us travelled by bus around the different sites, where Dr Christy Cunniffe, an expert on Irish medieval church architecture, expertly interpreted the buildings we visited. Despite the somewhat wet day, the rain held off for the most part, and those of us who participated greatly enjoyed the day.

Holy Trinity Aughrim, with Archdeacon John Godfrey

We began at Aughrim Church, where Archdeacon John Godfrey welcomed us and led us around the community climate action park, once his historic glebe, and the site of an ancient monastery founded by St Connell c. 500, of which no trace now remains above ground. It is an inspiring place with paths mown through a flowering meadow and a walled garden, maintained by local people, with the help of school children who learn about planting, the cycles of nature, biodiversity, and sustainable living. Here, and at each of our stops, Archdeacon John shared verses from the Psalms to reflect upon as we walked, a lovely practice of the early Irish church.

Kilconnell Franciscan Friary

Pilgrims in the choir at Kilconnell

From there we travelled to visit the C15th Kilconnell Franciscan Friary, with its high tower visible from miles around. The ruins are in a near perfect state of preservation – it would not be hard to put a new roof on and bring it back into use. The curvilinear tracery of the east window, and a magnificent tomb with statues of saints are particularly notable. We then repaired to Broderick’s Bar for tea and sandwiches.

Clontuskert Abbey curvilinear tracery

Clontuskert Abbey doorway

The next stop was Clontuskert Abbey, a C12th Augustinian Priory, with its magnificent doorway adorned with complex iconography, expertly interpreted for us by Christy, including a mermaid, similar to another in Clonfert Cathedral.

Dr Christy Cunniffe explains the iconography of the great door of Clonfert Cathedral

We then made our way to Clonfert, where we stopped for tea, provided by the ladies of the RC parish, and contemplated a rare medieval painted wooden statue of the Madonna and Child in the RC church. After that we went on to C12th Clonfert Cathedral, with its quite extraordinary Hiberno-Romanesque doorway. It became a significant pilgrimage destination in the Middle Ages, and the doorway was probably built as a shrine to St Brendan the Navigator, who founded the monastery and is buried there. After Christy guided us around the building, we sang a hymn about Brendan composed by the Rector Dr John McGinty, we prayed St Brendan’s Prayer and the Lord’s Prayer, and we finished with a group photo.

The next event organised by Valerie Raitt is a pilgrim walk on Slea Head, Dingle Peninsular on Midsummer’s Day, Saturday 21^st June at a cost of €40. It sounds fascinating if your legs are good. You can find out more at tlk.ie/spiritualtourism. If you’re interested, early booking is advisable.

We may not have such magnificent medieval churches in our Nenagh Union of parishes, but alongside our precious parish churches, there are a host of interesting medieval ruined churches and holy wells. I hope we can work with Valerie Raitt to find ways to enable visitors and pilgrims to hear the stories each of them have to tell.

Joc Sanders

27^th May 2025

Paul's advice to Ephesians - and to us

St Paul writing, from an early IXth Century manuscript
in the Abbey of St Gallen, Switzerland 

Reflection at Morning Worship with the Community of Brendan the Navigator on Tuesday 13th May 2025

The first three and a half chapters of Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians are deeply theological, about the relationship between God – as Father, Son and Holy Spirit – and human beings – both individually and together as the Church.

But in today’s reading (Ephesians 4:17-32), Paul moves beyond theology to look at its ethical implications. That is, how the Ephesian Christians should behave to each other and to their neighbours. He insists that their Christian faith must make a difference to how they live. Now, Paul tells them ‘Put away your former way of life, your old self … and clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness’. And Paul continues with very specific advice about how Christians should behave:

You must speak the truth to your neighbours, because you are all members of one community. By neighbours, I am sure Paul means everyone in the community, not just those who are Christians.

If someone angers you, you must seek to make it up. Anger is not wrong in itself – remember, Jesus often showed righteous anger, for instance when driving the money-changers from the Temple. But if you let anger fester – if, in Paul’s words, you ‘let the sun go down on your anger’– you allow evil a way into your lives – you ‘make room for the devil’.

You must be honest in all your dealings – you should work for what you get, not steal it. And why? So that you have something to share with those in need. Robin Hood stole from the rich to give to the poor – but this is not the Christian way: you must work, so that you have a surplus to give away to those who need help.

You must avoid speaking words intended to hurt others rather than help them. And, in this time of fake news, one might add, you must weigh up carefully what you hear, to avoid being deceived into doing what is wrong.

So, says Paul summarising, ‘Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ has forgiven you’.

Paul is addressing the Ephesian Christians of his own time. But his message is just as relevant to Christians in every time and place, and that means to you and me. We must:

• Speak the truth
• Not let disputes fester
• Be honest in all things with everybody
• Be generous to the needy
• Avoid hurtful speech, our own and others’

Let us all take Paul’s advice to the Ephesians to heart.