Kew festival service 2017 by Holy Trinity

Sermon 40th Kew Festival Ecumenical Service 19/03/2017 Carmelite Monastery Kew (St Paul’s Letter to the Phillipians 4: 4-9) I heard a story told to me many years ago about Mora Naba, a Mossi emperor in Burkina Faso West Africa who had conquered a powerful ethnic group in the south called the Kaesena. He extracted tribute from them once each year. One year, at tribute collecting time, the emperor made the mistake of sending his son, Nabiiga, a prince and his heir apparent. When the Kaesena saw Nabiiga with only a very small entourage of guards, they overpowered the group and took the prince hostage. His kingly robes were stripped from him, and he was forced to walk around in only a loincloth. The prisoner received only one meal per day and was forced out into the fields each morning to work. Normally, manual labour would be beneath the dignity of royalty, so the Kaesena made great sport of him. The women would pass by and belittle him. While he was working in the fields, the children would throw pebbles and stones at him. But, to the great surprise of all those watching from day to day, the Mossi prince would work and sing. He sang cheerfully with a loud voice as he worked from sun up to sun down. At first his soft hands blistered and then bled as he was unaccustomed to using farm equipment. He lost significant weight, but he continued to be cheerful and to sing. The elders of the Kaesena were much troubled by his singing and buoyant attitude. “How can he possibly sing,” they would continually ask, “since we make him sleep on the ground and make sport of him each day? We give him very little food, and he is forced to labor from sun up to sun down. Our women and our children mock him, but he continues to sing!” After a month of watching, they finally called him before a council. He stood in his loincloth straight and proud in their midst. The elder spokesperson for the Kaesena people asked the Mossi prince about his behaviour: “Why do you sing?” Nabiiga answered, “It is true. You’ve taken away my fine clothes. You have made me work, you give me very little food to eat, and you make me sleep on the ground in a common hut. You have tried to take away all my pride and all my earthly possessions. You have brought great shame upon me. Now you ask me why, in spite of all this, I can sing. I can sing because you cannot take away my title and who I am. I am Moro Naba’s first son. I am proud of that and will never react to your shameful behaviour!” The Kaesena people learned that they could not bring shame upon the Mossi prince because he was at peace and, therefore, could continue to sing. The peace that the prince felt inside was an active virtue manifest in his behaviour; peace was not simply the absence of violence and war in his life. We all know how to rejoice with great fervour when things go right, and we are in control and on top of the situation. This is a rather natural reaction when our success is personal, that of one we know and love, or even that of an organisation to which we have loyalty. We rejoice in our personal and family successes, the triumph of a friend over obstacles or disease. We rejoice when our favourite footie team wins the big game or even a premiership. Saint Paul tells us today that there is another element of rejoicing. He suggests we need to eliminate our propensity to worry and replace our anxiety with prayer and supplications to God. As a society we like to worry. In fact, we have a whole industry associated with it. When we worry we seek resolution through medications and various professionals. Certainly what medical science collectively has done for us with respect to our penchant to worry is laudable and generally helpful, but we worry far too much. Naturally we worry about our family: our children, our finances, our health, and our future. But, as we know, there are some people who prefer to worry; they do not seem content under any other mode of operation. Anxiety is turning into the disease of our age from young school children to octogenarians. I heard a story once that went: Fresh out of University, a young woman applied for various accountancy jobs. She got a job interview with a very nervous man who ran a small business that he had started himself. "I need someone with an accounting degree," the man said.” But mainly, I'm looking for someone to do my worrying for me.” “Excuse me?” the accountant said. "I worry about a lot of things," the man said. "But I don't want to have to worry about money. Your job will be to take all the money worries off my back.” "I see," the accountant said. "And how much does the job pay?” "I'll start you at eighty thousand.” "Eighty thousand dollars!" the accountant exclaimed. "How can such a small business afford a sum like that?” "That," the owner said, "is your first worry.” Paul suggests we must cast our cares on the Lord by substituting prayer and supplication to God instead of manifesting our worries and concerns. This sounds good, but we know it is not easy to accomplish. We want to Page 1 of 2