Are You Living Well?

A sermon preached at St Martin-in-the-Fields on November 2, 2025 by Revd Dr Sam Wells

Patronal Festival; Matthew 5: 38-48

A couple of weeks ago the Labour minister Sir Chris Bryant spoke in our Autumn Lecture series Here I Stand. In amongst a remarkable number of salacious stories about the high jinks of various actors, clergy and politicians, including himself, he outlined his understanding of the three elements of politics. The first level, he said, was about having real convictions, a soaring moral vision, an explicit picture of the world you would strive for and the tramlines outside which you would not trespass in order to achieve it. This is the part that fits the celebrated words, ‘Here I stand.’ But that’s not enough.

The second level of politics, he said, is the skill and commitment to turn those convictions into a concrete plan of policies and potential legislation, a detailed strategy for how to change society, the economy and the statute book for good. This is about turning passion and imagination into patience and particularity. It’s about converting heart into head and recognising things like evidence-based research and wisdom from other countries and cultures.

The third level of politics, he said, is about building a coalition of interest, horse-trading and compromising, teamwork and motivation, resilience and taking the initiative. People who think it’s all about number one, the integrity and vision, quickly become cynical about this third dimension. But those who think all they need to do is espouse inspiring ideas don’t last long in politics – because they fail to recognise that to get things done requires pulling together and incentivising and rewarding a team to get something of value across the line. That team is never going to agree about what to do and how best to do it; so the secret is to find a way to make it worth everyone’s while.

Chris Bryant was a priest before he was a government minister. What’s intriguing about his characterisation of politics is that it applies as well to the church as to Parliament. You might think being a Christian was all about conviction, integrity and vision: the kinds of things that lead to a person saying, ‘Here I stand.’ But that would leave out the other two dimensions to which Chris referred. To think simply having firm opinions without reflecting on how to turn those views into practical realities is enough is to be so naïve it verges on self-indulgence. To use grander theological language, it goes against the way God works, because God isn’t content to have strong convictions about humankind – God comes to be with us in Christ. So conviction without a plan of action is non-incarnational. But a plan of action requires the creation of alliances and the forging of partnerships for the short and long term, which takes us into Chris’ third dimension, the characteristic business of politics, finding ways to work together with those with whom you incompletely or scarcely agree. We can give a dignified name to each of these three dimensions: the first, the vision part, we call faith; the second, the plan part, we call kingdom or God’s realm; the third, the alliances part, we call church. Yes, you heard that right: church is in large part about finding ways to work with and be with those with whom you profoundly disagree.

Think of the difference between the United Nations and the World Council of Churches. At the United Nations everyone accepts there’s going to be serious disagreement. You’re never going to get a major fossil fuel producer, a huge carbon emitter, a half-submerged Indian Ocean islander and an ideological Scandinavian eco-warrior all to agree on much about halting climate change. So paradoxically there’s a remarkably positive atmosphere, because all parties are pleasantly surprised that, despite all, they still can forge alliances and broker partnerships. By contrast at the World Council of Churches, everyone arrives thinking it should be a love-in of footwashing, brother, sister let me serve you and the fruits of the Spirit, and when it turns out to be a fist fight, everyone’s furious, because the other lot claim to be Christians but look how pig-headed and hypocritical they are. Only once we realise politics in the third sense, about finding ways to establish common interest about issues on which we disagree, is integral to church life, can we hope to function well as a church.

In 2005 the American sociologist Paul Lichterman published an illuminating study of community and church groups in a town he called Lakeburg.^[1] Lichtermann interacted with a significant number of well-intentioned groups, each of which had passionate conviction and wide-ranging vision. What he found was that almost none had any significant impact beyond its own membership. All but one of the groups Lichtermann studied was submerged in its own internal politics. What that single group achieved was the third kind of politics Chris Bryant outlined. It managed to cooperate with other groups in the town whose plan for change differed from its own; it learned from these interacting with such groups, and was willing to alter its identity and way of working to make that cooperation effective.

It’s these kinds of realisations that have gone into making St Martin-in-the-Fields the kind of community it is today. Everyone in our community is moved by the power of a lone, brave, voice saying, ‘Here I stand.’ After all it was such witness that got Jesus killed, and that did for the early martyrs who followed him, from the stoning of Stephen in Jerusalem to the burning of Polycarp in Smyrna to the combination of wild animals and a gladiator’s sword that polished off Perpetua and Felicity in Carthage. The trouble is, if all we’re concerned about is our own moral righteousness, then we focus more on grand statements or florid gestures than realising God’s realm on earth. Which is why St Martin’s has also developed a reputation for a sleeves-rolled-up Christianity that doesn’t dwell too long on verbal formulations or virtuous conformity but is more interested in tangible actions that truly meet people in their adversity, genuinely inspire communities in beauty and artistry, uninhibitedly invest in good ways to dwell together as a body of people in trust and hope, and model the eternity and practicality of love.

It’s this kind of insight that explains why we’re such a hybrid between the professional and the amateur, the policies and the spontaneity, the procedures and the improvisation, the paid and the voluntary, the commercial and the charitable, the long-term prudential head and the immediate passionate heart. We want to yoke together the integrity and simplicity and courage of ‘Here I stand’ with the concrete practicality of everyday realities. After all, that’s what incarnation is – taking the eternal glory of God and making it present in the ordinary actuality of human existence. Whenever I have a few hours at St Martin’s where there’ve been arguments, mistakes, failures and losses, and I feel cross and frustrated, I always end the day realising, ‘Well, this is what incarnation entails, and we may not be perfect, but we’re incarnate, and that’s maybe closer to Jesus.’

But there’s also that third dimension of life at St Martin’s. It’s about forming alliances and partnerships and coalitions and tactics. I suspect we could be a bit better at that. After all, any community or individual that’s as focused as we are on the ‘Here I stand’ part and the ‘Let’s see it in action’ part is likely to become a little self-absorbed. It’s almost inevitable that, consumed as we are by doing a difficult thing, we’re somewhat slower to look around us and see who we should be in partnership with to achieve things we can’t do alone, or who’s doing beautiful and amazing things that we should learn from and join with. We know in our heads we’re not the centre of the universe, but we could maybe be more intentional about perceiving where the Holy Spirit is infectiously at work elsewhere. Until we do, we’ll maybe continue to be thankful for the things God is doing among us but less able than we might be to turn that into real change in church and society.

In Matthew chapter 5, Jesus says, ‘You have heard that it was said… But I say to you…’ What he’s doing is dismantling the idea that being a Christian is about keeping a set of rules and simply being kind, continent, careful and in control. He’s saying being a Christian is being unbelievable. It’s not ‘Love your neighbour,’ it’s ‘Love your enemy.’ It’s not ‘Be forced to go one mile,’ it’s ‘Choose to go the second mile.’ It’s not ‘Uphold your promises,’ it’s ‘Be a trustworthy person.’ It’s not ‘Don’t murder someone,’ it’s ‘Don’t be angry with someone.’ What we’re about at St Martin’s is not trying to be unbelievable people like that. It’s trying to be a place where unbelievable things happen. I think if I asked anyone here or online today, ‘Have you become an unbelievable person since being part of this community?’ you’d each look at me and think I was being ridiculous. But if I were to stop each one of you at the door and say, ‘Do you experience St Martin’s as a place where unbelievable things happen every day?’ I’d expect almost everyone to say, ‘One hundred per cent.’

The last line of today’s gospel has caused centuries of confusion based on misunderstanding. Jesus says, ‘Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.’ It sounds like he’s asking the impossible. But he’s not. He’s not saying, ‘You must all be morally impeccable human beings.’ The word for ‘perfect’ here is telaioi, which is like telos: it means ‘oriented toward the end.’ He’s saying, ‘You (plural, collectively, as a community) should be living in ways that anticipate heaven, the manner in which the Father will order things in eternity, where we’re together with him forever.’ And that’s where the three notions of politics converge. We say, ‘Here I stand,’ because we won’t waver from what we believe lasts for and anticipates forever. We turn that into practical action because we want to live God’s future now, to do practical things today that resemble the way life will be in heaven. And we form alliances and build partnerships because if we truly believe the Father has an eternal future for everything he has made, we need to get busy now making relationships with all the kinds of people with whom we’ll be spending forever, so we actually enjoy heaven, rather than feeling cheesed off by the other people who’re there.

I have a professor friend who goes to many conferences and gives assorted lectures. Every year at his field’s annual meeting he shares a room with the same colleague from postgraduate days. When they are reunited, they ask each other the same question. ‘Are you living well?’ I think that question sums up the three kinds of politics and the essence of what we’re striving for as a community at St Martin’s. Are we living well? How are we doing with passion, practicality, and partnership? Are we glimpsing today the way we shall dwell together forever? I hope the answer would be, ‘This is a community where unbelievable things happen. Every day.’

[1] Paul Lichterman, Elusive Togetherness: Church Groups Trying to Bridge America’s Divisions (Princeton: Princeton University Press) 2005.