Trinity XV Sermon by Gabriel Hopkins

Delivered in the King’s Chapel by Gabriel Hopkins on September 28, 2025

Consider the lilies of the field how they grow: they toil not, neither do they spin: and yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Matthew 6:28-29.

If you know me, you know that I love the lilies of the field. Later today we will actually be going to pick some flowers, not the lilies of the field, but rather Michaelmas daisies by the railroad tracks. But the lilies of the field is such a wondrous image. It is so beautiful to think about. Think about little flowers in a field, all dancing and spinning. These lilies do not toil, they do nothing to earn their greatness, and yet they are arrayed better than King Solomon. They simply rely on the mercy of God. Completely submitting themselves to God. It is this that makes them have more glory than King Solomon. King Solomon, for all his wisdom, eventually turned away from God to foreign gods this was his mistake for “No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.” Matthew 6:24 Right from our Gospel today. Solomon came to trust his own wisdom more than God. Now we shouldn’t seek after glory as it is written in our epistle, “But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.” Galatians 6:14. We only glory in ourLord. Not in ourselves.

Now, Solomon was too busy glorying in himself. He forgot that the gifts he had were only there because God gave them to him. Eventually, he started to glory other gods and himself, forgetting that he should have been glorifying God. He forgot to be humble. Now, being humble has nothing to do with hating yourself or anything like that. Some people think such things, but it's not right. God Forbid! No, as a Christian, you can’t hate yourself. To hate yourself is to believe yourself above God because God loves you. Don’t downplay the gifts the Lord hasgranted to you, but never forgot that they are the Lord’s. For, “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.” Galatians 6:14.

But let's take a closer look at creation, a closer peek at the flowers. Perhaps fitting that according to the architects of the new liturgies and lectionaries we are in the so-called “season of creation”. Now before we go any further, it is important to note that after some research it has come to my attention that the “lilies of the field” are not lilies at all! From my research, they are either poppies or a type or Anemone. But that is a side note. Creation is so beautiful, and I think we sometimes forget it. It can be easy to forget about the beauty of nature, the beauty of creation which God so perfectly sculpted when we spend all of our time in the city. You get hypnotized by the concrete and steel and can forget the flowers, and the animals. But creation is beautiful. It is forged by God. It all serves a purpose. Creation shows us beings that are confidently reliant on God. Fr Isaac Williams, one of the great members of the Oxford movement, says this about the passage “Why do you think that your heavenly Father has raised around you such abundance of flowers? why are they so beautiful and wonderful in their structure, and colour, and varieties?why do they bear about your paths such tokens of His hand, and seem to make silent appeals to you, in order to call your attention? It is because God has designed them to teach you, His children, of His unceasing presence, and His care, although you see Him not, in order that you may trust Him.” So what Fr Isaac Williams is telling us is that these lilies of the field, they are designed to teach us. If the rain doesn’t fall enough, the flowers will die. They’ll wither away. Only the mercy of God preserves the flowers. Just like how only the mercy of God saves us. The flowers are real, not just an image. As St Augustine says, “these examples are not to be treated as allegories, so that we should inquire what the fowls of heaven or the lilies of the field mean: for they stand here, in order that from smaller matters we may be persuaded respecting greater ones.” The flowers effortlessly glory in their creator, just as we are bidden to do. You just have to look at them and see them not as just flowers, but as the creation of God.

But alas it is a bit different for us humans then it is for flowers. Flowers have no choice. We have free will, the ability to choose anything. We can choose to do good, or we can choose to do bad. And we certainly are not perfect. How many times have we done wrong when we knew it was wrong? How long will we be captivated by lesser goods? We can only acknowledge our faults, our sins, and repent. There is a reason after all that we confess our sins twice a day in morning and evening prayer. Our collect for this Sunday addresses this: “KEEP, we beseech thee, O Lord, thy Church with thy perpetual mercy; and, because the frailty of man without thee cannot but fall, keep us ever by thy help from all things hurtful, and lead us to all things profitable to our salvation; through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Without Christ, we cannot do anything but fail. We must put our whole trust in the resurrected one. For we cannot do this alone. We must try to be like the flowers, relying completely on God, for to pretend we can do anything on our own is pure folly.

Consider the lilies of the field how they grow: they toil not, neither do they spin: and yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Matthew 6:28-29