A Sermon

Psalm one hundred and twenty seven, verse one: "Except the Lord keep the city the watchman waketh but in vain".
Many years ago, when I was vicar of a small parish in the north of England, I remember hearing a sad story of a certain
businessman. He was a man well known in that small community for his honesty, his competence, and his capacity for
hard work.
Now it happened on one occasion that he was made responsible for the safe-keeping of some vitally important papers
plans and documents concerning a new and secret process which was then being perfected by the company for
which he worked. He decided to keep the papers in his office safe, and took extreme precautions to ensure that nothing
went amiss. He arranged for a watch to be kept at night and informed the local police. And yet, in spite of all his care
and concern, the office was broken into and the plans were stolen.
The poor man was beside himself, and to cut a long story short, he resigned from his job and spent the rest of his days
in a very unhappy retirement.
Now where that unfortunate man went wrong is not that he failed to act the part of watchman with sufficient care for
surely we would all agree that he did everything that could have been expected of him in that direction. No.
Where he went wrong was in expecting too much of himself, in not facing up to the fact that the possibility of failure is
implicit in all human actions; in not realizing that, in the last resort, none but the Lord can keep the city.
I would like to think that if this man had been possessed of a true and devout communion with God, and had been
supported by the self-knowledge that can be derived from such a communion I would like to think that he would have
been better equipped to see his misfortune in a clearer light, and that he would not have succumbed so completely to
the blow which fate had dealt him.
All of us gathered here together this morning have suffered, I am sure, our own disasters, some great, some not so
great. Disasters, indeed, are something that few of us can hope completely to avoid during the stormy course of life here
on earth. And I am equally sure that many of us have been sustained at the times when misfortune has struck by the
realization that if only we will give Him our trust the Lord will be there to keep the city.
Man alone cannot hope to be the defender of his own city. Can we honestly say, any of us, that by our own efforts alone
we can be certain of maintaining our defenses intact? Try as we will, take whatever precautions we can think of,
somewhere, sometime, we are certain to fail. There are so many doubts and uncertainties to assail mortal souls, so
many enemies who come by night and conquer by stealth.
No. Only God can fulfill the role of ultimate defender. We must be content to try and keep watch. And even in our modest
attempts to do this we must not forget to turn to God. For it is only through a true awareness of His holiness an
awareness of how readily we may draw on the limitless fund of His manifold and great mercies that we can find the
spiritual insight and moral energy to make us effective watchmen.