Sermon preached at Evensong on the First Sunday after Trinity 2026

In Peter Shaffer’s play ‘Amadeus’, we see the competent, upright, ultimately mediocre court musician Salieri slowly consumed with envy for the coarse, childish, undoubted genius Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. It is a darkly enjoyable tale—we feel Salieri’s frustration, we enjoy Mozart’s antics, we accept that it cannot end well.

Shaffer’s choice of Mozart’s middle name as title for the play takes us to the heart of Salieri’s perplexity. Such a genius has clearly been blessed by God—God’s love (the ama-deus) for Mozart is self-evident—but what of the dutiful, religious, self-controlled Salieri? How can God show such inordinate love for such a dissolute clown as Mozart? It offends all natural justice.

King Saul, from our first reading, has a similar issue. His son Jonathan is deeply enthralled with a young shepherd who is rapidly becoming a super-star. First he defeats Goliath, against all odds, and now he is proving to be a formidable military leader, far eclipsing anything Saul is able to achieve. God has clearly blessed this young man, just as his name implies; in Hebrew ‘Da-wid’—literally ‘beloved’—leaving Saul feeling at best second-rate and taunted by the women of Israel who dance and sing.

'Saul has killed his thousands, and David his tens of thousands.'

No wonder Saul wants to spear David to the nearest wall.

Envying others is one of the less attractive facts of life. From our earliest days we learn to desire what others desire, and that inevitably puts us in competition with them. We are going to want what they want, whether that is a particular job, or the recognition of talent, or invitations to particular parties. It is hard to be content with our mediocrity; indeed, everything within and around us tells us not to be. We desire what others desire, and so envy is hard-wired within us, making it very hard to be grateful for what we have and what we are. We are very focussed on God’s blessings towards others, and find it much harder to acknowledge, let alone enjoy the blessings we already receive.

The gospel teaches us in all things to be thankful. We gather week by week, perhaps even daily, to celebrate the Eucharist, to train us in thankfulness because that is the only remedy for the envy that operates among us. Evolutionary theory insists that we compete; only God’s grace can make us thankful for what we are, and even thankful for the enviable gifts given to others.

So it is interesting that the most gifted human being of all is probably the one we envy the least. We might think that it would be nice to be able to heal people, like the women who had suffered 12 years of haemorrhages or even raise them from the dead like the 12-year-old child, both in the second reading this evening. But, in truth, most of us would find such a gift difficult to deal with, and none of us would be envious of what it ultimately demanded of him.

The prophet Isaiah presses the point in the song of the Suffering Servant (Isaiah 53 verses 2&3), which forms such an important part of our reflections on the Passion in the days before Easter:

he had no form or majesty that we should look at him,
 nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by others;
 a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity;
and as one from whom others hide their faces
 he was despised, and we held him of no account.

Jesus does not invite or excite our envy. He does not come to Lord it over us or compete with us; his aim is not to impress or enthral or entertain us. In the second reading today, we see two characteristic features of his healing miracles.

He tells the woman who touched his robe 'Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace.’ He does not claim this miracle for himself, though, of course, it was from him that the divine power went out to heal. But this is no false modesty either. The miracle he desires and in which he rejoices is the woman’s faith that opened a channel; that was willing to receive; that wasn’t trying to own him, let alone compete with him, but glimpsed in him a hope beyond hope. In Mark’s version of this story the woman says to herself ‘If I only touch his cloak, I will be made well.’ Her faith sets her free and Jesus is content it seems not to insist on any power of his own, because he knows that it is not his, but only what he in turn receives, freely and thankfully from the Father.

Jesus is not in competition with us, is not envious for recognition or status, because he comes from a world, as it were, where envy is unknown. His relationship with the Father, through the Spirit, is one of perfect reciprocity, a perfect rejoicing in one another as gift, and he receives his mission to remind and restore creation in its giftedness with an entirely uncompetitive obedience and trust. He knows that everything he is is the Father’s gift and wants us to know that for ourselves and for one another. In faith, by grace, this channel of healing is being opened in us.

The other characteristic feature in this healing sequence is the call for secrecy. He orders the parents of the girl who was raised to tell no-one. We see from the gospels themselves that such secrecy proved hard to maintain. But the point is that these miracles needed and need to be understood in the context of events that were yet to come. If we find it surprising that Jesus would not claim or desire celebrity, would not want to impress himself on others by exciting their envy and competitiveness, the events of Good Friday will leave us baffled yet further. The hymn in the letter to the Philippians expresses this wonderment,

Jesus,

who, though he was in the form of God,
 did not regard equality with God
 as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself.

Into our world of competition, of envy and glory-seeking, something entirely different is revealed, and we are encouraged to ‘let this same mind be in you as was in Christ Jesus.’

Jesus knew that he was Amadeus, the beloved Son of the Father, and his life manifested the freedom that such knowledge affords. We may never be entirely free of envy in this life—there will be others so much more gifted than we are—apparently blessed beyond any natural justice—complete bounders and chancers who flourish, or, worse still, those with genuine talent, genius even, who put us in the shade. If we can prise our envious eyes away, and look to Jesus, or, better still, see Jesus in them, we will begin to learn a different way. We will glimpse and know in ourselves the freedom, the healing—His freedom, His healing—that comes with the knowledge that we are each of us beloved of God. So may we learn to live less in rivalry, less tempted to throw spears or anything else, and to live more in thanksgiving, with the same mind that was in Christ Jesus.