“High fidelity: Julian Richer rewards staff loyalty with holiday homes and trips on the company jet. Next? He’s planning their inheritance…” That was the eye catching headline in the Independent this week.

“Why can’t all bosses be like Julian Richer? I’m not going to beat about the bush here: I think Julian is great. If I had to hold up someone as a role model for other wannabe tycoons to follow, the founder of the Richer Sounds hi-fi chain would be that person. … So what earns him this accolade? The way he treats his staff, the fact that in surveys 95 per cent of them say they love working for him. And then the way his approach translates into tangible results: 52 stores that produced profits of £6.9m from sales of £144.3m last year in an austerity-hit economy, and helped him to build a personal fortune estimated at £115m.

Based in what property agents refer to as the “secondary” shopping streets – the tattier end – his shops, full of in-your-face Day-Glo posters, have won awards galore for their levels of service, and achieved sales unheard-of in the electronics industry. For years, his London Bridge branch could claim to have the highest sales density of any shop in the world.

It was no surprise to hear Richer, 54, who still holds 100 per cent of the company he started 35 years ago, explain this week how he has formed a trust for when he dies so that the business becomes a mutual, similar to John Lewis, under which every staff member receives an equal share…That’s how he is. He’s often talked of the business surviving after he’s gone, of putting a structure in place to ensure his methods continue. He calls them the Richer Way (he’s pulled them together in what must rank as one of the best business books in history, now in its fifth edition, called, not surprisingly, The Richer Way). These include: providing free access to holiday homes in the UK and abroad (regardless of sales performance); trips aboard the company jet for those who suggest the best ideas; cash handouts for staff so they can go to the pub and brainstorm; the use of a Bentley for the store which does the best each month. His reasoning is simple: a happy workforce supplies good customer service, boosts sales, decreases complaints, and eradicates theft and absenteeism.”

A wise investor… in people. Our theme today is “How to Become a Wise Investor in 2014” That’s because today is our annual Pledge Sunday. Today we are asking you to make a pledge. To indicate in writing, up front, what the Lord has laid upon your heart to give back to him in 2014. Actually to ‘give back to him’ because we are acknowledging that everything we have has come from him.

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I was born on 27^th July 1953. Not a particularly significant date in Britain but in South Korea, where I have been this week, it is hugely significant. The Korean war which began in June 1950 saw the Republic of Korea (South Korea), supported by the United Nations and British Commonwealth, defend its borders against a surprise attack by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea), at one time supported by China and the Soviet Union. Over three years the battle lines moved up and down the country leading to over 1.2 million deaths, at least half of whom were civilian non-combatants. The armistice was signed on July 27, 1953.

It was designed to “insure a complete cessation of hostilities and of all acts of armed force in Korea until a final peaceful settlement is achieved.” But no “final peaceful settlement” has been achieved yet. So while the Cold War in Europe ended when the Berlin Wall was torn down in 1989, North and South Korea have remained in a perpetual state of war. How have the two nations responded?

North Korea has made repeated attempts to invade the South. On Tuesday I entered one of the tunnels dug by the North, deep underneath the DMZ using slave labour and dynamite. Only 44 km (27 miles) from Seoul, the tunnel was discovered in 1978. It is 1.7 km (1.1 miles) long, 2 m high and 2 m wide. It runs through bedrock at a depth of about 73 m (240 ft) below ground. It was  designed for a surprise attack on Seoul, and could easily accommodate 30,000 men per hour along with light weaponry. A total of four tunnels have been discovered so far, but there are believed to be up to twenty more. Furthermore, North Korea has 9,495,000 active, reserve, and paramilitary personnel, which makes it the largest military organization on earth, even without its nuclear weapon programme. How has South Korea responded?

Through its ‘Sunshine policy’ it has been giving millions of pounds each year to provide vaccines, medical care and food for North Korean children. It has built a railway to bring the two countries together and opened factories in the north to further economic ties. But most significantly of all, while the North has built the largest army in the world, the South has sent more Christian peacemakers into the world, as a proportion of its population, than any other country in the world. The first evangelical missionary to Korea was a Welshman, Robert Thomas. Aged 24, he landed in Shanghai with his wife Caroline in 1863. She died of an endemic disease just a year later, and Robert himself, became a martyr on the shores of the Daedong River in 1866. But a church was born. Even though the Evangelical church in Korea is just 150 years old, numerically, after the USA, there are more South Korean missionaries in the world than any other country.

Two nations – North and South – two very different responses – one fuelled by hate, the other fuelled by love. Today we rightly remember and honour those from our community who made the supreme sacrifice to defend our freedoms and values. It is one thing to risk your life to save a friend or even to put your life on the line for your neighbours. It is quite another to give your life to fight a formidable enemy to defend your country. But at best, all we can hope for is an Armistice – a cessation of conflict. In our gospel reading today from Matthew 5, Jesus wants us to take one step further, to realise that, whether in war or peacetime, God wants to enable us to transform our enemies into family. This is the kind of radical motivation that characterizes an authentic follower of Jesus Christ. Let’s make three observations.

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There are many ways people differ. Bill Hybels observes there are cat people and there are dog people. There are tennis people and there are golf people.

Some people like to sleep with the windows open and some people prefer to sleep with the windows closed – and they are usually married to each other. Some people keep a pen and notepad by the telephone while other people just have children. There are breakfast people and there are people who don’t remember what breakfast is. There are A type people and there are the rest of you. There are Tigger people and there are Eyore people.

There are blue sky optimist people and there are chicken little – sky falling in people. And every team has at least one of each. When it comes to finances, some are cheque book people and some are cash people. There are Windsor farm shop – John Lewis – Waitrose people and there are Staines market – Poundland people. There are carefully balanced every month cheque book people and there are shut the cheque account down every two years and start over people. And you know who you are. There are people with stock brokers and there are people perfectly capable of going broke without them.

We were all brought up differently. But we all have one thing in common. We have a range of assets, talents and skills that we can invest or waste, use or lose.

In Luke 19 Jesus told a parable – I’ve called it the Parable of the Dragons’ Den, because whether you love or hate the programme, the fact is God has invested significant assets in you and he expects a return on his investment. I invite you to turn to Luke 19 with me.

This is a most unusual parable because it’s the only parable, as far as we know, Jesus told that was based on an actual historical event. What historical event lay behind this parable and why tell it at this moment? The answer lies in our first observation:

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