Sermon for The Second Sunday after Trinity

admin | 21 June 2009

“A certain man made a great supper, and bade many”

There is more to the Christian religion that mere good manners. And yet good manners have in them more, perhaps, than we realize. More than just an aspect of civilization in the form of considerate behaviour, “manners maketh the man” and reveal something of our intrinsic character and nature; in other words, there is something of the charity of Christ at work in our dealings with one another.

And that is, of course, a central theme in the Trinity season. To put it bluntly, we participate in what is proclaimed. “God is love and he that abideth in love abideth in God and God in him,” as we heard last week from this same Epistle of St. John. There is a necessary, inescapable and intimate relation between the making known of God in Jesus Christ and the form of our life in Christ. St. John, in the Epistle reading for today, drives home a very hard lesson that follows from that understanding. It is about our love towards even our brother towards whom we may feel anything but love and affection, kindliness and concern. There may be things about our brother or sister (let’s not be gender exclusive!) that is quite unlovely, even hateful.

What, then, are we called to love in those whom, quite frankly, we can’t stand? Simply this, we honour their being made in the image of God as we are, howsoever much that image has been obscured, denied and derided, or howsoever much we ourselves may be confused and deluded in our judgment. This provokes the equally salutary thought. Our awareness of our judgmentalism leads to self-judgment. That can be quite destructive; self-condemnation leading to despair. In relation to that, there is the strong teaching that “if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart.” In every way, we are being encouraged, if not actually catapulted into the mystery of God which we have been privileged to hear and receive.

It belongs to the joy of the Trinity season to place us in the intimacy of the Blessed Trinity. Trinity season is about going through the open door or, at the very least, standing on the threshold of that open door of the kingdom of heaven. “The world is charged with the grandeur of God,” as the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins puts it, but we don’t always see it, do we? Yet, the realities of the kingdom are here and now, present in our quotidian lives. This Sunday, like last Sunday, we have a parable about the kingdom told by Jesus: “A certain man made a great supper and bade many.”

What is this all about? Well, the context goes some ways towards making sense of this. The context of the parable is Jesus in conversation with the disciples at a meal. One cries, out, “Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the kingdom of God.” Well, what does this mean? That is exactly Jesus’ point. Do you really know what it means to “eat bread in the kingdom of God”? Do you really know what the celestial banquet is really all about? The point of the parable is that we really don’t if we are constantly making excuses about not being present at the fellowship of the breaking of the bread. In other words, if one really were to think deeply and carefully – okay, I know, this is getting scary! – then, being where the Word is proclaimed and the Sacraments celebrated really matters. It cannot not matter. It either is what it is or it is all a game and a delusion; a cyberspace fantasy with no reality except what we bestow upon it. But the words of the Communion are ever so emphatic. “Take eat … Drink this… Do this in remembrance of me.” What’s not to get about that? It is ever so clear that communion is about our participation in the divine live opened to view in Jesus Christ.

In a way, the love of God is meaningless unless we pay attention to that love both in terms of Lazarus lying at our feet, in other words, one another, as we heard last week, and in relation to the things of God in the fellowship of the Church. It means responding to the invitation; willingly, gladly and with eyes wide open to the rich wonders of the liturgy: the scripture, the prayers, the hymns, the sacraments themselves, and, maybe, even the homily! God moves in mysterious ways! Responding to the invitation is about good manners in the sense of respect for what is worthy of respect and honour.

But the Gospel reminds us that we cannot take the Christian religion for granted. It requires good works and kindly deeds but also the heartfelt devotion to God in holy worship. Both together, not just one or the other.

There is much, to be sure, that remains of the influence of the Christian religion in the political and social realm; a residue of manners, I suppose, but without content, without the substance of belief and commitment to truths held sacred. It won’t do to hide behind the façade of social do-good-ism and think that that suffices religiously. No. Our present dilemma is about how to recover the tandem set of activity and contemplation. In other words, it comes down to acting out of the vision which we have been given to see.

Our excuses are merely our idolatry of our own measure of ourselves. The parable allows us to see such things for what they are, a refusal of God’s grace. It makes us aware of the necessity of worship, something that cannot be measured by our complacencies about ourselves and our lives. However much our activities and actions may be good and important, they are not the substitute for worship. And in a way that is the point. The measure of the Christian Faith is both about what one does and what one worships. The former, what one does, is, of course, but the reflection of the latter, what one worships.

So what will it be for us? The excuses are all so common. Nothing unique in them at all. They all have to do with our outlook and the direction of our souls. We turn towards the ground, quite literally, the ground of human experience, only to discover that without God, human experience is but a barren field, our human lives empty and desolate. In this parable, at issue is not our indifference and thoughtless neglect. No. At issue is our outright refusal of the invitation. An act of the will.

It shows us two things: our ignorance of the things of God and our arrogance about our own projects and plans, thinking them to be more important than they can possibly be. We give priority to everything else except that upon which everything else depends, namely God.

We have been invited, to be sure, and we are free to choose or refuse but in refusing we separate ourselves from all that matters and, ultimately, refuse for ourselves the heavenly joys that are to be found in placing all our activities with God in worship. The joys of our everyday lives are found through our conscious intent to see their connection to God. Worship is that intentional activity; it is about the grace of God that brings us to the banquet and sweetens every other aspect of our lives. “Come, for all things are ready”. Will we make excuses? Or will we come gladly and willingly? God will have his house filled but will we be in the company? It will depend upon the manner of our lives whether we choose or refuse God’s grace.