by CCW | 4 October 2009 14:25
It is one of my favourite Scripture texts. It’s not about ambition or pretension. It’s about the hope of transformation. It counters completely the dumb-down aspects of an anti-intellectual culture, such as ours, and conveys the sense that we are, indeed, called to something more, that we have a destiny beyond what we know is before us but will not face, namely, the grave and gate of death. And it signals ever so profoundly the necessary condition of soul for the realization of God’s will and purpose for us in our lives. The necessary condition is humility.
Here is a Scripture reading in which the operative words are “friend” and “go up higher”. We have just had a visible demonstration of this in the baptism of Brennan Isaac. He has been made – there is no other word for it – a friend of Jesus. He has just been called up higher but only through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ; such is the heart of baptism. We are identified with Jesus in his free-willing identity and sacrifice for us.
Jesus calls us “friends”. He does so not merely by way of a parable but more directly. He calls us friends at the height of his passion, on the night of our betrayal. There is an anticipation of that in the context of this gospel parable where Jesus is being watched critically and being challenged hypocritically by the Lawyers and Pharisees. This is the wondrous thing that passes human understanding. God has made us his friends when we were his enemies! This turns the ancient world on its head. It turns our modern world on its head. We live in a rather hopeless and fearful world. Here is the antidote to our hopelessness and fear. It challenges us so that it can redeem us.
We are called out of ourselves and we are called to God. We are called to the service of God in our life together with one another in the body of Christ. It is really the purpose of our being here today, a purpose which is meant to extend into every aspect of our lives.
St. Paul reminds us of the qualities of that vocation, about how we should seek to be, about how we should act: “with all lowliness and meekness, with long-suffering, forbearing one another in love, endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace”. These strong qualities arise from the strong doctrine – the teaching – which has been given to us and without which these qualities cannot live in us. “There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all and in you all.”
It is a high calling, to be sure. And it would be impossible, except for this. The means whereby it is accomplished in us is the same as what has been shown to us. Jesus himself is the teaching. He is what he says. In other words, it is grace – what comes from God to us. Grace goes before us and after us, as the Collect puts it. “Prevent” in its older and fuller sense does not mean “hinder” but “a going” or “a coming before”. Our grace-ordered lives are about the teaching, the doctrine, of Christ living in us, about our “walking worthy of the vocation wherewith we are called”. Brennan reminds us of our vocation.
“Friend, go up higher” is not our presumption but our calling. Christ has come to where we are but not to leave us where we are. He wants something better for us. He has come to us and we find our vocation in him, in what he says to us and in what he does for us. Our vocation is simply about the quality of our being with him.
That quality of being is not something static. It is dynamic and alive, charged with the presence of God. It is the awareness of God in our lives that makes all the difference. Awakened to that, we can only be set in motion, in sacrifice and service, in prayer and praise. “Friend, go up higher” signals to us that there is always more and never less with God.
But there is a condition. The condition is humility which really means our openness to the reality of God, individually and collectively. Without that openness to the reality of God we are trapped in the presumption of ourselves. We are, in fact, atheists. It may seem harsh and presumptuous to say, but it really follows that in putting ourselves ahead of one another, we also put ourselves ahead of God. The God who is the afterthought in our lives is the God who is dead to our lives. We are dead to him. We forget that the grace of God is the whole premise of our existence: “it is he that hath made us and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture” (Ps. 100). In a way, this gospel story, too, would remind us of who we are and what we are called to be by way of a patient, prayerful watchfulness and by way of acting upon what we see and hear in God’s word. This is the counter and the contrast to our self-presumption. The condition is humility.
We so easily get stuck in the various ruts of our lives. Our fearfulness is about ourselves. We have lost sight of the grandeur of God. We so easily forget the gospel of our transformation. God has come to us to raise us to where he is. That is the radical grace of the gospel. It is made visible and audible to us here this morning in this holy place in Brennan’s baptism and in the Holy Eucharist. Here we are called “friends” and here we are called “up higher”. We do not presume anything of ourselves but everything of the God who bids us go up higher.
Fr. David Curry
Christ Church
Trinity 17, ‘09
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2009/10/04/sermon-for-the-seventeenth-sunday-after-trinity/
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