Sermon for Septuagesima

“My soul cleaveth to the dust:
O quicken thou me, according to thy word”
(Psalm 119, pt 4, vs 25)

Dust and dirt? Quite a change from the emphasis of the Epiphany season on the essential divinity of Christ, it might seem. To be sure, with Septuagesima Sunday we mark a new beginning. We begin at the beginning. And that means, beginning, too, with dust and dirt, with the ground of creation, quite literally.

At Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer, we begin reading from The Book of Genesis. In so doing, we enter into an ancient tradition. The tradition conveys ancient wisdom, namely, a profound reflection upon the mystery of Creation within the Revelation of God as Trinity.

We begin with Genesis only to find ourselves in the midst of the vineyard of creation in today’s gospel. But we begin with Genesis. It is, at once, a difficult and a necessary starting point. It is difficult because of the contemporary tendency to view the Book of Genesis in one of two ways, both of which are false. The first way is to read Genesis as a kind of scientific treatise, which it isn’t (this is the folly of creationism: bad science and bad religion). The second way is to read Genesis as a haphazard collection of fables and myths, which it isn’t.

The Book of Genesis does not propose a discovery of God; it begins with God. “In the beginning, God.” There is the proclamation of God as the absolute beginning after which everything else is secondary, after which everything else is derivative, after which everything else is a product. And while something of the Mind of the Maker, to use a famous phrase, is made known in what he makes, the Creator is not simply equated with what he makes. He is known as beyond and in control. It is his creation. The distinction between the Creator and the created is absolutely crucial.

And so the act of creation is presented in poetic fashion as an orderly affair, even a liturgical affair. What is made – everything which is after God – is an effect of his will. It is created for a purpose – God’s purpose, to be sure, which is not always evident to us. But everything has a place in that purpose. Beginning with order rather than chaos is the great insight of revealed religion; paradoxically, such a beginning actually makes science possible since it affirms in the strongest way the world as intelligible, both for thought and for God.

Genesis, first and foremost, is a theological book which provides a basic understanding of God, the world and ourselves. It proclaims God as Creator and as Lord and Master of all that he has made. It presents humanity as God’s special creature, as made in the image of God, as the dust which God has shaped and into which he has breathed his spirit. These are lovely images which connect us to everything in creation and mark the special distinction of our humanity within creation. Everything follows from such a fundamental perspective, both sin and salvation.

Only creatures that are made in God’s own image, that is to say, rational and spiritual creatures, can freely go against God’s will and enslave themselves to their opposition to God. The result is suffering and death, for it is to will a lie against the truth of our life. But the purposes of God for his creation, especially his human creation, are greater than the vanity of our attempts to frustrate them.

The Gospel for today is the parable of the labourers in the vineyard. At first glance, it must seem to be a rather curious if not a disturbing and disquieting story. What does it teach us? That God is the master and lord, the householder, of all creation. There is the freedom of the Creator in the ordering of his creation. Everything is subject to his will and purpose. It is important to be reminded of this. And yet, it is a story which Jesus tells. Therefore, it is a story which picks up and carries forward the story of Creation through the Fall to Redemption.

Ultimately, it is a story about the grace of God towards us but as within the higher justice of his purposes for his human creation in spite of sin and folly, indolence and indifference. God desires our salvation in the freedom of his will. The parable highlights the primacy and the rightness of God’s grace. What God gives freely, he also gives according to the perfect rightness of his will.

But as a parable about God’s grace, it collides with our sense of justice. The point of the collision is to open to view the freedom, the grace and the higher justice of God. There is the rightness of what he does according to the purposes for which he made us and yet, that, too, is all grace. It arises entirely out of the sovereign freedom of God. As such, it is a story of the over-arching power of God which over-rides the limitations of human justice which are here shown to be tainted by envy and resentment and the sense of entitlement. At the same time, it shows God’s justice relative to human dignity, to our being made in the image of God.

What is wanted is that we should work in the vineyard of the Lord and enter into the favour and reward of God, whether later or sooner. Our lives are lived in the vineyard of creation. Wherever we are, that is the vineyard. It is wanted that we should recognize the Lord of the vineyard. To do so changes our perspective. But our working in the vineyard cannot be measured by the yardsticks of the finite or by our sense of entitlement. How long is not the question. Salvation is not about what’s in it for me over and against you!

What matters is that we simply enter into the labour willingly and find there the freedom and dignity of our humanity. The entering in and the recompense are, equally, all grace. God does not owe us what he freely wills to give us and yet, it is all his justice, too. “Whatsoever is right, that shall ye receive.” It is about our being with him in the good order of his creation, according to the justice of his grace. Our contemporary fixation with the language of ‘rights’, I am afraid, sometimes gets in the way of what God deems as right to give us. Our challenge is to see our daily labours as labours of love, even as creation itself is an act of love.

The dignified dust of our humanity is destined for something more than just the dust, despite ourselves. To remember the dust out of which we have been shaped is humility; but to remember the one who has shaped us and breathed his spirit into us is to be recalled to our dignity. It is to honour the Trinity. Our end is in his glory. We find our place in God’s story, beginning at the beginning, beginning with dust and dirt, but even more, beginning with God.

“My soul cleaveth to the dust:
O quicken thou me, according to thy word”

Fr. David Curry
Septuagesima 2010

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