by CCW | 13 June 2010 15:28
In the early days of the Trinity season, St. John’s First Epistle is read in conjunction with some of the most convicting and compelling parables of Jesus as presented by St. Luke in his gospel. Last Sunday, it was the story of Dives and Lazarus, a parable told to convict us about our indifference to God and to one another and to convince us about acting out of the vision of love that we have been given to see in the witness of the Scriptures. It means our care for one another out of God’s care for us.
Today’s Gospel is about an invitation – an invitation to a banquet, a great supper to which many are invited. The interest of the parable lies in the excuses which keep us from the banquet; in short, the ways in which we attempt to justify our absence from the divine feast of love. We are indifferent towards the needs of Lazarus lying at our gate because we are indifferent to the lessons of God in his Word, the Holy Scriptures. We refuse the invitation to the heavenly and divine banquet of love because we are pre-occupied with all the matters of our everyday life.
These two parables, seen in the light of the Epistle, speak profoundly, it seems to me, to our world and day. How? Because, let’s face it, in North America, at least, there is hardly a congregation that doesn’t want the sermon to be (a) entertaining and funny whether it is about God or not and preferably not; and (b) relevant to ourselves and the latest issue du jour which really means that Scripture and Sermon are meant to confirm or affirm some aspect or other of our quotidian lives, our everyday lives.
The Scriptures, of course, are full of good humour. God has a tremendous sense of humour. But the Scriptures aren’t there to amuse us. In my view, the Scriptures, too, are relevant to our lives, deeply and profoundly so, but not in the ways which we always expect. And that is the point. God is the measure of us, not us of God. He has accommodated himself to us in the Incarnation of Christ. Our task is to understand what that means in our own context but without prejudice to the essential principles of the Christian Faith. We are not to make God in our image, which is the trite and tiresome claim of the light-weight or soft-core atheists of our day, believe it or not.
It is actually hard to believe that Christopher Hitchens, author of the celebrated God is Not Great screed against all religion, should actually think that he has discovered a great truth, hithertofore unthought by anyone else before him, namely, that humans have made God in their own image. Utter nonsense. Both the ancient Greeks and the ancient Hebrews knew that argument. Xenophanes, for instance, in the sixth century BC, argued against the anthropomorphic principle that we make God in our own image. For the ancient people of Israel, the perennial issue is with idolatry which is about nothing less than mistaking the created things of this world for God, the creator.
The idea and the reality of God is greater than such folly and pretension. But we have to think God. “He therefore that would be saved/let him thus think of the Trinity” as the Athanasian Creed puts it so strongly. Think of God in a certain way is what that means. Think of God in ways that recognises his utter otherness from us and his world, on the one hand, and that also sees his relation and connection to everything in the created order, on the other hand. As is often the case, the poets help us best to think this.
Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back,
Guiltie of dust and sinne.
George Herbert’s poem, Love III, begins with this acknowledgment of the total and prevenient grace of God who invites us to his banquet. There is God’s invitation and then, there is our hesitation, “my soul drew back.” Why? In the telling of the gospel parable we are meant to realise that we are the ones who are “guiltie of dust and sinne.” It is as if our hearts condemn us and in that self-condemnation we separate ourselves from God and resist his love, drawing back from the invitation. The conjunction of dust and sin recalls us to the story of the Fall, to our turning away from God and turning, quite literally, towards the dust of creation.
In the parable, the excuses are about our preoccupations, our being busy with the things which, of course, easily concern us the most – property, such as land or possessions, and relationships, such as marriage or friendship. Our hearts are convicted but only in the hearing of the parable where we are meant to realise how often and how easily we put other things, particularly the passing things of the world, before the primary thing, namely, the love and worship of God. It doesn’t mean that land and oxen aren’t important (think cars or trucks, time-shares and cottages, iphones and flat screen TVs on which to watch the World Cup). They are. At issue is how important are they? Can they take the place of the love and worship of God, for instance? Our hearts should be convicted just in the hearing of the parable and in the asking of that question. For what kind of God is God if those things are more important? They become our gods and that is our folly.
We are ready for everything except God, it seems. God, on the other hand, has made his banquet ready for us. There is just that sense of a gulf between where God is and where we are. To become aware of that opens us to the mercy of God. God’s will for our humanity, it is suggested, cannot be frustrated simply by our indifference or our preoccupations with earthly pursuits and concerns. But we cannot be dragged to the banquet of love either. That is where John’s First Epistle comes into play so strongly, reminding us of the divine love which moves our minds and wills, reminding us that God is greater than ourselves, greater than our hearts of self-condemnation.
Herbert’s poem gives dramatic expression to the motions of divine love which seek to move us into the love of God.
But quick-ey’d Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
If I lack’d anything.
Not only does Love – God – bid us welcome but Love is “quick-ey’d” and draws “nearer” to us even when we are drawing back. Love “sweetly” questions us. It is a marvellous image. Questioning implies our capacity for understanding and response. It initiates a conversation, a dialogue in which our own sense of unworthiness is confessed, thus going beyond the initial sense of sorrow or contrition, the sense of guiltiness – “guiltie of dust and sinne.”
A guest, I answer’d, worthy to be here:
Love said, You shall be he.
I the unkinde, ungratefull? Ah, my deare,
I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
Who made the eyes but I?
In the exchange with Love, Love responds to our confession of ingratitude and unkindness, the condemnation of our own hearts, by taking our hand and “smiling did reply” to our own awareness of our unworthiness, with the reminder that the God who creates is necessarily greater than our folly. “Who made the eyes but I?
Truth Lord, but I have marr’d them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.
And know you not, sayes Love, who bore the blame?
My deare, then I will serve.
You must sit down, sayes Love, and taste my meat:
So I did sit and eat.
The theological sense here is that the divine love seeks the restoration of our hearts and minds. But for what end or purpose? That we might ultimately be united in his love. The Love that invites, draws near, sweetly questions, smiles and takes us by the hand is the love that has “bor[n] the blame” of our sins on the cross and seeks our company at the banquet of love. There is just that sense of being commanded to love. Not forced against our wills but by our wills responding to what God wills for us. “You must sit down, sayes Love, and taste my meat.” We have to want what God wants for us. As soon as we deny that, either in our indifference or in our outright refusals, then we make God in our own image or obliterate him completely from the horizons of our minds.
These lessons counter the atheisms and the idolatries of our contemporary culture. They do so by way of a reminder of the strong love of God, a love which is greater than our hearts. Love bids us welcome.
Fr. David Curry
Trinity II, 2010
Christ Church, Windsor
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2010/06/13/sermon-for-the-second-sunday-after-trinity-2/
Copyright ©2026 Christ Church unless otherwise noted.