Sermon for the Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity
“Friend, go up higher”
There was a healing done on the Sabbath under the suspicious eyes of hostile intent. There was a parable spoken in the face of resentful silence; a parable told to counter our presumption and hypocrisy, our hostility and discontent. Jesus speaks and acts. He teaches. At issue is whether we will be teachable. Only so can we ever hope to “walk worthy of the vocation wherewith [we] are called”.
For make no mistake, we are called. There is our common vocation. 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 must extend into every aspect of our lives. We either stand for something or we fall for everything. And then there is the matter of how we stand – with gracious determination and faithfulness or in resentful distrust and defensiveness? With bitterness or with graciousness?
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 qualities arise from the 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” – things which cannot be compromised or denied by concessions to the pressures of the world and society. For then we betray the vocation. We betray what we have been given to proclaim and who we are called to be.