by CCW | 18 November 2012 18:00
The theme of rejoicing continues in our Evening Prayer readings. The first lesson[1] is taken from The First Book of Maccabees, a book from the Apocrypha, too, complementing this morning’s reading from Ecclesiasticus, but belonging instead to the genre of historical writings. It is largely a war story about dark and difficult times for the Jewish people under the Hellenistic rulers that came after Alexander the Great’s conquest of the world. This passage is a song of rejoicing at a moment of peace and relative prosperity as the result of the leadership of Simon Maccabeus. There is peace and conversation, security and order, a climate of lawfulness and worship. “He made the sanctuary glorious, and added to the vessels of the sanctuary.”
There is a sense in which the contemplative worship of God is simply everything. For the time of the Maccabeans, what was at issue was Israel’s worship of God over and against “the abomination of desolation,” a statue of Antiochus Epiphanes, claiming to be Zeus set up in the holy Temple itself; in short, a sacrilege and idolatry. Idolatry always confuses the things of this world with the Lord and Creator of all things. It can take many forms.
Our second lesson[2] from Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians is really a powerful fund-raising letter! Perhaps the greatest appeal for funds in the Scriptures! Here Paul is exhorting the Corinthians to keep up their good reputation for being generous to others in need. He is exhorting them to give more, to be generous in providing relief for the Church in Jerusalem. A Christian appeal for funds, his argument is grounded in “the surpassing grace of God in [them],” a grace which belongs to the infinite and “inexpressible gift” who is Christ Jesus. That is and must be the basis of Christian charity whether in times of peace and prosperity or in times of scarcity and struggle. We live in the body of Christ. We live for the body of Christ with one another. We act out of the generous love of God which has been given to us in Christ Jesus. There is a joy which lies at the heart of the Christian understanding of things.
What is that joy? It is the joy of redemption that springs from the Covenant of the Most High and from the compassion of God in Jesus Christ. The divine generosity compels us to be generous, too. “Give and it shall be given unto you,” far more than what we can ever imagine, let alone deserve.
Fr. David Curry
Choral Evensong
November 18th, 2012
Trinity XXIV
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2012/11/18/sermon-for-the-twenty-fourth-sunday-after-trinity-choral-evensong/
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