Sermon for the Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany
“Why are ye so fearful?”
“From lightning and tempest; from earthquake, fire and flood; from plaque, pestilence, and famine; from battle and murder, and from sudden death, Good Lord, deliver us.” Thus prays the ancient Litany in the Book of Common Prayer, the first part of the Latin liturgy translated by Cranmer into elegant English which would be one of the distinguishing features of the Book(s) of Common Prayer. It offers a wonderful and ordered way of praying all that belongs to prayer and to our creedal identity in Christ. Such petitions teach a doctrine that, I fear, we have forgotten.
In our technocratic exuberance, we presume to think that we can control the elements but are fearful about every rumour of a snowflake in the air. We forget that we are creatures but are fearful about the brute forces of nature to which we are subject too. We forget that nature does not simply exist for us, for our pleasure and interest. We forget that nature is affected by our disorder; in other words, we find ourselves in a world of earthquake, tempest and fire, a world of woes and suffering, a world where nature, if not always “red in tooth and claw”, can be pretty foreboding and pretty threatening; at the very least deserving of our respect.
We forget even more that nature is subject to a higher authority as are we, too, as Paul reminds us this morning. There is an order and a purpose to nature, as Aristotle puts it, “at least for the most part.” We forget about that phrase, “for the most part”. What that means in Christian terms is that nature, too, is implicated in the Fall of man, that nature is no paradise. There are, I’m afraid, always the blackflies and the black ice, the winds and the snow.
We forget these things and yet are fearful about them. It takes an epiphany to awaken us to the Lord God of all creation and, especially, the Lord God of the human heart.
