Sermon for the Twentieth Sunday after Trinity
Link to audio file of the service of Matins & Ante-Communion for Trinity 20
“Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is.”
The days are evil, Paul tells us in Ephesians. It is a sombre sounding note in what otherwise seems to be a rather encouraging exhortation about being “filled with the Spirit”, about “speaking…in psalms, and hymns, and spiritual songs”, about “singing and making melody in your hearts to the Lord”; referencing directly the cultic practices of our liturgy in the Holy Eucharist, “giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ”. The ethical imperative of this is clearly signalled. It is about “submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God”.
This requires constant vigilance and instruction. “Be ye not unwise but understanding what the will of the Lord is”. We are at once fearful and anxious about our world and day and yet complacent and indifferent to the things which matter most. As such we acquiesce and contribute to the evil of our days. This is perhaps the tragedy of the Church in the failure to attend to the principles that belong to its truth and witness.
Something of what that means is seen in the rather disturbing scene presented to us in the Gospel story of the marriage-feast of the only-begotten. This Gospel reminds us in no uncertain terms about the seriousness of the invitation to the banquet of divine love and the consequences of our casual indifference; about our being “cast into outer darkness” with “weeping and gnashing of teeth”. Cast out even when you think you are in. Why? Because of our unreadiness which is nothing less than our indifference and complacency about spiritual things especially with respect to our corporate life in Christ, to what belongs to our fraternal and social friendships in their deepest meaning, as Pope Francis suggests in his latest encyclical, Fratelli Tutti. Simply put and I think obviously so, we don’t take church seriously because we don’t take God seriously. Ours is the culture of the shrug ‘whatever’. Where God does not matter nothing matters including ourselves. We neglect the idea of human agency and responsibility which is grounded in our life with God.
Something is required of us. What is required is our active attention to God in Word and Sacrament. Being serious about God is about being serious about ourselves as moral and intellectual agents; in short, an ethical understanding which shapes our thinking and doing. We are being called to account. This is something profoundly positive which is why this Gospel story figures so prominently in the second exhortation to Communion (BCP, pp. 90-92). We are “to consider the dignity of that holy mystery, and the need of devout preparation for the receiving thereof, so that ye may come holy and clean to such a heavenly Feast, in the marriage-garment required by God in holy Scripture, and be received as worthy partakers of that holy Table.”
