by CCW | 2 May 2021 06:00
Click here to listen to audio file of Service of Matins & Ante Communion for the Fourth Sunday after Easter.[1]
The lesson from Exodus recalls us to the Covenant that God makes with our humanity even in the midst of “a stiff-necked people”. It provides the ground for the marvel and wonder that is the further extension of that Covenant in the Resurrection. In the parade of readings today we see the wonder of God as essential life and what that means for us in our lives.
It is a challenge, of course, to read and think these readings particularly given the tendencies of a culture of many who are largely ‘unreaders’. If nothing else during the ups and downs of the pandemic, however, we might just learn to sit and think. ‘Don’t just do something, sit and think’ could be the most important lesson for us. It is ancient wisdom that contemplation is really the highest activity of our humanity. We need to ponder the wisdom that is more than knowledge and information and certainly more than the idolatry of the practical which so often consumes and destroys us. When ‘science’ becomes technology, science as knowledge is diminished and lost. Even more the philosophical wisdom that it presupposes is lost to view.
This is just to suggest that pondering these readings speaks profoundly to our current culture. It is, to use Jesus’ saying to Martha, the one thing necessary, unum necessarium, the better part that Mary has chosen. The Mary of the Martha and Mary story complements the Mary who is the mother of God, the Mary who sets the agenda and vocation of our humanity: “Be it unto me according to thy word.” That captures in nutsche, in a nutshell, the underlying logic of the classical Book(s) of Common Prayer in the patterns of reading that belong and have developed within that tradition.
So what do we see in the readings at Matins and Ante-Communion on the Fourth Sunday after Easter? The reading from Exodus presents the idea of the Covenant between God and Man written on two tablets of stone a second time. Why the second time? We are meant to recall our disobedience and betrayal of the Covenant of the Ten Commandments after they were initially given to us through Moses. That is the story of the golden calf, the story of our refusal to contemplate what is made known by God for our humanity. It led to Moses breaking the tablets of the Law because of our idolatry. We deny the universality and truth of the Law by turning to our immediate interests and concerns. The image of that betrayal is quite revealing. We make images of cows as the symbol of deliverance from slavery in Egypt. Why cows? Because they pulled the carts of the Israelites in the Exodus from Egypt. But a golden calf is simply a dead cow. This idolatry ignores and denies the active will of God moving in us that belongs to the deeper truth of the Exodus and which ultimately takes expression in the Ten Commandments; in short, the Covenant between God and man.
The depth and strength of meaning of the idea of a covenant between God and our humanity is further illustrated in the reading from 1 Peter 3, a reading we partly read at Ante-Communion in the quiet of Holy Saturday. The point is significant because that reading along with others on Holy Saturday reminds us dramatically and profoundly of the radical nature of the Covenant. It shows to the fullest possible extent God’s desire to be reconciled with the whole of his sinful creation in the credal idea of Christ’s descent into Hell.
It speaks as well to the intellectual aspect of salvation. Christ goes and preaches to the souls in prison, in the pit, in the abyss, in Sheol, in Hades, in Hell. Eastern Orthodoxy provides an important image of this in the icon of the Resurrection which depicts Christ bringing Adam and Eve out of the grave of death. It signals in other words the radical meaning of God as essential life which is the central point of the Resurrection. He is the life which is greater than death, greater than sin and evil, greater than human wickedness and folly. To think this is to transcend the divisive judgmentalism and empty moralism of our current situation: our looking in fear at one another quickly turns into pointing fingers of accusation at one another. This betrays the Covenant between God and our humanity which is the proper ground for our relationship with one another in community.
Such rich lessons inform the Eucharistic readings. The Epistle from James not only recalls God as “the Father of lights” from whom “every good gift and every perfect gift” comes down to us – a strong reminder, yet again, of God as essential life upon whom all good things depend – but also speaks to us about our relation to God’s grace. There is a strong check upon human hubris and pride, particularly in the form of wrath and anger which only contributes to division and hatred. Instead we are bidden to “receive with meekness the implanted word.” The image here is that of planting. Ideas are planted in us so that they may live and grow in us. Such is the purpose of the liturgy.
This complements in turn the powerful reading from the sixteenth chapter of John’s Gospel which form the Gospel readings for the last three Sundays of Eastertide. It is all part of the so-called “farewell discourse” of Jesus and reminds us yet again of the necessary interplay of Passion and Resurrection belonging to the essential life of God. One of the challenging features of today’s reading is the idea of God the Holy Spirit, the Comforter whom Jesus will send unto us, to “reprove the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgement.” This recalls the Covenant of God and the renewing of that Covenant in the Passion and Resurrection of Christ and grounds it in the very life of God as Trinity, “because,” as Jesus says repeatedly in these Eastertide Gospel readings from John 16, “I go to my Father.” “Because I go to the Father” is the phrase that reveals the logic of Eastertide. We are gathered into the fellowship of the Trinity through the Passion and Resurrection of Christ.
Such is the greater meaning of the Covenant between God and our humanity. Such is the greater meaning of the words of God to Moses. “Before all your people I will do marvels, such as have not been wrought in all the earth or in any nation; and all the people among whom you are shall see the work of the Lord; for it is a terrible thing that I will do with you.” The terrible thing is both a wonder and a judgment. It is about being called to account, to truth. But such is the greater wonder and marvel of God’s Covenant with our humanity. It is entirely about the wonder of essential life that alone is the counter to our fears and anxieties, our divisions and animosities, our suffering and death. It is altogether about life in the midst of the struggles and confusions of our times and world. Readings well worth pondering.
Fr. David Curry
Easter 4, 2021
(Christ Church closed during Covid 19 lockdown in 2021)
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2021/05/02/sermon-for-the-fourth-sunday-after-easter-12/
Copyright ©2026 Christ Church unless otherwise noted.