Sermon for the Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity

admin | 26 September 2021

“Friend, go up higher”

It is not about ambition or pretension. It is about the hope of transformation. It conveys the sense that we are called to something more, that we have a destiny beyond what we know is before us but will not face, namely, the grave and gate of death. We are more though not less than our bodies and the circumstances of our lives which does not mean that we are in flight from either. Somehow going up higher happens where we are in our souls and bodies.

The operative words are “friend” and “go up higher.” These words speak to the intimacy and nature of our identity in Christ, to the true form of our humanity in God, transhumanised, as Dante puts it, inventing a word in Italian (trashumanar) that has been transposed into English but now co-opted by contemporary identity politics in very different ways. But we are not what we might imagine in the vanity of our minds through the mechanics of re-imaging and refashioning our bodies as constituting our identities or in some sort of biological determinism which equally negates our freedom. Our identities as persons are not simply biological nor are they merely social constructs that shift and move like leaves on the wind. “Friend, go up higher” is about our vocation to Christ and in Christ. Through the sacraments of Baptism and Communion, we are identified with Jesus in his free-willing identity and sacrifice for us. It is about reclaiming the integrity of our being in Christ through the community of God and man realized in Christ.

Jesus calls us “friends” elsewhere in the Gospels, too. It is an especially potent statement that changes the nature of the relationship between God and man. He does so not just by way of a parable but more directly. He calls us friends at the height of his passion, on the night of our betrayal. The wondrous thing that passes human understanding is that God has made us his friends even when we are his enemies. This turns the ancient world on its head. Friendship with God rather than a cowering fearfulness of God? It turns our world on its head. To suppose that we can create ourselves? Sheer illusion. Yet we live in a hopeless and fearful world precisely because of such illusions. Here is the antidote to our hopelessness, our fear, and our illusions.

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 extends into every aspect of our lives.

St. Paul reminds us of the qualities of that vocation, about what 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.” These are profound words that speak to our spiritual identity, to our life and being in Christ.

It is a high calling, to be sure. And it would be impossible, except for this. The means whereby it is accomplished in us is the same as what has been shown to us. Jesus himself is the teaching. He is what he says. In other words, it is grace – what comes from God to us. Grace goes before us and follows us, as the Collect puts it. “Prevent” in its older and fuller meaning does not mean “hinder” but “a going” or “a coming before.” Our grace-ordered lives are about the teaching of Christ living in us by our “walking worthy of the vocation wherewith we are called.”

“Friend, go up higher” is not our presumption but our calling. Christ has come to where we are but not to leave us where we are. He wants something better for us. He has come to us and we find our vocation in him, in what he says to us and in what he does for us. Our vocation is simply about the quality of our being with him.

That quality of being is not something static. It is dynamic and alive, charged with the presence of God. It is the awareness of God in our lives that makes all the difference. Awakened to that, we can only be set in motion, in sacrifice and service, in prayer and praise. “Friend, go up higher” awakens us to the spiritual community of which we are a part “with Angels and Archangels, and with all the company of heaven,” the spiritual community that signals the true end and dignity of our humanity as found in communion with God.

But there is a condition. The condition is our openness to the reality of God, both as priest and people. Without that openness to the reality of God we are trapped in the presumption of ourselves. We are, in fact, atheists. For in putting ourselves ahead of one another we also put ourselves ahead of God. The God who is an afterthought in our lives is the God who is dead to us in our lives. We are dead to him. We forget that the grace of God is the whole premise of our existence: “it is he that hath made us and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.” In a way, this gospel story would remind us of who we are and what we are called to be by way of a patient, prayerful watchfulness and by way of an acting upon what we see and hear in God’s word. This is the counter and the contrast to our self-presumption.

We so easily get stuck in the various ruts of our lives. We forget so easily the gospel of our transformation. Yet God has come to us to raise us to where he is. That is the radical grace of the gospel. It is made visible and audible to us in our liturgy. We are called “friends” and we are called “up higher,” out of ourselves and out of our presumption. We are called to Christ.