Sermon for the Feast of St. Simon and St. Jude
“If a man love me, he will keep my words, and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.”
In the gentle softness of October and in the quiet stillness of the ending of nature’s year, we celebrate the completion of the Apostolic foundation of the City of God with the Feast of Saint Simon and Saint Jude. All that can be said has simply to do with their apostleship. They are of the company of “twelve poor men, by Christ anointed,”as a hymn puts it. And after all, what more needs to be said than that? Very little is known about either apart from their apostleship in Christ though they have come to be known traditionally as the patron saints of zealots and of lost causes, respectively. But that only highlights perhaps the essential doctrine of the saints. Another lives in them and so for us. It is all about the sanctifying power of the grace of Christ reflected in those whose lives are hid in Christ and who point us to the nature of our abiding in the grace of God.
That abiding is wonderfully signaled in the lesson from Revelation as belonging to the image of the heavenly city, the city of God. The Collect emphasizes that the Church is built upon nothing less than “the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the head corner-stone” and emphasizes the unity of doctrine as the binding principle that makes us “an holy temple acceptable unto thee.” We abide in the temple and are to be ourselves temples of the Holy Spirit.
What this means is shown in the powerful gospel for their feast which speaks about keeping the commandments of God in love and about the Holy Spirit as the Comforter or Strengthener of our faith who “shall teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.” The Feast of St. Simon and St. Jude completes the festal round of the Apostles and prepares us for the harvest festival of All Saints. What is set before us is the wonder of our co-inherence with God and with one another. God in us and we in him.
Saints Simon and Jude usher us into the glorious celebration of that community of divine love in which we have our abiding, the Feast of All Saints; itself the celebration of “all that dedicated city, dearly loved of God on high.” All our agendas are, after all, but lost causes, all our zeal is but misplaced love apart from our abiding in the love of God which passes human knowing. And as the Gospel makes clear this abiding is our peace and our joy, come what may in the course of this troublous life.
