by CCW | 8 September 2024 10:00
I can think of no better antidote to the anxieties of our “anxious generation” than what this day has set before us, first in Alec’s baptism, itself the result of a long gestation and period of questing, and, secondly, in the readings for this Sunday which speak so directly to the contemporary disorders of our lives and our institutions. Both recall us to the things which matter most, the things which belong to God and to our life in the body of Christ.
Paul makes a point of calling attention to the “large letters” that he himself writes in his own hand to the Galatians. This is similar to what Alec’s baptism makes visible for us, namely, “the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.” Such is the meaning of dying to ourselves and living to God in Christ, to our being incorporated sacramentally into the life and death of Christ. We are “a new creation” not at the expense of the body but through its redemption. Like Paul, we bear in our bodies “the marks of the Lord Jesus”, the signs of sacrifice, literally, the sign of the Cross.
This is the true meaning of being born again. It is about being born upward into the things of God but only through Christ’s sacrifice and love for us. This is exactly what Jesus explains to Nicodemus in the Gospel reading for “those of Riper Years” as the Prayer Book so quaintly puts it. Yet the context of that expression is crucial for it is about hardships and sufferings that are part and parcel of our lives and, indeed, of the history of our institutions in their folly and disarray; they are nothing without the principles for which they stand.
Why ‘Riper Years’? Because it refers to adult baptism, the baptism of those who can answer for themselves as distinct from infant baptism which for fifteen years or more had been banned during the English Civil War and the reign of Cromwell in the mid-seventeenth century. And yet, somehow the principles of the Christian Faith survived and were revived in their classical forms.
What I want to emphasize is that the principles which define and shape our spiritual lives are the things worth living for and are always there to be reclaimed despite the ravages of sin and folly and the ruins of institutions. With the restoration of the English Church in its reformed catholic nature, there was a need for a service for those who did not receive baptism as infants, hence “those of Riper Years” who could answer for themselves the questions which otherwise would have been answered on their behalf by parents and godparents. Those who are baptized as infants, those who are literally without speech (in-fans), are meant to grow into the understanding of the vows made on their behalf and to own them for themselves.
What is our anxiety? It is a modern word. Earlier texts bid us “take no thought” (KJV) or “be not careful” (Tyndale), phrases which have a certain paradoxical power that anxiety does not convey. They mean not to overthink things, not to think things in the wrong way, or not being too full of cares and hence distracted. We get it. It is really an issue about what preoccupies and obsesses us to the point of the loss of self. An englishing of angst, it signals a sense of dread and fearfulness which is really about a loss of the vision of God’s grace and the good order of his creation.
Being born again is about seeing the world and God and ourselves with new eyes, with a renewed vision that recalls us to the truth of ourselves in God. This is the beauty and the wonder of Jesus’s words in Matthew’s Gospel which speak so profoundly to our current distresses and, yes, anxieties, about the world and ourselves. Jesus recalls us to the beauty and wonder of God’s creation as the embodied expression of his grace and truth. Such, too, are the sacraments whereby the things of this world and of human labour and engagement with creation, such as water and bread and wine, become the vehicles of our restoration and joy, the means of our participation in the life of God. The Gospel itself is sacramental; outward and visible signs of invisible and spiritual grace.
“Behold the fowls of the air … consider the lilies of the field … seek ye first the kingdom of God”. These strong verbs proclaim the truth and beauty and goodness of God’s creation and his providential care; the very things which we have so much forgotten and ignored in the mad presumption of our technocratic urge to dominate and manipulate the world and one another. We are our anxiety; it is really about us in our self-absorption which paradoxically results in the loss of ourselves as selves and a disconnect from creation. We are divided in ourselves and our affections, torn between this interest and that, chasing after the fads of each age, twisting and turning in the gyre of our own confusions, willing and unwilling our wills, unable to commit to anything, on the one hand, while feeling completely determined and utterly unfree in the overwhelming dominance of the technocratic culture, on the other hand. The tyranny of choices is our unfreedom.
The antidote lies in recovering a way of thinking and being, a way of seeing the world anew, of seeing the world in God and in his all-embracing love for his creation and for us. Jesus uses the simple things of the world to remind us of God’s care for us. It is a beautiful and powerful image that opens us out to the created world of which we are a part and, indeed, a special part, but only if we will remain attentive to God’s grace and love as what is in principle prior and absolute. His words free us to what is everlasting and of lasting worth even in the face of the ups and downs, the confusions and follies, the sin and evil of ourselves and our world and day. We cannot control the future and, perhaps, that is the main point: our illusions of control belong to the illusion of thinking that we are God.
We presume to control the world and one another only to find we are the ones being controlled. But this is at the expense of our true vocation to understand and take delight in the givenness of things as grounded in the transcendence of God. “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof”, Jesus tells us, recalling us to his sacrifice, his death and resurrection which overcomes the world of our illusions. Perhaps, just perhaps this allows us to “behold”, “consider”, and “seek” what is absolutely beautiful, good, and true.
These verbs speak to the truth of our humanity in terms of intellect and will and their interrelation; a reminder of what it means to be embodied spiritual creatures. Such is the radical meaning of our life in Christ, the Son and Word of the Father; for “in him is life and the life is the light of men”. But, as in Alec’s baptism, we have to renounce ourselves and our illusions to affirm what God gives and provides for us. And there, there is the truth of ourselves as being restored to the image of Christ through our incorporation into Christ sacramentally in baptism and communion. Here is our freedom to God even in the midst of the uncertainties of our world and day. Here is the antidote to our anxieties.
Fr. David Curry,
Trinity 15,
September 8th, 2024
Baptism of Alec Westphal
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2024/09/08/sermon-for-the-fifteenth-sunday-after-trinity-12/
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