Category: Sermons

“Behold, we go up to Jerusalem”

The idea of life as a journey is a common yet compelling metaphor. It signifies a sense of purpose and indicates a sense of direction. But not all journeys are the same. The differences lie in the conception of the end which conditions the means. Lent would remind us of the essential character of the Christian journey.

The journey is the pilgrimage of the soul to God and it is a pilgrimage with God. The end is union with God and God makes our way to him with us. We are apt to forget how remarkable this really is. There is our human desiring, on the one hand, our quest for God, the odyssey of the human soul, as it were, but there is, on the other hand, the divine desiring, that is to say, God’s will for us.

The journey is the way of sacrifice, to be sure, but it portends the greater accomplishment, the discovery of our part in the body of Christ. What has to be forsaken is our continual tendency to mistake the part for the whole or to deny everything else except our own self-will. Such are the disorders of sin which result in suffering and death. The journey does not deny the realities of sin and suffering but makes the way of pilgrimage through them. This is the marvel and the wonder of the Christian faith, the marvel and the wonder of redemptive love.

That is why the journey is the way of suffering. Our way to God passes through the ways of our rejection of God. Our way to God is the way of redemptive suffering in which the disorders of our souls – our disordered loves – are set in order. The disciplines of Lent are altogether about this. They don’t involve a flight from the world and the extinguishing of our desires so much as they intend “the setting of love in order”. They embrace the three essential characteristics of the Christian pilgrimage: the way of purgation; the way of illumination; and the way of union.

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“I am the vine, ye are the branches”

There is something rather disquieting and quite disturbing about The Feast of St. Matthias. He is, after all, the disciple chosen by lot and by prayer to take the place of the traitor Judas, as the Collect so directly puts it. It is impossible to consider St. Matthias without thinking about the kiss of Judas and our own betrayals. To contemplate Matthias is to confront the betrayals of our own hearts. That may be the real blessing for it opens us out to the grace of God which is greater than our hearts of betrayal. Out of Judas’ betrayal comes Matthias’ faithfulness.

To be fair, we only know about his being chosen. That is the burden of the lesson from Acts. About his ministry and personality, we know far less. But that is in keeping with the Scriptures as a whole. They don’t fulfill our Oprah and Dr. Phil type desires; slim pickings for the gossip rags ancient and modern. Instead, they offer theology.

The theology here is most instructive. It is the theology of substitution, the theology of atonement belonging to the logic of redemption. Matthias takes the place of Judas. Why does he have to be replaced? Judas betrayed Christ and out of remorse killed himself. Why not just carry on sans Judas? Because of a larger consideration. The number twelve. The twelve apostles look back to the twelve tribes of Israel and look ahead to the apostolic foundation of the Church. It is all about how we are part of something more and greater than ourselves, namely, the community of redeemed sinners.

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“You are not your own”

Scripture tests our patience. But more often than not, it is about our willingness to hear and not simply our lack of understanding.

Today’s lessons are a case in point. The lesson from Genesis is the story of the blessing of Jacob, a story of deceit really, because Jacob disguises himself as Esau and takes his place, thereby robbing his brother Esau of his birthright, the blessing of the first-born. Jacob uses cunning or guile to obtain what he wants. And yet, Jacob will become Israel by wrestling with an angel, wrestling with God, with whom there can be no deceit. There is, in short, a transformation which takes place. Jacob, the man of guile, becomes Israel, “in whom there is no guile”, as Jesus says about a later Israelite, Nathaniel.

In other words, there is hope for us all! There is the hope of change for the better in our lives, the hope of transformation, the hope for something more than the endless and dreary round of our same-old sins which, if not deadly, at least deaden us to the life-giving reality of God’s Word. In the case of Jacob, God is able to make something good out of the treachery and betrayals of our lives, even out of our own treachery and betrayal.

Genesis can be read as a set of stories about brothers: Cain and Abel, Abraham and Lot, Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau, Joseph and his brothers. Through the various spectacles of sibling rivalry, God forges a people for himself through whom his will for all peoples is proclaimed. But are we willing to listen and attend to these stories?

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“If I must needs glory, I will glory of the things which concern mine infirmities”

Storms and sports seem to define our Canadian winter but let’s hope they don’t define our souls!

These three ‘gesima’ Sundays provide us with some important moral lessons that prepare us for the journey of Lent, the journey of the soul to God. They involve the transformation of the classical virtues of temperance, courage, prudence, and justice through the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity. This Sunday, Sexagesima Sunday, shows us the virtues of courage and prudence as transformed into love by the love of God.

God’s love seeks the perfection of our humanity. The virtues are the activities of the soul which seek human perfection. But the classical virtues, if left to themselves, can become, as Augustine argues, splendid vices. They are activities for we are not essentially passive creatures defined by what we have or simply by what we receive through our experiences for, then, we are not free. The cardinal virtues teach us something about the character and nature of our souls and the activity of our souls. But the activity seems to be from our side, the side of human seeking, human knowing and doing, as if we could perfect ourselves, as if we could attain to God on the strength and wisdom of our own. Therein lies the problem.

Does that mean that the virtues should be extinguished in us? No. Because, once again, we are not essentially passive beings. There needs to be our engagement with what comes to us; it is not just about what comes from us. That is where the transformation of the virtues by grace comes into play; the virtues become forms of love, forms of our participation in God’s love. Transitional between Epiphany and Lent, these ‘gesima’ Sundays remind us of the love of God manifest in Jesus and indicate how that love is to live in us.

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“Go ye also into the vineyard”

The parable of the labourers in the vineyard is powerful and disturbing. That is the point of the parables. They are meant to prod us into thinking. They offer us another way of looking at things. Often as not they are deliberately provocative.

What could be more provocative than the idea that those who have worked less should receive the same pay as those who have worked more? It violates our sense of justice completely. And yet, the point of the whole parable is to open us out to a larger consideration of the justice of God. “Whatsoever is right, that shall ye receive.” But what is right? Are we the measure? Is right simply, ‘what is right for me?’ Meaning, of course, what I want for me? But on the other hand, is there not a question about equity, about a sense of shared equality? Otherwise doesn’t everything come down to what is simply arbitrary? Now there is a problem!

But is that what we have in this parable? I don’t think so. I think this parable challenges the assumptions that I am measured by what I get and that I am owed what I think I should have; in short, it challenges the entitlement culture of our world and day. What is that? The idea that I am entitled to whatever I think I should have. Why? Because of who I am. Who am I? I am measured by my sense of self-worth but that is measured entirely by what I think I am owed. It is, of course, about arguing in a circle but the assumption is clear. My worth is measured in terms of what I receive. To the contrary, the parable challenges all of the forms of homo economicus, our humanity as defined primarily by economics, whether as consumers or as producers.

The parable suggests another principle which defines our lives. It is simply this. We are called to be labourers – workers. Not in the Marxist sense of homo faber, that I am what I make or produce, but in the much more radical sense that there is something positive and free, something dignified and true in labour. It belongs to the truth of our being as intellectual and moral creatures, creatures who know and love. Work or labour is about our lives as spiritual beings. Standing idle is not good and is not wanted. “Go ye also into the vineyard”. What is that vineyard but the good order of creation? What is our place in the created order? Both before and after the Fall, we are called to labour, to work: first, “to have dominion over” the whole of creation and “to be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it”; and, secondly, “to toil” on the ground and to labour for only “in the sweat of your face shall you eat bread.”

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“Behold, the days are coming … when I will send a famine on the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord.”

Epiphany season ends this year not with a bang or a whimper but on a note of reflective judgment. Epiphany season is about the making known of God and about what God wants for us. That alone is an astounding matter. It centers on the idea of revelation, that there are things God wants us to know and which are revealed to us. That says so much, on the one hand, about the truth and the dignity of our humanity, and says so much, on the other hand, about the truth and the mystery of God, the God who makes himself known to us so that his life can live and move in us. This is an astounding wonder.

The idea of God’s revelation of himself and his will for us means that something about ourselves is revealed to us. We are in these stories individually and institutionally, as it were. Something about the dynamic and nature of human institutions and human personality is revealed in the witness of the Scriptures. We are made aware of something beyond ourselves, a principle of absolute goodness and truth to which we are held accountable and without which we have no freedom and no real dignity. That we close our ears to this is our folly and our wickedness; judgment itself.

Judgment. We are uncomfortable about the idea of judgment and well we should be. In our day, judgment is about being judged by others without any recourse to the question, “upon what basis?” What are the principles that inform our moral, social and political discourse?

We live in a world of wheat and tares, wheat and weeds, as it were, and it is not always easy to know which is which or even which are we. That is why we are given sage advice by Paul in the Eucharistic epistle for today to forbear and to forgive one another and by Jesus in the Gospel parable to let both wheat and tares grow together until the harvest. “Whatsoever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus”, Paul says, and that suggests a check upon our judgments of ourselves and one another. In a world where we are constantly being told what to say and what to eat, what to do and what to think on the basis of mere assertion and arbitrary authority, it is good to be reminded of God’s judgment rather than ours. It is to be returned to the Lord who has made known himself and his will for us. There is a kind of intellectual and principled accountability.

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“Whatsoever ye do, in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus”

Epiphany runs out in the themes of mercy and judgment. Today’s epistle complements and illustrates the gospel. Wheat and tares grow together in the field of the world. Wheat and weeds are there together, both the good and the bad. But who can be sure which is which? What is weed and what is wheat? This is to recognize the limitations of our judgments. “Let them both grow together until harvest”, says the sower. God is the gardener and God is the judge. Not you and not me. That is itself a great mercy.

This doesn’t simply mean the suspension of our judgment in the abdication of responsibilities. We have the obligation and the ability to discern right from wrong and, and by God’s grace, to act accordingly. We are bidden to be God’s good wheat in the world of wheat and tares. But it does mean a check upon our judgmentalism. Forbearing one another and forgiving one another is the counter to our judgmentalism. Our judgmentalism is our presumption to know what we cannot and do not know about others and even about ourselves. We would put ourselves in the place of God as judge. We would presume to have a total and absolute view when, in fact, our viewpoint is altogether restricted and limited. We see, at best, “through a glass darkly”. To know this is to be aware of the limits of our knowing. It is the beginning of wisdom. It frees us from the tyranny of ourselves.

“Did you not sow good seed in the field? From whence then hath it tares?” the servants ask the householder who replies, “an enemy has done this”. There is always the possibility of discovering that we are the enemy. That we are the tares even when we think we are the wheat. Our judgments have a way of turning back upon ourselves. It is called hypocrisy. It is a very wide net that catches us all.

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“The Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple”

Candlemas marks the mid-point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. A blaze of light in the bleak darkness of winter, Candlemas awakens us to the hope of spring when we might hear again the words of the Lord of love, “Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away, for lo, the winter is past, the rain (and the snow!) are over and gone.” Candlemas points us to Easter, to the triumph of life over death. That alone is a comforting and even a cheering thought, isn’t it, especially for a people oppressed and wearied by the winter storms?

We aren’t there yet, of course! But Candlemas is a compelling and significant festival and this year, in the Providence of God, it falls on a Sunday, on what is the penultimate Sunday of the Epiphany season. A double-barreled feast, at once of Mary and of Christ, it reminds us of the deep logic of the Incarnation, of the radical meaning of God being with us in the humanity of Jesus Christ, the eternally-begotten Son of the Father, born of Mary. The themes of the Epiphany are wonderfully concentrated in the rich fullness of this celebration: The Presentation of Christ in the Temple commonly called The Purification of Saint Mary the Virgin, to give it its full title, redolent of theological significance, and yet even more commonly known as Candlemas. Light blazes forth into glory.

In some many ways, it is a most complicated feast. It is a feast of meetings. Eastern Orthodox Christians call it “hypapante”, meaning encounter or meeting. And to be sure, there are a great number of meetings that the Gospel presents: the meeting of God and man in the infant Christ, the meeting of Law and Gospel, the meeting of men and women, Mary and Joseph, old Simeon and aged Anna, the meeting of the Old Covenant and the New. A rich feast of meetings.

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