Category: Sermons

“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God”

Love constrains us to speak of love. It seems such a commonplace thought. Yet, I wonder if we do not altogether miss the absolutely extraordinary thing about this commonplace concept. I wonder if we do not altogether fail to see how special, how precious, how extraordinary Christ’s lesson is for us here in this gospel. It goes to the heart of the matter, to the heart that was willing to be pierced and broken for you and for me, indeed, for the whole world. That heart is the heart of Christ. That love is spoken and shown in the face of controversy and debate; in short, in the midst of the hostilities and animosities of our human hearts. “And yet the common people heard him gladly.” I hope that can be said of us.

Two things are extraordinary and noteworthy here. First, God commands us to love him. Secondly, Christ unites the love of God and the love of neighbour in himself. At first glance, such things may not seem so amazing. After all, they are words which we frequently hear: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord; and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength;” in short, with the whole of our being. “Hear O Israel,” says the One who is the Word of God himself.

To hear that Word is to be Israel, a people who are open to the Word of God, who are defined by that Word as a people of the Law. They come to be that people by that Word spoken in the Burning Bush, by that Word passing over them to free them from Pharaoh’s bitter yoke, by that Word delivering them from the Red Sea waters, by that Word sustaining them in the wilderness wanderings, by that Word establishing God’s will and covenant towards them in the Law. That self-same Word now proclaims that “the Lord our God is one Lord.” That unity is no mere oneness, no empty aloneness. It is fullness and the completeness of the divine life in itself. As Thomas Aquinas remarks, “the perfection of Christian life consists in charity.” That charity begins and ends with God.

(more…)

Print this entry

“Michael and his angels fought against the dragon;
and the dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not.”

Angels. What are they? Angels are messengers. A good messenger is an evangelist –angel is in the word. Evangelist is the Greek word for the Gospel – the good news, the good message. There is, then, an inescapable connection between Angels and the Gospel.

Angels are a feature of many religions. They are certainly a big part of the biblical landscape. They are a feature of the spiritual landscape of the Jewish or Hebrew Scriptures, what Christians know as the Old Testament, as well as being an integral part of the spiritual landscape of the Christian New Testament. They are also an important feature of the Islamic Qu’ran.

Whether or not one believes in Angels exactly, they are undeniably part of the religious world of Jews, Christians and Muslims. While not a matter of creedal doctrine for Christians, belief in angels is a defining feature of Islam. More importantly, though, is the role and place of angels intellectually or theologically speaking in the three monotheistic faiths. To put it simply, angels belong to the thought-world of Judaism, Christianity and Islam; in short, to the thinking that belongs to these revealed religions. There is a branch of theology that is devoted to angels – angelology. To put it in another way, angels are about our thinking God’s thoughts, the thoughts which come to us from God and our Godward thoughts which are carried on angels’ wings to God.

(more…)

Print this entry

“Friend, go up higher”

There was a healing done on the Sabbath before hostile eyes. There was a parable spoken in the face of resentful silence; a parable told to counter our presumption and hypocrisy. Jesus speaks and acts. He teaches. At issue is whether we will be teachable. Only so can we ever hope to “walk worthy of the vocation wherewith [we] are called.”

For make no mistake, we are called. There is our common vocation. We are called out of ourselves and 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 how we should seek to be and 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.”

(more…)

Print this entry

“And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her.”

In the Gospels, Jesus Christ seems to come and go constantly as a visitor, a man of no fixed address and one who is always, it seems, passing through. He is the babe of Bethlehem, but apart from his birth there is no mention of his birthplace. He is the boy of Nazareth, but apart from his boyhood, Nazareth is only the city to which he returns once and then, only to be rejected. He is by the sea and on the sea; upon the mountains and in the desert places; in the fields and on the roads. He passes through all the countryside and every region of that ancient promised land. He comes to innumerable villages and towns. He makes his way to Jerusalem. He is constantly drawing near and passing through. And yet, he is constantly in our midst, the abiding presence of God with us.

He comes and goes, strewing blessings on his way. But the blessings are not the passing moments of God’s visitation. They are the signs of his abiding presence.

In the gospel story for today, Christ comes to the city of Nain. It is really a little town or village. If I am not mistaken, this is the only time that it is mentioned in the Scriptures. And “as he came nigh” – as he came near – to the gate of the city, he meets a funeral procession. Christ is the stranger who becomes a neighbour to those who mourn. He enters into the sorrows of the mourners and, most especially, into the grief of the widow of Nain whose only son lies dead and is being carried to the grave.

It is a most extraordinary and touching encounter. “And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her.” Compassion. The word is strong; it refers to his inmost being. He takes her sorrow into his abiding love for the Father. “Weep not,” he says to this woman who has lost everything. What he means is, ‘do not weep forever’; ‘don’t always be weeping’; ‘don’t keep on weeping’. The weeping is not to be forever, for in the compassion of Christ we see the abiding love of God for us. That love means resurrection and life in and through the conditions of sorrow and death. That love means fellowship and joy. “Young man, I say to thee, Arise. And he that was dead sat up, and began to speak: and he delivered him to his mother” (Luke 7.14,15). He delivered him to his mother for whom he had already carried him into the heart of his abiding love for the Father. He delivered him to his mother even as we have fellowship with the Father through the Church.

(more…)

Print this entry

“Her sins, which are many are forgiven, for she loved much”

It is hard to imagine a more amazing statement. It dovetails wonderfully with the lesson from Ezekiel which speaks about “one heart” and “a new spirit” within us, “a heart of flesh” and not of stone; in short, a living heart, a heart that is alive to the presence of God. That lesson along side of this gospel story of the unknown and unnamed and utterly silent woman about whom Jesus says, “your sins are forgiven” is astounding. We see something of what that living heart of God in us really means.

What it doesn’t mean is the end of struggle and persecution, at least in this vale of tears. The story in Luke’s Gospel is particularly poignant and real. The woman who came to the house of Pharisee came because she learned that Jesus was there at table. She is described in the most wonderful economy of language by Luke as “a woman of the city, who was a sinner.” She is, in other words, a prostitute. She comes to Jesus.

She says nothing, yet her silence speaks volumes. Her heart is fully on display, fully transparent, a heart of flesh, we must say, though it is Jesus who has to teach us, hard-hearted ones such as we are, just what her actions mean. Her action is, perhaps, even more extreme and extravagant than the action of the one leper who was a Samaritan about whom we heard last Sunday. She brings a precious alabaster flask of ointment; she weeps, wetting his feet with her tears, and wiping them with the hair of her head, kissing them and anointing them with oil. It is an amazing act of devotion and love, an amazing scene of love-in-forgiveness.

Yet, it is the occasion of scandal. Doesn’t Jesus know who she really is? What kind of a religious hot-shot is he if he can’t recognise the garden-variety example of a sinner in this common “woman of the city?”

(more…)

Print this entry

“Be not anxious”

What is Jesus saying here? Simply this. He wants us to look at the world with new eyes. Look at the sequence of strong verbs here: behold, consider and seek.  “Behold, the fowls of the air”. “Consider the lilies of the field”. “Seek ye first the kingdom of God”.

It makes all the difference for us in our lives. To behold what he wants us to behold, to consider what he wants us to consider, to seek what he wants us to seek counters the paralysis of our fears, the terror of our anxieties and most importantly, perhaps, our anxiety about our anxieties.

Jesus says “be not anxious” more than once in this gospel. He knows our anxieties and how prone we are to being anxious, quite literally, about “a multitude of things”. It is “the Martha Syndrome” as diagnosed elsewhere by Jesus. “Martha, Martha, thou art anxious and troubled about a multitude of things” (Luke 10.41). We all have our fears and our worries, our troubles and our concerns, our heart-aches and our despairs. And we can worry ourselves, quite literally, to death about them. What are we anxious about? What are our anxieties? Quite simply, they are our cares, the things which, quite literally, occupy our thoughts.

(more…)

Print this entry

“That where I am, there ye may be also”
(John 14.3)

Summer in the Maritimes sometimes seems like a midsummer’s night dream, especially in these rural idylls and in the quiet beauty of such holy places as St. Mary’s, Crousetown. There is a marvelous providence, I think, in our midsummer feasts. They speak to our dreams and our hopes and give them deeper meaning; ultimately, they speak to the redemption of our humanity. August 6^th is the Feast of the Transfiguration. It is, we may say, a nine-day wonder which culminates in this lesser known feast, the Feast of the Assumption of Mary on August 15^th. Providentially, again, it seems to me, our Evensong lessons for the 11^th Sunday after Trinity this year flesh out the meaning of our human hopes and aspirations signaled in these feasts.

“‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.” Hardly a midsummer’s night dream, you may think! And yet this first line of one of the secular songs of the Christmas season touches upon the holy mystery of Christmas, the mystery of the Incarnation and the mystery of human redemption. It even echoes Zechariah’s prophecy which is read on the night before Christmas at Evening Prayer. It is exactly what we heard tonight in the last three verses of the first lesson.

“Sing and rejoice, O daughter of Zion; for lo, I come and I will dwell in the midst of you, says the Lord”… “Be silent, all flesh, before the Lord, for he has roused himself from his holy dwelling.” In between, there is the hint of the universal significance for many, if not all peoples, of the return to Jerusalem. At the heart of it all is the idea of God’s dwelling in the midst of his people.

And, if Paul, in the second lesson, can say, through the dialectic of persecution and preaching, that “they glorified God through me,” how much more so, then, through Mary, the one in whom “the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us”? The Transfiguration and the Assumption speak to the radical consequence of that divine indwelling; the radical consequence of God’s dwelling with us is the hope of our dwelling with him. It is about our participation in the glory of God. “And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father) full of grace and truth.” What is contained in that parenthesis – “and we beheld his glory” – is what we celebrate in the Transfiguration and the Assumption. We are being changed by what we behold. It is change that one can believe in; indeed, change that one can only believe in!

(more…)

Print this entry

“It is good to be here”

“It is good to be here,” Peter says to James and John and to Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration and he goes on to suggest, “let us make three tents”, three tabernacles to mark the special nature of the occasion, showing, however, that he has completely misunderstood the meaning and the nature of Christ’s transfiguration! Poor Peter, so right and yet so wrong.

The vision on the mountain top, it is true, has included the Old Testament figures of Moses and Elijah, witnesses to the Law and the Prophets respectively. But Christ’s Transfiguration is not simply another addition to the Covenant between God and Man; it signals its radical transformation and completion and implies the realization of the meaning of the Old Covenant encapsulated for Israel in the Law and the Prophets. The Church remembers and celebrates the Transfiguration on August 6^th.

Something seen and something heard. Jesus is transfigured before Peter, James and John, and, unlike the transfiguration of the face of Moses on Mount Sinai, too bright for the people of Israel to behold him, Jesus is seen: “his face did shine as the sun and his garment was white as the light.” There is something of a different order to Christ’s transfiguration and to its meaning for our humanity. And there is something heard; a voice is heard out of the bright cloud that overshadows them: “This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased,” words which were also said at the occasion of Christ’s baptism in Jordan. But there is this difference here. The voice of the Father speaking out of the bright cloud of divine majesty and glory also bids us: “Hear ye him.”

(more…)

Print this entry

“Behold, we go up to Jerusalem”

In the mercy of God’s “never-failing providence,” today is the Feast of St. James the Apostle as well as the Eighth Sunday after Trinity. The occasional intersection of the major Saints’ Days with our Sunday celebration of Christ’s Resurrection is, I think, most instructive. The commemoration of the Saints provides an illustration or example of what it means for us to participate in Christ’s redemptive work.

In the Maritimes, St. James is, we might say, a favourite saint. There are an enormous number of Churches, Anglican and otherwise, dedicated to the honour and memory of St. James. It is a feature of our Maritime and sea-faring traditions. St. James is one of the disciples whom Jesus calls from fishing to become a fisher of men. The Collect alludes to his calling. The Lesson from Acts indicates the radical cost of that calling. James is put to death by Herod the king. The Gospel teaches the meaning of that calling. It has to do with our going up to Jerusalem with Jesus.

Jesus explains exactly what it means to go up to Jerusalem. It means his passion, death and resurrection. What this means for us is seen in the lives of the saints, namely, our participation in Christ’s redemption of our humanity: drinking of the cup of which Christ drinks and being baptized into Christ’s baptism. We are consecrated to God by virtue of our incorporation into the death and resurrection of Christ. Suffering and glory are all part of that story.  As Paul tells us in the Epistle for the Eighth Sunday after Trinity, “we have received a spirit of sonship.” We are “the children of God and fellow-heirs with Christ”. But there is a cost: “if so be that we suffer with him, that we may also be glorified with him.” The martyr saints remind us of the suffering and the glory.

(more…)

Print this entry

“I have compassion on the multitude”

The Collect is a loaded prayer. Through a set of images which are essentially organic in character, it gathers our lives into an understanding which is spiritual and substantial. It concerns the quality of our lives with God and as standing upon the truth of God revealed. The images of grafting, growing, nurturing and preserving follow upon an understanding of God as the “Lord of all power and might, who art the author and giver of all good things.” That understanding enters into the meaning of these images. It makes them profoundly sacramental.

The Collect prays the understanding which the Scriptures reveal, particularly in the inter-relation between the Epistle and the Gospel. The Epistle suggests the meaning of the sacrament of Holy Baptism: we are grafted into the life of God without which we are dead in ourselves. We pray, too, that we may ever be kept in this living relationship. The Gospel speaks to us about the sacrament of Holy Communion: there is our growth and nurture in the goodness of God, “the author and giver of all good things,” through the compassion of Christ who feeds us in the wilderness and sets us upon our way, “he in us and we in him.” Grafted into “that pattern of teaching whereunto you were delivered,” as St. Paul puts it, we must live from that Word of God revealed.

That we are grafted not simply into the name of God but into “the love of thy name” suggests that Baptism marks the beginning of a dynamic relationship which has its continuing in the Eucharist. The fruit of these organic, spiritual, substantial and sacramental relationships is holy lives and a holy end. “But now being made free from sin and become servants to God, you have your fruit unto holiness and the end everlasting life.”

(more…)

Print this entry