Category: Sermons

“We love him because he first loved us”

St. John’s First Epistle is a treatise on love which complements and underscores the love which his Gospel proclaims. It cannot be emphasised enough, it seems to me, that we enter into the mystery of the life of God through the eyes of John. This epistle intends, as do so many of the epistles and lessons, the application of the Gospel message, particularly the Gospel proclamation that “God is love.” Love is of God and so we ought also to love one another. But what is that love?

That love is the communion of God with God in God – the communion of the Trinity. This is the love by which we have communion with God and so with one another. Our loves find their place and meaning in God’s love. “He that abideth in love abideth in God and God in him.”

This is, as it were, the recurring refrain of the Trinity season: “God is love and he that abideth in love abideth in God and God in him.” This is the love which the Church is empowered and compelled to proclaim. But more than that, the Church is to be the place of the indwelling love of God, the place where God’s love is called to mind, and the place where that love takes shape in us. The Church is to be the place where we seek the perfection of our love in the grace of Jesus Christ.

The Church refers to more than merely a building, just as the building points beyond itself. These holy places signify a greater purpose and one which extends into the stuff of our daily lives with the intent that they should be holy lives. We are called to love out of the love which has been shown to us.

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“Behold, a door was opened in heaven”

It was behind closed doors, literally and figuratively, that Jesus made known to us his resurrection. But it is not only behind closed doors that the things of God are made known to us. Through the incarnation and manifestation of Jesus Christ, through his passion and death, through his resurrection and ascension, through the sending of the Holy Spirit, “a door was opened in heaven” and we behold the glory of God in the fullness of his revelation. God makes himself known to us.

Trinity Sunday sets before us the vision of God which is the end of man. “The end of man is endless Godhead endlessly possessed” (Austin Farrer). Trinity Sunday, we might say, is the great Te Deum Laudamus of the Church. We proclaim God as the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. We proclaim what we have been given to behold through the fullness of the scriptural witness to God’s revelation. It is what we have been given to proclaim. It is also what we are privileged to participate in. And nowhere is that more fully captured than in the Athanasian Creed which we have been privileged to proclaim.

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“And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind”

Sometimes the things that come upon us suddenly are the things that unsettle us most. Is it so with the Descent of the Holy Ghost? He came down “suddenly” upon the disciples, but was his coming suddenly a coming unexpectedly? That he came suddenly we read; his coming unexpectedly, we do not read. In fact, Jesus tells us to expect the coming of the Holy Ghost, “commanding them not to depart from Jerusalem but to wait for the promise of the Father,” even the descent of the Holy Ghost.

Yet we may wait expectantly and still be caught unawares, for the realisation of what we await may far exceed our expectations and so catch us by surprise. We await for what we do not fully understand. The grace of God is always something more; the mystery of God something more yet again. The promise of the Ascension was the coming down of the Holy Ghost for which Jesus prepares us and bids us wait, yet “suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind.”

Certainly, the effects of this coming down would appear to be most unsettling, the manner of their appearing no less so – “a rushing mighty wind” and “cloven tongues like as of fire” lighting upon the disciples gathered in Jerusalem, filling them with the Holy Spirit and moving them “to speak with other tongues.” To all appearances an event most unsettling and more than a little bit disconcerting.

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“God has gone up with a merry noise/ the Lord with the sound of the trumpet”

It is the psalms, as often as not, that strike the right tone of approach to our worship. In this case, the high note of rejoicing and delight that belongs to the Feast of the Ascension is nicely captured by the words of the psalmist. “God has gone up with a merry noise/ the Lord with the sound of the trumpet” (Psalm 47.5). Another psalm, Psalm 93, too, captures the royal theme of divine kingship over the whole of creation that the Ascension also signifies.

The Ascension of Christ marks the fortieth day of Easter. It marks the end, in the sense of the completion, of the Easter season. One of the creedal mysteries of the Christian Faith, the Ascension is often overlooked, perhaps because it doesn’t fall on a Sunday, but on a Thursday. And yet, it provides some very important and powerful teaching.

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“The Lord is King”

Three psalms begin with the words “The Lord is King,” psalms 93, 97 and 99. In the psalter of The Book of Common Prayer, these three psalms have the same Latin title, Dominus regnavit. It means “the Lord rules,” in other words, “the Lord is King.” The inclusion of the Latin titles, invariably taken from the first words of the psalms in their Latin translation, reminds us of the long and rich tradition of prayer and spirituality to which we are connected. The Latin psalms, in some sense, shaped the thought-world of the West for more than a thousand years. Our Prayer Book honours that heritage and legacy.

“The Lord is King”signals that the God of Israel is the King of all creation. For Christians that kingship is made visible in the paradox and wonder of Christ crucified and dead, and then, Christ risen and ascended; in short, the cross and the glory.

We meet in the Ascension of Christ. Thursday was Ascension Day, the culmination of the resurrection and the celebration of the homecoming of the Son to the Father having accomplished “the will of the one who sent [him].” It is a time of great rejoicing, a time of great glory. “God has gone up with a merry noise,”as the gradual psalm so wonderfully puts it. The Son returns to the Father. Today is The Sunday after Ascension. In the meaning of the Ascension we celebrate the Session of Christ at the right hand of the Father. He “ascended into heaven, And sitteth on the right hand of the Father” as we just said in the Creed. What does it mean?

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“And the Lord showed him all the land” (Deut.34.1)

Sometimes the smell of the land can be quite overpowering! You know what I mean – the odour of ordure, the smell of manure. It is a reminder of the realities of the land in a farming community. Perhaps, today that pungent aroma will be offset by the bouquets of Mother’s Day flowers! Yet, apart from the secular observance of Mother’s Day, this is the Fifth Sunday after Easter, commonly known as Rogation Day.

The days of rogation are days of asking, days of prayer, but with a particular emphasis upon the land. Rogation Sunday would remind us of the redemption of creation itself and our place in the landscape of creation redeemed. The resurrection is cosmic in scope. It concerns the whole world – the world as ordered to God.

Prayer is an activity of redeemed humanity. We make our prayers in the land where we have been placed. Our places in the land are to be the places of grace. How? By prayer. Rogationtide embraces the world in prayer. The world is comprehended in the relationship of the Father and the Son in the bond of the Holy Spirit. Nowhere is that more clearly signaled than in today’s Gospel where Jesus speaks of his going forth from the Father into the world and his return to the Father out of the world. The redemption of the world is captured in those words. What is “overcome” is sin, which is the world as turned away from God and as turned against God, the world as infected and stained by our sinfulness, by the forgetfulness of our place and so of ourselves in the landscape of creation redeemed. The consequences are our disrespect for the land and the sea, for the world in which we have been placed. We make a mess of it. We forget the place of creation in the will of God; we forget about the redemption of creation.

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“Sing ye praises with understanding”

O sing praises, sing praises unto our God; / O sing praises, sing praises unto our King. /For God is the King of all the earth:/Sing ye praises with understanding (Psalm 47.6,7). So the psalmist teaches us. We have had a splendid illustration of what it means to sing with the understanding with the King’s College Chapel Choir tonight under the direction of Paul Halley. Welcome to Christ Church and please, please come again!

“Though we but stammer with the lips of men, yet chant we the high things of God,” one of the early Fathers of the Church says. We sing the high praises of God. It is our freedom, perhaps our highest freedom. But as the Psalmist suggests, our praises are not praises except they be through the understanding. Indeed, it cannot be our freedom unless it be through the understanding – the understanding of the revealed nature of God. For our praises are not projections but proclamations – an acknowledging of what has been given to us to know. We can only proclaim what has been made known to us and, in so doing, we enter more fully into the understanding of what we proclaim. But how is it our freedom?

God alone is praiseworthy precisely because in the freedom of his eternal being he does not need our praises. The proclamation of the Trinity – the highest of the high things of God, the mystery that is shown, what is revealed, not concealed – is the acknowledgement of the perfect self-sufficiency of God upon which everything else depends. Yet in singing God’s praises, the Church is also most free. The God who does not need our praises is freely praised. However much humanity needs to praise God, our praises are not praises if they are forced.

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“Because I go to my Father”

“Elvis has left the building,” it is famously said, indicating that there would be no more encores. Well, here, I hope, Jesus has not left the building! But the question for our culture and day is whether we have left him in our indifference, if not our outright hostility to Christian doctrine and life.

There is a paradox in the last three Sundays of Easter that is captured in the recurring refrain signaled in the Gospels for those Sundays. The recurring refrain is “because I go to my Father.” Jesus prepares the disciples for his going away which is the condition of his being with us in his body, the Church. It is the so-called “farewell discourse” of Jesus in St. John’s Gospel.

The Gospel engages the world. That is not the same thing as being collapsed into the world or being conformed to the world. Nor is it about making accommodations to the world with respect to the agendas and issues of our day. There have always been such tendencies and temptations. They can be, perhaps, the occasion for the discovery or recovery of the deeper truths of the Gospel. “The Spirit of truth,” it is said in today’s gospel, “will guide you into all truth.”

But what is that truth? Is it simply something which we happen to agree upon today only to change our minds tomorrow? Is the truth simply our acquiescence to the loudest voices drumming their mantras of social and political correctness into our heads? Is truth simply the will of those in power? Is it simply our feelings and opinions? No. Complementary to this statement about “the Spirit of truth,” is the equally important statement that we will hear at Pentecost, namely, that the Holy Spirit “shall teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said to you.” Somehow truth is found in the divine relations between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit; in short, in the divine life opened to view through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

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