Category: Sermons

“The people which sat in darkness have seen a great light”

The Gospel says nothing about shillelaghs or about shamrocks or even about snakes. It does say something about places on a sea-coast, about the preaching of Christ seen as the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy about light to those in places of darkness, about repentance, about discipleship, and about healing and salvation; in short, about all the things that belong to the evangelium – the good news that is the meaning of the word, gospel. Something of that sensibility belongs to the Feast of St. Patrick, the outstanding Apostle to Ireland, the bearer of the light of the Gospel to the pagan darkness of the Gaels.

It was Chesterton’s great quip: “For the great Gaels of Ireland [meaning the gaelic],/Are the men that God made mad./For all their wars are merry,/ And all their songs are sad.” Much of that remains true but through the missionary zeal and pastoral patience and understanding of Patrick, happy songs, the songs that belong to the divine comedy of Christianity are also heard and sung, known and loved. In How the Irish saved Civilisation, the writer, Thomas Cahill, notes that Irish and civilization are words which are “seldom coupled,” but if there is any justice in making such a connection, and I think there is, then much of the credit must go to Patrick.

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“For here have we no continuing city, but we seek one to come”

Rare are the occasions when we have a reading at Holy Communion from one of the major writings of the New Testament, The Letter to the Hebrews, but when we do they are of the greatest significance. Once in the Sundays in Lent, next Sunday, Passion Sunday, for instance, and twice during Holy Week, the epistle reading is from Hebrews. And, of course, it provides the great epistle for Christmas, too, and on a few other occasions as well, such as in the Octave of All Saints’. How splendid, then, is the course of the readings at the Offices which allow us to savour somewhat more fully the richness of this almost impossibly rich and perplexing epistle. In a way, it is one of the most theologically demanding works of the entire New Testament. And that’s saying a lot!

This year at Morning Prayer, we have had the privilege of reading from Hebrews a little more extensively as well as the great joy of reading one of the most outstanding narrative sequences in The Book of Genesis, the story of Jacob or Israel. In a way, The Letter to the Hebrews provides the most wonderful Christian commentary on the whole of the Old Testament and, indeed, particularly with reference to Genesis.

“Let brotherly love continue”, our reading from the 13^th chapter begins. Indeed, “let brotherly love continue,” and should we ever be under any delusion about how hard that is, we have only to consider The Book of Genesis! In a way, it is about the antithesis of brotherly love! Cain kills Abel; that’s just for starters; Abram and Lot, who are kinsmen, get into tussles over land; and, then, there is the most extraordinary sequence of stories dealing first with Isaac, the promised son, and then Jacob and Esau, twin brothers but at odds with one another; and then, the story of Joseph and his brothers who sold him into slavery. Apart from Isaac, it might seem that it is altogether about brothers. Upon closer examination, of course, there is the curious business of Ishmael, a step-brother to Isaac by way of Sarah’s servant, Hagar. In short, it is all about brothers whose relation to one another exhibits the greatest confusion, ambiguity, tension, and animosity imaginable. You would almost think it was Hants County! Or anywhere, really!

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“Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost”

The gathering up of the fragments, κλασματα, literally, the broken pieces, the left-overs of the picnic in the wilderness with Jesus, signals the nature of redemption itself. It is about the gathering up of the broken fragments of our lives. The gathering is about the coming together, literally, a συναγωγη, of our wounded and broken humanity in the wilderness of the world. But a gathering to what end? That nothing be lost. Such is the picture of redemption.

The gathering of the broken fragments of our lives is about our being gathered to God. Such are the Lenten mercies of Christ on this day which is known by various names. It is known as “Mothering Sunday” because of the Epistle reading from Galatians which identifies Jerusalem as “the mother of us all.” The nurturing, caring mother is the image of the Church that nurtures and cares for us with the things of heaven. It is known, too, as “Refreshment Sunday” because of the Gospel reading from John about the feeding of the multitude in the wilderness and the further provision for us in “the gathering up of the fragments that remain.” And, finally, it is known as “Laetare Sunday” because the Introit psalm for the day at Holy Communion, Psalm 122, which begins “Laetatus sum”, “I was glad when they said unto me, ‘We will go unto the house of the Lord.’” That psalm belongs to what are called The Psalms of Ascent, the songs of the going up to Jerusalem. They are the songs of the pilgrimage of our lives.

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“For he himself knew what was in man”

Jesus “himself knew what was in man,” John tells us (John 2.25). It is a perplexing and yet an illuminating comment. What is in us? Not much, it might seem from this gospel story, other than the will to nothingness, that is, a disillusioning and destructive spirit. In a way, John’s insight complements the story which Luke tells. There is nothing in ourselves but the will to nothingness.

This is to speak in a kind of contemporary language, the language of despair. But, such a way of speaking, has its biblical basis in this remarkable and remarkably disturbing gospel story that speaks, on the one hand, so directly to the climate of disillusionment and despair in our contemporary culture, and yet, on the other hand, offers the real and true remedy to our fears and worries.

It is, to my mind, the darkest moment in the pageant of Lent before the darker realities of Holy Week. In a way, this gospel story for The Third Sunday in Lent corresponds to the darkness of Tenebrae on Wednesday in Holy Week. “How lonely sits the city that was full of people,” Jeremiah laments, even as we find ourselves in utter desolation here in Luke’s gospel.

The Lenten Sundays anticipate the grand and disturbing events of Holy Week. If the Third Sunday anticipates the shadows and darkness of Tenebrae, then the Fourth Sunday, with its story of the feeding of the crowd in the wilderness, anticipates Maundy Thursday when we are with Christ in the Upper Room and where he gives himself to us as bread and wine, anticipating his passion and resurrection.

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“For ye were sometimes darkness,
but now are ye light in the Lord”

It is, to my mind, the darkest moment in the journey of Lent, at least before the dark intensities of Holy Week. Not only are we still in the company of demons and devils but that sense of struggle against the spiritual forces of evil has become intensified in the strongest way possible. Jesus, who in the gospel performs a double healing, at once exorcising a devil and making one who was dumb to speak, is accused of being in cahoots with Beelzebul, the prince of the devils. No good deed goes unpunished, it seems. Doing good he is accused of being evil. He is accused, actually, of being demonically possessed.

What is good is called evil. It is the perfect picture of sin and evil really. Nothing in themselves, sin and evil are privations of what is good and true. The interchange between Jesus and his detractors here is most instructive. He reminds them about Beelzebul, an ancient name for the devil, a name which literally means “the Lord of the Dwelling” but which can also mean, “Lord of the Flies”, suggesting death and decay. Lord of the Flies, of course, is the title of a famous novel by William Golding, a novel written in the period of the cold war which examines “the darkness of man’s heart.”

Some accuse him; others want more signs and wonders from him, “tempting him,” as the gospel so tellingly puts it. Jesus’ “knowing their thoughts,” Luke tells us, points out the obvious contradiction. He plays upon the name of Beelzebul, with its suggested cognates of kingdom and house, to show the folly of their accusation and the consequences of their rejection. A kingdom, Baal or Beel, “divided against itself is brought to desolation”. A house, Zebul or Zebulon, “divided against itself falleth”. If Satan who is Beelzebul, the Lord of the house of rebellion, is divided against himself, how can he stand?

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“Your name shall no more be called Jacob but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed”

It is one of the most outstanding statements in the whole of the Jewish or Hebrew Scriptures, in what Christians know as the Old Testament. It marks and establishes the real meaning of Judaism and its further fulfillment, dare I say, in Christianity, or at least, in Jesus Christ in the Christian understanding. Nowhere does the striving with God and man appear more completely and more concentrated fashion than on the way of the Cross, the way of our Lenten pilgrimage.

The tragedy of our age lies in our ignorance, wilful and otherwise, of this understanding and perspective. We have become so accustomed and cynically inured to the endless posturing and manipulations of power politics, on the one hand, and the defeatist mentality of victim and entitlement politics, on the other hand, that we have little or no capacity to grasp the transcendent truths that the Scriptures constantly open out to us. We are, I fear, as dead to metaphor as we are to metaphysics (read God). And yet, these stories, by virtue of their being proclaimed, speak to our need and our situation.

Jacob is the deceiver, the trickster, the supplanter, a clever fellow, we might say, perhaps too clever by half and, no doubt, that view of things has influenced the whole tradition of anti-Jewish sentiment and bias which, in turn, issues in the hideous realities of anti-Semitism and racism signalled so graphically and so disturbingly in the unforgettable horrors of the Holocaust. The Jews of Europe, after all, were betrayed by the culture which betrayed itself. Such things are the very spectacle of deceit and betrayal. But that is not, ultimately, who he is.

This is, I think, what makes the story of Jacob so compelling. It is the picture of a soul who in his struggle persists in the quest to understand and be faithful to what is understood such that there is a remarkable transformation. Indeed the transformation of Jacob into Israel complements the Eucharistic gospel for this day, where the Canaanite woman shows herself to be a true Israelite, indeed, precisely because of her tenacity of intellectual spirit in holding on to what she has rightly perceived as the truth of God in Jesus Christ. She will not be put off and her struggle, akin to Jacob’s, is the great struggle, the great struggle of faith that reveals the true nature of Israel. It is accomplished in its fullness and truth on the Cross.

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“O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt.”

There is a wonderful devotional prayer in our Prayer Book Communion Liturgy that is known as The Prayer of Humble Access. I won’t go into how it has been mocked and derided by the literalism of some liturgical scholars, who being tone deaf to the nuances and beauty of poetry, suppose that the last phrases attribute one power to the Body of Christ and another to the Blood of Christ with respect to our bodies and our souls, having forgotten the doctrine of concomitance, it seems, namely, that the sacrament is whole in each of its parts. The prayer works doctrinally as well as devotionally. It is profoundly sacramental.

The prayer says it all, however:

We do not presume to come to this thy table, O merciful Lord; Trusting in our own righteousness, But in thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy So much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table. But thou art the same Lord, Whose property is always to have mercy…

We pray this as a necessary part of our preparation and approach to the Sacrament. The prayer echoes explicitly the Gospel for this day, the story of the Canaanite woman who approaches Jesus so resolutely, so determinedly and yet so humbly.

Two words stand here in a complementary relation. They are the words “humble” and “access.” Humility is the condition of our access to God. What the prayer expresses is a fundamental attitude of Faith. It is not our presumption, our “trusting in our own righteousness,” but our humility, our trusting in the “manifold and great mercies” of God. Against everything that is thrown at her, she has a hold of this one thing, namely, the mercies of God in Christ Jesus. To have a hold of that is humility. She presumes upon nothing else and it is this that gains her access to the heart of Christ.

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“Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God,
And him only shalt thou serve”

For centuries upon centuries, the story of the temptations of Christ has been read on the First Sunday in Lent. But what are the temptations of Christ? They are our temptations brought to clarity in Jesus Christ. We are inclined, perhaps, to have a negative view of temptation. But in truth, there is something altogether positive about the fact of temptations. They are a necessary feature of our humanity. At issue is how we understand and respond to the temptations.

The temptations of Christ are about two things: the naming of the three forms of temptation which embrace every temptation; and the threefold overcoming of temptation. The critical lesson for us, in the Christian understanding, is that temptation is properly named and overcome only by Christ and by Christ in us; the grace that is given is not given in vain provided we act upon it.

In the Gospels, the account of the temptations of Christ follows the baptism of Christ. The baptism of Christ is an epiphany – a making known of his essential divine identity: “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.” What immediately follows is that Christ is driven by the Spirit into the wilderness. Mark’s word ‘driven’ is more intense than the word ‘led’ used by Matthew and Luke; it, literally, is about being cast out or thrown into the wilderness and suggests the alienating and violent aspects of sin as well as the divine determination to achieve our reconciliation; after all, it is the Holy Spirit who drives or leads Jesus into the wilderness. The temptations belong to the intensity of the pageant of Christ’s passion.

The wilderness is the place of spiritual combat. It is also the place of spiritual refreshment and renewal. There is a struggle, a conflict, an agone that is more intense than the Olympics. The conflict is within. It is the conflict of wills within us. We are divided against ourselves in every temptation. It is a question about our fundamental identity. What really defines us?

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“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God”

“If music be the food of love, play on” (Twelfth Night). And no doubt, we shall! “Dance me to the end of love.” Music, food, & dance, it seems, all come together tonight. But how? Through love. The question is not about what kind of music, whether Mozart or Villa-Lobos, not about what kind of food, whether Iberian or Brazilian, not about what kind of dance, whether minuet or samba, but about love. What kind of love?

What? Isn’t love, well, love? A little word pressed into the service of many and great things, I fear. Yet we cannot not think about love. It is the challenge of this day and a challenge for our culture. Nothing speaks more profoundly to our assumptions about love than the Scripture readings for this day and this season.

Our assumptions about love? Hey, isn’t it Valentine’s day? Isn’t love romantic and sensual, sexual and emotional? It is not something to think about. Feel the love! Yet:

In faith, I do not love thee with mine eyes,
For they in thee a thousand errors note;
(not, perhaps, the best of opening lines for Romeos and Juliets!)
But ‘tis my heart that loves what they despise,
Who in despite of view is pleased to dote.
Nor are mine ears with thy tongue’s tune delighted,
(this is not getting any better, is it?)
Nor tender feelings to base touches prone,
Nor taste, nor smell, desire to be invited
To any sensual feast with thee alone.

There’s a challenge. Somehow love might be something more than the sensual and the physical, something more than just the erotic. Yes, but, note, neither less nor other than the sensual and the erotic, perhaps, and certainly not without romance.
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“Set love in order in me”

It is a wonderful phrase from that great love-song of the Old Testament, the Song of Songs. It serves as a governing principle for the season of Lent. Today is Quinquagesima Sunday. We have already had occasion to talk about these curious names which adorn the three Sundays before Lent. Quinquagesima Sunday, is also commonly known as Love Sunday. It brings us to the very threshold of the season of Lent, to that concentration of the pilgrimage of our lives into the space of forty days. Lent, above all else, is the pilgrimage of love. Love’s journeying ways shape us in love and bring us to love’s end, to the peace and joy and blessedness of Jerusalem redeemed.

Quinquagesima is called Love Sunday principally because of today’s Epistle reading at Communion. It is St. Paul’s great love-song: “If I have not love I am nothing worth…and now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three: but the greatest of these is charity”, love. The theme is captured wonderfully in the Collect, but its profounder meaning is presented in the Eucharistic Gospel in the words of Jesus to the disciples that “we go up to Jerusalem.”

This day illustrates the business of Lent; the business, if you will, of setting love in order in us, both individually and collectively. All the readings on this day illuminate the path of our Lenten journey. It is the pilgrimage of love.

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