Category: Sermons

“In the world ye shall have tribulation; but be of good cheer,
I have overcome the world.”

Rogation Sunday reminds us that the Resurrection is cosmic in scope. It recalls us to the land in which we are placed and to our vocation where we are. That is altogether about prayer and praise. “Prayer,” as Richard Hooker so clearly states, “signals all the service that we ever do unto God” and so it is praise too. That Godward orientation of our lives belongs to a sacramental understanding whereby the things of the world become the instruments of grace and salvation. It is about seeing the world in God and God in the world. This challenges completely many of our contemporary assumptions.

Rogation is about prayer in this wider sense that connects us immediately and concretely to the land and to our cultivation of the land. This is not simply like, say, Sir Francis Bacon’s endeavour to interrogate nature and to force nature to disclose her secrets in order to make the natural world serve human interests. Though Bacon’s interest in nature was with respect to the betterment of the human condition, that impulse to interrogate nature forcefully and experimentally only too easily slides into the tendency to dominate. We know only too well how that leads to destruction, to a disregard and a disrespect of the created order. Canada shipping garbage to the Philippines? The mind boggles, the heart weeps.

Gerard Manley Hopkins’ 1879 poem, Binsey Poplars, reflects on this larger problem by way of an instance of a kind of clear-cutting along the banks of a country stream. “All felled, felled,” … “not one spared” …  “O if we but knew what we do/ When we delve or hew – hack or rack the growing green” … “where we mean/ To mend her we end her,/ When we hew or delve” … “Strokes of havoc unselve / The sweet especial scene,/ Rural scene, a rural scene, / Sweet especial rural scene.” There is more to that ending than just a kind of nostalgia for a romanticised rural idyll. His point is that we unselve ourselves in such acts of destruction.

Rogation recalls us to a kind of thoughtfulness about our engagement with the land where we are placed. We cannot not leave a mark; the question is what kind of mark? The cliches of our contemporary world in this respect are often misleading and dangerous. The mantra ‘think globally and act locally’ seems more and more only to serve the corporate interests of the global elites. To think and act locally might actually lead to a deeper appreciation and understanding of the world and of ourselves in it. Even better, just think!

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“Because I go to the Father”

There is a great fearfulness in our own age and culture. It is not just about the ceaseless spectacle of a world of wars constantly before us in such things as “international terrorism”, the Jihadis culture, or the continuing conflicts in Syria, or the humanitarian catastrophe that is the famine in Yemen, not to mention North Korea, let alone the mounting tensions between America and Iran, let alone the disturbing realities of the surveillance state of China which is Orwell’s 1984 at the same time as the so-called West largely reflects Huxley’s Brave New World. In the one, “Big Brother” is literally watching, measuring and controlling you. In the other, the problem of “making people love their servitude” under the illusion of happiness and distraction has been only too successful. Pick your dystopia. Pick your nightmare.

Our fearfulness is more about the emptiness within the soul of a culture when we can no longer identify the principles and the ideals that dignify our humanity. When we can no longer say what makes life worth living for, and mean something more than merely the pragmatic hedonism of a materialistic culture, then there is certainly nothing worth dying for either. There is nothing to live for. There is only the emptiness within, a darkness inside. Out of that emptiness can come such frightening and senseless acts of violence, death and self-destruction that have become a regular feature of our world. Such is the world of “cultural nihilism” in both its active and passive forms.

The essence of such acts is their meaninglessness. The philosopher Peter Kreeft notes that the fear for our culture is not the fear of death as it was for the ancient cultures of Greece and Rome, nor is it the fear of Hell as it was for the mediaeval cultures whether Christian, Jewish, or Islamic. No. It is the fear of meaninglessness itself. There is no truth to which we should endeavour to conform ourselves and hold ourselves accountable. Our fearfulness is our emptiness, our nihilism, which we confront.

In the Gospels. Jesus confronts our fearfulness. The Gospel of the Resurrection is especially about his overcoming of our fearfulness. The message of the angel to the women, coming early to the tomb and finding it empty, was “be not afraid”. Jesus comes into the midst of the disciples whether they are huddled behind closed doors in fear or on the road to Emmaus in fearful flight from Jerusalem. His presence is peace and joy.

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“Your sorrow shall be turned into joy”

Jesus’ words capture the meaning of the Resurrection. It is what we see in the mystery and the wonder of the Resurrection at Easter and throughout the Octave when we are suspended, as it were, in that wonder and mystery. Mary Magdalene comes in sorrow expecting a body; she encounters the Risen Christ. Sorrow is turned into joy. The disciples huddle in fear and anxiety behind closed doors; Christ appears in their midst. Sorrow is turned into joy.

Two disciples flee Jerusalem in fear and sorrow because of the traumatic events of Christ’s crucifixion; on the road to Emmaus, Christ comes alongside them and enters into conversation with them, drawing out their expectations and desires, all of which have been shattered and destroyed, and drawing out of them the confusing and perplexing things that belong to the accounts of the Resurrection: the women finding the tomb empty, the testimony of the angel, and the confirmation of the other disciples of the women’s words. He then opens their minds to the understanding of the Scriptures about his Death and Resurrection but is really only made known to them in the breaking of the bread. Only then do they get it and sorrow is turned into joy. “Did not our heart burn within us?”, they say. They return to Jerusalem, the very place from which they had been fleeing in fear and sorrow.  Sorrow is turned into joy.

But this Gospel reading is different. It is, as it were, before the fact and yet already explains the fact. It reveals the deeper and more difficult meaning of the Resurrection. It is not just sorrow turned into joy; it is joy found in the midst of sorrow (and paradoxically, sorrow in the midst of joy). It signals a deeper kind of turning that challenges our more linear way of approaching things and one which the Gospel seems to acknowledge. It does so by way of a metaphor: the metaphor of childbirth, appropriate enough, I suppose, on this day when in our secular culture we celebrate and remember motherhood. No motherhood without childbirth.

The Christian faith is wonderfully grounded in the everyday realities of human lives but without being reduced to them and ultimately provides an important critique of our assumptions about religion and human life. This is the challenge. To see the joy in the sorrow and the sorrow in the joy. That is to be radically changed in our whole outlook which in a narrow and linear way moves from one moment to another. Such a way of thinking is quite inadequate and false to what it means to be human. The Gospel readings of the these three last Sundays after Easter counter such simple determinisms.

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“For ye were as sheep going astray”

The accounts of the Resurrection, especially in John’s Gospel, are particularly instructive about a fundamental feature of Christianity which extends to other religions. That is “a sacramental understanding,” which we attempted to explore in our Lenten series this year. A sacramental understanding, we suggested, connects to the idea of creation and to the idea that the things of God are made known through the things of the world and that our participation in the life of God is precisely through the things of the world becoming the instruments of grace and salvation. A sacramental understanding extends necessarily as well to the Resurrection, itself a new creation. In a way, the Resurrection is made known to us sacramentally, as it were.

We see this in Luke’s Gospel too in such things as the wonderful story of Christ and the disciples on the road to Emmaus where Jesus “opens their understanding of the Scriptures” about his death and resurrection but is really only made known to them “in the breaking of the bread;” in short, by recalling them to his words and actions at the Last Supper. In John’s Gospel after Mary Magdalene’s discovery first of the empty tomb and then her encounter with the Risen Christ, and after Jesus appears in the midst of the disciples twice behind closed doors and makes himself known directly to Thomas, there is the wonderful story of a beach barbecue breakfast with Jesus. This is not quite the same thing as the Men’s Club breakfast. “Have you any fish?” Jesus asks, and then invites us, “Come and have breakfast.” That story leads to the end of John’s Gospel where Jesus asks Simon Peter three times “do you love me?” and commands him each time “to feed my lambs,” “tend my sheep,” “feed my sheep.” Peter who had betrayed Christ three times is reconstituted in love three times. It is a wonderful statement about the radical power and nature of the Resurrection. Something new and wonderful is made out of the nothingness of our sins. The past is not denied nor forgotten but becomes the vehicle and vessel of new life. Such is redemption.

This brings us to today’s readings. Sheep and shepherds. We are the sheep who have gone astray; Christ is the Good Shepherd who gathers us and returns us to himself, “the Shepherd and Bishop of [our] souls.” The image of Christ the Good Shepherd is profoundly a resurrection image that belongs to our sacramental understanding. Today’s Collect speaks of Jesus as being “unto us both a sacrifice for sin and also an example of godly life”. He is the sacrifice for sin. He is the cure, the Good Shepherd who gives his life for the sheep. He stands in the face of the destroyer of the sheep – ultimately our sins are his destroyer. He is the shepherd who wills to be struck, not so that the sheep may be scattered but so that through his being struck and their being scattered he may gather them to himself. He is our care. He cares for us through his cure for us.

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“Be ye not troubled”

Mark’s feast day fell within Easter Week and so is transferred to the first Tuesday after that week. There is something sacrosanct about the special readings and spiritual focus of Easter week that brooks no other considerations even when, as in the case of Mark, they provide a certain commentary upon the mystery of the Resurrection.

Mark is the saint of Eastertide. The Collect for his day of commemoration draws upon both the epistle reading from Ephesians and upon the Gospel reading taken from Mark. Rather than being “carried away by every blast of vain doctrine,” as the Collect colourfully and profoundly puts it, building upon the Paul’s more modest phrase of “every wind of doctrine,” we seek to “be established in the truth of thy holy Gospel.” And that means being not troubled even in the midst of troubling times and circumstances that pertain to the meaning of the coming of Christ’s kingdom. In other words, in difficult times of persecution when there is every reason to be troubled and to be afraid, we are exhorted to “be not afraid” as Mark’s account of the Resurrection at Easter wonderfully puts it. Here, too, we have the recollection of Christ’s words to Peter and James and John and Andrew, a kind of inner circle, it seems, about the times of wars and rumours of wars, of natural disturbances and troubles which are, Jesus says, “the beginnings of sorrows.” It is in that context that we are not to be troubled. Why? Because such things like persecution and suffering are the occasions for witness and testimony, for “speak[ing] the truth in love.”

I like to think that this is the real fruit of Mark’s Gospel and witness. His Gospel ends, at least in terms of what is called the shorter ending, with the words, “they were afraid,” even though the angel told them not to be afraid. Mark, I like to think, confronts himself in his fears and troubles, perhaps as the young man who runs away naked from the scene of Christ’s capture. Mark is aware of his own limitations and shortcomings. Christian faith is not about human heroism, a kind of willpower on our part for that would be to miss the whole point. The real point is that the Resurrection is God’s doing. The real point is about our utter and complete inability to do the good that we would and our utter and complete ability to do the evil that we would not, to use Paul’s words, words which resonate for me about Mark.

He has realized as few have with such perspicacity that what we want we cannot of ourselves achieve. He points us as few do so wonderfully, so clearly, to the grace of the Resurrection. The point is that it is all grace, all the grace of God, and yet all the grace of God at work for us and in us. To begin to grasp this is to begin to be defined by an overwhelming sense of joy and wonder which nothing, absolutely nothing in our worldly vale of tears can possibly counter. It is the peace and the joy that passes understanding. We need not be troubled. We need not be afraid. Let the good news of Christ’s Resurrection establish you upon the truth which Mark in his life and Gospel opens out to us.

“Be ye not troubled”

Fr. David Curry
Eve of St. Mark (transf.), 2019

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“Jesus came and stood in the midst”

It is like one continuous story from the same book, chapter after chapter. The same book is John’s Gospel. In the spirituality of the older eucharistic lectionary tradition found in the Book of Common Prayer, John’s Gospel contributes greatly to the essential theological understanding of the Christian Faith, especially, it seems, in Eastertide. We see, as it were, through the eyes of John.

“The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early,” we heard last Sunday. “The same day at evening, being the first day of the week,” we hear today. As if time were magically stopped and we are mystically present at that day, that day that never, never ends. The Day of Resurrection is just like that. And so, too, for the meaning of every Sunday.

The Resurrection is not something which we celebrate in a moment, for a day or for a season. It runs through the whole of the year and through the whole of our lives in Faith. The Octave Day places us in that endless day, the day of Easter, to show us the Resurrection in motion. It shows us something of the meaning of the Resurrection for us and in us. The symbolism of being “on the same day,” the day of Easter, becomes the meaning of our Sunday worship. It is always a celebration of the Resurrection. We are always in the presence of the Risen Christ and never more so than in the Easter Season when the Resurrection itself is our principal consideration. The only question is whether we are alive to his presence or dead in ourselves.

“Jesus came and stood in the midst.” They were behind closed doors. They were in fear and great anxiety. The world of their hopes and expectations had been shattered, perhaps like ours in contemporary culture. Then “Jesus came and stood in the midst.” Suddenly all that was shattered begins to come together into something new; a new understanding. His presence changes everything. The nature of that change is the Resurrection in us.

What is the significance of the closed doors? The closed doors are the closed doors of our minds. Our minds are like tombs. We are dead to the idea of the Resurrection, to its power and truth, until it presents itself to our understanding. We couldn’t invent it. It breaks through only so as to break out in us. The Risen Lord comes into our midst to break us out into a new and radical understanding of himself and what he is for us. Out of the chaos of fear and confusion comes peace and forgiveness.

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“What mean ye by this service?”

This has been our text throughout the Passion of Christ and one which now carries us into this day and to the proclamation of this day: Christ is risen, Alleluia! Alleluia! The Lord is risen, indeed, Alleluia! Alleluia! Now that’s a greeting! And one to be shouted out. It says a bit more than “Happy Easter” which might just as well mean, “May the bunny be with you!” Maybe even a chocolate bunny. Just saying. The great and ancient Easter greeting on this day is the proclamation of the Resurrection. Christ is risen. Alleluia! Alleluia!

And yet, the real meaning of this day, paradoxically it might seem, is that we are dead! For if we are not dead, then we shall not be alive. “You have died,” Paul tells us, “and your life is hid with Christ in God.” What this means is sacrifice in its deepest and truest meaning. Holy Week is about the Passion of Christ in all of its intensity but only so as to bring us to this day, the day of Resurrection, itself the fruit of the Passion and thus utterly meaningless without the solemn events of Holy Week and especially Good Friday. There can be no Resurrection without the Passion.

Bronwyn’s baptism is our Easter joy. Her baptism is a reminder of our vocation and calling, a reminder of the realities of death and life, a reminder of the radical new life of the Resurrection precisely through our dying to ourselves in order to live for God and for one another. She died and now she lives. And all because of the Passion and Resurrection of Christ. That is the meaning of this service. We are dead so that we may live. Our life is not in ourselves. It is all Christ and all Christ in us. His sacrifice is love, a love made visible on the Cross and in his Resurrection.

The Resurrection is radical new life because it grounds us in the only life there is, the life of God in Christ. The Resurrection is the new and greater creation, the making of life and joy out of the nothingness of human sin and evil and of suffering and death. That is its radical meaning. God and God alone makes out of nothing both in creation and in redemption. The Resurrection is the greater creatio ex nihilo, the greater act of making new. The Crucifixion is not a gothic horror tale, a Stephen King shocker. It is graphic, to be sure, but it is the graphic portrayal of the nature of all sin and evil. We kill God. At least that is what all sin attempts, the attempt to deny the very principle of life upon which our being, our knowing and our loving completely and utterly depend. The Crucifixion makes that reality visible even as the Resurrection makes visible the overcoming of all sin. Both are the graphic lessons of love. Such is a new beginning just as Bronwyn’s baptism marks a new beginning, a new life, one made visible to us in the act of baptism.

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“What mean ye by this service?”

We can only know it retroactively, after the fact, as it were. The Resurrection is the great new creation, God’s redemptive act that restores and renews our humanity and the world. The Passion and the Resurrection are cosmic events, we might say, arguing for a much more intimate and closer relationship between our humanity and the natural world than what we currently experience in our disordered world. Like creation, we can only know the Resurrection after the fact and yet that only leads to a whole new way of thinking that means seeing everything before it in a new light. In a way, the Easter Vigil is about that whole new way of thinking and seeing things. It is about a recapitulation of the past seen now in the light of the Resurrection.

The ceremonies of the Vigil are traditionally long (three hours or more!), intense, symbolic, and fully participatory. Our country vigil, as I like to call it, is a concentrated version of the Great Vigil of Easter but contains most of the same elements except for the blessing of the Font and the celebration of the Holy Eucharist. Like the traditional Vigils of Easter, there is the lighting of the new fire in the darkness; the blessing and lighting of the Paschal (Easter) Candle; the singing of the Exultet or Paschal Praeconium, the great proclamation of the Resurrection parts of which derive from Ambrose; the reading of some (though not all) of the ‘prophecies’ – there are up to twelve!; the renewal of our baptismal vows; and, finally, the lauds of Easter morn. All rather simple but profound.

What does it mean? It means our participation in the fruit of the Passion, the Resurrection. We re-enact sacramentally the meaning of the Resurrection as God’s great re-creative and redemptive act. Life triumphs over death; light over darkness. It cannot be the extinguishing of the past but the past now as seen in a new light, in the light of the Resurrection. The Vigil imaginatively and scripturally celebrates the passover from death to life, from darkness to light, representing the whole history of salvation. The renewal of our baptismal vows – or in the case of Bronwyn, the rehearsal of the vows she will make tomorrow morning – reminds us that the great Vigil of Easter was precisely that time when converts to the Faith, young and old, individually and by family, were baptized and confirmed by the officiating bishop. In other words, we participate and recall our incorporation into the Body of Christ.

It is precisely in the wonder and joy of the Resurrection that we have journeyed with Christ in his Passion. The Resurrection shows us the underlying principle and power at work in the Passion of Christ; it is the compassion of God and the power of the divine life which recreates and renews even out of the nothingness of our sin and evil. Yet the Vigil, too, is about our joyous participation in that work of redemption at once sacramentally through the rituals of remembrance and by sacrificial service in our life and ministry together as priest and people. The Easter Vigil is, as Augustine remarks, “the mother of all vigils” and in a double sense as being the greatest of all vigils and as bringing to birth like a mother our faith. New birth. New life. Such is the Resurrection. It is all joy. All alleluias! “Rise heart! Thy Lord is risen. Sing his praise always.”

“What mean ye by this service?”

Fr. David Curry
Easter Vigil 2019

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