Category: Sermons

“And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit”

Pentecost is a fascinating spectacle, perhaps even more fascinating than the fashion ‘fascinators’ of yesterday’s beautiful and moving royal wedding, a scene at once of pomp and circumstance and of piety and devotion, of joy and love. There is more to it than simply what meets the eye. Even more so with Pentecost.

It begins with the titles: “The Day of Pentecost Being the Fiftieth Day After Easter commonly called Whitsunday,” which at once recalls an ancient Jewish festival celebrating the first-fruits of the harvest of grain fifty days after the Passover and the Christian festival of Christ’s Resurrection, Christ being “the first-fruits of them that slept”. Pentecost has very much to do with the life of Christ in us, it seems, but that life is one that draws us into the very life of God as Trinity, the point which the Gospel makes clear. Through the coming down of the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, Jesus says, “we,” meaning God, “will come unto him,” meaning those who “love [Jesus]” and “keep [his] words.” Only so will we find our abiding in the love of God.

The liturgical colour for this day in the tradition of the Church is red and yet Pentecost is commonly called Whitsunday, literally, ‘White Sunday’. That seems confusing and paradoxical. Why Whitsunday? Because this day, too, like Easter is about new life and new birth, a day in which baptisms and confirmations also took place, a day when souls were joined to the great spiritual company of the Church Universal “having washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb,” recalling Christ’s sacrifice and our participation in the work of human redemption. The colour red also refers to the tongues of fire which came down upon the disciples gathered in Jerusalem. And so it becomes the symbolic colour for the Apostles, meaning those who are sent having learned the things of God.

And if that is not confusing enough, we have the whole fascinating spectacle of Pentecost as “a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind” and “cloven tongues, like as of fire,” “rest[ing] upon each of them.” Wind and fire are strange and evocative images, elusive and yet significant, that speak profoundly to the spiritual mystery of God. There is more to Pentecost than what meets the eye. More than appearance there is the reality of Pentecost and its meaning for us in our lives, our lives in the spirit, our lives as spiritual beings. The Holy Spirit is often symbolised as a dove, the dove of heavenly peace. The presence of the Holy Spirit with us and in us is symbolised as wind and fire; not to be sure, the winds of war and destruction nor the fires of technological progress which equally enchant and destroy us. No. It is the wind and fire of God that transform us. These are all images that teach and act as metaphors and similes for the reality of the Spirit.

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The end of all things is at hand

“The end of all things is at hand,” Peter tells us. It sounds rather ominous and threatening yet the central message of this day is all about our joy and delight in God and in the redemption of all things to God, the one who is without end. Such is the radical meaning of the Ascension of Christ and his Session, his “sitt[ing] at the right hand of God the Father Almighty” as the Apostles’ Creed puts it. That idea of having an end with God is part of the Ascension theme of Christ’s homecoming and thus our home. In our secular culture in Canada today is Mother’s Day. In Britain and in other parts of the commonwealth, Mother’s Day was on Mothering Sunday, the Fourth Sunday in Lent when we were reminded that “Jerusalem which is above is free which is the mother of us all.” In a way, the theme of home and especially the role of mothers is gathered into the radical meaning of Christ’s homecoming.

What do the Ascension and the Session really mean? They proclaim Christ as Pantocrator, as the ruler of all things. Several years ago, travelling in England and visiting a number of Cathedrals and Churches, I was struck with how many of them had icons. Icons are a particular feature of the churches of Eastern Orthodoxy and embody a kind of sacramental sensibility. They draw us into the mystery of God’s engagement with our humanity and our world. They suggest something which belongs to the Ascension of Christ, a way of seeing ourselves and our world in God.

It is that orientation and understanding that is so critical and necessary for our church and world, for our souls and our lives. Some of you will have noticed that we have an icon here at Christ Church in the crossing just in front of the organ pipes. It is an icon of Christ Pantocrator, Christ the Ruler of All, already pointed to in the theme of this morning’s gradual psalm, “for God is the King of all the Earth.” The Icon presents an image of Christ holding an open book. The words are written in Russian in the Cyrillic alphabet. The open book symbolizes the idea of Christ Pantocrator as Teacher. Other icons depict Christ as holding a closed book, symbolizing Christ Pantocrator as Judge, albeit the merciful judge of all creation.

The Ascension and the Session of Christ are what we celebrate on this day. They affirm in the fullest way possible the idea that who we are is found entirely in God through the redemptive work of Christ. We are gathered to God in Christ and live in that understanding. That requires our constant learning about what that means. Hence the significance of Christ Pantocrator as Teacher. Our lives are gathered into the life of Christ and thus into the rule of his life in us. Our vocation is to be the learners of Christ. Disciples, after all, means learners.

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Why stand ye gazing up into heaven?

The question seems to capture a critical commonplace about religion: gazing into the heavens instead of paying attention to the things of the world, religion as utter nonsense and of no earthly value. In a way, it is partly true, at least in the sense that religion, in this case the Christian religion, is not to be measured by the world. Though the World Council of Churches famously (or infamously) once opined that the world sets the agenda for the churches, this is at best highly questionable. To be sure, the Church in the form of the churches finds itself in the world but it is not of the world. World improvement is not exactly the role and purpose of the churches, however much the churches have contributed to the stability and order of human communities in the world at times.

The paradox is great. The Church in being true to God contributes to the world but cannot be defined by the world and the world’s agendas. The paradox is poignantly manifest in The Feast of the Ascension of Christ. It marks the culmination or fulfillment of the doctrine of the Resurrection. The overcoming of sin and death is about our being restored to fellowship with God signaled in the homecoming of the Son to the Father in the Spirit. In the going forth and now the return of the Son to the Father, we have the highest expression of human dignity and truth. We have a home with God now in the world because of Christ’s being “at the right hand of the Father.” His going from us into heaven establishes the real truth and meaning of our lives spiritually and sacramentally.

The Ascension is cosmic in scope and signals the redemption of the world and our humanity by the gathering of both to God. We live in that understanding and that orientation. Our liturgy is really the liturgy of the Ascension. “Lift up your hearts!” In prayer and praise we participate in the return of all things to God from whom all good things to come. The whole point is about the world and our humanity in God, not God in the world and in us. It is a question of emphasis and direction.

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

Jesus’s words seem to imply a conflict between the things of the spirit and the things of the world. But that would be, I think, a mistake. Rogation Sunday is really part and parcel of the Easter message which is not about a flight from the world but the redemption of the world. That is an essential feature of redemption, about our being returned to God and abiding in his love. We only live when we are alive to God. Our relation to the world belongs to that understanding. The world is God’s world. Redemption cannot be a negation of creation but its fulfillment.

Rogation Sunday provides us with a wonderful theology of the land. We are greatly exercised and concerned about our relation to the land, to what we call the environment. But how we use words greatly affects our thinking and our living or acting, a point which The Epistle of St. James clearly indicates. “Be ye doers of the word and not hearers only.” What does it mean to be a doer of the word? It means actions, yes, but actions that are themselves words in motion. We are to act upon words that are heard and if heard, then words that are spoken and proclaimed. The Epistle points us to a fundamental feature of the Christian religion and beyond, namely, the idea of a way of life predicated upon a way of thinking.

What kind of way of life? A way of life which embraces an ethical approach to the land in which we are placed. Rogation refers to prayer, to the prayer of asking. That immediately challenges our assumptions about our relationship to the land and to one another by bringing both into relation to God. It challenges the various assumptions that belong to our understanding of ourselves in relation to the natural world.

Eight years ago in 2010, someone somewhere schlepped off a farm one day and moved into a city and suddenly the world tilted and changed. Globally speaking, 2010 marked the moment, statistically, when there were for the first time in history more people living in urban settings than in rural places. This profound shift has lead to a raft of different questions and concerns, one of which is what is called the ‘nature deficit,’ a sense of disconnect with the natural world. This modern malaise is wonderfully captured in Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem, God’s Grandeur.
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In the world ye shall have tribulation;
but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world

Jesus’s words seem to imply a conflict between the things of the spirit and the things of the world. But that would be, I think, a mistake. Rogation Sunday is really part and parcel of the Easter message which is not about a flight from the world but about the redemption of the world. That is an essential feature of redemption, about our being returned to God and abiding in his love. We only live when we are alive to God. Our relation to the world belongs to that understanding. The world is God’s world. Redemption cannot be a negation of creation but its fulfillment.

Rogation Sunday provides us with a wonderful theology of the land. We are greatly exercised and concerned about our relation to the land, to what we call the environment. But how we use words greatly affects our thinking and our living or acting, a point which The Epistle of St. James clearly indicates. “Be ye doers of the word and not hearers only.” What does it mean to be a doer of the word? It means actions, yes, but actions that are themselves words in motion. We are to act upon words that are heard and if heard, then words that are spoken and proclaimed. The Epistle points us to a fundamental feature of the Christian religion and beyond, namely, the idea of a way of life predicated upon a way of thinking.

What kind of way of life? A way of life which embraces an ethical approach to the land in which we are placed. Rogation refers to prayer, to the prayer of asking. That immediately challenges our assumptions about our relationship to the land and to one another by bringing both into relation to God. It challenges the various assumptions that belong to our understanding of ourselves in relation to the natural world.

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“Ye believe in God, believe also in me”

The most provocative, the most challenging, and the most controversial of Jesus’ so-called “I am” sayings in John’s Gospel, at least with respect to interfaith dialogue is where Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth and the life.”

Yet the things which Jesus says and does are the works which manifest the truth and the life and the way of God. And how are we to participate in that? Through prayer. “If ye ask any thing in my name, I will do it.” All prayer is about nothing less and nothing more than asking the Father in the name of the Son by the power of the Spirit. All prayer gathers us into the fundamental orientation of the Son, “because I go unto my Father.” Here again, and providentially, we have the recurring Easter refrain, “because I go to the Father.” Everything is rooted and grounded in the life of God, the holy and blessed Trinity.

Are there not other ways to God, the ways belonging to other religions, for example? No doubt, the other great religions have much to offer in the way of wisdom and truth, and wonderfully and profoundly so, it seems to me. Each of them, whether it is Judaism or Islam or Buddhism or Hinduism and so on, has important and distinctive insights. So, too, does Christianity. The point is to be able to respect the integrity of each religion and not reduce them all to some common political, social or psychological idea, subjecting them, in other words, to some feature or other that contemporary secular culture finds amenable with itself. The point for Christians in honouring what is distinctive about Christianity is not to deny and diminish the claim that Christ is “the Way, the Truth and the Life,” but to connect other insights to that idea and to realize that there can and must be a respectful dialogue among the religions of the world only in and through what belongs to each.

The centrality and the uniqueness of Christ is an essential doctrine of the Christian Faith. For Anglicans, this is captured in Article XVIII of the Thirty-nine Articles; the only anathema in all of the articles concerns the denial of the centrality and the uniqueness of Christ. It is only through the centrality and the uniqueness of Christ that Christians can and must engage the religions of the world as well as the forms of contemporary culture.

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He brought us to birth by the word of truth

Another birthing image, another image of new life in Christ. Eastertide grounds us in the life of the risen Christ. That is not something static but dynamic. We are set in motion, caught up in the motions of God towards us and with us, drawn into the motions of the Son to the Father. And all through the Spirit of truth whom Christ and the Father send to us. “He will guide you into all truth,” Jesus says. The Spirit of truth is also known as the Paraclete, the Comforter, the one who strengthens us in our life with God.

The Easter season abounds with this sense of an orientation and a direction. “If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God.” And in the last three Sundays of the Easter Season, everything that belongs to human experience and human hopes and expectations is gathered into the motion of the Son to the Father captured in the phrase “because I go to my Father.” Again, it is entirely dynamic.

We live in the motions of the Son’s love for the Father through the Spirit, the bond of their love and power. What is being opened out to us is the reality of the life of the Spirit. The resurrection appearances are not just some sort of show and tell. They reveal the greater and more radical truth of our humanity as found in and with God. That is captured for us in the image of the Son’s going to the Father. In today’s Gospel, that fundamental sense of orientation and direction is understood in terms of righteousness.

The Spirit, Christ says, “reprove[s] the world of righteousness.” What does that mean? It signals the contrast between the world of human sin and folly, our unrighteousness, on the one hand, and God’s absolute justice, the divine righteousness, on the other hand. That is found in the Son’s relation to the Father in the Spirit. True justice or righteousness is not found in ourselves but in our relation to God. In these lessons from John’s Gospel, Jesus is teaching us about the Holy Spirit, about the nature of the divine life of God as Trinity. The Resurrection points us to the Ascension, to the homeland of the Spirit. It is all about a kind of orientation of our hearts and minds in the going forth and return of the Son to the Father.

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“Speak the truth in love”

Mark is the Eastertide Saint par excellence; his commemoration always falls within the orbit of the Easter Season. As such he belongs to our Eastertide reflections on the radical nature of Christ’s Resurrection.

That this is paradoxical is perhaps not surprising. The so-called short ending of his Gospel, referring to the earliest texts that we have, ends not with the Resurrection but with the statement that “they were afraid.” The longer ending takes us somewhat further towards the Resurrection and its power at work in us.“They were afraid,” however, captures perfectly the condition of our awareness of being broken hearted, our awareness of our lack and insufficiency. Yet, to know our insufficiency is to know our brokenness at the same time as to be looking to our wholeness.

The longer version belongs to the Canonical Scriptures, to be sure, to the texts that are received as authoritative, and yet, the fact of the shorter version remains intriguing and suggestive. In so many ways, it belongs just as firmly and fully to the accounts of the Resurrection as the final ending. Consider it an ending within that ending.

The paradoxes mount up but in ways that belong to the greater paradox of the Resurrection itself, the paradox of dying in order to live. That is the fundamental pattern of Christian life which provides us with a way to face our brokenness and our incompleteness. In facing such things we are in principle open to the one in whom alone we find our wholeness. It means confronting our fears and our anxieties without being defined by them. It means not conforming to the expectations of the world but to the greater work of God with us and in us. The building up of the body of Christ is not about church buildings per se but about what they exist for. They exist only to remind us of our life in Christ.

This is why the Epistle reading from Ephesians is read on The Feast of St. Mark. It speaks to us about the truth of our lives in the love of Christ which alone is the principle“for the building up of the body of Christ.” Speaking the truth in love, as Paul suggests, equally belongs to our being witnesses to the Gospel of Christ even in the face of persecution and worldly troubles of whatever sort, whether it be political or natural catastrophes.

The challenge of The Feast of St. Mark is signalled in the Collect which draws upon both the Epistle and the Gospel readings. We are to stand firm “in the truth of [his] holy Gospel” and not give in to “every blast of vain doctrine”; in short, to be established in truth with love even when everything seems to be falling down around us. To speak the truth in love is to let Christ rule in us. The simple honesty of Mark’s Gospel allows us to face our fears and yet remain firm in our witness, holding fast to “the heavenly doctrine of thy Evangelist Saint Mark.”

“Speak the truth in love”

Fr. David Curry
Eve of the Feast of St. Mark, 2018

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“Because I go to the Father”

How do we know what is wanted to be known? More to the point, how do we know what God wants us to know? The Easter Season presents us with some remarkable lessons about who we are in Christ. They are the teachings of Christ about the nature of our radical life with God and in God without which we have no life. At the heart of that teaching is the Resurrection.

We find our healing and our wholeness in Christ. All of the stories of the Resurrection reveal ourselves in ourselves as the community of the broken hearted. Only in facing our brokenness and recognizing our unknowing can we begin to be taught and come to understand what God seeks for us, namely, our wholeness. It happens in the face of our brokenness and not in spite of it or in denial of it. Only so can we begin to be made whole. The education here concerns the whole person; in short, matters of character.

Sorrow and grief, loss and suffering, dying and death are not denied. They provide the necessary occasion in which our wholeness is proclaimed and realized. This is a recurring feature of the Easter Season. The last three Sundays of the Easter Season present us with Gospel readings from what is sometimes known as “the farewell discourse of Jesus” in John’s Gospel, particularly John 16, in which there is the repeated refrain of the Easter season. It is the phrase “because I go to the Father.” Jesus is the teacher who prepares the disciples here for what is to come in terms of his death and resurrection. He speaks directly about suffering and sorrow and about joy. “Ye shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy.”

What is our sorrow? Our sense of separation from Christ: “a little while and ye shall not see me; and again a little while and ye shall see me,” Jesus says. This puzzles the disciples and us but reading these passages now in the light of Easter we see exactly what they mean. Sorrow is turned into joy through the triumph of life over death. Jesus uses an image, the image of childbirth, to convey the radical meaning of the Resurrection.

“A woman, when she is in travail, hath sorrow, because her hour is come; but as soon as she is delivered, she remembereth no more the anguish for joy that a child is born into the world.” There will be sorrow and suffering “but your sorrow shall be turned to joy.”

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“For ye were as sheep going astray;
but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls”

“All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way,” Isaiah remarks in a powerful passage that belongs to our Good Friday considerations and indeed to the General Confession in the offices of Morning and Evening Prayer: “we have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep.” But as Good Friday also makes clear “the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.” The idea of sheep and shepherd takes on a whole new meaning and complexity in the image of Christ as the Lamb of God. “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world,” as John the Baptist says in John’s Gospel. And in an even profounder image, John the Divine in his Revelation proclaims that “worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing,” a passage that serves as the Eastertide Offertory sentence.

The liturgy underscores the image of lamb in the Agnus Dei , which means “lamb of God,” as part of our communion devotion, recalling us to Christ as the “Lamb of God,” “that takest away the sin of the world” whose mercy and peace we seek in the receiving of the sacrament of Holy Communion. The point, too, is taken up in the repeated refrains for mercy in the Gloria which emphasizes Christ as the “Lord, the only-begotten Son,” “the Lamb of God, the Son of the Father, that takest away the sin of the world” and who “sittest at the right hand of God the Father.”

All of these Scriptural references that inform our liturgy contribute to our understanding of one of the most familiar of all Christian images, the image of Christ the Good Shepherd. The deeper point is that the Good Shepherd is also the lamb of God, the Son of God who is for us “both a sacrifice for sin, and also an example of godly life,” as today’s Collect puts it. Something has been done for us and something happens in us that revolve around the image of Christ as the Good Shepherd “who giveth his life for the sheep.” We are the sheep, lost and astray, “but [we] are returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of [our] souls” by Christ the Lamb of God whose sacrifice “takes away the sin of the world.”

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