Category: Sermons

“Ye know not what ye ask.”

“April”, it seems, “is the cruelest month of all” (T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland). Hardly the time for a pilgrimage, a journey unless it is like that of the Magi “with the ways deep and the weather sharp, the very dead of winter” (Eliot, Journey of the Magi) all over again with more snow! Yet we enter into the deepest and most intense pilgrimage of all, the inward pilgrimage of our souls to God and with God and in God, the pilgrimage of Passiontide.

The Cross is veiled, present and yet unseen. Such is the paradox of Passiontide. We see but “in a glass darkly.” We know and yet, we do not know. We make our way to the Cross. The first word that we will hear is “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”. The darkness of our ignorance is so much greater than we realize. It embraces our willfulness, too, signaling our willful ignorance born out of pride and prejudice, born out of folly and pretense, born out of presumption and envy. Such are the realities of sin.

Yet, this is the way that somehow we must want to go, if nothing else than for the clarification of our desires and the purification of our wills. We are on a journey with Christ, only now to discover that he and he alone “by his own blood enter[s] in once into the holy place” to obtain “eternal redemption for us”. We can only follow. We can only be among the crowd, at once deceivers and deceived, and yet to learn and be changed. The Epistle reading from Hebrews presents the stark and uncompromising logic of the atonement. Christ is the Mediator between God and Man whose labour of love makes us at one with God despite ourselves, and even in and through the darkness of our ignorance and the danger of our arrogance, and even more because of our betrayals of his love. Passiontide is really the parade of our betrayals.

We want what the mother of Zebedee’s children and her sons want. What is that? We want the very best for ourselves and for our children. But, inescapably, what we want for ourselves and for our children sets us and them at odds with everyone else. A benefit for a few is necessarily at the expense of the many. The poignancy of Passiontide lies precisely in the awareness of that paradox; our good is often sought for at the price of another’s hurt.

(more…)

Print this entry

“Be it unto me according to thy word”

The Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary often falls within the season of Lent. Indeed, there have been times even when it has fallen on Good Friday which moved a poet like John Donne to write a powerful poem about the nature of God’s comings and goings with us, a theme which Lancelot Andrewes develops over and over again as well. In Upon the Annunciation and the Passion falling upon one day. 1608, Donne explores in a rich and allusive way the comings of God to us and the goings of God from us in the double mystery of the Annunciation and the Passion. “At once a son is promised her, and gone,/ Gabriel gives Christ to her, he her to John.” As Donne wonderfully puts it, “All this, and all between, this day hath shown,/ Th’Abridgement of Christ’s story, which makes one/ (As in plain maps, the furthest west is east)/ Of the angels’ Ave, ‘ and Consummatum est”, a wonderful contraction of the mystery of God’s turning to us and for us. It is a kind of circling.

The turning is about God’s turning to us and our turning to him. Such are the motions of God’s comings and goings to, with and in us. Redire ad principia, a kind of circling, is all about turning. It is the dominant feature of Andrewes Ash-Wednesday sermons entitled in the collection made by Buckeridge and Laud as Of Repentance and Fasting.

In the first of those sermons preached in 1598 before Queen Elizabeth, Andrewes reflects upon the nature of the turning. He takes as his text what might seem an unusual passage, the 34^th verse Psalm 78, “when He slew them, then they sought Him; and they returned and enquired early after God.” The sermon undertakes to explore “the matter of repentance, expressed here under the terms of seeking and turning.” It focuses on the one to whom we turn just as the Annunciation is about God’s turning to our humanity in Mary and her turning to God in affirmation of the divine will for our salvation. Both Donne and Andrewes have a high regard for the significance of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the economy of salvation. In poems and in sermons, they contribute to the tradition of Marian devotion in seventeenth century Anglican divinity, a tradition that is largely shaped by a strong commitment to the doctrine of Chalcedon and to the measured sense of adiaphora, things indifferent though not unimportant, that allow for a breadth of expression about Marian doctrine but without sacrifice to the principles of essential faith as measured primarily by Scripture and Creed.

(more…)

Print this entry

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

March has been brutal, hardly a picnic. And as for there being “much grass in the place,” it certainly hasn’t been here unless in the Cannabis shops, legal or otherwise, or perhaps the Prime Minister’s Office. One way to escape the madness of March, perhaps, particlularly if you don’t like basketball. “Surely the people is grass,” withering away in the cold winds of March. Yet in contrast to the miseries of March we have these wonderful lessons which strengthen and refresh the soul in the things of God.

Our text speaks profoundly and eloquently about the nature of grace and about the meaning of our lives in faith. The gathering up of the fragments, κλασματα, literally, the broken pieces left over from the picnic in the wilderness with Jesus, signals the nature of redemption itself, the gathering up of the broken fragments of our lives, especially, it seems to me in our broken world and in the realization of our own brokenness. 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 variously 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 also “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 “Laetare Sunday”, because the Introit psalm for the day at Holy Communion is 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, the pilgrimage, to Jerusalem. “We go up to Jerusalem,” Jesus says in the Gospel for Quinquagesima Sunday just at the outset of Lent.

In the Christian understanding, Jerusalem has become less a physical entity, less a geographical city, and more the image of our spiritual homeland, more the city of God, in which the gathering up of our humanity finds its freedom and its fulfillment in God as a gathering, a συναγωγη, a synagogue, if you will, the place of being with one another in our being with God.

(more…)

Print this entry

“Turn thee unto me, and have mercy upon me”

It is really all about the turning, our turning back to God from whom we have turned away. Such are the realities of sin and grace. And yet, as the Psalmist indicates and as today’s disturbing Gospel illustrates, there can be no turning, no healing, no cleansing of our souls simply on our own merit and strength. Not only do “we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves”, but our attempts lead to greater dangers and, perhaps, to the greatest danger of all, despair. We give up on ourselves because we forget God. We give up on him and then we are in darkness and despair, depressive and depressing, oblivious to others because we are buried in our bitter resentments, worries, fears, and judgments about others.

Lent recalls us to the one who knows us better than we know ourselves and in being turned and turning back to him we find the truth of ourselves. It is the counter, indeed, the only counter to the depressed and depressing nature of our current concerns, our broken world, and our broken selves.

Jesus “himself knew what was in man”, John tells us just after the wedding feast at Cana of Galilee, just after the casting out of the money changers in the temple at Jerusalem, just after the prediction of his death and resurrection imaged in terms of the destruction of the temple and its being raised up in three days, just after “many … saw the signs which he did” when he was in Jerusalem at the Passover. Wonderful lessons, we might think, and ones which might awaken faith. Indeed, “many believed in his name” and yet, “Jesus did not trust himself to them, because he knew all men and needed no one to bear witness of man; for he himself knew what was in man” (John 2. 24,25)

(more…)

Print this entry

“To them which sat in the region and shadow of death, light is arisen”

We are those, too, who sit or have sat in “the region and the shadow of death”, having heard and seen and then, perhaps, have forgotten the light that has arisen upon us and is in our midst. The story of St. Patrick is the story of the conversion of Ireland, of a turning from “the region and shadow of death” and darkness to the light and glory of Christ. The paschal light lit upon Tara’s hill marks the transition from paganism to the beginnings of Christian culture. There is nothing about shillelaghs or shamrocks or snakes in Matthew’s Gospel, let alone about green beer; only something about sea-girt places such as Ireland and, I suppose, Nova Scotia, which while meaning New Scotland, has had its full measure of settlers whom are designated as Scots-Irish., not unlike St. Patrick himself born in Scotland in 387 AD.

More importantly, the Gospel appointed for the commemoration of a Missionary such as St. Patrick, speaks about the preaching of Jesus seen as the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy about light coming to those in places of darkness, about repentance, about discipleship, and about healing and salvation; in short, all the things that belong to the turning to God through God’s turning to us in the Gospel. It is very much a part of the meaning of Lent. It is all about the turning.

And the epistle, too, underscores the same theme. “The word of God grew and multiplied”, Acts tells us, meaning what, exactly? A new gospel, new things added to the essential proclamation of the faith? This is, unfortunately, a feature of our contemporary confusion, a kind of arrogance, really, which assumes that we know more and better than others before us about the nature of God and even about our humanity. Don’t we, though? Have there not been discoveries that challenge and overturn older ways of looking at things? Are we not always progressing?

(more…)

Print this entry

“Nevertheless, not what I will, but what thou wilt”

Christ’s words in Gethsemane are echoed in Leonard Cohen’s beautiful song of reflection, “If it be your will”. The challenge of our lives in faith is to find our truth in God’s truth but that means some serious thinking about the will of God for our humanity. The very rich, suggestive, and profound readings set before us on this The Second Sunday in Lent provide us with such an opportunity.

But first, let me thank your rector, the Revd Dr. Paul Friesen, and the Parish of St. Paul’s for the kindness and the privilege, the pleasure and the honour of preaching tonight and for hosting the Prayer Book Society of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. The work of the Society has been primarily about reclaiming our fundamental spiritual identity as Anglican Christians embodied in the Prayer Book tradition of theology and spirituality. It is especially an honour to be here at St. Paul’s, Halifax, because of the significant role St. Paul’s plays in the history and life of the Diocese and beyond. It was, to take one small but important example, the St. Paul’s Mite Society which contributed to the building and support of many of our rural parishes, particularly along the Eastern Shore of Nova Scotia. That kind of outreach and commitment to the Gospel was altogether crucial for the life of the Church in the remoter parts of the province. Having served for a number of years in such parishes and churches assisted by the St. Paul’s Mite Society, this gives me an opportunity to say thank you.

The Scripture readings that are before us this evening and as well at the Eucharist speak wonderfully to our current distresses and anxieties. We live in a broken world. One of the recurring refrains of the Lenten season is that we are the community of the broken-hearted. To know that is the condition of our turning back to God. “A broken and a contrite heart thou wilt not despise”, as the Psalmist, perhaps David himself, puts it. “Rend your heart and not your garments”, the prophet Joel tells us, “and turn unto the Lord your God.” The season of Lent reminds us of a basic biblical insight expressed in the Collect. “We have no power of ourselves to help ourselves”. But far from leading to a kind of paralysis and helplessness, it moves us to repentance which is about our turning to God and with great insistence. Nowhere is that great insistence seen more clearly than in the Eucharistic Gospel story of the “woman of Canaan” who engages so wonderfully and yet so disturbingly with Jesus, seeking mercy from him as Lord for her daughter who is “grievously vexed with a devil”.

(more…)

Print this entry

“Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou Son of David”

It is a most powerful Gospel story, the encounter between “a woman of Canaan”, as Matthew calls her, and Jesus whom she addresses as “Lord” and as “the Son of David”, terms of address that arise out of the story of Israel. Some of the most intense encounters with Jesus happen with those who are somehow outside of Israel and yet remind Israel of what actually belongs to her truth and life. One thinks of the Centurion about whom, Jesus says, “I have not found so great faith, no not in Israel” or about the Samaritan woman at the well of Jacob with whom he has an extended conversation about the living waters of eternal life and about worshiping “the Father in Spirit and Truth”. But this encounter is, I think, almost unparalleled in its troubling intensity.

She comes out of the coasts of Tyre and Sidon crying out to Jesus “have mercy upon me”, but her concern is for her daughter, “grievously vexed with a devil.” This is of another order than the healing of the body though soul and body are intertwined and interdependent, we might say. It’s just that spiritual and mental disorders are deeper and darker, it seems. And as such, there is the suggestion of the diabolical, of our allowing ourselves to be taken over by other forces and so surrendering our freedom and dignity. We become captive to some disorder in ourselves. The problem is within us, however much we might like to blame others, society, or the environment, whatever. We can sense the distress of a mother dealing with a deeply troubled daughter. It is the stuff of our own times.

The encounter illumines the nature of faithful prayer and challenges our indifference to matters spiritual, the casual and lukewarm way in which we approach Church and religion, the easy and indulgent excuses that we make that keep us from the very things that contribute most to the good and the health of our souls. The woman is insistent on what she senses and knows about Jesus. But this, paradoxically, is her humility that grants her access to the mercy she seeks. What we have here is what we pray in our liturgy in The Prayer of Humble Access; a prayer shaped by this Gospel story and the story of the healing of the Centurion’s servant.

(more…)

Print this entry

“Turn unto the Lord your God”

The words of the Prophet Joel belong to the beginning of Lent on Ash Wednesday. Yet they have a powerful resonance throughout the whole of Lent and even more throughout the whole progress of the Christian life of Faith. In a way, it is all about the turning. This is an important spiritual principle which was well understood by one of the outstanding preachers and masters of the spiritual life in our own Anglican tradition, Lancelot Andrewes.

A celebrated preacher at the courts of Elizabeth and James in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century, he stands not only with one foot in one century and the other in another but in the moments of transition between the medieval world and the early modern world and in ways that look back reflectively and profoundly upon the Fathers of the Patristic Period as well as ahead to the ambiguities and uncertainties that belong to our contemporary world. His sermons and his prayers are themselves an outstanding monument to the spiritual tradition which has come to be known as Anglicanism and which above all else connects that tradition to the essential Catholicism of the universal Church. It is, we might say, one of the counters to the fideism of our current situation by which I mean the narrow retreat into the ghettoes of our minds at the expense of the breadth and depth of the Catholic Faith in its truth and beauty.

Andrewes was a celebrated preacher in his day and his sermons and prayers have had a remarkable influence well beyond his time and place. While they are intense and demanding sermons, it seems to me worth considering the salient features of some of his Lenten Sermons precisely because they bring out a deep biblical wisdom understood creedally and doctrinally. They are indeed a redire ad principia, not just in terms of repentance which he especially refers to in these terms but because the whole of the Christian life is a turning back to God, a return to the principle, a point which appears in many of his sermons. Our endeavour will be simply to point out some of the themes of repentance that are presented and explored in some of the sermons which he preached in Lent.

(more…)

Print this entry

“One who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin”

The temptations which belong to the beginning of Lent connect to the end, to the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. He who is pierced for us is tempted for us.

To be tempted and to be pierced are related words. The overcoming of temptation belongs equally to the overcoming of his being pierced, namely, the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The cross and the resurrection are obliquely, yet strongly, present in the temptations of Christ. There is a resurrection into the presence of the living Word and Spirit of the Father, but only through the burning love of the crucified, a love which is already signaled in the temptations of Christ read on the First Sunday in Lent.

To be tempted is to be drawn to think and act in ways which we know to be wrong and false. This implies as well that we are drawn away from what we know to be right and true. Our reason is beguiled; our will is seduced. We are at once deceivers and deceived.

Temptations are received in the soul. It is there that they have their force of attraction, drawing us to what we know in some sense we should refuse. But there is always a choice, a crucial moment of decision, whether to give in or withstand. This is the counter to all of the forms of determinism in our culture and day. The problem is not that there are temptations – these there must be – but how we face them. Sin, after all, does not lie in the temptations themselves, but in our yielding to them, whether inwardly in our thoughts or outwardly in our deeds. Temptations actually belong to the path of our spiritual journey to God and with God. They are, we might even say, necessary to the perfecting of our wills, to the matter of setting love in order. They belong to our freedom in Christ.

The temptations of Christ are our temptations. His will to bear them belongs to the divine will to redeem. The temptations of Christ clarify the meaning of all and every temptation. There is no temptation which does not fall under one or other of the temptations of Christ. Our understanding is clarified and our wills are fortified by reflecting on the temptations of Christ. They sanctify our temptations. They are made part and parcel of the way of perfecting grace in us. By virtue of Christ’s temptations, we are inwardly strengthened in resisting, even as the force of the temptations themselves is abated, because we can see them in Christ for what they are and how they can be overcome.

(more…)

Print this entry