Category: Sermons

“That ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend … what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge…”

Paul’s words in Ephesians are powerfully and wonderfully illustrated in the Gospel (Luke 7.11-17). The raising of the only son of the widow of Nain reveals the love of Christ “which passeth knowledge,” the love which goes beyond what we can know and do simply on our own. Something is being shown to us that belongs to the deeper truth of our humanity; a truth found in our engagement with God. Without the love of God, the suggestion is, we are utterly incomplete, bereft and empty.

What Paul seeks for us is what Christ provides for us, namely our being “rooted and grounded in love” and being able to comprehend – to understand – the wondrous extent of the divine love which goes beyond our human capacities. To be aware of this is to be awakened to an ethic of action rooted in compassion.

The last several Sundays of the Trinity season have presented us with this underlying concept: our human actions as rooted and grounded in God’s love. Compassion was the operative word in The Parable of the Good Samaritan. That compassion is ultimately the love of Christ, the Son of God who became man for us and who engages us in our brokenness and hurt to heal and restore and to set us in motion towards one another. That compassion of Christ is the motivating force in the story of the one leper who “turned back, giving him thanks and he was a Samaritan,” too. Thanksgiving is ultimately rooted in the divine love which perfects our human loves. Thanksgiving is a form of love at work in us.

This morning we have the powerful story of the raising of the only son of the widow of Nain. It is one of three stories where Jesus meets us as mourners and each time something happens that is transformative. “Be ye transformed in the renewing of your minds,” as Paul says elsewhere. And, indeed, what we see and hear transforms our thinking and our doing. The operative word here in the Gospel is once again, the word, compassion. “When the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her.” Compassion is deep love, the deep love of God in Jesus Christ which reaches out to our humanity, at once to the sorrow and loss of the widow and to the death of her only son. We are meant to feel her pain, to use a much abused expression. To put it better, we are meant to empathise with her loss and to feel its depth. She is utterly bereft – a widow who has lost her husband and now a mother who has lost her only son. We sense and feel her desolation, the utter emptiness of her being.

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“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”

The Cross is the meeting place of lovers. That “strange and uncouth thing,” as the poet George Herbert calls it, reveals the incompleteness of our human loves and the all-sufficiency of divine love. It is signaled in what might be called the erotic liturgy of The Book of Common Prayer, a liturgy which is shaped and governed by the Cross, the liturgy of eros redeemed, the liturgy of the redemption of desire, of love as forgiveness. But what does it mean?

I have often been struck with the coincidence of the early beginning of school term with the Feast of the Holy Cross, and especially with one of its early and associated titles, namely, the Invention of the Holy Cross. It speaks so profoundly and yet so paradoxically to the nature of the intellectual enterprise. Inventio crucis.

Invention? Yes, but not in the sense of something fabricated out of our fevered imaginations. The feast derives from the celebrated visit of Helena, the mother of Emperor Constantine, to Jerusalem and her so-called discovery of the Holy Cross in the early fourth century as well as the exposition or “Exaltation” of the supposed true cross in the seventh century. Inventio does not suggest fabrication and invention so much as discovery and disclosure, in part our renewed discovery of our commitment to Christ in his Church.

In the Christian understanding of things, humility and sacrifice are de rigueur in the passionate search for understanding, the eros of intellectual life. The cross is the meeting place of all lovers.

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“Ye see with what large letters I write unto you with my own hand”

Paul’s words have a kind of directness to them, a way of catching our attention, even as he catches our attention yet again when he tells us that he bears in his body “the marks of the Lord Jesus”. Remarkable words, large words, words written, as it were, in the body of our humanity.

The Epistle reading complements wonderfully the Gospel reading. Jesus, too, catches our attention by way of strong words – “behold”, “consider”, “seek” – words which are nestled around his equally arresting and thrice repeated command, “be not anxious”. This, too, captures our attention.

Yet our anxiety gets in the way of our paying attention to anything. It describes much about our present condition. We are quite simply anxious about a multitude of things which we are utterly uncertain about what to do. What to do about the refugee crisis? What to do about the global economy? What to do about fire protection service in our rural communities? What to do … the list goes on. And because it does we are utterly paralysed by our anxieties.

What is the problem? What Paul and Jesus are saying and saying quite strongly is that the problem is with us. We are too much with ourselves. We are anxious precisely because we cannot face ourselves. But that seems utterly paradoxical. We are too much with ourselves and yet we cannot face ourselves? Precisely.

That is why we need the strong, strong words of Christ in the Gospel and the witness to such strong words in Paul’s large letters and his claim to bear in his own body “the marks of the Lord Jesus.” This Gospel is a powerful affirmation of the only real counter to our self-imposed anxieties. Why and How? Because it reminds us that this is God’s world and that we are his creatures, made in his image, who only live when we live for his glory – not, notice, for our own self-aggrandisement; not, notice, for our own security and comforts, isolated from the problems of the world, as if that is all out there, far away, and a problem for others who, shall we say? are just not like us. No, says St. Paul, “I bear” and so must we bear in our own bodies “the marks of the Lord Jesus.” Suffering not anxiety should be what defines us. Precisely what we don’t want to hear and yet these are the large letters, the strong words written for us to read even in the very body of our humanity, “the marks of the Lord Jesus.”

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“And one … turned back …giving him thanks; and he was a Samaritan.”

We are still on the road to Jerusalem with Jesus, it seems, at least in the logic of St. Luke’s Gospel. And, intriguingly, we have yet again a story that concerns a Samaritan, just as last Sunday’s Gospel presented us with the parable of the Good Samaritan. And once again, the Gospel is coupled with an epistle reading from Galatians. There are relatively few references to the Samaritans in the New Testament – mostly, these two Gospel stories read back-to-back on Trinity 13 and 14, and the powerful but long, long Gospel story in John’s Gospel about the woman at the well of Samaria, a story read appropriately enough as the second lesson at Morning Prayer on The First Sunday after Epiphany every other year. Why? Because it makes something known about Jesus and about human redemption.

We are made aware in that story about a tension between Jew and Samaritan best captured in the unnamed woman’s remark to Jesus, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria? For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.” And yet, we also see that such cultural and religious differences are transcended in a larger view of human redemption and divine compassion. “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” she says. The result of her witness is significant. “Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony.” Jesus stays there for two days, “and many more believed because of his word.” First, her word and then, his word. “They said to the woman, ‘It is no longer because of your words that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Saviour of the world.” The whole scene is a powerful witness to Jesus as the Redeemer and about the compassionate and yet compelling nature of human redemption. We are actively drawn into the story in order to make it our own. We see, too, how the Samaritans are brought into the pageant of redemption.

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“How readest thou?”

How do you read? Jesus asks the certain lawyer who had asked him about eternal life. Jesus responded with two questions: first, “What is written in the Law?” and then, secondly, “how do you read?” He means, I think, how do you understand or discern what is written in the Law, in the Scriptures more generally speaking.

This exchange serves as the introduction to one of the most familiar and, perhaps, most powerful of the Gospel parables, the parable of the so-called Good Samaritan (so-called because ‘good’ is not stated in the text; it belongs, and rightly so to the interpretation). The parable complements wonderfully Paul’s command in today’s Epistle (Gal. 5.16-24) to “walk in the Spirit” as against “the desire of the flesh”; it is really an illustration of “the fruit of the Spirit” alive and at work in us in our care and concern not only for one another, the neighbour whom we know, but also and importantly towards the stranger, the outsider, the neighbour whom we do not know. Somehow the stranger, too, is neighbour because the stranger, too, is human. This is quite radical and yet at the same time part and parcel of an older Jewish understanding about dealing with the sojourner, the stranger in your midst, reminding the people of Israel that they, too, were once strangers in the land. But in every way the exchange and the parable speak profoundly to what it means to be human by opening us out to a more explicit and more universal view of our humanity.

This gospel opens us out to the largest dimensions of love, the divine love which shapes and moves our human loves. Its radical message is that the love of neighbour, the possibility of our love for our fellow human beings, depends upon the love of God alive in us.

And yet that concept really all depends upon our how we read, especially how we read the Scriptures! Now there is a thought which must give us pause. Somehow our thoughts shape our actions; our thoughts are not simply afterthoughts but the very principle or living force of our actions. To put it another way, our actions are to be thoughtful actions. They arise out of our sense of humanity and of God. That is why the exchange which precedes the parable is so important. Jesus is at once countering and correcting the lawyer whose intent is actually to tempt Jesus, to put him to the test. But what about? Perhaps about this deeper understanding of the universality of our humanity which turns upon the primacy of the love of God. Somehow that love enables what otherwise seems hard and impossible, the point of view, it seems, of the lawyer who answering Jesus’ question rightly about the Law and its interpretation, then seems altogether sceptical about the possibility of doing the Law in his apparently dismissive question “and who is my neighbour?”

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“Ye shall know them by their fruits”

Actions, it seems, speak louder than words; at times, actions even seem to invalidate our thoughts and words. Such is hypocrisy – the gap between our expressed intentions and our actions, our saying one thing and doing another. This morning’s Gospel seems to affirm the priority of action. Not only shall we be known by our fruits but it might even seem that our words are empty and meaningless. “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.”

But that would be an incomplete view of what is set before us in these readings. The Gospel is really calling us to act according to who we are in Christ. Who we are in Christ is signaled profoundly in the Epistle reading from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans. “You have received a spirit of sonship … we are the children of God,” he claims, “and if children, then heirs; heirs of God and fellow-heirs with Christ: if so be that we suffer with him, that we may also be glorified with him.” This is powerful. Our actions should reveal our identity in Christ. We should be known by our fruits, our actions in accord with our vocation and identity as Christians.

This is the constant theme of the Trinity season illustrated constantly in the relationship between the Collects, Epistles and Gospels. It is all about acting upon what we have been given to see about our humanity as redeemed in Christ. It is all about actions in accord with words and not the divisions between them. For if we are simply what we do – if who we are resides simply in our actions – then we are doomed to despair.

Actions have consequences. This is a truism. Of course, actions have consequences and, of course, actions can be seen to reveal intentions and thoughts. But think about it for a moment. If you are defined simply by your actions then who are you? Shall we tally up the score? How many good things versus how many not so good things? Meanness versus kindness? Harm versus helpfulness? “The good that I would do, I do not do,” Paul famously reminds us, “the evil that I would not do is what I do.” On this score, our actions condemn us. They are not always in accord with what we know and want to do that is right and good and true. Such are “the devices and the desires of our own hearts”.

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“I have compassion on the multitude”

It must seem strange in the sultry heat of the quiet summer and in the lush richness of nature’s bounty in the beauty and peace of the valley, to hear about sin and death and about being in the wilderness with nothing to eat. Perhaps, such things merely confirm our current prejudices and biases about religion as something negative and threatening, judgmental and hateful.

To the contrary, it seems to me, these rich and wonderful lessons open out to us things that we need to hear and to hear in the context of the Eucharist, things which have to do with a larger, more complete and more honest view about human life. Ultimately, it is about life with God in Jesus Christ, something of lasting worth and meaning in which we participate here and now. To put it more simply, there is a spiritual and scriptural wisdom here which challenges the all-too-easy complacencies and certainties of our ordinary lives. The culture of full bellies and empty souls faces the deep and great question about what it means to be human. The spiritual and biblical view is that it has altogether to do with the dynamic of our life with God. This is wonderfully illustrated in the Collect, Epistle and Gospel for today.

“The free gift of God is eternal life, through Jesus Christ,” St. Paul tells us. “I have compassion on the multitude,” Jesus says. These are the strong positives of our spiritual life that speak directly and profoundly to the human condition and to the primacy of thanksgiving “at all times and in all places,” as our liturgy puts it, emphasizing in a phrase the freest and truest aspect of redeemed humanity. They are profoundly suggestive of the dynamic of our spiritual life expressed sacramentally in terms of Baptism, on the one hand, and Communion, on the other hand, that capture the distinctive interplay between the theological themes of justification and sanctification; or more simply put, Christ for us and Christ in us. As Richard Hooker notes: “we receive Christ Jesus in baptism once as the first beginner, in the eucharist often as being by continual degrees the finisher of our life” (Lawes, Bk.V, ch. LVII), suggesting exactly how Christ is “Alpha and Omega,” something which even the architecture of our churches often reveals. You need only look up and marvel at the Alpha and Omega beams of Christ Church and of many other Maritime Churches in the Carpenter Gothic style. The idea belongs to a basic and universal or catholic Christian understanding. Again, as Hooker notes: “nevertheless touching Baptism and the Supper of the Lord, we may with consent of the whole Christian world conclude they are necessary, the one to initiate or begin, the other to consummate or make perfect our life in Christ” (Lawes, Bk.V, ch. LXVII).

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“Be ye merciful, as your Father also is merciful”

These are words we have heard before only two weeks ago in the Gospel reading for Trinity IV: there at the beginning and setting for the parable of the blind leading the blind; here at the end of an extraordinary passage about loving your enemies. The first suggests how mercy is the counter to our hypocrisy and self-righteousness; the second, the deeper reality of mercy itself is on display. Love your enemies is mercy indeed!

We live in a world of conflicts and divisions, of hatreds and animosities, of bullies and cowards. How do we deal with such things? The tendenz of our age is to assert our various senses of entitlement, our claims to what we are owed, to a sense of justice or more accurately, self-righteousness. We think we deserve certain things and if we can’t get them it is someone else’s fault and, of course, there are always things which offend us. What we assert as a culture is the right not to be offended and endlessly to demand redress. There is no mercy, no toleration, no compassion in this; only a sense of injury, the world of the perpetually aggrieved and the endlessly resentful. All because we think we are better than others.

Today’s collect counters the entitlement culture. God has “prepared for them that love” him, “such good things as pass man’s understanding” – something more. What God seeks for us “exceeds” – goes beyond – “all that we can desire.” This is the great mercy of God that is the true and only counter to the divisions and tensions in our hearts and culture. It is precisely the something more of God’s love for our humanity that transcends our hearts of hatred and enmity, of hurt and injury, of endless cries of entitlement about what we think we are owed.

Mercy is precisely what we are not owed. It is precisely what is given in spite of ourselves, in spite of our claims to certain rights. The contemporary ‘rights culture’ pits us against one another; it creates enmities. Mercy counters and transcends our hatreds. It is about deep love. “Love – and you shall be loved” as one character says to another in David Adams Richards’ novel, “Crimes Against My Brother.”

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“It came to pass that as the people pressed upon him to hear the word of God,
Jesus stood by the lake of Gennesaret”

“It came to pass.” Something happened. It seems almost like the beginning of a fairy tale ‘long ago and far away,’ or ‘once upon a time,’ as it were. Yet this is no ordinary event but something extraordinary communicated through the quotidian, every day events of human lives. This story speaks wonderfully and directly to the deepest concerns of our contemporary world and day, namely, the sense of nothingness, the meaninglessness of our lives, what is properly called nihilism. The nothingness of life.

“If you live today, you breathe in nihilism,” the American writer Flannery O’Connor observed. It is “the very gas you breath,” whether you are “religious” or “secular” as the publishing venture “Interventions” notes in promoting works aimed at providing an alternative to the nihilisms of our day theologically and philosophically through a thorough-going and “genuinely interdisciplinary” approach. The challenge and the task is about rethinking everything, we might say.

Such an approach might be said to have a kind of Scriptural beginning with this Gospel story along with the Epistle from 1 Peter. We read these anciently appointed readings this year in what is traditionally and anciently known as Petertide, referring to the Feast of St. Peter to which is also added the figure of St. Paul. Both were martyred in Rome albeit at different times and buried originally at different places. Their common commemoration arises from the translation of their remains to a common place of burial during a time of persecution in 258; subsequently, their remains were returned to what is thought to have been their original places of burial.

As Fr. Park reminded us at his 30^th anniversary celebration of his ordination to the Priesthood this week, both Peter and Paul were missionaries and both Peter and Paul spoke to both Jew and Gentile communities alike. There is an intercultural engagement that belongs to the emergence and the development of the Christian Faith. Add to the picture that their joint commemoration has very much to do with Rome, with the way in which, through both, the Gospel of Jesus Christ engages the Graeco-Roman world of law and philosophy, and one begins to see the necessary nature of the interdisciplinary and intercultural aspects of our thinking and believing.

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“And thou, child, shalt be called the Prophet of the Highest”

And yet “more than a prophet,” Jesus himself will say. There are two nativities that belong to the major and scripturally based festivals of the Christian Church: The Nativity of Christ, of course, and the feast of The Nativity of St. John the Baptist on June 24^th, a celebration which coincides with the week of the summer solstice and so points us even in the measuring of time to Christ’s holy birth, itself the source and origin of Christian life and faith.

This ‘summer’s’ birth points us to the ‘winter’s’ birth of Christ, whose greater nativity signals all the summer of our lives in the grace of God towards us. In a way, that is the point of John the Baptist. He points not to himself but to Christ. The Nativity of John the Baptist signals the preparations which God makes for his coming into our midst as the Incarnate Lord in the Nativity of Jesus Christ. The summer solstice is just past; the long march to winter, yes, even to Christmas, begins! And yet, it is all about Christ within us.

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