Category: Sermons

“Can the blind lead the blind? Shall they not both fall into the ditch?”

This morning’s reading continue the underlying theme of the Trinity season which is about the relation between knowing and doing, between things intellectual and matters moral. Jesus commands us to “be merciful as your Father also is merciful”. But what happens if and when we turn our backs on the mercy of God revealed in Jesus? What happens if we fail to act upon what we have been given to see in Jesus? “And he spake a parable unto them,” the parable of the blind leading the blind.

I cannot hear this parable without being reminded of Brueghel’s marvelous painting of a troupe of blind beggars all in the process of falling into a ditch, the leader having his cap pulled down over his eyes, not only blind but doubly blind, almost willfully blind. And in the center of the painting there is the image of a church from which we have turned away. It suggests the disconnect between what we are given to know and what we do which goes to the issue of hypocrisy signaled in the Gospel. Such forms of blindness belong to a wisdom that is both ancient and modern.

In Sophocles’ great tragedy, Oedipus Rex, Oedipus thought that he knew who he was and thought that his form of reasoning, that of the being a solver of riddles, of problems, was the only form of knowing. He comes to learn, paradoxically through his reason, that the blind prophet, Teiresias, actually knew the truth of Oedipus even when Oedipus didn’t; in other words, there are other ways of knowing. Oedipus comes to know who he is, namely, the man who unwittingly killed his father and married his mother. He learns that he didn’t know what he thought he knew. He was blind to the truth about himself. He had eyes but saw not. But Teiresias, who was blind, knew. He had no eyes and yet he saw. Oedipus, in this moment of realizing who he is, puts out his eyes. He is now literally blind and yet now he knows. For the Greeks, he is “the paradigm of fate”. The one who didn’t know who he is provides the example of the importance of knowing yourself and your place in the world. The forms of his blindness, first, the presumption of thinking he knew what he didn’t know and thinking his form of knowing the only form of knowing, and, secondly, his becoming literally blind, are lessons for the culture. At the end of the play, he is no longer king and is led out of the city, no longer its leader, no longer the blind leading the blind.

(more…)

Print this entry

“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 this feast, The Nativity of St. John the Baptist, 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 fons et origo 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.

For beyond the reminder of God’s coming to us, there is the purpose of his coming in us – the motions of his grace taking shape in our lives. From that standpoint, the strange and compelling message of John the Baptist is constant and necessary; he points us to Christ, yes, but as well to Christ in us.

There is a kind of miracle of nature in the conception and birth of John the Baptist to the elderly and skeptical Zechariah and Elizabeth. Indeed, Zechariah’s scoffing will be rebuked by his being silenced and unable to speak until the birth of John. His challenge to the angel, “how shall I know this?” contrasts with Mary’s question, “how shall this be?” The difference is between a doubting that denies possibilities and the intellectual inquiry open to their realization.

What is wanted to be grasped is how the birth and ministry of the one prepares us for the coming of the other, a miracle of nature preparing us for the miracle of grace. Everything is preparatory for the coming of Christ.

(more…)

Print this entry

“Rejoice with me”

The parables in today’s gospel are powerful illustrations of the teaching in the epistle: not only does “God resist the proud and give grace to the humble”, but that grace conveys us unto glory, for God “himself shall restore, stablish and strengthen you … after that ye have suffered a while”. God is “the God of all grace” and here is a wonderful illustration of the nature and the immensity of God’s grace.

The parables come as a response to an accusation. Christ is accused of receiving sinners and eating with them, thereby identifying himself with sinners, being made sin himself, as it were. But Christ’s response shows that he does, not so as to be defined by sin, “him who knew no sin”, but for the sake of our redemption “so that in him we might become the righteousness of God”. He tells three parables, two of which comprise today’s gospel: the parable of the lost sheep, the parable of the lost coin. Beyond them, but as the fulfilling of them, is the parable of the lost son, the so-called prodigal son.

Sheep, coins, sons. There is a progression to these images. The first two which we have this morning stress the priority of divine grace in our restoration. What is emphasized is God’s reaching down to us in the gravity of our sins which separate us from God and from the community of divine love. There is, after all, a kind of passivity to sheep and coins, but this only serves to heighten the priority of God’s grace. Yet the effects of that grace are to be realized in us which is what we are given to see in the parable of the prodigal son. In him we see the motions of God’s grace in us effecting our restoration to grace, our establishment in grace and our being strengthened by grace.

The parable of the prodigal son completes the illustration of the teaching about God’s redemptive grace. It signifies the strong and exultant note of God’s mercy towards us. What, after all, is the recurring theme here except the theme of rejoicing? “I once was lost but now am found.” Here is the illustration of the “amazing grace” of God that “saved a wretch like me.”

God seeks the lost and God accepts the penitent who makes some motion of return to him for that motion is the motion of God’s grace in him. The first two parables make this point unmistakably clear. The sheep and the coins are utterly unable of themselves to move towards God. It is God’s grace which literally picks them up and carries them, gathers them up to himself and to the community which his love alone creates. We are reminded that our joy is to be found in the free gift of God towards us in the giving of his son.

(more…)

Print this entry

“My little children, Let us not love in word, neither in tongue;
but in deed, and in truth”

The readings in these early days of the Trinity Season offer a kind of holy seminar about the necessary connection between seeing and doing, thinking and acting. There is a kind of interplay between the readings taken from the writings of John and Luke which shows us this. On Trinity Sunday we had not only the reading from John’s Gospel but also a reading from The Book of the Revelation of St. John the Divine. And last Sunday and today we have epistle readings from 1 John and gospel readings, two parables, from Luke’s Gospel.

These readings underscore a basic feature of the Christian faith: namely, the necessity to act out of what we have been given to see through the life of God opened to view through Jesus Christ. It means that there is an inescapable doctrinal character to the living out of the Christian Faith. There has to be that constant attention to the primacy of doctrine which informs our practical activities in lives of service and sacrifice. John is constantly making this point in one way or another even as Luke is constantly providing us with examples and illustrations of just what it looks like on the ground, as it were.

“Hereby we know love, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.” These are strong words. “Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God,” we heard on The First Sunday after Trinity and then we were given to see how absolutely necessary it is to attend to the teachings of the Scripture and to act out of what we have been given to see in the story of Lazarus and Dives. Our indifference to one another arises out of our indifference to the things which really matter, the things of God. Today, John again emphasizes the conditions of our love in the face of the world’s animosities and hatreds and even our own failings, pointing out that love is not simply about us but, more fundamentally, it is about Christ’s transforming love in us. “This is his commandment,” John tells us, “That we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and love one another,” emphasizing the main point that “he that keepeth his commandments dwelleth in him, and he in him.” Luke indicates how we refuse that love through our excuses which are all about a refusal to think the things of God that have been revealed to us. We turn to the ground of our everyday affairs, a thinking downwards that denies what has been opened to view in our thinking upwards.

(more…)

Print this entry

“This is my commandment, that ye love one another, as I have loved you”

The Saints’ Days commemorations provide us with wonderful ways to reflect upon the essential nature of our Christian identity. They concentrate for us at once our vocation to holiness of life and witness and to our communion with God. They are a poignant reminder of our life in Christ here and now. They encourage us and perhaps never more so than in the commemoration of St. Barnabas whose name means “son of consolation” or “encouragement.”

Can there be any greater consolation or encouragement than this commandment to love as Christ has loved us? Can there be any greater consolation or encouragement than to realise that we are the friends of God and not simply servants? In short, can there be any greater consolation or encouragement than to be recalled to our communion with God?

The Gospel reading for the Feast of St. Barnabas is from the 15^th chapter of John’s Gospel. The passage follows immediately upon the last and perhaps greatest of the seven so-called “I am” sayings of Jesus, sayings where through metaphor and image, Christ indicates the forms of our incorporation in the life of God. The last and perhaps greatest of those images is that of the vine. “I am the vine,” Jesus says and goes on to talk about our abiding in him and he in us for “without me,” he says, “ye can do nothing.” Here the force of that image extends to the explicit idea of friendship; our friendship or communion with God in Jesus Christ which is the basis of our friendship or communion with one another. We live in the love of God.

This is the wonder which turns the world on its head. The idea of communion and fellowship with God and with one another. But why a commandment? Do friends command friends? Yes and no. The wonder here lies in the communion between God and our humanity that has been established – created – by God. “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you,” Jesus says. The distance between God and Man is not denied even as a connection and an intimacy between God and Man has been created. The God who is love commands love because of the necessity of love itself – because of its essentially divine nature.

(more…)

Print this entry

“If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded
though one rose from the dead.”

“God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God and God in him.” Familiar words perhaps, though we know them better through the scriptural sentences in the Offices for the Trinity season with the word, “abideth” rather than the King James version, “dwelleth.” Either way the phrase captures the essential point of the Christian Faith – our being with the God who dwells with us. We live in the love of God without which we do not live at all. Something of the radical meaning of our communion with God is wonderfully and, perhaps, terrifyingly set before us on The First Sunday after Trinity.

We either live out of what we have been given to behold – “a door opened in heaven,” as we heard last week – or we are, quite literally, it seems, in Hell. To live out of the love of God as Trinity governs how we look at one another and treat one another. As today’s epistle reading from 1 John and the Gospel parable from Luke make clear, heaven and hell are right here in how we hear and see; in short, in how we think God and how we regard one another. “If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?” To love God means loving our brother also.

The parable makes it clear that this ethical principle has its basis in the Jewish Scriptures spoken of here as “Moses and the prophets.” What does that mean? Simply that the love of God and the love of neighbour belong to the essential ethical insight of Judaism which is carried over into Christianity. In telling this strong and powerful parable, Jesus convicts both Jew and Christian alike of the way in which we betray God in ignoring one another. Lazarus lies at our feet. Do we simply walk over him or do we care for him? “Our life and death,” one of the desert fathers says, “are with our brother.”

(more…)

Print this entry

“He therefore that would be saved, let him thus think of the Trinity”

My text comes not directly from the Scriptures but from the Scriptures credally understood, from the Athanasian Creed, to be more precise, itself one of the three catholic creeds of the universal Church. It is rarely used and yet it speaks most wonderfully and profoundly to the central and essential mystery of the Christian Faith as well as to the spiritual nature of the great religions of the world. It is all about the Trinity, about God revealed in the witness of the Scriptures as Trinity, the three-in-one and the one-in-three, God as Father, Son and Holy Ghost. The important point is that the Creeds come out of the Scriptures and return us to the Scriptures within a pattern of understanding – an understanding above all else about God. We cannot not think God. In the Christian understanding thinking God means thinking the Trinity.

This is the essential insight of the Christian Faith but it belongs as well to the deeper meaning of all of the great religions of the world. As the great nineteenth century German philosopher, Hegel, observes, the Trinity is adumbrated – shadowed forth – in some way or another in all of the great religions of the world. At issue is how do we think the Trinity?

The Trinity is the fullest possible statement about the spiritual reality of God: God in his self-sufficient majesty and truth. This is a day where we stand on our heads, as it were. We are enveloped in mysteries which we strive to think knowing that we are struggling with what is inescapably beyond our grasp and yet cannot not be thought. Such is worship which is why the lesson on this day is from The Book of the Revelation of St. John the Divine. It presents us with a vision of heaven but even more with a vision of worship, the worship of the whole of creation. It is in worship that our humanity achieves its greatest dignity and highest honour. Our souls are made apt for worship. We are made for worship and for worship, in the language of Isaiah which John deliberately recalls here, of the thrice-holy God, “Holy, Holy, Holy.” Worship is about thinking God.

Think about that for a moment and realize how much that runs counter to our culture and church. It is not simply about us and about what pleases us as if entertaining ourselves and making us feel good about ourselves was the aim and purpose of the Church. No. It is first and foremost about God and only then the discovery of things about the truth of ourselves in God. Such is the true meaning of worship: God and us in God.

(more…)

Print this entry

“And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind”

Sometimes the things that come upon us suddenly are the things that unsettle us most. Such is the Descent of the Holy Ghost. He came down “suddenly” upon the disciples, but was his coming suddenly a coming unexpectedly? That he came suddenly we read; his coming unexpectedly, we do not read. In fact, Jesus tells us to expect the coming of the Holy Ghost, “commanding them not to depart from Jerusalem but to wait for the promise of the Father,” even the descent of the Holy Ghost.

Yet we may wait expectantly and still be caught unawares, for the realization of what we await may far exceed our expectations and so catch us by surprise. We await for what we do not fully understand. The grace of God is always something more; the mystery of God something more yet again. The promise of the Ascension was the coming down of the Holy Ghost for which Jesus prepares us and bids us wait, yet “suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind.”

Certainly, the effects of this coming down would appear to be most unsettling, the manner of their appearing no less so – “a rushing mighty wind” and “cloven tongues like as of fire” lighting upon the disciples gathered in Jerusalem, filling them with the Holy Spirit and moving them “to speak with other tongues.” To all appearances, an event most unsettling and more than a little disconcerting.

We all know about the winds that unsettle us – the rushing, mighty winds of rumour and slander, of whisperings and murmurings, of allegations and accusations which seek to belittle and destroy. The winds of hatred and revenge are the winds of death. These are the winds that unsettle us. But our Lord would not have us unsettled and troubled. In the midst of the sea-storms of our hearts and our world, even in the midst of the sea-storms of our churches and our communities, he bids the seas be calm and our hearts be still; “it is I,” he says, “have no fear.”

(more…)

Print this entry