Category: Sermons

“He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance”

Pentecost counters and redeems our empirical obsessions, it seems to me, the deeply entrenched idea – and it is actually important to remember that it, too, is an idea – that reality is essentially and only what can be sensed and experienced materially. To the contrary, some of the most important things in life are precisely what cannot be seen and known empirically, that is to say, through sense experience, nor can they be measured in the way one thinks to measure the world of our senses. Marina Warner’s observation about education relates to the natural, “The things that matter most cannot be measured.” The marvel of Pentecost is that it opens us out to an important intellectual and spiritual idea that belongs to religion, particularly the Christian religion, namely, that the things which cannot be seen and experienced are made known through the sensible.

Pentecost marks the descent of the Holy Ghost upon the disciples gathered once again “with one accord in one place,” this time after Christ’s Ascension. Such things as the Ascension and the Descent of the Holy Spirit are empirically meaningless – we can make no sense of such dislocations of time and space; they are simply beyond the empirical. And yet the way in which the Ascension and Pentecost are made known to us is through the sensible and empirical. And perhaps, nowhere more profoundly than in the story of Pentecost as Acts presents it.

“Suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind … and there appeared unto them cloven tongues, like as of fire.” Sounds and sights through which something is communicated but only through similies, through metaphor. “As of a rushing mighty wind” which is to say that it is not a rushing mighty wind; “like as of fire” which is a far different than saying that it is fire. And what is the ‘it’, here? The spiritual reality of God the Holy Ghost, the invisible yet effective presence of God with us.

As Jesus makes clear, the Holy Ghost is the Comforter, the strengthener. He who dwells in us is the one whom the Father sends in Jesus’ name. We are dealing with the spiritual mystery of God as Trinity, something which can only be taught to us through revelation. Revelation is simply what God makes known to us about himself and about ourselves, too. Pentecost uses the images of wind and fire to signal the spiritual power and truth of God and our lives with God through the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit. It can’t be quantified; it has to be experienced not sensibly but intellectually and to be sure emotionally, too; it is about hearts and minds. It, too, is ultimately about teaching.

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“These things have I spoken unto you”

There is something quite wonderful and special about this Sunday juxtaposed between the going up of the Son to the Father in the Ascension of Christ and the coming down of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. The Ascension marks the fortieth day of Easter and signals the culmination of the Resurrection, its fuller meaning, if you will. Pentecost is the fiftieth day after Easter and marks the birthday of the Christian Church.

The special joy of Easter and Eastertide reaches a kind of crescendo in the Ascension. All of the scripture passages, old and new, are full of a sense of joy and wonder. Why? Because the Ascension marks what the Fathers astutely call, “the exaltation of our humanity.” Through Christ’s death and resurrection we have a place, a home with God. It is signalled profoundly and beautifully in the Son’s homecoming to the Father having accomplished all that belongs to the redemption of the world and our humanity. All the themes of Eastertide find their fullest meaning in the Ascension of Christ.

“I go to prepare a place for you,” Jesus says, “that where I am there ye may be also.” The Ascension celebrates the return of the Son to the Father in which return our humanity realizes its end in God, on the one hand, and has its participation in the life of the Trinity through prayer now, on the other hand. The Ascension reveals the true movement of our liturgy. It is the liturgy of the sursum corda, the liturgy of the lifting up of our humanity to God and into God. “Lift up your hearts. We lift them up unto the Lord.”

The Ascension is the necessary counter to the spirit of accommodationism so dominant in our church and culture, the idea that the Christian Gospel must accommodate itself to the fads and fancies of each and every passing age. To engage our world in all of its confusions is not the same thing as catering to every passing fad and fancy. The Ascension signals the real meaning of the engagement between God and Man. “We ascend in the ascension of our hearts” as Augustine so memorably puts it. We ascend in prayer and praise, in Word and Sacrament. We are gathered into the divine life. It is the very opposite of supposing that the divine life is collapsed into our world and day; such an idea would be a perversion of the Incarnation.

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“These things have I spoken unto you”

There is something quite wonderful and special about this Sunday juxtaposed between the going up of the Son to the Father in the Ascension of Christ and the coming down of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. The Ascension marks the fortieth day of Easter and signals the culmination of the Resurrection, its fuller meaning, if you will. Pentecost is the fiftieth day after Easter and marks the birthday of the Christian Church.

The special joy of Easter and Eastertide reaches a kind of crescendo in the Ascension. All of the scripture passages, old and new, are full of a sense of joy and wonder. Why? Because the Ascension marks what the Fathers astutely call, “the exaltation of our humanity.” Through Christ’s death and resurrection we have a place, a home with God. It is signalled profoundly and beautifully in the Son’s homecoming to the Father having accomplished all that belongs to the redemption of the world and our humanity. All the themes of Eastertide find their fullest meaning in the Ascension of Christ.

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“He was received up into heaven”

“We ascend in the ascension of our hearts,” Augustine memorably says, capturing in a phrase the doctrinal meaning of Christ’s Ascension. The fortieth day of Easter marks the Ascension of Christ, itself the culmination of the Resurrection. It opens us out to its deeper meaning and truth.

There is a wonderful sense of joy which belongs to Easter and Eastertide that reaches a kind of crescendo in the Ascension. All of the scripture passages, old and new, are full of a sense of joy and wonder. Why? Because the Ascension marks what the Fathers astutely call, “the exaltation of our humanity.” Through Christ’s death and resurrection we have a place, a home with God. It is signalled profoundly and beautifully in the Son’s homecoming to the Father having accomplished all that belongs to the redemption of the world and our humanity. All the themes of Eastertide find their fullest meaning in the Ascension of Christ.

“I go to prepare a place for you,” Jesus says, “that where I am there ye may be also.” The Ascension celebrates the return of the Son to the Father in which return our humanity realizes its end in God, on the one hand, and has its participation in the life of the Trinity through prayer now, on the other hand. The Ascension reveals the true movement of our liturgy. It is the liturgy of the sursum corda, the liturgy of the lifting up of our humanity to God and into God. “Lift up your hearts. We lift them up unto the Lord.”

The Ascension is the necessary counter to the spirit of accommodationism so dominant in our church and culture, the idea that the Christian Gospel must accommodate itself to the fads and fancies of each and every passing age. To engage our world in all of its confusions is not the same thing as catering to every passing fad and fancy. The Ascension signals the real meaning of the engagement between God and Man. We ascend in the ascension of our hearts in prayer and praise, in Word and Sacrament. We are gathered into the divine life. It is the very opposite of supposing that the divine life is collapsed into our world and day.

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“I will that all men pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands”

Praying everywhere and all the time. That is the radical meaning of prayer. It signifies, as Richard Hooker puts it, “all the service that we ever do unto God.” In short, it is about the Godward direction of our lives. What that means is the challenge. But at the very least it suggests something about the power and nature of prayer. It suggests that prayer belongs to our thinking and our loving and our doing; in other words, our very being.

This opens us out to a broader view of prayer, though one which is deeply embedded in our liturgical tradition of prayer, in liturgical prayer itself. Nothing signals the Godward direction of our lives better than the liturgy, itself a labour, a human work but one which has been infused with the grace of God. Paul’s Letter to Timothy alludes to an aspect of this, namely, the physical gesture of holy hands uplifted in prayer. It suggests the orans position, a visible way of signifying our openness to divine grace and to the ways in which God’s grace shapes our lives through prayer.

The Gospel from Luke reminds us that the heart of all prayer is the Lord’s Prayer. That prayer gathers us into the intimacy of the Son’s love for the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit. It is the prayer which Jesus teaches us to pray – when you pray, not if. Apart from the literal words there is the deeper meaning of that prayer. The story which he tells that accompanies the teaching about the Lord’s Prayer is about persevering in prayer.

What is that about? Simply this, that God wants us to want what he wants for us and through prayer we are engaged in learning to ask what it is that we should be seeking. Knowing and desiring are both part of the dynamic of prayer. The Gospel makes it clear that persevering in “asking, seeking, knocking” results in “receiving, finding,” and in the “opening” to the will of God. Something is required of us. It is our wanting God’s will to “be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

Rogationtide is all about prayer and prayer is all about asking. It means, however, the willingness to learn what to ask for and in what way. It is nothing less than the reality of our lives as lived for God and with God and in God; and all because of the Resurrection. We are gathered into the very motions of the love that is the Trinity.

“I will that all men pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands”

Fr. David Curry
Rogation Monday, 2015

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“And the Lord showed him all the land”

How do we look upon the land, upon our world? Do we see it as something to be exploited and used to our benefit and interest economically and materially? Or do we see the land more spiritually and intellectually in ways that might condition our use of it? How can we separate ourselves from the land? How we look upon the land equally speaks to how we look upon ourselves.

In our secular or civil culture, this is Mother’s Day but in the liturgical patterns of prayer and praise it is Rogation Sunday. The word rogation signifies prayer but with a profound connection to the land and our world. In the great Eucharistic gospel for today, Jesus tells us about his coming into the world and about his leaving the world. Somehow the world itself is gathered into the spiritual motions of the Son’s love for the Father in the bond of the Holy Spirit. “I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world: again, I leave the world, and go to the Father.” And this makes all the difference for the understanding of our lives wherever we find ourselves in the world. There is the possibility for our affection for our places in the land and for a real commitment to the good of the land. The world does not stand over and against us in terms of our relation to God. As Jesus says, “I have overcome the world.”

We are challenged about how we see the land and about how we see ourselves in the landscape of creation redeemed. That is the great message of Eastertide and of this Sunday. The lesson from Deuteronomy tells the story of Moses being allowed to see the promised land before he dies. He sees but does not enter into the promised land. In the lesson from Acts, Paul preaches the Resurrection in Antioch Pisidia by way of reference to the Exodus and the promised land. “And as they went out [of the synagogue], the people begged that these things might be told them the next sabbath,” (Acts 13.42). We can be changed by what we hear – again and again, it seems.

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“Because I go to the Father”

There is at once a fearful and a sad emptiness to our world and day which the YouTube Fanfest in Toronto, perhaps, illustrates. Jenna Marbles has issued her 200^th YouTube video. Her YouTube Channel has over 15 million subscribers. Her latest and perhaps last YouTube is a kind of good-by. It captures wonderfully the narcissism and the nihilism of contemporary culture. It begins with her “want[ing] to share some thoughts” with us. But what are those thoughts? A series of rather trite clichés; trite but true which is the nature of clichés, I suppose. “Because to me, I’m just Jenna. That’s all I am,” she says. But there are questions. What are they? Our questions to her, she thinks. “What are you going to do next? Where is this all leading? What about your future?” To which she replies with disarming honesty and sincerity, “The truth is, I don’t know.”

There are the pressures about having plans and goals. But as she says, “what if your goals are vague? Like mine.” What are they? “To be happy. To laugh every day. To experience life. To find love and loss. To just feel what it feels like to be a human being. To feel alive.” All rather commonplace, a tad sentimental and, perhaps, a wee bit poignant but no doubt undeniable. We are likely all suckers for them. Yet, as she says, “where do you go with goals like that?”

“People associate being lost as something bad. Fear is bad. Confusion is bad. But it’s not,” she claims, “It’s life. Because the way I see it, no one knows what they’re doing. Ever.” True enough, I suppose. Our confusions can be the beginning of learning and living; so too, with fear, especially, “the fear of the Lord” which “is the beginning of wisdom” from the biblical perspective. But if people think they know what they are doing, they’re lying, she says. “No one knows what life has in store. You can take some steps towards what you want. But you can’t control where the cards fall.” True enough, too, I suppose. So then what? With respect to drive and desire and ambition, “people focus on how to get somewhere they’re not right now,” she observes only to ask, “what’s wrong with the step you’re on?” while falling on her face. And then, like the sentiment of a Hallmark card, she advises. “Look around you. Don’t miss what you have today. Your friends. Your family. People you love.” Okay. All rather sweet and cute. But then what? The sad recognition that her time in the limelight may be coming to an end. “The novelty of me has worn off” she says, rationalizing that “we get tired of people every day.” “And that’s okay,” she says, trying to put a brave face on it but wrestling with the transitory nature of fame and glory. Sic transit gloria mundi, she might have said more profoundly. So it’s not all Jenna any more. So passes the glory of the world. Those that live by the image, must die by the image.

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“Ye believe in God, believe also in me”

The readings for The Feast of St. Philip and St. James complement the themes of Eastertide. The fundamental orientation of the Son to the Father is ever so strongly and rather provocatively expressed in the gospel reading, “no man cometh unto the Father but by me,” Jesus says, pointing out to Philip, too, that “he that hath seen me, hath seen the Father.” And yet, Jesus says, “believe me, that I am in the Father, and the Father in me; or else believe me for the very work’s sake.”

The things which Jesus 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.

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“Peace be unto you”

Peace and forgiveness flow out from the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. They are the first-fruits of his resurrection in us. Jesus appears behind closed doors where the disciples are huddled in fear. He proclaims peace and forgiveness. He institutes the means by which his peace and his forgiveness continue with us – through the Holy Spirit breathed out upon the disciples who will be the apostles of his church. They are sent forth to bestow the peace and the forgiveness of God to a fearful and an uncertain world. “Whosoever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whosoever sins ye retain, they are retained”.

What an awesome charge! And, yet, how little understood. Sometimes known as “the power of the keys,” the proclamation of God’s forgiveness through the ordained ministry to his penitent people effects what it signifies. If we truly confess our sins and truly seek God’s forgiveness, then we receive the grace of forgiveness objectively proclaimed in the words of absolution pronounced by the priest and signified in the sign of the cross. We are forgiven. That is the grace which extends from the Upper Room “the same day at evening,” the day of the resurrection of Christ to us even today. It is as if we are there, in an arrested moment of time and space, the eternal now. Something happens in the liturgy. At every service, Christ appears, as it were, behind closed doors to speak peace and forgiveness to us all.

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