Epiphany 6 12th February 2012

All we are about as Christians harnesses energy.

It harnesses the energy that presses creation forward.

Let no one deceive you into thinking Christianity is a loss of energy, even if tasks in the life of the Church fall heavily on your shoulders!

God who brought all that is out of nothing brings us moment by moment in Christ the irrepressible power of the Holy Spirit.

It is the same energy at work in the Eucharist that is at work bringing, driving and melting the snow and pushing the grass and trees upward.

Our three scripture passages spoke in different ways of how Jesus Christ is the clue to understanding that energy that has brought us here and would carry us forward from this day and into a joyful eternity.

The passage from Proverbs speaks of pre-existent wisdom. Before the mountains had been shaped there was already, according to God’s word in this scripture, wisdom who acted alongside him as his agent delighting in the human race as the climax of creation.

The letter of Saint Paul to the Colossians identifies that agent as Christ, also named, as in the Proverbs passage as firstborn of all creation in whom all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible. The passage makes clear that the one whose power rolled out creation acted powerfully upon the Cross to reconcile sinful humanity and is powerfully present with us as head of the body, the church.

The holy Gospel – this is one of the Sundays John is used to complement Mark as that Gospel doesn’t stretch to 52 passages – is also clear that Jesus Christ is both the power that bought all things into being and the one who gives power to all who believe in his name.

The Word became flesh and lived among us to give us power to become children of God.

To know God in Jesus Christ is not something esoteric but something that touches the wellspring of our own life. You and I are here in this Church this morning, held together in our physical being by God.

God who brought all that is out of nothing brings us moment by moment in Christ the power of life.

More than that he fills hearts open to him with his own life, the life and power of the Holy Spirit, through word and sacrament.

Our Church spire points to this truth: all of life comes from God, is sustained by God and would be directed by God to his praise and service.

I say ‘would be’ because the creation of a world apart from God has led to the necessity of faith for mortal beings to be one with him, to choose intimacy with him, and to overcome the consequences of that apartness from God in the evil consequences of human wrongdoing, made possible by that apartness of the creation from God.

We name the second person in the Godhead Jesus Christ because the world apart from God began to fall apart through human sin and only through the gift of his Son, revealed in taking nature of a Virgin in Jesus Christ, his death and resurrection could it be brought together again.

The great Anglican theologian Austin Farrer has this summary of how creation links to redemption and the making holy of our lives:

We believe in One God, One not only in the unity of his substance but in the unbroken wholeness of his action. All the work of God is one mighty doing from the beginning to the end, and can only be seen in its mind-convincing force when it is so taken. It is One God who calls being out of nothing, and Jesus from a virgin womb, and life from the dead; who revives our languid souls by penitence, and promises to sinful men redeemed by the vision of his face, in Jesus Christ our Lord. A Celebration of Faith p62

I am hopeful for the Church because I know there’s a link between the supernaturally revealed truth of Jesus Christ and the truths of the world’s evolution established by science.

Not just a link but a dynamic!

Just to illustrate, it is the Lord’s Day.

Every Sunday we celebrate three dynamics. The first day of the week is a reminder of God’s creation on the primeval day. It is also the memorial of the new creation given on Easter Sunday. It is thirdly the memorial of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit empowered the Church.

This dynamic is encaptured in Victorian Bishop William Walsham How’s hymn for Sunday:

This day, at thy creating Word first o’er the earth the light was poured;
O Lord, this day upon us shine, and fill our hearts with light divine.

This day the Lord for sinners slain, in might victorious rose again:
O Jesu, may we raisèd be from death of sin to life in thee.

This day the Holy Spirit came with fiery tongues of cloven flame:
O Spirit, fill our hearts this day with grace to hear and grace to pray.

The truth behind Sunday is the same truth behind creation – the truth of a God who, in Farrer’s words calls being out of nothing...Jesus from a virgin womb, and life from the dead; who revives our languid souls.

A last thought on how we better lay hold on this truth.

Imagine yourself up a ladder replacing a light bulb.

You are concentrating your attention on loosening the bulb and suddenly your mind switches to ponder how securely you’re placed on the ladder (no doubt if in Church your two named ladder holders will be down below you).

Your inner questioning ‘how securely am I placed’ undermines the operation until you pull yourself together and get on with the job.

Do you get the analogy? When we try to analyse our faith it feels shaky. When we attend to God it is convinced.

Believing in God is a practical matter beyond human analysis.

As Austin Farrer says elsewhere:

God can convince us of God, nothing else and no one else can: attend the eucharist well, make a good communion, pray for the grace you need, and you will know that you are not dealing with empty air.