Who’d be a preacher?
We have to set forth God’s truth
without making it an obstacle to good living and call for love of the truth
that’s wholly practical.
Christianity’s a matter of
principle – we need these principles stating and re-stating - but it’s tailored
to people, and people fall short in their allegiance to principle.
Those verses in Deuteronomy 30
and Luke 14 shook me up.
I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life
so that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your
God, obeying him, and holding fast to him….. Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and
children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my
disciple.
Following God
means surrendering your whole life to him.
We’re here this morning to give an hour of our life,
Jesus’ hour, for him to impact and take hold of us afresh in word and sacrament
and Christian fellowship. We can’t underestimate the value of Sunday
obligation. For many of you, all of you hopefully, this morning’s attendance
has been a victory, a going out of your way to synchronise a variety of
commitments to honour God as the Lord of your life by coming to Church this
morning.
You’re here to be one with the Lord’s people, on the
Lord’s day, in the Lord’s house and round the Lord’s table. Alleluia!
You’ll leave hopefully with more of a taste for Jesus
Christ, more set to face the cost of being his disciple and more attentive to
what he has for you in the coming week.
Following God
means surrendering your whole life to him.
Saying our prayers, coming to Church, reading our
Bibles, serving our neighbour and reflecting upon our need for God are
expressions of that commitment.
Melvyn Bragg once asked Rowan Williams what God meant to
him. Here’s the answer he gave: God is
first and foremost that depth around all things and beyond all things into
which, when I pray, I try to sink. But God is also the activity that comes to
me out of that depth, tells me I’m loved, that opens up a future for me, that
offers transformation I can’t imagine. Very much a mystery but also very much a
presence. Very much a person.
To commit to God as a Christian is to commit trustfully
to the eternal God as the depth beyond all things, to see the world as no
longer a flat surface but to descend to the heart of things and be impacted. To
be caught up into something utterly mysterious and countercultural.
The second reading touches on this, where Paul commends
the runaway slave Onesimus he’d helped to faith to his master Philemon. Onesimus
had found these depths, that transcend the way the world is, in the person of
Jesus. Now, as Paul insists, his being a slave or a slave owner is a lesser
point, but not so much less that Onesimus shouldn’t return to Philemon, the
master he ran away from. Paul’s letter survives, shortest in the Bible, to
affirm among other things how in the depth of things there’s no hierarchy of
power.
Following God
means surrendering your whole life to him.
Once we’re surrendered we are, in baptism, made equal to
one another in a new way of living that’s no longer two dimensional and
superficial but one that’s surrendered to God as ground of our being. The eternal God is your refuge and
underneath are the everlasting arms we read in Deuteronomy 33:27.
Christian belief isn’t something cerebral, contrary to
those thinking you build belief or disbelief by argument. It’s whole life
surrender. It’s not a matter of thinking
your way into a new way of living but living
your way into a new way of thinking.
Faith’s the act of the whole of our being. Doubt by
contrast is a partial business employing that part of the mind that questions
what we’re about and what its right to think. This questioning is set for
Christians within the wholehearted surrender of faith. We believe in the
resurrection not with our minds but as we live out the death of the old self so
the Holy Spirit can bring us new life through the agency of faith. We believe
in the Cross as we make sense of suffering with the assurance that not all that
happens is determined by God's plan but that all that happens is encompassed by
his love.
We are loved by almighty love and we are loved for ever,
that is the reality Christian faith sees for sure. Paul knew Philemon knew this
when he wrote I have indeed received much joy and encouragement from your love,
because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you, my
brother.
Could that be said of me, of you? Would it were so!
Over my vacation
I read Rupert Shortt’s God is no thing.
It’s by the editor of the Times Literary Supplement who’s well familiar with
how religion’s seen in Britain today. Many believing artists and writers in the
UK are advised to conceal their faith if they want a following. Such is our
local scenario in which secular humanism predominates the world of ideas
with pretended neutrality. Meanwhile secularism is losing ground worldwide with
three quarters of humanity professing a religious faith, said to be heading for
80% by 2050. The world over people evidently see in Christianity a vitality and
coherence that is being lost or obscured in our own culture. Reading Shortt was
a real tonic. Here is his summary of what we’re about: Christianity - at its centre, the story of love’s mending of wounded
hearts - forms a potent resource for making sense of our existence. It provides
the strongest available underpinning for values including the sanctity of life,
the dignity of the individual, and human responsibility for the environment.
I like that
phrase love’s mending of wounded hearts as
a description of the dynamic of faith. It’s a long way from that over hasty
perception of religion as a bully. Shortt sees the problem for religion and secularism as the tendency to
bully rather than reason with one another.
Following God
means surrendering your whole life to him.
I can’t escape as
preacher underlining that Christian basic this morning, praying it will touch
more hearts here at St Giles into whole hearted service, lay or ordained - and,
yes, the church won’t survive without clergy so many here should remain open to
being called into that overarching ministry of Christian service. The eternal God is your refuge and underneath are the everlasting arms…. God
is also the activity that comes to me out of [the] depth, tells me I’m loved,
that opens up a future for me, that offers transformation I can’t imagine.
That transformation isn’t just for you but, like
Philemon, for all in your orbit. May this Eucharist fill you with the joy and encouragement that filled him to overflow, so that you can more fully love God and make him
loved in the networks you’re part of!
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