‘If anyone comes to me without hating his father, mother, wife, children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life too, he cannot be my disciple’ Luke 14:26.
Following God means surrendering your whole life to him.
We’re here this morning/evening to give God half an hour of our life for him to impact and take hold of us afresh in word and sacrament and Christian fellowship. 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.
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 it's 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.
In his book God is no thing Rupert Short, religion editor of the Times Literary Supplement, reflects upon how 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 how he sees 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.
Today’s Holy Gospel from Luke Chapter 14 verse 25 onwards underlines that Christian basic and we pray it will touch our hearts and enlist them in mending the wounded hearts in our circle. 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 for all in your orbit. May this Mass fill you with grace so that you can more fully love God and make him loved in the networks you’re part of. As St Paul says at the start of today’s first reading from Romans 13: ‘Avoid getting into debt, except the debt of mutual love’.
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