Talk on the divinity of Christ at St Wilfrid, Haywards Heath eucharist 13.1.21

I want to share something about the divinity of Christ picking up on our readings and our saint for today, St Hilary of Poitier who lived in the 4th century. 

In his day there was widespread denial of the divinity of Christ. Bishop Hilary’s contending with great grace against this error is celebrated in the collect or prayer for today: ‘Everlasting God, whose servant Hilary steadfastly confessed your Son Jesus Christ to be both human and divine: grant us his gentle courtesy to bring to all the message of redemption in the incarnate Christ’.

How do people see Jesus? In today’s Gospel from Mark 1:29-39 we heard of Our Lord preaching and healing in Galilee. The healings and miracles are seen as pointers to his divinity. We also heard from the letter to the Hebrews of his humanity, of how ‘he [became] completely like (us) so that he could… atone for human sins…’ (Hebrews 2:17)

How do we see Jesus? The Church sees him as truly God and truly human. Without his divinity the Cross would be emptied of power to save. Without his humanity, Our Lord’s becoming like us, the saving work of his dying and rising would not reach into our lives as it has into the lives of half the world’s population today.

How do people see Jesus? Muslims have their answer - Jesus, Isa, peace be upon him, is the human prophet waiting with Allah to judge the world on the last day. Hindus see Jesus as a god among the many gods they honour. Buddhists honour Jesus as a teacher. The question 'who do you think Jesus is?' has many answers but it's worth encouraging people to ask it and helping them attain the full picture.

‘The name of Jesus is not so much written as ploughed into the history of the world’ wrote philosopher Ralph Emerson.

William Lecky the Irish historian of rationalism wrote: ‘Christ has exerted so deep an influence that it may be truly said that the simple record of three short years of active life has done more to regenerate and soften mankind than all the disquisitions of philosophers and all the exhortations of moralists’

To get a perspective on the universality of Jesus we can follow endless tributes from people far from the Christian fold who cannot begrudge the universal significance of Jesus. Napoleon Bonaparte in Elba, after much study of the life and character of Jesus, wrote ‘From first to last, Jesus is the same; always the same - majestic and simple, infinitely severe and infinitely gentle..... I know men; and I tell you that Jesus is not a man. Everything in Him amazes me… He is truly a being by Himself...great with a greatness that crushes me. I defy you to cite another life like that of Christ’.

In the words of Victor Hugo ‘Pythagoras, Epicurus, Socrates, Plato, these are the torches of the world; Christ is the light of day.’

With the coming of Jesus the world has experienced something unique that twenty centuries have yet to plumb the depths of.

‘It would take a Jesus to forge a Jesus’ as someone put it, reflecting that in measuring this Man we find ourselves lost for a standard in human terms.

The atheist Rousseau admitted that ‘It would have been a greater miracle to invent such a life as Christ's than to be it’.

‘Christ is not valued at all unless he is valued above all’ wrote St. Augustine of Hippo echoing his 4th century contemporary, today’s Saint Hilary of Poitiers, who reflecting on the person of Christ wrote: ‘The One who comes from the perfect, is perfect because he has all, he has given all’.

The novelist Dostoyevsky wrote ‘there has never been anyone lovelier, deeper or more sympathetic than Jesus’. The unique warmth, simplicity and humanity of Jesus challenge anyone who picks up a Bible. Is there any figure in history to rival Jesus?  Even the atheist Rousseau said: ‘it would have been a greater miracle to invent such a life as Christ’s than to be it’.

In his book 'What the Bible teaches' R.A.Torrey gives this summary: ‘Jesus Christ is all-powerful, all-knowing and all-present. He is from all eternity, always the same, in the form of God. In Christ dwells all the fullness of the Godhead in a bodily way. Jesus is linked to our creation, preservation, the forgiveness of sin, the raising of the dead, judgement and the bestowal of eternal life. Jesus Christ is a person to be worshipped by angels and mortals, even as God the Father is worshipped.’

As we offer the eucharist on this feast of St Hilary we pray for the Holy Spirit to confirm this faith in Our Lord Jesus Christ, true God and true man in us and use us as the collect prayed ‘to bring to all the message of redemption in the incarnate Christ’.

‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.’ John 3:16

Trinity Sunday at Ascension, Haywards Heath 27th May 2018

Today we celebrate the revelation of God as an eternal fellowship of love, three persons equal in majesty, undivided in splendour, yet one God.

The doctrine of the most holy and undivided Trinity is challenging, relevant, intriguing and essential – four headings to steer our delving this morning into foundational truth and life.

Firstly it’s a challenge. Reason takes you so far in Christianity. We could never have invented God in three persons, it’s revealed truth. Then you have the question of weighing other revelations – Islam and Hinduism besides the Judaism from which the Trinitarian revelation came.

Preachers go on leave this Sunday for fear of a seemingly cold, calculated, mathematical doctrine. Three in one and one in three. Why three? Why not one, says Islam, why not more says Hinduism, why not none says the atheist mocking our feeble attempts to get our mind round God three in one.

There’s the challenge set before us in Trinitarian faith but that challenge is based upon historical events. These clearly reveal the nature of God in the coming of Jesus, whose death and resurrection we’ve been following up to Ascension Day, and the coming of the Spirit on Pentecost day. It’s a challenge that might lead you to the church library or the internet so you can better answer for your faith to those who believe in one God, no God or many gods as opposed to one God in three persons.

Secondly the doctrine of the Trinity is utterly relevant. How good it was to see the countercultural coverage on marriage last weekend since marriage as a union of life-giving love points us, because human beings are in the image of God, to God who is himself a union of life-giving love. Keeping true to ourselves as human beings, and true to the life-giving nature of marriage is keeping true to God no less, God as he has revealed himself to us.  God as love within himself. How could God be so without the distinction of persons within him?

Challenging, relevant – thirdly the doctrine of God should be intriguing. The eternal fellowship of love that is God draws us in to himself. What after all is the Church for other than to serve God’s purpose to bring as many souls on earth as possible into fellowship with him?

The doctrine of the Trinity is revealed first of all in Our Lord’s coming into a human family with Mary and Joseph, into village life in Nazareth, then into the missionary partnership of the disciples. That divine society continues after his resurrection and the gift of the Spirit as one, holy catholic and apostolic church which is God’s never-ending family!

How intriguing God is, and we are. If you want evidence for God look in the mirror and read Psalm 8 You have made (us) little lower than the angels and crown (us) with glory and honour. More than that, a human being in isolation isn’t a true human for, in John Donne’s words, no man is an island. What’s intriguing about God as divine society mirrors what we find intriguing about ourselves, namely our desire for society and friendship. This desire will be fully satisfied only in the communion of saints who can be thought of as standing near God as a corona or crown around the sun.

Challenging, relevant, intriguing – lastly the Trinitarian doctrine of God is essential.

It is essential because Christianity is a religion of salvation and that salvation stands or falls on the divinity of Jesus Christ. We read Jesus words in the Gospel all that belongs to the Father is mine…the Spirit will take from what is mine and make it known to you (John 16:15) Does my eternal destiny depend on my own good works, lacking as they are, or on a relationship freely offered me by God in his Son?

In Jesus do we really meet with God himself? That, as they say, is the twenty four thousand dollar question hidden behind keeping a feast day for the Blessed Trinity.This doctrine might sound cold and mathematical but it follows a logic of love, love beyond all measure, extravagant, unconditional love for God so loved the world that he gave his only Son Jesus Christ so that all who believe in him should not perish but have everlasting life. (John 3:16)

To believe this is to believe God isn’t One but One God in three persons.

It’s challenging to so believe – God is God and has revealed himself this way and not another way.

It’s relevant - the way we see God affects the way we see ourselves and steers us from unworthy pursuits.

It’s intriguing because the loving fellowship of God in three persons chimes in with our sociable nature and draws it to joyful completion in the communion of saints

It’s essential doctrine because without it the divinity of Christ falls, the word of God is emptied of power and the sacraments become empty ritual as God’s coming to us in Jesus and the Spirit is denied.

May all I have shared enrich the eucharist we now offer through, with and in Jesus Christ, to whom, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, be all might, majesty, dominion and power now and for evermore. Amen.