Sermon for Sunday March 18th - Romans 5:1-11

Sermon for Sunday March 18^th 2012 – EVENSONG

Exodus 6:2-13

Romans 5:1-11

(LINK TO AUDIO RECORDING)

Hope and Life

“I am the Lord, and I will free you from the burdens of the Egyptians and deliver you from slavery to them. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgement. I will take you as my people, and I will be your God. You shall know that I am the Lord your God, who has freed you from the burdens of the Egyptians. I will bring you into the land that I swore to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; I will give it to you for a possession. I am the Lord.” ’ Moses told this to the Israelites; but they would not listen to Moses, because of their broken spirit and their cruel slavery.”

My subject this evening is Christian Hope and the Christian Life. But we have to begin I think with this reading from Exodus. God has heard the cry of the Israelites in their harsh oppression and remembering his Covenant, his unbreakable Oath – Whilst we think of Love as the Pre-eminent aspect of God, the Scriptures speak more of his Faithfulness. God is Faithful, for as St Paul says, he cannot deny himself. To be faithless is to deny your very being. – and so God in his Covenant faithfulness has decided to rescue His people from Egypt. To claim them for himself.

And he tells Moses to go and tell the people, “but they would not listen to Moses, because of their broken spirit and their cruel slavery.”  They were so down they did not even have the energy to look up – they had nothing to hang their hope on. How on Earth could this be so . . . and to be frank who can blame them. For when We speak of hope, we have something similar in mind. I hope something will come along – I hope the weather will be better tomorrow – I hope aunty Jean will get well soon. But if we ask Why do you hope these things, then we have to say  - nothing really, I just hope they are true. And this is as far as it probably could be all that the Israelites could mean by hope also – a vague wish, based on?? Well based on very little, indeed based on the words of a strange God whom they did not know – Remember when they Cried out in their oppression, they didn’t cry out to God, they just Cried out! Based on the words of a strange God through the mouth of one of their own who had grown up in the Egyptian court and then got them all into trouble by killing an Egyptian and trying to set himself up as some kind of saviour and then fleeing who knew where to suddenly arrive back and say “God has been speaking to me’ and all the while they have been whipped and driven and tormented and forced to make bricks without straw. A labour camp of the worst sort, in all but name a Death Camp. Humanly speaking their situation in hopeless. I doubt any one of them listened to Moses, and they certainly didn’t pay any attention. Imagine being Moses and having to declare it!

No they didn’t even have the vague wish kind of hope for there was Nothing to base it on . . . which brings us to Christian Hope and one of the most densely argued sections of St Paul’s densely argued letter to the Romans. This reading is So significant that it is unusually read here at Evensong as Well as being part of the three year lectionary cycle – but it is not easy. I remember early in my years as Vicar in Hellifield. There was a diminutive lady in the congregation, a widow by the name of Barbara. And She was on the rota for readers and had this passage to read. And she came to me afterwards and said – I haven’t a clue what any of that meant! And it was at once highly understandable, and at the other deeply regrettable, for in some sense if we don’t get what this is about, we really don’t understand Christian faith or life at all.

Paul here in these carefully worded 11 verses in a very real sense tells us the Good News. He speaks of the past and the future and their concrete relationship to the present. It is masterful theology. And it reveals a staggering Hope about which there is Nothing Vague – and the Extraordinary nature of the Christian Life. So if you will permit me – I shall take a few minutes now to unpack what he says.

Verse 1 (Yes I am Really going to unpack this :) ) Therefore since we ARE justified by faith – ‘Therefore’ reminds us that we are in Chapter 5 and Paul has spent much of the preceding 2 chapters proving that if we put our Trust in God, abandoning trust in anything or anyone else, then That is sufficient to put us right with Him – we are Justified by Faith, by placing our trust in him.

Well what is the consequence of doing that? When we let go of everything else and trust God instead, ‘we have Peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ’. Christ in his death and resurrection has brought us access into a profound relationship with God – he has opened the door to the Rich Life of God and we enter into that Peace through Faith  - this Grace in which we now stand Vs 2 – And then Paul makes an Extraordinary claim and it is the first mention of that word Hope –at Peace with God, Made right with Him, Standing in Grace, we boast in our Hope of sharing in the glory of God!! We boast in our Hope of Sharing in God’s Very Life!! This is Extraordinary and we may well say hope in what?? Paul, you have gone to far!! But Notice that this is not a baseless hope – this is no vague wish, for Already God has acted – Our position for hope is Not like that of the Israelites in Egypt who are addressed before God rescues them. No! It is based on what God has Already done. The security of hope is the Past even of the death and resurrection of Jesus. So our Hope, our Faith has a Solid Past foundation upon which we base our Future Hope. And because it is Such a Breathtaking foundation, it gives rise to a similarly breathtaking Hope. That we might share in the glory of God.

Then Paul changes gear – having given the foundation for the Future hope – he then speaks of how we Now enter into that Hope.. throughout Lent I have been teaching on the Christian Practices – if you like the Essence of the Christian Life an I have said over and over again, that that is no more or less than entering into the very Life of God. We enact His Generosity, His Love, His forgiveness, His Hospitality, His Life. (details on my website). In other words that we begin to live the future reality in the present, based on the firm foundation of the past.

And here we see how clearly we enter the life of God – for we boast in our sufferings – for the Life of God is Suffering in the World, we can only walk in this Life following our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ – there is no other way. If we Trust in God, we Will find ourselves in conflict with All that is not God, BUT say Paul, Suffering produces Endurance – endurance character and character Hope. As I have been teaching these past few weeks, if we push past that first terrible resistance to Living out the life of God, we discover the Life of God available to us. The more we enter in the more we know of this Life of God in us and So we Grow in that life, Suffering, Endurance (God Endures though all the mountains are worn away, He endures), Character (the fullness of God’s being more and more revealed as we walk in this path, Growing in Love and Generosity and Forgiveness) and finally  - there is is again Hope. We Work from Hope founded upon the work of Christ – to Hope –the End is found in the beginning. You see we begin with this seed of Hope – given to us through the death and resurrection of Jesus, and Like All Life – it produces of its Own – we Grow in Hope.

And now Paul moves again, from the future Hope to its breaking into the present. ‘Verse 5’ ‘And Hope does not disappoint us because God’s Love has been poured into our hearts through the holy spirit that has been given us.

This is SO important. The Holy Spirit – the very Life of God is given to us. His Love poured into our hearts and Out into the world. In other words, this future hope  - this scandalous Hope that we will share in the Glory of God – share in His Life is found Present Expression as he shares his life with us here and Now.

The Hope is based on the Past work of Christ – it has a firm foundation – as we step out in faith, through suffering, endurance and character grow which produce More Hope and that Hope is already Now partially realized. So our hope is not only now based on what God has done pouring his life out for us Christ in the past but also his continual pouring out of his life for us in our present experience. We are Tasting the future.

The Christian Life is Based on the past, future directed and Present enacted – our Vocation, our Call it to live out the Life of the future, Here and Now. This is the Fruit of Faith.

So Paul makes this stunning and Wonder Full case for a Concrete Hope, Based Solidly on the Past work of Christ – Growing as we enter into the Life of God ourselves as Christ’s disciples – Given Present re-inforcement by God Living in us now by His Spirit.

And then he leads us in a meditation of the wellspring of all of this. Bringing us back again to the work of Christ on the Cross, this Spring of Life. Paul wants us to Wonder more and More. If you are at all unsure of God’s Love for you –meditate on this. For it was while we were still weak, Then at the Best time Christ died for the ungodly (Not the immoral, by the way, not the moral, no he died for those who were without God – God’s Love does not depend on us except in that we are far from him – that is the basis of His love – his love is poured out for those who do not believe – those like the Israelites who did not, who could not listen, because of their broken Spirit, and their cruel slavery. God proves his love for us that while we were yet sinners – while we had nothing in us to commend ourselves, like the utterly unlovely, That is the measure of God’s Love. Like the Father loving the Prodigal, Wasting his love on the wastrel. God’s Love is breathtaking for it Loves where NONE is shown in return. THAT is why we may have So much confidence in the Love of God precisely because it does NOT depend in anyway upon us..

And How Much that One fact can transform our Christian Life – that God’s Love is shown to us for no reason that we have anything to do with except our mere existence. Truly Unconditional Love. And So Paul now works up to his final Crescendo. Having Spoken of the past work being the Sure ground of our faith, he has Shown Just how wonderful that work is – if the death of Christ for you is Not enough – just consider that it is Utterly Gratuitous!! ‘Much more surely then’ he goes on, Much more surely that we have been put right by his blood , shall we be saved from the wrath of God’ Because this whole Salvation is an act of Gratuitous Love. There is NO basis for Fear.

For if while we were yet his enemies Christ died for us – the wrath of God is shown to his enemies, YET he takes the wrath upon himself, absorbing in himself for the sake of Love – If God makes his enemies his children through the death of Jesus, HOW much more surely will we be Saved by His Life.

In other words, Having started out on this journey into the life of God, we discover we are given his Life that we might more fully live the Salvation Life – which is of course the Life of Christ and so we rejoice, boast, glory in God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Karl Barth in his magisterial commentary on the Epistle to the Romans puts it like this ‘When once again people have God’ No longer without God and without Hope ‘they have all the fullness of life and its blessedness’ . . . because through the death of Christ, they are now filled with the future of God’

This is our Hope, This is our Life. The Past work of Christ – the present Life of God poured into us by the Holy Spirit as we live both In and towards the Glorious future of God.

Amen

Lenten meditation - The Temptation to be Spectacular

One of the gifts this stripping away that Lent offers us, in its reduction of our lives to the Essence of Life, is that it reminds us of the Ordinariness of life. It teaches us that life is mundane, and that it is in the seeming small things, the seemingly lifeless land of stones and sand, that Life is Given and Found. 

Abandoning the many many distractions available to us, something at which our society more than any other before has become adept, life is reduced to simple keepings - the trivial round, the common task. Keeping a Holy Lent is dull, frankly. Church has no flowers. All our treats are firmly locked away in the cupboard. All we have is life in the Ordinary.

And herein we discover something of our rejection of the Life that is offered us - for we find 'life in the ordinary' to be Not Enough. Frankly, we are bored - we long for excitement - we long that life would be More. Like the children of Israel in the Wilderness, our heads are spinning with dreams of metaphorical fleshpots and groaning boards. And so conditioned are we to our 'fallen life', we fail to recognise that those dreams are actually false remembrances of our captivity - for they were phantoms of 'Egypt'. We'd rather be slaves to fantastic dreams than live the Life that is Gift.

We thirst like the children at Meribah. We thirst for thrill, for exictement, for the Spectacular. But instead we are handed a life stripped to its bare essentials, to learn true faith - Trust in the Ordinary things of Life.

A fellow priest spent several years working in difficult circumstances - the soil was rocky and there was little response to his preaching and ministry. But his words spoke of this Life in the Ordinary. He said, 'You know? When all the world seems paved with concrete, you really begin to see and rejoice in the sheer beauty of one blade of grass' ( I guess that is why there is so much joy in heaven over the one sinner who repents :)  )

We need not bid, for cloistered cell,
Our neighbor and our words farewell,
Nor strive to find ourselves too high
For sinful man beneath the sky.

Religious people have always been faced with the temptation of trying to avoid the Ordinary and build a spectacular life. The ways of Spectacular religion are well trod and are of course encouraged by the world in which we live, which feeds of a religion which reflects its own worst instincts. 

But this also happens at the individual level. The disciplines spill over the edge into a means of feeding the ego. We speak of abandoning the world, but we take the world with us into our 'Righteous acts'. (As the desert father and all Wise folk know, you take the World into your cell). In so doing, in choosing the false life of Spectacle, we miss the spectacular Life that is under our nose

The trivial round, the common task,
Will furnish all we ought to ask;
Room to deny ourselves, a road
To bring us daily nearer God.

Satan in the wilderness challenges this 'Boredom with the Ordinary' - he tries to incite Jesus to a Spectacular life - throw yourself off the Temple!  As we follow Mark's recounting of the story of Jesus in this year of the Lectionary, we find Jesus confounding our understanding of life. He does precisely the opposite - he rejects All attempts to Go Public. His ministry is hidden, as Life is. Buried in a field, lost under the furniture, discovered whilst feeding pigs, Revealed in a naked dead Jew nailed to a Roman cross. Here is Life. All here in the Ordinary.

True Freedom

(Photo courtesy of Rose)

One of the truly wonderful things about living in this part of the world is the abundance of wildlife which is to be encountered, most especially on the edge of the sea. Even with the 'pressures of work', there is scarce a week goes by without a visit to one of the very many beaches hereabouts. These special places, often deserted, are places of encounter with penguins or the Northern Royal Albatross, that has its crib hereabouts, or any number of seals and sea lions. Such encounters are often times of gift which I am slowly learning to be more grateful for

To digress for a moment, when I was a youngster living on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales and Lake District I rarely if ever tramped the hills and I find there are a surprising number of folk who never seem to take the time for beaches and wildlife here, too. A Fresh Eye, as I discovered when I moved back to the North of England in later years is a Great Gift. 'Can anything Good come out of Nazareth? asks one who has 'seen it all'

Walking on the aptly named Long Beach this last week, on a day not suited for beaches and thus perfect for beaches, a day of rain and dense sea mist shrouding trees and cliffs on the shore line, of a heavy swell brooding with promise of more rain to come - I chanced upon a large fur seal. Stood some distance away as I was I don't think I disturbed him, they seem pretty imperturbable creatures, but he chose that moment to get up from his sandy repose and in that gloriously awkward yet graceful way of a creature only half formed for the land, made his way back into the waves. There is something full of wonder at such moments. Seals seem happy enough on shore, but for a few moments as they are in the shallows you behold their Joy as they come into their Home environment.

And I was very blessed in that moment, for I caught myself out of myself, rejoicing with the seal in its Joy. I saw myself taking pleasure purely in the pleasure of another. For a moment, freed from my usual posture of incurvatus se (turned in on myself). The seal was Happy and so was I. I was engaged in the joy of an other. It was Great Gift and led me to think of many such glimpses I have of the Heavenly life in others.
I was led to think of one dear friend amongst many who often faces circumstances which threaten to overwhelm  and yet who seems to have an infinite capacity to rejoice with others, to take sheer delight in another's delight. It is in them, truly a well of water springing up to eternal life. For me they have often exemplified the Excurvatus life - the turned out life, the life which is Other focussed.

It occurs to me that it is in this self letting go that we discover Life. Christ calls us frequently to let go of our life to discover Life. Often I have reflected on the thought that forgiveness is commanded as much if not more for the one who needs to forgive, than for the one who needs to be foregiveness - that it is in the radical letting go of all our own troubles that we step into something of Great Wonder.

Somewhat amusingly, given the source, I was further taken down this path of reflection by some words of the famous scientist Stephen Hawking who turned 70 this past week. Hawking although of a fairly atheist set of mind, does not waste his energies on the noisy proclamations of some of his fellows, although one might think he would have cause to, if that is he were turned in on himself. The gifted cosmologist has spent the vast majority of his 70 years profoundly disabled by Lou Gehrig's disease, a form of Motor Neurone Disease and yet he says 'The human race is so puny compared to the universe that being disabled is not of much cosmic significance'. Hawking takes great delight in something which is so incomprehensibly vast that he sees his own suffering in a totally different light. There is at the least an echo here of losing life and so finding it.


Over the past few months I have been reflecting over and again about the significance of the First Commandment and latterly of the Truth that Human life 'properly conceived' - i.e. born again, is pure response to the Word of God, such that it is the most profound of dances - a liberty and freedom. That it is only in loving God with all we have and all we are - with all of our resources so that there is nothing left for incurvatus self absorption, that we are set free to truly love others, to rejoice as they rejoice and indeed to mourn as they mourn. 


Learning from my friend and watching the seal helped me see this better - I Need to Get Out more

Who are you . . . ?

Although I love photography, I must admit a certain hesitation when photographing people. I have more than a degree of sympathy for those from less technological cultures, who sense that to take a photograph is to steal a soul. Thus I rarely photograph anyone except people I have come to know well, mainly family members. I think of the great portrait photographers and their work and always it reveals something that goes beyond the casual snapshot. They have spent time with their subject and the photograph reveals something of their Essence, their soul captured.

This morning, I noticed some Silvereyes enjoying the fruit on a bird table in the garden. These small and delightfully marked birds are native to New Zealand and new to me, and the light being good I rushed to get my camera and fit the telephoto lens, but first the presence of the cat and then my own lack of composure scared them off and I was left to wait.

I learnt a little about photography whilst waiting, taking time to test a variety of aperture settings  - but then more importantly being present and attentive. Usually when I am out with my camera, there is a certain anxiety about getting a good shot, especially when wildlife is concerned, and frustration when it doesn't come off. But I'd been dwelling on Presence and Contemplation recently and it came to me that photography at its best was an act of Contemplation. Of being Present to the subject of your attention. Not making a claim upon them and so tying myself to them, just Being there.

I've learnt over the years not to get fretful when God doesn't show up at the hour I've ever so courteously carved out for Him. That fretting belies a certain impatience. But waiting for the birds is very much like waiting for God in prayer, they weren't in any hurry to show themselves, and it came to me that the real fruit of patience is not the reward of a good shot, but the stillness of heart wherein time becomes of no importance, it almost disappears. As one quietens oneself to Wait, time stops. and you just are Present. And at some juncture the Silvereyes reappeared.

Of course they didn't have to, they are free, and in that stillness I found I was too.

Learning to fly is the easy part . . .

Nos fecisti ad te et inquietum est cor nostrum donec requiescat in te

[Thou hast made us for thyself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee 

- Augustine of Hippo]

Just recently, musing upon changes in life and ministry as I am at present, I 'saw' a picture which has stuck with me. It was based on a memory from many years ago, when I was but a youth - and on reflection a most disturbing and yet instructive one. 

At the age of 16 an opportunity fell into my lap that, unlike many others that came my way, I grasped with both hands.      I was offered the chance to learn to pilot a light aircraft. 
              And so a whole year before it would be legal for me to drive a motor car on the public road I found myself alone at the controls of a Cessna 152 - somewhat dramatically named 'The Aerobat', license G-GRBP - high above the East Midlands of England. 
            And what an exhilarating experience it was! There was a  freedom to powered flight that was quite wonderful, unhindered motion through three dimensions, unconstrained by roads and, by the wonders of the Bernoulli effect, a moderately powerful engine provided at least the illusion of freedom from gravity.

However, the memory in question was of a day when the exhilaration gave way to a profound discomfort to put it mildly -  a day when the freedom was exposed as illusory. 
                I had already discovered that flying was slightly less straighforward than my imagination had told me it was.  In many respects there was nothing to it, such aircraft are very stable in the air and even without the aid of the propeller could glide, but I had seriously struggled with the most elementary yet highly necessary skills, that of landing :) On my course, 10 hours of instruction was the cut off point for 'going solo', if you couldn't land safely before that point the course ended. After all if you couldn't satisfactorily land the plane, it wasn't a good idea to take off on your own! I think I was finally let off the leash after 9 hrs and 45 minutes . . .

And so it was about a week later I found myself spending a carefree hour practising a basic manouvre, the Steep Turn.  Paying close attention to airspeed and applying the necessary extra throttle, keeping the aircraft nose raised by applying opposite rudder I was utterly absorbed in the business of flying. Yet whilst putting my nascent knowledge to use and growing steadily in confidence, beginning to think I really could master the skies,  I had forgotten to pay attention to one important thing. 
            Having spent half an hour practising these turns I levelled out the aircraft and glanced at my map to navigate home, only to discover that the land underneath me bore no relation to said map. I was lost.

I have on rare occasions got lost in a car. It is little more than a minor irritation and certainly no reason to invest in SatNav. I pull over and ask someone where I am. In a light aircraft you can't pull over, you can't even stop . . .

Of course rather than seek help in my fear of being exposed for the fool I'd been, I guessed :) Seeing a large town beneath me I assumed I had inadvertently drifted off course in a Southerly direction, so duly headed North. Wrong town. I had as you may have guessed actually drifted North and so was headed even further away from my home aerodrome.

It was only about ten minutes later (air speed 90knots - you can do the math) that I realised I was in big trouble and called for help, or rather HELP!!! Fortunately my cry of distress was picked up by a USAAF base into whose controlled airspace I had drifted. Thus, apart from the knowledge that there were two F111 tactical strike aircraft headed vauguely in my direction at a speed that meant I could have been reduced to a million and one pieces before they ever saw me, my return to the safety of Leicester East airfield was  uneventful - I guess I must have landed ok too :)

Well this picture of flying in a kind of freedom above a map with which I had lost all connection came to me as I considered both my own spiritual walk and perhaps that of many others. In our restless quest for Something, we pay little attention to the Ground of Our Being - the source of all of our Life.

We are Human, of the earth - Adam - Mud men and women - and if God had meant us to fly he'd have given us wings - but Icarus like we still try and develop our own freedom, but one which is illusory. One way or another we will come back to earth. It all depends on whether we realise we are lost and cry out for help or just wait for the petrol to run out, and should the latter be the case, whether we have developed any facility for landing, for connecting with our true Home - our Life in God.

It will come as no surprise to anyone to discover that I have a somewhat butterfly mind - ceaselessly, restlessly (?) playing with ideas and thoughts and it occurred to me that that picture of flying above unfamiliar territory might be a picture of my own life and perhaps that of others. To paraphrase one old mentor, I think better than I live.

St Augustine spoke of the restless heart and how we needed to come home, the plane needed to land on the solid earth of Existence that is our Life in God. A Life not lived in a rarified but disconnected thought life, 2000 feet above reality, but rather is immersed in it. As one dear friend constantly reminds me, a Life that is found in life's keepings, in a thousand and one human encounters and simple acts of service. That somewhat paradoxically, it is within these constraints of the everyday that our true freedom is found. And here we find Him. Whilst undoubtedly there are some who are Called to the Academy or the Monastery, most of us are not ( and what is it to us, should He so call them? Jn 21:22) - but the message of one who was so called I think teaches us the how of this Ordinary life - Brother Lawrence who taught about the Practise of the Presence of God - of Lives turned to Him - heaven bound whilst bound to Earth.

The attentive heart can be alert to him in each moment of the Ordinary, found in Him and not lost in our illusions. 

Following my qualification as a pilot I never flew again - it was an enjoyable and rich distraction - yet I am still struggling with those most important of skills, paying attention to the Ground and learning to land, to come home and live there.