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Sermon - Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost (B) - 18th October 2009
St Aidan's Anglican Church West Epping
Readings: Readings: Job 38:1-7 (34-41). Psalm 104:1-10, 26. Hebrews 5:1-10. Gospel according to Mark 10: (32-34) 35-45.
GOD: THE HEART OF REALITY
Prayer : God, take our thoughts and words and let them be avenues through which your love may touch the world. AMEN
I find the readings we have for this 20 th Sunday after Pentecost very confronting. In the story, Job is good, he does good things, and he is faithful. Then things go dreadfully wrong; he and his family suffer terribly. Job’s friends say it is because he is not faithful to God. Job complains to God: “Why me?” Haven’t we all done it? And what does God reply? In beautiful poetry: “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me if you have understanding.” (v.4) Do we really think that we will win rewards through our religious activities? In the story, Job learns his place in the scheme of things by being overwhelmed by the wonder of Creation and its Creator.
Most of us have felt the sheer beauty, the strangeness, awesome power and dangers of nature. The poet of Psalm 104 exalts in the “green goodness of God” long before modern science discovered eco-systems, it thrills at the interdependence between all parts of creation, including the relationship between nature and humanity.
No book in the Bible shows Jesus’ humanity more than The Letter to Hebrews, parts of which are being read at the Eucharist from the 18 th to 24 th Sundays after Pentecost. Today Jesus “learns obedience” – like all of us. Jesus “offers up loud cries and tears”. Like every human he learns, fears and suffers.
In the Gospel according to Mark, Jesus had tried to forewarn his disciples what was likely to happen now that he had decided to go up to Jerusalem. He would be arrested, flogged and killed. Immediately after this, we read that two of his key disciples, James and John, ask for privileged positions: “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” Do we religious believers follow because it is right, or because it is to our advantage? In these days of the “supermarket of religions”, different faiths hawk their wares offering “special rewards in heaven”. Jesus denies such self-achievers. His offer is a cross, not “pie in the sky when you die”.
Each of us has grown up with an angle view of the world. We have a “worldview”, an image or picture or understanding of what is real and what is possible. In this 21 st century, people on this planet earth are broadly divided into those who have a religious worldview and those who do not.
For those with a religious worldview, in addition to the visible world as disclosed by science and in our everyday experience, there is a “More”, an extra dimension, a non-material layer of level of reality. This view is shared by all the enduring religions of the world. This “More” has been named in various ways: God, Spirit, the sacred, Yahweh, the Tao, Allah, Brahman, Atman and so forth.
For those with a non-religious worldview, there is no “More”, no extra dimension. There is only “this”, the space-time world of matter and energy and whatever other natural forces lie behind or beyond it, not yet explained by scientific research.
In the history of Christianity, there are two primary ways of thinking about God and the relationship of God to the world. Both are found in the Bible:
1) The first way of thinking about God, ‘Supernatural theism’imagines God as a person-like being, God and the world are sharply separated: God is ‘up in heaven’, ‘out there’ ‘beyond the universe’. However God, having created the world, continues to intervene from time to time, especially in response to prayer.
2) The second way of thinking about God imagines God and the God-world relationship differently.
It thinks of God as the encompassing Spirit. The universe is not separate from God, but in God.
The clearest expression of this idea is attributed to Paul in the Acts of the Apostles. God is the one in whom “we live and move and have our being”. God is not “out there”, but “right here”, all around us.
The scholar’s word for this way of thinking about God is “Panentheism”; it comes from three Greek words: ‘theos’ (God), ‘en’ (in), ‘pan’ (all, everything).
Thinking of God as the encompassing Spirit leads to a different way of thinking about the relationship of God to what happens in the world. It sees the presence of God “in, with, and under” everything, not as the direct cause of events but as ‘presence’ beneath and within our everyday lives.
This view does not see God as a long way off, ‘absent’ from the world, and intervening sometimes to cause a ‘miracle’. If God sometimes intervenes, how does one account for not intervening at other times? Given all the horrible things that happen, does the notion that God ever intervenes make any sense?
If God could have intervened to stop the Holocaust but chose not to, what kind of sense does that make? Does it make sense to think that God could intervene to stop terrorist attacks, but chooses not to? Or that God could choose to keep a plane from crashing, or to stop a tornado, tsunami, or consuming bush fire from striking? And then there are all the tragedies that don’t make the news: accidents, disfigurements, abuse, premature deaths from illness, and on and on. To suppose that God intervenes implies that God does so for some, but not for others. “And so panentheism rejects the language of “divine intervention”.
Both ways of thinking about God - supernatural theism and panentheism - are deeply rooted in the Christian tradition. But since the beginning of the 17 th century (the 1600s) the way we in the west (e.g. Europe and America) have slowly but steadily been influenced by modern scientific enquiry and what historians call “The Enlightenment”.
The universe, about which we are continually learning more, has rules and rhythms that are not altered by divine intervention. Extraordinary events and answers to prayer frequently happen, but it is not helpful to talk about “God intervening”. That sort of language often adds to suffering of people when their prayers go unanswered.
‘GOD’ is the name we use for the non-material stupendous, wondrous “More” that includes the universe even as God transcends the universe. This is God as the “encompassing Spirit”, the one in whom “we live and move and have our being”, the one who is all around us and within us.
God is in the universe but God is more than the universe. God is the Mystery who is beyond all names, even as we name the sacred Mystery in our various ways.
Jesus, when he faced what he knew was inevitable, asked his closest followers to pray for him. Knowing that that he faced agonizing torture and brutal death, he prayed to God as his “Father” that he might be spared. As he died he cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mk 15:34 or “made me a reproach”). He like us and others felt forsaken by God, but still he prayed, “My God…”, and as Luke records his death, “‘Father into your hands I give my spirit’. Having said this, he breathed his last.” (Luke 23:45)
The human Jesus needed his friends to pray for him. How much more do we need others’ prayers and they need ours!
The way Jesus is portrayed in the four Gospels and elsewhere in the NT, does not support the sort of cut-and-dried “certainty” or “assurance” that some zealous Christians would have us believe. They do “protest too much, methinks”.
They tie themselves up in knots trying to explain that unanswered prayers are probably due to the past or present faults of those asking God to intervene, or were caused by their parents or ancestors. I personally have cringed sometimes when earnest religious folk have prayed that God do this or that, as if God needed our prompting or advice!
Sometimes we all can go on and on, oblivious of the warning of Jesus in the ‘Sermon on the Mount’, “When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” (Matth.6:7-8) .
Abbé Couturier, who recovered an open way of praying for Christian Unity, often spoke of “the invisible monastery of prayer”.
When we pray in the Spirit of Christ, we are linked in thought and compassion with others praying in similar way. People change and situations respond it seems ‘miraculously’, because of the prayers of that invisible network linking God with those who are “in tune with the Infinite”.
In the words of St Teresa of Avila (1515-1582):
Christ has no body now on earth but yours,
no hands but yours,
no feet but yours,
yours are the eyes through which Christ's compassion
is to look out to the earth,
yours are the feet by which He is to go about doing good
and yours are the hands by which He is to bless all now.
Let us will a blessing, that our energy, focused and magnified by the divine energy, attuned to the Spirit and open to that greater power may flow towards others and to the creation, to our mutual well-being in God …..
Abba, our Father,
Amma , our Mother,
Beloved, our God,
Creator of all:
your name be held holy,
your domain spread among us,
your wisdom be our guide,
your way be our path,
your will be done well,
at all times, in all places,
on earth as in heaven.
Give us the bread
we need for today,
the manna of your promise,
the bread of your tomorrow.
As we release those
indebted to us,
so forgive us our debts,
our trespass on others.
Fill us with courage
in time of our testing.
Spare us from trials
too severe to endure.
Free us from the grip
of the powers that bind.
For yours is the goodness
in which evil dissolves;
yours is the joy
that sounds through the pain;
yours is the life
which swallows up death.
Yours is the glory,
the transfiguring light,
the victory of love,
for time and eternity,
for age after age.
With Love to the World, U.C.A. Vol.12, No.8, ( wlwuca@bigpond.com ph.9am-1pm weekdays 02 9747 1369), with acknowledgement for quotations and ideas from commentary by Revd Kim Cain on Job for Mon 12Oct09.
ibid on Psalm 104 for Sun 18Oct09.
ibid on Hebrews for Wed 14Oct09.
ibid on Mark 10:35-45 for Sat 17Oct09
Throughout this Exploration, I quote and incorporate extensively the exegesis of Marcus J. Borg, Professor of Religion and Culture at Oregon State University, in The Heart of Christianity: rediscovering a life of faith (publ by Harper-Collins 2003, chap.4, pp.62ff)
Acts 17:28. See also Psalm 139. Also Marcus Borg book The God We Never Knew (HarperSanFrancisco,1997) pp.37-44.
Distinguish “pan entheism” from “PANTHEISM” The belief or theory that ‘God’ and the universe are identical: ‘God is the universe’ or ‘the universe is God’.
Shakespeare, Hamlet,III,ii(242).
see my Exploration “The Spirit of Truth will teach you” (GL 0912)) 11Oct2009.
In Tune with the Infinite by Ralph Waldo Trine, philosopher and Christian, teacher and author 1866-1958 (Foulis Publishers, London; first published 1897).
Jim Cotter’s Out of the Silence… Prayer’s Daily Round (2006) from ‘In Solidarity’ p.497 & ‘Gathering’ p.506.
Enquiries, comments and criticisms are invited; also requests for additional copies of sermon scripts of permission to quote or reproduce:
The Reverend Clive H Norton (Anglican Priest),
phone (02) 9411 8606;
7 Dulwich Road, Chatswood, NSW 2067;
E-mail: chnorton@bigpond.com