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Sermon: The Tenth Sunday after Pentecost (A) - 21st August 2011
St Alban's Anglican Church Epping 7, 8 and 10 am
Readings: Exodus 1:8-2:10 Psalm 124 Romans 12:1-8 Matthew 16:13-20
Jesus asked his disciples, “But, who do you say that I am?”
Last Friday week we celebrated the life and the passing of Roy Cooper: a wonderful man. He was a well educated person with an inquisitive mind. Roy had difficulty in answering that question. He had difficulty with faith.
While Roy attended worship here and participated fully in the life of the parish community, he could not understand the concept of faith. It was an interesting exercise for me to prepare a funeral homily for a doubter, in the context of a Christian funeral. I have been told, that reflecting on Roy’s life in this manner was helpful for other members of the congregation at the funeral who also have difficulty with faith.
I believe that Roy would have called himself an agnostic. While Roy in his life could not answer Jesus’ question, in the positive manner most of us here today could, none the less, he did not deny that others could answer with Peter, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God”.
It should be borne very well and truly in mind that none of us have all the answers. We all have doubts. There is much in our faith that requires us to acknowledge that, as limited human beings, we do not and cannot know God completely. If we were able to do so then we would be greater than God and God would then be made in our image, not the other way around. With this limited knowledge, I would call my self a Christian agnostic. I am sorry to tell you, but I do not have all the answers.
The God I believe in is an inclusive God who allows us all to be our unique selves and who allows us to have doubts an inquiring mind. The last couple of verses from the reading that was read at Roy’s funeral from Ecclesiastes chapter three, speak to me of all who have an enquiring mind about God and the world in which we live. They read, “I have seen the business that God has given to everyone to be busy with. He has made everything suitable for its time; moreover, he has put a sense of past and future into their minds, yet they cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.” Roy was always searching out the answer. Most of us are constantly searching for more answers. I believe that we are all made in the image of God and through us God can reveal a little bit of God’s self, whether we perceive that or not. God has revealed to us something of God’s self in allowing Jesus to become human. As Paul writes this morning God has given us a measured of faith according to our ability and our God given gifts, as members of the body of the Christ, are to assist each other in our faith journey.
In my research for this sermon, I discovered this poem, by Kilian McDonnell, an American Benedictine priest, called “God is not a problem”.
“God is not a problem
I need to solve, not an
algebraic, polynomial equation
I find complete before me,
with positive and negative numbers
I can add, subtract, multiply.
God is not a fortress
I can lay siege to and reduce.
God is not a confusion
I can place in order by my logic.
God's boundaries cannot be set,
like marking trees to fell.
God is the presence in which
I live, where the line between
what is me and what
before me is real, but only God
can draw it. God is the mystery
I meet on the street, but cannot
lay ahold of from the outside
for God is my situation,
the condition I cannot stand
beyond, cannot view from a distance,
the presence I cannot make an object,
only enter on my knees.”
Today’s reading from Romans goes to the heart of what Paul is saying because it is about the mystery, “The Mystery” God Himself. God is the mystery, revealed in Jesus who for a short time, thirty-three years, limited his person to a human form.
The poet continues:
“God is my situation, the condition I cannot stand
beyond, cannot view from a distance,
the presence I cannot make an object,
only enter on my knees.”
God is the mystery before whom we can only kneel. God is our Creator; God’s creating power sustains us continually in existence. God is present to us anywhere and everywhere. God’s providence enfolds our every action and us. When we kneel in prayer to God we can have the whole God, his totality.
Sixteen hundred years ago in a garden in Milan a young man from North Africa became a Christian believer. He had been searching for something for many years and had tried quite a few of the spiritual disciplines and therapies on offer. He had a girlfriend he'd abandoned as well a little son. He also had a ferocious mother who got at him for his fecklessness.
He managed to find a good job in a university, but his underlying depression weighed him down. As he sat in the garden with tears in his eyes he heard the singsong voice of a child next door, chanting the Latin words: 'Tolle, lege … tolle, lege … .' ('Take, read'). In the end he took hold of a copy of the Scriptures and read: 'Arm yourself with the Lord Jesus Christ, and spend no more thought on nature's appetites.'
That conversion was a turning point in history, for the young man was Augustine, who became one of the greatest philosophers of the Western world.
Gardens are beautiful places. Bird songs, flowers, warm air in summer bring a sense of grace. Without books, without reading, our understanding is uninformed, our judgements narrow. Augustine found his true self through a child's cry in a garden and a challenging text. He met the living God on the page of a book, the Bible, and it broke his heart and set him free.
In his Confessions Augustine wrote,
“Late have I loved you, O beauty so ancient and so new; late have I loved you. For behold you were within me, and I outside; and I sought you outside and in my ugliness fell upon those lovely things that you have made. You were with me and I was not with you. I was kept from you by those things, yet had they not been in you, they would not have been at all. You called and cried to me and broke upon my deafness; and you sent forth your light and shone upon me, and chased away my blindness; you breathed fragrance upon me, and I drew in my breath and do now pant for you; I tasted you and I now hunger and thirst for you; you touched me, and I have burned for your peace.”
Jesus said “But, who do you say that I am?”
This sermon produced using material from http://torch.op.org/preaching_sermon_item.php?sermon=1242&ref=lit and The Living Spirit: Prayers and Readings for the Christian Year M Hebblethwaite Ed, Canterbury Press, Norwich.