This one didn't get any special comments, but I think it migt be appreciated ...
A Sermon for the Ninth Sunday after the Epiphany,
The Sunday called Quinquagesima
The Sunday called Quinquagesima
Preached at the Church of St Columba and All Hallows
6 March AD 2011
6 March AD 2011
When I was an undergraduate, there was a professor living at Trinity College who was a priest of the Community of the Resurrection; he was a wonderful and moving preacher, one that most of us could hardly hope to be compared to. He was a man of wisdom and a sharp wit. I have heard it told that someone once greeted him after service with the customary complement on his sermon; he replied, What are you going to do about it?
That question underlies that first reading and the Gospel passage we just heard, as well as a whole mass of teaching in Scripture about the need not only to hear but also to so the word and will of God. In the first reading, Moses tells the people of Israel that the Law of God is so important that it must be kept in the mind and in the heart and obeyed. ‘And you shall teach them to your children, talking of them when you are sitting in your house, and when you are walking by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise’. Then in the Gospel, our Lord adds the element of doing the words, the commandment. It is not enough just to hear. We find this again in Matthew 12.50: ‘For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother, and sister, and mother’. The point is hammered home by St Paul: ‘For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified’ [Rom 2.13] and by the second chapter of the Letter of James, and by the first letter of John, ‘he who does the will of God abides for ever’.
So the preacher was correct; it is not enough to marvel at the teaching (as the crowd did when they heard Jesus), the next question is , What are you going to do about it? And if that is true of a fine preacher today, let us not forget that the words we hear in the Gospel are more than that.
How often it is we hear someone say that they can admire Jesus as a great spiritual teacher or a great moral teacher or a philosopher, but cannot accept that he is the Son of God. This might seems like an attractive position; you can admire a teacher without having to do anything about his teaching. But it is not really a tenable position; for there is no way of teasing s supposed historical basis from the miraculous elements in the Gospel, or the moral teachings apart from that claim to authority which makes Jesus different. We have been reading that great epitome of his teaching, the Sermon on the Mount over the last few weeks, and have already seen the claim to divine authority in the words, You have heard that it was said …. But I say to you. There is in the section we just heard, the final section of that sermon, an even more daring and audacious claim. Before we say anything else about today’s Gospel, we need to note this. For we must guard ourselves against any temptation of thinking Jesus less than he is.
Now it is true that nowhere in this passage does our Lord make any explicit claim; rather, what he says is said in a way that implicitly declares that he, Jesus of Nazareth, is the one before whom all will be judged. First, we read, ‘On that day many will say to me. Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in thy name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ ‘That day’ means the day of the Lord, the day of the final assessment. On that day, he says, ‘they will come to Me.’ Without preface, without emphasis, as a matter of course, He implies that He is the final judge of all men, not only as to the outward results they achieve, but also as regards the secret inner motives of their hearts and the character of their lives [Bishop Gore]. Then later we read, ‘Everyone … who hears these words of mine and does them will be like wise man who built his house upon the rock’; Here, again, is the tremendous claim: Jesus and His words are the only solid foundation for life.
So we must hear them, and do them. This is not only the sole ground on which our Lord judges us (and on this—and to find out what to do— we need to read the 25th Chapter of Matthew) it is also the sole ground in which the world may know that we prophecy or preach or do mighty acts in his name. For none of these things are by themselves evidence that we are Christ’s. Only his life-changing power by which we are enabled to do works of Love, Mercy and Righteousness will be evidence. So it is that those who claim to preach the Gospel cannot be trusted when they say ‘Lord, Lord did we not prophesy in thy name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ if what they preached was hatred and their actions were cruel, and they were as demons declaring a God of hate.
If nothing else, what many who call ‘Lord, Lord’ actually do demands that in our age we put more emphasis on calmly and clearly hearing the word and knowing what it is God Commands. Hearing the word is not rifling through the Bible to find something to support your beliefs and biases, it is to set yourself down at the feet of the Lord and hear him teach. And the simplest thing this means might just be to hear the great Summary of the Law, and bind it in your heart, and in your mind; to repeat it on going to bed and on rising from sleep, to think it while sitting in your home or when walking abroad. And with it on your mind to read again our Lord’s words in this great sermon, and find, as all who have made the effort have found, that you fall short of the goal, you will find your need for God’s forgiveness and God’s strength. For there is one fact of God’s will and grace that this sermon does not tell us, a fact that we will begin to ponder seriously in Lent and Easter: the atonement by which our Lord has taken the sins of the world, and brought us back to reconciliation with our Father which is in heaven, and the gift of grace by which we are empowered to live the new life.
Over the next seven weeks we will move from the end of the Sermon on the Mount into the mystery of Christ’s death and resurrection. If we are truly both hearers and doers of the word we will experience that mystery in us, renewing us. I invite you to join with me this Wednesday in the great act of Penance by which we begin the journey to the Cross and to life.
That question underlies that first reading and the Gospel passage we just heard, as well as a whole mass of teaching in Scripture about the need not only to hear but also to so the word and will of God. In the first reading, Moses tells the people of Israel that the Law of God is so important that it must be kept in the mind and in the heart and obeyed. ‘And you shall teach them to your children, talking of them when you are sitting in your house, and when you are walking by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise’. Then in the Gospel, our Lord adds the element of doing the words, the commandment. It is not enough just to hear. We find this again in Matthew 12.50: ‘For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother, and sister, and mother’. The point is hammered home by St Paul: ‘For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified’ [Rom 2.13] and by the second chapter of the Letter of James, and by the first letter of John, ‘he who does the will of God abides for ever’.
So the preacher was correct; it is not enough to marvel at the teaching (as the crowd did when they heard Jesus), the next question is , What are you going to do about it? And if that is true of a fine preacher today, let us not forget that the words we hear in the Gospel are more than that.
How often it is we hear someone say that they can admire Jesus as a great spiritual teacher or a great moral teacher or a philosopher, but cannot accept that he is the Son of God. This might seems like an attractive position; you can admire a teacher without having to do anything about his teaching. But it is not really a tenable position; for there is no way of teasing s supposed historical basis from the miraculous elements in the Gospel, or the moral teachings apart from that claim to authority which makes Jesus different. We have been reading that great epitome of his teaching, the Sermon on the Mount over the last few weeks, and have already seen the claim to divine authority in the words, You have heard that it was said …. But I say to you. There is in the section we just heard, the final section of that sermon, an even more daring and audacious claim. Before we say anything else about today’s Gospel, we need to note this. For we must guard ourselves against any temptation of thinking Jesus less than he is.
Now it is true that nowhere in this passage does our Lord make any explicit claim; rather, what he says is said in a way that implicitly declares that he, Jesus of Nazareth, is the one before whom all will be judged. First, we read, ‘On that day many will say to me. Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in thy name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ ‘That day’ means the day of the Lord, the day of the final assessment. On that day, he says, ‘they will come to Me.’ Without preface, without emphasis, as a matter of course, He implies that He is the final judge of all men, not only as to the outward results they achieve, but also as regards the secret inner motives of their hearts and the character of their lives [Bishop Gore]. Then later we read, ‘Everyone … who hears these words of mine and does them will be like wise man who built his house upon the rock’; Here, again, is the tremendous claim: Jesus and His words are the only solid foundation for life.
So we must hear them, and do them. This is not only the sole ground on which our Lord judges us (and on this—and to find out what to do— we need to read the 25th Chapter of Matthew) it is also the sole ground in which the world may know that we prophecy or preach or do mighty acts in his name. For none of these things are by themselves evidence that we are Christ’s. Only his life-changing power by which we are enabled to do works of Love, Mercy and Righteousness will be evidence. So it is that those who claim to preach the Gospel cannot be trusted when they say ‘Lord, Lord did we not prophesy in thy name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ if what they preached was hatred and their actions were cruel, and they were as demons declaring a God of hate.
If nothing else, what many who call ‘Lord, Lord’ actually do demands that in our age we put more emphasis on calmly and clearly hearing the word and knowing what it is God Commands. Hearing the word is not rifling through the Bible to find something to support your beliefs and biases, it is to set yourself down at the feet of the Lord and hear him teach. And the simplest thing this means might just be to hear the great Summary of the Law, and bind it in your heart, and in your mind; to repeat it on going to bed and on rising from sleep, to think it while sitting in your home or when walking abroad. And with it on your mind to read again our Lord’s words in this great sermon, and find, as all who have made the effort have found, that you fall short of the goal, you will find your need for God’s forgiveness and God’s strength. For there is one fact of God’s will and grace that this sermon does not tell us, a fact that we will begin to ponder seriously in Lent and Easter: the atonement by which our Lord has taken the sins of the world, and brought us back to reconciliation with our Father which is in heaven, and the gift of grace by which we are empowered to live the new life.
Over the next seven weeks we will move from the end of the Sermon on the Mount into the mystery of Christ’s death and resurrection. If we are truly both hearers and doers of the word we will experience that mystery in us, renewing us. I invite you to join with me this Wednesday in the great act of Penance by which we begin the journey to the Cross and to life.
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