Why Did This Happen to Me?

A Sermon for Proper 5, Year B
Preached at the St Columba and All Hallows, East York

Sunday, 8 February 2009,
The Fifth Sunday after Epiphany

One of the first questions that have been submitted for the planned Lent Series seemed to be a little outside the theme of that study. Nonetheless, it is an important question, indeed an age-old question, a question that comes to everyone at some point. However, it is a question that is better dealt with in a homily than in a study series, partly because more people come to Church on Sunday than come to a study series, and partly because this is a question that touches on a person’s faith as a question about worship or history, important as it might be, does not. What is this question? Let me quote you the question exactly as it appears on the file card I received:

Why did this happen to me? (e.g., accident, accidental death, severe illness)—where is God in this?

It is a good thing that the questions are anonymous, for it means that I can teat the question as a general inquiry, rather than the cry of help of someone in distress, and that the treatment can be more abstract, and one can say things that under other circumstances might be less helpful. Or, more bluntly, one doesn’t have to tread quite so carefully.
You will note that I spoke of “treating” the question rather than “answering” the question. For there has never been a simple answer to this question. Not even the Bible offers us a complete answer, even though the question comes up again and again in its pages. In treating this matter, first, I shall make some observations about the question itself; then look at an assumption it seems to contain, and then by dealing with that assumption think about the problem. There will not be enough time to deal with this today. Indeed, it may well be necessary to spread this topic out over the next weeks, and through Lent.
So we begin by examining the question itself, and notice at one that there are two questions here. The first one is fairly simple: Why did this happen to me? Such a question assumes that that things happen for a reason. The moment you say that all sorts of questions come up: do things happen freely? or is everything happening according to a set plan? How does my free will exist with God’s providence? Does the belief that God directs the world to a certain end mean that he controls all events like a puppeteer? If I set off down that road we will never come to an end. Perhaps, though, all we need to say now is that each one of us needs to ponder these questions now: don’t wait for something bad to happen before you start thinking, or you will end up in a worse mess. And don’t just think, read: for thousands of years people have studied these questions and come up with suggestions, and you don’t need to start again from scratch. More importantly, read what wise Christians have said about the problem. I would recommend two books in particular: The Problem of Pain, by C. S. Lewis and The Third Peacock by Robert Farrar Capon (don’t let the title put you off: it is about God and the Problem of Evil). Right now I don’t know where my copies are. If you can’t find these books in your library, go to the Anglican Book Centre and pester them to order them for you.
We will just flag that point lest it distract us. I will assume in the rest of these homilies that in the mystery of this world. events happen because things act according to their natures — rocks fall down, storms rise, men and women are free. I do not know how this all works together under God’s will to come to good; I only trust that it does.
So back to the question. When someone asks “Why did this happen to me?” there is another assumption: either that whatever happened, which for convenience’ sake I’ll call the disaster, has some cause, possibly hidden, in the behaviour of the person it struck or that it was simply undeserved. This is why the classic formulation of the problem is “Why do bad things happen to good people?” and the usual way we all express it is “Why me?” or “What did I do wrong?” here again we could get thrown off track by the question of how far any of us are really good or innocent. This is problematic, to say the least, but it is something each one of us should consider. As Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet, “use every man according to his deserts and who’d escape a whipping?” It doesn’t solve the problem, though, since bad things do seem happen to apparently good people.
Back to the main question. How often do we hear someone ask Why me? of their good forthune in life? I have a feeling that while this doesn’t solve the problem, it is good to ask from time to time what one did to deserve the good things of life —or even life itself. And we will come up with the answer, Nothing. I did nothing to deserve the good in my life. I did not chose to be born in Canada in the twentieth century to hardworking and successful parents, and so get a head start in life. I did no more to deserve this than I have done to deserve some bad things that have happened. And right there we cut down the assumption that things happen to us as rewards and penalties. That is a very easy and convenient assumption, and some people have got through life without ever questioning it; and it is clearly written in some places in the Bible but it has the slight disadvantage that it does not seem to be true. Our Lord Jesus teaches the truth in Matthew 5 45, when he commands his disciples to love their enemies, so that they can be like their heavenly Father

for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust

and more bluntly, in Luke 6

for he is kind to the ungrateful and the selfish.

These words cannot be true if there is a regular one-for-one correspondence between our behaviour and the good and bad things that happen to us.
The things that happen to us result from a complex of causes. When we try to examine these causes we find ourselves facing mysteries: many disasters are the result of freedom misused: that is the only real answer when an innocent bystander is gunned down on the street, or war devastates your country; while some famines are caused by natural processes, some are the deliberate result of the choices of human beings in positions of political or economic power. So too are caused violence against and abuse of spouses or children or employees. The blunt answer is that these things happen because human beings choose to do them and the innocent are often hurt. Often their choice is the result of someone else’s choice, as when those who have themselves been abused act out abusively in life. Some people are led to believe that love means control, or that others are here to gratify our desires: some of the most revolting things that happen stem from this. Other disasters —such as accidents on the road or elsewhere might be said to be a step removed from choice, but too often they are the result of someone’s carelessness, in driving, or in failing to keep brakes in good repair, or a myriad of other human acts. Others, such as sickness are harder to understand, and we will come back to this point in a later sermon.
I have to stop here. We have seen, I hope, that the answer to the question, Why did this happen to me? is complex and difficult to answer. If we examine a particular disaster that befalls a particular person, we might come up with suggestions, though that is not very helpful, as Job’s friends found out when they tried to explain his disasters. We will find our way further into the mystery when we turn to the other part of the question, Where is God in this?

Note: This sermon was very kindly received by the parishioners, who made some very interesting comments, including one I always hesitate to make, Why shouldn't this happen to me?

A Sermon for the Third Sunday of Advent, Year B
Preached at the Church of St Columba and All Hallows,
Sunday 14 December 2008

We hear about St John the Baptist on the middle two Sundays in Advent, which might be a hint that the Baptist has something important to say to us as we prepare to celebrate the birth of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Last week we heard of the three Advents: Christ’s coming in humility to be born at Bethlehem, his coming again in glory to judge the world, and the middle coming, when he enters our lives today. John’s call to Prepare the way of the Lord referred at first to Christ’s coming of old, the first Advent, but it now speaks to us of that middle Advent, so that by penitence and prayer we both can prepare his way to us and prepare his way to others around us. The account of John’s witness or testimony in today’s Gospel helps us to understand more about our own witness to the coming of Christ.
The Gospel passage is in two parts. The two opening verses come from the Prologue to Saint John’s Gospel, the Hymn of the Word of God coming into the World as the Light of the World It declares that John was sent from God, not to be the Light, but to bear witness to the Light. After that we jump over the great Christmas Gospel of the Word Incarnate to hear of the witness that John bore when a delegation was sent from Jerusalem to inquire into his teaching, and, putting it bluntly, to ask Who do you think you are? It would be easy to think that this inquiry proceeded from malice as if they were trying to trap John and destroy him, as was later done to Jesus. But it was not necessarily so. If the religious authorities at Jerusalem (whom St John calls “the Jews”, v. 19) sent to inquire into John’s ministry, it was because they had the clear duty of investigating anyone who went about claiming to be a prophet and judge whether they were true or false. Since John’s preaching and his call to a baptism of repentance had stirred up the whole countryside and, as .St Luke informs us, “all questioned in their hearts concerning John, whether perhaps he were the Christ”, it would have been as wicked for them not to investigate his mission as it was, later to reject his message.
So their question, Who are you? meant in part, Do you claim to be the promised Messiah? Messiah means the Anointed one; in Greek the word is Christos, our Christ. To explain everything that the word meant in the time of Jesus would be more of a lecture than is helpful for preaching. The idea had both religious and political implications, and it is perhaps enough for us to note that not the least reason a claim to be Messiah was dangerous was that it would bring down the power of Rome. So we can understand that they would ask, Are you the Christ? That at any rate is the question John answered. He confessed, and he did not deny, but he confessed, I am to the Christ So they asked whom he claimed to be. What then, Are you Elijah, are you the Prophet? The coming of Elijah before the Day of the Lord was foretold in the third chapter of Malachi, while Deuteronomy 18 spoke of the coming a prophet like Moses. Both of these figures were associated with the fevered expectations of the people. Jesus in his time was also associated with this prophet (John 6.14, 7.40). When John denied this, they were perplexed: Who are you then? We have to say something to those who sent us! At this he gave the answer that is familiar to us from the other Gospels, “I am the voice crying in the wilderness”. This was not a help to the delegation, Why then do you baptize, if you are no one in particular? Now he could bear witness to the one to come after, whose sandals he was not worthy to untie. To loosen the sandal was beneath the dignity even of a humble disciple, for it was said, “Every service which a servant will perform for his master, a disciple will do for his Rabbi, except loosing his sandal thong.”
More of John’s witness than this is recorded in the fourth Gospel, and we should particularly bear keep chapter 3 verses 26-30 in mind as we read today’s Gospel,. In it we hear that John’s disciples come to tell him that Jesus was baptizing and that “everyone was going to him”. Then John reminded them that he had born witness, I am not the Christ, but I was sent before him. The friend of the bridegroom rejoices when he hears the bridegroom’s voice; therefore this joy of mine is full. He must increase but I must decrease.
John rejoiced that people went from him to Jesus; he must increase, but I must decrease. He knew that he was nothing in himself but God’s messenger to call folk to Christ. there can be no clearer message for us. God did not call us into the Church so that our neighbours can see how good we are, or to hear our voices or our ideas; he called us so that we can point to Jesus, bring peoples’ attention to him. But how often we get in the way. If it is not because we want to make people look at us, it is because we do things that make them look at us, and distract them from Christ. At worst, the things Christians do hinder love of Christ, their sins, their quarrels. But we prayed this morning that God would remove from us those things that hinder love of him.
In the eleven days left until Christmas let us ask as simple question: is there something I am doing that I one of the things that hinders the love of God? Do I somehow get in the way, so that my neighbours see and hear not Christ but me? Are we as a Church pointing to Christ, or are we pointing to ourselves. I am not going to answer these questions —I can’t answer these questions; I only know that a person or Church who does not regularly ask these questions is in great danger of being a hindrance. It is not enough just to ask the question; we must know what to do to point away from ourselves, to sit down, as it were, and stop blocking everyone else’s view. The answer begins, as always in prayer.
Assuming that you all pray regularly each day, if not necessarily “without ceasing”, it is very important to ask the Lord to make himself known to you. There is no one way of doing this; it may be enough, after saying the Lord’s prayer, and the usual daily ACTS of prayer to repeat some such verse of the Gospel, as “Lord I believe, help thou my unbelief” trusting that he will increase you faith and knowledge; or simply to ask the Lord for this in faith, each day. Such prayer is the first step to turning from self and knowing the Lord so that you can point to him. Then we in our day and our community can be like John, finding our true joy as Christ increases, but perhaps not even caring if we decrease, as long as we are with him.

A Sermon for the Second Sunday of Advent, Year B
The Church of St Columba and All Hallows’, East York, Toronto
Sunday, 7th December, 2008

Before I say anything about the Gospel and readings for today, I hope that you will allow me to say briefly how pleased I am to be with you as your interim Priest in Charge. This is a new situation for me; so new that I have not yet been informed of the terms of my appointment. and know so little of the practical aspects that it is very much an act of faith. Oh, well, what matters most in priestly ministry is coming to the heart of the Christian life: the worship of God in beauty and decency, the celebration of the sacraments and the preaching of the word. It is my prayer that I may attend to this among you to the best of my ability. No more on that now, save to ask for your prayers that I may serve and minister as Christ would have me do as long as I am here.
It is the second Sunday of Advent, that time of preparation for Christmas that is so familiar in churches that follow the liturgical Calendar and so foreign and strange to the rest of society and even many Christians of a less traditional bent. In wisdom gained from the experience of centuries, the Church teaches us not to jump into the celebration of Christ’s birth, but to take time to ponder the meaning of his coming and prepare ourselves to hear and rejoice. The truth is that the more we prepare the deeper will be our joy on Christmas Day.
The four Sundays in Advent help us to ask one simple question that lies at the heart of our Christmas preparation: the question is “what Child is this?” On the first Sunday we look ahead to the second coming, in glory and behold the cosmic and eternal significance of the Christ Child. This is no mere baby, and our worship at the creche cannot be just a sentimental tenderness, or a devotion to a God who never grows up. This is the one who will confront evil and defeat it, the one weho has the right to judge the world. On the Second and Third Sundays we see the forerunner, John the Baptist, and hear his testimony: he proclaims that the Child born at Christmas is the one who will baptize with Fire and the Holy Spirit, who will call his people to turn around and begin a new life. John called the people to make themselves ready for the coming of the Lord. He also declared that the one who was coming would take away the sins of the whiole worl. On the Fourth Sunday we hear how Joseph and Mary learned that their child was the promised Lord, the Son of God, and here we see how the Lord of all entered into the tenderness and love of a human family.
Thus in Advent it is clear why we meditate on the Coming of the Lord long foretold by the prophets and in the Psalms, and why we look ahead to the second coming; it is clear, too, why we hear the stories of Mary and Joseph that will lead us to hear the story of Bethlehem, for that is the story of the first Coming. Why do we spend so long on John the Baptist? Surely we could hear his teaching during the year, or even at Epiphany, when we celebrate the Lord’s Baptism!
The answer here, my friends, is that there are really three advents, not only two. Let me read you some words from the fifth Advent Sermon of St Bernard of Clairvaux,

We know that there are three comings of the Lord. The third lies between the other two; it is invisible, while the other two are visible. In the first coming he was seem on earth, dwelling among me; he himself testifies that they saw him and hated him [John 15.24]. In the final coming all flesh will see the salvation of our God [Luke 3.6; Isaiah 40], and they will look on him whom they pierced [John 19.37] The intermediate coming is a hidden one.

This coming is hidden because only those who answer the call know the presence of Christ within themselves, and recognize him in the needy and suffering. Bernard goes on to say.

In his first coming our Lord came in our flesh and in pour weakness; in this middle coming he comes in spirit and in power; in the final coming he will be seen in glory and majesty … Because this coming lies between the other two, it is like a road on which we travel from the first coming to the last. In the
first, Christ was our redemption; in the last, he will appear as our life; in this middle coming, he is our rest and consolation.

OurLord Christ himself promised this intermediate Advent. He said: If anyone lives me, he will keep my words, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him [John 14.23].
When we understand the middle Advent we may more easily see why we need to hear John’s preaching in the Advent season. For if Christ is to come to us as he has promised, we must hear John’s call to repentance, that is, to turning around, to changing one’s mind, for that is what repentance means. John spoke to the people of his day and said: You hope for the Messiah to come and lead you from this wilderness into God’s kingdom? well, then, make yourselves ready; show yourselves to be the kind of people who want to live in God’s kingdom. He says the same thing to us. You rejoice that your Lord and Saviour has come to you? well, then, live like the people who follow the Crucified and Risen Lord. We heard this in the reading from Second Peter this morning: since Christ will come to judge the world, what sort of people ought you to be.
How far many Christians are from these questions. Many see themselves as pretty well all right, no worse than most, and all they want from God is some help and security. Just look after me and let my life go on as normal, is their prayer. For them, as Pope Benedict remarked last week, the coming of Christ is like “a beautiful decoration upon a world already saved” rather than what it truly is, “the only way of liberation” from the mortal danger, from the consequences of human sin that we see in violence and oppression around the world. The coming of Christ is God’s answer to the cry for help that the peoples of the world send up. Just how this is is something that we can only truly know by entering into his life, and allowing him into ours. For as John Baptist tells us our minds need to changed and our footsteps turned to follow the path of Christ. Our faith cannot be just business as usual and a pretty Baby at Christmas.
Those who know that the Christian life is not just business as usual are trying evey day to follow Christ; they have knowledge and experience that he helps them with his love and strength, they know the middle Advent. They know the true meaning and joy of Christmas and are able to share it with those around them. I invite you to make the eighteen or so days left a time of preparing, and welcoming the Lord Jesus, who so much wants to come to you.

All Souls' Day Homily

After the All Souls' Day Requiem a number of people spoke kindly of the homily and suggested that it shoudl be published here. Although the written text is a only a shadow of the Homily as it was spoken, here it is.

Homily for All Souls’ Day
Preached at the Solemn Requiem,
at St Matthias, Bellwoods,
5 November 2008

Once upon a time you might expect to find among the books of a literate Church-goer a volume called

The Rule and Exercises of Holy Dying, in which are described the Means and Instruments of Preparing ourselves and others respectively for a blessed Death; and the Remedies against the Evils and Temptations Proper to the State of Sickness.

This was published in 1651 by the great pastor and theologian Jeremy Taylor. I don’t know what devotional books Churchpeople have and use nowadays; too great a variety is available, but I would guess they would be less likely to include one on preparation for death, for our world has a tendency to avoid thinking of death, a tendency that the Church hasn’t quite avoided. We speak less of death than we used to, and certainly we speak less about death as the one thing for which eveyone has to prepare, especially all Christians. [As recently as when I was in my teens it was still remembered that the major theme of preaching in Advent was the Four Last Things: Death, Judgement, Hell and Heaven. But who thinks of that now?] Fortunately here are moments when we have to think of death—in Holy Week, at funerals, and now, at All Hallows’ tide..
So here we are at one of those moments when we face the fact of death, and, lo! and behold, this is not the time to address preparation for death; this is the time to remember the faithful departed; those whom we love but see no longer. Nonetheless this commemoration, by calling us to remember the departed, is a part of preparing for a good death. Quite naturally it calls us to ponder death and the nature of death: What is it? What does the Christian faith say about death? What do we mean by life after death? How does the concepts of the immortality of the soul relate to faith in the Resurrection of the Body? What is the use of prayer for the dead? All these are important questions, but the last is probably the one we most need to ask on All Soul’s Day.
In Christian history, the practice of prayer for the departed came to be wrapped up in particular doctrines about what happens to the dead, particularly the doctrine of Purgatory. At the time of the Reformation, these doctrines in turn were mixed up in what seemed to be a money-making scheme of vast proportions. In our Anglican Tradition, most formal prayer for the departed was taken out of the liturgy. We do not need to discuss these disputes now, for in Christian experience Prayer for the departed is not part of the doctrine of Purgatory, it is something far deeper: it is a real experience of fellowship in the Body of Christ. The truth of this comes clear if we begin with the words of our Lord in the Gospel we just heard:

This is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that every one who sees the Son and believes in him should have eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. John 6.39-40

What a wonderful promise this is, that those who come to Christ in faith will not be cast out, will be raised up, will have eternal life. This is the ground of our assurance that whatever it is like for those who pass through it, death is not a separation from the love and life of Jesus Christ the Risen Lord. We hear the same assurance in words from the Letter to the Romans that are read at almost all Christian funerals

I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8.38., 39

Now we are assured that Baptism has made us members of Christ’s one body and in that body members of one another. Therefore none of these things—death, life, angels, height, depth and all the rest—can separate us from one another in Christ. Death does not break the communion and fellowship of the Church. As Eric Mascall put it, we enter the Church by baptism; we do not leave it by death. So it is as natural that we should pray for fellow members of Christ who have died as we should those we see every day. After all, we are members of the Lord who died and conquered death.
What specifically whould we ask for when we pray for the dead? That is easy—look in your Prayer Book or Book of Alternative Services (and if you don’t have copies of you own you really should) where will find good models to use. These are prayers founded on trust in the love of God, prayers that make no other assumptions about the condition of the dead. The Collect we used today is a good example:

Father of all, we pray to you for those we love but see no longer. Grant them your peace; let light perpetual shine upon them, and in your loving wisdom and almighty power, work in them the good purpose of your perfect will; through Iesus Christ Our Lord, who lives, &c.

This can be adapted for personal use. So you might say, “We [or I] pray to you for [Name], whom we love but see no longer; Grant him your peace,” and so on. The 23rd Psalm might be used in a similar way (The Lord is N's shepherd, she shall not want, and so on).
There are many other questions we could raise, but will not now. At another time we must all learn more of what the Church teaches about Death, and how we can prepared for it. Not all knowledge comes by study, or even by asking questions; we learn to know one another by speanding time together; and we learn to be members of Christ by spending time in the life and worship of his body the Church. This present is the moment not to ask any more questions, but to enter into the Church’s prayer for her departed members, those you know and love and those unknown who are still members of Christ with you. It is th emoment to experience the life which begins in Baptism but does not end with death. Perhaps from this experience we will all come to know a little more clearly the fact that death is not a separation, and that as we draw closer to Christ Jesus, the conqueror of death, we draw closer to those we love in him, and trust that it is not forever that we do not see them.

A Homily for the Feast of Dedication

5 October 2008,
St Matthias’, Bellwoods, Toronto

“How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” (Genesis 28.17)

Long before folk knew that the earth turned, they spoke of the year turning. And they were right, for no matter what the reason for it might be, the year does turn: the seasons have one after the other, winter, spring, summer, and autumn, and then the whole cycle turns back to begin once again. For this reason the old Romans called the celebration to mark something that happened every year the anniversarius, the turn of the year. So you can see, by the way, how silly it is to speak of a “three-month anniversary” (how can a year turn so soon?), and how redundant to say “one-year anniversary”, instead of the simple “first anniversary”. But I digress. We celebrate the anniversaries of many important things: the anniversaries of weddings, of ordinations, of births and deaths, and of the dedication of our churches. It is as if this place and this building came to life on the day the bishop declared that it was consecrated, set apart from profane and common use, and dedicated “to Almighty God for the ministration of his holy Word and Sacraments, and for public worship.”
Although we aren’t keeping the real anniversary of the consecration we didn’t just pick this Sunday at random. Long ago churches kept this festival on the real anniversaries and they kept them exuberantly, as parish revels, but the time came when the English government started to get worried about the number of holidays people had, and probably about how they couldn’t work well the next day, and possibly about the lower classes having that much fun, and twisted the arm of Convocation (that’s what they called the Church synod) to order every church to keep its dedication feast on the first Sunday in October, to get it over with all at once. Later on, this date came to be used for churches where the real date was unknown, and so everyone was happy. That’s why we keep this festival today.
The Church provides a list of suitable readings for this festival, from which we have chosen three readings and a psalm: the first reading, Genesis 28.10-17, speaks of a holy place, a place where a human being encounters the Living God; Psalm 122 sings of the joy of a pilgrim coming to the temple at Jerusalem, the centre of the worship of God’s people, and the heart the covenant. From the second chapter of the first epistle of St Peter (2-5,9-10), we hear his declaration to his readers of who they are as the Church. They are the ecclesia, the assembly, the people who have been called together by God. We may know this word best in our “ecclesiastical” or in the French église. In this passage St Peter speaks Christians as living stones, who are built on Christ the chief cornerstone into a spiritual house where acceptable sacrifices are offered to God. The House of the Lord is no longer thought of as a place you can find on a map, but as the household and family of God, held together not by nails and beams,[1] but the love of its members. The Gospel (Matthew 21.12-16) tells us of Jesus’ zeal for his Father’s house, which led him to drive out of it all that was unworthy and shaming. Today, as always, the Dedication Festival coincides with the date of the Animal Blessing, so let us look at the story of Jacob, and the idea of a holy place.
After Jacob had stolen the blessing that was due to his brother Esau, he left home to seek a wife from among his kindred in the land of Haran. On the way he stopped at a certain place for the night, taking a stone for a pillow. A vision came to him in his sleep, of a ladder or staircase uniting heaven and earth. Up and down went the holy angels running the Lord’s errands; the Lord himself spoke to Jacob, renewing his covenant to be with Jacob on his journey and to bring him back to the land of promise. When Jacob awoke he realized that unknowingly he slept in a holy place, and was awestruck: “This is none other than the house of God, this is the gate of heaven”. Because Jacob had encountered the Lord in that place that place was holy. He named it Beth-el, the house of God. When we hear this today we remember that our word church at its root means something like ‘house of the Lord’; it comes to us from the Greek κυριακον, of or pertaining to the Lord; another form is the Scots Kirk.
To read of Jacob’s encounter with God on the feast of Dedication is to be aware of similarity and difference between that house of God and this. Our churches are set apart to be houses of God in our midst, but rarely are they chosen for us, like Bethel. That was a holy place because God appeared to Jacob; most of our churches are built on land that was donated to us. We dedicate and consecrate them, that is, we offer them and set them apart to God. we encounter God in this place, both as a community and as individuals in prayer, in word and sacrament. Who knows what the encounters men and women have had with their Lord in this place?
In the liturgy of Thanksgiving for the Feast of Dedication we go to places in the church where there God has promised such encounters; to the font, where we died with Christ and were reborn through the waters of baptism; to the lectern, where we encounter the Lord through hearing his written Word; to the pulpit—in this church it may be the same object, but its function is different!—where the message and Gospel of the Cross of Christ is proclaimed, that message which gives unity to all the messages of Scripture; and to the Altar which is the Holy Table, where now we take part in the heavenly banquet that is to come, where we who can offer no worthy sacrifice are made part of Christ’s all sufficient sacrifice. When we give thanks for these things, when we consider the meaning of what font and lectern and altar, how can we not cry out, “How awesome is this place! Surely this is the house of God, this is the gate of heaven.”
Jacob went to Bethel unawares, and found that it was a holy place, the very gate of heaven. We do not come here to this Church all unknowing, as if we are surprised at God’s presence. For we were invited here and summoned, no, more, we have come here to keep a tryst, a rendezvous that our God has made with us. We have said, “we will go into the House of the Lord”; because our Lord has promised, “Where two or three are gathered together in My Name. there am I in the midst of them.” My friends, if there are any who think that these are just words, nice words perhaps, and pious sentiments, but only words; I tell you that it is not so. I pray that God will open your hearts and eyes and ears, that you may know that because of the promise of Christ This is truly the house of God, this is the gate of heaven.

Note

[1] Not until I reached this point in preaching did it strike me that it is precisely by nails and a beam that the people of God are held together, the beam and nails of the Cross. I cannot remember exactly how I said this, except that I turned and ponted to the figure of the Crucified on the Rood Screen.

Blessing your Enemies

Sermon for the Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 22 Year A
Preached at St Matthias, Bellwoods, Toronto
31 August 2008

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Romans 12.14

Just over sixteen hundred years ago, St John Chrysostom preached a series of sermons on the Letter to the Romans. When he came to Chapter 12, verse 14, “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse,” at the beginning of the twenty-second sermon in the series, he commented that in these words St Paul does not simply say, “be not spiteful or revengeful, but required something far better.” and that although a wise man might act without spite or vengefulness, “this is quite an angel's part.” If “to bless those who persecute you” seemed to so great a saint as Chrysostom to be “an angel’s part”, can we hope to grasp it an make it our own? But this commandment is not some clever idea of St Paul’s; it is simply a repetition of the teaching of our Lord Jesus. That we should accept persecution without spite or rancour follows from the words of the gospel, that those who would follow the Lord must «deny themselves and take up the cross». That we should go further than this and bless those who persecute us we find in the Sermon on the Mount, «But I say to you that hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, pray for those who abuse you» [Luke 6.27]. If we are to follow Christ then it is clear, not only must we never return cursing for cursing, pain for pain, evil for evil. not only are we never to avenge ourselves, but we are to be good and kind and loving to those who hurt us, and to be cheerful about it. Search the Gospels as you will; you will find no exceptions.
Now what St Paul says in this passage from Romans, and what our Lord Jesus says in the Gospel, are both very clear. There is no mystery about what is asked of us. But Chrysostom was right: “this is quite an angel’s part.” For the way of the world is, if not to take vengeance for wrong done or perceived, at least to feel slighted and hurt, and to think that you would be justified to try to get your own back. To follow Christ’s way, then, means not only a new way of acting, but a new way of thinking. It means, as we heard in the reading from Romans last week, not to be conformed to this world, but to be transformed by the renewal of your mind, so that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect [Romans 12.2].
Every time we respond to persecution, or hurt, or even the unintentional slights that come our way with anger and resentment, with cursing and ill will, we are saying to the world that the will of God is not good, not acceptable, not perfect. For the will of God is seen in Christ, who suffered himself to be abused, beaten, and finally to be crucified, without complaint, without seeking revenge If we do not do the same, we are showing that, for all the faith we profess, we are conformed to this world. Worse than that, when we resist evil with evil, we are not overcoming evil, but adding to it, adding anger and violence to the world. For vengeance never heals wrong, it merely adds a new wrong, calling forth new resentment, fuelling bitterness and rancour from one generation to another. Has a wrong been done to you? St Paul’s words and the Lord’s example tell you to leave it to God. “Vengeance is mine,” says the Lord, “I will repay.” The Lord Jesus said, “Judge not;” but all vengeance is based on judgment. All that my vengeance shows is that I do not really believe that God will take care of me. And it is a simple fact that none of us is either wise enough or good enough to punish our enemies justly.
In reality in the lives we lead here, as we try to follow Christ, we may never have to face real persecution, or even hatred for our faith in him. This is not true for all Christians; it is for the most part for us. Nonetheless we need to learn the lesson, “Bless those who persecute you.” For what we do meet are the thousand slights and wrongs, some real, some fancied. If we are not hated for being Christians we do meet personal hatred, or at least dislike. We must learn to respond graciously to the petty hurts of this life if we are to learn to bless those who hurt us, and even those who persecute us. Indeed it is only with these things that we can learn to be gracious and forgiving, with the resentment we feel for people who cut ahead in line, or in traffic; or for people who cheat us or hurt us in petty ways. The Gospel calls us to let these things go.[1]
At first this may mean — it probably does mean — acting against your instincts. It means swallowing your pride and keeping your first response to yourself. The late Father Egan, who taught patristics at Regis College, used to say, “I thank God for the gift of my stutter; it keeps me from saying the first thing that comes into my head.” Having swallowed your pride and bit your tongue, you’ve won a moment to ask yourself whether you have really been hurt, or have any real reason to be angry, or indeed, whether it really matters. You have won a moment for giving the other person the same benefit of the doubt that you expect and give yourself This should wipe away most of the cases. It is in the ones that remain, when a real wrong was done, and you have really been hurt, that the job of being transformed begins, and the angel’s part has to be learned.
Someone has done you a wrong, and they meant it. You feel angry, hurt, and resentful. But you are forbidden to curse, indeed, you are commanded to bless the one who hurt you. This is not easy, indeed, it might seem impossible, truly an angel’s part. But ask yourself: do you ever really try? Do you really try to stop yourself every time you want to repay a real or imagined hurt with hurt, or cursing with a curse? And finding it hard, do you ask God to help you, or do you just give up? As Chesterton one remarked it is not that the Christian life has been tried and found impossible, but that it seemed difficult and has not been tried. Perhaps I should say, Get out there and try to follow Christ’s teaching, and then we’ll talk about the difficulties. But sermons don’t work like that, and I need to finish with some practical words
It takes time to learn the angel’s part. The first step is to stop yourself from doing or saying the first thing that comes into your head. Most of us can manage that. If we try, most of us can manage not to curse. The next thing is to bring those feelings to God in our prayers or to a confessor or spiritual counsellor. We don’t have to keep them bottled up until they explode. Getting this far, simply not returning evil for evil is a wonderful achievement. But we are commanded to take the next step and bless the one who curses us. As we ponder this, it is helpful to remember that Christ did more than bless those who killed him; he died for them. So perhaps he is not demanding as much from us as we think.
Still, perhaps, we cannot utter a blessing on the one who hurts us. The answer is the same as always, so we do what we can. I cannot bless my enemy? Then let me pray for my enemy, pray perhaps that God will forgive him, or that he will see the error of his ways, or that he will have a better day and find a better temper. Let me pray for his good, in fact; for what else does it really mean to “bless” someone? Every time I do this, I build up the right habit of mind, I come to act more like Christ, and I trust that I by his grace I will finally come to bless my enemy. The all-important thing is to trust God and to try.

Note

[1] It is worth remembering that in Our Lord’s word from the Cross, "Father, forgive them" (Luke 23.34), the word translated "forgive" (aphes) also means, ‘let go’.

Thoughts on Miracles: II

Sermon for the Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 19, Year A)
Preached at St Matthias’ Bellwoods, 10 August 2008

Last week we heard the miracle of the loaves and fishes; we have just heard how in the small hours of a stormy night, Jesus walked on the Sea of Galilee many furlongs out from land to his disciples in a boat, and bade St Peter walk on the water as well, and saved him when he lost faith, and how when Jesus got into the boat, the storm ceased. Thus there are three miracles at least in this story, not just one. Last week’s gospel brought us to consider that there is no way around the miraculous element in the Gospel, but because this is an important matter, we will continue to think of it today. In fact to is going to take us at least into next week.
The events in these gospel readings truly fit the definition of “miracle” given by St Thomas Aquinas, quoting St Augustine:

A miracle is described as something difficult and unusual, surpassing the capabilities of nature and the expectations of those who wonder at it.[1]

We should note the words for what we call “miracles” that are used in the New Testament. The first is τέρατα, ‘wonders’ or ‘prodigies’; in this word the astonishment of the beholders is applied to the deed itself. This word is the closest to our word “miracle” which comes from the Latin mirari, to be astonished. It is never used alone, but always with one of the other words, as “signs and wonders”; which brings us to the second word, σημεια, ‘signs’. Σημεια is used in all the gospels, but particularly in John, where it is the ordinary term for miracle as a sign pointing to Christ’s glory, or the presence of God in him.[2] What matters here is not the wonder produced in the beholder, but in the meaning of the act. The third word is δυνμαεις ‘powers’ or ‘works of power’ we find this word at Matthew 7.22, Mt 11.20, Mk 6.14, Ll 10.13. These three words describe the same works under different aspects than three different classes of works. The most important of them is σημεια, ‘signs’, for the most important thing about a miracle is that they point us to belief in God. Now although all miracles are signs, a sign is not necessarily a miracle. Common events may be signs that authenticate some word or announcement. Thus, the Angel said to the shepherds that the sign of the good news would be their finding a Child wrapt in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. There are many such signs in the Old Testament.[3]
That said, we can return to the definition. If a miracle is something which “surpasses the capabilities of nature” it is obvious that the whole question of whether we believe that God works miracles depends on what we mean by nature.
First, however, it is important to remember that “nature” is not a thing—just as the world is not a thing—the word nature originally meant “birth”, it is from the same root as “native”; it came to mean a quality or character, and rerum natura meant the nature of things, the order or course of the world. Now over the centuries, human beings have observed that in the world there is a regular and uniform activity, which regular activities are given the name laws of nature. Unless uniform and regular rules are assumed, as C. B. Moss put it, “we could never be sure that the sun would not rise in the west or that a hen’s egg would not produce a crocodile, natural science and indeed human life would be impossible.” However, the records of scripture and history include events which could not be explained by any natural cause. It is sometimes naively said that that is because people in past ages did not know of or believe in the uniformity of nature. But if this is so, there would be no reason to speak of wonders, prodigies or works of power. Unless people knew the ordinary way in which children are begotten, there would be nothing surprising in a virgin conceiving without the aid of human father. It is fair to clarify the definition: a miracle is an occurrence which surpasses the capabilities that are known of nature. The New Testament scholar Reginald Fuller said that

This formula is attractive for both its scientific and theological humility. It admits that we don’t know everything yet, that our scientific knowledge … is still limited. But it is also prepared to surrender belief in a particular miracle, if it should turn out to be a natural occurrence after all. And on this definition the day may come when we shall know so much about nature that there will be no place for a miracle after all.[4]

That is a sensible statement. People have learned that some wonders have causes within nature; one might think of solar and lunar eclipses, for example, or rainbows. It is much harder to see how we can ever know enough to do away with the resurrection or the virgin birth. You will notice, I hope, that Fuller does not define “nature”. Moss points out that

The word "nature" can be used in three different senses: (a) It may mean "all that exists". Spinoza … uses it in this sense. Nothing can be "beyond nature" if this is what we mean by nature. (b) It may mean "all created things". St. Thomas Aquinas uses it in this sense, for he is careful to say "created nature". (c) It may mean "all material things", as when we say "natural science". This is the usual modern sense.

Now which of these senses we mean is not decided by scientific experimentation; it is a philosophical question. If you say that only such things as can be measured have reality, you have excluded the possibility of a miracle before the question is raised, and will have to reject or explain away any accounts of miracles. We will return to this question next week. Now we need to consider a fourth word from the New Testament. The miracles of Christ are often called έργα, ‘works’ i.e., such works as might be expected of the God-man, and which reveal his Person. It is almost as if they come forth by necessity. Archbishop Trench wrote.

They are the periphery of that circle whereof he is the centre. The great miracle is the Incarnation; all else, so to speak, follows naturally and of course. It is of no wonder that He whose name is wonderful’ (Isa 9.6) does works of wonder; the only wonder would be if he did them not

The miracle of walking on the sea is such a work, and a work of power, and we must turn to it before we use up the little time we have. This miracle is unlike the miracles of healing and mercy; and we might ask why God should overrule nature in this way. Taken as a work of power, this miracle declares the power of Christ over the sea. This points us back to very ancient beliefs in the Old Testament that God in creation was victorious over the sea, a symbol of chaos and evil.[5] For Jesus to walk on the sea is for the power of God in him to be manifest. On a symbolic level, it is a miracle of teaching: by it Jesus teaches his disciples to trust in him, that he is with them and will help them even when it seems least likely, and that nothing can come between them and his love. It is a preparation for their mission in the world, which is our mission. Notice that he has gone up the mountain to pray; while he has sent disciples out onto the sea. Just so, he will send the disciples out into the stormy world, and himself ascend into heaven. But in heaven he is with his Church, in heaven he ever intercedes for it and watches over it But there I am past my time and we will have to turn to Peter and his faith another time. If it is manageable I will produce further notes on this passage. Next week we will think further about miracles.

Notes

[1] Miraculum dicitur aliquid arduum et insolitum supra facultatem natura et spem admirantes praeveniens. ST 1a Q 105 7.2, quoting Augustine De utilitate credendi 16 (Miraculum voco quidquid arduum et insolitum supre speam vel facultatem mirantis apparet.
[2] We find this meaning in Deuteronomy 13: “If a prophet arises among you, or a dreamer of dreams, and gives you a sign or wonder, and the sign or wonder comes to pass, and if he says, Let us go after other gods, which you have not known, and let uis serve them, you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams”
[3] Luke 2.12; Exodus 3.12; 1 Sam 2.34; 10. 1-9; Jer 44.29-30; Jgs 7.9-15; 2 Kgs 7.2, 17-20)
[4] Interpreting the Miracles (1961), p. 8

[5] One thinks also of the miracle of the Red Sea in Exodus 14, which also took place in the morning watch. Job 9.8: [God] alone stretched out the heavens, and trampled the waves of the sea; Psalm 64.12-17: Yet God is King from of old, working salvation in the midst of the earth. Thus didst divide the sea by thy might; thou didst break the heads of the dragons on the waters. Thou didst crush the heads of Leviathan, and didst give him as food for the creatures of the wilderness; Psalm 77.19; Psalm 89.9-10: Thou dost rule the raging of the sea; when its waves rise, thou stillest them. Thou didst crush Rahab like a carcass, thou didst scatter thy enemies with thy mighty arm; Isaiah 43.16: Thus says the Lord , who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters. (Rahab and Leviathan are names of a sea-monster and personify the restless power of the sea.)