Sermon Sunday 5 October 2014
Lessons Deuteronomy 26: 1 – 13 Revelation 14: 14 – 18 St Matthew 13: 23 – 33
Prayer of Illumination
Let us pray.
In time, though made for eternity, in the world of matter, though creatures of consciousness, may we be receptive to Your Sacred Presence, to the Spirit’s leading, and to the redemption that comes from living in Christ. Amen.
The spirituality of the late George MacLeod has much to commend it. MacLeod was founder of the Iona Community and responsible for the rebuilding of the abbey as we see it today. He was Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1963. Often accused of being half way to Moscow or Rome, MacLeod told the story of overhearing a conversation while attending a dinner at The New Club in Edinburgh. One elderly gentleman, slightly deaf, said, ‘That’s the Moderator. I think he’s a Communist.’ The other, also slightly deaf, replied, ‘No, he’s a Roman Catholic.’
In one of his prayers, MacLeod wrote:
Almighty God, Creator:
the morning is Yours, rising into fullness.
The summer is Yours, dipping into autumn.
Eternity is Yours, dipping into time.
The vibrant grasses, the scent of flowers,
the lichen on the rocks, the tang of sea-weed,
all are Yours.
Gladly we live in this garden of Your creating.
But creation is not enough.
Always in the beauty, the foreshadowing of decay.
The lambs frolicking careless: so soon to be led off
to slaughter.
Nature red and scarred as well as lush and green.
In the garden also:
always the thorn.
Creation is not enough.
…………
Always in the beauty: the tang of sin, in our consciences.
The dry lichen of sins long dead,
but seared upon our minds.
In the garden that is each of us, always the thorn.
…………
Till that day when night and autumn vanish:
and lambs grown sheep are no more slaughtered:
and even the thorn shall fade
and the whole earth shall cry Glory
at the marriage feast of
the Lamb.
In this new creation, already upon us,
fill us with life anew.
MacLeod’s prayer captures our appreciation of the natural world; its breath-taking, life-changing beauty but also the violence, suffering and death which are always present. The prayer ends with a very real sense that, though we are of the earth, part of the created order, our future, our destiny, our true home, lies beyond this world, beyond this material reality. MacLeod wrote, ‘In this new creation, already upon us, fill us with life anew.’ The new creation, eternity, is tasted in this mortal life.
If we widen our horizon from the nature of the universe to the universe itself, we learn that the universe of matter is likely to come to a sticky end. The particle physicist and Anglican priest, John Polkinghorne, says that the history of the universe is one ‘gigantic tug of war between two opposing principles. One is the expansive force of the Big Bang, continuing to propel matter apart. The other is the contractive force of gravity, seeking to pull matter together.’ These forces are evenly balanced and, says Polkinghorne, we do not know which one will win. If it is the expansive force, the universe will end in a ‘long, drawn out, dying whimper’ as galaxies implode. If it is gravity which is the stronger force, matter will eventually be pulled back together and the universe will end in what Polkinghorne calls the Big Crunch! Fortunately, for us, that end is likely to be tens of billions of years away. Violence, suffering and death are as integral to the universe as is beauty, healing and new life. This is the reality in which we live.
It is not a cause for despair. We are to seek God in and through this reality. In our Gospel lesson this morning, in the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares, the wheat and the weeds, Jesus acknowledges the presence of evil. Weeds are sown in the field and will be in this universe until the end of time, until what Jesus calls the time of the harvest. We may wish it were not so, we may hope for a different reality, but it is in this world that we believe we can and do encounter the Eternal Consciousness, the Mystery at the centre of all life. In the mess, we encounter the Mystery. Polkinghorne says:
It is a trust in the everlasting faithfulness of God the Creator,
who will not allow anything of good to be lost. For humankind
that implies an individual destiny for each of us. We are all
going to die with our lives incomplete, our hurts unhealed,
business unfinished, potentialities unexplored or unfulfilled. I
do not think that this life by itself makes sufficient sense to be
considered complete without the possibility of a further life
and growth beyond.
For me, the proof of a life beyond this mortal life lies in the fact that we can taste eternity in this life. Atheists says that there is no God, but how do they know that? In his Letter to a Christian Nation, the American Sam Harris says that it may be possible to experience positive life changes in accepting Christ and also feelings of peace, love and bliss through praying. But, he argues, others experience the same thing through praying to Allah, the Buddha, Krishna or contemplating the beauty of art or nature. Harris says that none of these experiences are of God. My question to him is, ‘How does he know?’ In the world today, there are 2.2 billion Christians, 1.6 billion Muslims, 1.1 billion Hindus, almost 500 million Buddhists and millions upon millions of followers of other faiths. How does Harris know that his interpretation of his life experience is correct and that most of the rest of the population on the planet is wrong?
For me, the proof of a life beyond this mortal life lies in the fact that we can taste eternity in this life. In one sense, we are of the Earth, mortal, and our consciousness seems inextricably tied to our brain and yet the intuition of the ages is that we are of God. Spiritual practice sensitises us to our own soul, its struggle with the ego, to others, their presence, humanity, joy and pain and to the Earth itself. The fourteenth century mystic, Julian of Norwich, said we are made of God. The present-day mystic, Philip Newell, offer this comment on what Julian said:
We are born from the very womb of the Divine. What does it
mean that we are made of God rather than simply by God? In
part it means that the wisdom of God is deep within us, deeper
than the ignorance of what we have done. It is to say that the
creativity of God is deep within us, deeper than any barrenness
in our lives or relationships, deeper than any endings in our
families or our world.
……….
We and all things have come forth from the One. Deep within
us as Holy, natural longings for oneness, primal sacred drives
for union. We may live in tragic exile from these longings, or
we may have spent a whole lifetime not knowing how to truly
satisfy them, but they are there at the heart of our being,
waiting to be born afresh.[1]
Spiritual practice sensitises us to ourselves, others and the Earth. It helps us reverence life and the Earth upon which we stand. As a spiritual practice, at home or outside, it is worthwhile walking barefoot for in doing so we feel the roughness of the Earth, the softness of grass and every pebble. We are no longer cocooned in hard leather, but connected to the soil and water from which we came.
To mark the Feast of St Francis, today in the Cathedral of St John the Divine in New York, the church will hold its annual blessing of the animals. With numbers attending greater than at Christmas or Easter, the sung liturgy includes the Missa Gaia or Earth Mass, which incorporates sounds of the wolf and whale. Dancers leap around the altar signifying the earth, sea and sky and throughout the service parakeets perch on people’s shoulders and macaws squawk raucously. The service closes with the silent Procession of the Animals. The great West Doors are opened and, in silence, the animals process down the nave: camels, boa constrictors, pigs, goats, cats and dogs! In the service, creation claps its hands.
At their best, a traditional harvest service, a Creation Covenant Service and a Procession of the Animals honour the Earth, acknowledge its beauty and brutality. Through the mess and muddle of life, we seek to live ethically towards others and the planet, but, above all, to live consciously in the presence of the Presence, knowing that we are of God and that our life does not end with death.
Amen.
1
[1] John Philip Newell The Rebirthing of God 8