Sermons from St Faith's
Waiting for the Spirit
Revd Sue Lucas, Sunday, June 1st, 2014
What do you get if you put three Anglicans together? Ten
different opinions! It’s a familiar joke – but it has a grain
of truth in it; for we are a broad church, a place where difference
has been tolerated, even rejoiced in; and it is in our DNA from the
beginning – Richard Hooker, seeking to steer a difficult middle way
in the bitter and sometimes life-threatening struggles of the 16th
century drew on the Thomist notion of adiaphora – things inessential
– but things inessential are not things unimportant, necessarily –
amongst the things Hooker identified as inessential – at least to
salvation – was the view we take about what happens at the Eucharist
– and the way in which the scriptures hold truth for us – far from
being unimportant, they were the very things the Roman Catholics on
the one hand and the Reformed Protestant Puritans on the other
battled over – sometimes literally to death. But Hooker’s
point is a subtle one – none of us has the whole truth, and we
cannot limit God’s saving work in Jesus to those who happen to agree
with us.
We’ve heard the story of Jesus’ Ascension three times in the last
few days – on Thursday, in both the Luke and Acts versions – and
they are rather different from one another; and today, we hear the
Acts version again, perhaps hearing something new and different in
it each time; and, in today’s Gospel, we hear Jesus’ prayer for his
disciples – not before the Ascension, but before the Crucifixion;
though we perhaps hear in it a sense of the not-yet church, the
church to be;
And all this is very appropriate; for the Church, the witnessing
Church – always has different versions of itself; the Church even
now, after two millennia, is the community that both is and is not
yet, that is itself the sign of the kingdom to come, yet is – well,
in the words of the Reformers – semper reformata, always being
changed, transformed, remade;
Which can feel a little unsettling – because most of us hate change,
and cling on to how things are, or were – as our security blanket;
yet, the Holy Spirit flings us into change and new life – which can
sometimes feel unsettling, even brutal – yet, as Newman realised, to
be holy is to be converted many times – to come closer and closer to
being the people and the community God made us to be.
Unsettling, yes – but our Epistle is very clear about how we wait
for the coming, converting Spirit; through discipline, discernment
and repetition; discipline – in doing what we do – saying our
prayers, feeding on Christ in the Sacrament and learning what it
means to treat one another as the body of Christ; discernment – in
listening; hence, we are told to ‘humble ourselves under the mighty
hand of God’ – this is not some Uriah Heepish false humility, but
about being down to earth, and above all willing to wait, to listen
to hear the still small voice; in discernment; in being willing to
sift what is true and good and lovely in ourselves from what is
damaging, destructive and deathly – and to see that distinction as
being as much inside us as around us; and in repetition – in being
willing to keep on keeping on with our prayers and sacraments and
small and simple acts of devotion.
Then, in both our Epistle and Gospel – we are promised Christ’s
glory; but perhaps we need to reflect a bit more on what that means
– it is not cheap grace, or easy glory; nor is it spectacle or
splendour – it is, perhaps, claiming our fullness of life and of
humanity – of being the best human beings we can be – for the glory
of God, as Irenaeus tells us, is the human being fully alive, and to
be alive is to be in the presence of God.
That is what we are being transformed into by the searching Spirit.
That is the life that our Saviour came to share; and that, through
discipline, discernment and repetition, is what we are gradually
being formed into; and indeed, it is being changed from glory to
glory – to discover the God who is transcendent is nearer to us than
our own breath – and shows his glory in the world in very ordinary
human beings – in you and me. Amen.
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