LENT V, Year B: March 29 2009

Preacher: Fr Andrew Greany

The general title for our Sunday morning sermons in Lent has been 'God amongst us'; if that were put as a question: 'how, or when, is God amongst us?', many Christians, many of us here perhaps, might answer it by focusing on worship, on the belief that Jesus, who lived and died and was raised for us in a particular time and place is present to us as we gather for worship, that he is present to us now in word and sacrament. But as we invited four preachers whose daily concerns have often been to some extent outside the gathering of committed Christians for worship, this wasn't, on the whole, the answer which we heard. What we did hear from them was, to begin with, fascinating accounts of the contexts in which they are, or have been working: alongside marines fighting in Afghanistan, in the legal profession, with people working in the Fire Service and other workplaces in our city, in an independent school whose Christian foundation means little to many staff and pupils. The experiences of our preachers led them to some analysis: sometimes, I think, of the way the world is — for example, the 'metropolitan atheism' of which Fr Young spoke last week: or the tensions in the legal system described by Fr Mark between the positive law of the state, and the gospel values which Jesus proclaimed: or Fr Savage's sense of greed endemic in our society, leading to the idea that wealth or profit can be achieved without risk, forgetting that the sharing of risk should lead to the equitable sharing of wealth. At other points in our sermons, the analysis was more of the church: as marginalized, existing in a comfort zone, removed from the harsh and broken realities of our 21st century world, even, in the memorable words of Fr Mark's colleague in chambers, a hobby.

I think that it is important for us in our gathered Sunday congregations to hear of such experiences and to be offered that kind of analysis. It is good for us to be aware of the costly and demanding ways in which both clergy and Christian laity are engaging with the realities of the battlefield, with the assumptions of metropolitan atheism, with the tensions inherent in the legal system or with the uncertainties of the workplace. It is right that we should be held to account if our worship and prayer are comfortable and escapist. But I want to suggest that our texts this morning open up to us important vistas of the connectedness between the Christian community's prayerful and liturgical use of Scripture and the kind of world we live in; for the same God is amongst us in our personal or corporate prayer as is amongst us in every aspect of today's world — and He is the God revealed in the person of Jesus, who lived and died and was raised from the dead. Let's look at today's texts, particularly those from the letter to the Hebrews (5.5-10) and from St John's Gospel (12.20-33) in two clusters: this is the first: in the days of His flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears, to Him who was able to save Him from death (Heb.5.7)and now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say: 'Father save me from this hour? No, for this purpose I have come to this hour' (Jn.12.27). These texts reveal the passionate engagement of the human Jesus with the brokenness and inherent disorder of the world. The hour, the days, were His hour, His days —but they are our time too. An hour of darkness in a damaged relationship, days of conflict as we wrestle with the ethical compromises that society makes, the misery which human beings inflict on one another, the greed and self-interest which exploits and depersonalises so many: souls troubled when the God of love is mocked or caricatured. No, for this purpose I have come to this hour. This 'no' is the Word made flesh speaking within all of this. And if it is His word and His engagement, then it must be that of the church, His body.

Jesus spoke and lived as disconcerting prophet, as pastor, as reconciler, as servant. He did not shrink from involvement with people's pain, nor from opposing false religiosity. No, He came for such purposes. Yet the words and deeds of Jesus are not just an example or a challenge to us, whether we are chaplains on unfamiliar territory or a gathered parish congregation; and the second cluster of texts reveals to us how in Jesus God acted decisively not simply to offer an example, but in order to make effective and real the very life and being of Jesus in the church as we face our day, this hour. So here then is the second cluster of texts: Thou art my Son, this day I have begotten thee (Heb.5., quoting Ps.110): I when I am lifted up from the earth will draw all people to myself (Jn.12.32): Christ is appointed a high priest for ever (Heb.5). Thou art my Son: here is the incarnate Son of God, God with us, as we were specifically reminded last Wednesday on the Feast of the Annunciation; next, Jesus lifted up from the earth on the cross in its scandalous glory drawing in that moment of apparent defeat all people to Himself; and finally the risen and ascended Christ appointed as the true High priest through whom a new and living way is opened into the freedom and joy of the kingdom of God. Incarnation, Cross, Resurrection and Ascension. This is what those who gather faithfully week by week and day by day recall and proclaim: and now we give thee thanks, because through Him thou hast redeemed us from the slavery of sin, giving Him to be born of a woman, to die upon the cross, and to rise again for us, through Him thou hast made us a people for thine own possession, exalting Him to thy right hand on high. To recall and to proclaim that decisive and world-changing work of God in Jesus Christ while turning our backs on a passionate engagement with the world is to be trapped in a religiosity as dangerous as that which Jesus condemned in His earthly life. To be immersed in the tensions and pains of the world while cutting ourselves off from the source of that life which is won through the self-emptying of Incarnation and the scandal of the cross is to risk being snared in a false trust in human strength. God amongst us then, discerned in the places of pain and tension and cynicism, and enabling us to live in those places the life of Jesus, whose incarnation, passion, resurrection and intercession are made real to us in this very Mass, in this hour, in these our days.