18th June 2006The First Sunday after Trinity
Fr David Cherry
Ezekiel 17 : 22 – 24; II Corinthians 5 : 6 – 17; Mark 4 : 26 – 34
“Old things are passed away; behold new things are become new.” From the epistle this morning.
A congregation is split over whether they should be kneeling during the
prayer of consecration or standing. The only way to resolve it,
they decide is to remember what it was like when Fr Joe was their
parish priest. They track him down in a nursing home and go to
visit him. We used to kneel didn’t we father, asks the
leader of one party; that what it was like, wasn’t it? No
it wasn’t. We used to stand didn’t we father? No, it
wasn’t like that, says the old priest. Well please tell us
what it was like because we are all at one another’s necks.
That’s what it was like!
It is not by making us more super spiritual, but by making us more human.
The coming of God among us in Christ stirs things up a bit.
The Holy Spirit among us in the world, ‘blowing where he
lists’ is the creative ruarch or wind of God which breathed over
the waters at Creation. The Spirit bubbles up and makes all
things new. And we the church in this Ordinary Time when we
return to green, which we call Trinitytide, are invited to ponder what
it is like to live ‘after the spirit’; inhabited by the
Spirit that was in Christ : that Creative Spirit which makes all things
new.
Last week we thought how that Spirit brings about Trinitarian life,
draws Persons into unity, mutual understanding, mutual
self-giving. And it happens in an utterly natural and human
way. It is not by making us more super spiritual, but by making
us more human.
The parables are those stories of Jesus which stir things up.
They are creative because we find ourselves in a new place,
disconcerted and even laughing at ourselves. We’re meant to
be confused…. This confusion is about being subverted from
within, finding yourself – like that story which is true (The
Tablet 10th June 2006) of the people who went to Fr Joe and found
themselves in a new place: faced with the truth of how they live and
act; and yet finding they’re loved and so, please God, able to
laugh at themselves, and so become more human; less capable of taking
themselves too seriously, less hard of heart.
The hearers of Jesus are confused because they hear him turning the
parable of Ezekiel upside down, taking what was old and making it
new. For Ezekiel, the young tender branch is the faithful remnant
which will become greater than the original tree. The early
Christian church, cut off from the branch of Israel, a sect looked down
on by the Jews, could have taken comfort in that… They
could have thought to themselves : we will be ultimately vindicated,
proved right; our little branch will ultimately prove more favoured
than theirs.
But Jesus does something new. There is no branch, but a seed, the
smallest seed, judged, St Mark tells us, as ‘less than all the
seeds that be in the earth’ for it is a weed. No one would
have planted it in the ground, or – as Luke would have it –
in one’s own garden. But this scandalous seed is
planted by God, it is new, and will surprise us.
Is he the seed, this subversive weed which will become a vast shrub?
– not to outdo any other, but in order to provide shelter to many
birds? Our imagination is invited to go there in Trinitytide as
we begin to imagine what Trinitarian life looks like. No faithful
remnant being vindicated; but something new which will scandalise and
stir people up to life; make you and me more human; and so more lovable.
The life of the Trinity is about persons in unity, mutual love.
This is what life ‘after the spirit’ is about. The
attitude that that a house divided against itself is all we can hope to
do is ‘Life after the flesh’. Is the cost of peace actually
only constant vigilance? Is it about checking up on oneself and
others?
The TV series on China shows us how dehumanising a legislated
communitarianism built from suspicion and conflict can be. To
think that Christianity is about correction; about grasping a theory
and applying it or forcing others to comply with it is a
travesty. All puritanical projects end in violence against
others. They become exclusive because at heart they are focussed
on what humans rather than what God is doing in his world.
The life of God, as community of Persons, is not to be built from
conflict but from forgiveness: that realisation that I have been wrong
and that I am loved and that I am free to love myself still.
And here on Refugee Sunday let us not be afraid to think of its
political and social implications. Life that is built from
forgiving love is most definitely about freedom to love the refugee,
the asylum seeker, the stranger in our midst, a very ancient command in
the Old Testament. Such is the Life of God. Such must become the
Life of the Church to often a pale reflection of God’s Life.
Here in Holy Communion, God, our loving God, comes to us in his
Sacrament. Fr Bill on Thursday preached about the embrace and
kiss of God in the sacraments where God meets us where words run out,
and love is enacted in ritual. Here: holy communion to create of
us a communion.
Come to the altar rail to receive God’s love. May the union
which he is bringing about through his Spirit be strengthened in us and
among us. May we find ‘old things are passed away;
behold, all things are become new.’ Amen
*