9th September 2007TRINITY XIV

Fr David Cherry

Deuteronomy  30  :  15 – 20 ; Philemon  1 - 21 ;  Luke  14  :  25 – 33

The words of Moses to the People : ‘Therefore chose life.”

We are realising that we were made for something more than the story we have created for ourselves...

It’s a great joy to be back and to be celebrating Rufus’ baptism this morning.  Very briefly and simply let’s think about what we’re doing here celebrating Baptism in the context of Holy Communion.

The story of God’s project in his Creation is a story of reconciling a world that has chosen its own ways.  God’s desire is to draw the whole world and all Creation into the Communion of his life – a Trinity of Persons.  

The agent of this project is you and me.  God, the Creator, the Father of all things and without whom nothing would exist, has chosen to call you and me to participate in this project.  This is the ‘big story’, what theologians call the meta-narrative.

And there are other big stories  - national, tribal, cultural stories, even religious stories - which are counter to the story of God, contrary to the intention and project of our gracious God.  The other big story - around in Western society  for now - is a story which is about individual gain, leading to competition, gross selfishness, the devaluing of our humanity, competition for the world’s resources, abuse of Creation, violence and destruction, social breakdown.  And this story wears us all out and we find ourselves wanting to isolate ourselves to get a bit of peace; to downsize and decamp to a village or holiday resort in Spain.   

This is a sure sign that God’s spirit is not dead in us.  We are realising that we were made for something more than the story we have created for ourselves; this self-limiting story from which there seems no way out; where, rather than the Creator, the individual pretends to be the centre of a self-constructed universe.  Iris Murdoch talks of a character ‘trapped by the purposes of his own design.’  A real imprisonment.

So Our Lord in his teaching, in his gestures, in his healing, his death and resurrection is showing, revealing, to us, what God’s story is like – a counter culture of graciousness.  But he is doing more than this – he is doing more than giving us instructions or a morality code like a guru - because he is also demonstrating that this culture is already upon us and that nothing will stop God’s Spirit at work in the hearts of humans and in the painful circumstances of the world.  

Though the Spirit of God is not confined to the followers of Jesus, through our Lord Jesus Christ, God instituted a People as his own, a Church, to be his agents in the world; to be co-operators in God’s big story.  This involves giving up the desires and hopes of a culture which to some extent is a denial of God’s desire for his Creation; as we begin to find our true desire for God’s story.  

There is a real choice to be made, which was made for us or by us at our baptisms.   Jesus says that it was like this from the beginning when God created the world and it is true now.  

Moses said to the People :
I have set before you this day life and good, death and evil….. therefore choose life, that you and your descendants may live, loving the LORD your God, obeying his voice, and cleaving to him

To chose life, to chose God’s story will mean a new constellation of People, where family loyalties become secondary and where we need to count the cost.  We can only wonder what happened to the crowd following Jesus when he turns to them and says – rather than: “Thanks for coming, how nice to see you”…
If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.  
The multitude  must have been drastically thinned out – many turn away and can’t bear this sort of invitation.  

As we celebrate Holy Communion, God’s unbroken communion with us and all his Creation, we are realising more and more the truth of God’s story and its claim on us.   

In the Liturgy of Baptism, Rufus is anointed twice.  The first is a kind of anointing in which we, God’s Church, extend God’s claim to Rufus, our little brother: Christ claims you for his own – you belong to Christ, you are God’s gift to us and you are created to love and serve him.  In this, Rufus lies all your freedom and joy of heart.

The second anointing is the seal of the Holy Spirit, which is also used at Confirmation; the seal which says God’s Spirit is on you and nothing can remove you from this culture of God, nothing can exclude you from God’s story.  

Then Rufus, one day, can stand at his Confirmation and say : Yes, this story of God, is my story.  I commit myself to it whole-heartedly and want nothing more than this.  I chose life.

Amen