Sermon by Rev Sydney Maitland for Sunday 12 February 2022.
• First Reading: Jeremiah 17: 5-10 (Blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in Him)
• Psalm 1
• Epistle: 1 Corinthians 15: 12-20 (Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep)
• Gospel: Luke 6: 17-26 (Blessed are the poor, for yours is the kingdom of God)
They called it ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ and although I have never read or seen it, I understand that it was a raging success. This is for others to say, those who have ventured into the depths of its fictions.
But the title says something quite definite: that there is no black and white, only shades of grey. For those who have been exposed to the insistent demands of religious or secular moralists, this is quite an appealing concept.
But then to look at it another way, the results of any endeavour, whether intellectual or scientific or cultural, will only be as reliable as the founding principles and the integrity of the process by which it came to be. If the founding assumptions or the subsequent reasoning are faulty then the result cannot, by definition, be accurate or reliable. In this sense what was said of the programming of the early computers holds true: ‘Garbage in, garbage out.’
So while there may be some comfort in a world of greys, this is not the starting point of our lessons. In Jeremiah, there is a very simple and stark starting point: to be founded on humanity – or to be founded on God. In the end, the choice must be made, and it really is a choice of one or the other. There is no middle way to comfort the agnostics of the land.
In Jeremiah, security and meaning can be sought in self or in humanity – in effect the whole world but separated from God. There are folk who do exactly this. What is real is what we can see or feel or measure. We are the measure of all things and there is nothing else and nothing more.
At the end of it all there is only darkness and annihilation – certainly not any kind of personal accountability. So this means that the ends justify the means in any endeavour and our morality is the convenience of the moment for the most powerful in the land.
And yes, there are and have been societies run on exactly these lines – but they are not particularly attractive and some are or were downright evil.
But Jeremiah has a further alternative – to put one’s trust in God: unseen and unmeasurable, but still knowable in a relationship that transcends all others.
This is a relationship of faith, leading to fellowship and obedience. It is a relationship of trust and of finding oneself within the context of God and of Him alone. All else flows from this relationship, and once this find of fellowship has been known, then there is and can be no plausible alternative.
And yes, people have indeed died for the sake of this faith rather than forsake it for some atheistic myth.
In a similar way, St Luke also offers a binary choice in his account of Jesus’ Sermon on the Plain. It is different from Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount even if parts of it are similar.
I have no doubt that Jesus said the same thing more than once, possibly altering the delivery to match the situation without altering the content as such.
But the same pattern is there: the contrast between self-sufficiency and faith in God. Those who know themselves to be poor in the sight of God are already blessed, while those who rely on the wealth of their education and possessions and social and economic position have already enjoyed such benefits as are to be had. In the end they will all disappear and we will stand before God, morally and spiritually naked and waiting to be clothed by Him according to His sense of judgment.
There is the same encouragement to find ourselves in Him and not apart from Him. It is a life of knowing Him, trusting Him, rejoicing in Him and placing Him before all others and all else. It is to be emptied of self in order that we may be filled with God Himself and none other.
In a way Paul is pointing to the same thing, as he discusses the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.
His personal faith is founded on having met Jesus in person on the road to Damascus. It knocked him to the ground and left him blinded. This was no daydream of semblance of an apparition.
And so having met Jesus personally, Paul was able to say with total conviction that Jesus was indeed raised from the dead.
And that being the case, then the resurrection of the dead was indeed a reality. It was as universal as the principles of gravity or electromagnetism. Only different in its effects and application.
If there were no resurrection from the dead, then Jesus could not have been raised, and the whole life of faith was not just pointless but wholly deluded.
The fact that God raised Jesus from the dead ahead of time does not violate any universal principle, for in this Jesus was the first to know resurrection in all of humanity. Others who were recovered from death, like Lazarus and the son of the widow of Nain still died in the fulness of time. For Jesus, resurrection was the gift and will of God for all of humanity, and resurrection into a new kind of heavenly realm.
So if Jesus’ resurrection was and is for real, then not only is our preaching of Him valid, but it is a foretaste for our own lives as well.
And that brings us back to the foundations of our lives. If God is the power and author of our resurrection then His is also the standard by which life will be judged and our futures determined. Maybe that is why the psalmist says: ‘The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God.’ (Psalm 14:1)
