THE PYRAMID OF SATISFACTIONS

Sermon delivered on the Fourth Sunday after Easter (Easter 4), the 2^nd May 2010 by Fr Nicholas JG Sykes in the congregation of St. Alban's Church of England, George Town, Cayman Islands in the service of the Holy Eucharist.

 Scriptures:            Acts 11:1-18                        Revelation 21: 1-6                    John 13: 31-35

 John 13: 31   When Judas had gone out, Jesus said, “Now is the Son of man glorified, and in him God is glorified.”

 Having lived in both in the town and in the country it has been possible for us to own at various times a cat and a dog, and possible therefore to observe and compare the characteristic behaviour of each animal. Although we do not own a cat now it is still possible to compare the two because we have a stray cat or two that make use of any left-overs from the dog's meals when the coast is clear. When I watch and hear my dog drinking water, the sound of water being lapped up seems to be the sound of a pure satisfaction. When a cat drinks water, there is no sound and no spilling, and a seemingly careful approach to the exercise, but when a dog drinks, it doesn’t matter to him how much it can be heard or if some is slopped out, and it is as if some of the satisfaction and relief he is feeling from the drinking is being expressed in the carefree sounds of his lapping.

 

The satisfaction is the one important thing of that moment to the dog, and we humans too are to a large degree driven by the need to be satisfied. Yet the human need for satisfaction is complex. When Jesus said, “Seek ye the kingdom of heaven and all things shall be added unto you”, he was giving high expression to that complexity. If our minds and intentions are focussed exclusively on obtaining the satisfaction of the moment, we may lose the possibility of a greater satisfaction. Jesus’ teaching suggests that there is a sort of hierarchy or pyramid of satisfactions. If we are consumed or satisfied with those that are lower in the hierarchy, we will neither seek nor find the ones further up. If we are disciplined to seek the ones at the top, we will find them, and also get to taste in some way the ones on the way up the pyramid as well. Numerous applications of this are no doubt possible, including its application to the finances of the Cayman Islands or any other place.

 

The idea of a pyramid can I think be applied to our Christian discipleship too. In the first lesson today from Acts chapter 11, we see the interaction between Christians who are described by St. Luke to be “those of the circumcision” and the apostle Peter. Those on both sides of the interaction, Peter on the one hand and “those of the circumcision” on the other, were both Jewish as well as both Christian. The party of the circumcision believed that the laws of the old covenant were still supremely important for a Jewish man to keep, and that the supremely satisfying goal of discipleship was to keep the laws and customs with the greatest rigour. They felt that Peter the leading apostle should set an example to the church of this rigour in keeping the law, and they were mortified that he had broken the customs by accepting the hospitality and the food of uncircumcised Gentiles.

 

Coming from a Galilean fisherman’s background, S. Peter most likely was not accustomed to taking as much care to keep the law as rigorously as did these Jerusalem critics, who at that time thought that the pinnacle of discipleship for one that had been baptised into Christ was perfection in observance of the law. But S. Peter has to explain himself to his critics, and these are the the reasons he gives for his actions. First, he had a vision - the thing like a great sheet descending with both clean and unclean creatures in it, and a heavenly voice directing him to slaughter and eat them, and stating that what God had made clean must not be called unclean. Secondly, there was the providential timing of the arrival of the three Gentile men, just when the vision was concluded. Thirdly, Peter said, the Spirit prompted him to go home with the Gentiles as they were requesting, just as if they had been Jewish. Fourthly, he said, he was not acting alone, for six other Jewish men accompanied him to Cornelius the centurion, and fifthly, there was the testimony of Cornelius himself, that an angel of God had directed him to send for Peter, who would come with words by which he and his household would be saved. Then sixthly, Peter said, when he did start sharing the Gospel with the Gentiles, the Holy Spirit visibly anointed them just as with the Jews on the day of Pentecost. So since God had given the same gift to these Gentiles as he had given to the first believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, how could he withstand God in the matter?

 

Peter showed that whatever level keeping the laws and customs of his people demonstrated was not as high in the pyramid of Christian discipleship as following the clear promptings of the Lord step by step. Following these promptings, the Gospel was advanced into the Gentile culture, to the great amazement and acknowledgement of Peter’s critics. This is a lesson for us too in the later times of the church. While the natural alignments and ways of doing things in the Church are to be taken into account, it might become necessary, with the greatest spiritual care and godly advice, to vary some of them if we are to be faithful to a higher level in the pyramid of discipleship. We too are to seek not to try to withstand God, when He declares His intentions.

 

According to St. John the Beloved Disciple, the course of events that led to Jesus’ betrayal and crucifixion were in order for  the Son of man to be glorified, and for God to be glorified in him. Now this was far from obvious to most people at the time. In our Gospel today, the main happening that was the occasion of Jesus saying this, was the departure of Judas Iscariot from the company at the Last Supper to go and fetch the Chief Priest’s guard to the garden where he knew Jesus would go after supper. Satan had in effect said to Judas, “Now is the time for Jesus to be forced into an impossible position”. But God had said to Jesus, “Now is the Son of man glorified, and in him God is glorified.” Judas’ own motivations were unclear, but the Passion of the Christ that Judas’ action brought on was at the very pinnacle of the divine intention to bear the burden of the redemption of mankind. The action of the traitor was in Jesus’ perspective the occasion for joying and glorying in the victory that the action would contribute to bringing about. The incarnate Saviour showed that he was indeed at the very top of the pyramid of discipleship, seeking no less than the perfect will of God, whatever the personal cost. How glorified indeed was the Son of man!

 

We the poor fallen sons of Adam and daughters of Eve, baptised nevertheless into Christ, are called to His high satisfactions, and not to settle for anything less. All of the former arrangement, the first heaven and the first earth, will pass away, but the vision has been granted of which we have heard, of the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband; and to that city, the Church triumphant, we are called. God says, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give freely from the fountain of the water of life.” Then let our thirsts be assuaged from this fountain, to be found in the kingdom of God where the Son of man is glorified, rather than by lesser and limiting satisfactions.