THE STRONG WAY - SUFFERING, HUMILIATION AND ULTIMATE TRIUMPH

Sermon delivered on the 4th Sunday after Easter the 20th April 2008 by Fr Nicholas JG Sykes in the congregation of St. Alban's Church of England, George Town, Cayman Islands.

Scriptures: Acts 7: 55-60     1 Peter 2: 2-10     John 14: 1-14

1 Peter 2:4 "Come to Him, to that living stone, rejected by men but held by God chosen and precious."

TRUE STRENGTH

It is good to recall that there is in the final analysis a correspondence between what is good and what is strong, and this recollection is I think achieved by the Bible lessons today. We may become used to the idea that it is evil rather than the good that is strong, because we do indeed perceive many evils that seem to be strong, and often the good is given a weak position from which it must proceed and overcome. But because of the inherent strength of what is from God and therefore good, it is able to prevail ultimately. Part of that strength is a quality such as patient endurance. With such qualities the good is able to tolerate the appearance of being weak or powerless, for as long as it takes to prevail. And then and only then for many, its true strength becomes apparent.

THE MINDS OF MEN

During the latter part of our Lord's ministry among His disciples before the Passion, part of their difficulty was that His great goodness seemed sometimes to be weak rather than strong. In today's Gospel two of the disciples contradict His sayings because, I suppose, they were not ready to suspend their own judgment about them in favour of the trust that Jesus was calling forth from them. When Jesus taught that the disciples did already know the way He was going, Thomas said, "No, we don't know." And when Jesus told them that they already knew and had seen the Father, Philip chimed in and said superfluously, "You show us the Father." The fact was that their minds were still the minds of men and not the mind of Christ. The disciples, towards the end of Jesus' ministry on earth, were not ready, as quite often we are not ready, to move beyond their own perceptions of victory for Jesus and themselves, to the point of putting Him into the centre of their outlook, no matter what the external prospects for that position might appear to be.

THE STRENGTH OF JUDAS

This might go some way towards explaining the mindset of the marginally and supposedly "Christian" leaders one has at times seen who consider that clearing out a large population of another religion or culture from their midst by a campaign of terror and butchery represents a victory for the Christian cause. This is more akin to the strength that Judas Iscariot is believed to have wanted Jesus to display, rather than the strength of the actual way of Jesus through the cross and Resurrection. Great harm is always done to the Christian cause in people's minds and hearts by these misguided progroms. For this reason the Jewish people and others blame Christianity to some extent for the evils of the Nazis' Jewish extermination policy. These examples demonstrate that though the good may ultimately correspond with the strong, as we believe it does, the strong is not necessarily the good. What seems immediately strong may indeed be Satanically evil.

THE MIND OF CHRIST ON VICTORY

So it is critically important for us at this time to move beyond our own perception of victory for Jesus and for ourselves, to putting Him into the centre of our outlook, to baptise our minds into the death and Resurrection of Christ, so that the whole concept of Christian victory is converted to encompass the truth that God so loved the world, including our enemies, that He gave His only Son, that whoever will believe in Him, including those of the enemy camp, should not perish but have eternal life. The cross and the Resurrection of Christ show us that this is the strong position the Church must take about every matter, no matter what the implications of it on the ground might be. The suspension of judgment that is called for by such a position involves trust, a walk by faith rather than sight, the walk that characterises all truly Christian positions. We are called, for instance, as children of the Resurrection, to take a position over the deliberate as well as in some cases unwitting secularisation of the Cayman Islands by the powers that be. We are called, also, as children of the Resurrection, to defend the Church of England in the Cayman Islands. We should bear in mind that the positions and defences that we set up are diminished by attitudes on our part of superiority and contempt for the powers-that-be either of church and state that are hooked with the ideologies of our day. For thirdly, we are called, as children of the Resurrection, to walk as individuals consistently with our baptismal privileges and vows. These areas represent mighty areas of battle, and I suggest that all of us, being children of the Resurrection, are called to the battleground. It is necessary to have the correct strategy for our battles, because nothing less than ultimate triumph will do for the outcome, though suffering and humiliation for us may more quickly appear. We must perceive correctly the shape of Christian victory, being neither deceived by false substitutes nor deluded into foregoing the ultimate triumph.

THE STRENGTH OF THE FAITHFUL

As we were thinking at the beginning, the readings today remind us of the ultimate correspondence, no matter how things often seem to be contrary to it, between the good and the strong. Terror and butchery, as well as cynical deception, are evil, their appearance of strength is satanic and not real, and ultimately such things are mortally weak. Our first lesson, a portion of the account of the martyrdom of St. Stephen, reminds us that in a time of the direst personal subjection to terror, what prevails comes forth from the obedience that a man of faith renders to God. We know little or nothing of Stephen’s family or social life: just that he was a full of faith and of the Holy Spirit. It was this that prevailed over the fury of his persecutors, though in the eyes of those who appeared to be strong, it was he who appeared to be weak and foolish. But as the saying goes, he who has the last laugh, laughs loudest. At the close of his earthly life, Stephen was given a vision of the Christ, standing at the right hand of God, welcoming him into the courts of heaven. Then Stephen gave his attackers the ultimate challenge of words that recalled to them the words of the Christ they had condemned, and of forgiveness in a similar spirit to Christ’s. That martyrdom, we should recall, was witnessed by Saul, the great persecutor, who subsequently became a great apostle, and his key ideas as an apostle one can even see foreshadowed in the great speech that St. Stephen gave to his attackers. Our New Testament lesson refers to Jesus Christ as the cornerstone laid in Zion, applying Old Testament imagery of strength, security and defence to the Risen and Living Lord. So as St. Peter says, Christ is that living stone, to whom we are called to come, and be made ourselves living stones built within the spiritual House of God, God's holy and priestly people. We are called to be little rocks, little stones after the pattern of the Big Rock, the Big Stone that is Christ our Lord. The Christian position, the truly Christian world-view, is the strongest one of all, the one that endures through the failure of all others, no matter how strong they might appear, and no matter how weak and corrupted the Christian Church appears at any time to become. For after all, even through the death of all deaths, the living Christ was raised, and will prevail. We too in our time are to be little Christs, and though called also to die, we are to conquer and prevail.

 

QUESTIONS

1. Give some examples from your own personal experience of the good, in spite of appearances, being stronger than the evil.

2. List some biblical instances of good prevailing over evil.

3. Can the "truly Christian position" be distinguished from positions taken by the Christian Church, or do these positions actually define what Christianity is? Can Christians set themselves up in judgment over their Church?