TRUST AND CONFESSION                            

Sermon delivered on the First Sunday in Lent, the 21^st February 2010 by Fr. Nicholas J.G. Sykes in the congregation of St. Alban’s Church of England (Cayman Islands) in the service of the Holy Eucharist.

 Scriptures : Deuteronomy 26: 1-11                       Romans 10: 8b-13                  Luke 4: 1-13

 Romans 10:8  “The Word is near you, on your lips and in your heart.”

 Research has been documented showing that the age that men in particular reach in their life is affected by whether they have a companion or not. On average our lifespan is longer when we do have one. That is no surprise, certainly. When elderly people live by themselves, the physical dangers of life are more of a threat to them if there is nobody else to give them a helping hand or even to check on them from time to time. Yet I would suppose that the benefits of companionship go deeper than these sorts of physical factors. A study published in 1994 showed that the percentage of married men living past 65 years old was 80%, while the percentage of unmarried or divorced men living past 65 was 32%. It is beneficial for the mind and the soul to interact with others, and no doubt it is the deeper levels of interaction that are more beneficial than the shallower ones.

 

As those baptised into Christ, we are all most fortunate that our baptism and our faith involve very basically a critically important closeness or companionship that we are able to lay claim to. While I know of studies that show that on average ill people recover much more quickly if they are people of faith, I cannot cite studies that specifically show that people of faith live longer than others, though clearly better health would contribute to the lengthening of our lifespan. We are fortunate because Christianity involves much more than keeping to the rules, even though as in disciplines of every kind, there are in practice for Christians rules, boundaries and obligations to be observed and met at various levels, just as there are in all well-functioning homes, families or communities. We would have to be in retreat from the world altogether if there were none of these. Yet we should never forget that the more basic thing about Christianity is our relatedness, primarily to our Heavenly Father, and flowing from this, our relationships with men and women. And of these relationships we are called into a particular sort of relationship of closeness with those who are members of the household of faith. If we do truly have such relationships, that would most likely contribute to length of years. As people of faith we know too that length of years is not the only sign of God’s blessing. A greater sign than length of years is whether or not life is profoundly better, however short or long it may be in this age. The real prize and blessing, of which this profound improvement also would only be a sign, is in the age to come.

 

Our Old Testament lesson today is from the book of Deuteronomy chapter 26, which details certain ordinances which the children of Israel should conform to when they enter the land God gives them for an inheritance. The book of Deuteronomy is one that our Lord especially quoted from, as He did in the wilderness, and although this portion deals ostensibly with outward observances, the real flavour of what is being enjoined upon the people has to do with their inner attitude of heart, and that in turn has everything to do with their disposition towards the God that brought them to their inheritance. We all know that when we are involved in the production of something, like a cabinet we might have made or doors that we might have varnished, or no doubt crops or fruit that we might have harvested after planting (though this is not my particular forte), it is something of a personal expression. So when they periodically take some of the ground’s first-fruits that they harvested and set it before the altar of the Lord, it is something of themselves that is being dedicated. Through that gift, a relationship is being forged or strengthened between the Lord and the worshipper. So from the outward observance we move to a relationship involving an inner disposition of the heart. The words that the worshipper recites beginning “My father was a wandering Aramaean” are not merely a formula but words of profound humility and thanksgiving about the nation’s humble origins and its being rescued from peril by the mighty hand of God. The worshipper confesses his whole position and declares his trust in God.

 

Our Lord’s temptations in the wilderness, too, are about His relationship with the Heavenly Father. The Satanic attempt was aimed at breaking the filial relationship that was so recently confirmed at the Baptism of Jesus by John, when St. Luke records that the Holy Spirit descended upon Him in bodily form, as a dove, and a voice came from heaven, “Thou art my beloved Son; with thee I am well pleased.”

 

“If you are the Son of God,” He was tempted in the wilderness, “command this stone to become bread.” Whether He could have done so or not was not an issue. The proof of His Sonship must lie in what has already been revealed to Him, and His obedience to that, and to seek a further sign  now would be to disbelieve what He already knows, and to go contrary to His obedience, drawing up the ground upon which He stands. It was by that ground that He lives, and not by breaking the great fast in such a way. “Man shall not live by bread alone - but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God”, a quotation from Deuteronomy, He makes in reply. In the desert as well as in the Jordan, in the dryness that is a foreshadowing of His last hours on the Cross as well as in the rippling streams of a new beginning, what has been revealed to Him of His Sonship He holds beyond question or doubt. This was the new Man, the firstfruits of a race that would be part of and yet unlike the race of Adam, the generation of those who were being given power to become sons of God.

 

It is not hard to see in the recent violence of so many sorts on the part of such cowardly individuals, the exercise of temptation and a series of failures to resist it. But the more basic issue is whether the perpetrators and their silent allies have in their lives ever been given a knowledge of God’s offer of being sons of His. Without accepting that offer, they live under a spreading curse, as our recent declaration of Commination on Ash Wednesday shows. Sons of Adam must find the way of becoming sons of God.

 

Jesus affirmed in His wilderness trials that the true Man is sustained in every circumstance by the word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Our text today quotes St. Paul’s words in our second lesson, Romans 10:8  “The Word is near you, on your lips and in your heart.” He is saying that our Christian confession has brought us to an entirely new era of closeness to God Himself. The very words that we make to confess our baptismal faith are the Word that God has to speak to us and to transform our hearts and lives. That Word that we confess is “Jesus is Lord”, and if we make that baptismal confession and know in our heart that He is not far away either in time or in place – not someone that lived long ago but is now dead and buried in a far-away place, but that God raised Him from the dead to be with His people now, - then we are truly the sons and close companions of God, in the time of trial being saved and fashioned in His image, aiming for the prize of fulfilment in the age to come.