TRANSFORMING GRACE

Sermon delivered on the 2nd Sunday in Lent the 17th February 2008 by Fr. Nicholas J.G. Sykes in the congregations of St. Alban's Church of England, George Town, and St. Mary’s Cayman Brac.

Scriptures: Genesis 12: 1-4a     Romans 4: 1-5, 13-17     S. John 3: 1-17

Romans 4: 17b "God gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that are not."

THE UNEXPECTED VICTORY

Although a good work of fiction follows certain guidelines or rules for itself, it will keep the interest of the reader by its use of the unexpected. The unexpected elements in the plot or perhaps in the nature of the characters cause the rules or the underlying pattern to be worked out in a way that engages our interest. In this, actually, a good work of fiction will be a sort of expression in miniature of life itself, and it is rightly said that life is stranger than fiction. I have to add my congratulations to those who have been responsible for "Find the Lady" at the Playhouse, which was an excellent and highly amusing demonstration of these general principles. As in life itself, the resolution of the plot was very sweet, because the potential for it had not been apparent for much of the time.

THOSE FINALLY SHOWN TO BE CHOSEN

Those parents who consider their children to have been late developers know the sort of feeling, I am sure. My intention at this time, however, is to point out that something of this pattern is to be found in the purposeful providence of God Himself for His people. Our Old Testament lesson recounts the call to Abram to leave his country, his kindred and his father's house, and to go and settle in the land that God would show to him. God promises to make of Abram a great nation and that his name will be a blessing to all the families of the earth. We remember how the story goes on, and how with the continuing childlessness of Sarah his wife the whole project seems to be completely impossible, and that various false attempts to bring about the desired result were made, until at a very late stage God Himself visits His servants, makes the promise imminent and brings about a fulfilment. And all that is only one layer, so to speak, in God's providence, because as St. Paul shows, the heirs of the promise are not to be the descendants of Abraham by law only. They are to be those of many nations who share his faith. Abraham failed often, as do his physical and spiritual descendants fail often in their walk of righteousness, but it is still for his series of exemplary acts of obedience in faith that Abraham is remembered. "So Abram went, as the Lord had told him" we hear in our Old Testament reading, the first account in a series, of the faith of Abraham. He did not focus on the problem of uprooting himself and his dependants from the land of his father, or on the problem of what his prospects might be in an unknown land, but on the outcome of God’s promise, however obscure the means for the fulfilment of that may have been at the time. St. Paul asserts that the Jews as descendants of Abraham indeed have historical advantages: as he says in Chapter 9, to the Israelites belong the sonship, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, the promises, and even according to race, the Christ. If life wasn't stranger than fiction the Jews should be leading the world where the Christian religion is concerned. But the real descendants of Abraham, St. Paul says, are the people who have faith the same way Abraham had faith when he believed God and did His bidding. The descendants of people who were not related in any way physically to Abraham, could become children of the covenant themselves by faith in the one descendant of Abraham who would redeem mankind, Jesus Christ. The losers, the Gentiles, had the hidden potential after all for coming out well that had not been revealed at first. God "calls into existence the things that are not", or, more literally, God calls the "not being things" as "being things". He quickens to life what had been considered dead in His sight.

 

WHAT DO WE RELY ON?

So it is that Jesus taught in His parable of the publican and the Pharisee in the Temple that it was not the one who relied upon what He did for God, not the one who claimed to excel in fulfilling the demands of God's law, that went away from the Temple without God counting his sin any more, but the one who threw himself on God's mercy. Our Gospel today gives the fuller account of Nicodemus' visit to Jesus by night, a part of which we always use in the Baptism service. In this episode Jesus teaches that nobody can rely upon his own norms - even religious norms - for entering the Kingdom of God. There must be a new birth from above: there must be a dying to the old human nature and a putting on of what descends to us from above. For an individual the visible marker of this dying and birth is Baptism when he is incorporated into the Church, the Body of Christ. He too then becomes a child of the covenant, and a child is called to grow. Now we too tend to forsake the way of faith, in the same way Jewish people in New Testament times found it natural to pull away from the way of faith and rely upon adherence to their laws to claim advancement in holiness, only for us it is not the law but other things. In some ways we are worse than our Jewish spiritual forbears, because the things we rely upon are less holy or moral than what they relied upon. This is where a "Lenten examination" can do us all good, to identify in us what we tend to rely on to claim advancement over others. From where I stand now I cannot presume to do this for any other individual except myself. Do we think that our family, our nationality, our immigration status, our street-smartness, our savvy, our security of housing, our insurance policies, our credit rating, our academic or professional qualifications, the prestige of our job, our prominence in society, our popularity, our wealth, our marital security, to take a few examples, will advance us over others in the sight of God? I must emphasise that to do so would only be natural, just as natural for us as relying upon fulfilling the demands of their customs and laws was for our Jewish forbears.

THE KINGDOM OF THE SPIRIT

We might also be in denial about such things, claiming that these are not very deeply ingrained attitudes of ours when in fact they are. But bear in mind, as St. Paul said about the Jewish heritage, the person who possesses these things does indeed have real advantages. Yet to rely upon them for what descends from God is not the way of faith. We are called to an advancement in the Kingdom of the Spirit, an advancement that can lead to such qualities and character traits as purity, knowledge, long-suffering, kindness, a holy spirit, and unfeigned love, to use one of the Pauline lists. Such things can only be developed within us through a spiritual incorporation into God’s Kingdom; it is not within the fallen man's power at all to develop such qualities. But we must not lose heart, for it is indeed God who quickens the dead and calls into existence the things that are not. We admit our failures and repent of our sins, but a happy outcome of our afflictions is by focussing not on these or the problems they cause, but upon the Kingdom of God and the grace that God grants us to be citizens of this Kingdom and conquerors of Satan. Relying on faith in Jesus Christ, welcoming His means of grace and taking the way of faith whenever alternatives are presented will place us in the way of God increasing within us the various marks of His spiritual Kingdom, the marks of being incorporated in the new Man and the new creation, whose Head is our Lord Jesus Christ in the throne-room of Heaven.