GOD’S AWESOME LOVE FOR US

Sermon delivered at the service of the Holy Eucharist on Quinquagesima Sunday the 3rd February 2008 by Fr Nicholas JG Sykes at St. Alban's Church of England, 461 Shedden Road, George Town.

Scriptures: Exodus 24: 12-18     2 Peter 1: 16-21     S. Matthew 17: 1-9

2 Peter 1: 19 "You will do well to pay attention to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts."

I expect that there are many of you like me who find waiting for something to happen to be just as severe a test as being actively engaged in making something happen. We can think of something in our current circumstances, no doubt, or in my case for instance the planning problem encountered last year when we had to wait six weeks or more before proceeding with our schoolroom. If we put ourselves into common situations in other parts of the world, where people have to wait for years on end in refugee camps before getting back home or obtaining a home of their own in the host country, and some of us in Cayman too have been in a somewhat similar position, or in an agricultural economy where the harvest fails due to drought for years in succession, we might ask ourselves how we could put up with the condition of being forced to wait so long and with no power to effect a change but the power of prayer.

 

The themes of the Old Testament lesson and of the Gospel today may help us to put both the active and the passive parts of our lives into perspective. St. Luke, who wrote the book of Acts, quotes Jesus in what is for me a favourite saying of His: "It is not for you," he said, "to know times or seasons which the Father has fixed by His own authority." That authority is key, and is an awesome one. The gifts extended by that divine authority to us of being active, on the one hand, and of waiting expectantly on the other, must be viewed as huge privileges of our relationship with Him.

 

REVELATION ON THE MOUNTAIN

The Scriptures set out for today put us in mind of the great privileges of the covenant relationship that God extends to His people, erring and frail as we all are. The Old and the New Testament scriptures today both show the power and greatness of God being revealed on a mountain. In the Old Testament, Moses enters the holy cloud of God's presence on Mount Sinai for forty days and forty nights in order to receive God's law. We read elsewhere that the people left behind waiting utterly failed to wait faithfully. The New Testament Lesson recalls Peter, James and John being with Christ on the Mount of Transfiguration. "We made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, [and] we were eyewitnesses of His majesty," declares the 2nd Letter of St. Peter. Even a mountain of itself can put us in mind of the majesty of God, the Creator of all things. Like other great phenomena of nature such as hurricanes, it can remind us to ask of God, "What is man, that thou art mindful of him?" A mountain can remind us of our smallness before the awesome and holy God; after all, we are small compared with this huge mass that fills our view. For all their many blessings, in this the Cayman Islands may be truly unfortunate, that they were not blessed with mountains. There is not this particular reminder here of the greatness of God, or that there are things that are too great and too marvellous for us to think that we can control.

 

Yet the Biblical accounts of Moses on Mount Sinai and the apostles on the Mount of Transfiguration go far beyond the majesty of nature. On the Old Testament mountain, the Lord said to Moses, "Come up to me on the mountain, and wait there, and "the appearance of the glory of the Lord was like a devouring fire on the top of the mountain in the sight of the people of Israel. And Moses entered the cloud, and went up on the mountain." He would not have wanted to go there, and he would have had no right whatever to go there, had not the Lord Himself called him there. No more would we have the right to call ourselves children of God, if God had not called us to Himself.

 

THE PRIVILEGE OF GOD'S CALL

Nor was it any light matter for the three apostles to be with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration, when He took them apart from the others and led them up and was transfigured before them. 2nd Peter describes the Transfiguration as the Lord’s "receiving honour and glory from God the Father". As Man, even the Son of God "receives" glory from the Father as if He has no right to it. That phrase "received honour and glory from God the Father", while it describes the Transfiguration, also puts us in mind of the Baptism of Jesus, when He was given a profound heavenly revelation. At that time the Gospels tell us that He heard the voice from heaven saying, "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased", and all the accounts of the Transfiguration tell us that this revelation, directed this time to the apostles, recurred then. The effect of all this on the three apostles was not fully evident until later, although until then it would have helped them to keep faithful to Jesus when being His disciples began to test them sorely. The disciples had to pay attention strongly to this lesson. They had to pay attention to it, in the words of 2nd Peter, "as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawned and the morning star rose in their hearts." They were called to pay attention to the instruction from heaven, though often they did not do so very well, until Jesus rose from the dead. Now the apostolic word to the Church is that we too must pay attention to divine instruction, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in our hearts. Baptised children as they get older also are called to pay attention to the great privilege of their having been adopted by God as His children, even if many things about the faith are still unclear to them. Until the crisis was upon them, the disciples themselves did not understand the heart of Jesus' own teaching, and the necessity to our redemption of the Cross and the Resurrection. A baptised child may be in a rather similar position. Yet God so loves us that we are already baptised into these realities.

 

SUNDAY OF THE LOVE OF GOD

Not only the original Epistle, but also the Prayer Book Collect on this Sunday, the 1st before Lent or Quinquagesima Sunday, caused this Sunday sometimes to be called "Love Sunday". We pray in the Collect that God may send us the Holy Ghost and pour into our hearts the most excellent gift of charity, which is "caritas" or supernatural love. For our church, this Sunday is certainly the Sunday of the love of God, and especially, it seems, manifested for children. Seven years ago on Quinquagesima Sunday there was the laying on of hands and anointing with oil, following which the physician declared the little boy concerned to be free of the condition he had. Six years ago on the same Sunday another little boy was baptised, into that which we declare makes him to be free from the chains of man’s fallen condition. Today we joyfully anticipate the impending provision of an attractive space that promises to be beneficial and salvific especially to the young of this church and neighbourhood. So let us be reminded that by the love of God, by the remarkable privilege extended to us, we are likewise set free. Let us indeed pay attention to this, as to a lamp shining in a dark place. Through Jesus the Beloved Son, God calls us and declares us to be His children too. We are in His care, whether being called to wait expectantly, or whether to act; for His Day is dawning.