THE TREE OF LIFE, LIGHT AND TRUTH

Sermon delivered on the Feast of St. Matthew the Apostle, the 21st September 2008 by Fr. Nicholas J.G. Sykes in the congregations of St. Alban's and St. Mary’s Church of England in the Cayman Islands.

Scriptures: Proverbs 3: 13 - 18    2 Corinthians 4: 1 - 6    S. Matthew 9: 9 - 13

Proverbs 3: 18 referring to Wisdom, "She is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her; those who hold her fast are called happy."

2 Corinthians 4:4 "Their unbelieving minds are so blinded by the god of this passing age, that the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, cannot dawn upon them and bring them light."

INTRODUCTION - THE FACT OF OPPOSITION TO THE LORD'S MESSAGE

Our readings for today provide a basis for thought about the factors that hinder or prevent people from readily accepting the proclamation of Jesus Christ as Lord. Whenever we pray the Lord’s Prayer we pray "Thy Kingdom Come", and although the seventh angel in the book of Revelation blows his trumpet to the sound of loud voices saying that the kingdom of this world became the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, that victorious finale of the Biblical account of the world's destiny, which is the fulfilment of our prayers, does not yet fully appear. Even the Lord Jesus Himself saw disciples fall away, saw people choose lifestyles that were incompatible with His invitations and demands upon them, and indeed saw one of his closest associates develop inexorably into someone who would deliberately betray Him to His enemies with a sign of personal affection. The age of our own lifetime is for an enormous number an age of the discarding of our inheritance - an inheritance both of personal belief and of institutional expressions of belief. Those who insist on continuing to believe experience a sense sometimes of being left behind as the tide of secularism surges forward. Or sometimes we experience our beliefs being whittled down to specific religious practices on a particular day of the week, while for the rest of our life's schedule our effective beliefs and acts surge forward with the world's tide along with those around us.

WISDOM AS AN OT TYPE OR FIGURE OF CHRIST

Our first lesson from the book of Proverbs naturally does not refer to Jesus explicitly, because it is a sample of the wisdom literature of the Old Testament. To proclaim wisdom as superior to riches in the blessedness it confers upon a man is a sort of Old Testament version or type or foreshadowing of the New Testament proclamation of Christ as Lord. The superiority of wisdom over riches is one of the many and various ways Hebrews 1:1 says that God spoke of old to the fathers by the prophets, whereas in these last days God has spoken to us by a Son.

THE FATEFUL CHOICE

So the word spoken to our fathers in faith, the Old Testament people of Israel, about wisdom is that it is superior to the more tangible and visible blessings that all men desire. "Gain from wisdom," our writer says, "is better than gain from silver," and profit from it is better than gold. Every one of us can set to thinking about this: if you and I could make a cast-iron choice, of whether to be a seriously wise person, or whether to be a seriously rich person, would we without any hesitation or misgiving choose the first over the second?

There is a promise attached to choosing rightly, says Proverbs. Long life is in her right hand; in her left hand are riches and honour. As with the choice of Solomon in his dream, the choice of wisdom brings these other blessings also. The New Testament equivalent is Jesus' advocacy to seek the Kingdom of Heaven, and for those that do, He says, all things shall be added unto them. Of course when the "right-handed" choice is being made the immediate result will be some kind of a cross, and the riches do not appear until afterwards. When Jesus so chose in Gethsemane, the added blessings to Him were not to appear until the moment of His death, and those that do choose after His example, like Matthew, accept the denial of visible and tangible blessings, no matter what blessings might follow in eternal life or even in this age. Proverbs says, long life is in her right hand, in biblical imagery the better or stronger hand. The New Testament reading of "long life" is "everlasting life" or life eternal, and that is the blessing of greatest value and significance. But in the other hand of Wisdom, the left hand - the less favoured hand - riches and honour are found. It may not be fanciful to see here the hint of a warning, that with these left-handed blessings, there is at least to the fallen human mind a built-in temptation. Those that desire the left-handed blessings rather than their source are choosing wrongly. So in the New Testament when a choice arises between adherence to our fondest possession, even to those we love most dearly, yes even to our own life itself, and adherence to the Son of Man, it is a fateful choice. When we cannot bring what we have or those we have to Him, we are called to go to Him alone. He can be trusted to look after the matter of their being drawn to Him as well. The choice that the early martyrs made against their own life merely followed from their public choice to follow Him.

MATTHEW'S CHOICE

There are no biographical details to be found about the choice of Matthew, or Levi as he is called in the other synoptic gospels, to follow the Lord. The Gospels do not dwell on what may have been in his mind, or whether it was a choice he had to weigh up for any time before making it. Whatever such considerations Matthew had were settled before we see Jesus directing him in the Gospel today to follow him. We see him rising and following Him without question. This was a Jew whose occupation involved living off the wealth of a financial system that the religious Jews regarded as the worst case of Gentile ungodliness. How severe a cross to him it was to give up this trade, as the call of Jesus required in this case, we do not know. But we honour St. Matthew because he was not (in St. Paul's words) "blinded by the god of this passing age". When Christ said "Follow me" Matthew put behind him all that his own circumstances had sustained him with. The sequel to his choice was the scorn of the Pharisees. It was a scorn directed at Jesus Himself, and I wonder if St. Matthew was tempted to feel shame or self-condemnation when they started to get at Jesus for eating with the tax-collectors and sinners that gathered at table, perhaps at a farewell party held by Matthew himself as he was about to leave them, an occasion in which they could see at first hand the One who had changed Matthew’s life.

 

OVERCOMING THE OPPOSITION TO OUR CHOICE TO FOLLOW CHRIST

But this shows us an important truth. The cross that St. Matthew felt from the scorn of the Pharisees was really intended for the Lord Himself. Whenever we see opposition to a choice of following Christ, it is basically because Christ Himself is being opposed. And this also means that such opposition is never being borne alone by the follower, because Jesus Christ Himself bears it. To see this helps us to be protected from the blindness inflicted by the god of this passing age. We all should discern that our Church is being called to prepare for and choose - perhaps out of one of our own number - a second priest. So will this call be for one or more of us the word of Wisdom, the Tree of Life, or will we seek only the left-handed blessings? May we in our own time choose to adhere to and follow the Wisdom and Word of the eternal age, who once came into our own time to bear a cross and to say to men, "Follow Me", and to bring them the Tree of Life, Light and Truth.