THE WIDENING
CIRCLE OF THE LIGHT
Sermon delivered
on the Sunday called Sexagesima (the 2nd Sunday before Lent) the 27th
January 2008 by Fr Nicholas JG Sykes at St. Alban's Church, 461
Shedden Road, George Town, Cayman Islands.
Scriptures:
Isaiah 9:1-4 1 Corinthians 1:
10-18 Matthew 4:12-23
Matt 4: 17
"From that time Jesus began to preach, saying, "Repent, for
the kingdom of Heaven is at hand."
LIGHT IN THE
DARK
The Gospels
record that Jesus began His main public ministry after He heard that
John the Baptist had been arrested, and we might imagine that such a
circumstance could put a damper on such a proclamation: for John's
message also was one of repentance, a turning to God's way.
Characteristically, however, the ministry of Jesus starts as a light
shining from a dark backdrop. We see much of this in today's
Scriptures: the darkness and the light juxtaposed, and the light not
being vanquished by the darkness, as St. John the Evangelist puts it.
S. John the Baptist was arrested by Herod so that the message of
repentance might be overcome, but that very arrest was the signal for
Jesus' public ministry to begin, which took the message of repentance
to a new level. Jesus moved men and women to repentance by force of
the imminence of God's Kingdom, which was realised through His Person
and His message.
THE RULE OF
HEAVEN
God's Kingdom is
not always manifest by good circumstances or even by familiar
circumstances. While it is a natural human reaction to retreat to the
familiar or to the congenial every so often, to restore oneself with a
nice cup of tea or whatever, to sleep in one's own bed, to walk the
dog or bury oneself in a good book or sit on a comfortable sofa in
front of the TV, yet as Christians we cannot afford to make such
things our heaven. The true rule of Heaven is where Jesus is and in
His viewpoint and message, and that may be in very unfamiliar or even
inauspicious circumstances. Six years ago I travelled to India, not
exactly in the steps of St. Thomas, but certainly to experience and to
recount some of the fruits of that mission to India that Thomas the
Apostle reputedly undertook in AD 52. And then just when I was really
getting to enjoy the food I was called to return to the cold of
England ahead of time to be with my ailing mother, to minister to her
in her need and to help my sisters make decisions that would affect
her. Therefore instead of spending the Season of Epiphany in our
familiar setting here, one Sunday six years ago I was in the country
district of Ichilampady South India, being helped by the Rev. Jacob
Verghese, the Priest of the Parish, to find the place in the English
version of their St. James Liturgy, which was being chanted in a
language altogether unknown to me, preaching while a Dr. John Thomas
translated to the congregation phrase by phrase, partaking of Holy
Communion at their altar, all the time with one's shoes removed as is
customary there, and enjoying the friendship of the congregation
afterwards, while they auctioned off chickens and ground produce, as
that Sunday was their Harvest Festival. Eager for the ministry of
healing, Jacob and his wife provided for me before I left India to lay
hands on their child Jordice, who had a rare sickness, and Dr. John
Thomas too made request for us to intercede for him and his wife, that
they might after several years have a child. Then the following Sunday
afternoon I was at my mother's bedside in the Arrowe Park Hospital in
the Wirral in the presence of my sisters providing the ministry of
absolution, laying on of hands and anointing with oil, an action which
seemed to form a climax of my visit to England and its main purpose.
The setting was again entirely different, but the kingdom of heaven
was at hand, just as it was at the Mar Thoma
church in Ichilampady, and just as it has been here. In all
circumstances we are called to heed the words and the viewpoint of
Jesus, to be aware that the rule of Heaven is at hand, and to return
in spirit, heart and action to the way of God, and this is exactly
what the approaching season of Lent particularly recalls to us. For we
are part of the body of Christ and we are called to think with the
mind of Christ. Since we are baptised into Christ our perspectives on
everything are called into conformity with His, and as with Him, we
can be given to understand the strangest of circumstances and even
sometimes the darkest of circumstances to be the backdrop for the
shining of great light.
PROPHECY OF
LIGHT IN GALILEE
Such a
perspective is prophesied in our Old Testament lesson today from
Isaiah Ch 9, in which the coming Messiah is promised to transform the
darkness and gloom of the defeated lands of Zebulun and Naphtali into
something glorious; for "The people who walked in darkness have
seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on
them has light shined." For Isaiah, for all his remarkable
discernment that this salvation would come through the birth of a son
whose name would be called "Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace", part of the circumstances
of it was the shedding of the burdens and the breaking of the rod of
the Assyrian oppressor. Yet long after such circumstances have fallen
away, the prophetic words are quoted, this time from the Greek
Septuagint version, in our Gospel from St. Matthew. "The people
who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in
the region and shadow of death light has dawned." The
Gospel-writer sees the presence of Jesus Himself in Galilee and in
Capernaum as the fulfilment of the prophetic words, because Galilee
included the old tribal territories of Zebulun and Naphtali, and the
town of Capernaum, where Jesus had his home base after he left
Nazareth, was smack in the middle of those regions. There are many
indications in the Gospels that the Jews of Judaea and Jerusalem
looked down on these northern territories with their mixed populations
of Jews, Gentiles and Samaritans, and the prophecy in their Scriptures
that they would be made glorious seems to have been widely
disregarded. Typically, it is recorded of Jesus that He went about all
Galilee, teaching in the synagogues, preaching the gospel of the
kingdom and healing every disease and every infirmity among the
people. The dark backdrop of the place being despised by the cognoscenti
made it peculiarly appropriate for the light of His ministry. This is
the ministry to which we as part of the body of Christ are heirs.
THE LIGHT
OVERCAME EARLY DIFFICULTIES
We do not,
therefore, look for ideal circumstances or ideal people to demonstrate
the presence and light of Jesus, because His is a Presence that causes
light to dawn in the darkest of places and circumstances. The truth of
this is demonstrated by the Corinthian church, which we heard about in
the second Lesson from St. Paul's first letter to the Corinthians. The
letter shows how upset the Apostle is by the reports he has received
of the quarrelling among them, and of their division into factions
supporting various different leaders, and he counsels them to consider
that the real light of the gospel is the word of the cross, not the
eloquence of the preaching nor the prestige of the leadership. When
one looks at all the difficulties reported with the early church, it
is indeed remarkable that the gospel survived it, and we may take the
courage to have faith that the gospel can in the same way survive over
our own failures and weaknesses in the Church of the present time.
LIGHT IN TODAY'S
DIFFICULTIES
Certainly the
Church today in the West is beset by many difficulties, not least by
the mental climate of unbelief, which is so prevalent both in the
State and in the Church, and which causes many moderns to consider
that religious issues are completely irrelevant to their lives. From
those few unforgettable days in India, for which I will always be
deeply grateful to Abraham for his provision, I observed the very
different mental climate of the east, which, though not without its
own great problems, impinges differently on the life of the church,
because it could never be said to be a climate of unbelief. In
Nazareth St. Luke records that unbelief made it difficult even for
Jesus to have an effective ministry there, so we cannot minimise the
effect of it on the life of the church today. It is up to us in the
churches to provide the antidote for unbelief, though we might think
we are ill-equipped for such a task. Yet our weakness is the backdrop
for His grace. The only recourse is for us to look to the Presence and
the character, the viewpoint and the words of Jesus, and rely upon Him
for the shining of the Light and the moving of men and women to truth,
repentance and faith, even in our own time and place, this 21st
century of Our Lord in the Western world. I suggest that this recourse
and antidote for unbelief should form the basic purpose for our Lenten
discipline in 2008.
QUESTIONS
1. Give personal
instances of "heaven" being quite different from peace or
comfort.
2. "The
real light of the gospel is the word of the cross". Comment.
3. Early
Christians used to be considered to be "atheists" by pagans,
in the modern West, the mental climate is unbelief or practical
atheism, while in parts of the East, the mental climate may regard
both the West and Christians as atheists (or infidels). In each case,
how has the Church been influenced?
