PRESENCE AND OBEDIENCE

Sermon delivered on the 19th Sunday after Trinity, the 28th September 2008 by Fr Nicholas JG Sykes in the congregation of St. Alban's Church of England, George Town, Cayman Islands.

Scriptures: Ezekiel 18:1-4, 25-32     Philippians 2: 1-13    S. Matthew 21: 23-32

Philippians 2:12 "As you always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for God is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure."

 

The earliest comment in the Scriptural narrative made about the character of man, was made by God in the second chapter of Genesis: "It is not good for man to be alone." On that particular occasion, we know that the condition was solved by producing a wife, but such a solution may well not be available in many of the circumstances of a man or a woman becoming isolated from others. The sense of loneliness or abandonment may indeed still exist even when there is another human being physically present. Old persons may receive care from others, but yet have no sense of relationship with them. In that state we can become self-centred and difficult, because we are not holding ourselves accountable to others for our own actions.

 

Of course, you may say, the Church has always taught, and teaches still, that God's Presence is the primary reality of our life. Still, we do not always hold firmly in practice what we theoretically believe. If we accidentally stub our toe or knock our elbow when no visible person is around, we might well say something which, in the presence of some one else, we would be careful to subdue.

 

We do not always put into practice, therefore, our pledged discipleship, the pledge of our baptism. We do not always, in the famous phrase of Brother Lawrence, "practise the presence of God." Brother Lawrence who wrote the little spiritual classic called "The Practice of the Presence of God" had a lowly position in his monastery as a kitchen worker, and it was in the context of cleaning up the kitchen rather than meditating in his cell or in the chapel that he developed his simple spiritual classic on practising the presence of God, a work of help and direction that has gone all over the world and into the widest variety of forms of Christianity.

 

MODEL OF OBEDIENCE TO GOD THE FATHER

St. Paul's great model of obedience to the holy will of God was the obedience of the incarnate Christ Jesus, who on earth was separated from the appearance of the exalted form of His divine nature and took the form of man, and was willingly obedient as God's suffering Servant-Messiah to the death of the cross. In Gethsemane He cried, "Not my will, but thine be done!" Our Lord immersed Himself completely, so to speak, in the creation, but He was not captured or beholden by it. His death was not a defeat by it, but rather an exodus from it, and His pathway is our spiritual exodus from it as well. The Gospels make it very clear that in His incarnate life on earth the presence of His Father was with Him and sustained Him. The works that He did and the words that He said were what He saw His Father accomplishing and uttering. His spirit of obedience was a continual celebration of the presence of His Father, so that in His life we see the perfect and complete "practice of the presence of God." May it be said of God's people too that their spirit of obedience is the celebration of the presence of God with them.

 

It’s worth pointing out, though, that both in the Old Testament and in the New, the value of our human presence to one another is made clear. God’s solution for the loneliness of Adam was not to say, as He could very well have said, "Well, Adam, see Me here." If God had so chosen, His own sufficiency for Adam’s company could have been presented, but instead, we are told that God made for Adam human company. We can take this to say to us how necessary it is that when we see somebody become isolated, like an elderly person living alone, we should do what we can to make of ourselves or others some human company for that person. From the very first, part of the design of our human species is that we should form a company and not remain alone. We ought to do what we can to offer such company as a gift to those who show need of it, in whatever condition of life they may be. Actually, that’s following the example that God set for us in Genesis.

 

The New Testament very deliberately incorporates the pattern. Even though the Lord Jesus "practises the Presence of God" in His obedience to the words and works of the Father, the very core of His work involves the formation of human company, and in particular His twelve disciples, who become the apostolic foundation of the Church. When His work on earth was completed, Jesus Himself left no work of art or writing as the fruit of lonely genius. What He left on earth was indeed something that could produce these things, namely, a human company, the apostolic Church, the extension of the Incarnation, the divine-human Body of Christ on earth. From New Testament times, this has been far different from a number of individuals isolated from one another and practising their religion. The Presence of God has involved them in company with Him and with one another. They, or rather we, because we ourselves are part of that company, are in communion or fellowship with one another and with Him. In St. Paul’s writings in the New Testament we discern the relationship he has with those he writes to, and that relationship is one of responsibility. The Apostle is accountable to God for his charges, and they are accountable for their behaviour to the Apostle as well as to God who gave them the apostolic relationship in the first place. He says to them, "As you always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for God is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure." St. Paul affirms that his presence, though now withdrawn from them, had been necessary for the Philippian Christians. So it is not good either for the new man in Christ always to be humanly alone. The design of the New Man requires for its formation the new human company.

 

That is why the Lord Himself refers to the new state or company He came to earth to set up as "The Kingdom of God". Within the Kingdom of God there is accountability, a spirit of obedience. His parable of the two sons, one of whom obeyed his father in spite of his saying he wouldn’t, and the other not obeying in spite of saying he would, illustrated this accountability or lack of it. Jesus said that the way the religious leaders of the day had not believed the message of John the Baptist illustrated their real lack of accountability to God, in spite of their reputation of being religious men.

 

When we pray "Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done on earth as it is in heaven", we are expressing the faith and the hope that God’s work for the establishment of true society on earth will continue, based not on human tenets but on the divine foundation. May we too find in this work of God the reality of true communion and fellowship one with another, a real obedience and real responsibility in our human relationships, under the headship and authority of the Lord.