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St
Alban’s (Grand Cayman) & St Mary’s (Cayman Brac) |
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THE PERFECT RESTORATION Sermon delivered on the 20th Sunday
after Trinity, the 25th October 2009 by Fr Nicholas JG Sykes in the
congregations of St. Alban's and St. Mary’s Church of England in
the Cayman Islands. Scriptures:
Jeremiah 31: 7-9 Hebrews 7:23 -
28 Mark 10: 46-52 Hebrews
7:26 "For it was indeed fitting that we should have such a high
priest, holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners, and
exalted above the heavens." (ESV) AN
IDEA OUT OF STEP Perhaps many in the Christian West
will instinctively disagree with the essential thesis of our
lesson from Hebrews today, encapsulated well in my view by the
English Standard Version rendering of the text, that it was
indeed fitting that we should have this high Priest, exalted
above the heavens. For thinking of Jesus as a High Priest in the way
the Epistle to the Hebrews does, is inconsistent with the idea that
the human spirit is without reservation free and indomitable. We are
heirs to a culture that for hundreds of
years has spoken to our fathers and to us, voicing how our
unaided humanity has the power to throw off all the shackles that
restrain it. The way to this power is to become what we want to be,
it is suggested to us: make progress in that and you will eventually
become immortal. Every so often however, there is something that
looms up in the public eye by way of a corrective to this cultural
mindset. When this happens I get reminded of the Challenger shuttle
disaster of the 1990s in its impact, even if the occasion might
mercifully lack the tragedy of that event. I don’t know if any of
you remember the last commercial transatlantic flight of the
Concorde supersonic airliner about six years ago, which we saw on
television taking off from JFK airport. This great technological
marvel, this most beautiful of aircraft that flew faster than a
bullet, and that we in Grand Cayman had once flocked down to the
airport to marvel at, that had been hoped to pave the way for a new
era of supersonic travel around the world, had proved from its
beginning to be an economic nightmare, and instead of 300 aircraft
being built, as the project had hoped, only 20 actually were. In the
end, therefore, what had seemed to be at the time a wonderful
project has become a brilliant cul-de-sac, perhaps like putting men
on the moon for the purpose of eventual inhabitation - though that
is an idea that has never died, - a huge achievement in technical
terms, but without any practical prospects of declaring a future
pattern for humanity. Indeed there are many examples of human
developments of all sorts that turn out not to be practically
futuristic, contrary to initial assumptions. One example could be
the pan-sexuality lifestyles of the modern human relationships,
including unlimited artificial insemination and the prospect of
human cloning, that differ radically from age-old family patterns.
The nuts and bolts consequences, so to speak, of these lifestyles
seem though, to make them in practice unsustainable, and impossible
for any society to support for long. Like the Concorde project
collapsing under the weight of economic considerations, human
pansexuality too sooner or later will have to be limited by the
weight of its own consequences. Yet the general outlook of human
illimitability or boundlessness, flying in the face of what St. Paul
calls the last enemy of death, is often accepted without being
recognised for what it is. If
there are no boundaries or reservations limiting what humanity can
do or be, it is definitely NOT fitting for us to have any divinely
ordered high priest. We would not need one. But the Good News
as presented by the Epistle to the Hebrews is opposed to this
outlook. We read in verse 25 that He is able for all time to save
those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives to
make intercession for them. It is not the indomitable,
Promethean-like human spirit or intellect that will save us. It is
the intercession of the ever-living High Priest, the Risen Jesus,
that will for all time save those who come near to God through Him.
That's an opposition of attitudes that we need to be aware of, if we
are to enable the mind of Christ to grow in us and avoid being
misled and consumed by a most popular voice of our time, hardly less
active in the Church herself than in the wider world. CONTRASTING INITIATIVES One difference is that in the one
attitude God takes the initiative, and in the other, humans take the
initiative. What do we do if we believe humans take the initiative
rather than being led? What happens to us is that we do not wait
sufficiently before firing off in wrong or unhelpful directions. We
are not reflective enough; we become like unguided missiles, and our
intentions are frustrated rather than effected. Now if we take the
Gospel view that God takes the initiative, it doesn't mean that we
become “do nothing” people, for indeed the Gospel proclamation is
that God already has taken the initiative in our Lord Jesus Christ,
who in His incarnation and redemptive work provides for us at all
times a model which we need faithfully to follow. So
if we believe as we should that God takes the initiative, then
we at once have a source of guidance for our own action. If we are
faithful to that guidance, and indeed part of being faithful is to increase
in the knowledge of God and His obedience, then our action will be
fruitful. And that does not mean that we will get every action right;
nevertheless the Lord will use even our unsteady steps on His way to
effect His purpose. Now,
which would we rather have, the actions of unguided human initiative,
or fruitful human action modelled upon the divine initiative? Surely
the answer is clear. It's well worth being reflective and having the
discipline, difficult as it is sometimes, of conforming one's own
action to the divine initiative. May we always be recalled to that in
the mission of this church, and certainly in the tasks to which we are
immediately called. We need to act upon these tasks, and those actions
need to be guided by the intercessory power of our eternal High
Priest. He is able to save those who draw near to God through
Him. Our roles are contingent, being derived from His. We must
take care we do not forget this and become agents of the myths of
human indomitability and independence that still persist in our time! GOD LED THE WEAK HOME Let us notice too that the Old
Testament lesson did not speak of the strong people of Israel who cast
off the shackles of their captors and returned to their homeland under
their own steam. Rather, the highly vulnerable are specially depicted:
the blind, the lame, the pregnant women, those even already in labour,
the distressed. They weep, they pray and, says the Lord, I will
lead them back, I will put them on the easiest path back. The
Church has sometimes not held this concept faithfully, but especially
in today's world it is vital that we keep it clear. In today's Gospel
Jesus didn't follow His own followers and self-appointed protectors
who tried to silence the blind man crying out for help. Why did they
do this? Perhaps it was to protect Jesus on His solemn journey to
Jerusalem. Perhaps they thought of His Messiahship in the standard
terms of an immortal Conqueror, and believed that one so lowly as a
blind beggar should not get in His way. But Jesus chooses His own
guided pace. He knows that the kind of victory He is to accomplish in
Jerusalem is not one of human indomitability of this world’s sort,
but one of serving to the uttermost and paying ransom for his brethren
with His life. So He was led or guided to stop the procession, attend
to the crying blind man and heal him. Better too that we be crying out
to Him as blind, yet persistent in our faith in Him, than resisting
Him by our own sightedness, initiatives, self-certainties and agendas!
BIBLE STUDY QUESTIONS 1.
Outline some differences between the "Utopian" vision
and the hope of the Kingdom of God. 2.
Does "heavenly-mindedness" lead to being "of no
earthly use"? Discuss some models of fruitful church work. 3. In what way does "God lead the weak home" today, resisting the agendas of the strong?
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