RESPONDING TO GOD’S GREAT PROMISES

Sermon delivered on the 3^rd Sunday after Trinity, the 8th June 2008 at Holy Baptism and Holy Communion by Fr Nicholas J G Sykes in the congregation of St. Alban's, George Town Church of England, Cayman Islands.

Scriptures: Hosea 5:15 - 6:6 Romans 4: 13-25 S. John 3: 1-8

Romans 4: 13 The promise to Abraham and his descendants, that they should inherit the world, did not come through the law but through the righteousness of faith.

 

St. Paul in these words, which come from our second Lesson today, recalls the great theme of the Old Testament that shows Abraham breaking ties of land and kindred in order to respond obediently to the Lord's summons to him and his wife to settle in a place that He could not immediately identify. St. Paul shows how Abraham's faith also broke through what seemed to be the natural barrier of childlessness, through his belief in God’s promise of descendants, and then Paul shows how faith can make children of Abraham out of Gentiles, who are not biologically his descendants, and how, through faith, lawbreakers and sinners of all sorts can all be made whole again. This is St. Paul’s way of expressing the simple and compelling words of our Lord in today’s Gospel: "You must be born from above".

What we are about to do today has the character of the faith that S. Paul was talking about. You see, Abraham, along with his wife Sarah and his household, considered that when God says "Go somewhere" or "Do something", it was important to respond. The whole Abraham story in the Bible is so interesting to us, because just as with ourselves, we see those people struggling with the issue of what it means to do what God wanted them to do.

I don’t know if the way in which God spoke to those people several thousands of years ago was different from the ways He speaks to us today. Some people have said, It was easier for those people because they seem from the actual Bible narrative to have physically heard the voice of God, or even as in the case of Abraham sometimes to have seen God’s angel or His Presence. But perhaps with even more reason they would have said it is easier for us to hear God speaking. God speaks to us through the words of Jesus, who is God’s Son. How many Sunday School lessons have been taught around the words of Jesus? And before Jesus left the earth, He promised to send us the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit has been with the Church ever since and has shown us and has spoken continually to us the words of God. And God’s Son had not come to the earth and lived the life of a man, and he had not died and been raised from the dead, in the days of Abraham, and so they could never be baptised into Christ or receive the Holy Communion of the Body and Blood of Christ even once in their lifetime, in the way that we have been taught to do as confirmed Christians regularly.

When it comes to doing what God wanted, though, we read that Abraham and his household had similar problems to ours. We read that they found it more difficult simply to trust God and obey him, than to hear him in the first place. We read that they had to learn sometimes through positive experiences and sometimes through negative experiences, that God would always keep His promises. The promises of God to Abraham were fulfilled, and as S. Paul points out, over-fulfilled, fulfilled even beyond the immediate promise. Abraham not only has a multitude of descendants, in spite of his own childlessness for many years, but has an even greater multitude of faith-descendants as well.

God will fulfil His promises to us too, just as He fulfilled them to Abraham. The undertakings that God makes towards His people in their baptism into Christ are very great, and are briefly listed in the Prayer Book Catechism as being made a member of Christ, being made the child of God, and being made an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven. God will keep His promises towards us, though sometimes we have to learn and relearn this both through positive and through negative experiences. And just as in his covenant with God, Abraham was called to believe steadfastly in God and His promises, so we too are called through Christ to believe steadfastly in God and His promises. Annabel and Robbie this morning are not alone in being called to that continuing belief. Annabel and Robbie are persons in relation to their parents, to their godparents, and to their church, and we are all called to that continuing belief, and in different ways to encourage them in that belief, and so today we will join with them as they make promises to renounce all evil, to believe on the rock of Christ and to endeavour to keep God’s holy will and commandments, God being their helper and ours.

To close I want to refer to the prophet Hosea, from whose book our first reading of Scripture came this morning. Hosea is chiefly famous for being a prophet of forgiveness and restoration, and this affected and was displayed by his personal life as well as his message. In today’s reading, Hosea depicts the Lord as waiting upon His beloved people to acknowledge their guilt and to seek His face. The Lord laments that their love is like a fading morning cloud, or like the dew that disappears from the earth. It is not just surface activities that He wants His people to display, but He wants His people to show steadfast love, and the knowledge of God. God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, desires no less of us His baptised people. He has made great and priceless undertakings towards us. To respond to him in our lives, acknowledging our guilt and seeking His face, and with steadfastness of faith going on to a knowledge of Him by His Spirit, is our greatest privilege and obligation. This is to be living the abundant life, into which we have been born from above.