INCARNATING THE AWESOME

Sermon delivered on Septuagesima, the 5th February 2012 by Bishop Nicholas, George Town in the congregation of St. Alban's Church of England, George Town, Cayman Islands.
Scriptures: Isaiah 40: 21-31 1 Corinthians 9:16-23 S. Mark 1: 29-39

Mark 1: 30f "Simon's mother-in-law lay sick with a fever, and immediately they told Him of her. And He came and lifted her by the hand and lifted her up, and the fever left her; and she served them."

COMMUNICATING GREAT THINGS
Many of us know what it is like to sit through a speech or a sermon or a lecture that is to us so complicated or technical that it is over our heads and our attention wanders. I can still remember thinking this of Budget Speeches of the Chancellor of the Exchequer as a schoolboy in England, and when I came to the West Indies, Mr. Seaga’s speeches as Minister of Finance were not much easier. At least though they avoided the opposite extreme of making points that one has heard a hundred times already, so that while everybody can understand quite well what has been said, once again little has been communicated. I sincerely hope that you have not had to endure too many of such experiences of either type from the direction of this lectern. I am glad to be able to report that my chief consecrating bishop, Bishop Robert Redmile is an excellent preacher, and I hope that his words will be taken notice of in the hoped-for DVD, but I fear his gifts of that sort may not have been imparted to me by the laying on of his hands. The ideal, which is by no means always achieved and is always in some way costly, is to be able to communicate something profound or complex or true or beautiful in a form of language, conducive to lifting people out of themselves for the purpose of hearing great things. Conveying profound truths in a simple and elegant form is a great and valuable art, a costly gift to be sought from the Lord.

WHEN GOD WAS MADE MAN
And this surely is reminiscent of the Incarnation itself, when the eternal Son, the highest and purest and profoundest Word of all, became flesh and was made man. The very expression of the Godhead, the Word of the Father, was translated into a form that was communicable to the rest of mankind, because He was caused to become one of us, and as it were take a costly responsibility for us. The Cross itself is the measure of the extent of the responsibility for us that He took, and demonstrates the high cost of that communication.

INCARNATING THE AWESOME IN SCRIPTURE
Now in today's Scriptures this theme of incarnating the awesome is shown forth. The great Old Testament passage this morning from Isaiah Ch. 40 speaks of an awesome, numinous God. "Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? It is He who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers, who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to dwell in" declares Isa 40:22. This is the awesome God, who sees all, knows all and fashions all as Creator. But the prophet goes further. "The Lord is the Everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary, His understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and to Him who has no might He increases strength. Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength." The great and awesome God is prepared to come to the aid of the weary and defeated, whether they be old or young, and renew their strength, so that they mount up with wings like eagles. God is not too great to care; no, rather, He is too great to fail. When we bring the ills of our time, of our community and of our own selves before Him, let us be confident that His sympathy and His greatness are perfectly matched.

AWESOME POWER IN SYMPATHETIC ACTION
"Immediately they told Him of her", we have read in our Gospel today, "and He came and took her by the hand and lifted her." This is the Jesus who had taught in the synagogue with unquestioned authority and cast out unclean spirits, the true Hero that we thought about last Sunday. In Jesus the awesome Word of God was translated or incarnated into sympathetic action. The fact that it was the Sabbath did not inhibit Him for a moment from lifting Peter's mother-in-law from her bed of sickness. We do read indeed that it was at sundown, in other words when the Sabbath day ended, that the whole community came to His door with their sick and possessed. No doubt they did not want to break the Sabbath laws by carrying the pallets on the Sabbath, and they exercised a degree of courtesy and deference to this remarkable Rabbi in not troubling Him with their affairs on the Sabbath Day. If Jesus had told Peter's household that He would wait for the Sabbath to end before healing the sick mother of Peter’s wife there, they would no doubt have fully accepted it. But He did not. We may note too that when He raised Peter's mother-in-law the fever left her and her healing was immediately complete; it was as if she had never been sick, because far from taking things easy for the rest of the day, we read that she served them.

THE CHURCH'S TASK
Sometimes the Church has erred by not translating its doctrine into practical action. At other times it has erred by thinking that action of various sorts was to be so predominant that doctrine, the deposit of the faith, was of little importance. In reality the Church too is charged with the task of incarnating the awesome, of shining the great light of God into the dark recesses of human need. The full Gospel must be proclaimed, but for it to be received it must be embodied in the experience of the hearers, and this was what St. Paul was saying in the second Lesson today. He wanted to go further than just declaring the truth of the Gospel in his own way, and relying on people themselves to pick those truths up. First of all he wanted to go beyond living off the Gospel, which he had the right to do. Perhaps this was because of the mindset of the community. We might speculate that there was something about the local culture that made the Corinthian church think that if they supported their ministers they were buying the Gospel. So St. Paul's "reward" was to live independently of them, to proclaim the Gospel without charge to them. In whatever way it takes, we as the Church as a matter of importance and urgency must see to it that the light of what we proclaim is made incarnate, embodied in the lives of those around us. This is no easy task, but one that we must persist in. This is why St. Paul, being under no obligation to either community to live under their religious and cultural rules, still became a Jew to the Jews and a Gentile to the Gentiles, a native to the native and an expat to the expats, if you like. It was in order that the awesome light of God in Christ, of which he was a messenger, could be truly embodied in the experience of both.

OUR CHURCH'S CALL
Now our challenging task in the Cayman Church is to see to it that the eternal Gospel, the same awesome light of God in Christ, becomes embodied in the experience of our community, strongly affected as it is by mindsets that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. The eternal Gospel must not merely be proclaimed, but embodied, built into its fabric. It must be embodied locally in the community around the church here, and it must be embodied in the Islands as a whole. The Church and my episcopate must become seen and known by the community, both local and Island-wide, as theirs, as well as Christ's, and we must become the community's servant too for His sake, as well as becoming His servant. This is costly discipleship and it can involve difficult battles that we sometimes lose, but it is also glorious and part of the war that is won; for it is our portion of the costly and glorious divine communication of the Cross of Christ itself.

BIBLE STUDY QUESTIONS
1. A core task of the Church is communication. What has our Church communicated to you?
2. Do you communicate Christ's Good News to your family or close associates? How?
3. How must the Project of the Church become a means of communication?