Friday, September 18, 2015
Sermon for Pentecost 17
Proper 20 B ~ September 20, 2015
Christ Church, Bayfield
…not to be anxious about earthly things, but to love things
heavenly; and even now, while we are placed among things that are passing away,
to hold fast to those that shall endure…
+In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity,
Earth and Heaven are metaphors, symbols. Earth means
everything that is passing away heaven means everything that is permanent. It
is obviously foolish to worry, as the disciples worried and argued, about
things we can't do anything about, such as the fact that everything is always
changing. Today’s collect is prays for
what it is now fashionable to call mindfulness: the art of learning not to be
distracted by little, day-to-day nuisances — or even big day-to-day delights —
and learning to pay attention to the unchanging beauty behind them.
Preferring the heavenly to the
earthly certainly does NOT mean scorn of the beauty of the physical earth,
God's creation. The beauty, even of
temporal things, points to God. But that
is just the point: there is something behind or beyond earthly beauty, that
does not change — Someone, rather. The
beauty of things that are passing away reflects the permanent, unseen Beauty.
I don't know about you, but the
beauty of the earth always fills me with longing. Especially the brief seasons of spectacular
natural beauty, such as the one we are now entering, or the lilac-and-apple-blossom
Spring. I know that it will soon be
gone, and there is a twinge of sorrow about that. Maybe it isn't exactly sorrow, but it is a
kind of desire, the longing to possess the beauty, to keep it. I suppose that's why I take pictures — which,
however, I rarely look at later!
Spiritual teachers would say that what I really desire is the Source of
the beauty, which earthly beauty only reflects.
I long for union with Beauty Itself.
Everything we see is passing
away. In fact, everything we are is passing away. This is what Jesus’ disciples, all lively
young men, didn't get. It is silly to
argue about who is more important, because everything is passing away,
including all such distinctions. Jesus
advises them to be like a small child, who as yet has no such concerns. The "adult" world of striving,
jockeying for position, ambition, craving, and conflict is not yet, the child's
world. Furthermore, the child is
helpless. It won't survive at all,
unless other people help, although the child is unaware of that fact. Furthermore, it continues to be true, even
though, as it grows increasingly independent, the child acquires the illusion
that it is not helpless. But in the
world of change and decay, we all are
finally helpless. Everything we see is passing away and everything we are is
passing away. You and I are passing
away.
Facing this unpleasant fact, the
foolish distract themselves in meaningless pursuits of craving and ambition,
acting out their unconscious anxiety “about things that are passing away" as
the disciples did.
But what God has prepared for us is
unimaginably greater, and it has nothing to do with our own notion of greatness.
Ambition and craving are a waste of time, a distraction from the indescribable
joy to which we are called.
Our life in this world is a life of
change from moment to moment. In fact,
that is a pretty good definition of life: change. So what are we asking when we ask to hold
fast to things that shall endure? Since
life itself is change, what does it mean to live outside time? In the end, we don't know. But one of our greatest teachers, St. Gregory
of Nyssa, thought about it like this: Eternal life is a journey, not a static
destination. What we call the Vision of
God is the process of more and more knowledge,
love, and joy. The Bible says that no
one has ever seen God. That is because
God is infinite and we are finite. In
that sense, we can never experience God completely — we can never see God. In that sense, the Vision of God is
impossible. But we can, in the words of one of our prayers for the dead, go from strength to strength, ever
increasing in God's love and service.
In other words, eternal life is change, just as temporal life is change.
Life is becoming. But while the becoming
of temporal life includes changes for the worse, the becoming of eternal life
is change only for the better – from
lesser to greater, from less life to more life.
Gregory, who was one of the most important early theologians of the
Trinity, taught that God invites us to a life of infinite growth – from glory
to glory – in our capacity to enjoy ever
more and more of God's infinite Love and Beauty, forever and ever, world
without end.
AMEN
MARANATHA
COME, LORD JESUS!
