Sunday, 16 February 2025

It is time to seek the Lord

A sermon preached at Gonville & Caius College Chapel – Choral Evensong, 16th February 2025

 

Hosea 10.1-8, 12 Israel is a luxuriant vine

Galatians 4.8-20 Has my work been wasted? I wish to be present with you.

 

‘Sow for yourselves righteousness; reap steadfast love; break up your fallow ground; for it is time to seek the Lord, that he may come and rain righteousness upon you.’

 

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The basic premise of the book of Hosea, from which our first reading came this evening, is that if the relationship between God and his people, Israel, can be likened to a marriage, then Israel has committed adultery and been relentlessly unfaithful.

 

Unfaithful in a thoroughly promiscuous way.

 

Who said the Bible is dull?

 

In the face of that infidelity we see the face of the faithful God, who continues to yearn for his spouse who has turned away.

 

It’s not just in Hosea: Israel’s unfaithfulness is a recurring theme in the Hebrew Scriptures.

 

There’s a pattern of covenant made, covenant broken, yet always marked by God’s grace and mercy to restore that broken relationship, albeit with palpable exasperation at times.

 

This nuptial theme continues into the New Testament where Christ is portrayed as the bridegroom coming to his people, hence his first sign in St John’s Gospel is at the Wedding Feast at Cana in Galilee.

 

Ultimately, the fulfilment of all things, in the Book of Revelation, is at the Marriage Banquet of the Lamb, something prefigured in the Eucharist.

 

That sweep of the Biblical narrative and Christian practice is compelling in so many ways, for it reminds us of Hosea’s message of the faithfulness of God in the teeth of human infidelity.

 

Within the overarching sweep of the narrative, Hosea has a particular take.

 

Hosea sees how easily our heads are turned by those things that we find more attractive or seductive, things that are less demanding of commitment than the ongoing paying of attention, and relinquishing of self-obsession that a stable, faithful and committed relationship demands.

 

It was true of Israel and it’s true of individuals.

 

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The Israelites - those living in the Northern Kingdom, sometimes also known as Ephraim, politically, but, not religiously, distinct from Judah, the Southern Kingdom – had their heads turned by the worship of Baal.

 

Baal was an agricultural god with a mythology that on an annual cycle associated the seasons and climate with his life and death.

 

The seasons apparently turned as a result of Baal being rescued from the underworld by his wife, Asherah.

 

Their reuniting was, in the eyes of the Hebrew prophet, a debauched fertility festival and worship of the calf god representing Baal.

 

That’s where the reference in our reading to ‘the calf of Beth-aven’ comes in (Hos. 10.5).

 

In a land and climate where crops could easily fail Baal had a bit of a pull.

 

But Hosea asserts that ‘the people shall mourn for [the calf], and idolatrous priests will wail over it, over its glory that has departed from it’. (Hos. 10.5)

 

Its time is up; its glory has gone; return to the Lord of glory.

 

Hosea is telling us that Baal, and his like, is an attractive fantasy on which to pin your hopes, but the Lord your God is the one to whom you, people of Israel, are pledged.

 

There are echoes here of the prophet Elijah in his feats against the priests of Baal in the first book of Kings. (1 Kings 18.20-40)

 

And what happened when the priests of Baal were destroyed by Elijah? It rained after years of drought! (1 Kings 18.41-46)

 

This was to demonstrate that it is the Lord God of Israel who gives the rains, not Baal, hence a verse in Hosea:

 

And in that day, declares the Lord, you will call me ‘My Husband,’ and no longer will you call me ‘My Baal.’ (Hosea 2.16).

 

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The agricultural and fertility gods of human imagining have never really gone away, but have new forms.

 

Tempting though it is to worship the creation, the climate, the seasons, the trees – which are the golden calves of Baal and Asherah - we are called to worship their Creator, the God of Israel.

 

It is what the great canticle Benedicite, omnia opera asserts:

 

8    O ye Showers and Dew, bless ye the Lord :

praise him, and magnify him for ever.

11  O ye Winter and Summer, bless ye the Lord :

praise him, and magnify him for ever.

12  O ye Dews and Frosts, bless ye the Lord :

praise him, and magnify him for ever.

20  O all ye Green Things upon the Earth, bless ye the Lord :

praise him, and magnify him for ever.

(from The Song of the Three Holy Children 35-66)

 

Created things, however beautiful, are just that, created, and not the Creator.

 

Calling us back to a consummated relationship with the Living God, Hosea says,

 

Sow for yourselves righteousness; reap steadfast love; break up your fallow ground; for it is time to seek the Lord, that he may come and rain righteousness upon you.

 

There’s an echo in St Paul who reminds us that, ‘neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.’(1 Corinthians 3.7)

 

Fidelity to the God of Israel, sees us in a right relationship with him - faithful, committed, permanent - that is what we are to sow on the seedbed of our hearts.

 

Hearts and lives, like the fallow ground, need tilling ready to receive the potential of the seed that will take root, grow and bear fruit, thirty, sixty and one hundredfold. (cf The Parable of the Sower: Mark 4.1-9)

 

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What does that look like?

 

I don’t know if you were a Valentine’s Day person or a Palentine’s Day person last week, but every relationship, between husband and wife, parent and child, two friends or companions, needs nurturing and fostering in tangible ways.

 

So it is in the life of faith.

 

As with any human relationship it is not enough to love God in the abstract, simply as an idea, for then God becomes an object, a golden calf.

 

Love needs concrete expression.

 

The consummation of our relationship with God is found in the sacramental practices of baptism, Eucharist, confession: where created matter -water, bread, wine - becomes a channel of grace, not an object of worship in itself, and reconciliation is expressed in charity.

 

Hosea is cautioning us away from a life turned in on itself, the ‘Incurvatus in se’ as St Augustine puts it.

 

When we fail to pay attention to the other then we become self-consumed, ultimately self-destructive, as was Baal.

 

Prayer, adoration, devotion, the sacraments, turn us away from self and to mystical union with God, and that is surely Hosea’s aim and call.

 

…it is time to seek the Lord,

that he may come and rain righteousness upon [us].

Sunday, 9 February 2025

Going out into the deeps

Isaiah 6.1-2a, 3-8 ‘Here I am! Send me.’

1 Corinthians 15.3-8, 11 ‘So we [reach and so you believed’

Luke 5.1-11 ‘They left everything and followed him.’

 

 

‘Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch’

 

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There’s something a bit fishy about today’s gospel reading.

 

Yes, it features fishermen: but they’re commissioned to become fishers-of-men, not catching fish anymore, but saving souls.

 

And isn’t it a bit odd that the Galilean fishermen need the direction of a carpenter’s son from Nazareth, which is not by water, to tell them how to do their job effectively?

 

And what of that most remarkable catch of fish, so much so that two boats were almost sinking under their weight?

 

And perhaps most bizarrely, the fishermen, who are effectively small businessmen, leave their lucrative catch and walk away!

 

Well, as in all reading of scripture we are called, like the fishermen on the Sea of Galilee, to push out away from the shallows, to see beyond the surface and let down our nets deep.

 

To use a different image, Gregory the Great, the Bishop of Rome who, in 597, sent St Augustine of Canterbury to England to evangelise afresh, once said ‘Scripture is like a river again, broad and deep, shallow enough here for the lamb to go wading, but deep enough there for the elephant to swim’.

 

We can fish the surface of faith or cast our nets deep.

 

On the surface it’s about Jesus helping out some fishermen who are having a tough time; that’s amazing and miraculous in itself, but where does that take us?

 

Is Jesus just a bit of a wonder worker, an impressive guru figure who can do remarkable things so that people follow him?

 

Gregory speaks of different senses by which we read the gospels: the surface and the deeper.[1]

 

So, when we look again at this gospel we can see there are deep things going on.

 

Peter unlocks this for us, ‘…he fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” (Luke 5.8)

 

This is an act of awe-filled devotion, falling to his knees as one would only before God: Jesus is Lord, sovereign now in Peter’s life.

 

We can’t, then, read this passage as an interesting fisherman’s tale, but as something that has direct bearing on our life of faith as individuals and for the Church as a whole.

 

When we cast out into the deep and put down our spiritual nets we find there is much we can draw from those waters.

 

This gospel is about the fruitfulness of daily life, of calling, of decision, of response and of commission.

 

We see that the fishermen’s daily tasks are made fruitful at his word.

 

Their fishing efforts were literally fulfilled – filled full – by Jesus’ word.

 

Can his word for you, to go out into the deeps? What holds you back from doing that?

 

We can always go deeper into faith and into the life of the Holy God.

 

Are you ready, like Peter, flaky as he was, to say, ‘at your word I will let down the nets’? (v5)

 

Peter is awestruck by what Jesus can do, not just on the surface level, but going deeper too.

 

Peter’s words echo Isaiah’s reaction of inadequacy and awareness of his personal sinfulness in the majestic presence and power of God in the temple: ‘Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips.’ (Isaiah 6.5)

 

Reverent awe is the response proper to the call, and word, of Jesus Christ.

 

This text, alongside our first from Isaiah, tells us not to think that faith in Jesus Christ is a self-help technique, rather one of faith and trust in Him.

 

The encounter with awe, majesty is converting: the immediacy and impact of what the fishermen did is shocking when you think about it.

 

‘And when they had brought their boats to land, they left everything and followed him.’ (v11)

 

They put  aside their own priorities and came, in St Benedict’s words, to ‘prefer nothing to Christ’.

 

They say in effect the words of Isaiah, ‘Here am I! Send me’ (Isaiah 6.8) and the words of Mary, ‘Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word’. (Luke 1.38)

 

Those are words of going out into the deep in love and trust, facing down fears through faith in Jesus Christ.

 

If you push out into the deep, you want to know your boat will float and be buoyant: this is the spiritual move Peter, James, John, you and me are called to make: ‘do not be afraid’ (v10) says Jesus.

 

When we do this our nets filled, our lives are full-filled, we are nourished spiritually so that we cannot keep the Good News to ourselves, but to bring it ashore to a hungry world.

 

As he calls them, Jesus is coaching, training, shaping, these fishermen to a task that goes well beyond the shores of Galilee.

 

There’s purpose in what we are called to as Christians, not solely for ourselves but for the sake of the world.

 

And what feeds the world is Christ, the Living Bread from heaven, who takes the ordinary loaves and fishes to multiply them that all people may know salvation.

 

As with the teeming fish, which is an image of the life of the Church and all her people throughout the world, so the task falls to us by our faith, our hope, our love and our devotion to Christ to share the Good News and draw others to Christ.

 

The fishermen found their lives repurposed in Christ; Isaiah found new purpose in the presence of the same Living God, you are called ‘to shine as a light in the world to the glory of God the Father’: are you ready to say, ‘Here am I! Send me’?



[1] Gregory uses a method typical of his era, and valuable today, a fourfold way of reading scripture, the Quadriga: the historical sense (plain sense), the allegorical sense (typological), the moral sense (tropological), and the anagogical sense (pertaining to the last or ultimate things).

Sunday, 2 February 2025

The Light of the Temple

Malachi 3.1-4 ‘The Lord whom you seek will come to his Temple

Hebrews 2.14-18 ‘He had to be made like his brother so that he might become merciful

Luke 2.22-40 ‘The child grew, filled with wisdom’

 

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Today’s gospel reading is such a rich and beautiful story.

 

The key features were set out in the introduction to the entrance procession with our candles:

 

Mary and Joseph, as obedient Jewish young parents, did what they were meant to do under the Jewish Law.

 

The figures of Simeon and Anna, obedient and expectant older people, filled with the Holy Spirit, who saw in Jesus the fulfilment of their long-held desire to see the Lord’s Messiah.

 

Jesus declared to be ‘the light to enlighten the nations’ and the hope of Israel, with whose light we are illumined at baptism: that’s the Christian Enlightenment!

 

All this takes place in the Temple in Jerusalem, the epicentre of Jewish religious practice, the very dwelling place and visible focus of the invisible God.

 

The Temple is at its heart a place of presentation.

 

In the Temple sacrifices are presented to God.

 

To sacrifice is to give up something precious of our own, in order to receive blessing in return.

 

In pagan religion even children were sacrificed, the Bible condemns this in no uncertain terms.

 

The cult of the god Molech demanded child sacrifice, but in Leviticus we read, ‘You shall not give any of your children to offer them to Molech, and so profane the name of your God: I am the Lord. (Leviticus 18.21).

 

The great patriarch Abraham has to be taken right to the brink of sacrificing his son, Isaac, to understand that the God of Israel is not like that, does not demand that. (Genesis 22.1-19)

 

So, in ancient Israel sacrifices were not of children but were typically of animals – which is why God provided a ram for Abraham to sacrifice, instead of Isaac.

 

‘The LORD will provide’ (Genesis 22.14)

 

And in Jesus Christ the Lord provide himself as the sacrificial offering for sin: he is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

 

So in anticipation of his offering of himself, Jesus is presented in the Temple

 

The prophet Malachi sees deep into the Lord’s intentions so that our eyes are open to the work of John the Baptist, whose birth was announced to Zechariah in the Temple, and who prepares the way for Jesus Christ, the one who offers and the one who is offered:

 

Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple; and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the LORD of hosts. (Malachi 3.1,2)

 

That cuts straight to the scene we heard today: of presentation and reception in the Temple.

 

Mary and Joseph present; Simeon and Anna receive.

 

Mary and Joseph the young parents present the Christchild in the Temple.

 

Anna and Simeon, two elderly people yet refreshed, vigilant, eager, receive him.

 

This is the Church in embryo: young and old, men and women, presenting themselves to the Lord, receiving the Lord.

 

Just pause on that elderly man and woman: how inspiring!

 

In a tired world, with so many people feeling just tired, it is a great gift to be infused, inflated, inspired by the Holy Spirit.

 

This is call to allow ourselves to be inflated by the Holy Spirit!

 

The Spirit is the presence of God allowing and enabling us to recognise the Lord and the things of God in the world and in the heavens.

 

Here in the Temple, just as at Christ’s baptism, which we have already celebrated, but that comes later in his life, we see the Blessed Trinity in action: the Son is presented in the power of the Holy Spirit, in his Father’s house, the Temple.

 

At his baptism he hallows the waters of new life and new birth, waters that, in the prophecy of Ezekiel, flow from the Temple, just as the rivers flowed from the Garden of Eden to water the whole world. (cf Ezekiel 47; Genesis 2.10-14)

 

And when the soldier pierced the Crucified Lord, as he hung on the Cross, there flowed water and blood.

 

That was the sword, of which Simeon spoke, that pierced the heart of Blessed Mary too: as the 13th century hymn, Stabat Mater, puts it:

 

Through her heart, his sorrow sharing,

All his bitter anguish bearing,

now at length the sword has pass'd.

 

The water and blood, flowing from the Sacred Heart of Jesus, signifies life and sacrifice.

 

When a child is born there is water and there is blood.

 

In baptism – itself a birth - there is water; in the Eucharist there is blood: both of which graft us into the Body of Christ, so that we share in his offering to the Father.

 

Just as Jesus Christ is human and divine so we are to shape our lives as human beings in the way of the divine, of God.

 

This is what is meant by those words in the Collect today, that Christ came and was presented ‘in substance of our flesh’: the fullness of divinity and fullness of humanity meet in his body; he is the New Temple, the Temple to be destroyed and raised on the third day as told in St John’s gospel:

 

Jesus, looking at the temple in Jerusalem, said: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jews then said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?” But he was speaking about the temple of his body. (John 2.19-21)

 

St Paul teaches that your body is a Temple.

 

Your body is the meeting place of divinity and humanity.

 

Your body is a temple; it is also a sacrifice.

 

That doesn’t mean you’re going to be slaughtered; it means you’re going to offer yourself in service of God in his world and in the lifting up of your heart in worship.

 

Lift up your hearts. We lift them to the Lord.

 

Our collect today prays that ‘we may be presented to [God] with pure and clean hearts’.

 

This is how St Paul puts it, connecting the offering of ourselves to God and away from the corruptions and machinations of the world:

 

I appeal to you therefore, brothers [and sisters], by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. (Romans 12.1,2)

 

The human body, in Christian tradition, is precious, honoured, not to be sullied or abused.

 

It’s why we carefully treat a dead body and recognise crimes against the body: it’s why every body matters.

 

We come as members of the Body of Christ, drawn by the Holy Spirit, presenting ourselves at the altar so that in turn we receive the Body of Christ.

 

So let us also, gathered together by the Holy Spirit,

proceed to the altar of God to encounter Christ.

There we shall find him

and recognise him in the breaking of the bread,

until he comes again, revealed in glory.