Sermons from St Faith's
Back to Basics
Fred Nye, Sunday 18th November, 2012
‘Back to basics’ is a slogan that has been the downfall of more
than one leading politician. To emphasise high standards in
public life, be they about money, marriage or the media, is a
high risk strategy which can so easily backfire. Politicians are
after all only human. Some of the time, or cynics might say most
of the time, they can find it hard to practise what they preach.
The letter to the Hebrews is also about getting back to basics –
but basics of a very different kind. The letter was written to
Jewish converts to Christianity, perhaps living in Rome, who
were finding it difficult to cope with their new faith. They
kept harking back to times past, to the days when their
ancestors worshipped in the wilderness, and the letter is
full of references to the old Tabernacle rituals. Not exactly
stirring stuff. But if we sift through the letter to glean a
little bit more about the people to whom it was written, we can
gain a lot.
‘The Hebrews’ had been well nurtured in the Christian faith, but
to the writer’s obvious exasperation they seemed to have stopped
making progress, even to the point of going backwards. Times
were hard, some church members had drifted away, and even among
those who stayed, confidence was running low. They needed much
encouragement to keep firm their hope of salvation, and to go on
living a life of Christian love and care. Perhaps their church
community was not, after all, so very different from our own.
And what the writer of the letter tries to do is to bring them
back to basics, by reminding them of the central, crucially
important truth of the Christian faith: it is through Jesus
Christ that we are saved.
You may not agree, but I find these words strangely disquieting.
‘Are you saved?’ is a question that makes many traditional
Anglicans squirm inwardly. But why should this be? After all,
like the Hebrews community we are steeped in faith, and
nourished by faith. The evidence for God’s love for us in Jesus
Christ is all around us. In the scriptures, in the Eucharist and
the sacraments, in prayer, in the events of the church’s year,
and in what the Prayer Book calls ‘the blessed company of all
faithful people’ we are constantly reassured of one great truth.
Through his cross and resurrection Our Lord Jesus Christ has
redeemed the world, gives us the means of grace, and offers us
the hope of glory.
So what’s the problem? Perhaps in common with the Hebrews, we
Anglicans often settle for what in religion is traditional
and familiar, rather than yearning for that perfecting of the
world, and of ourselves, which Our Lord has promised us. We live
in a damaged and fallen world and, knowingly or unknowingly, we
all contribute to its pain and discord. In our better moments we
get a conscience about all of this, and wish that it were
otherwise. But to be saved we must really want salvation, we
must have a restlessness, a longing, a passion, for the Kingdom
of God and for the reign of his love and peace. And that
restless yearning, that divine spark, is itself a gift from God.
‘O thou who camest from above, the fire celestial to impart,
kindle a flame of sacred love on the mean altar of my heart’.
We Anglicans like to think of ourselves as unassuming people
with modest aspirations, for whom ‘nothing to excess’ might be a
suitable epitaph. I remember Fr. Richard Capper memorably saying
at my dear mother’s funeral that she had practised ‘religion
without enthusiasm’:- and she might well have taken that as a
compliment. Most of us share with the legendary church of
Laodicea a preference for being lukewarm, a preference for a
Christianity that is nether cold nor hot. We regard
Christians who are enthusiastic about their faith with some
suspicion, not to say alarm! But I firmly believe that Jesus
shared with his heavenly Father a vision that went far beyond
our restrained and limited ambitions. It was a vision of the
world, and of humankind, transformed and taken up into the
glorious perfection of the Godhead itself.
It is remarkable that Jesus reserved his greatest praise, not
for the great and the good, but for those who were dissatisfied
with themselves and with the world as they found it, and had a
longing for something far better. ‘Happy’, he said, ‘happy are
the poor in spirit, happy are the merciful, happy are the
peacemakers, happy are those who hunger and thirst for what is
right’. He held up as a role model the despised Samaritan
who had the courage to cross the religious divide for the sake
of common humanity. He befriended the loathed and hated
Zaccheus, Zaccheus the financial wheeler-dealer who had the
courage to abandon a life of cheating and greed. And at
the end of his earthly life Our Lord focussed his compassion on
the woman who anointed him before his crucifixion, and on the
penitent thief on Calvary:- because they both recognised their
need for forgiveness and reconciliation. Like them, we need a
vision of a new heaven and a new earth, and of ourselves renewed
in body, mind, and spirit.
We can only compare salvation with what we already know: the
experience of loving, and of being loved, in the here and
now. And salvation is nothing more nor less than the
overwhelming love of God, which we find in Christ Jesus our
Lord. How can I, so flawed and fallible, deserve the total and
unconditional love of another human being, let alone the love of
my creator and redeemer? And yet Our Lord, through his death and
resurrection, tells us that it is so, and his love compels us to
come in. ‘Just as I am, without one plea, but that thy blood was
shed for me, and that thou bidst me come to thee, O lamb of God,
I come’. With this, our only possible plea, we are indeed back
to basics.
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