Proper Worship

A sermon preached at Evensong on December 4, the Feast of St. John of Damascus, at St. Willibrord’s Church, Munich

Ecclesiastes 3:9-14, John 5:24-27

Today is the feast day of St John of Damascus. Now John is probably not one of the best known saints: He didn’t die a particularly spectacular or gory death, he is not known for any miracles, nor for conversing with birds or animals. He was an eighth century priest, monk, hymn writer, and theologian from Syria. Considered a Doctor of the Church, he was one of the last Eastern theologians to be fully recognized by both the Western and Eastern Church. 

He lived in difficult and dangerous times: Damascus was “occupied territory.” It had fallen to the Islamic Arab armies only 70 years before he was born, yet was still majority Christian. And then in the year he was ordained priest, the Byzantine emperor issued an edict against ‘Holy Images’ i.e. Icons ordering their destruction. As a result, icons were burned and murals in churches painted over and replaced by whitewashed walls with at the most a picture of the cross – which all sounds a lot like the destruction of images, statues, and windows during the 16^th century Reformation.

There were good theological reasons for this ban – the second Commandment not to “make for yourself any idol” for one. Also some historians think that the success of Islam, with its strict prohibition of images of the divine, may have been a factor too. Perhaps Christians were being punished for worshipping images and idols?

One of John’s theological works was a very spirited defense of ‘Holy Images,’ which includes the great line: “If an angel or an emperor teaches you anything contrary to what you have received, shut your ears.”[1] I suspect that his courage was probably helped by him living in Islamic territory beyond the emperor’s reach! John argued that while it was indeed “impossible to make a statue of one who is without body, invisible, boundless, and formless” and would be wrong to make “statues of men, and hold them to be gods, worshipping them as such,” icons were neither. They were images of the likeness of our Lord, “who became incarnate and visible on earth” or of the saints, but never of gods or as objects of worship. Instead their purpose was to act as an aide or focus of our worship, they help us contemplate Christ’s “saving sufferings …. and His miracles," and to “praise His almighty power," as well as to record the glory of the saints allowing “us to become imitators of their fortitude and faith.” 

So why am I giving you this brief history lesson? Apart from me being a frustrated would-be history teacher of course. Because John’s insights about worship are still valid and important, As I mentioned, John of Damascus also wrote many hymns and three of them, all Easter hymns, are in our hymnal (# 198, 199, 210). So in John’s life and work we can identify three means of worshipping God: intellectually through theology, visually through images, and through music – and there are many more.

Worship is one way in which we try to know God better and in which we express our love of God. This can never be, as some reformers thought, just an intellectual exercise. For one thing because the very center of our Christian faith is the belief in an incarnate God, in an embodied God, in a God of flesh and blood, and not just in a God of the written word. Worshipping requires our whole body, not just our mind. Both in the Old and New Testaments we are commanded to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind.” (Luke 10:27) Or to put it another way, to love and worship God with everything we have and with all our senses, using them to see, hear, smell, taste and touch the divine.

As John of Damascus rightly argued, worshipping God includes things we see: art, statues, images, icons, books, or just the beauty of creation. Worship includes things we hear, say or sing: readings, sermons, music, and prayer. Beyond that worship includes things we can smell: incense, fresh flowers, the smell of the sea, or of the forest and also things we can taste: the Holy Food of the Eucharist, or just the food we share with one another in fellowship. For as the author of Ecclesiastes writes “it is God’s gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil.” (3:13) Worship includes what we feel: the handshake and hug at the Peace, the hands on our head during prayer and anointing, the water of Baptism. It is through our experience and enjoyment of all these things that we can know God better and show our love and gratitude.

Last, and certainly not least, we worship and know God in other human beings. We humans are also ‘Holy Images’: “God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them.” (Genesis 1:27). How we respect and treat all those we meet, whatever they may look like, is an expression of how much we love God. Some of you will have seen or read about how Pope Francis recently reached out to and embraced a man whose face was completely covered in and disfigured by boils. That was not just a sign of compassion. Pope Francis saw and worshipped God in that other person. The commandment to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind” that I quoted earlier continues in Luke’s Gospel with the call to “Love your neighbor as yourself.” The love of God and love of neighbor are two sides of the same coin.

So as John of Damascus demonstrated in his life and teaching let us worship God with all we are and have: with our minds, with all our senses, and with all our hearts, and may our worship also continue even after this service and once we have left this building.

Amen

Ecclesiastes 3:9-14

9 What gain have the workers from their toil? 10I have seen the business that God has given to everyone to be busy with. 11He has made everything suitable for its time; moreover, he has put a sense of past and future into their minds, yet they cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. 12I know that there is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live; 13moreover, it is God’s gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil. 14I know that whatever God does endures for ever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it; God has done this, so that all should stand in awe before him.

John 5:24-27

24Very truly, I tell you, anyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and does not come under judgement, but has passed from death to life. 25 ‘Very truly, I tell you, the hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. 26For just as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself; 27and he has given him authority to execute judgement, because he is the Son of Man.

---

[1]   All citations taken from: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/johndamascus-images.asp

Stand firm and hold fast

Sermon Preached on Sunday 10th November at the Church of the Ascension, Munich

Job 19:23-27a, Psalm 17:1-9, 2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17, and Luke 20:27-38

We celebrate his death and resurrection, as we await the day of his coming[1]

Don’t worry – you haven’t fallen asleep and missed half the service, even if that was one of the responses, the mystery of faith, from the middle of the Eucharistic Prayer. We say these, or similar words, every Sunday just as we say the Nicene Creed together every Sunday. But do we really mean what we say? I know you all do, of course – but all Christians?  

We celebrate his death: well despite the attempts of some of the new atheists, the “four horsemen of the apocalypse” as I have heard Messrs. Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris and Dennet described[2], to take away not just the climax, but also the very beginning of our story, I think all Christians will agree that Jesus was a real person who both lived and died.

We celebrate his resurrection: This is probably trickier for some, but if we include risen in the spiritual sense or  concepts such as Jesus rose again in their hearts or minds or as a vision then I think almost all Christians will sign up to this statement.

We await the day of his coming: I’m not really certain everyone believes this or even wants it to happen, at least in their own lifetime. The end of the world as we know it, the world a lot of us are actually quite comfortable with? There’s a wonderful T-shirt you can buy that sums up our concerns nicely, it says: “Jesus is coming. Quick, look busy.” And anyway isn’t the second coming just some strange idea from the Christian fringe, something the books of the “Left Behind” series are all about?

Well unfortunately no, it’s an important part of our statements of faith and as, we heard this morning, also right out of Scripture: In today’s Epistle Paul is instructing the Thessalonians all about “the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” or the “Day of the Lord” and Jesus, answering a trick question from the Sadducees, gives his audience and us a glimpse of what the age to come, and our lives in it, might be like. And these are not the only occasions on which this topic is mentioned either: “Then they will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory,” (Mark 13:26) “When the Son of Man comes in his glory… all the nations will be gathered before him,” (Matthew 25:31-31) or “the hour is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice.” (John 5:28)

So let’s take a closer look at what today’s readings have to say about resurrection and about the age to come. In the passage from Luke’s gospel Jesus is answering a question from a group of Sadducees. They were one of the Jewish sects of that time and a very important one: they ran the temple, the chief priests were Sadducees. The only Scripture they accepted as authoritative was the Torah – the 1^st five books of what is often called the Old Testament: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. So none of the prophets, not the wisdom literature, nor the history books. They only believed in what was written in those five books about God’s actions, the Covenant, about the Law, ritual, and an orderly, structured society. And they certainly didn’t believe in an afterlife or any kind of resurrection. That’s why they are trying to provoke Jesus here with their rather ridiculous question about the wife with seven husbands. It’s not a real question, it’s a test. Jesus’ answer is authoritative because he answers as one who knows just what “that age” will be like. It will not be the same as the present age, we will have a new bodily existence, the resurrected will be like angels – that’s Jesus provoking the Sadducees again by the way, they didn’t believe in angels either. Jesus finishes his answer by quoting the Torah back at them: the book of Exodus itself teaches that death is not final. The patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are alive to God, they are alive in God’s presence as they await the final resurrection in that age, in the age to come: this is an impressive promise, a message of great hope and one that for us is proven by Jesus’ own resurrection in which God acted to overcome death as a sign of the promise of resurrection for us all.

Unlike the Sadducees, the Thessalonians Paul was writing to did believe both in the resurrection and in the age to come. The problem here was that they thought the Day of the Lord was already here, or at least just about to come, and that was preventing them from living the full lives they were called to live, and especially from living the lives as pioneers of the Gospel as bringers of the Good News, as people set apart for and by God to bring salvation to the world. No, Paul writes, the day of the Lord is not here yet. There will be many trials and tribulations before that day arrives. We know, he reminds them, from our own Jewish history and from Roman history that the powerful, the mighty of this world, have and will set themselves to be worshipped as gods, that there will be much evil before good triumphs. The good news of Christ’s resurrection, of the promise of God’s love, of eternal comfort is meant to strengthen and sustain them during these times in “your every good work and word,” (2 Thess. 2:17) not to release them. God is powerful and will always support you, is the message Paul has for them and us. Christ will come again and we will all be gathered together to him, and we will share in Christ’s glory: so use the knowledge of that promise, use that glimpse of the future now, share it with the world, and help bring some of that future blessing into the here and now.

In the meantime, “stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that you were taught” (2 Thess. 2:15) Paul instructs the Thessalonians. What might such traditions be for us? One of the traditions we have been taught are the Creeds. Now I know that they are not universally popular. They have come in for a lot of flak. Some denominations don’t use the traditional creeds at all, nor do some Episcopal churches. They are criticised as a political document, as not being wholly scriptural, because they don’t tell us how to live, because they were used to exclude people, and as they were often a test of faith. All this is true: the Council of Nicaea was called by the emperor and some of the phrases are the result of political maneuvering. You won’t find the Nicene Creed written down in the Bible, but all the concepts and ideas are there. Some individuals and large groups of Christians such as the Coptic or Syriac Churches were excluded because they wouldn’t accept individual phrases, words, or even letters of the Creed. Or as we know today more because these phrases, words or letters were misunderstood. Having one common language, Greek, across the Mediterranean world did not prevent misunderstandings, just as having English as a common language today does not prevent the occasional misunderstanding across the Atlantic or even within this congregation! But none of that is a reason not to hold on to the creeds.

They stand for the tradition Paul wants us to hold on to when life gets tough. We should not think of the creeds as a straightjacket, but instead as a framework of trust to enable us to live godly lives. When Paul writes that we are chosen through belief in the truth, that’s not a condition for salvation. God’s grace doesn’t depend on us passing a test of faith. Instead I see traditional expressions of faith like the acclamation in the Eucharistic Prayers, or the creeds, more like a safety rope when we have a dangerous climb ahead of us, like a safety net when life requires us to balance as if on a tightrope, or like a lifejacket, when we are underway on life’s stormy seas. Faith is something we can rely on and trust in while we get on with “every good work and word” in this life. Faith is meant to strengthen and sustain us during difficult times.

Faith, as expressed in the creeds, is the comfort and promise that there is one God, the maker of all. That we are so important to and so loved by this one God that God sent God’s son to share our lives and to give himself for us. That this Son, who knew and shared our existence, will come again. That God wants and promises justice. That the same God is with us now as sustainer, as comforter and as guide. That God has chosen us to bring this Good News to the world. That God promises forgiveness for all our weaknesses and failings. And that we can look forward to the resurrection and to a world to come, an age in which we will be like angels and are children of God.  

This summary of faith, imperfect of course because it’s a human product, is still a wonderful summary of what we can hold on to. Think of that please, when we say the words of the Nicene Creed together in just a moment. Accept them as words that are meant to give us “eternal comfort and good hope, to comfort your hearts and strengthen us in every good work and word” – that is the good work of sharing the knowledge and the practice of God’s love with the whole world.   

Amen

---

[1] Book of Common Prayer (TEC), 371

[2] John Pritchard, Living Faithfully, 161

Celebrate!

Sermon preached on Sunday, September 15 at Church of the Ascension, Munich

Readings for Harvest Thanksgiving: Deuteronomy 26.1-11, Psalm 100, Philippians 4.4-9, John 6.25-35

Today is a celebration! Of course every Sunday is a celebration, that’s why my function in the service was traditionally described as that of ‘celebrant.’ But today is special: our Sunday school children are having a party to celebrate the start of our new Sunday School year with our fun new curriculum: ‘Weaving God’s Promises’. And it’s not too late for children to join that event in the Gemeindesaal or for any parents to register your children!

But today is not just a special day for our children. This is the time of the year when churches in the UK, and as you can see in Germany too, celebrate Harvest Festival or Harvest Thanksgiving. Our equivalent, almost, to the American Thanksgiving holiday. As we heard in the reading from Deuteronomy, harvest thanksgivings or celebrations go back a long way. But this particular festival is comparatively recent. In fact, it dates only from 1843, and at least in the UK was the brainchild of the Reverend Robert Stephen Hawker, for 41 years Vicar of a CofE parish in Cornwall. Hawker was concerned that his parishioners should give thanks to God the creator for all God’s generosity. So he instigated a festival of thanksgiving, in sharp contrast to the prevailing custom of celebrating the gathering-in of crops ‘in pagan fashion with beer and tumult’. Beer and tumult: sounds just like the Oktoberfest, doesn’t it!

The Thanksgiving holiday, as I now understand better having celebrated it with friends twice in the US, has a slightly different focus to Harvest Festival. It’s more intimate and less public: my church in DC offered a church service on Thanksgiving but it was not the best attended service of the church year! The focus is more on relationships, on family and friends, and on giving thanks for more than just a good harvest: for friendships and family or for success at work or sports. Not forgetting of course the focus on turkey with all the trimmings and shopping for bargains at the so-called Black Friday sales!

Giving thanks to God is always a good thing, as the author of today’s Psalm 100 (4-5) tells us:  “Give thanks to him, bless his name. For the Lord is good.” But both Harvest Festival and Thanksgiving can focus a little too much on what we have received and on our own needs. God’s creation is then reduced to being a source of food and sustenance for humanity, rather than something of value in its own right, and God becomes a God whose purpose it is to serve us, rather than the other way round.

Jesus encountered a similar problem in the story we heard this morning from John’s gospel. At the beginning of chapter 6 (6:1-14) Jesus has fed the 5,000 with the help of five barley loaves and two fish – this is by the way the only miracle recorded in all four gospels. Now a day later the people he fed physically have come looking for him. They are very grateful, but they can’t look beyond the material gifts they received. “You are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves,” (6:26) Jesus says to them. They were missing the point: feeding them was necessary because they were hungry and far from home, but it was also a sign of something much greater.

When God answered Moses’ prayer and provided food for the Israelites in the desert it also served two purposes: it saved their lives, it sustained them on their long journey. But the manna was also a spiritual sign: it stood for God’s continuing love and care for the Israelites, even as they quarreled and disobeyed God, it was meant to keep both faith and hope alive. In the same way Jesus’ multiplication of the five barley loaves and two fish was a sign. It showed that Jesus was sent from God, that he was God’s word, that his gift to us all was a sustenance that lasts for ever. Jesus is the “bread of God which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” (6:33) Believing in Jesus and following Jesus’ way is all we have to do to perform the work God requires. Unlike the manna, this bread from heaven does not just keep faith and hope alive, Jesus is our faith and our hope.

So by focusing solely on the physical, the gift of bread and fish, the crowd was in danger of missing the much greater gift that God offers through Jesus. And that is also one of the dangers for us too, if we celebrate and give thanks just for having our own immediate needs fulfilled, if we just celebrate the physical on days like today. We miss that Creation is also a sign of God’s greatness, we miss that the harvest is a sign of God’s love and care for us, we might forget that the bread and the wine that we will share later at the altar stand for God’s love that knows no bounds, for self-giving, for being one with God and one another: for Communion.

The other danger is that the physical can become either the most or even only important thing for us. If we concentrate on ever larger “harvests,” on amassing wealth, on plenty of good food and drink, on success and happiness in this life only, our lives will get out of balance and our celebrations become self-centered and empty routines.

So, how can we celebrate properly, how can we make all our celebrations a sign? Our celebrations, whether festivals or ordinary Sundays, must always be a sign of something greater, they must point to God … but how?

Well, Paul always has good advice on how Christians are to behave and his letter to the Philippians is no exception. What advice does he have then about how we should celebrate and how our celebration, and our very lives, can be a sign?

First of all: “rejoice in the Lord always” (4:4) – celebrate joyfully in the Lord, all the time. Make our joy in knowing God through Christ a public affair. Show our joy – smile, sing out loud, dance …. OK, perhaps dancing in the aisles is a step too far for Anglicans and Episcopalians, but hopefully not the other signs of joy and happiness!

Our public image must be one of a gentle and gracious community: that we are open, considerate and generous in our treatment of all others. The practice of many churches at Harvest Festival of some kind of extra giving: to food banks, donating to allow people in the Global South to buy livestock, build wells, or buy agricultural implements, is a very practical way of demonstrating this gentleness and generosity. This community does so every week with its gifts of food and service to the Soup kitchen run by the Missionaries of Charity.  

Show our trust in God, by bringing all our requests before God in prayer, knowing that while not every request can or will be met, nor all suffering avoided, God is in control and that we have the promise of God’s peace, a “deep peace in the middle of life’s problem and storms” [1] that will guard our hearts and minds.

Celebrate God’s creation, God’s gift of life, God’s goodness by focusing on all that is good:  “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable” (4:8) was Paul’s list. This will enable and empower us to deal with and work against all that is “untrue, unholy, unjust, impure, ugly, or unfair!

Put simply – live a life that embodies the Gospel and is in itself a sign. Paul is willing to set himself up as an example: just do what I do, he says. I suspect we all find that a very tall order indeed, but it is what all of us as Christians strive to do, with God’s help. Our celebrations, our communal life, our own lives, sustained by the bread of heaven, must all point to God: thankfully to a God of peace, love, and grace who overlooks that we are not and cannot ever be perfect examples.

We can and should make every day, not just special Sundays or even just Sundays, a celebration. The signs are: Showing joy, generosity of spirit, trust in God, and being aware of the presence and the goodness of God in all we see and know. That is what will help us and others have the great time God intends us to have. Rejoice in the Lord always, again I say, rejoice!

---

[1]  N. T. Wright, Paul for Everyone: The Prison Letters, 131