Rev. Dr. Sumner is the principal of Wycliffe College, Toronto
This being Christmas Eve Eve, my question for you is this: back in your childhood, when Christmas had a numinous glow, what was the most memorable present you ever received? Several come to mind for me. There was a doll of my hero, Popeye, which I received on my 5th Christmas and dragged happily around the house all morning, only to discover to my horror later in the afternoon that my sister had performed surgery on him (we were surgeon's kids) and the surgery had gone very very wrong...not sure I have forgiven her yet. A couple of years later, in my militaristic phase, I found under the tree two beautiful uniforms, of Union and Confederate soldiers, handsewn by my grandmother, one of which I have to this day. But the one I want to focus on this morning was actually given to my older brother: a see-through antfarm. There they were, working industriously within, digging, dragging, building, quite oblivious to the staring eyes of us, far larger beings taking in their predicament and their efforts. The antfarm: what strikes us when we watch is how industrious they are, but when one gets older one stops to think why? For they are equally unaware of themselves, and willing to be trampled by their comrades if it furthers the cause. It is all for the Farm, and down with the Ant, the individual anyway, a far cry from each wondering what there is for me under that tree. The great selfless one, in which we are but worker ants: it is strange, attractive, and awful to us as we look in on the plastic window.
Quite the opposite are our lives, aren't they? Doesn't it often seem that our work, our homelives, are precisely the balancing and working out of different and colliding needs and desires, of all the very individual creatures with which we deal, including ourselves? Isn't every sphere of our life in this way "political", in the sense of being a polis, a micro-city, in which there is a struggle to balance what each individual desires and what would benefit the whole? Ants we aren't, which is our splendor and our problem.
It is in this regard that I want to offer to you this morning a vision by a Father of the Church from 4th Century Turkey named Gregory of Nyssa. In one of his essays he imagined that in heaven there stands before God one great being, Adam the new, humanity. Within that one being are we all parts of the whole, individuals still, though the walls between us taken down, so that the spiritual ligaments between us are better seen. It is in the same vein that I heard a clergy colleague say recently in a sermon that in church there is only one communicant, the Body of Christ, the Church, because the communion is with God the Father, and that belongs to God the Son, and through the sheer grace of God we have been included in that communion. There is only one communicant at the rail at St. Matthew's this morning, who is named Church, the new Eve bride of Christ and one flesh with Him, and we are all included in that one Body. That of course has wonderful and hard implications. It means that eternally and to my salvation I am bound together with some people I do not really like nor can I abide, but brother or sister they are to me still.
This sermon is really about heaven, and my first point is that we are there, not just you and you and you and you and, God willing, I, And the next question is this: what are we doing there? For the answer to that question, what are we doing when we get to where all of life is about getting to, will tell us a lot about what this life too is for. There we are, the book of Revelation tells us, gathered around the Lamb of God. I Corinthians tells us that it is really we, bodies and all, though in a way that we cannot now even imagine. Daniel tells us that we are "from every language, family, language, and people," though these differences no longer divide. Traditionally what we are doing is singing, which may seem unappealing to the unmusical of us, but this is really a way of saying that in joy and the beauty of holiness we are telling forth all that the God we behold has done. To do that is what we were originally intended to do; arrows are for shooting, shovels for digging, humans made in the beginning for this praising, in what Paul this morning calls "the obedience of faith," that he is now, finally, calling the peoples to. In common praise they are more and more themselves to eternity, as they are more one. The two are not opposites after all, nor desire and self-sacrifice, if you are doing what you are made for. In other words, what they are doing in the Christmas story, the peoples gathered around God's Son in wonder and praise, is a figure, even in its plainness, for heaven itself. That takes us beyond the antfarm, and brings us round to the today's lesson, from the first chapter of Romans.
We are on the edge of Christmastide, the feast of the Incarnation of our Lord, and the next question to be asked, obvious when we think of it, however used we may be to the story is this: why does God come this way? If He is God, and the world so in need of righting, why not come in manifest power and terrible justice? Why not skip this first coming altogether? If the goal is the obedience of faith among the nations, who are always in a fury, why not come and enforce the order they need? Why this painful and circuitous route through human history? And the answer comes back, "precisely because it is the obedience of faith," which is to say trusting relationship. The goal God has for us is loving and free praise of Him from us his creatures. To accomplish this he must use means that allow and nurture human freedom and free love, that give the creature space to act, to praise, which also allows space to rebel as well. But be sure that it is God the creator who allows us this space. And likewise it is all God in this passage of Paul's in Romans 1, ordaining, setting apart, determining how the drama shall unfold. This is the real test of God all-powerful greatness, that he can lead us where we were created to reach, and nurture our free love all the while. How he determined to do this begins here in the Christmas, incarnationtide story.
If we were to look in detail at today's lesson, from Romans 1, with these questions, and God's grand strategy in mind, the first thing you would notice is that the birth of Jesus is fixed at the very center of a much longer story. It is all about God making a path through the way of human flesh, a way through the valley of the shadow of death. You see Romans 1 starts by telling us that God has set Paul apart as an apostle, a sent one, a messenger. But this is not new thing, for he is but the last of a long line of prophets, and what he has come to say was foreseen by them long ago. That is one big reason you and I have a Bible that is one book with an old and new testament, for God's journey down through the way of flesh is one journey, and the path was announced by prophets in both eras. God journeys into the far country of his own creation, and the country of the rebellion of his own children. He moves in humility into the land of flesh and blood, sin and death, so that it can be the land of the "obedience of faith." It is the land of Israel, the flesh and blood people who are to mark God's ownership of them in their flesh, who are to obey with their bodies as well as their souls. The Torah is full of what they eat, and with whom they have sex, and how they dispose of their wealth, and how they take in the stranger- these all matter to the Lord God in the journey through the flesh on the way to the obedience of faith. On the far side of the birth of Jesus, Paul talks about the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. That is the moment when he is shown to have been the Son of God by power. That is where the transformation of human flesh begins in earnest. That is the culmination of the life which begins in the nativity stable, the life that is the great descent of God through the land of flesh and blood, in humility and powerlessness. It is the only way that we can be led to the place prepared and set apart for us, where we are to praise him freely in the obedience of faith. My point is that incarnation is centerpiece of a longer story of God with us, in the flesh. For the story goes on, for God the Son resides in the Church through the Holy Spirit. With the resurrection God has not abandoned our lowly way. He is still in the Church, guiding it, speaking to it, indwelling it in His Spirit, feeding it with his body and blood. He is in it forebearing its divisions in order that the peoples might learn to be one in his praise. The incarnation of which you will hear again this Christmastide is the heart of a longer strategy, the fitting way for God to bring us to the end for which he made it. It is the fitting way, and a painful way, a patient way.
It is easy to look at the Church and be disappointed, or discouraged, or despairing, or cynical, or angry, and not least we who are clergy. Why do divided, so impotent, so ineffectual, so faithless? It is all these things, and to our blame. But why does God allow it? Why, the question goes unspoken, doesn't God do a better job of creating an instrument on earth for himself? But here, with the help of today' lesson, we look again at the Church, in all its frailty and failure, and wonder in silent gratitude. God, even here, places his priceless treasure, the key that unlocks the door of eternal life. He does it in this way not because he couldn't do otherwise, but because he is willing to duck his head to come into our house. He does it because of the infinite patience he shows in walking the long road through the valley of flesh and blood. He does it because this frail and endangered thing is perfectly fitted to the delicate work of making us, free and loving in the obedience of faith. Frail yes, but unbreakable too, for in it is the tungsten of his word, the steel against which one Anglican theologian said that many a century has broken its teeth. Against this frail creature, because it is God's creature hell cannot prevail. Frail, yes, but the perfect preparation for heaven.
Quite the opposite are our lives, aren't they? Doesn't it often seem that our work, our homelives, are precisely the balancing and working out of different and colliding needs and desires, of all the very individual creatures with which we deal, including ourselves? Isn't every sphere of our life in this way "political", in the sense of being a polis, a micro-city, in which there is a struggle to balance what each individual desires and what would benefit the whole? Ants we aren't, which is our splendor and our problem.
It is in this regard that I want to offer to you this morning a vision by a Father of the Church from 4th Century Turkey named Gregory of Nyssa. In one of his essays he imagined that in heaven there stands before God one great being, Adam the new, humanity. Within that one being are we all parts of the whole, individuals still, though the walls between us taken down, so that the spiritual ligaments between us are better seen. It is in the same vein that I heard a clergy colleague say recently in a sermon that in church there is only one communicant, the Body of Christ, the Church, because the communion is with God the Father, and that belongs to God the Son, and through the sheer grace of God we have been included in that communion. There is only one communicant at the rail at St. Matthew's this morning, who is named Church, the new Eve bride of Christ and one flesh with Him, and we are all included in that one Body. That of course has wonderful and hard implications. It means that eternally and to my salvation I am bound together with some people I do not really like nor can I abide, but brother or sister they are to me still.
This sermon is really about heaven, and my first point is that we are there, not just you and you and you and you and, God willing, I, And the next question is this: what are we doing there? For the answer to that question, what are we doing when we get to where all of life is about getting to, will tell us a lot about what this life too is for. There we are, the book of Revelation tells us, gathered around the Lamb of God. I Corinthians tells us that it is really we, bodies and all, though in a way that we cannot now even imagine. Daniel tells us that we are "from every language, family, language, and people," though these differences no longer divide. Traditionally what we are doing is singing, which may seem unappealing to the unmusical of us, but this is really a way of saying that in joy and the beauty of holiness we are telling forth all that the God we behold has done. To do that is what we were originally intended to do; arrows are for shooting, shovels for digging, humans made in the beginning for this praising, in what Paul this morning calls "the obedience of faith," that he is now, finally, calling the peoples to. In common praise they are more and more themselves to eternity, as they are more one. The two are not opposites after all, nor desire and self-sacrifice, if you are doing what you are made for. In other words, what they are doing in the Christmas story, the peoples gathered around God's Son in wonder and praise, is a figure, even in its plainness, for heaven itself. That takes us beyond the antfarm, and brings us round to the today's lesson, from the first chapter of Romans.
We are on the edge of Christmastide, the feast of the Incarnation of our Lord, and the next question to be asked, obvious when we think of it, however used we may be to the story is this: why does God come this way? If He is God, and the world so in need of righting, why not come in manifest power and terrible justice? Why not skip this first coming altogether? If the goal is the obedience of faith among the nations, who are always in a fury, why not come and enforce the order they need? Why this painful and circuitous route through human history? And the answer comes back, "precisely because it is the obedience of faith," which is to say trusting relationship. The goal God has for us is loving and free praise of Him from us his creatures. To accomplish this he must use means that allow and nurture human freedom and free love, that give the creature space to act, to praise, which also allows space to rebel as well. But be sure that it is God the creator who allows us this space. And likewise it is all God in this passage of Paul's in Romans 1, ordaining, setting apart, determining how the drama shall unfold. This is the real test of God all-powerful greatness, that he can lead us where we were created to reach, and nurture our free love all the while. How he determined to do this begins here in the Christmas, incarnationtide story.
If we were to look in detail at today's lesson, from Romans 1, with these questions, and God's grand strategy in mind, the first thing you would notice is that the birth of Jesus is fixed at the very center of a much longer story. It is all about God making a path through the way of human flesh, a way through the valley of the shadow of death. You see Romans 1 starts by telling us that God has set Paul apart as an apostle, a sent one, a messenger. But this is not new thing, for he is but the last of a long line of prophets, and what he has come to say was foreseen by them long ago. That is one big reason you and I have a Bible that is one book with an old and new testament, for God's journey down through the way of flesh is one journey, and the path was announced by prophets in both eras. God journeys into the far country of his own creation, and the country of the rebellion of his own children. He moves in humility into the land of flesh and blood, sin and death, so that it can be the land of the "obedience of faith." It is the land of Israel, the flesh and blood people who are to mark God's ownership of them in their flesh, who are to obey with their bodies as well as their souls. The Torah is full of what they eat, and with whom they have sex, and how they dispose of their wealth, and how they take in the stranger- these all matter to the Lord God in the journey through the flesh on the way to the obedience of faith. On the far side of the birth of Jesus, Paul talks about the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. That is the moment when he is shown to have been the Son of God by power. That is where the transformation of human flesh begins in earnest. That is the culmination of the life which begins in the nativity stable, the life that is the great descent of God through the land of flesh and blood, in humility and powerlessness. It is the only way that we can be led to the place prepared and set apart for us, where we are to praise him freely in the obedience of faith. My point is that incarnation is centerpiece of a longer story of God with us, in the flesh. For the story goes on, for God the Son resides in the Church through the Holy Spirit. With the resurrection God has not abandoned our lowly way. He is still in the Church, guiding it, speaking to it, indwelling it in His Spirit, feeding it with his body and blood. He is in it forebearing its divisions in order that the peoples might learn to be one in his praise. The incarnation of which you will hear again this Christmastide is the heart of a longer strategy, the fitting way for God to bring us to the end for which he made it. It is the fitting way, and a painful way, a patient way.
It is easy to look at the Church and be disappointed, or discouraged, or despairing, or cynical, or angry, and not least we who are clergy. Why do divided, so impotent, so ineffectual, so faithless? It is all these things, and to our blame. But why does God allow it? Why, the question goes unspoken, doesn't God do a better job of creating an instrument on earth for himself? But here, with the help of today' lesson, we look again at the Church, in all its frailty and failure, and wonder in silent gratitude. God, even here, places his priceless treasure, the key that unlocks the door of eternal life. He does it in this way not because he couldn't do otherwise, but because he is willing to duck his head to come into our house. He does it because of the infinite patience he shows in walking the long road through the valley of flesh and blood. He does it because this frail and endangered thing is perfectly fitted to the delicate work of making us, free and loving in the obedience of faith. Frail yes, but unbreakable too, for in it is the tungsten of his word, the steel against which one Anglican theologian said that many a century has broken its teeth. Against this frail creature, because it is God's creature hell cannot prevail. Frail, yes, but the perfect preparation for heaven.
