Sermon for Sunday 22nd March 2020, St Matthew's, Oxford
Readings: Luke 13: 31-35 and Isaiah 49: 14-18
Today it is, of course, impossible to give a sermon without mentioning
the Corona Virus and the extraordinary situation we find ourselves in because
of the pandemic. It is also, of course,
Mother’s Day and the fourth Sunday in Lent: three weeks before Easter: the day
we would normally give out daffodils here at St Matthew’s. We are now also two weeks away from Palm
Sunday when we remember Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem on a donkey and
our gospel reading today records an incident on the way to Jerusalem.
Today my theme is ‘Trust’ prompted by our readings, which are about motherly
aspects of God and the trust we can have in God’s mother-like protective arms, but
also by a phrase in a song that you can find at the end of Deuteronomy where
Moses sings about ‘ the everlasting arms of God.’ I should also say that some of my reflections
comes from a Thought for the Day, on Friday, from Richard Harries.
So we find ourselves in a strange new world where church services have
to be conducted via the Internet rather than in person. Now all new situations provoke anxiety even
if the change to our lives is relatively minor. And the Corona Virus pandemic promises to
lead to major changes to our lives whether we catch it or not. And of
course these changes are not just to our holiday plans but to our very health
and wellbeing.
Now anxiety about the future is to some extent a good thing: it prompts
us to plan and to take control with the rational part of our being. In this situation we can do sensible things
like washing our hands regularly, avoiding physical contact with others as much
as possible, self-isolating if we catch the disease, etc. And the Government too, can take measures to
protect us.
But planning only takes us so far, firstly because we are not just
rational but emotional beings and secondly because we can only rationally plan
for the future in as much as we can predict what will happen. The emotional side of our being means we are
affected by anxiety about the future to different degrees. Some are overcome by anxiety, some seem not
to worry at all, even in the most normal of times let alone in times of crisis.
.
But it is also the case that what will happen is always inherently
uncertain and unpredictable to a larger degree than we may care to admit to
ourselves. As the write of Ecclesiastes says: ‘No one knows when their hour will come.’[1] And Jesus also
says something similar when he talks about his second coming. He says in St Matthew’s Gospel ‘But about
that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but
only the Father’.
So there are things about the future we just cannot know or
predict. And let us remember that we
might not know our own future but God does: the hour Jesus’s return my not be
known to him but it is known to the Father.
Furthermore the uncertainty inherent in life – revealed in situations
like the one we find ourselves today - makes us realise that ultimately we are
not in as much control of things as we might think we are.
Now again, people react to uncertainty in different ways. Some adopt a resigned fatalism, some a
cheerful stoicism. But the message of
the Bible, and of our readings today, is that we should go beyond pessimistic fatalism
or over-resigned stoicism.
The scriptures, in both Old and New Testaments, urge an ultimate trust
which, far from merely propping us up like a crutch, should empower us to take
action. Beyond what might seem immediately apparent, the
Bible says, are the purposes of God. Paul
say: ‘We know that all things work together for good for those who love God,
who are called according to his purpose.’
And Moses sings: ‘The eternal God
is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms’ [2].
Note that the arms are everlasting:
they don’t run out, unlike the proverbial toilet roll.
These everlasting arms are invoked by Isaiah when he says, in our Old Testament
reading today: ‘Can a woman forget her nursing-child, or show no compassion for
the child of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I [the Lord] will not forget
you’[3] And
the Psalmist[4], extending
the image of the all-powerful arms to the protective wings of a mother hen
under which her chicks can hide in times of danger, says:
‘You who live in
the shelter of the Most High,
who abide in the shadow of the Almighty,
will say to the
Lord, “My refuge and my fortress;
my God, in whom I trust.”
For he will
deliver you from the snare of the fowler
and from the deadly pestilence;
he will cover you
with his pinions,
and under his wings you will find refuge;’
Jesus, in our Gospel reading today, is put into a risky situation where
he must trust God. On his way to
Jerusalem he is accosted with some friendly Pharisees who warn him of a threat
to his life from Herod – the ruler of Galilee. Jesus tells them that he is set on a course of
action from which he will not be diverted.
He tells them that he has work to do – casting out demons and performing
cures – which he intends to complete and then, instead of reassuring those
around him that he will avoid danger, tells them he must be on his way to
Jerusalem – the city that kills its prophets – and the place of greatest danger
for him.
This wasn’t to say that Jesus wasn’t acting rationally in the situation
he found himself in, or even that he wasn’t concerned about the threat from
Herod. It is just that in the end he
felt, he trusted, that some things were more important that his own personal
safety – as those who are working for us in our National Health Service today must
also feel.
The value of this ultimate trust in God is that it directs us away from
worrying too much about the future and directs us towards living fully in the
now. The eighteenth century priest Jean-Pierre de
Caussade talked about the “sacrament of the present moment”. He believed that receiving the present moment,
just as we receive the body of Christ at Communion, and giving ourselves wholly
to it, constitute life’s highest and holiest calling.
One of the unexpected results of the Corona Virus pandemic might be
that we come more fully to recognise that living for the now is more important
that living for an imagined future. And
in this begin to discover a new joy and a deeper compassion for those around us
as we trust in the everlasting arms of God.
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