Sermon: 11th Sunday after Pentecost
Feast of Title | St
Saviour’s Parish, Claremont
8 August 2021 –
Archdeacon Mark Long
2 Samuel 18:5-9,
15, 31-33, Psalm 130, Ephesians 4:25-5:2, and John 6:35, 41-51; NRSV
It is a joy to be with you all this morning as you celebrate your Feast of Title here at St Saviour’s, and my thanks to your Rector, the Revd Chesnay Frantz, for the generous invitation to be present this morning and to preach at this important milestone in the life of the Parish. Your journey over the past few years has not been an easy one and the Covid-19 pandemic continues to bring challenges to life and ministry as we seek to find ways to be faithful to our calling as God’s people within the shifting restrictions placed on our ability to gather together and to be the physical presence of God to one another and to the world around us. My thanks for the manner in which you have all welcomed Revd Chesnay and Samantha and their growing family, and the support you have given them, especially in relation to the substantial health challenges Samantha has faced recently. In addition you have coped with the untimely death of your Parish Secretary, Avril, and other shifts in the staff complement of the Parish, with doubtless the sadness of the loss of loved ones and good friends to Covid-19 and other illnesses in the greater breadth of your lives. Thank you for remaining faithful through it all, and may you continue to demonstrate the resilience of faith and trust that is a hallmark of this Parish and of the wider people of God.
As we celebrate the Parish’s Feast of Title today I am reminded of the gift we demonstrate as human beings to personify those elements of faith and life that are important to us. Normally when we think of Saints in the context of the names we give our Church communities, we reflect on those individuals in the history of our faith who have stood out, not because they were better human beings than their contemporaries, but because in some form their lives stood out as an example of faithfulness and trust that demonstrates a Godliness to which we aspire, and which we desire to embrace. In this Parish’s Title we have personified the greatest gift that God has offered all creation: salvation! And we honour that gift as it is personified in the Eternal Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord and our Saviour. The Title, St Saviour, honours all that God is in Jesus Christ, and all that we are in Jesus as the Body of Christ.
As Saviour, Jesus offers us an incredible gift, which the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, links very specifically to God’s resurrection of Jesus from the dead. In his book, God with Us: The Meaning of the Cross and Resurrection – Then and Now, Rowan speaks of Jesus as the bridge between God and humanity, and says the following in this regard:[1]
“… [because of the Resurrection] Jesus is now free to act universally, eternally and without limit; but who is it that acts eternally, universally and without limit? The answer, of course, is God. … In the new age you can’t disentangle what Jesus is doing from what God is doing.
“[Jesus] stands as a bridge between God and humanity: … bringing them together. … Jesus has created a space we can occupy, in his name. … if you occupy the same space, you can say you share the same embodiment.
“So not only is he acting for God and in God; this action for God and in God makes space for us to live in God’s presence and to live for God and the world.”
Key to what Rowan is saying here is that the gift of salvation is the space that Jesus creates where God and humanity are brought together; that Jesus is that space. You and I know that space as “the Body of Christ”.
Interestingly, and helpfully, the root word in the Greek for both salvation and healing is the same, so when we ask the question, “What does salvation look like?” the answer is that it looks like healing, or in the words of John’s Gospel, it looks like abundant life.[2] The Lectionary presently has us immersed for a five week period in John 6, which began two weeks ago with a focus on the feeding of the five thousand, a sign in John’s Gospel of abundance where we saw that the edge is not just taken off the crowd’s hunger, their hunger is satisfied to the point where food was still available but not needed, and could be collected doubtless to be shared again with others. The nature of abundance is that there is always more than enough; and the nature of salvation is that we are given the insight to recognise this.
Today’s Gospel opens with Jesus words, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”[3] We then see the controversy that arises among those that hear Jesus say this: it is one thing to enjoy physical nourishment in abundance; it is something else entirely to place our trust in God that this will always be the case, and not just physically but on every level of potential existence. Again, we are reminded, as Rowan Williams’ words reminded us earlier, that Jesus is this space of abundance, of salvation, of wholeness. Salvation is also an ever increasing space of healing and wholeness, just as we have discovered that the universe in which our planet exists as a tiniest spec is also ever expanding. One of the biggest challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic is that it limits and restricts us, causing us to think first and foremostly of safety, of protecting ourselves; and in so doing building ever expanding obstacles to abundance. The lived experience in South Africa, as the pandemic adds to the already overwhelming socio-economic and political problems of poverty, unemployment, violence, and corruption, also draws us ever deeper into a scarcity mentality; and our humanity is diminished. It also deafens us to the message of our Scriptures and the call of God on our lives.
Your Feast of Title today is a reminder to look up, to look again to God. It is a call to once again recognise in the Eternal Son, Jesus Christ, the salvation God offers us firstly and foremostly as people of God, as the Body of Christ in which God and humanity are brought together to occupy the same space, a space that is one of abundance and healing. But just as there was food left over after the five thousand had been fed to the point of satisfaction, so this gift is also offered to the communities in which we live, work and worship; to the people of Southern Africa, and to the Nations of our world; and to Creation itself. It is a call to leave behind the mentality of our time, a mentality of scarcity and fear, and to embrace the abundance God offers in Jesus: “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”[4] We need to hear in these words of Jesus that you and I are the Body of Christ; you and I are given for the life of the world.
You and I are human. In moments of true self-awareness we are able to acknowledge that we are frail, we are hurt, we are broken. That is not a problem … only when we break bread can it be shared; only in the brokenness of our lives are we truly useful to God. Professor Denise Ackermann, in a Lenten address some years ago to your daughter Church, St Andrew’s in Newlands, reminded us that the beauty of a stained glass window is due to the fact that the glass is broken, and that the fractures are part of the beauty. Strangely perfection is never truly beautiful; it is the imperfections that add beauty. Never be embarrassed as individuals or as a Christian community of your imperfections; don’t seek to create them, but those that are there, offer them to God for his purposes. Where you are wounded and hurting, seek healing and wholeness, and offer that gift to one another. Be St Saviour’s!
I close with some words from our New Testament reading today,
“… we are members of one another. Be angry but do not sin; … do not make room for the devil. … Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up. … Put away from you all bitterness and wrath … and be kind to one another. … be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”[5]
And a prayer by Irish Theologian and Poet, Pádraig Ó Tuama:
Let us pray,
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