• Embed Doc
  • Copy Link
  • Readcast
  • Collections
  • CommentGo Back
Download
 
Talk 4 Standing together
Humanity raised and lifted up
Wednesday April 1st
We are on the way to Easter. This coming Sunday is Palm Sunday,and next week is Holy Week in which we follow the Lord through hispassion to the cross of Good Friday, and onward through it to Eastermorning.
1. Christ raised
Christ has been raised. His resurrection previews ours andanticipates the redemption of all creation in the holy communion of God. Christ has brought us together in this single everlastingcommunion, the only part of which we can see, by faith, is theChurch. When we identify only other people’s sin and despise somepart of the Church because of it, we fail to recognise Christ. But if we look at the world
through Christ’s passion
, we are able to seepast this sin which is ours as much as theirs, to discover that Christhas joined all these sinful people to himself, and is redeeming andglorifying both them and us. The unreconciled world divides andwounds itself away helplessly: the cross is the image of thistormented world. As it travels through it, the Church asks the worldwhy it puts itself through this pain. The world throws at the Churchwhatever contradictions and accusations it does not know how todeal with, and the Church takes whatever the world inflicts on it,and in this way undergoes a long Lent, a Passover. Today we will look at how the Church stands, dwells and abides. TheChurch is constituted by the resurrection now and in eternity. Christis the rock. The Church stands on this rock while the tide ragesaround and strips away whatever does not belong to it. Thougheverything else disappears, the Church remains. For these manycenturies, the Christian people have stood in here in this city, whilethe world gathers around or scatters from it. Do not imagine thatthe Church was once some vast political power: in every ageChristians have been, at most, the ‘salt’ and the ‘yeast’, and havevery often made their contribution against great resistance.
2. Christ raises man
Christ lifts man to God and God receives man from Christ. God hastaken hold of man, holds him now, and will hold him finally in aneternal relationship. In this eucharist Christ raises mankind andoffers him to God, who receives him so that he is sustained foreverin his holy communion. In this prayer and act of elevation we have asnapshot of the eternal relationship of man to God: we are lifted upto God and received by him.We said that the first aspect of the eucharist was the gathering of the body of Christ, the second was the giving and opening of that
1
 
body, the third was its sending. Now the fourth aspect is that thisbody is raised and perfected by Christ. Christ lifts man and allcreation with him, and this raising and offering is his service. Christ
serves
: he serves God, and he serves us. We glimpse his twofoldservice in each service of Christian worship. We even participate inthis unceasing service of his for, in this eucharist, we are also ableto offer Christ to God, and to offer ourselves to one another, and tooffer ourselves to the world as his body. Christ is dressing us with hisown glory. When we are gathered here in Christ, the wholecommunion of God and so all the Christians who have been andwho will be, are present to us. Christ brings them to us and enablesto receive them from him, and so he is raising and glorifying hisChurch. The Church that is pushed down is lifted up by Christ – mindyou, only the Church that is pushed down will be raised.
3. Public service
 The Christian community sings the worship of God, and this involvesit in periodic withdrawal from the world. Through this worship andwithdrawal, Christians develop self-judgment, self-discipline and self-government. We saw that the leaders of civil society clusteredgathered around the Church because they knew that they benefitedfrom the practices of self-judgment, self-restraint and self-government that are practised by the Church. The love and mutualservice of Christians flows out of the Church and into public service. Their self-government and public service creates civil society.Because this nation and its rulers have listened to this God-worshipping community, and received, at least at second-hand, the judgment and forgiveness of God, our national history has been amovement, slow and erratic, from tribalism and violence to unityand peace.Government is that particular form of public service that allows us toserve and provide for one another. A government preserves theconditions in which everyone of us can act well by reducing theobstacles to our own generous and public action. It does not providefor us what we can provide for one another. The Church commendsour public servants and encourages them to serve us well. But theChurch does not tell people to be good, or shout at governments orsuggest that more funding is the solution to any problem.Christian baptism makes us self-controlled persons, no longerentirely propelled by our passions. Christians understand that,because our passions are primarily
ours
, each of us is our own worstenemy. No one can do as much harm to us as we can do toourselves. As long as we blame others for not giving us what wedemand, we endanger ourselves and endanger our environmenttoo.
2
 
 The ability to say ‘no’ to our own immediate desires is theirreplaceable gift given to Christians. It is the first step to freedom.Only when we manage some self-mastery, can we act well towardsone another. The true judge can release us from our sin and give usmastery of our passions. Through baptism we are freed to love andto act. We can act first for ourselves, then for our families and thenmore widely. We may become disciples, and givers of ourselves, andfreely embrace an evangelical poverty. Only through Christianbaptism and within this Christian community and its discipleship arewe freed to acquire this self-control. This baptism means that we areno longer driven by ‘needs’, or by resentment, so we are no longerconsumers, or victims or service-users, and this has immediate andpositive political, economic and ecological outworking. As long as atleast some in it receive the justice and forgiveness of God, thisnation will find the resources to recover from these crises. But if ithas no appetite for the disciplines of self-government things will notcontinue as before. Without hearing this truth this nation willmeander back towards violence and tribalism again.
4. Panicked society
Many are ready to agree that our society is not doing very well atthe moment. But who would be so tactless, so insensitive, as tosuggest that societies can die? Who but us? It is exactly the job of the Church to ask our society whether it wants to live, or wants todie.We are anxious. Our leaders are concerned that we could talkourselves into terminal decline. They want to talk us out of ourfears, so they assure us that with these strong international policyinitiatives and some patience, things will right themselves. They aremistaken. Things do not right
themselves
, because the economy isnot some vast mechanism that turns around on its own, but it is justthe sum of our acts. Some of our fears are well-founded. Onlyprolonged examination of the attitudes and behaviour of everyoneof us, exposure to judgment and our repentance, can help us avoidthe worst consequences of our own actions.Liberal democracy is anchored in the great tradition of Christianpolitical thought and practice. Parts of this vast tradition are alwaysbeing bowdlerised into different agendas and slogans, but itnonetheless belongs to the Church, that is, to the community of Christian discipline and discipleship. This tradition of ethics makessense within that community. Outside, it has only a derived sense.Here we have individual campaigns against poverty, for theenvironment, against capitalism, for regulation. As long as we areangry about other people’s sins, without asking for forgiveness andrelease from our own, all our politics is mere self-disgust andshouting. Without exposure to the truth, to which the Church is
3
of 00

Leave a Comment

You must be to leave a comment.
Submit
Characters: ...
You must be to leave a comment.
Submit
Characters: ...