Sermon: Eve of St Simon & St Jude

Preacher:

Date:

Sunday 27th October 2013

Service:

Choral Evensong

Readings:

Deuteronomy 32: 1-4

John 14: 15-26

Listen:

Download Recording (MP3, 28.3M)

In the letter to the Ephesians we read that we are no longer strangers and aliens, but ‘citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone’. (Ephesians 2.19, 20)

As we celebrate Simon and Jude the apostles it is a good moment to reflect on the Cornerstone, and the stones that make the building of the Church. There are bricks and mortar type stones, and then there are the apostles and prophets type stones.

Christians are well versed in the imagery of the spiritual temple as well as the physical one. There is deliberate ambiguity: the church is both a building and a people.  The Church is where the Church worships. The human body we understand as a temple of the Holy Spirit; the Church, the Body of Christ, as a spiritual temple; we are easy with the language of being living stones within the church. And Christ is the corner stone of all of this.

The authority of the apostles in the life of the Church, then, is only ever built on Christ the Cornerstone. In the name Peter the Apostle we see a play on all these images: Peter the rock, the stone, on which Christ’s Church will be built. But that very same stone can be something which can be tripped over or a toe can be stubbed on. Church tradition is both too. Tradition properly understood as that which is handed on to us, a generous and living inheritance, is the foundation stone; traditionalism a dead and arid legacy is what we a liable to trip over. And by the way, neither the term living-tradition nor traditionalism should ever be used a labels to paint others with, or to run down those who don’t see things the way we do.

It’s highly topical for us in the Cathedral to reflect on being the Body of Christ and the buildings that house our common life together, and on how we continue to remain faithful to an apostolic faith founded on Christ. It is topical because we ourselves are on the cusp of the renewal of this place both as a building and as the Body of Christ. Both will inform the other. The building gives the focal point and shelter for the Body of Christ the Church to be able go out in service of Christ in all the places; but the building has to be at the service of the worship, mission and ministry that is offered here. The sense of being built on the lived apostolic faith on the foundation of Christ is essential to all our undertakings. We have constantly to say with one of tonight’s psalms, ‘Our help standeth in the Lord: who hath made heaven and earth’. (Psalm 124.7)

Our first reading was a song in praise of God that Moses declared after the fullness of the Law was written down and before he died. In Moses we have a case study of the tension between being God’s people and the need for buildings. In Exodus he is given the directions and dimensions of constructing a sanctuary, a holy place, and a tent of meeting. That seems to suggest the necessity of a marked out, measured space for encounter with God and offering sacrifice within a particular place. In total contrast Moses first met God in the wilderness, a rough barren place and not hemmed in, a place where sheep could easily get lost. It was place of discomfort where God whispered his presence. The space around the Burning Bush, a place which was not a neatly defined, not measured out space, was declared by God to be, all the same, holy ground, on which Moses was standing.

Moses’ places of encounter were all God shaped and God inspired. They were places of intense holiness, a radical meeting with God, the God of Abraham, of whom Moses says,

‘For I will proclaim the name of the LORD; ascribe greatness to our God! The Rock, his work is perfect, and all his ways are just’ (Deut 32.3, 4a)

The apostolic faith built and founded on Christ is a faith that is not defined in a rigid, tight, marked out way but is shaped and formed in the generous life of the Trinity. It places the Church, and each individual member of the Body, in the place where Christ stands, the place of radical openness to the Father bound by the Spirit. If you are standing where Christ stands you are on holy ground, even in a wilderness. Jesus’ promise of sending the Holy Spirit is the guarantee of that relationship, the flame of the Holy Spirit which does not destroy anything of God, the Holy Spirit our Advocate.

The thing is this could all be an introspective churchy pursuit and that would be totally to deny to inspiration and guidance of the Holy Spirit and would deny our life in the Trinity which always generates more beyond ourselves because participation in that life is participation in the very life of God. The Holy Spirit of God will always breathe out beyond our confines; life in the Trinity means we cannot look beyond ourselves into the mystery of God. The Spirit of Jesus Christ breaks in even into the locked, dark places of fear in our hearts. No building, nobody can keep him out and keep him.

I wonder if Simon and Jude can be our patrons this new week as we seek to stand with and in Jesus our foundation in the life of the Holy Trinity, knowing that when and where we stand with him we stand on holy ground. May we pray for the renewal of this holy place its bricks, mortar and concrete and you, me and all our guests, young and old, the living stones of this place.