Sermon for 26.07.20

“Praying in the Sunlight"

by The Revd Preb. Marjorie Brown

The Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops from around the world that was meant to be taking place next month has been delayed by coronavirus until 2022. In the run-up to the Lambeth Conference of 1930, the mystic, theologian and spiritual director Evelyn Underhill, who is buried beside Hampstead Parish Church, wrote a piece of advice to the Archbishop of Canterbury. She said in it, “God is the interesting thing about religion, and people are hungry for God.”

Elsewhere in the same letter she wrote about the state of the Anglican clergy of her day: “The Church wants not more consecrated philanthropists, but a disciplined priesthood of theocentric souls who shall be tools and channels of the Spirit of God.”

Now over the past four months the Church of England has been spinning in circles trying to produce the right response to the pandemic. The clergy have been bombarded with advice from the government, from scientists and archbishops, and it seems to change every few days. This can’t be helped. It’s the nature of the unknown situation we are dealing with. We are trying our best to manage risk, sort out finances, plan online worship and meet pastoral needs.

But when I read today’s passage from the letter to the Romans, I am sharply reminded of Underhill’s words. The point of the clergy, after all, is to be channels of the Spirit, because it is the Spirit alone, and not any of our well-meaning projects, that can meet people’s hunger for God. 

The passage in Paul’s great letter that was read to us so ably by Nicholas this morning tells us some very important things about God. Let’s pick out a few of them:

First of all, it is God who prays in us. So it is not our own faith or ability or holiness that puts us in touch with God. We are heard because the Spirit of Jesus Christ prays in us to the Father. So people who say “I’m rubbish at prayer” can rest easy – we’re not expected to be good at it. We simply have to let that prayer happen in us. As Rowan Williams says, prayer is like simply lying in the sun and allowing the light to get to us. Perhaps in the summer holidays we might hold on to this image of prayer as sunbathing.

Paul then goes on to say that all things work together for good for those who love God. If we start to worry about whether or how well we love God, we can put that out of our minds. The great 20th century theologian Karl Barth said of this verse, “The love of God is not a particular form of behaviour within the sphere of human competence… It can be in our prayers, but also in our inability to pray; it can be in our religion, but also in our indifference to religion, in our antipathy to it, and in our assault upon it.” 

The point is the reality of God, who is utterly beyond our comprehension and who forces the question upon us, Who then am I? If we really face this question, we encounter the ground of our being, the God who created us in perfect love and freedom and not out of any kind of necessity.

It’s God’s love and purpose for us that are real, not our stumbling and uncertain response. People used to get very anxious about predestination, wondering if they were among the elect. What must we do to be saved? How could we be good enough? But those are all the wrong questions. We don’t need to worry about what we do but what God does.

Paul tells us that God is for us, and that all things work together for good in God’s loving purpose. Jesus Christ is the visible sign of God being for us, and none of the terrible things that human beings did to him were able to overcome God’s love. In that famous passage that is so often read at funerals, he says “I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

So why are we so anxious? The greatest spiritual malady is fear – fear that we are unloved, that our life has no purpose, that the universe is meaningless and that we are headed towards oblivion. So much of modern life is a series of activities to avoid thinking about this, and our frantic doing and consuming are just distractions from that dreadful emptiness.

That is where the COVID-19 pandemic, in all its horror, can be turned by God to work for our good, just as every other human disaster can be transformed. The blessing in this tragedy is the universal aspect of it. Across the globe we face the same giant STOP sign. We have had to take stock of our lives and find out what we value. We have been reminded of the famous line that no one ever said on their deathbed, I wish I’d spent more time at the office. Instead we have delighted in nature, in our loved ones, in the precious time made available to just let the blessed sunlight fall on us, whether we name that a religious experience or not.

As the global human family, we have shared this forced pause. We have had to face the ultimate question that the virus steers us back to, Who then am I? Our generation will be defined by how we answer this question that is posed to us all.

Do we go back to the cycle of destructive behaviours that pitched us into this catastrophe? Or do we listen to Jesus’ parables about the kingdom of God, and direct our hunger to the only place where it can really be satisfied? We don’t manufacture the mustard seed, the yeast, or the pearl; they are gifts to us. By attending to and valuing these tiny things, these signs of hope, we can live abundantly and thankfully. God’s Spirit can pray in us, grace can empower us, and God’s purpose can be worked out in us, not because of our efforts but because we let God be God. 

The only interesting thing about religion is God. We can busy ourselves with church business, finances, building, outreach, services, and all those things that can be deeply fulfilling and create bonds of fellowship. But our ultimate hunger is for the deepest reality, so let’s spend more time lying in the sunlight of God’s love.