Sermons
Epiphany - 4
In Stella Gibbons’ novel Cold Comfort Farm, when the preacher Amos announces to the congregation ‘Ye are all damned’, we are told ‘an expression of lively interest and satisfaction passed over the faces of the Brethren and there was a general rearranging of arms and legs, as though they wanted to sit as comfortably as possible whilst listening to the bad news.’ I will be talking about sin today, but it may be good news.
There must have been several stories about the calling of the first disciples doing the rounds in early Christian circles because the gospel accounts differ quite sharply. In Mark’s version of today’s gospel, Jesus is almost a passer-by to the fishermen by the lake, he simply calls them and they jump to it. In John it is the Baptist who points out Jesus to Andrew, who then with another disciple goes to enlist Simon, Philip, and Nathanael. In Luke’s version which we have just heard the focus is on Peter’s reaction to Jesus and that reaction is one of unworthiness, and of sin. When Peter sees the nature of the person he is encountering in the actions of Jesus, the thing he becomes most aware of his own unworthiness to be called, his own sinfulness which he thinks rules him out of being part of whatever is going on.
In the light of this well known story I would like to say something about the nature of providence in the Christian understanding, and something about its relationship with sin.
Sermons on sin have become the exception rather than the rule in most churches. The reason for this may be a desire to avoid putting people off, a scruple not observed in our Lord’s teaching, a large part of which concerns the need for repentance of sins. There is certainly the danger that weekly hellfire sermons can become rather comforting as in the fictional example of the preaching of Amos. But if sin is less popular as a subject for sermons now it is just as popular as ever as an activity. Indeed much of what would in the past have been called sin by the church, has been reclassified as an expression of free will and individual choice. Sometimes, of course, this is long overdue - such as in the rethinking of the role of women within the church, and the gradual awakening of the mind of the church to the sexual diversity that has always characterised human life.
Free will, sin, and providence are closely connected ideas in Christian history and they occupied much of St Paul’s thinking, but fate has always been a more popular concept than providence. From the deified drama of the imaginary Greek gods, to avoiding walking under ladders, people have often wanted to make little bargains with fate, bribes with some unknown but powerful force. Negative people term the downside of fate (that is nemesis) as Murphy’s Law, which issues in a well-known anti-proverb, the rule that ‘no good deed goes unpunished’. But if fate ruled the lives of men and women in reality, we would be reduced to mere puppets on the world’s stage, automatons lacking initiative, perpetually superstitious and fearful of committing some fateful faux pas which might ‘tempt fate’.
The Christian understanding of providence is very far removed from this. It claims that God is perpetually in a state of looking eagerly for the good in his creation and promoting it, indeed this is a way of describing his very nature, which is love. Evil and sin are in the world not as a result of this nature but as a result of the fallen nature of mankind. Within the scheme of God’s providence the central acts of history take place – the calling of the Jewish nation to receive the law, to become the covenanted people of God, the incarnation of God in Jesus, in his life, death, and resurrection, and the life of the church, from the calling of the first disciples to today, the spirit-driven body of Christ in the World called to sanctify the creation until it receives its fulfilment in the eternity of God.
But within God’s providential scheme there is given to mankind the great gift of free will, the knowledge of good and evil, the possibility of turning away from God and rejecting his love. This is why providence at a personal level is not like fate. We are not supine beholders of the world; to say that we can discern God’s providential action in the world is not simply to describe whatever we find to be the case. [As the celebrated philosopher said (and we are told to imagine there is some enigma in his statement), Die welt ist alles was der Fall ist.]
God does not coerce us into acting for the good and rejecting evil, and neither does God set up the biological possibilities of intelligent life and leave us simply to work out the rest for ourselves. God is revealed in Jesus Christ, who is the sole source of the life of the Bible, and of the Church, and in Jesus Christ, God is revealed as a God who calls us into co-operation with him in his ongoing work of creation.
We are not ourselves the authors of creation or of evolution; there is a certain amount that we can describe about both of these aspects of the world, but one suspects our ignorance outweighs our knowledge several-fold. It is only by recognising God as the author of creation and evolution and by praying for his grace that we can begin to answer his calling to us. God is sovereign and free, but freely and with almighty power he has created us and reflects his freedom in the gift to us of free will. Providence is the educating of that free will more closely to respond to God’s call as our lives progress.
So when Jesus called Peter, the response of awesome invitation was entirely fitting on Peter’s part but not that deep sense of unworthiness, none of us is worthy of God’s invitation and yet all of us are offered that gift ‘not weighing are merits, but pardoning our offences’ as the prayer book has it. God does not control our every movement but treats us with dignity, trusts us, and loves us.
I would like to offer an analogy to ponder of the dynamic providential work of God in creation. When a skilful organist such as Trevor extemporises at the organ, something magical happens. He is not reading the music from the page, not bound by a preset order of harmonies and rhythms. He is involved in a process of free creation, delighting to find new possibilities always emerging. The organist and the organ seem to become one, so much is the instrument drawn into the ongoing creative work of the improviser. Perhaps this is a useful analogy for God’s creative providential care for his creation. God is not bound to follow any pattern for his ongoing work and he delights in what he is making.
To return to Amos and his congregation, delighting to hear the bad news; consider for a moment Jesus’ response to Peter’s confession of sin. He says first ‘do not be afraid’.