Sermons
18th November 2007 - Fr Martin Preaches at Evensong in St Pauls Cathedral
Photo - Fr Martin and Chrissy Eastwood with their son Charles by Christoph Von Luttitz.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit
This is the first time I have preached from a pulpit that is larger than my kitchen, and if, like me you are a visitor to this great church today you may find yourself caught between feelings of wonder at Wren’s great monument and feelings of your own insignificance in such a vast and beautiful place. There is, perhaps, so much grandeur of place here, so much that speaks of one man’s attempt to embody in stone the absolute majesty of God, that we may be tempted to discount our own position in such a stupendous vision. The business of scale can be overpowering. You may be wondering if this God of the Christians is a God of shock and awe, as high above you as the dazzling ceilings of this church, very beautiful to behold but very much out of reach.
So it is worth remembering that this great church is only a temporary structure, this church will fall down, not I hope in the next few minutes, but it is a temporary pitching of the tent, a tower and temple that will fall to dust in the twinkling of an eye, and that is good news. It is good news because it reminds us that the Christian religion is not something fully expressible in buildings or art or music, or indeed in words. It reminds us that Christianity is not a religion founded on the claims of beauty or the claims of words (aestheticism, of course, carries with it the dangers and delights of idolatory, the adoration of the ephemeral), and literary constructions (including those of the Bible) like architectural constructions are temporary and temporal manifestations, records of how and where people have pitched their tents in their pilgrimages towards God. The fragility of both buildings and books remind us that Christianity is not a word-based religion or an image-based religion, it is a person-based religion and that person is Jesus Christ, in whom the desire of God to engage with us as individuals in a conversation of love is fully revealed. And it is because of the confidence with which can approach that one person, and because the invitation to us to begin and continue that conversation is personalised in every detail, that we should never discount our own individual place within the vast vision of a building such as this or indeed in the vaster vision of the creation itself. It is through recognition that God loves us as individuals that we have confidence to call ourselves people of God and not insignificant assemblages of matter careering through the physical architecture of a creation which is far too big for us to contemplate with meaning.
And how do we begin to play our part in that conversation? If you get caught up in the rumour of God seeking you out in love, but are too dazzled by the magnificence, if you want to leave here today and carry something with you, how might you start to respond to that invitation to personal relationship with God?
I would suggest that you need to look around you at other people whilst remembering that each of them also is called by God. If you can begin to look at people whilst holding in your mind that each one of them has this defining feature of what it is to be a created human being, this feature of potential of engagement with God then you may begin to see all whom you encounter in a quite different light. You might begin to see in each of them the moments when they very clearly are responding to that invitation to engagement, and when they are not. And if you start to get that bug, start to see the actions of God in other people, you might find then that you need to take a further step and approach those people in the place you live who are publicly living the Christian life, people in church or house groups and ask them to lead you deeper into the conversation that you have begun. Like those early enquirers in John’s gospel you might want approach those who can nurture you and say ‘we would see Jesus’
One of the holy men we celebrated last week in church was Charles Simeon, an evangelical divine of the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Simeon was very conscious of the dangers of pulpits or buildings or beauty leading us away from encounter with God and the people through whom he is working. In the pulpit of his church in Cambridge, Simeon had the words ‘Sir, we would see Jesus’ carved where only the preacher could see them, to remind him that his calling as a preacher was always to point people towards the God who in Jesus seeks us out as individuals and invites us to engage with him.
So when you leave this glorious building today and return to your home, if you find yourself spotting the actions of the loving God being played out between the people you meet, then seek out those who can lead you deeper into relationship with Jesus, those who can show him to you. Then, perhaps, your trip to St Paul’s Cathedral on a rainy afternoon in November 2007 might have been not simply awe-inspiring, but life-changing.