Sunday 24 October, Trinity 21
Lectionary Readings for the Last Sunday after Trinity
Isaiah 28: 14-16
Therefore hear the word of the Lord, you scoffers who rule this people in Jerusalem. Because you have said, “We have made a covenant with death, and with Sheol we have an agreement; when the overwhelming scourge passes through it will not come to us; for we have made lies our refuge,
and in falsehood we have taken shelter”; therefore thus says the Lord God, See, I am laying in Zion a foundation stone, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone, a sure foundation: “One who trusts will not panic.”
Ephesians 2: 19-end
So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are 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. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.
I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.
John 15: 17-end
“If the world hates you, be aware that it hated me before it hated you. If you belonged to the world, the world would love you as its own. Because you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world—therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, ‘Servants are not greater than their master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you; if they kept my word, they will keep yours also. But they will do all these things to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me. If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin. Whoever hates me hates my Father also. If I had not done among them the works that no one else did, they would not have sin. But now they have seen and hated both me and my Father. It was to fulfill the word that is written in their law, ‘They hated me without a cause.’ “When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf. You also are to testify because you have been with me from the beginning.
Sermon for the Last Sunday after Trinity
The readings we are given for this Sunday ask us this question:
Not it is e i
What does it mean, to belong?
We all know how important it is to belong—-to feel wanted, needed, loved, cherished. By our mother, our father, our sister, our brother, our friends, by the world around us, whatever part of the world that is.
And we may have been born into a loving family in a place of safety—-a neighbourhood where there are no regular robberies. We may have been well educated and positioned for a career that ensures us a steady and sufficient income for all our lives, if we invest the proceeds wisely.
But others in this same shared world have not. They happen to have been born elsewhere. They have fled violence of many kinds: civil war, bombings and terror, or the sheer hopelessness of watching crops wither and die, day by day, because the conditions for their growth are not there anymore. And so they have either been driven out of their homeland or have chosen to risk everything for a chance to begin again in a new place.
So where do they, our fellow human beings, belong? What does it mean, for them, to belong?
Last month the Home Office placed two hundred Afghan refugees just down the street from St. John’s, in a hotel. And somehow, the communication between the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea and the Home Office was so poor that for two weeks these families were isolated, bewildered, not venturing out of the hotel by themselves for fear of not being able to find their way back! So the church, St. Mary Abbots, in this case, immediately came to help them. To register them for health care, including the first doctor’s examination of a baby born in quarantine. And to organise schooling, and more permanent housing, and counselling, and help in creating a new life. They welcomed them.
So with love and many prayers this one group of refugees from a country where they used to belong will now have a country where they will come to belong. And it is the church that has shown them this care.
We can help to care for those who are displaced. But we cannot, most of us, change the world itself that causes people not to belong anymore. We can work for that change, and we must, but the real causes of flight lie deep within our nature as human beings: envy and greed, selfishness, pride, the lust for power.
Most people in the world don’t go to church! Or synagogue, or their local mosque. So how do we confront a world like this?
We cannot place our ultimate trust in it. Awareness of what is happening in the world is good; voting is good; supporting charitable causes that help the poor and the weak is good. All this.
But our passage from John today says that we do not belong to the world.
We cannot place our ultimate trust in a world that values personal attractiveness and power, money and material possessions. It is not reliable, this world—-it will not care for us if we lose our job, or are stricken with an incurable disease, or have a sudden reversal of fortune. And this happens all the time, every day.
We cannot belong, ultimately, to this kind of world.
Advent is not so far away. This is the last Sunday of Trinity in the church’s year—next Sunday we celebrate the feast of All Saints’ Day, and Advent will follow four weeks after. And Advent, each year, year after year, is the season where we consciously hold up the hope that is our faith, the hope that the light of Christ has come into the darkness of our world; is coming; will come, finally, at the end of all time.
What is that very real hope?
It is that the source of truth, which is not the world, but the Word of God in Christ, is our living Word.
And it will sustain us.
I am preparing three persons for confirmation, in between our regular classes for confirmation. St. Paul’s Cathedral offers a confirmation service once a year to all those who
are ready. For me, confirmation classes are a chance to think about what is most important to teach about the faith, the Christian faith. What are the most important words to teach that help us to understand the living word that is Christ?
I keep going back to what might be my favorite passage in all the Bible, Isaiah 43. Listen to these hauntingly beautiful words from this prophecy in the Old Testament:
But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel:
Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.
For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.
I give Egypt as your ransom, Ethiopia and Seba in exchange for you. Because you are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you, I give people in return for you, nations in exchange for your life.
Do not fear, for I am with you; I will bring your offspring from the east, and from the west I will gather you;
I will say to the north, “Give them up,” and to the south, “Do not withhold; bring my sons from far away
and my daughters from the end of the earth— everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.”
These words of Isaiah prepared the way for the words of John’s Gospel:
If you belonged to the world, the world would love you as its own. But you do not belong to the world; I have chosen you out of the world.
And for the words of Ephesians:
So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are 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.
What does it mean, to belong?
It means that we place in front of our eyes, each day, the model of Christ’s life. Because we have already been chosen, we can make our response with gladness and with confidence. Loving others as we are loved by God. As Jesus showed us how to love when he welcomed the little children, when he drew close to lepers, when he placed his hands on the deformed and despised and rejected. They all belonged to him.
Belonging is about realising that we are already chosen. Belonging is about, with relief, not caring anymore how the world might look at us and consider us.
Belonging is about claiming the freedom to welcome the strangers and the aliens, because we are those persons, also —-strange and alien to this world, but no stranger, no alien, to God.
Our faith bids us to love one another, and to testify to the truth of this loving faith as we have known it in our own lives.
So may we live in this world—-in it but not of it. Knowing that we belong, and that every fellow human being on this shared earth also belongs, because we all belong, together, to God.
Amen!
The Revd Dana English
The Church of St. John’s Notting Hill,
London
October 24th, 2021