Second Sunday of Trinity, 13 June 2021
Lectionary Readings for the Second Sunday of Trinity
2 Corinthians 5: 6–17
So we are always confident; even though we know that while we are at home in the
body we are away from the Lord; for we walk by faith, not by sight. Yes, we do have
confidence, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord.
So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him. For all of us
must appear before the judgement seat of Christ, so that each may receive
recompense for what has been done in the body, whether good or evil. Therefore,
knowing the fear of the Lord, we try to persuade others; but we ourselves are well
known to God, and I hope that we are also well known to your consciences. We are
not commending ourselves to you again, but giving you an opportunity to boast about
us, so that you may be able to answer those who boast in outward appearance and not
in the heart. For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God; if we are in our right mind,
it is for you. For the love of Christ urges us on, because we are convinced that one
has died for all; therefore all have died. And he died for all, so that those who live
might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them.
From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though
we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that
way. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed
away; see, everything has become new!
Mark 4: 26–34
He also said, ‘The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the
ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow,
he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then
the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his
sickle, because the harvest has come.’ He also said, ‘With what can we compare the
kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which,
when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is
sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large
branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.’ With many such
parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it; he did not speak to
them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples.
Sermon for the Second Sunday of Trinity
I think I am tired of hanging on every word of the day’s newspapers—-too many
words, passing too quickly, replaced by more words from tomorrow’s. Words about
the state of affairs of the country, of the world, but so many of these words only apply
to today, not even to tomorrow, and they will have no importance if we want to think
about next year, or ten years, in the future. These newspaper words don’t go deep, but
they do have the power to alarm us, and to keep us unsettled and unsure—-they cause
us a great deal of anxiety, and even fear.
I am not arguing that we should not read the news the newspapers give us. But I think
if we give them a little less time in our reading day, and instead give a little more time
to other kinds of reading, it may help to ground us on ever-shifting sand.
So I’d like to turn to some old words, words that have lasted, words that went deep
into the minds and hearts of those who heard them a long time ago.
For those of us who come here on Sundays and for others who hold the faith of
Christ, we are given, this morning, words that were spoken two thousand years ago to
the young churches of Asia Minor and of Greece. Words Paul spoke not to evade the
truth about what it means to live as a human being in a messy and uncertain world,
but words that penetrated the minds and souls of his hearers, encouraging them and
helping them to place in a cosmic persective what it is that lies ahead of us.
For all of us must appear before the judgement seat of Christ—-how terrifying! What
in the world are we to make of words like these? Because I think they are true.
If our lives have meaning in the eyes of God, I believe that what we choose to say
and do in this human life matters. It matters to God; it matters to our fellow human
beings; it matters to us. We have choices to make, every day. And some are very hard
ones, indeed. But Paul also said in this passage: that the love of Christ urges us on—-
urges us on to act and serve in love and in community with one another. We have
hope that something larger than just ourselves helps us—-this love of Christ, love
already given, already present for us.
Life holds a great deal of mystery. Sometimes we can never know exactly what
another person feels, or thinks. If they don’t tell us, we will never know. We may
never know exactly what went wrong in a relationship, as much as we try. We cannot
analyse it and have that insight, just by trying. We cannot know what the future holds
for us, as much as we would like to!
In a practical, day-to-day kind of way, what helps us to make sense of life and make
our choices within it?
I would offer that it is words that go deep. In Scripture, and from others in the great
Tradition, from others in faith closer to our own time. I think it matters what we
choose to read, and how much time we take to think about what we read.
I would like to highlight the words of one of our neighbors, someone whose writing
is not often read today.
Evelyn Underhill died on June the 15th, 1941—-eighty years ago this Tuesday. She
was only 65. She lived just here, two blocks away, on the west side of Campden Hill
Square, number 50. Underhill was one of the most widely read and influential writers
on spirituality in the English-speaking world in the first half of the twentieth century.
Her best-known work, Mysticism, published in 1911, was read by many thousands.
She was, in addition, a novelist, a pacifist, and, herself, a mystic.
Underhill was the first woman invited to lecture in theology at Oxford. Educated at
home, she was trained in the classics and was widely read in theology as well as
philosophy, psychology, and physics, not to mention the history of Western
spirituality. She wrote thirty-nine books and hundreds of articles and reviews. These
were widely read and commanded great respect from her contemporaries. She was a
close friend of Charles Williams, who, in his novels, also dealt with the spiritual
realm that impinged upon the human…..
As one of the early advocates of ecumenism, she collaborated with the Nobel
Laureate, Rabindranath Tagore—-the Indian mystic and writer—-on a major
translation in 1915.
More than any other person, she was responsible for introducing the forgotten authors
of medieval spirituality to a largely Protestant audience and the lives of Eastern
mystics to the English-speaking world. As a frequent guest on radio, her 1936
broadcast titled The Spiritual Life was especially influential.
Over the course of ten years, her friendship with the Catholic philosopher and writer
Baron Friedrich von Hügel became one of spiritual direction. She wrote to him once
of the darkness she contended with:
What ought I to do?...being naturally self-indulgent and at present unfortunately
professionally very prosperous and petted, nothing will get done unless I make a
Rule. Neither intellectual work nor religion give me any real discipline because I
have a strong attachment to both. ..it is useless advising anything people could notice
or that would look pious. That is beyond me. In my lucid moments I see only too
clearly that the only possible end of this road is complete, unconditional selfconsecration,
and for this I have not the nerve, the character or the depth. There has
been some sort of mistake. My soul is too small for it and yet it is at bottom the only
thing that I really want. It feels sometimes as if, whilst still a jumble of conflicting
impulses and violent faults I were being pushed from behind towards an edge I dare
not jump over.
Here are some other of the words she wrote:
Prayer is a lived experience.
We live in two worlds: the seen world, which largely preoccupies us, and the unseen,
eternal world, which is in fact the more significant reality calling for our attention.
Gaze at Christ’s life with loving awe and breathe in His Presence.
(The Ways of the Spirit)
Receiving means to keep ourselves carefully tuned in, sensitive to the music of
Eternity. We can never adore enough.
Underhill challenges us to launch ourselves into a daring, depth-filled, depthconfronting
Christian life rather than settle for the comfort of the shallows.
***********************************
Life holds a great deal of mystery.
As Jesus says in the Gospel reading this morning, we sleep and rise night and day—-
the seeds we have planted sprout and grow—-we do not know how—-it is a mystery
to us. He said these words about the Kingdom of God and how it grows and spreads
in the world. We can plant the seeds of the truth we have encountered, but we cannot
see exactly how these seeds will take root and grow. These words are also about us,
as human beings, beloved creatures of God. We are mysterious, in our essence, even
to ourselves.
I went to the Rodin exhibition at the Tate Modern last week. It is an exhibition not of
the finished products—-the polished sculptures in bronze we think of when we say
the name, Rodin—-but of the lowly plaster casts, the models in clay. But these are
also brilliant. Because you can see in them, left behind, the marks of his fingers
pressing and shaping the unformed clay, the shapeless block. Like God’s hands, that
surely leave their mark on us.
God is the One who has created us and shaped us to his liking, that we might grow
into the fullness of the stature of Christ. This process is surely a mystery, but the
marks of his loving shaping are upon us and in us.
Paul said that if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has
passed away; see, everything has become new!
Every day we face choices to go deeper in the life of the Spirit. We are continuously,
still, each day, formed and shaped by the words we choose to read and the words we
choose to hear.
We are not bound by the past—nothing can hold us back. We can choose.
Let us go forward in confidence and love, marked by the depth of the words we read
and hear, bearing, also, the marks of God’s own hands.
Amen!
The Revd Dana English
St. George’s Campden Hill
St. John the Baptist Holland Road
June 13, 2021
(excerpts from Underhill taken from Robyn Wrigley-Carr’s article in The Church
Times, 11th June)