Ninth Sunday of Trinity, 1st August 2021
Lectionary Readings for the Ninth Sunday of Trinity, 1st August 2021
Ephesians 4: 1-16
I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all. But each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift. Therefore, it is said, ‘When he ascended on high he made captivity itself a captive; he gave gifts to his people.’ (When it says, ‘He ascended’, what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower parts of the earth? He who descended is the same one who ascended far above all the heavens, so that he might fill all things.) The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knitted together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love.
John 6: 24–35
So when the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum looking for Jesus. When they found him on the other side of the lake, they said to him, ‘Rabbi, when did you come here?’ Jesus answered them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For it is on him that God the Father has set his seal.’ Then they said to him, ‘What must we do to perform the works of God?’ Jesus answered them, ‘This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.’ So they said to him, ‘What sign are you going to give us then, so that we may see it and believe you? What work are you performing? Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, “He gave them bread from heaven to eat.” ’ Then Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.’ They said to him, ‘Sir, give us this bread always.’ Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.
Sermon for the Ninth Sunday of Trinity
The most astonishing line in the entire Gospel for today, I think, is this one:
What sign are you going to give us then, so that we may see it and believe you?
The tone of this question goes beyond a skeptical one—-it sounds insolent, taunting, even, to me.
In John’s Gospel, we are at chapter 6. In the chapters leading up to this John has recorded that Jesus has already given them sign after sign that some power greater than any human person they had ever encountered was here. It had erupted into their human world of short and afflicted lives and was now manifest. John uses this word, signs, for what have also been called miracles. Jesus has just revealed the glory of God in the signs that he gave the people at the wedding at Cana, the restoring of the official’s son, the healing of the crippled man at the pool of Beth-zatha, the multiplication of the loaves and fishes. The crowd was wide-eyed. Now, Jesus has just presented himself, there, in that moment, before them, and told them that I am here—it is I, myself—God is present, in me. And that all that they need to do is believe—-believe that God has sent him. That in human form, like them, God is now here. But in response, they have the audacity to say: you may be who you say you are, yes, maybe—-but, still, in any case, give us another sign—-one more.
Jesus was there—standing there, looking them in the eye, real, present, this One who was clearly more than a prophet, who spoke with an authority that clearly came from some other place. Jesus had a charisma, as I try to think of a word to describe it—-a charisma that drew people to him, that singled him out as disturbing, troubling, not easy to classify in any of the old ways. It was a charisma that compelled a response— a yes, or a no.
But even seeing him there, feeling his power that drew forth such extraordinary response (no one who encountered Him was left unchanged) even then, they kept repeating: give us a sign! Give us a sign! They weren’t taking in what this all meant; they wanted more. We may think that this kind of dumb desire for evidence, for proof, for a sign, is what those people back then, in that day, were capable of. We would never have been presented with Jesus here, right here, in front of our very eyes, and demand a sign—- not us!
But I think that human nature, centuries on, has not changed. We are still saying, Give us a sign! We want a sign, we need a sign. To be sure. That our faith is not in vain, that Jesus is who he said he is. We want something physical, tangible, that we can see and touch and hold and even take home to keep—-something that will be the final word, as far as this faith business goes.
There are two rather tricky elements to do with signs, however.
One is: how do you recognise a sign, in the first place?
And the other is: how do you interpret that sign once you know it is one?
Our world is a confusing one. There are many different voices, all speaking at once, asking for our belief. Believe that this dress will make you look really good—just buy it! Believe that if you enter the world of finance you will make a lot of money—just sign here! Believe that no deeper examination of your life is necessary—the culture that surrounds you will tell you all you need to know! No wonder that we are still looking for signs.
In the past, comets were often taken as signs portending great disaster or change. In the spring of 44 BC, immediately following the assassination of Julius Caesar, a comet was interpreted as a sign that he should be deified. Shakespeare, in the play, wrote:
the heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.
Halley's Comet, in its most famous appearance, occurred shortly before the 1066 invasion of England by William the Conqueror. It is said that William interpreted the appearance of the Comet as a foretelling of his success. An image of a comet is included in the story the embroidery tells on the Bayeux Tapestry. But it was generally with signs of disaster that comets became intertwined.
I like this story (not attested in any known primary source):
Callixtus III, a Borgia pope, excommunicated the 1456 appearance of Halley's Comet, believing it to be an ill omen for the Christian defenders of Belgrade in the face of the besieging armies of the Ottoman Empire. Quite a remarkable gesture, to excommunicate a comet!
Closer to our own time, you can probably remember with what wonder you might have confronted the turning of the year 1999 to 2000, the end of the second millennium. But if that year held no particular sign for us, perhaps, what about this year?
As we read the newspaper each day there are signs that the human propensity to seek the good of our selves at the expense of the good of the selves of others is showing catastrophic results: coal-fired power plants still being built, the rain forest still being burned—-countless acts of greed that have changed our weather and damaged our earth. The failure of men in power in governments all over the world resulting in the continued misery of the governed: Afghanistan, Tigray, the Democratic Republic of Congo, North Korea—-the list goes on and on. Is the sign of hope that distinguishes our faith clear enough and strong enough to see us through? We live in an age when the great Christian tradition has not been passed on, when some flirt with superstition or dabble in the occult, but most wait, and watch, and hope without any clear sense of how to interpret the signs of the times.
For us, however, there is no particular reason to probe the heavens or examine tea leaves in a palm. We, along with all the rest of the human race, watch and wonder at our own undoing of our modern world, but we know how to steer our course, by the single sign that is sufficient, that illuminates the sadness and grief and loss we have all experienced in some way or another.
The recognition and the interpretation of the sign we have been given lies in the other reading for today, from Ephesians.
I beg you to lead a life worthy of that to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love speaking the truth in love, growing up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ each part working properly, promoting the body’s growth in building itself up in love.
This love is of the Christian community as a body, grasping the sign, living into it, together. At its best the love of Christ shapes our lives in a way that is never finished, but never lacking in ultimate hope.
We no longer have Jesus with us, but we have the sign that He was and is. Jesus pointed beyond Himself to the One who had sent Him, the God of glory who lifted Him up. He gave us a faith to practice that commands us to love one another with the kind of love that His life was.
Of sacrificial love, of never-ending love, of love modelled on Him.
That word, love, is a problem, trivialized by our culture as it has been, replacing the living out of our Christian faith that is the living sign of our redemption and our hope. Love seems to be manufactured in little red cut-out hearts that you can stick on anything, in computer memes, in throw-away phrases like Love is the Answer, in countless vague and interchangeable love songs recorded every day as if they were a revelation.
The love that was the sign of Jesus, however, is something completely different. It asks us to think about the cost. We may be asked to give all we have to live out a life worthy of the one to which God has called us.
But we have already been given the only sign we need, the sign of Jesus Himself.
May God grant us grace to grasp that sign, as we grow in greater love, each day.
Amen!
The Revd Dana English
St George’s Campden Hill
St John the Baptist Holland Road
London
August 1, 2021