Sermon by the Reverend Richard Fermer for the Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

The following sermon was preached by the Reverend Dr Richard Fermer, priest-in-charge of our neighbouring Church of England parish, the Grosvenor Chapel. Fr Dominic Robinson preached at the Grosvenor Chapel on the 13th September and we were delighted to welcome Fr Richard to preach at Farm Street Church a week later. This pulpit swap was organised for the ecumenical Season of Creation.

+ One of the questions asked by some in my congregation is, what theologians of the past can speak to the reality of living with this pandemic? Well, last week provided one candidate: St. Cyprian, third century bishop of Carthage, whose episcopate was marked by persecution, schism and plague, himself dying as a martyr in 258 AD. Cyprian takes as models the Biblical figures of Job, Tobias, and the Apostle Paul. He speaks of how with the eyes of faith, our approach to times of trial can be transformed and become a “profitable proof of faith”. He says of Job’s faith that it was “not overcome, but proved”. Cyprian picks up on St Paul’s autobiographical reflection on struggle in 2 Corinthians 12. “I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ,” writes St Paul, “for whenever I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor 12.10). Cyprian comments: “When, therefore, weakness and frailness and devastation attack us, then our strength is made perfect; then our faith, if it withstands trial, is crowned” (De mortalitate).  For what would we be if we were only “fair weather” Christians? If the Son of God partakes in our human vulnerability, can we not stand with Him as He stands by us now? This is the first of three Divine subversions of human worldliness, which I wish to highlight, namely, human frailty need not lead to hopelessness, if we grow in faith through the experience. It is easy to speak about this; it requires us to dig down deep in our faith to see it through. 

 St Cyprian shares with the Apostle Paul, something else: St Paul’s fervent longing for the glories of the Kingdom that will come in all its fullness, generated by a great desire to be with Christ more fully. Do we have a sense of that desire and longing, that can never leave us even in time of trial? It presents Paul with quite a dilemma, as he says in the reading from Philippians: “I want to be gone and be with Christ, which would be very much the better, but for me to stay alive in this body is a more urgent need for your sake” (Phil 1.24). It is an interesting paradox: there is the desire and the end of being with Christ more fully, but there is also the embodiment of Christ’s love, called to participate during our earthly sojourn in the Divine Mission. In fact, you cannot do the “embodiment” part, unless Christ is first living in you. Despite, then, the movement back into the world in charity and proclamation, St Cyprian, like Paul, was clear that “withdrawn from these whirlwinds of the world, we attain the harbour of our home and eternal security, when having accomplished this death we come to immortality.” We have here the second subversion of human worldliness: our souls may be fashioned by God through our earthly pilgrimage, in which we participate in the proclamation of His Gospel and self-giving love, but this world is not to be our end. 

 Today’s Gospel brings a third subversion of our worldliness. The Kingdom of Heaven possesses an abundance that shrinks our petty customs and norms to meaninglessness. Our worldly logic would have it that people are recompensed according to the hours of their work, in conformity with the market, as people say today. But what if there is enough for everyone to have an equal share? What if that is the will of the overflowing generosity of our Creator and Redeemer, who makes our protests seem misguided pettiness? Christians, especially, are to rejoice at being daughters and sons of God’s generosity. “Thus, the last will be first, and the first, last.” Our worldliness is again subverted. The rich, the strong, the powerful, the healthy, the greedy, no longer have a Darwinian right to step on top of the less privileged, less powerful, the sick, the marginalised. 

 In this Season of Creation, we might like to reflect on how, for our own near-sighted ends, so much of God’s creation has been relegated by us to last place, an object to be manipulated for the survival of our own species alone. There is some irony that in the scheme of Creation, we were created last, but as last God would have us be the “crown of creation”, not as selfish despots, but as His image, caring for His creation. What if Christ, then, says to us, “The last will be first and the first will be last.  You have put my Creation last, indeed, have led much of the biodiversity of my created life to the edge of extinction by thrusting yourselves always first in my Creation, when I gave you the responsibility to care for all, not to exploit all. This is not my way you follow. You do not follow the way of my Son, who puts Himself last in order to serve others. This is the way that will lead to your own destruction, because you have dishonoured my Creation and its finely tuned interdependence.” Or in the words of the Prophet Isaiah: “Let the wicked man abandon his way, the evil man his thoughts. Let him turn back to the Lord who will take pity on him.” Maybe we should be grateful that after all that our species has done, those who would consider themselves first can still be last in God’s salvation. There is still an opportunity to be saved: “Seek the Lord while he is still to be found.” 

 To do so, somehow, we must be purged, our worldliness subverted, in order to see again, to receive God’s Life again, to be reoriented to God’s way. Maybe this time we are passing through brings this into stark relief. Our minds need to be purged, so that we realise that “my thoughts are not your thoughts, my ways not your ways.” And taking on, as the Apostle Paul says, “the mind of Christ”, we walk again in the way of service and humility, in which we can treat God’s creation as gift and not as a given, rightfully sharing in the abundant generosity of our God, our Creator and Redeemer. +  

Reverend Dr Richard Fermer