RCL Lent 4C
17 March 2013
Saint Faith’s Anglican Church
Vancouver BC
Shining with the Glory of God That Is in Us: Petition
Isaiah 43.16-21; Psalm 126;
Philippians 2.4b-14; John 12.1-8
Please click here for an audio recording of the Sermon as preached at the 10.00 a.m. Eucharist on Sunday the 17th.
Please click here for an audio recording of the Sermon as preached at the 10.00 a.m. Eucharist on Sunday the 17th.
I have no
memory of ever having wanted to be anything but a priest. I toyed with the law, thought about
mathematics and chemistry, even considered becoming a naval officer. But when I stopped toying with the law,
thinking about mathematics and chemistry and considering the navy, the thought
of becoming a priest returned. For
better and for worse, this is who I am, not what I do.
Every one of
us wishes to become the person we are truly meant to be. Sometimes we know who that person is from an
early age. For others the realization
comes later in life. But the knowledge
is within us, because God has planted it deep within our very being.
The
second-century Christian theologian, Irenaeus of Lyons, once said that the
glory of God is a human being fully alive.
To become fully alive we need to know who we are as persons. In Jesus Christ we see what it means to be
truly alive as a human being made in God’s image and throughout our lives we
try, as best as we are able, to become more Christ-like. The irony is this: When we become more Christ-like, we actually
become more ourselves. We set aside the
illusions and delusions that our society and culture lay upon us. We see ourselves and our fellow human beings
with greater clarity and with deeper charity.
One of the
means God provides us to become more truly ourselves is the prayer of petition,
the prayers we offer not for others but for ourselves. Sometimes those petitions can be petty and
mundane. But sometimes those petitions
can point us to the heart of what prevents us from becoming who we truly are.
I remember
writing my Bishop while I was in seminary.
I told him that I had been praying for patience and finding it a
constant challenge to be patience. When
his return letter arrived, I anticipated some episcopal wisdom. What I read was this: “Stop praying for patience.” A few weeks later I was in Colorado and had
an opportunity to chat with him. I asked
why he had told me to stop praying for patience. “Because,” he said, “when you pray for
patience, God sends you opportunities to be patient. Your letter made it clear to me that you
really weren’t ready for a challenge of that magnitude at this moment in time.” But in order to become who I am called to be,
patience is required, so I still pray for it.
Brother Curtis
Almquist of the Society of Saint John the Evangelist tells this story. Prior to coming to the monastery he had been
a priest in a parish that had a weekly eucharist with the laying on of hands
and anointing with oil of those who came for those own healing and for the
healing of others. One woman had a
husband and a son who were both quite ill.
For two years the community prayed for the two men. One day the woman came to the eucharist with ‘light
in her eyes and a smile on her face’.
Thinking that one or other of her men had been healed, Curtis asked her
whether her husband or her son were better.
She said, “Oh no; they’re the same, but I am so much better.”
What I am
trying to say is this. When we pray for
ourselves, we are also called to self-examination. What do we see are the obstacles to becoming
truly ourselves? What attitudes or
habits are preventing us from growing more Christ-like? What patterns of behaviour are clouding the
glory of God that is within us? What is
preventing us from being God’s healing and reconciling presence in the lives of
those around us.
Praying for
ourselves is not about self-indulgence; it is about self-discipline in order to
enter into self-discovery.
Paul writes
about this in today’s reading from Philippians.
He recognizes that he is not yet the person whom God wants him to be,
yet he knows that the potential awaits him:
“Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal;
but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his
own. Beloved, I do not consider that I
have made it my own; but this one thing I do:
forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I
press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ
Jesus.”[i]
I pray
because I know that the God to whom we speak is compassionate and
passionate. I pray because I know that
the God to whom we pray is more ready to forgive than we to confess. I pray because I know that the God to whom we
pray is the source of everything that we often think is ours. I pray because I know that the God to whom we
pray changes the world. I pray because I
know that the God to whom we pray has a vision of who we really are and works
to make it so.
And when we
pray, just as the faces of Moses and Jesus shone with the glory of God, so our
faces shine, revealing the life of God within us. Amen.
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