Church of the Epiphany
Surrey BC
23 March 2025
Click here to listen to the Sermon in the context of the Eucharist.
Throughout my years as an ordained minister, I have collected stories. Some of these stories are about people I have known, others about people I would like to have met. Among the people I would have like to have met are those disciples of Jesus whom we call ‘saints’ – the famous women and men whose lives and teachings have left their mark on generations of believers.
One of those saints is Teresa of Avila. She was born in 1515 in Spain and belonged to a family of conversos, Jews who were forced to convert to Roman Catholicism if they wished to remain in Spain. She became a monastic reformer and travelled throughout Spain helping to restore a life of contemplative prayer among her religious community. Like many reformers, Teresa was not always popular among her colleagues, but she persevered.
One of my favourite stories about Teresa shows her sense of humour as well as her willingness to address God directly and honestly.
As St. Teresa made her way to her convent during a fierce rainstorm, she slipped down an embankment and fell squarely into the mud. The irrepressible nun looked up to heaven and admonished her Maker, “If this is how You treat Your friends, no wonder You have so few of them!” [i]
I think that Teresa’s question is one that people of religious faith have asked since the very beginning of human spiritual consciousness. If we who understand ourselves to be God’s friends endure trials and tribulations, then is it any wonder why God seems to have so many enemies. It’s quite natural to understand the questions that God’s friends ask when such bad things happen to us.
If we were to spend the time to read the entire book of the prophet Isaiah, we would see a community trying to understand the events of their times. In the first part of Isaiah, chapters one to thirty-nine, the prophet points to the political dangers the people are facing in the hopes that they might act in ways to deflect that danger. In the second part, chapters forty to fifty-four, a later prophet tries to instill hope in a people whose land has been ravaged by foreign powers and whose leaders are being held captive in Babylon. But in the third part, chapters fifty-five to sixty-six, yet another prophet encourages a people who have returned as subjects of a foreign power to a devastated land and attempt to rebuild their lives.
In today’s first reading we hear the opening words of comfort to this lost and bewildered people. We can hear the questions that they are asking: If God is for us, then why are we in this mess? If we are God’s chosen people, why are our homes destroyed and the Temple, the place where God’s glory dwells, in ruins? Into that distress the prophet speaks words that I believe to be both true and yet mysterious: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” [ii]
These words are spoken in a spirit of encouragement and seasoned with a promise of forgiveness. But they remind us that God’s ways are mysterious, even as we believe that God is working God’s purposes out as year gives way to year. We can question; we can even raise our fist toward heaven and challenge God; but God’s ways are not our ways, nor are God’s thoughts our thoughts.
We see this same conversation going on in the first part of today’s reading from the Gospel according to Luke. We are told about a massacre of people offering sacrifice by the government and about the deaths of some people in what might have been a construction accident or an earthquake or some other unexplained building collapse. The people around Jesus immediately want to account for these deaths. They leap to the assumption that these people who died must have been responsible in some way for their own deaths.
But Jesus jumps in with a reminder that this is the wrong question. We don’t know, Jesus says, what prompted Herod to act in such a way, even though we know he’s a tyrant and afraid of any public display that might be seen as criticism or resistance. We don’t know, Jesus says, why the tower fell down upon those people, even though we might wonder about shoddy construction by a get-rich-quick builder or a tremor that disturbs unstable soil, bringing the tower down.
What we do know, Jesus says, is that we all live in a world where bad things happen to good people. We all live in a world where injustice and justice work side by side. We all live in a world the rich get richer and the poor poorer. In such a world as this, a world we believe in the creation of a loving God who expects to do justice, to love kindness and to walk humbly, how shall we live? Do we live in dread? Do we live without hope? Do we live in submission to the status quo?
No, says Jesus, we must live lives of repentance. Unfortunately, our English translation of the Greek word used in the Gospel is not as helpful as it might be. When we hear ‘repent’, we hear ‘be sorry for what you have done’. But what Jesus says in the Gospel is this: ‘ . . . unless you change your perspective on the world and see the world as God sees it and work to make God’s ways visible in the present, then you will continue to live lives of fear and uncertainty and hopelessness’. [iii]
My friends, there is little doubt that we live in a world where we see injustice and the abuse of power. We see and know loved ones who suffer from unexpected illnesses and misfortune. All of us have probably felt a bit like Teresa of Avila and wondered why we, who are doing our best to be a friend of God, are being treated in these ways.
We may be tempted to find a reason for our misfortunes in some external cause, whether it be our own poor choices or the bad actions of others. Sometimes our circumstances are caused by our choices and by the actions of others who intentionally or unintentionally seek to do us ill. But rather than spend our days stewing in such thoughts, the prophet Isaiah and Jesus bid us consider how we will act in the present – despite our doubts, despite our discouragements, despite our uncertainties. God’s ways are not our ways; God’s thoughts are not our thoughts, but God is working out God’s purposes in us, through us and for us.
Many years ago my father began our family genealogy. He loved stories and he probably bequeathed that love to me. In his searches, he discovered the Welsh motto of one branch of our family tree: ‘Hebb Dduw, hebb ddim. Duw a digon.’ – ‘Without God nothing. God and enough.’ Some years later when I was involved in the work of bringing our blue hymn book Common Praise into being, I was introduced to a hymn by Teresa of Avila which I sometimes sing: “Nothing can trouble, nothing can frighten. Those who seek God shall never go wanting. Nothing can trouble, nothing can frighten. God alone fills us.” [iv]
I find comfort in knowing that my Welsh ancestors and a Spanish nun shared the same conviction. Despite all that the world can throw at us, those who are God’s friends, who are seeking God, will never go wanting. God will empower us to witness to a world where all God’s children will be free and even God’s enemies will learn to become God’s friends.
[i] https://www.littlewithgreatlove.com/breadcrumbs-of-st-teresa-of-avila accessed on 22 March 2025.
[ii] Isaiah 55.8-9 (NRSVue).
[iii] Luke 13.5 as interpreted by the Ven. Richard Geoffrey Leggett.
[iv] ‘Nada te turbe’ Common Praise #568.
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