I want to bring together threads that have occupied my preaching these last Sundays. These threads included reflections on the Holy Spirit, the image of our parish as a garden, our dedication of this holy house and ourselves with the clear and singular purpose of giving God the love which He is owed, and having a living faith.
I spoke of how the Holy Spirit is the Lord and giver of Life: the giver of growth, and the only giver of growth, the only giver of increase. Our parish is a garden; this was my theme all throughout the Stewardship season. Gardens in the world have a culture of biological and microbial activity; without that microbial culture, little to no plant growth happens; the soil is not fertile. If a parish is a garden it will grow, therefore, if it has the right culture: that culture is life in the Holy Spirit, that is, genuine spiritual activity. A parish will grow if its culture is of the Holy Spirit and His Kingdom – indeed, if it has a “Kingdom Culture,” within which our Saviour Jesus Christ lives and reigns as the King of kings and Lord of lords, the Lamb of God around Whom worship all the Angels and all the Saints.
I spoke last Sunday about the fact that for the same reason Our Lord came to the Temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the Temple, and overturned the tables, so we celebrate the Feast of Dedication. That is, as a reminder of our fundamental purpose as catholic Christians in the ancient tradition of Anglicanism. And that purpose must always be God. Our primary purpose of worshiping in this church to love God because He is God and is owed our love, owed our adoration, which we realize through prayer and most prominently through liturgical prayer, the daily and weekly Liturgy of the Church throughout the year, that God might grant us in this world knowledge of His truth, and in the world to come life everlasting. In our worship, in the Liturgy, we present our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, and this, says Saint Paul our patron, is our spiritual worship
Genuine spiritual worship means a lively faith, here in this parish. A lively faith is life in the Holy Spirit: constant wonder, constant awe, ever-sensing the divine presence in our heart and in the world, and a constant openness to divine disclosure: a constant openness to God’s revealing something of Himself through His Son Jesus Christ, Who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Christ Who is the image of the invisible God, through Whom all things were created, and for Whom all things were created. In Christ, the fullness of the Father dwells. How can that not throw us into awe, a lively faith? This is the Gospel, and joy it brings us!
Undoubtedly this is what happened to Andrew and Peter and Philip and Nathanael. About this Jesus of Nazareth, was said “Behold the Lamb of God!” – words of S. John the Baptist. We can hear in their words awe and wonder and joy, the stirrings of a lively faith in them: “We have found the Messiah,” said Saint Andrew to Saint Peter. “We have found Him of Whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph,” said Saint Philip to Saint Nathanael (later renamed Saint Bartholomew). This was He who was foretold by the Prophets, such as Jeremiah, Who heard Christ speak to him and say, “Behold the days are coming, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and He shall reign as King.”
Thus their lives took on a new level of spirituality. Their life in the Holy Spirit sprang forth as their relationship with God became a lively faith, a true life in the Holy Spirit: a life of constant wonder, constant awe, ever-sensing the divine presence in our heart and in the world, and a constant openness to divine disclosure: a constant openness to God’s revealing something of Himself through His Son Jesus Christ. And these and all the apostles preached so as to proclaim the Gospel that all who hear it may be caught up in the life of wonder, awe, and openness to the presence of Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit. They preached and proclaimed with all their heart that people might be stirred up into inhabiting Kingdom culture, where the very soil of the parish is the life in and of the Holy Spirit; stirred up to a living faith; stirred up with the singular purpose of loving God; stirred up to be gardeners in the garden of Christ, living and moving and having their being in a Kingdom culture in which Jesus Christ is King: He Who is before and things, and in Whom all things hold together, Our Saviour Jesus Christ, Who lives and reigns with the Father and the same Holy Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
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