Sermon for the 4th Sunday of Trinity – 2nd July 2023delivered in Belgium – in the morning to the Anglican congregation in Knokke, and in the evening to the Anglican congregation in Bruges.
Fr Leonard Doolan.
I thank Fr. Augustine sincerely for inviting me to preach. We have known each other many years now.
Addressing the Christian community in Rome, the Apostle Paul puts a stark challenge to the believers that sounds dissonant to the modern ear. Are you an instrument of wickedness or an instrument of righteousness?
It is beyond the boundaries of this sermon to begin to explore all the implications of the application in St. Paul’s theology of sin and righteousness – and it is not just about being a good person going through life without harming anyone and giving to charities, or bad person going through life inflicting hardship on people, because he is also contrasting the antithesis of living under the law – namely the Law of Moses which Paul now understands as a form of slavery and life in Christ which Paul now understands as freedom in the Spirit. ‘The letter kills but the Spirit gives life’ if you put it succinctly.
So when we consider what St. Paul means by wickedness and righteousness the distinctions are not straightforward, nor what they appear to be on the surface. However he does introduce well an approach to understanding the other two scripture readings this morning. His words act for us almost as a commentator on two other related, but not so easy passages of scripture.
The prophet Jeremiah speaks to the priests and the people in the House of the Lord. This is the Temple in Jerusalem. He is addressing the people who were left in Jerusalem after the fall of the city to the Babylonians in BC587. The temple is destroyed a year later. It is the time of the Exile. Just a word about this. Contrary to what we imagine, when the Babylonians under the King Nebuchadnezzar, carried off the people of Israel to slavery in Babylon, it was the better educated Israelites who were taken into captivity – not the people who for example, worked the land, who were ethnically and socially of a lower social standing.
So the prophet Jeremiah refers the priests and the people to the prophets of the past generations – the prophets who spoke of wars and famines and pestilences. Such prophets are easily credible in our own rather dark times.
If we consider the war between Russian and Ukraine as it develops we begin by seeing envy between one nation and another, patriotism, greed, self- protection and self – serving military and political action. One nation begins to seek domination over another, and to possess land to protect peoples who ‘speak our language’. It has created chaos – a chaos that has not just been contained to two nations, but globally, because the nations of the world are intertwined, they are interdependent.
So what happens in Ukraine causes hardship in Africa because, for example, the world needs grain from fertile Ukraine. So we can’t put our heads in the sand and say it has nothing to do with us.
In the last few days we have seen the chaos deepen, as mercenaries who were fighting for Russia in Ukraine are now suspects of treason against the Russian political leadership. Chaos begets chaos.
