After Sunday: Divine Convergence
Sermon preached in St Salvator's Chapel, St Andrews on the 4th March, 2007 by Rev Peter SinclairReadings: Philippians 3:17 - 4:1 and Luke 13: 31 - 35
Sermon:
Each of us, it is said, has a unique song to sing in our lives. I guess that that by the time we come toward the end of our student days there is an expectation, however unhelpful it may feel, that we might be able to hum the first few bars of it even of we haven't got the whole aria worked out. Just as a song has both lyrics and a tune, so our song should help us to clarify what we should do in our lives, and probably more importantly, who we should be.The notion of having a sense of vocation is meant to help us in the task. In the days when I was floundering here for musical inspiration, there was a sense of a clear hierarchy of callings. The highest calling was to give ones life to God, become ordained, or travel as a missionary overseas. Next were the callings to caring or socially valued professions such as medicine, teaching, law and the like. At the bottom of the heap, for those who were morally bankrupt, feeble minded or tone deaf, you could always go into industry or commerce. This was the path that fate and I, working hand in hand, had chosen. It seemed that people who became accountants, engineers, retailers and so on didn't have a calling, they just had careers. What interest could God possibly have in their work if they decided to immerse themselves in the compromising and ambiguous world of Mammon. These three worlds that are represented in that hierarchy of callings - the spiritual, the social and the economic or material - can be seen to be underpinned by very contrasting value systems that keep them apart. Over the centuries the church has encouraged the idea of the separation of that which is spiritual and holy from that which is material and grubby. Words like secular have become part of our everyday thinking and have led to a sense of compartmentalisation between our faith and how we make our living. While the world struggles with the problem of work, life balance, we as Christians sense instinctively that the real issue is about whole life integration. The melody and the lyrics of our song, our doing and our being, can so easily become misaligned.
In the reading that we had from Philippians we hear of Paul trying to clarify the Christian understanding of the relationship between the material and the spiritual. Those who Paul sees as enemies of the cross of Christ appear to have their minds set on earthly things whereas Paul thinks of Christians as those who by contrast are citizens of heaven. That sounds like he is reinforcing the distinction. But the point that Paul makes is more subtle.What Paul is pointing to is that the body with all its appetites and shame is not irrelevant to Christian living. On the contrary, our existing body, Paul argues, is the material out of which our deliverer, Jesus Christ, will fashion us into a new body on the Day of his coming. Those, whom Paul criticises, see the flesh as being of no interest to God so they conclude they can do what they like with it. And so they party on. They are only concerned with abiding spiritual truths and life. Paul insists that Jesus' resurrection means that salvation, will bring not destruction but transformation of material existence. Here he is focusing our attention towards the point of divine convergence in which the material and spiritual will become one and God's full glory will be revealed. Paul teaches us here that spiritualization no longer means a break or discord regarding the material it means working through the material. The direction of Christian holiness is not away from matter but into it towards the risen Christ on whom the process of the spiritualization of matter converges.So when we pray that God's kingdom will come on earth as it is in heaven, we can begin to imagine what all that is material and earthly, along with our relationships will be like when they are fully transformed and find their fulfilment in Christ. This is the path of divine convergence which gives meaning to our lives as Christians and helps us to appreciate that what we do now in the material world is important in the long term.What I discovered, much to my surprise, when I tested my singing voice in the grand setting of a chemical factory in the North East of England, was that God was very much alive and present there and it looked as though he had been for some time. The experience of walking down Ammonia Avenue, they have such imaginative names for the roads in chemical factories, and encountering the mysterious presence of God in the amazing transformation of matter that was occurring took my breath away. Some have suggested that it might have been the ammonia. Of course God is at work in chemical factories. I am quite sure that he loves them. He is present in the white heat of the technology and its processes, in the imagination of those who build them and operate them. He is in the midst of the interactions between the people as they each play their part in keeping the chain of supply in tact. He is in the loving care and service that those who work there have for each other, their customers, their neighbours and the wider environment. Of course he is also there as a source of challenge and judgement as he encourages everyone involved, and that includes each of us, to face the realities of what we are doing and consider seriously how we exercise the freedom of choice that he has so graciously given us. This sense of God in the ordinary was captured well by one of my heroes, Revd Geoffrey Studdard Kennedy who served on the front lines in the Great War armed only with a wooden cross and a comforting packet of Woodbine cigarettes which he shared with the dying. As a founding Christian Socialist he wrote in one of his most forthright lines 'If our finding God in churches leads to our losing him in factories, it were better to tear down the churches, for God must hate the sight of them.' Perhaps his prophetic words are coming to pass.
It is this day-to-day experience of encountering the divine in the midst of the hard nosed, money driven, ordinary that has led me on a journey over many years to my current passion for a project called After Sunday. After Sunday is a project that is funded by the Diocese of Durham where I live and run my business. The project aims to strengthen the connection between faith, work and the world. It is in essence about helping us as Christians, and those on the edge of faith, to discover and discern God's activity in the world and to join in with what he is doing. It is about re-energising what it means to be church dispersed in the world. The gathering together, as we do now, is but the breathing in of the church. As it breaths out so we are scattered and dispersed like salt and yeast in the world to make a real difference. And thirdly, it is about getting in touch with the significance of our baptismal calling which gives us all a unique share in Christ's ministry of love. Our uniqueness is always of course only a small but vital part of a living body that is the church.After Sunday reminds us of that it is the God of love who has a mission of love to the world and happens to have a church in the world.The work of After Sunday is inspired by the words of another radical priest, Alan Ecclestone, who spoke of the sense of convergence when he observed that 'all of life is spiritual for all is part of God's creation. There is no division between sacred and secular, work and worship, religion and politics. Spirituality is not apart from our daily lives, it is our daily lives. But it is a life with a cutting edge not avoiding the pain or fear'. In this time of Lent, we are very conscious of Alan Ecclestone's words as we, walk with Jesus, as he turns towards Jerusalem and confronts he pain and fear that lies there for him, and for us if we allow our whole lives to be caught up with his.
This whole process of divine convergence is at the heart of understanding God's great project of God's love as a five act opera. Act 1 opens with the Song of Creation when the morning stars sang together and all heavenly beings shout for joy. We celebrate God's continuous creation of the world with every breath. In Act 2, God forms a covenant of endless love with his chosen people and speak to us through his prophets. In Act 3 God enters his material worldly creation in person and in the life, dearth and resurrection of Jesus Christ opens up a new possibility for all created matter. Act 4 begins on the first Easter Day. And now, here we are on stage with our own song to sing. We live in the tension between things as they are and things as they ought to be, between the present and ultimate future. The final act of convergence will comes as the conclusion of Act 5. In the last days we are promised that all with be reconciled and made complete in Christ. Throughout this whole drama, alpha to omega, God is drawing all things toward himself towards a unity in Christ and that includes us, everything around us and all that we do.
But what of our vocation? What is to be our song? I would like to suggest that our calling as people of faith is first and foremost to be partners with God in our daily lives in his work of divine convergence. The idea of a hierarchy of callings has little to offer a world that has outgrown this idea. The heap has collapsed. The three spheres of the spiritual, the social and economic still prevail. Many young people I speak to are thinking about rejecting the call of big bucks in the city or a prize position in management consultancy and searching instead for a niche in a charity or in an organisation that is working for social justice. But we need to see our vocation as something more than the choice of a career or work of a particular kind or social value. This is to miss the point. God is as active in the marketplace as he is in the charity and he is inspiring people in all areas of human endeavour to work out what it means to act justly, love mercy and walk humbly. Our calling is probably not to be found by focusing our attention in the spiritual, social or economic spheres believing that one is more pleasing to God than another. Our task is to recognise that we live in all three of these spheres and so we need to bring all three together into sharp focus and balance. The higher calling is to work to create the maximum convergence between these three aspects of human life both within ourselves and on whatever stage we happen to be performing our art.
If you can engage fully in the complexities and joys of the economic and material aspects of creation and in the generation and distribution of wealth; whilst at the same time investing in the social capital of human communities and be attentive to the need to channel resources to the poor; whilst at the same time engaging with the spiritual struggles of creating purpose and meaningfulness and inspiring those around you with a sense of hope and dignity then you will be engaged in the work of divine convergence in the here and now and what you do will endure. We can only do this in the day to day grist of daily living by tackling head on the forces of the world that seem hell bent on divergence and fragmentation. When we grasp this we discover that the way to full life is the way of Jesus - the way of incarnation in the natural and material.
Every generation is called to discern the work of God in their times and to deal with the Herods of their day. For people of faith the challenge is to throw ourselves into the risky and dangerous work of God's continuing transformation of the world which he has begun in Christ. We need to accept its complexity and engage with it fully. We need to foster in ourselves and others the spiritual wisdom and imagination to see just how life can be for us all as God's kingdom of convergence comes to earth in the here and now. Most of all, if we can catch hold of this divine possibility for change, we need, in the words of Mahatma Ghandi, to be the change we want to see in the world.
May you find your voice and sing your hearts out to the glory of God through the world that he loves so much.
Amen.