“But you
are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people, that
you may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called you out of darkness into
his marvelous light.”
I Peter 2:9
The
French author Georges Bernanos published
a few decades ago one of the more interesting sermons I have ever read. What made it so interesting is that he wrote
it from the perspective of an agnostic, an outsider to the Church. If we let a unbeliever into one of our
pulpits for twenty minutes on a Sunday morning, what exactly would he or she have
to tell us about ourselves and the faith we claim to profess? I will read you just a small portion of that
sermon:
Need
I remind you that God came in Person to the Jewish people. They saw Him.
They heard Him. Their hands
touched Him. They asked for signs; he
gave them those signs. He healed the
sick and raised the dead. Then he
ascended once again to the Heavens. When
we seek Him now, in this world, it is you we find, and only you. Oh, I respect the Church—but the history of
the Church herself, after all, does not surrender its secret to the
first-comer…It is you, Christians, who participate in divinity, as your liturgy
proclaims; it is you ‘divine men’ who ever since His Ascension have been His
representatives on earth. Well, you must
admit that one would hardly know it at first glance.[1]
The agnostic’s
complaint is an old one, and often a very fair one. As I Peter says, we have been called out as “a
holy nation,” a people set aside for God’s purposes. Christ has called us to be salt and light, to
stand out in a dark and troubled world.
We have received the Holy Spirit, who is at work within us to purify our
hearts and to give us the strength and courage to do God’s will. And yet, so often, in the things we say and
do, we Christians seem to rise no higher than the low standards set by the
society around us. So many polls show
that in the kinds of morality that statistics can measure: divorce, violent
crime, domestic abuse, sexual promiscuity: in all those areas, religious
commitment makes very little difference—we are little different from the pagans. Scandals involving high profile Christian
leaders emerge so often that they hardly attract our notice. The Christian hypocrite has become a stock
character in movies and television, a person whose talk of God and the Bible is
undone by his way of life.
As I say, the complaint is hardly a
new one. In the New Testament, we find
some rather scathing descriptions by Saint Paul of the immorality within the
new churches he founded in Greece and Asia Minor. The scandal of their infighting and lax
personal standards could even cause offense to outsiders in the notoriously
live-and-let-live first century. And
yet, he consistently addresses them, in his letters as the agioi, the saints, the holy ones.
“To the church of God which is at Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ
Jesus, called to be saints”[2] begins
the letter to his most notorious daughter church. He addresses the Ephesians as “the saints who
are also faithful in Christ Jesus,”[3] and writes
another letter “to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi.”[4]
Now Saint Paul wasn’t delusional,
and I don’t think he was acquainted with what we call “reverse psychology”—if
you make them think they’re good boys and girls, one day they just might
surprise you. No, he was talking about
God’s vision for the Church, the purpose that He is accomplishing through
Christ and the Holy Spirit that is, for now, still unfinished.
There are two Greek words that we
translate as holy. Agios, the word that Paul uses in those introductions, means set
apart, dedicated to a special, sacred purpose.
The Church in Corinth, for all its flaws, was that one society in
Corinth dedicated to doing Christ’s work.
It met for worship, it taught God’s word, it was working to share the
faith with others. Its purposes and
tasks were holy, even when those who were called out to do them turned out, as
he wrote in his second letter to that congregation, to be “broken vessels.”[5] God had told Moses as the people were
wandering in the wilderness that he had was calling Israel to be this kind of
holy nation, the one group of people set apart out of all the world’s tribes to
be his own, to bear his purposes for the rest of the world. In the text I read you at the beginning of
this talk, Peter is saying that this privilege and responsibility is now being
passed on to the Church. God has called
you out of darkness, He has brought you into fellowship with His Son, He has
given you the Holy Spirit, and so you must be holy.
Holiness is built into the mission
of the Church. It defines the church
from other kinds of human groups. And
the members of the Church also, in one sense, have become holy through Christ’s
work of salvation. We have become, in
Christ, “the righteousness of God,”[6] Saint
Paul tell us in II Corinthians. The Book
of Hebrews calls us sharers or “partakers of God’s holiness.”[7] As we
are united with Christ through His Spirit, we share in all his own gifts—and
among these is that righteousness or holiness that gives us access to
fellowship with our holy God.
We may be called holy because we
have come to know and love the Holy One, but that kind of holiness is not an
accomplishment so much as a summons. We
are called to become osios, which is
that other Greek word for holiness. Osios is the pure and exalted way of
life that marks out people who live as God’s own. We have been brought into the holy people so
that we might become holy in that way.
The Spirit is at work within us to change us completely, desire by
desire, action by action, thought by thought, until we become completely given
over to God’s purposes, what Saint Paul calls “having the mind of Christ.”
From the very beginning of the
Church’s life, there have always been people who we have recognized as
especially osios, especially pure and
devoted to God. They show us in special
ways what it means to truly follow Christ.
They are the little signs to the world that despite all the contrary
evidence, the Church truly is a holy society, reaching toward that purpose God
has set before us.
I could cite several examples from
within Anglican history of a person whose holiness was well known and admired
in his or her own time and in the ages that followed. But the figure of George Herbert, the priest
poet of Fugglestone and Bemerton stands out in many ways. Herbert was a priest of the Church of England
in the seventeenth century. Born into a
noble family, he served in parliament for a time and looked forward to a
lucrative and successful career at Court.
His patron, James I, died in 1625, and he decided against the counsel of
nearly all his friends, to give up on future prospects of worldly success, and
to seek ordination. His biographer,
Isaak Walton, recalled a meeting that he had with one of his closest friends
just before he went to see the bishop.
His friend criticized the priesthood as a task far below his station and
abilities, but Herbert responded to him with these words,
Though the Iniquity of the late
times have made Clergy-men meanly valued, and the sacred name of Priest
contemptible; yet will I labour to make it honourable, by consecrating all my
learning, and all my poor abilities, to advance the glory of that God that gave
them; knowing, that I never can do too much for him, that hath done so much for
me, as to make me a Christian.[8]
Herbert was assigned to a small,
insignificant rural parish near Salisbury.
His churches had dirt floors—one still does--and for the three years
that remained until his premature death, he poured all his energies and gifts
into doing God’s work there. In the
discussion notes you can read Walton’s moving account of the prayer of
self-dedication he offered after the bishop had instituted him into the parish. We know much about his methods, because he
prepared a little book of advice called “The Country Parson” which has been
much loved and studied by subsequent generations of Anglican clergy. The aim and focus of the book is pretty well
summarized by the first piece of advice he gives under the heading, “The
Countrey Parson's Library.” “The
Countrey Parson’s Library,” he writes, “is a holy Life: for besides the
blessing that that brings upon it, there being a promise, that if the Kingdome
of God be first sought, all other things shall be added, even it selfe is a
Sermon.”[9] He urges that a priest be wise, a store of
advice for his people on all matters, theological and practical. He urges generosity and sacrifice, diligence
in ministering to all kinds of parishioners, constant prayer. But the priest, for Herbert, will have the
greatest influence through the kind of person he is, more than the things he
does or the words he says. The life of a
Parson, for him, is “itself a sermon.”
Walton recounts that Herbert was
greatly loved and admired by his flock.
They trusted him with their fears and needs, they grew in understanding
and devotion, even the plowmen in the field would stop to say their prayers
when he rung the bells for Mattins and Evensong. His own holiness called others to holiness,
his example urged them to also seek God’s help to change their own lives.
We also have great understanding
of Herbert’s inner life through his many meditative poems, collected together
after his death in a volume called The
Temple. In them, we see that
Herbert’s personal example was not molded by his own effort, but came out of a
deep reliance on God’s grace. His poems
recount deep struggles with pride and depression, and his continual return to
Christ for forgiveness and strength.
Your packet contains one of them, a moving meditation on the life of a
priest. It is titled “Aaron,” and
meditates on the dress and calling of the first priest of the Old
Testament. Herbert describes the dress
of the priest and the way it is designed to recall the inner strength and
devotion of those called to stand before God at his Altar. Yet he hardly measures up, with “profanesse
in my head, defects and darknesse in my breast.” And yet, through his fellowship with Christ,
he is equipped to fulfill the ministry to which God has called him: “Christ is my onely head,” he writes, “My alone onely heart
and breast/ My onely musick, striking me ev’n dead;/ That to the old man I may
rest, And be in him new drest.”[10]
We may
not all be called, as Herbert was, to the responsibilities of a priest, but we
are all called to be holy, to do our part in showing the Church to be that body
set aside for God’s purpose, doing his will, showing Him to others in the way
we live. The agnostic’s sermon reminds
us that the world is waiting to see God in us.
With God’s help, may our lives be what Herbert called "true sermons," speaking consistently of His goodness and truth.
[1]
Bernanos, Georges. “A Sermon of an
Agnostic on the Feast of Saint Therese of Liseux.” The Heroic Face of Innocence. Trans. Pamela Morris and David L.
Schindler. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999,
30-31.
[2] I
Cor. 1:2.
[3] Eph. 1:1.
[4] Phil. 1:1.
[6] II
Cor. 5:31.
[7]
Heb. 12:10.
[8]
Walton, “The Life of Mr. George Herbert.”
The Lives of Doctor John Donne, Sir Henry Wooton, Knight, Mr. Richard
Hooker and Mr. George Herbert.” New
York: Scott-Thaw, 1904, 172.
[9]
The Countrey Parson, XXIII.
[10]
“Aaron”
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