Below is a transcript of my impromptu sermon at yesterday’s FlashEvensong outside St Paul’s.
The readings were 2 Kings 9.1-16 and Acts 27.1-26.
You can hear the audio of the whole FlashEvensong here. The sermon begins at 28.04 and lasts just under three minutes.
“Keep your courage, men” said Paul (Whay!). Keep up your courage men – and women – I say to you now. For Paul was sure that what God had revealed to him would indeed come to pass and I am sure that what God has revealed through his Son, Jesus will indeed come to pass. Paul had confidence in setting his face against the might of Imperial Rome because he had put his trust in the Son of God, the risen and ascended Jesus of Nazareth.
We have confidence in the face of inclement weather and increasing cold because we have put our hope and our trust in the same risen and ascended Jesus of Nazareth.
Jesus came in order that we, who have been separated from God by that which we have done, might have fresh relationship with God, our heavenly Father. Jesus came and was executed by the most powerful Imperial nation the world has ever seen. Jesus came and defeated that death by rising to new life on the third day. And so we too have a confidence in that all the things that might travail us, that might assault us, stand defeated because of the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.
Capitalism is defeated in Jesus!
(Whay! [Applause])
Communism is defeated in Jesus!
(Whay!)
Fascism is defeated in Jesus!
Thatcherism, Blairism, Cameronism: All defeated in Jesus.
All “isms” – left, right and centrist – are defeated in Jesus!
Standing before you is a motley crew. A very motley crew (laughter). Standing before you are those who agree with the aims of those camped outside the temple – the temple? The Cathedral! Too much New Testament study from me there.
Standing before you will be people who are opposed to the views of those camped outside the Cathedral.
Standing before you will be people who are largely indifferent to the views of those camped outside the Cathedral.
What we are not indifferent to is the glory and worship of God almighty in the person of his Son, Jesus of Nazareth. That is why we are here, because like Paul, like Elisha in our first reading, like Mary who sang the words of the Magnificat and Simeon who sang the words of the Nunc Dimitis, we have a confidence in the God who created the world, is redeeming the world, is restoring the world and will one day remake the world afresh.
To whom be all the glory, all the honour, all the praise: now, in this world and the next. Amen. (Amen!)
1 comment
John Lipnicki
27/10/2011 at 21:04 (UTC 0)
Dear James,
this is good. You have done good or in football parlance ‘the boy done good.’ Somehow these gatherings outside the closed cathedral have such a resonance, at least for me, but are not widely reported in the big media.
I have just read something by the neglected philosopher Jacques Maritain, written in 1940, (the year my father arrived in England after a nine month journey to escape from occupied Poland)
‘I am certain that the coming of such a democracy, which presupposes class antagonism overcome, requires that we go beyond capitalism and beyond socialism, which are both tainted with a materialistic conception of life.’
The democracy he speaks of is one which views human society as the organisation of liberties. Both personal and communal and informed by the Christian leaven.
Anyway, all the best.
With Regards,
John Lipnicki