All for Jesus

Sometimes, no matter how much time we spend on things, we tend to forget the emotional reason why we do them. They tend to be things that require constant work, where you find that getting the immediate tasks out of the way takes over from remembering the point of what you were trying to do.


And while this gap is sometimes hypocrisy (think of eco-tossers banfing on about saving the planet in between flights to far flung destinations), often it's just a result of day to day life. For me, I find God a bit like that. Inevitably the early fire of conversion fades (quite rightly) and by now sucked into the detail of actually helping run a church, I often find myself worrying more about the church finances than about, well, Jesus.


I was reminded of this on Sunday. I went to Holy Trinity to see Marcus gave his maiden sermon. Although clearly biased, to my mind it was excellent. It was technically well done: focusing on a short section of one reading, but using the full range of the two texts in the sermon. Too often, one gets the preacher's thoughts on one line and a general exposition of the theology that links to it. Sometimes that's appropriate, but it's overdone (this has long been a problem - Alan Bennett's parody is as good now as it was then). Marcus avoided this problem and resisted the temptation to preach on the papal supremacy (and why it's bad), but most importantly he delivered a sermon that spoke about something much deeper than the bits of text he had to play with and one that helped remind me why I do this.


Now, it helps that in many ways, Marcus and I agree on the essentials here, but then, they are, well, essential. Rooting ethics and actions in Christ and the incarnation is critical to Christianity. In explaining away the miracles of Christ, we risk losing a Christian conception of the world and the miracle of the resurrection, which the point. I was given a further forcible jolt on this later in the service, when the priest returned to the theme to comfort a family over a death and declaimed very movingly on the promise of the glory of eternal life. At the heart of this is Christ who through life, death and resurrection makes this promise of redemption real.

But its the manner of his doing so that is important. Marcus put it well in this sermon. "Because God has been in the world ... that makes him a God capable of redeeming the world." This is familiar, though important, and one is reminded of the immortal words of Gregory of Nazianzus: "that which He has not assumed He has not healed," though the points are slightly different (fabulously, you can find that letter here). However, I was struck by Marcus' counterpoint, where he argued that because Christ has rejoiced in the world, "he doesn't just love his creation, but he has lived his creation as well." And it is that joyful, living and generous Christ whom I hold dear, as well as the sufferer on the cross. Because I think that a religion without that joy at its heart could not offer the final reward and mean it.

But Christ does, and it was good to be reminded.