A short service of Morning Prayer, two readings, a hymn and some thoughts on it.
As we are freed from the confines of Covid restrictions, this will be the final Worship and Homily I will put on the site for now. Most of you are now back in church and for those who for other reasons feel unable to come, Stilman has set up a link to a Daily Service that you can access through the website.
With every blessing
Mary Tucker (Rev’d)
This is the day that the Lord has made,
Let us rejoice and be glad in it.
Let’s sing together,
In Christ alone my hope is found,
He is my light, my strength, my song;
This Cornerstone, this solid Ground,
Firm through the fiercest drought and storm.
What heights of love, what depths of peace,
When fears are stilled, when strivings cease!
My Comforter, my All in All,
Here in the love of Christ I stand.
In Christ alone! – who took on flesh,
Fullness of God in helpless babe.
This gift of love and righteousness,
Scorned by the ones He came to save:
Till on that cross as Jesus died,
The wrath of God was satisfied –
For every sin on Him was laid;
Here in the death of Christ I live.
There in the ground His body lay,
Light of the world by darkness slain:
Then bursting forth in glorious day
Up from the grave He rose again!
And as He stands in victory
Sin’s curse has lost its grip on me,
For I am His and He is mine –
Bought with the precious blood of Christ.
No guilt in life, no fear in death,
This is the power of Christ in me;
From life’s first cry to final breath,
Jesus commands my destiny.
No power of hell, no scheme of man,
Can ever pluck me from His hand:
Till He returns or calls me home,
Here in the power of Christ I’ll stand.
Together we confess our sins and are forgiven
Have mercy on us and redeem us, O Lord
for our merits are your mercies
and in your judgement is our salvation
Happy the one whose transgression is forgiven and whose sin is covered,
. . . You surround me with songs of deliverance.
Thank you.
Amen.
Let us pray in the words of St Benedict,
Gracious and Holy Father,
give us wisdom to perceive you,
diligence to seek you,
patience to wait for you,
eyes to behold you,
a heart to meditate on you
and a life to proclaim you,
through the power of the Spirit
of Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen
Readings
Mark 6:30-34, 53-56
30 The apostles gathered around Jesus and reported to him all they had done and taught. 31 Then, because so many people were coming and going that they did not even have a chance to eat, he said to them, “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.”
32 So they went away by themselves in a boat to a solitary place. 33 But many who saw them leaving recognized them and ran on foot from all the towns and got there ahead of them. 34 When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. So he began teaching them many things.
53 When they had crossed over, they landed at Gennesaret and anchored there. 54 As soon as they got out of the boat, people recognized Jesus. 55 They ran throughout that whole region and carried the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was. 56 And wherever he went—into villages, towns or countryside—they placed the sick in the marketplaces. They begged him to let them touch even the edge of his cloak, and all who touched it were healed.
Psalm 23
1 The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.
2 He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters,
3 he refreshes my soul.
He guides me along the right paths
for his name’s sake.
4 Even though I walk
through the darkest valley,[a]
I will fear no evil,
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
they comfort me.
5 You prepare a table before me
in the presence of my enemies.
You anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.
6 Surely your goodness and love will follow me
all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord
forever.
Some thoughts on the Hymn and Readings
It’s dangerous isn’t it? to decide what your favourite hymn is. Different ones I suppose speak to us at different times, but the one we’ve just sung to ourselves or read (and I’m sorry if you aren’t very familiar with it) is one that has always spoken very powerfully to me.
It’s one of those all-embracing hymns which manages to combine the sweep of Jesus life with its enormous significance for us. It’s a song of praise and rejoicing combined with a thumbnail sketch of the basis for our confidence in salvation. I’ve loved it ever since I was first introduced to it at college when I was training for priesthood.
It moves me so much that, when we’re allowed to sing, I can’t help bellowing it out and on more than one occasion have done so with tears of grateful joy streaming down my face, with the obvious consequence of wobbles and croaks and cracks as I sing. But I don’t care.
Imagine then my surprise, and to some extent disappointment, when I discovered a fellow student whose amazing mind I was totally in awe of, couldn’t stand it – wouldn’t sing it! Her problem was with a single line, and yet it seemed to her a very big problem, it comes in verse 2 . . .
“Till on that cross as Jesus died,” it goes “The wrath of God was satisfied.”
And that’s the one she had a profound and fundamental disagreement with.
And so in awe of her mighty intellect was I, that for a while I allowed myself not to enjoy the hymn myself. Her explanation does make sense in light of the readings we’ve shared this morning describing God as a caring shepherd and Jesus giving rest to his disciples and selflessly pouring out of love and healing on all who came.
Her explanation of her dislike was that the picture painted by the words, “The wrath of God was satisfied.” was not one which fitted with the God she loved and knew and was loved and known by. It spoke to her of a vindictive spirit determined on revenge for sins committed and careless of who paid the price; a merciless tyrant sticking to the letter of the law whatever the cost. And as I said, I allowed myself to go with that for quite a while, singing the hymn somewhat guiltily, mumbling that line and thinking, ‘But God’s not like that – is he?’
However as the years have gone on and as, I suppose, my own little understanding has begun to grow, I have been enabled to return with joy to the words of this modern Psalm, partly because, as my knowledge of the Bible, and particularly Old Testament texts has grown I have been forced to face the idea of the wrath of God which appears there so often.
But just because we’re uncomfortable with something doesn’t make it wrong, rather it should make us look more deeply. And to start that process I will use the words of a truly great mind, Paul Tillich ,who says,
“The idea of divine wrath has become strange in our time. We have rejected a religion which seems to make God a furious tyrant, an individual with passions and desires who commits arbitrary acts [but] this is not what the wrath of God means.”
Ours, I’m relieved to say, is not a God of revenge, he is a God of love, total love, and love cannot and will not accept sin of any sort – the two things cannot exist together. His intention and purpose for his world, and that includes us, is perfection, love and joy. And if he were a God who would simply give in and just accept that the world and humans in particular are imperfect and sinful, the hope to which we all cling (that things in the end, whether in our life or beyond it, will be made right) would be in vain and hopelessness would reign.
No, that is not what our God is like. He will be satisfied with nothing but the best. And if we stopped there things would be just as bad, we would know our doom was sealed and that the righteous wrath of God would mean we would never be partakers of that perfection.
But the story of course does not end there. In fact it ends where this hymn begins,
“In Christ alone my hope is found.”
We have said often that Jesus came to show us what God was like and yet he was willing to have to do with us sinners. How does that fit with the picture of a God who is incapable of accepting anything but perfection? And there is the answer, he does not accept it, but in not accepting it he does not reject us in all our imperfection. Instead he finds a way to sort out the problem himself. He is the way, he is the truth that lies behind the truth of a God who cannot accept sin. There is, as C S Lewis puts it in his famous Narnia book – ‘The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe’,
“A deeper magic.”
Imagine it, if you will, (and this will be easier for those of you who are parents or grandparents) one of your children is in deep trouble. In trouble so deep it can only end in tragedy. Your child, because he or she is imperfect, is open only to wrath and destruction. You would do anything to save them, even give your own life instead of theirs.
‘Ah ha!’ I hear you say, ‘that’s is where she’s going with all this, God dying instead of us, for us, as we say regularly.’
You’re right but I want to add another layer to this, a picture which can only increase our wonder and amazement at the pain and sacrifice made by God in saving us from the wrath that was, and is, our just desert
I’ve asked you to put yourself in his place as a parent. And I think we can all imagine that we might, possibly would, be willing to die for our child. But what about this? What if the price to pay was not you yourself dying but instead another child of yours – and you would have to watch your best beloved, your first born, die? And you would look on and let it happen in order that all the others might be saved.
We regularly thank God for his mercy and his sacrifice in dying for us in the person of his son, but there is a deeper layer of sacrifice which should make us even more grateful, even more amazed.
God was both Father and Son. God died himself and God watched in agony the agony of the death of his best beloved.
I’m not sure there is any deeper way in which God could show us his love, show us himself, than to put that self through two parallel and ultimate pains.
“An on that cross as Jesus died the wrath of God was satisfied . . . for every sin on him was laid, here in the death of Christ I live.”
And a few words from St Anselm
‘Jesus, like a mother you gather your people to you, you are gentle with us as a mother with her children. Despair turns to hope through your sweet goodness, through your sweet goodness, through your gentleness we find comfort in fear. Your warmth gives life to the dead, your touch makes sinners righteous. Lord Jesus in your mercy heal us, in your love and tenderness remake us, in your compassion bring grace and forgiveness and for the beauty of heaven may your love prepare us.’
Final words and a blessing
The Lord bless us and keep us,
the Lord make his face to shine upon us and be gracious to us,
the Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon us and give us peace
And the blessing of God Almighty,
the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit,
be with us this day,
with those we love and those we pray for.
Amen
Let us go in peace to love and serve the Lord,
in the name of Christ
Amen