A video version of this Sermon is available at https://youtu.be/sTjFXKSmoPs ..............................................................................
In Freetown in Sierra Leone in the Krio language - a blend of English and African languages- they talk about “Papa God”. I think that is beautiful. As a thirteen year becoming a Christian I heard for the first time about God as daddy. Oh the words had passed through my ears before, but I had never truly heard them before.
“The father from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name” (eph 3:14)
When I was five my (human) daddy died. Unsurprisingly that left quite a big gaping hole inside of me. For much of my childhood (and indeed adolescence) I would discover surrogate father figures, put them on a pedestal only to cast them down again when they failed to live up to my over idealised expectations.
When I became a Christian two things really helped me
- The one was the point in the prayers when we pray for the departed. Being able to remember my dad before God I found beautiful, peaceful, helpful
- The second was increasingly experiencing God as daddy - Papa God - my earthly daddy might be in heaven, but increasingly I experienced the love of my heavenly daddy with me here on earth.
“For this reason I bow my knees before The father from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name”
Church is meant to be a family. Sometime a second family for people who also have good loving human families; sometimes the only family for those whose biological families have failed to be real family. For those who have suffered abuse, or those whose parents have disowned them perhaps because they are gay, or have “betrayed the family” by converting to Christianity from another religion, or just because of whatever mess the parents themselves have been through they have not been able to love their children properly. And the mess passes down from one generation to another until we find healing in God’s family the Church.
That’s why we used titles like Father or Mother for our clergy - because we are a family.
Of course sometimes our church family may feel a bit….
(picture of the Simpson's family strangling each other)
Our Church family is far from perfect because we are broken sinful human beings.
But the more we center on Papa God “The father from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name” - the more our church family will become healing family - rooted and grounded in love.
We think of Father as a metaphor - we look at our human parents and say “ah God’s a bit like that”. St Thomas Aquinas tells us it is actually sort of the other way around. We may first learn about parental love by looking at our human parentals. But it’s when we look at God that we learn what a true Father, a true Mother is like. “The one from whom every human family takes its name”. Then once we have looked at God and learnt what being Father or a Mother is really about- we can start to apply it to how we should live as human Fathers and Mothers.
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And how do we plug into that?
We need “Christ to dwell in your hearts by faith”
It is often said that “Christianity is a relationship not a religion”
Now this is perhaps a bit unfair to the word religion
NERD ALERT -
Historian Tom Holland has suggested that the opposite is true- that Christianity is the first religion. Before that societies might have their Gods - Roman Gods, Athenian Gods, Babylonian Gods - like countries might have their National Anthem or their National Football Team. But Christianity was the first god thing that people truly made a choice to join for themselves. Rather than simply blinding following what your country, people for the first time, in getting baptised, said I choose to join the church, I choose to be a Christian.
END OF NERD ALERT
But in fact when people say that “Christianity is a relationship not a religion” - the are using the words in a different way
They are saying no matter how often you sing songs by Hillsong or Bethel; no matter what Bumper sticker is in your car; no matter what fancy Christian T shirts you wear - that’s not what makes you a Christian.
As Cardinal Basil said
“Holiness involves friendship with God. There comes a time in our walk with God when we need to move from being Sunday Acquaintances to weekday friends”
A friendship in which “Cor ad cor loquator” - heart speaks to heart. To quote the beautiful Spiritual writer Francis de Salles “Truly the chief exercise in mystical theology is to speak to God and to hear God speak in the bottom of the heart; and because this discourse passes in most secret aspirations and inspirations, we term it a silent conversing. Eyes speak to eyes, and heart to heart, and none understand what passes save the the sacred lovers who speak.”
Or from St John Vianey
“Listen well to this, my children. When I first came to Ars, there was a man who never passed the church without going in. In the morning on his way to work, and in the evening on his way home, he left his spade and pick-axe in the porch, and he spent a long time in adoration before the Blessed Sacrament. Oh! how I loved to see that! I asked him once what he said to Our Lord during the long visits he made Him. Do you know what he told me? ‘Eh, Monsieur le Curé I say nothing to Him, I look at Him and He looks at me!’ How beautiful, my children, how beautiful!”
“Christianity is a relationship not a religion”
“Christ to dwell in your hearts by faith”
As you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power , with all the saints, to understand, to comprehend, to get - how wide, how long, how high, how deep is the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge,
In one the Eucharistic prayers - the prayers when we ask the Holy Spirit to make Jesus present in the bread and the wine- there is a beautiful line that goes “He opened wide his arms for us on the cross” - how wide, how long, how high, how deep is the love of Christ.
When I talked about Church as family I talked about how sometimes we can be more
{picture of the simpsons strangling each other} Than {picture of classic 1950s idealised loving family}.
The danger is that because we are (and I don't’ know about you but I certainly am) wounded broken people - we can hurt other people because of our place of brokenness.
But the more we discover “how wide, how long, how high, how deep is the love of Christ”; the more we are
“Rooted and grounded in love” then the more healed we will be and the better able to love others.
St Paul is bringing up the analogy of a tree. Imagine a tree. A healthy tree has roots which are at least as deep underground as the branches .Then when there is a flood or an earthquake or a storm - the roots hold the tree fast. Through spending time with God we need to be rooted and grounded in that love.
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“that you may be strengthened in your inner being with POWER through his Spirit,” The word power - dunamis - comes from the same root as dynamite - All this passage about LOVE is about how we can be filled with POWER.
But what of when life gets difficult? Christian Writer Craig Groeschel in his moving book “Hope in The Dark” writes-
Initially, being a Christian can feel like this amazing experience.
You have these powerful times of praying and studying
Bible. Each day, the words of the Bible seem to jump off
page, ministering to you in just the perfect way. Sermons
seem to be especially for you directly addressing something
important that you’re going through, or thoroughly explaining
a Scripture you just read. Then you see the same verse on someone's social media feed and you know that God is speaking
to you. When you get in your car, your favorite song comes
on the radio, and I feels like God played it just for you. You
feel an urgency to help your non-Christian friends, and God
constantly gives you the right words to say. You know he's with
you. When you're in a rush at the mall, a parking spot opens
up right in the front row. That's when you know you're on top of the mountain.
Then at some point, life starts to creep back in. And God's
presence seems to fade. Without even realizing it, you have come down from the mountain, back to the real world, and
your faith doesn't seem quite so amazing anymore. You still
believe in God, still go to church, still try to read the Bible and
pray when you have time But the sermons aren't always just
for you. Your favorite song isn't on the radio anymore. And the
best parking spots are all taken-
Suddenly life isn't going as you planned or hoped. Your
prayers feel flat and stale. It seems like God has stopped listening.
Someone betrays you. God doesn' t feel as close as he
once did. You feel disoriented, uncertain where you stand with
God, or whether you're still Standing at all. You were up on the
mountaintop, and now you're down in the valley.
If you've never been there, I hope you never are. But I
suspect you might know something about what I'm saying. (1)
So how do we deal with that?
If you are going through that at the moment, I do encourage you to read "Hope in the dark."
But lets look at the context of this beautiful passage from Ephesians 3;14-21.
And to do that we have to re-wind to Ephesians 3:1
“This is the reason that I Paul am a prisoner for Christ Jesus for the sake of the you gentiles”
When St Paul writes about the amazing love of God. When he talks about being rooted in that love. When he talks about “strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit,” and “him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine”....
....When he says all these things, he's sitting in a prison cell. This isn’t just champagne for the goodtimes, it’s black coffee and battle rations for the bad times.
There’s a tale told of a porter called Ralston Young. One day he was asked to wheel a lady in a wheelchair. he noticed there were tears in her eyes. ”Ma’am, if you don’t mind me saying so, that is a mighty pretty hat you are wearing.” “Thank you” “And may I add” he said “that sure is a pretty dress you have on. I like it so much”. despite the fact she wasn’t feeling well, she brightened up and asked ”Why in the world did you say those nice things to me?”
“Well” he said ”I saw you were crying and I just asked the Lord how I could help you. The Lord said ‘Speak to her about the hat’. The mention of the dress was my own idea.”
“Don’t you feel well?” he asked. “No” she replied “I am constantly in pain”. I am never free from it. Do you, know what it is like to be in pain all the time?”
Ralston had an answer: “Yes Ma’am, I do for I lost an eye and it hurts like a hot iron day and night.” “But you seem so happy now. How did you do it?”
” prayer”
“Does prayer take the pain away?”
“Well” replied Ralston ”perhaps it doesn’t always take it away. I can’t say it does, but it always helps to overcome it so it doesn’t seem like it burns so much. Just keep on praying, ma’am and I’ll pray for you too.” (2)
I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen
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(1) Hope in the Dark https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hope-Dark-Craig-Groeschel/dp/0310343119
(2) From "the Power of Positive Thinking" by Norman Vincent Peale - quoted by Fr Martin Dale in a sermon on this site. In sharing the story neither Fr Martin nor myself are endorsing the (potentially heretical) views expressed by Norman Vincent Peale in other parts of this book
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