Occasional Sermon

Paul Walton
17 December 2002

Tonight, the Mustard Bush Faith Community is taking it upon itself to give a blessing to Anita Monro as she prepares for her new ministry as Lecturer in Liturgy and Theology at UTC, Sydney. We're not farewelling her yet—we have at least fourteen sleeps left! But we are sending her from this Community with a blessing, and with the assurance of our prayers.

On this occasion, I’d like to start by looking briefly at 1 Thessalonians 5:

I don’t know about you, but I hear the language of worship here: rejoice; pray; give thanks; the words of prophets. I also hear words concerning the seeking of truth: this is the will of God for you; do not despise the words of prophets, but test everything … Worship, and the seeking of truth. Or, as the academic types say, liturgy and theology. Worship is one place—a crucial place!—that liturgy and theology meet. This is one emphasis that has been better kept by the eastern churches than the west; so tonight, I'd like to introduce you to a couple of Orthodox theologians.

Firstly, let me introduce you to Evagrius of Pontus, who was a monk and deacon back in the fourth century. He said:

Liturgy and theology are means by which the Christian community praises God truly. As liturgist and theologian, Anita is a practitioner and seeker of truth.

I’ve quoted one Orthodox theologian, Evagrius. Let me quote another, this time from the nineteenth century: St Theophan the Recluse (aren’t they great names?). He wrote:

The first part is to stand before God—not to have an agenda, but to come to God as friend comes to friend. To stand in a receptive attitude. Simply to be, to be simply. Yet: when we stand before God, we stand naked. No matter what lovely clothes we are wearing, no matter what degrees or status we have, we are naked before God. This may help us to sense the holy awe that comes to one who stands before God. We stand there as friend, yet we are fully known. We can’t pretend. We can’t fool God, even though we can fool ourselves and others. Truth is being told, even as we stand in silence.

The second part is to stand before God with the mind in the heart. Neither mind nor heart is to be despised. Both are needed. In a supermarket age, people go to the worship services that ‘meet our needs’. It’s hard to find truth that way. Services which cater for people’s needs may be too geared towards heart or mind, but not often towards both; and, if I dare say, they are not primarily geared towards seeking truth either. Services which try to meet people’s needs forget that the human race has got into the pickle that it’s in today precisely through ‘meeting its needs’.

The Mustard Bush Faith Community has been seeking to stand before the triune God with the mind in the heart, bringing head and heart together. We do this through our liturgy—that is, through our common life. Are we doing this to meet our needs? I don’t really think so. I believe that if our needs are being met, it is because together, we are standing before the living God. I believe that if our needs are met, it is a by-product of a form of worship in which we seek to bring head and heart together, to connect them, by a series of connections which include:

* receiving patterns of worship which connect us with the ancient Church
* embracing symbols such as candles, incense and icons that connect us with the Source of life
* meeting in the round, sharing together, sharing weekly communion
* acknowledging the communion of saints, that is, our connectedness with those who have gone before us
* using language that connects us with contemporary concerns

How does this help in praying truly? It’s simply that heart and head need each other. Neither can know the truth alone, neither can worship the triune God alone.

The third part is ‘to go on standing before [God] unceasingly day and night, until the end of life’. At last, an echo of the 1 Thessalonians passage! Remember 5.17: ‘pray without ceasing’. This is the goal. How do we ‘pray without ceasing’, ‘day and night, until the end of life’? Do we do it in shifts, as some monastic orders do? Do we become adept in continually repeating the Jesus Prayer—‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner’?

However we do it, surely to pray without ceasing is to be a person of prayer. It is to be in awe of God, and God’s good creation, and to be committed to working with God to put it to rights. Poets like Gerard Manly Hopkins (Catholic, not Orthodox!) knew something of this. One of his greatest poems is, God’s Grandeur. It begins, ‘The world is charged with the grandeur of God’ and it goes on in typical GMH style. He points out that human sin has spoiled God’s good creation:

And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell; the soil
Is bare now …

Yet God’s grandeur will ‘flame out’:

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things …

Why does this happen?

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

How can we not pray without ceasing? Living in a world ‘charged with the grandeur of God’ is a first step towards praying without ceasing. To pray without ceasing is not to pray anxiously, but trustingly, and with awe. We can only pray unceasingly to a God of grace, who rejoices and weeps with us, who even in our misfortunes works for our good, and who is ready to forgive us our sin. To pray without ceasing is about being a Christian.

To be a theologian is to pray truly. We pray truly

* as we stand before God as friend with friend, knowing that in doing so we are naked in God’s sight;
* as we connect heart and head;
* as we pray unceasingly, being people of prayer.

As you go to your new placement, Anita, we send you trusting that these things have already taken root in your life. You will be asked to do many things; remember to firstly be. We believe that Evagrius would call you a true theologian, and we ask for your prayers for us, as we pray God’s blessing upon you. Amen.