Sermon: Evensong - 20 March 2011

 

The Very Revd Victor Stock is Dean of Guildford Photograph of Victor Stock

Preacher:
Victor Stock
Date:
Sunday 20th March 2011
Service:
Evensong
Readings:
Luke 14: 27-33

‘Would anyone of you think of building a tower without first sitting down and calculating the cost to see whether you could afford to finish it?’  This passage from Luke suggests a context of persecution, Jesus warning the disciples to calculate what following him might mean.  Although we have, in this chapter of Luke in its present arrangement, a collection of sayings addressed to the crowd, it may be that this particular teaching was intended for the inner group of disciples steeling themselves to face whatever lay ahead of Jesus.  Encouragement for the faltering, or ‘you cannot give up now, you should have counted the cost before you began following me’.  This saying less well known that the preceding one: ‘No-one who does not carry his cross and come with me can be a disciple of mine’.

How the nuclear industry must be thinking of counting the cost of building nuclear reactors on so unstable a ground as earthquake-prone Japan!  The New York stock exchange has already borne a cost and the international nuclear industry will bear more.  Think of the cost for those who oppose General Gaddafi and his despotism in Libya.  The Christian religion is as full of unknowns, uncertainties and incalculables as Professor Brian Cox said the universe was ‘full of unknowns, uncertain viables and unprovables’ in last Monday’s Andrew Marr’s Start the Week on Radio 4.  But at the same time as Brian Cox said the night before in his programme on the universe, there are things scientists know to be true.  And it’s the same with religion.  We know that setting out on the journey on Christian discipleship will be costly, not just at the beginning of the journey, but always. 

On this second Sunday in Lent let’s glance at three costs.  First, the cost of understanding our faith, puzzling about it, thinking it through.  John Austin’s question in the Chapter House last Sunday evening about the Gospel for the first Sunday of Lent: how do we know about Christ’s temptations - nobody was there?  The beginnings of trying to put together the pieces that help answer that question go deep.  Or again, one day last week, a couple for instruction about Baptism; one a conventional occasional Church goer, but only occasional, and the other a non-believer, not hostile, but never attracted or engaged.  How is the priest to think his way into helping them understand the cost of committing a child into a faith they don’t or hardly share?  What are the right words, images or metaphors to use in Christian instruction?  How helped we are by Brian Cox, the scientist who is unashamed to use metaphor, analogy, symbol , and indeed poetry.

Secondly, there’s the cost of practising the Christian faith, the Rule of Life, keeping Lent, wondering what fasting might mean in an affluent, over-fed Northern European context, and why do it?  Struggling with prayer, the prayer not of speaking but of listening and stillness and receptivity and silence.  The keeping of the feast days of the Church, as well as its fasts; going to Holy Communion and receiving the Sacrament on significant days in the year; giving realistically from our income to the life and witness of the Church; getting out of bed when you don’t want to, visiting a person who’s difficult, sick or demanding and being with them when we don’t feel like it, writing that letter that needs to be written, simply out of concern, care and charity when we’d rather not.  There’s a cost to practising the Christian life, it’s inconvenient for starters.

Thirdly, there’s the cost of proclamation, what we technically call ‘apologetic’, finding the words for the faith that is in us.  So, the first cost, the cost of understanding, is about context – how am I to have a sensible conversation with a physicist, for example, whose metaphors, symbols and understanding of the world seem at first radically different from mine.  But in this third cost, the cost of proclamation, how do I myself find words for what I believe and why I believe it.  Do I just rely on the Bible or the Pope or the Clergy or my grandparents, or do I wrestle with this cost of proclamation myself?  Then further, the cost of saying what we think is right or maybe true, or is a better way, when we meet racism, misogyny, homophobia, or any other destructive prejudice.

‘Would anyone of you think of building a tower without first sitting down and calculating the cost?’ is a good question for Lent for it raises at least these three costs, the cost of understanding, the cost of practice and the cost of proclamation.  If Christianity is really about the meaning of the universe, what it’s all for, and it’s not to end as a physicist believes with entropy, explosion and extinction, then this process is very costly.  I wonder how much of this cost has been put before our candidates for Baptism and Confirmation at Easter that carrying the cross daily in order to be a disciple becomes more than a pious hymn or an undemanding aspiration.

‘Would anyone of you think of building a tower without first sitting down and calculating the cost’?