A Perpetual Love and Reverence: A Sermon for 4 Pentecost

They say that preachers only really have one or two sermons. The longer you hang around here at Christ the King – or some will say the longer that I hang around here– you will begin to hear themes that emerge repeatedly in my preaching. So, one of my sermons is this: In the story of salvation history, God is always the one who acts first. God creates first, God speaks first, God loves first, God forgives first…the list goes on. As such, our action – our love, our voice, our forgiveness – is always our faithful response to God’s initiative. And as loving, faithful, and kind as we might think we are (most of the time, at least), the truth is, whether we realize it or not, we are always depending on God’s initiating grace to get us there. And that is Good News because we have a God who chose and chooses to love us first, without our having to have done anything to deserve it.

Our Collect of the Day (p. 179/230) addresses this very issue when it says,

O Lord, make us have perpetual love and reverence for your holy Name, for you never fail to help and govern those whom you have set upon the sure foundation of your loving-kindness…

Now, we have to be careful here, because at first glance, it might appear that we are pleading with God to help and govern us as a reward for our good behavior, namely, our perpetual love and reverence for him. And as long as we show our love and reverence for God, God will help us.

But that is not the petition of the prayer. Rather, through our baptisms, God has already set us upon the foundation of God’s loving-kindness. As we heard from the Apostle Paul today, in our baptisms, [we] must consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” That is the sure foundation of God’s loving-kindness that our Collect speaks of. But this new life in Christ isn’t our doing – it isn’t because we are being rewarded for our “perpetual love and reverence” for God, or our good deeds.

In John’s first pastoral epistle, he writes, “God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love… not that we loved God… but that he loved us…and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.”

So, if God is the one doing all the work here, when, where, or how do we faithfully respond to this love? What are we to do with this wonderful, undeserved gift of having been set upon the sure foundation of God’s loving-kindness?

I just returned yesterday from the James Lloyd Breck Conference at Nashotah House Seminary in Wisconsin. The purpose of the annual Breck Conference is to explore the history and practice of monasticism in the Anglican tradition. This year, we learned about E.B. Pusey’s influence on the rebirth of monasticism in mid-19th century England.

A primary takeaway from the conference was that while those who live in religious communities – monasteries, convents, and the like – indeed strive for a life that is grounded in offering one’s perpetual love and reverence for God’s holy Name, such a vocational calling isn’t (or shouldn’t be) a striving to earn points from God for one’s own piety. Unfortunately, in the Middle Ages, certain theologies of the religious life – meaning, living as a professed monk or nun – devolved into a belief that it was a spiritually superior calling to just about anything else. Monks and nuns were seen (or saw themselves) as the spiritual elite who, when they died, had the best chance to make it to heaven without having to spend too much time in purgatory. As such, this heretical theology tainted the institution of the religious life, so much so that the English Protestant Reformers and Henry VIII all but did away with religious communities in England.

So, when E.B. Pusey and his Oxford Movement peers sought to revitalize monastic life and communities in England in the 19th century, they first had to articulate their understanding that the call to live in community and pray nearly unceasingly wasn’t in order to earn God’s favor, but rather it was a faithful response to God’s call to live a life of poverty, chastity, and obedience. And such a vocational calling was a faithful response to one’s having been – through our baptisms and the sacramental life of the Church - set upon a foundation of God’s loving-kindness.

But even in 19th-century Victorian England, extraordinary Christian piety made many people feel uncomfortable, or even worse, angry. There was something about the piety – the faithful and even tenacious striving for holiness - of Pusey and his Oxford Movement peers that turned many people off. And just as it was then, so it is today.

Take me to a charismatic, Pentecostal worship service, and I’m looking for the exit doors as soon as folks begin getting slain in the Spirit. Why is that? Why does that expression of Christian piety make me feel profoundly uncomfortable?

The same goes for contemporary evangelical praise and worship. When folks start closing their eyes, raising their hands and singing along like they are at a Journey concert, I feel incredibly awkward? Am I supposed to be as emotionally moved by this song and moment as everyone else around me? Is it because I don’t love Jesus as much as I should?

But on the other end of the spectrum, at when I am at an incredibly ritualistic, ornate, Anglo-Catholic worship service, I feel equally as uncomfortable. I just genuflected and crossed myself for the fifth time in this worship service. Do I really need to do it again? The priest and a bunch of folks around me are saying a bunch of additional prayers under their breath right now. And it appears to be in Latin. Am I supposed to be doing that too? If so, I need to learn Latin. And we just finished the prayer of Great Thanksgiving. What else are we supposed to add?

I could go on and on about worship styles and practices that make me feel uncomfortable. But the point isn’t to disparage other people and how they experience and express their love for God. The point is that any expression of Christian piety that is markedly different from my own, and especially if it is what I experience as being notably expressive – whether it be low-church evangelical or high church catholic - makes me squirm. I was raised on the principles of Anglican reserve decorum.

I wonder if I had lived and served as a priest in 19th century England, I would have been a part of the Church that tried to stifle E.B. Pusey and his Oxford Movement peers from re-introducing monastic life to the Church? Would I have deemed it to be too Catholic? Would I have felt so insecure in my own spiritual life that I couldn't just be supportive of people who felt God's call for them to commit their entire lives to and perpetual love and reverence for God's holy name? Was there profoundly sacrificial lifestyle of poverty, chastity, and obedience threatening to me because I knew deep down in my heart that I can never be that committed to God? Why did their piety make me feel so uncomfortable, or even angry?

This past week up in Wisconsin, I lived and studied and worshipped with people who express their Christian piety in a way that is different than I do. And at times I felt uncomfortable and even irritated. And then when we were learning about the powers that be in the Church of England in the 19th century trying to suppress a movement within the Church to bring about the return a vocational religious life, I felt humbled. I wondered if I lived back then, I would have been me trying to suppress these faithful Christians’ way of faithfully expressing their perpetual love and reverence for God’s holy Name.

I always tell Julian and Madeleine that God has enough love to go around. Thankfully God doesn’t have to ration God’s love - there is always enough. Praying harder, more fervently, or more frequently won’t make God love us more. But, as a faithful response to this radical love, we are called to return that love to God, and then to others. But how we go about expressing that perpetual love and reverence has oftentimes been controversial throughout the history of the Church, and even today. However you choose to express your love for God, rest assured that God is far less judgmental than we are.