Turning away from sin and embracing life—a reflection for Lent

A sermon preached by the Dean of Melbourne at St Paul’s Cathedral on the First Sunday of Lent 2023

At the beginning of Lent, the church’s season of renewal and growth, stands the reminder that we humans are mortal, and sinful. On Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, we offer the opportunity to be signed on the forehead with a cross—in ash. The symbolism of this ‘ashing’ has its roots in the solemn act repentance of the Jewish people: putting on sackcloth, simple, unadorned garments, and ashes on the head, as signs of returning to God, of conforming to God’s will. ‘Remember, o mortal, that you are dust, and to dust you shall return’, the priest says as he ashes each worshipper. ‘Turn away from sin, and be faithful to Christ’.

During the six weeks of Lent, our Sunday readings explore the journey of turning away from sin and being faithful to Christ. We are going to hear from Scripture what it means to be far removed from God through human sinfulness and are encouraged to think about what it takes to know and do God’s will. For much of Lent we will be hearing from our patron, St Paul, through the first chapters of his epistle to the Romans. For Paul sin is not a light matter: he takes sin very seriously indeed. In the New Testament, the Greek word for ‘sin’, harmatia, is mentioned 173 times. Of those 64 times by Paul. If Paul is the New Testament author who is most concerned with sin, then his Letter to the Romans is the epistle that most considers what sin is and means: of the 64 instances that Paul writes about sin, sin is mentioned 48 times in Romans. 

Sin, for Paul, is not simply wrongdoing, or the daily struggle to live a values-based life. Sin for Paul is a deep-rooted principle of evil, and wilfulness: is the power that does harm to humanity and the root of all its conflicts. Sin is always present in human community, Paul knows: even­—especially, he would say—when we wish for good, evil is readily at hand.

If Paul is the New Testament author most concerned with sin, he is also the writer most concerned with the way in which we can rid ourselves of its destructive effects. The epistle to the Romans is Paul’s first and longest letter. It is, in fact, the first Christian text to be written following the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Paul is writing to the Jewish-Christian community in Rome to encourage them to forgo their differences and quarrels, which for him are signs of sinfulness. Instead, he tells them to recognise the unity they can enjoy by knowing Jesus Christ; and to discover for themselves the harmony and mutual love that are the fruits of Christ’s forgiveness. Sin has an effect on the way we think, Paul tells them. It has an effect on the way we eat and drink, and it has an effect on the way we die, he reminds them. Forgiveness and grace, on the other hand, is what enables us to live together as the people God loves, and is the basis for our confidence that Christ has overcome death.

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Today’s readings tell us the story of how sin came into the world, and how it affects everyone. They take us to the very beginning of the story of God and his people, and the first acts of human disobedience that opened the way for sin and evil to enter our world. They tell us that evil has become our basic problem, and ultimately the cause of our death. They show us how sin seeks to tempt us with things we long for­—food and comfort, reliance and security, power and influence—and how sin may use good things—including God’s word—to tempt us. At the same time, they assure us that, although sin is a universal problem, redemption—the forgiveness of sin—is available to all people and that God judges and punishes sin itself by overcoming it through Jesus Christ.

Our first reading, from the book Genesis, takes us to the abundant and peaceful garden of creation. God made it, and knew it to be very good. He placed humankind in the garden to tend and protect it, and permitted humans to name and therefore have influence over all creatures. He placed all things necessary for a rich life in the garden, walked the garden himself and lived closely among his people. God knew his creation personally, and loved it, and sought for it to flourish. God also placed the key to knowledge at the heart of the garden: the knowledge to see the world as God sees it—frail and complex, full of choices, requiring a nuanced course of constant decisions to navigate life. Humankind, our reading tells us, desired and acquired this knowledge. That which appeared to them as a delicious delight, revealed itself to be a deadly duty.

Where previously people had lived in harmony because they knew only harmony, now they knew both good and evil. The two humans instantly knew their vulnerability, our reading tells us—knew that they were figuratively and genuinely naked before God, and rushed to cover up their nakedness, in the hope that God would not notice their choice. The writer of Genesis speaks of the act that has become known as the ‘fall from grace’ in allegorical language. The garden might have seemed harmonious, and very good, but cunning and deception was already present in this idealised community. The persuasive serpent represents the double-tongued talk of evil persuasion, and the venom that brings death: the point of the story is that evil will talk smoothly, that evil will tell that our choices are simple when they are not, and that evil will, ultimately, leave us vulnerable and unprotected. We will not be protected by the loincloths we may conjure up for ourselves from the first thing that is at hand. Sin will have its prize, and that prize is human life: evil, our reading tells us, is the reason for sin, and sin is the reason why people die.

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Our Gospel reading takes us to an encounter between the author of evil and Jesus Christ. Jesus had just been baptised. There was no need for Jesus to be washed from sin in baptism. His cousin John the Baptist knew that Jesus alone among humans was without any sin, and called him out: ‘why should I be baptised by you’, John asked his cousin, ‘when I in fact have need to be baptised by you’. Jesus of all people needed no washing from sin, and yet took on the ritual in order that ‘all righteousness might be fulfilled’. Jesus submitted himself to the Law of Moses, and its requirements of righteousness. And as he came up from the waters, once all righteousness had been fulfilled, God opened heaven and anointed Jesus with the Holy Spirit, and called him his beloved Son. The same Spirit that had anointed him now led him into the wilderness ‘to be tempted by the Devil’, our reading tells us.

We would expect the Spirit-filled Jesus to be full of power and strength, driving away Satan, in the same way in which he drove out demons. But Jesus does not evade temptation by driving evil away. He fasts, and prays, and at the moment of his greatest vulnerability—famished after forty days—he encounters the tempter. And Satan tempts Jesus to use his powers to serve himself: ‘command these stones to become bread’. And Jesus, who will share a few loaves and fishes with thousands and who will turn water into gallons of fine wine for others, resists. God’s gifts are used to serve God and neighbour, and not to serve self.

Satan tempts Jesus three times: tempts him to test his reliance on God by an act of wilfulness by causing a spectacle. And Jesus who would later rather endure the loneliness of the cross than call up a legion of angels, resists. The last temptation is power—not the power that serves others, or the power that sets humans free from the effects of sin and evil by bringing healing and wholeness, but the power that enthrals, subdues and tyrannises. ‘If you worship me, I will give you all these kingdoms’, will give you all human power. And Jesus, whose kingdom is not of this world, finally casts Satan away, and commits himself to worship and serve only God. 

All righteousness is fulfilled in this act of dedication, in which Jesus commits himself to be the One who will take away all sinfulness by his death on the cross. As Jesus walks away from the wilderness, John observes in his gospel, his cousin who had baptised him, instantly knows him to be the sacrificial lamb that would be killed so that all have life. ‘Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world’, John declares (John 1.29). Sin must be terrifying indeed if it takes the Son of God to take it away. God made Jesus, the sinless one, to be sin, so that all sin might be taken away, our patron saint tells the Corinthian church (2 Corinthians 5.21). The principle of sin is eradicated—taken out at the root—when the Lamb of God is killed, and Christ lifted up on a cross.

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Sin is terrifying. It applies to all people, our epistle reading argues convincingly. For those living under the Law of Moses, the rules of life given to the people of God on Sinai, the Law holds them accountable for their deeds. They will be judged on the basis of their observance, or lack thereof, of the Law. Would it be better not to know the Law, Paul asks rhetorically? Well, those who live apart from the Law, those who have never known God, will also be held accountable for their living. All are subject to God’s judgement; both those who live under the Law, and those who do not. Just as all are subject to sin: ‘there is no one righteous, not one; there is no one who understands’, Paul tells the Romans (Romans 3.29): ‘All have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God’.

‘Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return’, we solemnly recalled last Wednesday. Remember that the effects of sin are death. As the ash crosses were marked on our foreheads, we were also reminded of the remedy for sin: ‘turn away from sin, and be faithful to Christ’. Turn away from sin. In the next few chapters of Paul’s letter to the Romans we will see that Paul has faint hopes for us: alone, Paul believes, we will never have the capacity to turn away from sin. Sin, simply put, is all pervasive, and hard to escape under our own strength. But together with God it is possible to turn away from sin. When we turn to Christ, when we remind ourselves daily—in our prayer and actions—of the goodness and love of God, and the sacrifice and selfless acts of Christ, then, Paul rightly knows, we have a chance to turn from the sin to which all of us are subjected. ‘Turn away from sin, and be faithful to Christ’.

Next Sunday, our readings will tell us more about at what this faithful turning to God, this act of committing ourselves to God, looks like. We will hear words of promise and reassurance, hear that God seeks to bless and not to condemn. Today, though, let us take seriously the gravity and effects of sin. That no one lives without the daily struggle against sin. That without the daily need to turn from turning from the enticements of sin to serve self—to provide for our own comforts first, or only ever strive for our own recognition and renown—that without the daily turning from sin, and focusing on Christ, we remain subjects to the tyranny of evil. ‘Turn away from sin, and be faithful to Christ’.

Where sin is deadly and clouds our life, turning to Christ is joyful and life-giving. If you have not yet committed to turning to Christ, and seeking baptism or confirmation, I encourage you to talk to one of our clergy about what committing to Jesus Christ means. If you have already made the commitment, in your baptism, to reject evil and turn to Christ, you will have experienced the joy that discipleship, that following Jesus can bring. When your fundamental commitment, made in baptism, is lived out day by day in discipleship, by every action and work of yours, choosing at every step to turn to Christ, and choose life and joy, and thereby rejecting sin and death. 

This Lent, I invite you to pray with me, each day that we might choose Christ, choose life. You may wish to pray the simple prayer of the penitent, ‘Have mercy on me, Lord, a sinner’. Or you may wish to pray the lines from the prayer that Jesus taught us, asking that your will be conformed to his: ‘Lord Jesus, thy kingdom come, thy will be done’. Especially when you feel that you are tempted to sin, or when you feel that God is far from you, I encourage you to pray for God to meet you in your need. And if you are already committed to prayerful living, I invite you to pray for those who still need to make that fundamental commitment to living with Christ. Pray for a friend, or a group of friends, whom you would like to see turn to Christ. Again, do so consistently, and joyfully, knowing that it is in turning away from sin, and our faithfulness in Christ, that we may share in the life that is forever.

‘All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. But God is righteous and justifies all who have faith in Jesus’. Thanks be to God.

© Andreas Loewe, 2023

Returning to the garden of God’s goodness: doing God’s will of reconciliation

A sermon preached by the Dean of Melbourne, the Very Revd Dr Andreas Loewe, at St Paul’s Cathedral Melbourne on the Second Sunday after Pentecost, 7 June 2015

Today’s readings are all about God’s work of forgiveness in a world of conflicting standards. They take us to key moments in the life of God and his people, to explain how evil entered the world and what God is doing in order to ensure that evil will not have the upper hand. They remind us that evil can take many forms – like the serpent in our first lesson or the demons referred to in our Gospel reading – and that it is impossible to make a good bargain or deal with evil – for evil delights in deceiving. They urge us to call on God when we feel burdened; when find ourselves in the depths out of which our psalmist addressed his heartfelt prayer to God. They show us how, through Jesus Christ God has already bound evil, and plundered evil’s store of deceits and deceptions, like the property of strong man in our gospel reading.

Because God was there at the beginning of the story of evil’s sway over humankind, and because Christ has already taken away the ultimate power of evil and death, today’s readings encourage us never to lose heart: even if our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed every day. And the key to that constant renewal, our lessons tell us, is seeking God’s friendship, his protection, and forgiveness.

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Our first lesson (Genesis 3.8-14), from the first book of the Bible, tells the story of creation in allegorical terms. God has created a universe he knew to be very good, and placed humankind in the middle of his garden of delights. There is no no harm, no hardship, no death; only goodness, growth and life. Everything in God’s garden promotes life; especially the trees at the heart of the garden: ‘the tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil’ (Genesis 2.9). In return for life in his presence, in return for his goodness and the absence of any evil, God commands humankind not to consume the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

In an environment that is all good, with the tree of life to give life, and no form of evil at all, there is no need to discern between good and evil, God knows. Indeed, the very act of seeking to know of evil in an environment that is all good, God knows, invites evil, harm and death into the garden of goodness. And so God tells humankind not to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, ‘for on the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die’ (Genesis 2.15).

The people did not die immediately, once they had eaten of the fruit that invited evil into God’s good creation. But with the knowledge of evil in a world of goodness came evil itself – not only the temptation to be like God and to be enabled to navigate the complexities of discerning what is good and wholesome and what is evil and destructive – but the very evil that leads to death and mortality. Indeed, a chapter after our first lesson sees the first fruits of evil and death: a deep-rooted jealously that led to pre-meditated murder as Cain killed his brother Abel. Once evil had been admitted into God’s good creation, our story tells, there was no more protection from the ultimate fruit of evil. Where once the fruit that sustained humankind had been the goodness of the fruit of life; now there only remained the decay of the fruits of death, as people daily are confronted with the need to discern what is good and what is not, and folk sense more and more how their outward nature is wasting away, on the way to the ultimate, universal, human destiny: death (2 Corinthians 4.16).

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It is this very physical experience of evil and oppression, of death and destruction, that led our psalmist to cry out to God ‘out of the depths’ (Psalm 130.1). Our Psalm is one of the fifteen psalms of ascents, the songs of pilgrimage of the second temple that were sung by faithful followers of the God of Israel on the way to, or on the steps of, the restored Jerusalem sanctuary. Our psalm is written from the perspective of exile and distance, recalls the time in captivity, when God’s people were driven away from the land of their promise by fault of their own disobedience, when they were ‘led away’, by the Lord, ‘with the evildoers’ (Psalm 128.5). As in the garden of goodness, so here, on the steps of the temple sanctuary, our writer recalls, appeals to, God’s goodness. We might find ourselves in the depths, might find ourselves afflicted and oppressed, like God’s faithful followers in exile. Yet even when confronted with the reality of the fruits of evil, and an absence of goodness to discern, there remains a sign of our hope: our direct appeal to the One who created this world to be very good, and who will hear the supplications of those who call on him – wherever and in whatever circumstance of life we might find ourselves: ‘let your ears be consider well – be attentive to – the voice of my supplication’, our psalm writer prays God (Psalm 130.2)

Our psalmist knows that, having presumed to take the place of God and discern between good and evil, humankind had, all too often, chosen the path of evil rather than goodness. If God were to do what humankind appropriated to itself – the right to pronounce judgement of what is good and what is not, the right to know what is good and what is not – then none would stand; all would fail and fall, the psalmist has experienced: ‘If you, Lord, should note what we do wrong: who then, O Lord, could stand?’ (Psalm 130.3).

At the same time, the writer, who plunged the depths of human experience, also knows that God will readily show mercy, if only we ask him to take away our the evil that oppresses, and our own sins: ‘there is forgiveness with you … with the Lord there is mercy, and with him ample redemption’ (Psalm 130, 4, 7). ‘Trust in the Lord’, the writer appeals to those who, like him, have known of the misery of the depths of evil and human frailty: ‘God will redeem his people from the multitude of their sins’ (Psam 130.8).

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Our gospel reading from Mark’s account of the story of Jesus and his followers, gives us a very practical insight into how God has redeemed his people from the multitude of their sins through his Son Jesus Christ. Jesus had just called to himself a group of twelve apostles, followers whom had had commissioned ‘to be with him, and to be sent out to proclaim the message, and to have authority to cast out evil’ (Mark 3.14-15). These returned with him to his home in Capernaum and, because he had healed many, ‘a great multitude followed him’ (Mark 3.7). So large was the crowd, so desirous to be healed, to be set free from the fruits of disease and death, that Jesus and his apostles ‘could not even eat’ (Mark 3.20). Jesus’ own family come to take him home for a meal and a rest: the experience of healing so many, of setting folk free from the fruits of evil – which for Mark included possession by evil forces – had worn Jesus out, they believed. Or at least their neighbours thought so, the people who kept on saying: ‘he has gone out of his mind’ (Mark 3.21). But they are rebuffed by their son and brother: are sent away so that Jesus is enabled to explain why it was that he did what he did.

Until now in Mark’s gospel, we have only seen the fruits of Jesus’ ministry of countering evil in all its guises – at this stage only evil personified knows Jesus’ true identity and mission: ‘What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are – the Holy One of God’, the demons address him (Mark 1.24). Until now in Mark’s account, we have only seen the fruits of his mission to be a physician to those who are sick in body, mind or soul; to be the One who pronounces forgiveness to those who have sinned, or are so deeply affected by evil that they feel as if demons had conquered their innermost selves. Until now in Mark’s story, only those set free, only those healed, know Jesus’ true identity: the others are amazed, attracted and follow him; or are unsettled, upset and call him a blasphemer.

The reason why Jesus does not have time to go home and rest, why he sends his own family away, and calls his disciples and anyone else who ‘do the will of God’ his ‘brother and sister and mother’, is not because he does not love, or care for them, but because he is about to engage those who are unsettled, and reveal to all what doing the will of God entails for him. For Jesus doing God’s will means nothing less than entering ‘the house of the strong man and plundering his spoils’ (Mark 3.27).

The ‘strong man’ in our gospel reading is evil personified. From the moment of the story of evil entering human existence in the garden of God’s goodness, evil had steadily increased in power, built for itself a strong fortress, gathered for itself spoils from frail humans. Jesus’ task is to bind evil, to storm his fortress, and to plunder his spoils, Mark tells in his story. Only by binding evil and setting free those drawn into its sphere of influence, drawn into the strong man’s house, people will be able to taste again of the fruit of the tree of life. Jesus tells the scribes and teachers of the law who have come from Jerusalem to ascertain his motives: ‘Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins’ (Mark 3.28). Those who believe that Jesus is the agent of this deliverance will be able to call on God out of the depths of even the deepest distress, and be given the assurance of a new beginning, a new life. Those who only see the power of the strong man, ‘Beelzebul, the ruler of demons’, do blaspheme against the power of God, and the Holy Spirit through whom God accomplishes the work of deliverance (Mark 3.29). Those people, Jesus says, will remain in their depths of distress, will not able to lift their heads above the parapet of the depths from which they call: ‘whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin’, Jesus rebuked those who had come from Jerusalem to rein him in (Mark 3.29).

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This liberation by Jesus Christ is the reason for the hope expressed so poetically in our epistle reading: because Jesus has bound the powers of evil, and set free those in death’s domain from eternal death, we may have hope, Paul knows. The fruits of the tree of life are given us to sustain us in our own journey of mortality, the apostle tells, are set against the wasting away of our outer nature. Where the outward is wasting away, ‘the inner nature is being renewed day by day’ (2 Corinthians 4.16). Where the fruit of evil and sin is death, the One who has overcome death by his own death, and bound evil by overcoming this world and its ruler, has returned to us fruit from the garden of God’s delight. And that is why ‘we believe: because we know that the One who raised the Lord Jesus, will also raise us with Jesus, and will bring us – with you – into his presence’, Paul affirms this firm and certain hope (2 Corinthians 4.14). Hope this certainly is: hope that cannot be seen – ‘for what can be seen is temporary’, and is subject to destruction by death; hope that cannot be seen, because ‘what cannot be seen is eternal’ (2 Corinthians 4.18).

The call from the depths of our oppression, the call from the depths of death, has been answered, Paul proclaims. Even though ‘the earthly tent we live in is destroyed’, even though we continue to share the certainty of mortality with the first Adam, we also share the hope of immortality of the second Adam. The hope of heaven reopened, a garden prepared for us, and it it a tree of delights and life: ‘we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens’, Paul knows (2 Corinthians 5.1). Evil may well be a daily reality; the discernment of good, in a world that shows so much evil, will continue to be a labour of sweat and toil of tears, ‘till we return to the ground’ (Genesis 4.19). But we undertake this labour in the knowledge that the root of all evil has been bound, and the stronghold of evil been conquered, by the One who calls us to be his brothers and sisters, his family; people who join him in doing the will of God.

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God’s will is for this creation to be very good. God made it good, and remade it by binding the power of evil and giving us fruit from the tree of life to sustain us in our journey to his ‘house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens’ (2 Corinthians 5.1). God invites us to join in the work of promoting goodness and life, invites us to be members of the family of his Son, who share with Christ in doing the work of reconciliation and resurrection.

As we seek to do God’s will at the heart of this city, by our listening to God’s word, our sharing of his good news, and our ministry of bringing others closer to God, it is my prayer for you and for me, that we may know God’s salvation, trust in his mercy and know his love, rejoicing in the righteousness that is ours, for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

© Text: Andreas Loewe, Photography: Carsten Murawski 2015

The Church Universal: forgiven folk living as members of Christ’s body

A sermon preached by the Dean of Melbourne, the Very Revd Dr Andreas Loewe, on Trinity Sunday, the eighth in a series of sermons on the Apostles’ Creed:

We are almost at the end of our series of sermons on the Apostles’ Creed. The main points of our faith have all been covered. We have confessed that the world was created by a God who calls us his children and whom we may call Father. We have confessed that this Father-hood is uniquely expressed in the life of Jesus Christ, ‘God’s only Son our Lord’. We have affirmed that in Christ God and humanity have equal place by the childbearing of blessed Mary. We have recalled the life, and death on the cross for our redemption, of Mary’s Son, and anchored the events of our redemption in time by recalling the earthly judge before whom Jesus gave an account of his life: the governor of Judea, Pontius Pilate in the first century Roman empire. We have confirmed our faith in the new life Christ brought by rising from the dead, recalled the raising of that renewed humanity into heaven at Christ’s Ascension. We have given thanks for the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. We have given voice to all of the historic acts of our faith, recalled all the events in the story of the creation and redemption of this world.

What is left in our confession is how the story of the triune God, who creates, redeems and sustains his creation, is lived out daily in the life of those who join you and me in making this statement of faith. Yes, we have completed the remembrance of our story of faith. What follows now is an answer to the question that so many of us carry with us: how can this faith be lived out in our day to day journeys of faith? The answer our creed gives is threefold: ‘I believe in the Holy Catholic Church; the Communion of Saints; the Forgiveness of Sins’.

Each of the three parts of this statement of faith depends on the next. Our faith is brought to life in the church, Christ’s body on earth. Our faith journeys, in turn, are sustained by the knowledge of those who have completed the journey of faith, God’s saints in Christ’s presence, and the knowledge that by our confession of faith we too affirm our membership in their number, are counted among God’s holy people. And our faith life is based on the knowledge that our sins can be, and have been forgiven; that we, too, can be a part of the community of the redeemed. In fact, the final statement is the one on which the former two are based: without our acceptance of the forgiveness of sins, there can be no membership in the communion of Saints, nor can there be a Church; the statement of faith we examine tonight hinges on our acceptance of the gift of a new life, set free from sin and the fear of death, by the gift of Christ’s own life on a cross for our sakes.

Tonight’s readings (Acts 20.24-32, Colossians 1.9b-20) give us a closer insight into what it may mean to profess our faith in a community shaped by the belief that Christ forgives the sins of those who call on his name and seek his friendship. They give us a better understanding of what it means to be the company of those whose sins have been forgiven, and who have been shaped together as a communion: the Church. That body is holy because it has been sanctified by the One who called it into being to make known the faith of sins forgiven. And that body is universal—the Greek word ‘catholicos’ means ‘universal’—incorporates people wherever they may be ‘whether on earth or in heaven’ (Col. 1.20). In the days of the early Christian community that affirmed the then contentious belief that the church is there for those who were born in the land in which Jesus grew up and shared his Jewish roots, as well as the Gentile believers who came to faith through the ministry of apostles like Paul and Barnabas, Timothy and his companions. In our own generation it gives expression to that fact that the Church is enduring and that the church is to people wherever they are, from whatever ethnic, social or faith background they may first have come.

And because it is a community that professes as its founding principle the ‘forgiveness of sins’, the Church is a body that has often stood in need of thar forgiveness itself, and is growing in the knowledge that holiness can begin where people acknowledge their own sinfulness and failure, and receive in turn the assurance of God’s love and mercy. That knowledge is there for individuals as well as for the church as a whole—the church is holy when it confesses its own shortcomings and seeks to live out the message of sins brought to light, and lives transformed by God’s forgiveness.

Both our readings (Acts 20.24-32, Colossians 1.9b-20) give voice to our Patron Saint, Paul the Apostle. The first, through the historic writings of Luke, takes us back to Miletus, at a turning point in Paul’s apostolic journeys. The second contains Paul’s counsel to the Christian community in Colossae. Both are spoken texts that were later set down in writing: the first is a farewell speech to the leaders of the church in Asia Minor, the second takes the form of a hymn in praise of life in communion with God. The first addresses the leaders of the church in particular, the second is addressed to all its members. At the heart of both stand the insights that were later incorporated into our creed: that the Church is a living body, a living community, and that that community has come into being through the gift of ‘redemption, the forgiveness of sins’ (Col. 1.13), and that its purpose is to make known the message of a new, transformed life, which Paul calls ‘the inheritance among all the saints’ (Acts 20.32). The creation of the church as a communion of saints that spans all nations on earth, and encompasses the whole household of God—living and departed—is the gift of our Triune God: it is the ‘Father, who has enabled us to share in the inheritance of the saints in light’, the ‘Son in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins’ and the Spirit who ‘shepherds the church of God’; an apt message to recall this Trinity Sunday (Col. 1.13-14, Acts 20.28).

For the Apostles’ Creed, the step from forgiveness to membership of the church is immediate: we are made part of the communion of saints at the moment at which our sins are forgiven. There appears to be no intermediate steps necessary to obtain membership. Our readings echo this sense of immediacy. God’s forgiveness was ‘obtained through the blood of God’s own Son’, our first lesson explains; it is this message that ‘is able to build us up and give us the inheritance among all who are sanctified’, Paul tells the elders at Miletus (Acts 20.28, 32). And in his letter to the Colossians he confirms that ‘through Christ God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross’ (Col. 1.20). It is was the self-giving act of offering the life of his ‘beloved Son’ (Col. 1.13), so that all might come to experience the forgiving love of God, that makes us a member of Christ’s body, the communion of Saints.

The other principal creed, that adopted by the first Council of Nicaea through the course of the fourth century, professes an intermediary step to membership of that body: ‘we acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins’. Since 381, and the formulation of the Nicene Creed, the formal beginning of the journey as member of the body of Christ has been the confession of faith in the forgiveness of sins through Christ symbolised by baptism, in which the washing through the ‘blood of his cross’ our second reading speaks of is ritualised by the washing of our bodies, or foreheads, in water. Baptism, then, is the moment in our Christian journeys, when we come to experience in our bodies, what it means to be a member of Christ’s body: there we are linked to Christ, ‘the head of the body, the church’, there we are given a physical sign of the forgiveness of sins that shapes that body, the church. There we receive the necessary gifts of grace to enable us to live out our faith.

And that living out of our faith through the gifts of grace bestowed to us by the Holy Spirit is the final aspect of tonight’s article of faith. We profess that, in our membership of Christ’s body, we rely on the gifts of others: we rely on the gifts of grace that God gives—the gifts that, as our second lesson puts it—can fill us ‘with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding so that we may lead lives worthy of Christ’ (Col. 1.9). We also rely on the gifts we receive from other members of the church: whether they are those who, as in our first lesson, are set over us as shepherds of God’s flock, the ‘overseers’ or bishops of our church who act on behalf of Christ. Or the gifts of those who share with us in the strength of ‘God’s glorious power’, the strength that both prepares the members of the church to endure trials with patience and gives us the joy of praising God in worship. As those who profess our faith in the body of Christ, ‘the holy catholic church; the communion of Saints’, we are encouarged to live like the saints Paul speaks of in our lessons: as people who live with understanding, bear much fruit through our good works, as people prepared to grow in strength and endurance, as people who praise God together and, above all, as people who share this message of faith with others.

What we profess is not an organisation, but a living organism, given life at the moment at which Christ died for us to know ‘the forgiveness of sins’; the act of liberation at which God came to visit and redeem us—his people.

‘And now I commend you to God, and to the message of his grace; a message that is able to build you up, and to give you the inheritance among all who are sanctified’ (Acts 20.32). Thanks be to God. Amen.