Predestination

Chosen (Predestination)

“In him we were also chosen, having been predestined… for the praise of his glory.” Eph 1.11f

Frogs in Cream p.90

Two frogs fell into a can of cream,
Or so I’ve heard it told.
The sides of the can were shiny and steep,
The cream was deep and cold.

“Oh, what’s the use?” croaked number one.
“Tis fate, no help’s around.
Good-bye, my friend! Good-bye, sad world!”
And weeping still, he drowned.

But number two, of sterner stuff,
Dog-paddled in surprise.
The while he wiped his creamy face,
And dried his creamy eyes.

“I’ll swim a while at least,” he said,
Or so I’ve heard he said;
“It really wouldn’t help the world,
If one more frog were dead.”

An hour or two he kicked and swam,
Not once he stopped to mutter,
But kicked and kicked and swam and kicked,
Then hopped out, via butter!
(TC Hamlet)

Well, that’s as good an introduction as any on a hot summer’s morning, to the subject of predestination. Is our eternal fate already fixed? As v4 puts it, ‘he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world.’ Or can we, like frog number two, work out our own salvation?

Remember the expunged verse of All things bright and beautiful...

“The rich man in his castle,
the poor man at his gate;
God made them high and lowly,
and ordered their estate.”

Is it God who orders our destiny? Prince or pauper? Famous or infamous?

Is our vocation and ministry - the words of our opening collect; ordered by God’s governance - the words of the final collect?

In that wonderful legal ecclesiastical language, Rowan is Archbishop of Canterbury by Divine Providence; whereas poor Richard is Bishop of London, merely by Divine Permission.

A cynic of course might say that both phrases boil down to: ‘by Tony Blair’.

I’m not preaching on John the Baptist today (Fr Alan has a fine sermon on him delivered at St George’s Windsor recently, and due for a re-run here) but he was a very odd choice for the forerunner of Christ. He would certainly never have got through our Anglican selection processes!

Amos himself admits what an odd choice he was to bring the prophetic message of judgment to Israel. As he admits in the last verse of this morning’s reading: “‘I am no prophet, nor a prophet’s son; but I am a herdsman, and a dresser of sycamore trees.'” (7.14)

This is all part of a very disturbing theological principle of the Judaeo-Christian tradition: divine choices often leave both the subject of the choice and those who observe it, bemused or bewildered.

In the words of the book of Proverbs: “Man proposes; God disposes.”

Or in our Lord’s words: “You did not choose me; I chose you.” (John 15.16)

The doctrine of predestination was an unsuccessful attempt to give theological shape to this part of the character of God, that is basically unfathomable.

This is the ‘u’ in ‘TULIP’ - the little mnemonic for remembering the central tenets of Calvinism: total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible calling, perseverance of the saints.

But if you’re not careful, you can end up with a capricious and almost vicious god, and a view of life that is fatalistic – que sera sera. (Like the Calvinist who fell down stairs and said “Thank goodness that’s over with!”)

Paul begins to get to the nub of the matter when in the next chapter he talks of God’s choosing in the same sentence as he says - lest any man should boast.

“For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.” (Eph 2.8, 9)

There is at the heart of God’s dealing with humanity, a desire to confound; and at the same time to reveal. It seems it is the only way to deal with us in order to save us from self-destruction - both individually and perhaps as human kind; and perhaps the only way for us to maintain our integrity and freedom.

So at Babel there is the confusion of languages, the confounding of the superstate’s plans, in order, Genesis 11 tells us, to save humanity from the dangerous consequences of its own folly.

Our Lord quotes the prophet Isaiah when explaining why he uses parables. “That seeing they may see, and not perceive; and hearing they may hear, and not understand; lest at any time they should be converted, and their sins should be forgiven them.” (Mark 4.12)

You see the principle at work in weak King Herod: “When Herod heard John he was greatly puzzled; yet he liked to listen to him.” (Mk 6.20)

To confound and to reveal - this is the mystery of our faith; the mystery of this Sacrament. It is what calls us to walk by faith rather than by sight. (2 Cor 5.7)

But, unhappy with the loose ends our faith throws up, we attempt to justify everything; to square the circle. At one level that is what theological debate and trying to understand life is all about. But part of our childlike faith is being able to accept that there are some things, however hard we struggle, that we will never understand.

Mortals are contingent to the universe. They are not the authors of it. We rightly wrestle to increase our knowledge of the way things are. But that knowledge, by definition, can never be exhaustive. In the scientific world this is known as Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle.

Sometimes we try to justify God by saying he chooses ‘the good’ for special blessing and special purposes. There seems to be lots of evidence in Scripture for this, especially in the OT.

It’s the righteous who are blessed and used.

But even Scripture struggles with this and isn’t it in the book of Hezekiah that we read that the rain falls on the just and the unjust, but mainly on the just because the unjust have stolen their umbrellas?

The wisdom literature of the Bible knows that plenty of bad things happen to good people.

And Scripture is also brutally honest in showing us that many of the saints were bigger sinners than you and I will ever manage to be.

We cannot ignore the plain truth that the men and women that God has chosen to do remarkable things in the history of the world, have by and large been flawed humans - sometimes ordinary, sometimes exceptional, but always flawed.

The fact is, that there is no justification of God. His dealings with us are always mysterious.

But we also use this same argument to try and justify ourselves. And by this I mean that we say, we’re not holy enough or good enough to be used by God, or even to be Christians, or part of the church.

We keep a sort of mental hierarchy of whom God will bless and use - Our Lord - Mary - saints & martyrs (especially virgins) - bishops - missionaries - priests - deacons - churchwardens - PCC members - right down to advertising executives.

“God can’t use me.” And that lets us off the hook.

Paul is so excited by the fact that we are all called by God, and all used by God, that he dictates the twelve verses of today’s epistle as one long, complex Greek sentence – and the burden of the sentence is the praise of a loving God.

The mystery of why we are Christians, why we believe when many of friends and family don’t seem able to believe, should lead us, certainly not to pat ourselves on the back; but to praise God who is beyond all praising.

I’m very bad at noticing engagement rings, but when I met my friend’s daughter and her boyfriend the other day, it was the smile on each of their faces that made me immediately look to the ring finger. And there it was!

The modern Greek word for engagement ring is αρραβων, and Paul uses the word in the last verse of today’s epistle to describe the Holy Spirit as the pledge, the αρραβων, of our inheritance in Christ. It should bring a smile to our faces and praise to our lips.

“In him we were also chosen, having been predestined… for the praise of his glory.” Eph 1.11f

Sacred Space, Dedication Festival

Sacred Space

“This is the house of God, and gate of heaven.” Gen 28 (Introit verse)

I used to preach at the Brighton Railway Mission as a teenager. It was one of those tin tabernacles that sprang up at the end of the Victorian era.

They used to have those big gospel posters outside in day-glow colours, and I remember one Sunday arriving to see “Are you tired of sin? Then come inside.” And someone had added with a felt pen underneath. “If not, phone Brighton 2374.”

The little group who kept the Chapel going loved that building although it was of no architectural merit whatsoever.

Most humans have a strong sense of place. So returning to the place of their birth, or a place associated with their first love; a place of great happiness or a place of deep anguish - these places are more than mere geographic locations.

Through memory and its linked emotions, space becomes differentiated for us, divided by familiar tracks.

Here’s how one writer has expressed it:

“For religious man, space is not homogenous; he experiences interruptions, breaks in it; some parts of space are qualitatively different from others.” (Eliade 1959:20)

On a Dedication Festival such as today, we are giving thanks for the building itself, but in so doing we are recognising that it is far more than the some of its masonry.

When you look at religious people around the world you can see that there are two important processes going on in sacred spaces: re-ordering and focusing.

Re-ordering is repeating the work of God in creation, bringing meaning and order out of chaos. This is the purpose of the careful structure of Genesis chapter one, a literary masterpiece reflecting God’s cosmic intentions.

So our church is carefully ordered if we can but see. The Baptistry is at the entrance, for Baptism is the sign of admission to the Church of Christ. The altar and cross is the obvious focus – the place where the Gospel is re-enacted. And so we could go on, differentiating this sacred space, re-ordering the world of human things to reflect God’s order for salvation.

There are of course some Sacred Spaces that need no ordering: places and events that produce awe and a sense of the transcendent - the total otherness of a vast universe and the feeling that there is continuity and meaning to human life. And yes, even the feeling that there is a God.

Mountain tops and seascapes; quiet gardens and vast deserts; friends in candlelight; the beauty of music, poetry, art…

Eclipses have always produced an immense and silent Sacred Space that sweeps around the world with darkness, beauty and the numinous in its wake.

But then there are of course the Focused Sacred Spaces, of which this church is one, where the general feelings of awe and transcendence, of longing and loving, and occasionally the mysterium tremendum et fascinans (Otto) - the compelling and fascinating mystery at the centre of life and existence - these feelings find particular focus in the life, death and resurrection of Christ, and in the lives of his saints.

This is the sacred breaking into the profane.

For Christians these sacred spaces - these houses of prayer - although they do not fully explain the sacred, nevertheless give shape and form to what we believe to be a Christian explanation of truth.

Many people in our post-Christian society today do not know how to use them. They are unaware of the meaning of the symbols.

They are even in danger of worshipping the created rather than the Creator; they follow the line of beauty in a curve that turns in on itself. Sadly, they miss the living messages of a house of prayer, a gate to heaven.

We live in a culture where people don’t like focus, because it brings responsibilities and duties. The answer to everything is a sort of blurry thing. The revelation of Christ as Lord of Sacred Space necessitates response and an effort to live differently.

A fuzzy sense of awe at an eclipse, will not transform human society in the way that the church has. Christ’s people, however imperfect, have done immeasurable good in the world and still do.

This is the sort of focused, prayer-infused Sacred Space St Mary’s should be, and I believe, is. A man rang me when I was here to book a time that he could bring a group of psychics to ‘feel the remarkable energy’ (his words) present in our church. I hope you continue to support the daily offices and mass. This is at the heart of maintaining the Divine energy of this sacred space, the presence of Christ.

There is one more important aspect of this sacred space. Listen to Mircea Eliade in his book The Sacred & Profane:

“But the irruption of the sacred does not only project a fixed point into the fluidity of profane space, a center in the chaos; it also effects a break in plane, that is, it opens communication between the cosmic planes (between earth and heaven) and makes possible (ontological) passage from one mode of being to another.” (1959:63)

Here today is a ‘break in plane’ - along the cosmic axis of this altar and the crucified Christ above.

The altar here is a sarcophagus with relics - the bones of the saints - the place of the dead. Above Christ’s head sits his Mother in Heaven - the place of eternal felicity.


And later as the host is raised along this axis, and as the monstrance is poised above the tabernacle, there is a ‘break in plane’; eternity touches earth and our bodies and souls are fed with manna from heaven. The sublime is made tangible.

We give most hearty thanks today for this Sacred Space, and for all the lives it has touched from around the world and for over a century.

And as again we offer gifts of bread and wine; we offer prayers of thanksgiving and wonder, or sometimes of anxiety, pain, bewilderment; but we remember with faith and hope that

“This is the house of God, and gate of heaven.” Gen 28 (Introit verse)