Easter 6 & Rogation Sunday, 2024

Sermon by the Vicar

Readings: Acts 10:44-end, 1 John 5:1-6, John 15:9-17

As we approach the end of the Easter season of 50 days, we prepare to celebrate Ascension Day on Thursday of this week, images of the Resurrection are all around. The Islamic Republic of Iran is much in the news right now, and it’s difficult to get accurate information, but I offer two images from my own experience in that country. There are two seventeenth century ceramic inscriptions on either side of the door into the Great Mosque of Isfahan – both made by Christian Armenian craftsmen. On the one side this one, “The ones who believe in the Resurrection are like fish in the sea,” and on the other side, “The ones who do not believe in the Resurrection are like birds in a cage” The ones who do not believe in the Resurrection are like birds in a cage. I believe this to be true, and would like to illustrate this today, the sixth Sunday of Easter, Orthodox Easter Day, and Rogation Sunday by drawing two themes out of our texts, which I hope might be helpful as a reflection. The words or themes I would like to draw out are these two – Chosen and Loved.

Firstly, Chosen. Unless you have had a very unusual life, all of us have had the experience of being disappointed by not being chosen. Perhaps having gone for an interview for a job, and not being chosen. Conversely, when we are chosen it makes us feel welcomed and affirmed – and, in the best sense, proud. It can also be challenging. The Chapel of my theological college was dominated by a large icon of Christ with the words “You did not choose me, but I chose you.” Pretty odd choice, I would often think, either looking in a mirror or around the room. This is the sense conveyed by the second reading today from the first letter of John. John uses these words of the people of God. “everyone who loves the parent loves the child” This expresses the basic conviction we are chosen by God, the Father of us all. Baptism is the outward sign of being chosen by God into the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. His destiny is our own. Where Christ has gone, we believe we will follow- all of us. This sense of being chosen gives an inner freedom, which is different from propping ourselves up with more and more layers of external protection. If our international politics had more sense of this inner security, this inner sense of freedom, it would be different – whether in Israel/Palestine which has walled itself into a cage of notional security, or Russia and NATO or China and its neighbours, or any other place where security can only be relied on from the outside, and no longer from an inner sense of security. The lack of a sense of inner security from being at peace with the world is palpable, damaging, and damaged. By contrast, the sense of being chosen, leads onto the sense of being loved, and will produce a less fearful view of the world, idealistic as this may sound. For Christians, this sense of freedom comes from our being chosen through our baptism into the death and Resurrection of Christ. In this lies freedom, and we are like the bird set free from its cage.

Now being loved. Here again, words from Scripture point the way.” As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you: remain in my love.” Again and again, we are assured in the Gospels that it is the Christ how has gone before us, who is, even now, preparing our place, through loving us. This is basic to our belief in the shared Resurrection of all the beloved. It is the ultimate being set free, as we are liberated from the fear of death – our own death, and the death of those we love. And it is exactly this love, which is stronger than death, which the Resurrection of Jesus Christ form the dead shows us. One of the particular characteristics of this Church over the last couple few years, which you will have observed, is the increasing number of adults being baptised, and the number of those who have come from other faiths, particularly Islam. In the Easter Vigil here this year, several such adults were baptised. I have often asked myself why this should be happening right now. People more pious than I would say it is a manifestation of the Holy Spirit. It may be. It probably is, but there are also other things. For those who have come from a Shia or Sufi background, with its mystical experiences of Jesus and the Virgin Mary, and its strong belief in the Resurrection, it is my estimation that it is a natural step to seek to enter into that Resurrection through baptism. In this country, we are also culturally free to make this move, which is not the case in officially Islamic societies. We are also blessed in this church with the presence of skilled and mature guides in the faith for those who come from a Muslim background. All these factors contribute to what we are now experiencing, but there is, I believe, one stronger fact than all of these, and this affects us all if we allow it to. This is the sense of being chosen, called by name, and loved, which Christian faith at its best will give. And a manifestation of this will be friendship on the human level. A Church without friendship will therefore be a spiritually dead Church. In other words, love and friendship are at the heart of the Resurrection experience. Pope Francis referred to this primacy of love and friendship, addressing the Archbishop of Canterbury and Primates of the Anglican Communion when they gathered in Rome this week. He said this “Only a love that becomes gratuitous service, only the love that Jesus taught and embodied, will bring separated Christians closer to one another.” We hope that the Primates of a Communion at war with itself will listen to him.

I started with Iran, so I’ll end with it. The great mystical poet Hafiz was writing in the fourteenth century at a similar time to many of the great mystical love poets and theologians of the west. He is contemporary, for example, with Julian of Norwich in this country. Both use the image of intoxication, and the image of the lover – often in erotic and sexual imagery, to describe their experience of God. Hafiz wrote, “The love-pain caused by Thee I ever store, and make it medicine for my heart so sore.” May we all remember that it is God who is also speaking to each one of us directly as chosen and loved. Being chosen and loved are uplifting images of the Resurrection, which come from the Bible and Christian tradition. If you want one from creation on this Rogation Sunday, go to the Isabella Plantation in Richmond Park and let your spirit soar with the azaleas and rhododendrons in that place. When we know and feel that we are chosen and loved, like Jesus at the Ascension, or like birds set free from the cage, we fly. To end, the seventeenth century English poet Richard Lovelace wrote these lines while in prison, “If I have freedom in my love and in my soul am free – angels alone, that soar above, enjoy such liberty.”