Sermon for 26th September: 17th Sunday after Trinity | Canon Jo Spreadbury | Cathedral Eucharist with baptism of baby Hugo

Readings: James 5.13-end; Mark 9.38-end.

Let me begin this morning with a Latin lesson. Although we are in good company here with Hugo’s mother and grandmother both being teachers, and a number of people having done some Latin at school, I won’t be testing you. But there are some insights that I find really helpful from the original Latin of certain prayers and parts of the liturgy.

Take for example today’s collect, which begins: “Almighty God you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in you…” This is based on words from the beginning of St Augustine’s Confessions – the most influential spiritual autobiography ever written. Augustine’s writes the story of his life in the form of a prayer to God, examining his desires, his hopes and ambitions and his mistakes, and always questioning why he is so attracted to God and yet, at the same time, wants to run away from him. And in telling us the story of his soul he reveals insights that seem surprisingly modern. They would not be out of place in a psychiatrist’s chair or a counsellor’s office.

Anyway, back to the Latin: Augustine’s phrase ‘you have made us for yourself’ is literally you have made us towards yourself: fecisti nos ad te. In Latin using the accusative case is about ‘motion towards’ – God has made us towards himself – our hearts are restless, like a compass swinging to and fro away from its true direction, until our hearts rest towards God: finding the direction and destiny that gives us the clue to everything else that is important in life. So the Latin construction: motion towards with the accusative gives us not only a sense of direction and motion but also a goal: God is our truth North, our destination as well our direction.

We are on a journey through life, and even more so we are on a journey in our spiritual life. God has made us towards himself, to journey deeper and deeper, further on and closer in… This is a journey of delight and discovery, a journey that is just beginning for Hugo this morning, as we learn more and more about ourselves - and more and more about God.

It is a journey that God promises through baptism to underwrite and underpin – whatever happens to us, God promises that he is to be found in the changes and chances of this short life on earth, somehow it will work out for the best. And because, in another phrase of Augustine’s ‘God knows us even better than we know ourselves,’ we discover on the journey of faith that we need to learn more about God in order truly to learn more about ourselves.

The same Latin lesson helps us understand something also about the Creed that we recite together most Sundays. Some people find the Creed hard, like signing up to a fixed set of rules they are not sure they understand, let alone agree with. But the words of the Creed, translated from the Latin, are about something dynamic and progressive and vital and vivid. It is the same Latin again: motion towards with the accusative. So the word ‘in’ has a sense of movement: ‘into’. Credo in unum Deum: I believe into one God… I believe into God the Father, I believe into God the Son, I believe into God the Holy Spirit…

Faith is not static but we are on a journey of life and meaning and purpose. Each time we affirm our faith, we are saying that God is the direction in which our life to be oriented, God is the direction we know that opportunity and fulfilment lies ahead. We are on a journey of faith towards the source of all things, towards the heart of the universe, towards the very being of God.

Of course, there is challenge in all this: however much God draws us on, we remain free, we can draw nearer or draw back. The Gospel reading that we heard just now make it clear that there is a challenge and a cost to faith, and facing up to the reality of what we are like and what God is like…

Athletes understand this. They know that to succeed they have to deprive themselves, sometimes of leisure, sometimes of sweets or drink. They have to be disciplined as part of their training and their success depends on it: look at the achievements of the Olympians and Paralympians we have seen competing last month. And in the armed forces people have to accept the discipline of obedience, they have to unlearn some individual instincts, so that they can respond with the trust and loyalty that comrades can rely on. Life often depends on it.

Jesus gives us the rather shocking example of cutting off a hand or a foot rather than missing out altogether on the promise that life holds out to us. That’s not about encouraging us to harm ourselves or hate ourselves but to realise that there are times of choice, times of decision, times when we can’t have everything all at once, but have to set priorities. Self-fulfilment depends on self-discipline.

Learning to trust God and training ourselves to respond to God makes all the difference to our lives and to the world. When we turn to the East for the creed we turn in the direction of sunrise, light and life. The opposite direction, darkness, which we might at some stages of life find attractive or even fascinating, turns out to be the direction of frustration and death. There is a lot at stake in the welfare of children and young people – and we make this commitment for Hugo today – we promise on his behalf that he will keep faith with the light, with the goodness, truth and beauty of God. Again, on his behalf, we reject evil and falsehood and the disillusionment they bring. We ward off the spirit of despair which like the Dementors in Harry Potter suck the hope and joy out of everything.

Hell is oneself, says one sage of our time. Another says, hell is other people. The Christian faith says, hell is around us but it need not be within us, because however much we get a whiff of hell in this life, however much we experience the shadows of hell in the behaviour of bullies and tyrants, the reality of hell is defeated for ever. It is because God loves us and promises us salvation that we are free to respect his work in us, to trust God’s love and so to love ourselves, recognizing our gifts and using them, not just for our own gratification but for the life and fulfilment of other people, of society and our world.

So Hugo enter that life and that blessing and all that God holds out to you in baptism, recognize that God has called you to himself, trust in his mercy and rejoice in his kindness for he is yours and you are his for ever and ever. Amen.