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Youngest broken collar bone.   Golden Retriever came out of nowhere.  Off balance!

 

Todays gospel is a veritable Golden Retriever itself.  It comes just after Peters confession of his conviction that Jesus is the Messiah

No sooner has Peter expressed his conviction

Than Jesus shocks him and his other listeners

with what discipleship entails for him and for them

The change of tone comes so quickly and violently that it can leave us feeling OFF balance…

 

At the 1^st hurdle Peter is labelled Satan – literally ‘an oposer’

Its not quite calling him the Devil- but definitely knocking him on his….petard

 

The worry for us is that as we look more carefully at this turning point in Jesus’ ministry– at the 1. intellectual conviction of Peter,

2. the spiritual conversion that Jesus invites everyone into,

and 3. the moral calling he says will be necessary

there appear to be temptations aplenty to knock us back too…

 

And yet, far from making things more difficult for his disciples Jesus offers us a FREE TWO SHOT CURE ALL VACCINE to keep us well.

 

TWO SHOTS–  HUMILITY and LOVE to KEEP US STANDING UP

TWO FEET to keep us walking along the straight road,

TWO FEET to lead us on though the narrow gate.

 

 

As any of us approach the Intellectual Conviction of the historical Fact of Jesus Christ we are tempted straightaway:

to think of this as just an intellectual exercise

or to ignore the intellectual altogether.

 

We’ve just started a confirmation class for the girls and boys of the cathedral choirs and, just as at the start of any such class I found myself trying to strike just that balance.

 

There are those kids who want to approach confirmation as if we are saved by our brains and through argument …& then there are those who disregard the dogma and teaching altogether and guided only by their feelings or intuitions.

 

The challenge for the teacher is to outline the great paradoxes of Xn faith-

The trinity in unity.  The union of God and Human in Jesus.

 

Those doctrines which reveal the radical nature of God’s love,

As the theologian Tertullian put it:

“proving itself by its very implausibility”

 

But we also teach that experience of God is not an idea to be understood

Or an argument to be won…

God is a ‘person’ to be loved by and to love.

 

 

 

 

 

As adults in faith those twin risks also exist for us-

 

There is a risk we don’t pay attention to doctrine,

and as we go on in faith we neglect the stretching spiritual reading

that is such a vital stimulant in our devotion.

 

((we should always have a spiritual book on the go…))

 

But there is also a risk we forget that right ideas and sound arguments

are not what is primary in Christianity.

Neither replace the fundamental experience of

a personal love of Jesus

and the fundamental practice

of humble loyalty to him.

 

What differentiates Christian teachings, from other philosophers or teachers,

is that Jesus’ gospel insists upon HIMSELF.

 

We can no more accept the wonderful teaching and rich philosophy

without the falling in love with the teacher

than the moral precepts of Rabbi Jesus as nice and useful

without humbly acknowledging his claim to be God

 

And so, as CS Lewis put it,

Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being just a great human teacher.

He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

Well, if we meet the first challenge of intellectual conviction by humbly loving Him as our saviour (as He intended)

we soon approach the second challenge of spiritual conversion.

 

Here again we are beset by twin temptations: as Peter was

 

Jesus sets it out this time:  Do you set your mind on human or divine things?

….I wonder where you tend to land?

 

Are you one of those who make Christianity

a retreat into an elite esoteric practice fit only for the few?

Or are you that sort of Christian without much real spiritual discipline at all?

 

Both are tempting- neither will do!

 

In our branch of the church we still cling, some of us anyway, to an idea of a cultural Christian- the occasional attender- who are tentative, often conservative, very supportive, but uncomfortable with full blooded conviction

either by restriction of circumstance

or an aversion to puritanical fervour.

 

It is a fine Anglican nuance – a large feature of cathedral ministry-

and covers a multitude of sins.

 

It is good thing.

 

But it is not a substitute for THE thing, which-like it or not, calls all of us out from where we are: sheep, goats, lukewarm or cold….

and loves us into the warmth of Gods embrace.

On the other hand there is a unmistakable move in the church in our times

to draw lines, to retrench, to want know- and count- who is in and who is out

who make faith into some kind of elite sport….

 

Overhearing some public church pronouncements from some quarters

The fringe Christian could be forgiven for concluding that their sort

was no longer really wanted in todays church let alone tomorrows.

 

In all this temptation Augustine reminds us that

Jesus teaching here  is more nuanced than that:

 

There is a hierarchy to be sure –

 “To love God and the world equally is to live neither God nor the world”

but there is also a balance:

“it is our love of him that rightly orders our love for the world…

 

We are most certainly called to a radical spiritual conversion

but that what is radical and spiritual about that conversion

is that it manifests in humble change and is worked out in practical application

in concrete places and with complicated people

who we are called to love and serve as though they were Christ himself.

 

 

Yes- it is a hard balance but,

believers can be vaccinated ready to take on this heavy requirement

because, says Augustine again,

“his gifts of humility& love supply the strength to keep our balance & not to fall

If so if we meet the first challenge of intellectual conviction by humbly loving Him as our saviour,

and we then accept the second challenge

of radical but humble spiritual conversion

we come steadily upon the final challenge: which Jesus outlines:

of our Moral Calling

 

At which point we are, for a third time, tempted.

 

This time- in Jesus dialectical style:  tempted to save life or to lose it

 

There are those who make our faith all about morality – and morality alone-

as if we are saved by our works-

either personal morals on the right or political morals on the left

For too many, gaining converts to one or other cause

is what is going save the world  …. or they’re gonna die trying.

 

On the other hand…

there are those who seem to disregard moral conviction altogether.

Either in reaction to the zealots

or by the slow onset of acedia.

 

Whatever the cause, too many of us insulated ourselves against moral imperatives that most certainly do come part and parcel of Christian life.

 

 

I wonder where you sit on the spectrum?

 

Only this week I was perusing a new hymn book, which, by clear intention, had removed as many references to the cross as could be found!

 

Im sure- I hope-  it won’t sell but golly-

Doesn’t it represent- in concrete form

Those twin temptations were so familiar with?

to think that we can either build our chosen utopia

without the Love shown in the work of His cross

or to live the Christian life without the humility demanded in the work

of taking up our own and following Him

 

Humility and Love.  Our cure alls -come to the rescue.

 

As Christians we must have the humility to recognise

that we are not here to save the world- morally or politically-

((that was done in 33AD))

 

But equally- as Christians- we are most certainly called

to imitate and witness to the one who already has.

And we must Love our neighbour enough

To stand with him, who- out of love for us- was crucified for us.

 

 

All these Christian tasks, then, starkly given in this gospel-

are far from easy.

 

The temptations to go astray- or not go anywhere at all- are manifold.

 

Even if we meet the first challenge of intellectual conviction

by humbly loving Him as our saviour

we then still need meet the second challenge

of radical but humble spiritual conversion

 

And if we can meet that foe day by day and get that balance right

there still remains this final challenge of living up to our Moral Calling

without succumbing moral priggishness or moral cowardice.

 

No-It is not easy but …

Jesus FREE gifts of humility and charity”

Is now readily available and equal to the task….

 

Get you shot again. Even if you are off balance right now. Get your shot again.

Its most definitely worth it.

 

To know Him.  To Love Him.  To witness to Him. To pursue Him

is the most exciting and wonderful thing to spend you life on.

 

 

Let us pray…

O thou who art the light of the minds that know thee,

the life of the souls that love thee,

and the strength of the hearts that serve thee;

help us so to know thee that we may truly love thee;

so to love thee that we may fully serve thee,

whom to serve is perfect freedom;  through Jesus Christ our Lord.