A sermon for Sunday
by the Revd Dr Robert Wilson PhD (Cantab), Old Roman Apostolate UK
Seventh Sunday after Pentecost
O God, whose providence in the ordering of all things never fails; we humbly beseech thee to put away from us all hurtful things, and to give us those things as are profitable for us.
In today’s collect we acknowledge that the divine providence never fails in ordering all things. Mindful of this we ask God to put away from us all hurtful things and to give us those things as are profitable for us. The collects are one of the greatest attributes of the traditional Roman rite. They are concise and to the point, as well as expressing profound theological concepts, in particular the need to continually remind ourselves that we are dependent for our salvation on the grace of God. This has often been criticised in recent times as encouraging people to have a low self esteem, for this is an age in which they are encouraged to think of themselves more highly than they ought. It is now said that these ancient prayers were the product of a society in which civilisation seemed to be in a state of collapse, as the Roman Empire fell in the west before the barbarian incursions and the so called Dark Ages began. But this fact, far from being irrelevant to our present situation, has many parallels to it, for we too are living in a time when our civilisation seems to be in a similar decline, and there is no more reason to be optimistic about the state of the world now than it was then. We need to take to heart the words of these ancient collects, and learn to trust not in ourselves, but in God, whose never failing providence orders all things.
But is it realistic to speak of God’s providence over all things never failing when there is so much evidence of evil and suffering in the world? How can this be reconciled with a belief that all things are ultimately part of the outworking of divine providence?
A Jewish midrash (commentary on a biblical text) said that Abraham’s faith that led him to leave his country and kindred could be compared to a “man who was travelling from place to place when he saw the palace in flames. He wondered, “Is it possible that the palace lacks an owner?” The owner of the palace looked out and said, “I am the owner of the palace.” So Abraham our father said, “Is it possible that the world lacks a ruler?” The Holy One, blessed be he, looked out and said to him, “I am the ruler, the sovereign of the universe.”
In other words, Abraham sees a palace. He sees the world has order and therefore it has a creator. But the palace is in flames, for the world is full of disorder, violence and injustice. Where then is the owner of the palace? If God created man in his own image, why does he allow the human race to destroy the world through lust for power and violence? What is the explanation of this contradiction?
There have classically been two different answers to this question. The first is to deny the reality of God and ultimate goodness. It is to say that because there are so clearly flames of violence and disorder in the world there is no palace, no ultimate goodness. The world is simply an arena of chance and necessity in which the strong triumph over the weak. There is therefore no justice and no judge. This is the materialist view. It explains everything at one level, but it explains nothing at a deeper level. For if there were no ultimate goodness to compare it with, how can we be sure that so much of what we experience in the world is evil, just as if there were no creatures with eyes we would not know what light was, for darkness is the absence of light, just as evil is the absence of good.
The second view is to deny the reality of evil. It is to say that because the world is clearly a palace with order and beauty there are therefore no real flames and that evil is ultimately an illusion. This is the pantheist view, which says that since creation is divine, nothing is really wrong. It is only our limited human experience that causes us to see some things as evil. But this seems to deny our moral sense that there is something really wrong about so much that is in this world. There is so much evil that it hardly makes sense to tell someone who is suffering that it is all ultimately unreal, that because there is a palace there are therefore no flames.
By contrast to the materialist view which denies the reality of God, and the pantheist view which denies the reality of evil, the faith of Abraham was that both are real. The world is really a palace, but the palace is also in flames. God and ultimate goodness are real, and yet evil and suffering are also real. There is in this life an insoluble tension between what is and what ought to be. Since God is real, we have reason to hope for the future, but since evil and suffering are also real we cannot be complacent about the present. Hence, Abraham was led to leave his country and his kindred. He could not rest content with his existing life, but he was also not despairing, for he hoped against hope that in his seed all the nations of the earth would be blessed. In other words, the victory of the strong over the weak, the reality that the palace is in flames, is not inevitable, for in spite of everything there is still hope in the promises of God.
St. John of Damascus later drew a distinction between God’s antecedent or absolute will and his consequent or conditioned will. Absolutely God wills only that which is good, but there are circumstances in which what God in general wills may not take place since that would mean willing something evil or unjust. But what God does actually or consequently will in any given situation always comes to pass. This is how the Church has sought to reconcile the conviction that God wills all to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth with the reality that so many reject that offer and bring damnation upon themselves.
A helpful way of trying to understand the outworking of divine providence in the face of so much apparent disorder and randomness is to think about how the Christian Church calculates the date of Easter each year. Superficially, this may look completely random, given all the variations between different possible dates over a cycle of many years. But in fact it is actually the consequence of clearly worked out rules that dictate exactly when Easter should fall in any given year. It may initially look completely random, but in reality it is not.
In the same way we can become so overwhelmed by the sheer amount of suffering and injustice in the world that we are tempted to see everything as simply random and meaningless. It is only when we look at things more closely that we start to recognise that there is an invisible hand at work, even though we struggled for much of our lives to recognise any ultimate purpose or plan.
God in Christ has taken the weight of evil upon himself and somehow subsumed it into good. There is no ground for complacency for we still live in a world filled with violence and suffering. But we know that despite all the trials and tribulations of this life, nothing can ultimately separate us from the love of God.
Recognising that God’ s providence is ultimately prevailing over all things, let us make our own the words of today’s collect, beseeching him to put away from us all hurtful things and to give us those things as are profitable for us. 🔝
Leave a Reply