16/10/22 St Peter’s, Birkdale. Trinity 18
Jeremiah 31:27-34 Holy Communion Luke 18:1-8
There are three parts to this sermon.
The first is a reading from St. Augustine who is realistic about what our life is, hopeful about what it will be and reminds us of our calling as the people of God. The second part is two linked stories about Russian composers that I found in the programme notes of a concert Hilary and I went to in Buxton - it exemplifies the human problem and then eventually in the third part we’ll look at the passage from Jeremiah and tenuously connect it to the Augustine.
‘Let us sing alleluia here on earth, while we still live in anxiety , so that we may sing it one day in heaven in full security... We shall have no enemies in heaven, we shall never lose a friend.
God’s praises are sung both here and there, but here they are sung in anxiety there in security; here they are sung by those destined to die; there by those destined to live forever; here they are sung in hope , there in hope’s fulfilment; here, they are sung by wayfarers; there, by those living in their own country.
So then let us sing now, not in order to enjoy a life of leisure, but in order to lighten our labours. You should sing as wayfarers do - sing, but continue your journey ...sing then, but keep going.’
This was part of a sermon by St Augustine and it has a lovely balance between the life we live now and our future hope.
He is realistic about our life - we are anxious, there may be enemies, we lose friends, in this world we are wayfarers rather than permanent residents.
He is reassuringly plain speaking about our hope in God - our hope is in heaven where there is security, no-one is an enemy, we will never lose a friend - there is eternal life - we are no longer wayfarers but those living in their own country.
He ends with a reminder that for now we have a task So then let us sing now, not in order to enjoy a life of leisure, but in order to lighten our labours. You should sing as wayfarers do - sing, but continue your journey ...sing then, but keep going.’
Now the Russian composers.. The first is Borodin - who was a very gifted composer but he was also a very gifted chemist and a doctor - and though now he is remembered for his music - what he was proudest of was establishing a school of medicine for women and this was the late 19th Century. Much to the irritation of his composer colleagues music was only part of his life. He began working on an opera Prince Igor - but the usual distractions meant progress was very slow.
Then catastrophe - eighteen years after he had started work on it - Borodin died suddenly with Prince Igor nothing like finished. But his friends did not abandon him or his work and Rimsky-Korsakov and Glazunov, began the hugely unenviable task of sifting through his belongings and dealing with the score of Prince Igor. As Rimsky-Korsakov later wrote ‘Glazunov ... was to fill in all the gaps in Act III and write down from memory the Overture played so often by the composer, while I was to orchestrate, finish composing, and systematise all the rest that had been left …’ The work was finished and is still performed.
Glazunov - was the hero of the hour - painstakingly assembling the bits of manuscript, then finishing it as truly as possible to Borodin’s intentions. What real friendship and selflessness that took. What Glazunov gave to Borodin was the best of himself.
The second composer is Rachmaninov and his 1st symphony. It was written early in his career - when he was known as pianist and conductor rather than a composer. Its premiere was a a total disaster. Rachmaninov was very unlucky in his conductor. It was a difficult work anyway but it had been under-rehearsed and for the performance itself reports suggest the strong likelihood that the conductor was drunk. Unsurprisingly it had a wretched reception and it put Rachmaninov off symphonies for almost ten years Poor man - his career blighted by a conductor.
As I said these are linked stories and the link is that Rachmaninov’s conductor was the same Glazunov who so helped Borodin -for one he was the hero but for the other he was the villain.What he gave Rachmaninov was a long way short of his best.
How can this be? How can the same person be a hero and a villain, a success and a failure , a saint and a sinner?
The better we know ourselves the less surprised we will be - because this is us too. This is what we are like - we see it dramatically here but we are made of the same ingredients.
The good - the glorious, the made in the image of God - that’s in us but so too is the bad, the bit which gets things wrong sometimes accidentally, but sometimes quite deliberately and knowingly, the bit that is selfish, mean and uncaring.
All of us have both these sides tugging at us the whole time - sometimes we’re more aware of the one than the other but they’re both there.
It’s how we deal with this tussle that shapes how we live. How do we make sure that the good - the made in God’s image predominates, and the bad, the fallen is subdued.
Of course this is not a new concern - Glazunov’s behaviour would have been no surprise to Jeremiah
In the reading he knows the mess that God’s people have made - their behaviour has exiled them from the promised land and brought them to slavery in Babylon - but he knows God is not washing his hands of them he writes in effect ‘You get things wrong, You have a bias that pulls you away from what is good and towards what is bad. How can you make a better fist of living? God says ‘I’m going to do something different, to make a new deal with you, I will put my law within you, I will write on your hearts and I will be your God - I will forgive your iniquity and remember your sin no more.’ Here is hope in Jeremiah for Judah and for us. Forgiveness - because however much we try we still get things wrong - and a new heart alert to the things of God.
What does it mean that God will write his law on our hearts?
It can’t be just a more sensitive conscience to heighten our sense of guilt and failure when we get things wrong - that very rarely improves us.
What are the laws that he wants us to have on our hearts - very simply the two great laws “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. And , love your neighbour as yourself
God wants a people who don’t just know his laws, he wants people who know him. A heart with a greater responsiveness to God, a heart which naturally warms to him and his ways.
Easy to say God writes his laws on our heart - how do we learn to respond
Having touched on Russian composers, we are finishing with a Russian bishop. Metropolitan Anthony Bloom suggested this - when you read scripture look out for those passages that suddenly strike you and you say ‘ How beautiful, how true’ - it may be something vast, or it may be something very small - take that beauty that struck you - turn it around in your head, reflect on it, live with it
‘That will allow us to start on our struggle for integrity and wholeness, not by any ineffectual effort to reject or to heal what is wrong in us, but by watching over with joy, with tenderness, with a sense of reverence, something which is of God in us: visible, a light that pierces the darkness, and which is God himself’ (Encounter p.285)
Dwell on those things of God that gives you joy - love, truth, a parable, a saying -whatever it is - let them grow and bit by bit they can provide a touchstone of what is good - and the more attentive you are to them, to that which bears the stamp of God, the more natural it will be to live out of that part of you - so that you will be able to give the best of yourself to the people around you.
Love God, love our neighbour. These are the laws of God’s Kingdom. Learning to live by them is the labour that builds the kingdom of God. These are the laws God writes on our heart. This is what Augustine is talking about when he says So then let us sing now, not in order to enjoy a life of leisure, but in order to lighten our labours. You should sing as wayfarers do - sing, but continue your journey ...sing then, but keep going.’
