Trinity Sunday, Belmont Presbyterian Church
First broadcast: Sunday 14th June 1987, 9.30am on BBC Radio 4 FM
Morning Service
Introduction
Hymn: Glory Be God The Father
Prayer (including The Lord’s Prayer (Sung))
Old Testament Lesson: Joshua Ch 24 V 1-5, 13-15
Hymn: Summer Suns Are Glowing
New Testament Lesson: Matthew Ch 11 V 7-19
The Anthem: “When Mary Through The Garden Went” (Stanford)
Sermon
Hymn: Blessed be The Everlasting God
Prayers of Intercession
Hymn: Lord of Light, Whose Name Outshineth
Organist and choirmaster JOHN MERCER
(C) 1987
BBC Northern Ireland
Trinity Sunday Sermon
Well, I suppose that now, as the Election dust begins to settle, a new parliamentary chapter opens. And even if it's basically the same government, with a few changes here and there in yesterday's reshuffle, still something old has passed away, and something new has come in. So that's what I want to take up now, as I said earlier.
This theme of new beginnings. And to go back for a minute to our gospel reading from St. Matthew, it's a theme that takes us to the heart of this contrast that Matthew draws between John the Baptist and Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus and John may have been relatives, but they were two very different people indeed, chalk and cheese almost.
John the Baptist comes across as a rather sombre figure, an ascetic, a wild man of the wilderness, full of gloom and doom. And to a great extent it's all due to the nature of his message, a message which is mainly about the passing away of the old. He believed himself to be sent by God to prepare the people for the end of things as they had known them.
Jesus of Nazareth, on the other hand, is much more aware of the good news in the message that He brings, a message about the coming in of the new. St. Matthew has caught this contrast between John and Jesus in those words that were part of our New Testament lesson. John, he says, came neither eating nor drinking, and they say he has a demon.
The Son of Man, meaning Jesus, came eating and drinking, and they say, look at him, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners. Well, it's true what they say, isn't it? You can't please all of the people all of the time. The more liberal were suspicious of John's asceticism, and the more conservative scandalised by Jesus' liberty.
Now, let's think about this contrast a bit more for a moment or two. John's message, as I've said, is all about the passing away of the old. And there is something downbeat about such a message.
So, John, we're told, came neither eating nor drinking, a lifestyle in keeping with his mission. And there is a certain sadness about the passing away of things and the disappearance of old landmarks in our lives. I may be wrong, but I imagine that this is why many of us find it hard to cope when we slip over that difficult boundary between 39 and 40.
All of a sudden, we start getting sensitive and even secretive about our age. Life begins at 40, everybody tells us, but when we actually hit this glorious springtime, we're maybe not all that sure. For perhaps what really hits us is the first real reminder of the years that have all too quickly slipped away.
And that's not always easy to come to terms with. Of course, we can, it's true, reach that point when we do find it easier. We've a member of our congregation here who's 103, a marvellous old lady who's still quite mentally agile and incredibly cheerful about her longevity.
And she said to me recently, when you get to my time of life, you stop worrying about your age, for the fact of dying is no longer avoidable. I think she was saying in her own way, is that we really can't avoid this message of John the Baptist about the passing away of things. But the plain fact is, of course, that we do keep trying to avoid this message.
Because for the most part, we really don't want reminding about it. For there are so many things in our lives that are passing away or already gone, and that we would dearly love to be able to hold on to or reclaim. Yes, the gospel has got it right.
It's no wonder John came neither eating nor drinking, for there doesn't seem much to celebrate in his message. It all seems a bit dismal, and maybe even more than a bit. However, let's hold on for a moment, for there's something else here too.
Because what marks the end of the old can also mark the beginning of the new. In fact, this is precisely why John the Baptist, according to the gospels, is the forerunner, preparing the way for the Christ. His message, as it were, ploughs up the ground, ready for the sowing of Jesus' message.
And so it is that Jesus came eating and drinking, for his was the message of God's new beginning with the world. And there's something about a new beginning that has a ring of hope and expectancy about it. Here in our church, just at the moment, we are going through a kind of baby boom, with a lot of young mothers and mothers-to-be.
And it's always a cause of renewed hope in any community of people, when the promise of young life turns it away from the old to the new, and away from a preoccupation with the past to the future. Now it's this sort of excitement, the exhilaration of new beginnings, that we meet with again and again in the New Testament, happening to people who encountered Jesus and believed that they had found in him the Christ, someone who opened up new horizons for them, like Zacchaeus or Mary in that anthem. The Apostle Paul summed up the whole thing like this, Old things are passing away, all things are being made new.
But to be quite specific now, what then does this double message of John and Jesus, of the old and the new, mean for us today, as individuals, as a community, and as the Church? Well to begin with as individuals, this double-edged gospel means that we can't expect to find peace within ourselves until we let go those old things that rob us of it. It's not that everything that's old is bad and must pass away, there are of course those values and truths that are timeless and must never be lost, but old things that serve only to keep out the new have to go. It may be something in our past which haunts us with the grey spectre of guilt, or a secretly harboured malice, envy or resentment.
Maybe it's an irrational prejudice that has to be dealt with, or an attitude towards other people that harms ourselves if we only but knew it as much as anyone else. Maybe we're just out of tune with God and what we understand of His ways. We each know best what the blockages are in our hearts that have to be removed, the demons that must be exorcised if we are to clear the way ahead.
Jesus called this liberating process of change in the individual repentance. It implies a turning round, conversion if you like, in order to find a new and better direction for our lives, and a turning away from everything that disrupts our relationships with those around us and with God, and that causes disunity within ourselves. It's this passing away of old things that opens up our lives to the new possibilities that always await us, and that lays open before us the great adventure of a life lived by faith in God.
Little wonder Jesus described it like being born again. Secondly, as a community, this combined message of John and Jesus will mean that however dear we hold the past, there's much in it from which we must be set free if we are to find a future together. Here in Northern Ireland, we've been living through an attempt at a new beginning in cross-border relationships brought about by the Anglo-Irish Agreement.
A lot of people here don't like it, as our local elections have once again made clear. But whatever happens to it, and it may simply serve to make necessary a revised and more widely acceptable framework, whatever happens to it, it does stand as an important sign, a sign of the desperate need for something new among us if we are to overcome our long and bitter feud. It's a sign, too, of the need to create ways and means of achieving peaceful and stable co-existence in our province if our children and young people are going to stay here.
A sign of the accommodation that's needed if we are to make room for both sides in our divided community, for neither side is going to go away. Whether the Agreement itself can now, in fact, deliver what it promises is seriously open to question, but what it signifies remains vital. So as a new Parliament gets underway on Wednesday, the burning issue that faces us here is whether or not, together, we can find a new spirit of forgiveness, understanding and cooperation that will rid us of the old policies of dominance and violence that build up nothing and destroy everything, whether or not we can create enough space to be able to hear and respond to the good news in Christ of the passing away of the old in order to let the new come in, so that we can begin to discern the form of the alternative society in which old conflicts might be turned to new cooperation.
And finally, as the Church, what does this Gospel of New Beginnings mean for us? Well, it must surely mean that we will have to see and experience the Church as something much bigger than our own particular denomination or tradition. Throughout the world, Christians are being called today, perhaps as never before, to leave the old camps in their restrictive aspects for new and wider ones. We're being called, with all its risks, to new ecumenical ventures as we try to discern the nature and role of the Church for today in its witness to Jesus Christ, and as we try to unlock the meaning of the Christian faith in the late 1980s and beyond.
In England, Scotland, and Wales, many of the churches are currently involved in a process called “Not Strangers, But Pilgrims.” Anglicans and Free Church members, as well as Roman Catholics and some Black Pentecostal Communions, are engaged in an extensive programme of bible study, prayer, and reflection together as they grapple with a greater understanding of the way forward for the churches in Britain. It is one of the most significant ecumenical initiatives in recent years, and it may well herald an important new phase in inter-church relations in the United Kingdom.
Time, of course, will tell. But the Holy Spirit is at work, and always ready to do new things among us, leading us out into freer, more expansive, and deepening relationships in our journey with God, John, and Jesus. Their messages belong together.
John came neither eating nor drinking with the sombre message of the passing away of the old. Jesus came eating and drinking with the resilient message of the bringing in of the new. And both messages fuse into the Gospel.
Long ago, at a marriage reception in Cana of Galilee, Jesus changed water into wine. And part of the lesson of that sign seems to be that he had come to offer men and women the wine of his kingdom, the wine of the new Israel in place of the water of the old. And the Gospel still sets that choice before us.
The water of the old, or the wine of the new. It's essentially a choice between two kinds of spirit that we bring to life and to our world, the sad old spirit that continually looks back, or the joyful new spirit that looks forward with hope, and then works to make hope a reality.
And may the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, our Lord and our Redeemer.
Amen.
Rev R D Drysdale
Sunday 14th, June 1987.
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