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Today's Sermon
Mar. 22nd, 2015 01:49 pmI often write a sermon and say to myself, "It'll do, but it's not my best work." and after I've delivered it people tell me that they really thought it was good and they enjoyed it. Today's sermon was like that. I read the first part of a sermon that recounted the story of the eggless cake mix. I didn't read any further, but developed the idea my own way. It seems to have worked.
Decades ago a flour company in the United States produced a product they were sure would be a success.
They made a cake mix that only required the baker to add water. The mix produced a wonderfully moist cake that was as good as one baked from scratch.
When they made it available, after a few months they were surprised by the sales figures. Hardly anyone bought the mix. So they commissioned some marketing research and found out something quite startling.
The reason that people weren’t buying the mix was that the baker only needed to add water. The people who tried the mix thought that this was too easy, and that adding water wasn’t enough for them to feel that they’d created a wonderful cake.
So the company changed the mix slightly. Now the baker was to add water, and one egg. Sales rose. The bakers felt that they were contributing more to the success of the cake with that one egg.
The Gospel today is about death, and life. It was written decades after the life of Jesus ended. The Evangelist wrote that Jesus compared his own life and death to a grain of wheat. When a seed is sown in the earth, it loses its own separate existence and produces another blade of wheat, which in turn produces a sheaf of new wheat seeds.
We use those seeds to bake bread, or even cakes. But if all we added to that wheat was a little water, we would just be doing what was expected.
The Greeks who had come to Jerusalem to worship at Passover asked Philip “We would like to see Jesus.” At this point something odd happens, and you may have picked that up. The Greeks disappear from the Gospel entirely.
Were this to happen today—if a couple of fans were to ask to see a famous actor, say—the story would end with the fans posing for a selfie with the actor. That would be proof enough that they had met him.
In this story, there is no selfie. Instead, the Greeks disappear and Jesus compares his own life and death to that of the grain of wheat.
Jesus’s death would sprout Christianity.
Perhaps more precisely, were Jesus to have died and that were the end of him, no faith would have proceeded from his death. The little bit extra that Jesus added to produce faith was the Resurrection.
Now our religion is not something that happened once and for all two thousand years ago. When I was a child our prayer books reminded us that Masses were being offered every hour of every day, all over the world. Of course, this is as true now as it was then.
I think of the continuous offering of prayer and thanksgiving as seeds of faith being planted and nurtured worldwide. Were those seeds not being planted, Christianity would disappear for lack of care.
However, being a Christian requires us to do more than plant the seeds of faith with a bit of water and wait patiently for results. God requires more from us than just spiritual agriculture.
The egg we need for this mix is our own constant faith. If the farmer simply scattered seeds without believing that most would grow into wheat grass, the mere fact that he planted the seeds would not be enough to ensure that the crop would appear.
Last week saw the first day of what the weather forecasters call “astronomical Spring”. The night and day all over the world were the same length. Spring is a time for flowers and trees to bud and put forth fruit and seeds. The trees outside my study window have just this week begun to produce beautiful pink flowers, as if they knew by some dim arboreal awareness that spring had arrived and thus warmer weather was coming.
In a couple of weeks at the most, these flowers will wither and drop off the branches. My back garden will be covered in a mass of pink and white petals. The flowers will die, but the seeds of new trees will be produced from their deaths.
And thus life produces death, and yet death produces life. The life of Jesus culminated in his Passion, Death, and Resurrection. His death and resurrection then produced our faith, and the assurance of eternal life.
It’s no coincidence that the egg needed to produce a successful cake is also the symbol of the season of Resurrection we are about to encounter.
And so, let us in the coming weeks recall with awe and love the season of the passion and life-giving resurrection of Jesus Christ, to whom must be ascribed all might, majesty, dominion, and praise both now and evermore. AMEN.
22nd March, 2015 The Fifth Sunday of Lent
Sermon delivered at St. John the Evangelist, 10:30AM.
First Reading: Jeremiah 31:31-34
2nd Reading: Hebrews 5:7-9
Gospel: John 12:20-33
”…it produces much fruit.”
In the name of God, the one, the Undivided Trinity. AMEN.
Sermon delivered at St. John the Evangelist, 10:30AM.
First Reading: Jeremiah 31:31-34
2nd Reading: Hebrews 5:7-9
Gospel: John 12:20-33
”…it produces much fruit.”
In the name of God, the one, the Undivided Trinity. AMEN.
Decades ago a flour company in the United States produced a product they were sure would be a success.
They made a cake mix that only required the baker to add water. The mix produced a wonderfully moist cake that was as good as one baked from scratch.
When they made it available, after a few months they were surprised by the sales figures. Hardly anyone bought the mix. So they commissioned some marketing research and found out something quite startling.
The reason that people weren’t buying the mix was that the baker only needed to add water. The people who tried the mix thought that this was too easy, and that adding water wasn’t enough for them to feel that they’d created a wonderful cake.
So the company changed the mix slightly. Now the baker was to add water, and one egg. Sales rose. The bakers felt that they were contributing more to the success of the cake with that one egg.
The Gospel today is about death, and life. It was written decades after the life of Jesus ended. The Evangelist wrote that Jesus compared his own life and death to a grain of wheat. When a seed is sown in the earth, it loses its own separate existence and produces another blade of wheat, which in turn produces a sheaf of new wheat seeds.
We use those seeds to bake bread, or even cakes. But if all we added to that wheat was a little water, we would just be doing what was expected.
The Greeks who had come to Jerusalem to worship at Passover asked Philip “We would like to see Jesus.” At this point something odd happens, and you may have picked that up. The Greeks disappear from the Gospel entirely.
Were this to happen today—if a couple of fans were to ask to see a famous actor, say—the story would end with the fans posing for a selfie with the actor. That would be proof enough that they had met him.
In this story, there is no selfie. Instead, the Greeks disappear and Jesus compares his own life and death to that of the grain of wheat.
Jesus’s death would sprout Christianity.
Perhaps more precisely, were Jesus to have died and that were the end of him, no faith would have proceeded from his death. The little bit extra that Jesus added to produce faith was the Resurrection.
Now our religion is not something that happened once and for all two thousand years ago. When I was a child our prayer books reminded us that Masses were being offered every hour of every day, all over the world. Of course, this is as true now as it was then.
I think of the continuous offering of prayer and thanksgiving as seeds of faith being planted and nurtured worldwide. Were those seeds not being planted, Christianity would disappear for lack of care.
However, being a Christian requires us to do more than plant the seeds of faith with a bit of water and wait patiently for results. God requires more from us than just spiritual agriculture.
The egg we need for this mix is our own constant faith. If the farmer simply scattered seeds without believing that most would grow into wheat grass, the mere fact that he planted the seeds would not be enough to ensure that the crop would appear.
Last week saw the first day of what the weather forecasters call “astronomical Spring”. The night and day all over the world were the same length. Spring is a time for flowers and trees to bud and put forth fruit and seeds. The trees outside my study window have just this week begun to produce beautiful pink flowers, as if they knew by some dim arboreal awareness that spring had arrived and thus warmer weather was coming.
In a couple of weeks at the most, these flowers will wither and drop off the branches. My back garden will be covered in a mass of pink and white petals. The flowers will die, but the seeds of new trees will be produced from their deaths.
And thus life produces death, and yet death produces life. The life of Jesus culminated in his Passion, Death, and Resurrection. His death and resurrection then produced our faith, and the assurance of eternal life.
It’s no coincidence that the egg needed to produce a successful cake is also the symbol of the season of Resurrection we are about to encounter.
And so, let us in the coming weeks recall with awe and love the season of the passion and life-giving resurrection of Jesus Christ, to whom must be ascribed all might, majesty, dominion, and praise both now and evermore. AMEN.
