ECUMENICAL PATRIARCHATE

Exarchate of Parishes of Russian
Tradition in Western Europe

Participation in the Resurrection of Christ

Sermon for All British Saints by Bishop Basil of Amphipolis

Matthew 6: 22-33
Romans 5: 1-10       

Parish of the Dormition, London (Holborn)

6 July 2008

In the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today is the 3rd Sunday after Pentecost, and it’s worth noting the difference between the way we speak of the Sundays after Pentecost and the way we speak about the Sundays between Easter and Pentecost. Between Easter and Pentecost we speak of the Sundays of Easter, not after Easter. The point being made is that Easter is a seven-week, eight-Sunday feast, with Pentecost as the eighth Sunday of Easter, corresponding to the eighth day that definitively ushers in the Kingdom of God.

Between Easter and Pentecost, at the Liturgy, we normally read from the Gospel of John, the ‘Resurrection Gospel’ par excellence, and from the Book of Acts for the Epistle. But after Pentecost we switch, and normally read passages from the Gospel of Matthew and from St Paul’s Epistle to the Romans.

Romans is by far the longest of St Paul’s letters and also the most ‘meaty’. Into it Paul has put a great deal of thought – and a great deal of himself. Today I would like to look at the passage we have just heard, Chapter 5, verses 1-10.

Paul begins by saying ‘Being justified by faith, we have peace [i.e. are at peace] with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.’ This word ‘justified’ needs to be looked at. It means ‘to be made’ or ‘to be considered righteous’. And the Greek word for ‘righteous’ here is dikaios , a straightforward translation of the Hebrew word, tsadik , which indicates someone who, both outwardly and inwardly, is a pious follower of the Law. In other words, to be considered a tsadik is high praise indeed in Judaism. The tsadik is someone who is both a servant of God and at peace with God through the way he leads his life.

But St Paul says here that the Christian is ‘justified [i.e. ‘counted as righteous’] by faith’, and not by the observance of the Law. It is this that gives ‘peace with God’. And the words ‘through our Lord Jesus Christ’ indicate that it is through faith in Christ that ‘righteousness’ or ‘rightness’ with God is achieved.

He then goes on to develop some of the implications of this and, at the end of the passage we heard this morning, returns to the theme of righteousness from a very different angle. He seems now to consider the good person to be higher than the righteous person. ‘Rarely would anyone die for a righteous man’, he says, ‘though perhaps someone might dare to die for a good man.’ And then he goes on to say that it was ‘while we were yet sinners’ that Christ died for us. For him the death of Christ on the Cross is the effective, incarnate sign of our atonement – our at-one-ment – with God, a universal reconciliation with the Father then made available to us individually through faith.

Here too we have a powerful reversal of values. Think of the familiar verses of Psalm 5, where the psalmist says of God: ‘ … thou hatest all workers of iniquity. Thou shalt destroy them that speak lies: the Lord will abhor both the bloodthirsty and deceitful man (Ps 5: 5f.). For St Paul, however, the love of God­ for all - even for sinners - is given physical, bodily expression in the sacrificial death of Christ.

At this point St Paul returns to the question of justification. ‘Much more, then, being now justified by his blood [i.e. given the possibility of peace with God through faith in the crucified Lord], we shall be saved from the wrath [of God].’ The wrath he is referring to is the eschatological wrath of the last days, from which we are asking constantly to be preserved when, during the services, we say ‘For our deliverance from all affliction, wrath, danger and constraint, let us pray to the Lord.’

What is interesting here, however, is that faith does not bring immediate salvation, but offers the possibility of salvation in the future. There is movement here, movement in time. There is a vision of the future, and we can see here the essential dynamism of St Paul’s thought. He is always looking forward, never standing still. There is always something more to come, right up to the end of the world.

And how, finally, shall we be saved? St Paul tells us that ‘if, when we were enemies [of God], we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.’

Again, this is an extraordinary statement. Atonement may be the work of the Crucifixion, but it is the life of Christ – his resurrection life – that saves. We are saved by participating in his resurrection, which he shares with us so that it becomes ours.

All this is clearly based upon St Paul’s experience of life in Christ. His great gift was not just to live the life of the Gospel, but to express it in words so that others could see it and share in it.

In fact, we all of us have the same task. We are all called to be – in our own ways and at our own levels – interpreters of the Gospel for others. We are all called to become extensions - prolongations through time - of the message of the incarnate Word of God in our own, human words. And this does not mean just interpreting the Scriptures, but interpreting the resurrection life of Christ in us, the resurrection life of all mankind already present in our hearts. Amen.