Sermon at Parish Mass, St Mary's Somers Town, Trinity 11 2012

Proverbs 9:1-6

Ephesians 5:15-20

John 6:51-58

“This may be a wicked age, but your lives should redeem it.”

The Letter to the Ephesians over the last few weeks has been painting a picture of contrasts: the new life of believers in Christ contrasted with the old life of sin and corruption. In the past they were dead in their sins but now have been saved and raised to new life in Christ. Therefore, believers must leave aside their old way of living: lies, anger, theft, evil talk, immorality. These things no longer have any place in the life of those who are in Christ.

Throughout Ephesians, Paul also contrasts the present age and the age to come.  These are not simply periods of history, like the space age or the iron age, but represent two very contrasting ways of living and being, two opposed value systems, two different and incompatible imaginations. 

This present age is what we might call the age of sin, governed by envy, rivalry, violence and death. The age to come is the age of God’s Kingdom. It is the age when God’s rule will be manifested in the world. It is the age in which love, justice and peace will be all in all. It is the age which the Bible compares to a great feast, of super-abundant, never-failing rich food and fine wine. 

These two ages are not however consecutive periods of history. The age to come, the age of God’s rule, is not something that will come about only after this present age of sin and death is over. The Biblical picture is much richer than that. The age to come in fact is a reality which is already present. In Ephesians 3 Paul says this is a mystery “hidden from ages in God” and now brought to light in Christ. 

The age to come entered the world in Jesus, because Jesus is God’s kingdom, God’s rule, in person. The preaching of Jesus was not abstract teaching, but what he was himself enacting: forgiveness, healing, the restoration of human society through the renunciation of envy and greed. These things characterise the age to come. The Kingdom of God, said Jesus, is among you - already. Let those who have eyes to see, see. 

And of course this present age would have none of it and put him to death. But Jesus was raised from the dead because God’s Kingdom is triumphant and is the final word on human sin. 

Christ has conquered, and the age to come is already present for those who are in Christ. Christ is risen, and those who are in Christ are raised with him into his Kingdom. In Christ we share in the life of the resurrection, which is the life of God in whom there is no death.

So we could call this present age the age of death, because death is what defines its imagination. Resources are limited, life is short, so grasp what you can while you can, before you die. And this leads us only into envy and rivalry and violence. The age of death ends in death.

And we could call the age to come the age of the resurrection. It is the age of limitless life, which we do not have to grasp at because it is a gift from the never failing generosity of God our loving Father. It is life entirely without death, without rivalry, without violence, because it is the life that God lives. The age of the resurrection has no end.

But the heart of Paul’s message in Ephesians is that if we are reborn in Christ we are already beginning to live in the age of the resurrection, even in the midst of this passing age of death. 

That contrast requires, as Paul says, the radical reordering of our lives. It requires, in fact, repentance, turning around. We are to redeem the age by living according to the age to come whilst still in this passing age.

This is nothing less than a collision of worlds. As Paul repeatedly says, it requires lifelong discipline. Christ has freed us from this passing age of death, but it still retains a powerful allure. The world is very attached to the imagination of death, as we see only too well every time we turn on the news. 

Nevertheless, to redeem the age is to transform the world. It is to make the age of the resurrection more concrete, more visible, in the midst of the age of death. The gospel message is not escape from this evil world to a heaven somewhere else, after we die. The gospel message is transformation of this world, the redeeming of the age. We are to live our lives according to the resurrection here and now.

This is where any true theology of liberation begins: Christ is risen, bringing the age of the resurrection to light in the midst of the age of death. We should not be surprised if the gospel often speaks most powerfully to those who are the victims of the age of death, the oppressed and downtrodden of the earth. After all, Christ’s resurrection is foreshadowed in the Exodus, the liberation of slaves from Egypt. And whether in the favelas of Brazil, or in South Africa under Apartheid, or in the slums here in the time of Father Jellicoe, Christian lives lived according to the Gospel redeem the age. 

Christian life is of course life lived in the Church. St Paul is absolutely clear that if we are in Christ then we are one body, one new humanity, in Christ. That being one body in Christ is expressed and made real though the sacramental life that Christ has given us. We are made one body through Baptism and the Eucharist. Through those sacraments we receive the life of the age to come. As Jesus says in today’s gospel, “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives in me, and I live in him. As I, who am sent by the living Father, myself draw life from the Father, so whoever eats me will draw life from me.”

And of course to many of those who listened this was incomprehensible and offensive language. “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” The words of Jesus provoke a violent reaction. But this too is about the collision of worlds. It is about the age of death failing to understand the age of resurrection. Because if your imagination is bounded by death, then talk about eating flesh and drinking blood can only sound like cannibalism. Someone can only give his flesh to eat if he’s dead. And that does not lead to more life but less. 

But if you are in Christ, and beginning to live in the age of the resurrection, then indeed the flesh and blood of Christ are the source of limitless life, the life he draws from the living Father, and which he pours out to us continually without being diminished. In the Eucharist we are fed with the boundless, limitless life of the resurrection. 

And when and where do we celebrate the Eucharist? Not in heaven, but on earth. In the midst of this passing age, the age of death, we feed on the flesh and blood of Christ, the life of the age to come. The Eucharist is the sacrament of the Church, and the Church is the sacrament of the transformation of the world, the new humanity, living from the deathless life of God.

Our participation in the Eucharist calls us to live with the same openness and generosity that God shows to us. We are to be open to the life of God, which is limitless, and to leave aside our old life of sin, which ends only in death. And the generosity of God is infectious. By being forgiven, we become forgiving. By being liberated, we become liberators, co-workers with Christ in his transformation of the world. 

This is why the gospel of the resurrection is, necessarily, a social gospel, a gospel of liberation. If we live according to the resurrection then we must oppose injustice, oppression and violence in the world around us. Anything which destroys or diminishes humanity does not belong in the age to come, and we are already beginning to live in that age even in the midst of this present age.

“This may be a wicked age”, says Paul, “but your lives should redeem it.”