Sermon for the 2nd of July - Fourth Sunday after Trinity (Choral Evensong at St Paul's Cathedral)

Psalm 27
The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid? When evildoers assail me to devour my flesh—my adversaries and foes— they shall stumble and fall. Though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear; though war rise up against me, yet I will be confident. One thing I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: to live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple. For he will hide me in his shelter in the day of trouble; he will conceal me under the cover of his tent; he will set me high on a rock. Now my head is lifted up above my enemies all around me, and I will offer in his tent sacrifices with shouts of joy; I will sing and make melody to the Lord. Hear, O Lord, when I cry aloud, be gracious to me and answer me! ‘Come,’ my heart says, ‘seek his face!’ Your face, Lord, do I seek. Do not hide your face from me. Do not turn your servant away in anger, you who have been my help. Do not cast me off, do not forsake me, O God of my salvation! If my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will take me up.

Teach me your way, O Lord, and lead me on a level path because of my enemies. Do not give me up to the will of my adversaries, for false witnesses have risen against me, and they are breathing out violence. I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!

Isaiah 35
The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and singing. The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it, the majesty of Carmel and Sharon. They shall see the glory of the Lord, the majesty of our God. Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees. Say to those who are of a fearful heart, ‘Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God. He will come with vengeance, with terrible recompense. He will come and save you.’ Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy. For waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water; the haunt of jackals shall become a swamp, the grass shall become reeds and rushes. A highway shall be there, and it shall be called the Holy Way; the unclean shall not travel on it, but it shall be for God’s people; no traveller, not even fools, shall go astray. No lion shall be there, nor shall any ravenous beast come up on it; they shall not be found there, but the redeemed shall walk there. And the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

Hebrews 10: 35–11: 1
Do not, therefore, abandon that confidence of yours; it brings a great reward. For you need endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised. For yet ‘in a very little while, the one who is coming will come and will not delay; but my righteous one will live by faith.
My soul takes no pleasure in anyone who shrinks back.’ But we are not among those who shrink back and so are lost, but among those who have faith and so are saved. Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

Homily for Choral Evensong

Today is the eve of the day on which the church remembers the Apostle Thomas. We get a sense of Thomas as an individual three times: he interacts three times with Jesus in the Gospel of John. But it is the third time that has so marked him as standing for many who find the Christian faith hard to embrace. Because he wasn't there when Jesus appeared to the rest of the disciples after the Resurrection, Thomas says to the others these famous words: Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side I will not believe. A week later Jesus comes to them again and directs his gaze to Thomas, responding to his challenge. He says to Thomas: Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe. The most dramatic feature of this encounter is that Thomas doesn't. He does not put his finger in the mark of the nails and his hand in Jesus's side. He does not need to. He has encountered the risen Jesus and he knows him. The only response he makes is to exclaim, My Lord and my God!---the most moving response in all of Scripture. Jesus makes, then, the equally famous declaration: Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.

Why do so many people identify with this encounter? Why do they identify with Thomas?

We are asked to live by faith. That is hard, sometimes. We feel that we cannot be sure of the truth of the Christian faith, that our faith is accompanied by doubt, that we are struggling in the midst of all that life brings us. As our great resource, we have the words of Scripture: Isaiah urges us to be strong, do not fear! Here is your God....and Hebrews exhorts us not to abandon confidence, to endure. But if, as Hebrews declares, this is, indeed, the definition of faith---the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen, we may not feel we have it. Alongside Thomas, I would like to offer you another figure to contemplate, a great man who was born almost on this day 400 years ago--Blaise Pascal. His mother died, sadly, when he was three. His father, who never remarried, decided to educate Blaise and his two sisters himself. Pascal was a child prodigy who showed an aptitude for mathematics as well as for the natural and physical sciences.

While still a teenager, his intellectual curiosity led him to investigate conical sections, geometry, and probability theory, this last work strongly influencing the later course of modern economics and social science. In an attempt to help his father, who had left his position as a local judge to become tax collector of the city of Rouen, Blaise invented a mechanical calculating machine. Among other scientific investigations, Pascal also devised a system for a bus line, a remarkable first attempt at public transportation, for Paris, in the 1670s, assigning the profits to the poor. He suffered from ill health all his life and was often in pain; he died at the age of 39. But it is for his passionate dedication to the truth and his passionate defence of the Christian faith that we remember Pascal today. Pascal was deeply attached to his sister, Jacqueline, who became a Jansenist, convinced that practical works of charity and a deeper life of prayer were necessary to the living of the Christian life. There were many fashionable atheists in the Parisian world of that day, and Pascal set himself to write against them. He is known today as one of the finest prose writers of the French language. When he was 31, Pascal had a mystical experience in the early hours of the night. Ever afterward, he kept a scrap of paper pinned inside his coat that said: "Fire. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, not of the philosophers and scholars," and, from Psalm 119, "I will not forget thy word. Amen." His conviction that Christian faith does not exist without striving after virtue and engaging in charitable works for one's fellow human beings compelled him to begin to write An Apology for the Christian Religion, cut short by his early death. But what we have is the Pensées--his Thoughts--the notes he made for it. A classic of Christian spirituality, it is infused with the love of God that Pascal felt so deeply. Perhaps the most famous single thought from the Pensées has come to be known as Pascal's Wager.

It is about the existence, or not, of God, and how a person should live in light of the choice she or he makes---to believe, or not. This is the substance of the thought Pascal sets forth: does God exist, or not? Reason alone cannot determine the answer. He therefore concludes that the question functions as a coin toss: even if we do not know the outcome of this coin toss, we must base our actions on what its consequences might be. We must decide whether to live as though God exists, or to live as though God does not exist, even though we may be mistaken in either case. For Pascal, we should live as though God exists. Because if God does not exist, we have only a finite loss--some passing pleasures---whereas if God does exist, we stand to receive infinite gains---dwelling with God for all eternity.

In Pascal's assessment, participation in this wager is not optional. Merely by existing in a state of uncertainty, we are forced to choose between the available courses of action, for practical purposes. I am with Pascal. The important thing is to live as though God exists---to decide to seek God. For God is always seeking us. If we do not feel that we have faith already, it is of infinite importance to seek it. What we have to gain is everything---a clearer, deeper sense of the infinite love of God that already envelops us. So let us live into faith. Let us seek to grow in faith, hope, and love, into the arms of the God who awaits us.

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