Sermon by Rev. Russell Daye
St. Andrew's United Church with St. John's United, Halifax

God of Grace and God of Glory

Luke 12:49-56

Let me encourage you to keep your books open to the hymn we just sang.' This hymn by the great American preacher and peacemaker Harry Emerson Fosdick begins where all true proclamations of faith begin - even one as challenging as this: God of grace and God of glory. If a declaration cannot begin here, then it is not truly a declaration of faith, at least not faith in the only God who can save us. As another hymn says 'this is God's wondrous world.' This is God's world; if she is not a God of grace and glory, then everything is already lost. If she is a God of fear and worry, if she is a God of conditional love, if she is a God of dispensation based on merit, then we have no hope. If she is a technocrat, if her will is to implement systems, then life here will be insufferable.

But she is not, and what a glorious truth! Our God is a God of grace. Our God is a God of glory. Our God gives more than we deserve, more than we ask for, more than we could know to ask for. 'God of grace and God of glory, on your people pour your power.' Our God pours her power on to us. She pour her power not as water that would run off our backs to the ground but as vital energy that percolates into our bodies and our souls. We don't take this seriously enough. As sunshine warms the plant, releasing vital juices to burst forth in leaf and flower, so the Spirit vitalizes us to blossom in acts of love and creation. Very few of us know the scale of this gift of divine energy; very few of us fully open to the love and creativity available to us. Your gifts are greater than you imagine! Tap into the Spirit and blossom!

This is good news; Fosdick's song immediately turns us to the light, but it does not long continue in that vein. Before we're finished the first verse he is painting with darker colours: 'Grant us wisdom, grant us courage, for the facing of his hour.' What hour? What are we to encounter that will require courage? It is as though Fosdick has been pondering the latter part of Luke 12: 'I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided: father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother.'

The pouring of God's power on God's people destabilizes. The gospels teach us this over and over again. Nowhere is this shower of power more pronounced than in the life of Jesus; and where Jesus taught and healed, he repeatedly destabilized the people. God's grace can bring disorder. This is true in all the layers of our being. For those of us whose personal life is serene and satisfying, it is difficult to see destabilization as the consequence of divine activity. For those of us who enjoy relatively wealthy and secure lives, it is difficult to see disharmony as the natural consequence of God's engagement. It is hard to believe that an upheaval that threatens the familial or economic or spiritual equilibrium may well be the fruit of the percolation of the Spirit in history. We may not like it, but this is a truth repeatedly expressed in the scriptures.

Talking economics for a second, I'm not prepared to blame God for the sub-prime mortgage crisis, but I am prepared to say that the stirrings of the Spirit are acting to bring about crises in extractive industries, the energy sector, and, yes, the global monetary system. And what is true for this stratum of human life is true for all of them: the workings of the Spirit eventually bring us to challenges in our own personalities, partnerships, communities, nations, and the global village.

This is how one of Fosdick's successors at Riverside Church put it: 'I believe the power of God is lodged in the very marrow of our substance and is pressing, constantly pressing, for release in order to permeate every fibre of our being. And the demand is not for self-denial, as is so often preached, but rather for self-discovery and self-realization, which includes the commitment to God that is the final fulfillment of human life. This I think is what St. Paul means when he says, "God searches our inmost being" and "the kingdom of God consists not in words but in power." To think we can escape wrestling with this power is to dream.'

We have with us this morning a group of people from St. John's United Church who give witness to this wrestling. Over the last year they have spent countless hours fundraising $30,000 - to do what? Not to go to Disney World. Not to contribute to the building fund. Not to pay their college tuition. They will use this money, plus that in their own pockets, to travel to Guatemala - in August of all times. They will travel to one of the poorest countries in the hemisphere, which is recovering from some of the worst violence in recent decades. They will stay in very rough accommodation, in stifling heat, and struggle to make connection with people who in language, class, culture, and experience could hardly be more different than themselves.

Only one thing can explain their choice to do this: the constant pressing of the divine power into the marrow of their lives. Yes, their trip involves self-denial but only as a path to self-discovery. What I find exciting about journeys such as this one is that they cut across the all strata of human life in which the Holy Spirit is at play. The connection of people of faith and good intention from such different societies, which are experiencing such different fortunes in this globalized millennium, provides an opportunity for transformation that is personal, spiritual, cultural, economic, and even political.

I know that those of you making the journey are not going to build a house or a school or a hospital. I know that you are not going to teach the Guatemalans anything, but rather to grow in solidarity with them and to learn from them. And they do have something to teach us, something that relates to what Fosdick speaks to in the middle verses of his great hymn: 'Lo, the hosts of evil round us scorn your Christ, assail your ways; fears and doubts too long have bound us; free our hearts to work and praise. Grant us wisdom, grant us courage, for the living of these days. Cure your children's warring madness, bend our pride to your control; shame our wanton selfish gladness, rich in goods and poor in soul. Grant us wisdom, grant us courage, lest we miss your kingdom's goal.'

Like many in Central America, the Guatemalans have seen most clearly 'the hosts of evil round us.' Tragically, their country has been one of the playgrounds for the warring madness of nations rich in goods and poor in soul. Your journey to them will bring you struggle and destabilization; I hope you will remember its purpose - which is more than your own self-discovery. Surely, the goal of struggle is a new balance and a new peace. Surely, the goal of struggle is a new peace in which goods are transferred to those poor in them and soul grows in those poor in it. There can be no doubt that the poverty of goods in the south is connected to the poverty of soul in the north, and so your journey to our brothers and sisters in the south is a journey of hope, the hope expressed in Fosdick's final verse: 'Set our feet on lofty places, gird our lives that they may be armoured with all Christlike graces, pledged to set all captives free.'

The hymn began with the line 'God of grace and God of glory, on your people pour your power.' As the wise man said, 'the glory of God is a human being fully alive.' May this journey make you fully alive. May this journey bring life to those you meet. May you return and bring us to full life.