PASTOR =EMS

Heathen gods are naught...
The psalms at Lauds this morning set me thinking in a way that they don't always do. That's the lovely thing about being on retreat; all of a sudden it is as if you breathe the air more deeply into your lungs and inspiration seems easy and natural. Someone once asked Elgar to explain whence his inspiration came and he answered that the music was in the air all around him; all he did was to write it down. Prayer is similar, I think. By faith we know that the presence of God is with us always, all around us and deep within. Prayer is a process of leaving everything else to listen to that, to trust that I am grounded in His Presence. How difficult I have found that recently!
It was a line in Psalm 95 that caught my attention: "The Lord is great and worthy of all praise ... the gods of the heathen are naught." Normally, I must confess, it's the kind of thing that could pass me by without my much engaging with it, You know how it is with prayer, like listening to music, there is only so much intensity the poor brain can take and so, with the best will in the world, one rather comes and goes in terms of concentration. Doubtless this is why the dear monks and nuns sing alternate verses, so as to listen to what they are praying, if you see what I mean.
I think it was the idea of choosing other gods that reminded me of some reading I had done recently in preparation for Trinity Sunday. I usually take extra care over the sermon on that day. It is one Sunday when nothing but some theology will do — and perhaps the supreme test as to whether in all those years at seminary one has interiorised dogma in any way that is meaningful. It caused some wry amusement and comment at school recently when I was observed reading a book entitled Introduction to Christianity. It's not quite the soft option it sounds — far from it, in fact. I have read it several times and still have to struggle to get my head round it. It is an examination of the Creed by
Joseph Ratzinger, written long before his recent promotion, but, like so many of his other luminous works, doubtless not selling any the worse for the fact that he is now Benedict XVI. As it happens, on the Saturday afternoon when I came to write my sermon I was summoned to the hospital three times, appropriately enough, and the resulting sermon was rubbish.
Ratzinger points out that Israel's conversion to monotheism, its confession of God's Oneness, meant the rejection of a different kind of belief common to their neighbours. Those who do not confess God's Oneness, tend to worship three things: the imperial or royal power, or some other earthly kind of rule; the body's appetites, either in terms of sex (as in fertility rites) or consumption of some kind; and finally, what might be called superstition — the forces of darkness and evil which need to be placated. I remembered Chesterton's aphorism that those who do not believe in God don't believe in nothing, they believe in anything, and discover that in fact, polytheism and atheism are very similar.
It is true today that those who do not confess God's oneness go down exactly the same routes in terms of what they "confess" consciously or unconsciously, namely human power, human pleasure or superstitions like the power of crystals or horoscopes.
People in glass houses like me, however, should realise also that the confession of God's Oneness, that he is the Lord, also involves a rejection of the idea of creation as being the product of contrary forces which was the take of other ancient religions. Against this Israel believes in a good God who alone creates everything out of nothing. If I am made in his image then I need to reject the idea that subconsciously tends to hold sway over me, namely that I am somehow the product of opposing forces — sin and grace. Confession of God's oneness is also confession of my own unity, namely that I was created good and by baptism in Jesus Christ I am brought into the unity which is the Trinity. Sin, though it continues to trouble me, is not the undertow of an opposing force of equal strength, but rather, it is a privation, a lack of something in me — the lack of freedom to surrender myself to God.
I am suddenly struck by the Trinitarian structure of the words of absolution. "God, the Father of Mercies, though the death and resurrection of Christ, has sent the Holy Spirit into the world for the forgiveness of sins." The struggle is not one of equal, opposing forces. Rather it is that my imaginary unity. this ego of mine, which would put itself at the heart of everything, must give way to the true source of unity, goodness and truth, the triune God.
Even when I am sunk in sin, the final word on the reality of existence is that he is great and worthy of all praise; and in such praise lies the hope of my salvation, for he forgives sin and I do not overcome it.