Gaudete Gaudete Christos est natus ex maria virginae Gaudete! – Rejoice Rejoice, Christ was born of the virgin Mary, rejoice.
Welcome to Rejoice Sunday. It why we lit the pink candle, its why I’m wearing Rev Janice Bartholomew’s rose coloured stole – today is Rejoice Sunday.
The idea being that in the middle of our Advent Fast we might have a pause and celebrate a little. So today I want to encourage you to rejoice.
Today’s reason for rejoicing is that you have a meaning and purpose and calling in life. And if you’re still here then that’s a sign that you’re not finished.
1700 years ago a little over 300 bishops gathered at a Nicaea which was small town south of the new capital city of the Roman Empire – Constantinople. They were on an all expenses paid trip, by invite of the new emperor Constantine.
He had had a dream in 312 on the eve of battle in which he saw the X and the P of Christ overlapped – we call it the ChiRho, and he heard a voice saying ‘In this sign conquer’. So he went into battle and vanquished Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge. Hurrah, peace in our time.
During this time of peace, Christianity was enjoying a moment of being quite trendy, and this required the Church to be doing quite a lot of explaining about the faith. I’m sure they had some sort of equivalent Alpha Course.
And during this time an unhelpful Deacon called Arius in Alexandria in Egypt, thought it would help to make things simple to say – Jesus is not God. Jesus is super with super miraculous powers but not God.
I’d hope that you would think that clearly Arius was being silly – especially when you read either of our readings today – “n the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God and the Word was God”. Its not difficult to see that St John was conveying to us the enormity of what it means to see Jesus as God incarnate, as Immanuel, God with us –
listen to the carols – Veiled in Flesh the Godhead see! Hail the incarnate deity!
But people do like a nice simple flat understandable deity. Arius’s thought caught on, and that led to others getting upset and this led to the need to have a gathering of Bishops to work out ‘Well what do we think about Jesus and how can we express that?’
And so we have this creed.
It starts with the word WE – We believe. That’s a way of gathering us together around a common understanding. Other creeds start with I. ‘I believe’ – that sounds like a good affirming prayer. But the Nicene Creed starts with a We. Its an awareness that this creed is said by all Christians all over the world. It connects us to them, and reminds us that we’re not alone in our faith.
We Believe. This word Believe had about it in those days a stronger sense of So What. To believe something meant that it had an impact on your life somewhere. I believe that this bus is going to Eastbourne. Well good for you but are you getting on that bus? Because that would show that you really do believe the bus is going to Eastbourne!
So this creed is going to shape how we see God, and that’s going to help us to see how we relate to God, worship and pray, learn to forgive, and to have hope, this creed gives us hope that there’s more to life than what we see and do in the here and now.
We believe in One God the Father almighty. Christians persist in being Monotheists. One God – as revealed in three persons – Father Son and Holy Spirit – and we all know that that’s a bit confusing. It would be so much simpler to go with Arius and keep to one God, God. And not worry about any of this Father Son stuff. OR It would even be simpler to say lets have three gods.
But the Christians from the start have stubbornly refused. They, we, have wanted to hold to the truths that have been revealed to us about the nature of God, and to hold the bits that we do not understand in tension. Perhaps one day we will understand, but certainly we know that God is not to be simplified, that God is beyond our grasp, a mystery – but not in the sense of being unknowable – more in the sense of being endlessly knowable. So we do not flatten our Trinitarian God but allow God to remain multi-dimensional.
When I do Grilla vicar in school and they ask me SO who was God’s mum or dad? Sometimes I will ask them ‘How do we measure time’ – and they will say something about the sun and moon – and then I say ‘God made the sun and moon on what He calls Day 4’. But prior to that we have had no concept of time. So God is outside of time.
Its not easy to grasp this scale of wonder and mystery that we find in the God who is revealed to us in Holy Scripture.
We’re invited to see God as the Father.
Two things are going on here, one is this invitation that Jesus repeated when He taught us to pray – Abba Our Father in Heaven. So we are invited to relate to God not as the Maker of all things seen and unseen – but as a caring parent. This isn’t a comment on the Gender of God. Nor is it about us looking at our Dads and saying Well God is a bit like that. No.
There’s an important Saint Athanasius who said We need to be careful with arguing from down here to up there.
For eg: When we are children, our parents are all powerful, and so perhaps God is like that. That makes us no different from the Ancient Egyptians who depicted the god of the river Nile as having a human body but a crocodile head – and you can see why, if you go into the Nile, you might get eaten, Crocodiles are big and powerful. Maybe god is a bit like that.
Athanasius said You’ve got to argue from the top down. Not from the bottom up. So you could say God is The Father, in which case we who are Dads we’re supposed to be a bit like God, not the other way round, we’re supposed to be caring, encouraging, helpful, loving. Top down. Look to how God has revealed Himself.
And this means that the moment you understand God as the Eternal Father then you immediately see that Jesus is the Eternal Son.
One of the unhelpful spinoffs of simplifying Jesus into Not being God – as Arius was trying – was when you asked ‘How do I know if I am forgiven?’
Only God can forgive sins. But we have always known that it is through Jesus that we have the forgiveness of sins.
St Paul in our Colossians reading was clear that it was Christ’s blood shed on the cross that has begun the work of reconciling all things, the working of making peace. That forgiveness has come about through Christ. But only God can forgive.
You might also remember the shock of the Pharisees when Jesus forgives the sins of the paralysed man. Only God can forgive. But it is through Jesus that we have our forgiveness. So Jesus must be the Eternal Son.
And this takes us to the last part of today’s bit of creed – more next week with Derreck who I expect to take you to the line about Mary.
We close with this thought about how -through Jesus, eternally begotten of the Father, through Him all things were made.
You heard it in the reading from Colossians – ‘For in Him all things were created, – they were created through him and For Him, and In Him all things hold together’.
And in the Gospel – ‘through him all things were made, without him nothing was made that has been made’.
Now here’s the point – you have a purpose. God has put you here, called you here for a purpose. Each day some opportunity will be open to you to be a blessing so that where you see a broken world, where people are struggling, discombobulated – there we find our purpose.
St Paul calls us to the work of reconciling all things.
I start with myself being reconciled to God in Christ – and then join in with the mission of Jesus to reconcile all things to God.
That works out in allowing God to work in us His healing and forgiveness, equipping us to live a simple kind generous life – so you might smile and thank someone later today – you might invite someone to next week’s Carol service, or say ‘Come with me to the Alpha course’.
Don’t come up with excuses. I was in a care home last week for a service – I had been asked if I would visit someone, but I didn’t know where to go, so I asked one of the ladies who’d been worshipping with us, ‘Can you take me to…’ – and she came and stayed and explained to the lady that I’m the new vicar here (which oddly sounds so much more flattering than being referred to as the old vicar), and she helped me minister to this woman. Thank you.
Her vocation was alive and well. And so is yours.
Today is Gaudete Sunday, Rejoice! You should have had a sermon about how we are to be like John the Baptist, in pointing people to Jesus.
Instead you’ve had a sermon about how because of what we believe about God as Eternal Father and Eternal Son (we will come to the Holy Spirit bit later next year) – because of our creed – we understand that God has not forgotten us, continues to reconcile us, and to call us to join in with His work of reconciling all things, as we point people to Jesus.
So Rejoice! Amen. //
(Photo is of a notEternal father with a notEternal son)