Choral Evensong by Fr Jack

First Sunday of the Month, June Evensong with Holy Baptism
1 Samuel 18.1-16
St Luke 8.41-end

Today’s readings show a variety of patterns of relationship. The Christian life is all about relationship. 

David and Jonathan love each other greatly. It’s beautiful. Saul is both ill, and also afflicted by jealousy when he hears the people sing of David’s prowess in battle (despite the fact that David is fighting for him). 

And then in the second lesson, there’s the lady who has suffered haemorrhages who comes to Jesus. She just wants to touch the hem of the Lord’s cloak. That’s an image of relationship too - small, unnoticed. She is humble and faithful. 

By contrast Jairus comes up to the Lord front and centre and grabs His attention. He begs Him to come and heal his daughter. Jairus trusts and asks. Another image of relationship. The crowds outside his house scoff and sneer, thinking that they know better, their prejudices are their starting place - another image of relationship.

A whole set of different ways of relating. 

Love, jealousy, humility and smallness, boldness and trust, scoff and sneer. Faith and restoration.

It’s a whole opera of emotion and relationship, in just a couple of snippets of Scripture. We’ll come back to that. 

Today the opera of Lola’s life begins in a particular way. Through water, and what the Holy Spirit does with this water, Lola begins life as a Christian. 

In Baptism we become a member of Christ’s body. Bodies have members: legs, arms, hands. Each of the Baptized are a part of Christ’s body. A living part of Jesus. And because Lola is part of Jesus through baptism, she is part of a Body that has died and risen back to eternal life. Her life now has one foot already in heaven, and one foot here on earth. It’s a beautiful gift God gives us here. And as a member of Christ’s Body, she is indispensable, unique, and beloved. She can never truly be alone from now on. She is part of God’s plan of love in the world: a gift and a calling. 

And so we see that the Christian life (begun here in the waters of the font) is all about relationships: us and God, and us together. It is a pattern of relating through which we continue to discover who we truly are. And we discover the gift of love and being loved. Of sadness and sorrow, and service and challenge, of joy and purpose. 

A life with meaning, discovered through relating on purpose to God, myself, and everyone around us. In prayer, sacrament, scripture, singing, community, service, everything. A life with meaning, done on purpose. 

And the reality and drama of the readings today, like all of scripture, give us the words and music of this opera of our living. 

In the Bible (especially the Old Testament) there is lots of dramatic irony and absurdity and deliberate contrast. Like our own lives, there are lots of twists and turns that only make sense when we look back and they can mutually illuminate and interpret one another - both the narrative of scripture, and our own lives.

On one level it’s simple: the lady is sick, no one can help her. She comes to Jesus and is healed. Yes it is so. But also this lady’s life, our life, Lola’s life, is a story of many different acts, ups and downs. 

David and Jonathan’s love is, well, lovely. But it’s full of blood and battle, and in the end, Jonathan dies, and David weeps.

So how am I going to tie this all up in a pretty bow and finish this sermon in 45 seconds? 

Well I’m not really. The Prayer Book we use at Evensong, and for this Baptism, knows this well. It’s basically a medieval rite. It emerges from Scripture and centuries of life and worship in these islands. It bubbles up out of a continent that has been devastated by Black Death, fires, civil wars. It often strikes me that its tone is well suited to the hard and short lives of peasants. It gives a theological groundwork for tough communities, bad harvests, cold winters, corrupt rulers. 

And yet, for all its bleakness, again and again the Prayer Book talks of God’s grace and goodness. Sin, death, despair (what the prayer book tonight calls ‘carnal affections’: our inclinations in so many ways that destroy us and those around us) - yes, those are real and need to be faced. 

But also the Prayer Book gives us, gives Lola, hope of glory, ‘joyful through hope, rooted in charity (that is, caritas, love). 

The Christian life is all about relationships. A life with meaning, discovered through relating on purpose to God, myself, and everyone around us. In the opera of Scripture, and our own little operas, held by rhythms of prayer, sacrament, scripture, singing, community, service, everything.

And all of this together adds up to, well, life. It is not neat and tidy. It’s not a matter of grabbing easy answers. But it is full and real and good. Just like Sacred Scripture hasn’t given us easy answers today. It has shown us life’s complexity, and pointed us to do life with Jesus: to come to Him just as the lady did, just as Jairus did. 

An adventure begins for Lola today. We pray that she will have the gift of knowing that her life is woven into this great adventure of people and God. As we all continue to discover this for ourselves.