Trinitytide Pastoral Letter, 2024

The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us. (Romans 5:5)

June 22, 2024

Dearly Beloved in Christ,

The American theologian, Stanley Hauerwas, is fond of saying that “the greatest enemy of Christianity is not atheism, but sentimentality.” Similarly, the evangelical Anglican pastor and teacher, J.I. Packer, asserts what he takes to be “one of the most urgent tasks facing evangelical Christendom today—recovering the Gospel.… [For] without realizing it,” he says, “we have during the past century bartered the [biblical] gospel for a substitute product which, though it looks similar enough in points of detail, is as a whole a decidedly different thing …. Whereas the chief aim of the old was to teach people to worship God, the concern of the new seems to be limited to making them feel better.” Too easily do we settle for ‘product Christianity,’ and conform to our secular age by behaving as private consumers of religion, each with his or her own peculiar preferences. But how are we to be re-evangelized and recover the Gospel?

In the above passage from chapter 5 of the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Romans, did you notice that there are two ways of reading the phrase, “the love of God”? Is it referring to God’s love of us, or our love of God? Yet regardless of how scholars might disagree about how it is best understood, there is no doubt that God has given himself to us: he has poured out himself into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. The divine gift of love and the gift of the Spirit are inseparable. Probably we should understand this gift as both God’s love to us and our love to him. God’s love to us is “the source and essence” of our love towards him. Why? “Because the love which we bear towards God is nothing else than our sense of the love He bears towards us.” This teaching is made so very clear to us at the beginning of Trinity Season, as we read in the Epistle appointed for the First Sunday after Trinity: “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (I John 4:10). Only because of God’s love for us, in the reality of that divine embrace, are we able to love God and our neighbour: “Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another” (I John 4:11).

The whole second half of the Christian year is a catechism of the heart, the reordering of our love, and the healing of our desire by grace. Every aspect of our life must be brought into conformity with that love of God towards us which has been manifested and made real in the flesh of Jesus Christ. Apart from that Love Divine our love is deficient and disordered, and our unruly wills and affections inevitably leave us restless, confused and frustrated. Our capacity to love in the right way depends absolutely on God’s life and love at work in us. Our daily growth in holiness (our ‘sanctification’) is God’s Holy Spirit working in us in the ordinary and everyday.

The ancient Collect for the Sixth Sunday after Trinity teaches the same.

“O GOD, who hast prepared for them that love thee such good things as pass man's understanding: Pour into our hearts such love toward thee, that we, loving thee above all things, may obtain thy promises, which exceed all that we can desire; through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

In this prayer, the clear intention of our love towards God has no other source than the gracious gift of love which God pours into our hearts. It is God alone, working in us, who can and will produce our love for him!God himself must be the object of our love if we are to receive the “good things which pass understanding,” and the “promises which exceed all that we can desire.” Even when God withholds from us peace and health and joy, we are to love him. Only he knows in his Providence what is best for us, and the good things which pass our understanding. “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him” (I Corinthians 2:9, quoting Isaiah 64:4).

I commend to your reading the financial update from our Treasurer, Evelyn Lewis. God has prepared for us in this Trinity Parish such good things as pass man’s understanding, and more than we can even desire. Do we believe that? With God all things are possible. All our blessings are from the overflowing goodness of God towards us, by no merit or deserving of our own. Let us cast the burden of our earthly cares upon him, by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving. Then shall we lay up our wishes in the heart of his infinite Wisdom and Love.

Under the Mercy,
Fr Benjamin+

Commemoration of St Alban, Martyr