Sermon, 1 May: Seeing God in all things

READINGS: Revelation 21:10, 22 - 22:5; 

John 14:23-29 

SERMON 

Let’s pray:

May the words of my mouth 

and the meditations of all our hearts, 

be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, 

our strength and our redeemer, Amen.

His name was Nicholas, 

a Frenchman born to peasant parents.

He was a humble man:

humble both in position in life, and in character.

He knew what it was to be poor:

so poor, that he joined the army 

in order to be guaranteed regular meals 

and a small stipend in order to live.

He had a great and deep spiritual awakening:

while serving, he saw, in the depths of winter, 

a barren tree, stripped of leaves and fruit – 

seemingly dead, yet waiting patiently

for the sure hope of spring 

and of summer abundance.

He grasped, in that moment, 

a sense of God’s extravagant grace...

understanding that, like the tree, 

he, too, was seemingly dead,

but that God had life waiting for him, 

and that the turning of the seasons 

of his own life would bring fullness.

He also saw war, and was injured in battle.

He was forced to retire from the army and eventually joined 

a religious order in Paris – the Carmelites –

where he spent most of his remaining life quietly, and cheerfully, 

working in the monastery kitchen scrubbing pots, peeling veg, 

running errands for his superiors.

There, in the kitchen, cooking and cleaning, 

he developed a simple way of life and work for God, observing that:

People ‘invent means and methods of coming at God’s love,

they learn rules and set up devices to remind them of that love,

and it seems like a world of trouble to bring oneself into the 

consciousness of God’s presence. 

Yet it might be so simple. 

Is it not quicker and easier just to do our common business 

wholly for the love of him?’

He was a man of grace, of patience, of love...

but it was his reputation as a man of deep and profound peace, 

and his simple and cheerful spirituality based upon the peace he’d found,

that drew people to him despite his lowly status.

He was sought out, in his kitchen,

by many who were hungry for a way to experience the peace that he had found.

He was courted by ordinary folk, 

and by those deemed ‘the great and the good’,

for the desire for peace is a powerful thing.

He shared with them his understanding of living life 

through the medium of God’s love.

In all things, love.

He particularly celebrated the little things, saying:

‘we can do little things for God;

I turn the cake that is frying on the pan for the love of him,

and that done, if there is nothing else to call me, 

I prostrate myself in worship before him,

who has given me grace to work;

afterwards, I rise happier than a king. It is enough for me to 

pick up but a straw from the ground for the love of God.’

He found, in that love of God, companionship:

he didn’t wash the dishes alone, nor scrub the pots...

God was there with him.

He said of this companionship:

‘I have abandoned all particular forms of devotion, 

all prayer techniques. My only prayer practice is attention. 

I carry on a habitual, silent, and secret conversation with God 

that fills me with overwhelming joy.’

This humble man could have died in complete obscurity

and would not have been disappointed if he had.

However, the profound peace of God that he experienced

guaranteed that even now, 402 years after his birth,

that his name is still known, particularly through a small book –

his religious name was Brother Lawrence,

and he wrote what became a spiritual classic 

treasured by both Catholic and Protestant alike:

‘The Practice of the Presence of God’

Some of you may have heard of it.

It’s a book that I stumbled upon very early in my Christian life –

I was about 19 when I first met Brother Lawrence, and discovered 

his kindly, gentle ways, 

his deep and profound peace, 

and, his great, shining love for God.

His book, his words, have been such a help to me in my own walk with God –

and I thoroughly recommend reading it, if you get the chance!

In our gospel passage today, 

we get a sense of practising the presence of God:

we’ve stepped back chronologically to just before Jesus’ arrest and execution.

It’s just after the Last Supper and of washing the disciples’ feet in an upper room.

These few chapters in John are known as ‘the farewell discourses’ –

basically, conversations had with his disciples before he was taken from them.

Immediately prior to this particular passage, Jesus talks of his leaving them,

but tells them that they will not be alone –

‘I will ask the Father, 

and he will give you another Counsellor 

to be with you for ever – the Spirit of truth....

I will not leave you as orphans’

In response to a question by Judas, Jesus talks of those who love him:

and here we get a sense of what our friend, Brother Lawrence, had understood...

for Jesus talks of companionship –

‘My Father will love him, and we will come to him, and make our home with him’

companionship:

God making a home with the one who loves and is loved in return:

God, in vision to John on the isle of Patmos, sharing the outcome of all things;

God, in a monastery kitchen in Paris, 

side by side with Lawrence, talking companionably over the dishes...

and God, in the Abington Store, with us as we get our messages,

or with us as we call on a friend for a cuppa.

Down through the ages, and through to the end of all time...

God with us through the promised Spirit.

Companion, friend, and Creator of the universe.

God with us 

in the flesh and blood and bone of incarnation,

a lived life among his friends with many conversations 

along the stony roads of the Holy Land,

and in death and resurrection –

God with us, teaching us that he is near us,

or, as Brother Lawrence once said:

‘you need not cry out very loud; he is nearer to us than we think’

And, as God is with us, so Jesus talks of peace:

a peace given to those who follow him,

those who love God –

a peace unlike the world gives...

for there are always negotiations and conditions surrounding such peace,

and the fear that such hard-won peace may disappear, 

for the peace of the world is a fragile thing,

unlike the peace of God which survives even death itself.

The peace that Jesus talks of leaving 

is given by the one we know as Prince of Peace –

the peace given that will ultimately heal the nations, 

as described in our reading from Revelation. 

This is a peace that is both for now, and which lasts for all eternity.

A peace – a ‘shalom’ – which is all-encompassing,

a peace that is about the well-being of the whole person,

of communities,

of countries,

of the whole world.

A peace founded upon not being 

‘weary of doing little things for the love of God,

who regards not the greatness of the work, but the love with which it is performed.’

Peace, however, doesn’t come easily:

it comes at the cost of the Cross and rises up in the joy of the Resurrection.

Peace is an attitude of heart and mind – a way of choosing how to live our lives.

Brother Lawrence talks of prayer as being

‘the pure loving gaze that finds God everywhere’.

In that sense, learning to see God in all things,

learning to practice the presence of God in our daily living 

as we work at daily loving God both in busyness and quiet,

with company, or in the companionship of God.

It is as we stop, occasionally, to look at the way the light is playing on the hills,

or in the interactions of the smaller members of our communities,

that we try to focus on God –

first, giving thanks,

but also, just seeing God in the everyday:

there’s a sacredness to soapsuds, Brother Lawrence might say.

Peace is found, as we are attentive to what is happening around us

as we pause to look for what God is doing in our world, 

reminding us that we are his, but that he is ours:

he has made his home among us.

There’s a saying:

‘Dance like nobody’s watching,

love like you've never been hurt,

sing like nobody’s listening,

live like it’s heaven on earth’

I did see a more cynical alternative the other day: 

‘dance like nobody’s watching – 

because they aren't, 

they’re all on their mobile phones’ 

But I wonder, if there might be another way of viewing the saying, 

of re-jigging it the Brother Lawrence, peace-filled way.

How about:

‘Dance like God is watching,

love like God has loved,

sing as if God is listening,

live like it’s heaven on earth’

Where do we find God?

Actually, right with us.

Where do we find peace?

As we practice the presence of God...

for he is our peace, that lasts forever.

How might we change the way we see this week,

so that we look for God

so that we see God in all things,

so that we live into the peace that he gives?

...  ...  ...

Let’s pray:

Dear God

enlighten what’s dark in us,

strengthen what’s weak in us,

mend what’s broken in us,

bind what’s bruised in us,

heal what’s sick in us,

and revive whatever peace and love has died in us, 

we pray, in Jesus’ name, amen.