One of the most important periods of Church history is what’s known as the Patristic Age, or the Age of the Church Fathers. This began in the late 1st Century, with the immediate successors to the Apostles, and is generally though to have lasted until the late 8th Century and the Second Council of Nicaea in 787, the last of the seven great ecumenical councils of the Church that bishops of both the Orthodox East and Catholic West attended together. It’s a period of Church history when much of what we now regard as orthodox Christian belief was formulated and agreed on, so it’s extremely important time in the history of the Church and of the Christian faith. And not least for the Church of England who, historically at least, have regarded everything that was decided upon at the seven ecumenical councils as binding on everyone, but anything that has been decided since, as these things have not been agreed upon by the whole Church, as a matter for individual conscience.
One of the most influential of the Church Fathers, especially in the Catholic West, was, and is, St Augustine of Hippo, so called, not because he had anything to do with a large semi-aquatic African mammal, but because he was the bishop of Hippo Regius in the Roman province of Numidia (modern day Algeria). St Augustine was influential in the formulation of the theory of ‘Just War’, which many of us may remember being mentioned during the two ‘Gulf Wars’ in recent years, he wrote very influential works on the Church, as it exists in the world, on the Trinity, and on the necessity of God’s grace to fallen humanity. It’s thanks to St Augustine, and his doctrine of ‘original sin’, that infant baptism became the norm in the Church. So, although he died in the year 430, St Augustine’s influence is still very much with us in the Church, and the world, today. And that’s something I’ve been reminded of in the last few days as I’ve been saying morning and evening prayer.
In the prayer books I use, in addition to the Scripture readings at morning and evening prayer, there are also daily spiritual readings provided and very often, these are from the Church Fathers. Over the last few days two of these have been from the works of St Augustine, and I think speak to us very clearly in our current situation when we’re having to worship God and be faithful disciples of Christ whilst, at the same time, neither being able to go to church nor be out and about our normal lives in the world.
In one of these, St Augustine takes for his text some words from the first verse of Psalm 149,
“Sing to the Lord a new song, his praise in the assembly of the saints!”
St Augustine likens this new song to a new way of life and a new testament, and says that those who sing it, belonging to the kingdom of God. He also says that this new song is a thing of love and, quoting St Paul’s letter to the Romans, says that this is,
“God’s love (which) has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”
But, in urging the “children of the Church” to sing this new song to the Lord, St Augustine tells us to
“…make sure that your life sings the same tune as your mouth. Sing with your voices, sing with your hearts, sing with your lips, sing with your lives.”
As the Psalm says, this new song, is a song of praise and for St Augustine,
“The singer is the praise contained in the song.”
And so, he closes by saying,
“Do you want to sing the praise of God? Be yourselves what you sing. If you live good lives, you are his praise.”
This, of course, is a call to avoid hypocrisy, a call to ‘practice what we preach’ and it’s something we all know that we need to do if we’re to have any integrity as Christians. It’s something we must all do if we’re to ‘sing to the Lord a new song.’ These are things that Jesus himself tells us in this morning’s Gospel when he says,
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth…”
and,
“Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.”
The words St Augustine took from Psalm 149 though, the call to praise the Lord “in the assembly of the saints”, might suggest that we’re simply called to praise God in church, but we know that we’re called to praise God with our whole lives, not just in a particular time and place. And this is something St Augustine picks up in another of his works that I’ve read recently.
In this work, St Augustine speaks about praising God, and he says,
“Praise God with the whole of yourselves; it is not only your tongue and your voice that should praise him, but your conscience, your life, your deeds.”
He then goes on to say,
“We are praising God … when we are gathered together in the church; when anyone leaves to go home, in a sense he ceases to praise God. But provided he does not cease living a good life, he praises God continually. You stop praising God only when you turn aside from righteousness and all that pleases him. For if you never turn aside from a holy life, though your tongue is silent your life speaks aloud; God has ears for what your heart is saying. For just as we have ears for men’s voices, God has ears for their thoughts.”
I think these are words which can be very helpful to us in our present circumstances. Because, whilst we can’t praise God in church at the moment, we can still praise him with our lives. We can praise him by doing all we can to help others. We can praise him by praying for others. We can praise him by taking time out to worship him at home. And we can also praise him by resisting the temptation to become bitter and disillusioned about things, and with and about people at this time too.
That is perhaps a very great temptation at this time when we may be forced to spend much more time than we usually do with members of our family. As I’m sure we all know, even those we love the most can become very annoying to us if we have to spend all our time with them. Little habits of theirs that we might usually find of no consequence can become very irritating to us if we have to put up with them all day, every day. For some people, the most difficult aspect of the present situation will be that they can’t be with those they love or do the things they want to do. Again, there is a temptation to become angry about that, and perhaps to take out our anger and frustration on those around us. But, becoming angry with people and criticising them, especially to others, isn’t the new song we’re called to sing to the Lord. It might help us let off some steam, but it’s not what we should be doing as Christians and so it’s not praising God with our lives.
We’ve now been in lockdown for eight weeks. Our last Sunday service in church was two months ago, and unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be an end to this situation in clear sight at the moment. So the temptation to become bitter and disillusioned, and angry and critical, is likely to continue for some time yet, and perhaps to get even worse over the next weeks and months. But, as Christians, we should do all we can to resist that temptation and keep Christ’s commandments so that we can continue to sing that new song to the Lord and praise him, wherever we are.
Amen.
You will find the Propers for the Sixth Sunday of Easter here.
Parish Church of St Mark Chadderton 