Shadows in the fireplace

When my laptop died, I lost many sermons that I would have published here. However, I've been fortunate to find the manuscripts of some of my sermons in amongst some papers, including this which I enjoyed preaching.

Sermon preached at St Peter and St Paul's Church, Swanscombe on Trinity Sunday, 22nd May 2005, based on 2 Corinthians 13:11-13

Jeremy Harding is quite brilliant.

He's already received a starred first at Cambridge,
and has decided to stay on
and complete a doctorate in theology
before he finally gets ordained.

He's spent that last few years
reading and learning all about
the Christian Faith in very great detail,
and his ideas have gone down very well
amongst the fellows
of the college.

They regard him as having
the potential to do something
very special in the Church.


They have place Jeremy for study
under the guiding light of
Professor Alexis Pangnosis.

Professor Pangnosis himself is
a fantastically gifted human being
with enough letters after his name
to write a new letter to the Corinthians.


His office is large
and filled with bookshelves,
containing mostly the books
that he himself has written.

We find Jeremy and the professor
sitting by a roaring fire on a cold,
dark October evening.


"So, Jeremy," says Professor Pangnosis,
"have you any thoughts on the direction
your research will take?"

"Yes, Professor," says Jeremy,
"I'd like to understand the Holy Trinity."

"Understand the Holy Trinity?"
says the Professor sitting back
into his aged armchair
stroking his long white beard.

He pauses,
lost in thought for a moment.

The fire crackles in the grate
and this brings the Professor round.

"Look to the far wall of my office,"
he says,
"what do you see?"

"Nothing but the shadows caused by the fire,"
says Jeremy.

"Exactly," says the Professor.

"Oh," says Jeremy
struck by sudden realisation.

He promptly gets up,
quits his Ph.D.
and goes home.

[PAUSE]

An interesting response,
don't you think?

But then human beings react
very oddly to shadows, don't they?

Think back to your childhood.
Do you remember sitting awake
in the middle of the night
with your bedclothes
pulled up to your face
because the shadows
on the wall opposite
frightened you?

How the branch of a tree turns
into the arms of a monster?

Or how a dressing-gown turns into
someone lurking behind the door?

Your imagination runs riot in the night,
doesn't it?

But in your heart of hearts
you know that everything's okay
and that you really shouldn't have stayed up
to see "Dracula AD1972".

You know that in the cold light of day,
the ghost lurking behind the door
turns back into a dressing-gown,

and the monster tapping on your window
turns back into a tree...

...until tonight!

[PAUSE]

Do you remember when you first found out
what a shadow is.
when it became clear to your
that a shadow is an absence of light,
that a shadow is caused by light being blocked
by an object in the way?

The people who built this church building
knew how to use shadows to their advantage.

Beneath one of the windows
is a simple sundial,
so it's the shadow that tells the time.

Think about it,
the absence of light
actually tells you something useful,
or at least it did to our ancestors.

For an artist,
the absence of light is sometimes
more important than the light itself.

By understanding how the shadows look,
you can build up a picture
of what the object is.

But there's a problem with this approach!

[PAUSE]

As you go on an evening walk in the fields
with the Sun behind you,
the sky glowing a warm evening orange,
look at your shadow in front of you.

How long is it?

Do you yourself look as long and thin
as your shadow does at this time?

Do some of you wish that you looked
as long and thin as your shadow?

That's the problem
shadows can get so very distorted;
you can't rely on them
to provide an accurate picture
of the object
that they are supposed to be shadows of.


At night time,
your brain can't make a great deal of sense
from the many shadows,
which is why it resorts to imagination.

You know that the hand tapping at your window
is just a branch moving in the night breeze,
that the shape behind the door
is just your dressing-gown,
but they look like something else in the dark.

Shadows are unreliable.

[PAUSE]

St Paul famously describes our knowledge as
"looking throught a glass darkly,"
that we wander about, seeing merely
the shadows of things as they are.

All that we know
or can know
is just a collection
of shadows of the truth.

So who casts the biggest shadow?

Think about it.

What do we actually know about God?

It doesn't matter who we are,
all we know of God
and all that we will ever know of God
is just a collection of confusing shadows
of Him:

the shadow of a Creator
who built and constructed the Universe;

the shadow of a God who is a proper human being
and yet not just a proper human being;

the shadow of a Paraclete
a comforter;

all different and distinct persons
yet One True God.

If we try to build up a picture
of this One True God from His shadows alone,
then all we get is a distortion.

If we think we have the answer,
then God says to us
"Who has measured the waters in the hollow
of His hand,
Measured heaven with a span
And calculated the dust
of the earth in a measure?"

Great things!

But

Incomprehensible things!

How can we hope to understand
this wonderful God in truth?

Can we really understand the Holy Trinity?

[PAUSE]

The answer depends on what
you want to understand about the Holy Trinity.

Let's look at the shadows.

There is just the shadow of a Creator Who is God.

There is just the shadow of one Man Who is God.

There is just the shadow of a Comforter Who is God.

Each shadow is different, distinct,
so the Creator, the Man and the Comforter
are all different people.

Each Person has His own character,
each single Person is fully God,
yet there is only one God, not three Gods.

We can say confidently
from the shadows that God shows us
that there is One God in Three Persons,
but we can't understand it
becuase all we can ever see
is shadows.

[PAUSE]

But there is a big difference.

Didn't we agree that shadows
are just the absence of light?

Can this really be true of God's shadow?

If God is the Light of the World,
how can He cast a shadow of Himself?

If God is the Light of the World,
then we can't look at Him.
He is far too bright for us to see until,
as St Paul tells us today,
we become complete.

So what does God do?

To help us to try to know Him,
He dims His light,
shows us shadows of Himself,
not expecting us to understand
Who He is and what He looks like,
but to show us that He is there
with us
to the very end of the age.

His brilliant light dazzles our poor little minds,
but that same light illuminates our souls,
and throws up shadows for us to see
in our lives.

It is written in the Song of Solomon:
"I sat down under His shadow
with great delight."

No scary trees or dressing-gowns,
just the Love of God
and a wonderful place to sit.

Can you see God's shadow
in your lives right now?

Wil you sit down under it
with great delight?