St George's Cathedral, Cape Town

A sermon preached by The Revd Bruce W. B. Jenneker in the Cathedral Church of St George in the City and Diocese of Cape Town on the Tenth Sunday of the Year 10 June 2007

It seems to me that the lessons we heard tonight bring us a special message as we leave the high peaks of Easter, Ascension and Pentecost, to take up residence for the next five-and-half months in Ordinary Time: the plains and flatlands of life, where the humdrum of ordinariness stretches long before us, to be sometimes broken by the unexpected gorge that plunges down dangerously or the swampy groves that tangle and pull. Flat and uninteresting, yet full of risk and danger, how shall we live here, how shall we find meaning and security, hope and splendour on the plains and flatlands of life? Without the carols of Christmas, the anthems of Easter and the tongues of fire of Pentecost, will we be able to find the voice of faith? Having celebrated the grace of God on the glorious mountain peaks, are we going to be able to find God on the plains?

Two clues come from the lessons – the writer of Ecclesiastes warns us against vanity and St Matthew holds before us the compassion of God in Jesus Christ. Vanity and compassion. Vanity – that's the eternal risk of our human condition, because we inevitably run after the fantasy of a quick fix when we are faced with real needs deep within us. Compassion – because that's the heart of God, God knows who we are, whereof we are made and remembers that we are but dust. When God's compassion in Jesus Christ meets our deep desire for meaning and hope, that is when our life in Ordinary Time is filled with extraordinary joy and lasting peace.

Vanity – an old word, and one that for us mostly means excessive pride in one's appearance, abilities, qualities or achievements. That is not the principal meaning of the word as the writer of Ecclesiastes uses it. Rather it refers to something worthless, trivial or pointless, an emptiness or sham, unreality, folly, triviality, futility. On the flatlands of life we run after vanities you and I. Pleasure to make the ordinariness bearable, possessions to make it comfortable, sex and drugs to escape its monotony, controlling and manipulating others to give us power of it. It seems to us that without these props life is only dull dreariness, we need our thrills to escape its boring tedium – and yet they are all vanities, emptiness, sham and unreal. They cannot give us what they promise. They cannot help us to construct real meaning out of the ordinary reality we are and in which we live. They appear to take us out of reality by sleight of hand for a moment of brief artificial delight or freedom or power, only to plunge us back, deflated and empty into the inevitable and unavoidable ordinariness of real life.

Tonight as we enter Ordinary Time – with our extraordinary hopes and dreams, our unique fears and failings – let us name our vanities, you and I, name then one by one: the empty, pointless, futile occupations and diversions by which we seek to give our ordinary lives a quick fix.

They offer us nothing and take us nowhere. There is no health in them. There is in fact no reality in them. They are empty, unreal, sham. And yet we choose them, over and over again, until we are addicted to them, can't live without the empty, pointless nothing which is all they are, until we are ultimately caught in their grip, prisoners of our vanities, unable to break free from the unreality into which they have imprisoned us.

It is precisely at this point that St Matthew's account of the feeding of the four thousand has something to say to us. The evangelist tells us that Jesus looked upon the crowd, understood fully their human condition, their weariness and their hunger and had compassion upon them. There on a remote hillside the heart of God is made manifest. The weary find rest, the troubled are consoled, the hungry are satisfied.

When next you are tired beyond the reach of your endurance, open yourself to the grace of God, don't risk the vanity of a quick fix – a smoke, a drink, a nap - and hope for a renewal of your spirits. When next you are hungry – for affection and respect, for love and intimacy, for regard and esteem, don't risk the vanity of buying things or over-eating, of gossip or lies, of pseudo- relationships or cheap sex and hope that the empty void deep within you will be satisfied. Open yourself to the grace of God, let it lay hold of you, fill you, dwell within you. Let it unfurl your close-folded defences. Let it touch and heal old wounds and new pains. Let it kindle a fire of faith and hope and love to guide and carry you through the plains and flatlands of Ordinary Time.

The flatlands are unavoidable. Will we meander, you and I, circuitously drawing out our tedium? Or will we lift the eyes of our spirits to see God moving ahead of us, beckoning us into a dance of hope across those ordinary plains. Will we be depressed by the flatland that rolls on and on and on seemingly for ever? Or will we open the ears of our souls to hear God sing the pilgrim songs of faith and join in singing the songs of home? Will we be overcome by the loneliness and the anxiety of the trek across the veld? Or will we stand still and realise that it is the love that holds the universe together that is reaching to take our hand to hold us where we are, on the flatlands of life, hold us with a love that will never let us go.

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