Septuagesima - 29 Jan 1961 / 10 Feb 1963

Today is Septuagesima Sunday and the two Sundays following are known as Sexagesima and Quinquagesima. These are the three Sundays before the beginning of Lent. It will be interesting to study why these Sundays are given these names – Septuagesima, Sexagesima and Quinquagesima. These are Latin words which mean 70 th , 60 th and 50 th . These names are supposed to indicate their respective distances from Easter Day. But the numbers are not correct. You will notice that between Quinquagesima Sunday and Easter Day there are seven weeks. Counting from Quinquagesima Easter Day is the 50 th day. So the name Quinquagesima is justified for that Sunday. The two Sundays before Quinquagesima are named Sexagesima and Septuagesima. They give the round numbers and not the exact number of days from Easter.

Throughout the year the Church puts before us a theme for each Sunday. Generally the Collect, Epistle and Gospel bring before us the Church’s teaching for each Sunday. In this way the great truths of Christianity are brought before us for our study and meditation every year. It has become habitual to associate the first of these three Sundays – the Septuagesima and the Sexagesima – with the themes, not of their Collects, Epistles and Gospels, but the lessons of the morning and evening services. Both at Matins and Evensong we read in the Old Testament lessons about the creation of the world from the Book of Genesis. The Septuagesima Sunday is sometimes known as ‘Creation Sunday’. So we will spend a few minutes this evening in thinking of God as the creator of the world.

In Genesis we read that God made man in own image and put him in the Garden of Eden. That picture of the Garden and the man, given in the opening chapters of Genesis, teaches certain truths about God and His relationship to this world. The idea of God as creator brings before us certain truths which we will do well to think about.

The first thing I would like to point out is that matter is not, as such, evil. The things we touch and handle, the physical body with its instincts and impulses, are not evil in themselves. There is a kind of religion which blames our material state for our shortcomings. The physical body with its natural instincts is blamed for the sins we commit. According to the Bible view, material things are not evil in themselves. In the Book of Genesis we read, ‘And God saw everything that He had made and behold it was very good.’ Again in St. John’s Gospel we read that the word became flesh. The Word, God’s own self-utterance, became flesh. God became man and therefore there can be nothing intrinsically evil in matter. It is however perfectly true that matter is constantly being turned to evil purposes. For example there are various instincts that are part of the human constitution - the instinct of anger, the fighting instinct, the sex instinct and many others. These are implanted in us by God for they are necessary for our life. They are good and not evil in themselves. But we abuse the powers that God has given us – powers God has given us for proper use. Our sins are due to the wrong way in which we exercise our free will. If God is the creator of the world, as we believe, then it must follow that everything He made is good. God is the creator of the world. Everything he made is good. The first lesson we learn from this truth is that matter is not evil in itself.

Secondly we learn that if God is the creator of the world there cannot be any essential distinction between the secular and the sacred. There is no doubt a sense in which we distinguish between the sacred and the secular for convenience. For example the vessels we use at the Communion Service – the chalice and the paten – are sacred vessels for us, while the vessels we use for eating and drinking in our homes are secular. But the distinction is only a secondary one; for if we believe that God is the creator of this world then we believe that the whole of a person’s life falls within God’s concern. In that sense a social party is as sacred in its essential nature as Holy Communion. Conversely we may say that the Holy Communion is as secular as any social party, because Holy Communion is intimately connected with life in the world as any gathering. ‘The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.’ It is true that for convenience we set apart certain times and places for the worship of God and call them sacred. It helps us in our devotion and to concentrate on worship. So the church is a sacred place and Sunday is a holy day. These distinctions we have made are secondary. Primarily there is no essential distinction between one place and another, between one day and another. Sunday is an opportunity to dedicate the entire week to God, and the days from Monday to Saturday provide the scope for working out in practice the self dedication we have made on Sunday, and of living in the presence of the God to whom we have deliberately given up the day. Our worship in the church on Sundays has some relationship to our work during the week days. If God is the creator of the world there cannot be any essential distinction between the secular and the sacred.

Thirdly, if God is the creator of the world there cannot be any radical difference between the natural and the supernatural. We sometimes speak of the natural world and the supernatural world as if they are in water tight compartments. The natural world working according to scientific laws in which God works only indirectly, and the supernatural world above the law of nature, in which anything might happen. It is wrong to think of these as two worlds separate from each other and to limit God’s activities in any way. It is good to remind ourselves of the fact that God is always active in the world He has created. God dwells in His own world.

Let me conclude with one last thought on the creative activity of God. God’s creative activity is not confined either to the material universe or to the general historical process, for the New Testament declares that it is also revealed in the life of the individual. In every man, who with repentance and humility submits himself to the leadership of Christ, a new creative act takes place. “If any man be in Christ he is a new creation. Old things are passed away; behold all things are become new.” Let us therefore submit ourselves to Christ that He may make us new creatures.