Sermon preached at the Sung Eucharist on the Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity 2026

It’s lovely to be with you this morning and I’ve very grateful to the Dean for his invitation. I also bring greetings from the community at Norwich Cathedral.

In this royal church, I thought it only right to begin with words of a queen.

‘So many people place God so out of reach
that they never get the make the most of all the things he is.’

Now, if you are concerned that your history is letting you down and you can’t remember which queen uttered those words, fear not! It was, of course, the Queen of Country Music, the late Dolly Parton.

Dolly has a point. It is very easy to put God out of reach; indeed it can provide a bizarre reassurance to put God out of reach. By finding ways of separating ourselves from God—putting God seemingly out of reach feeds into a natural human introspection. Looking inwards so often seems is safer than looking outwards; putting God out of reach gives us a scapegoat of a God who doesn’t understand, is remote, or worse still is little more than a concept invented by the needy.

Of course, that’s not why you or I gather here today. We’re here, at least in part, because in coming here we are having a go out reaching out. That might not have been your first thought as you came here, but that is what you’re doing, what we’re doing. Together we are exploring the idea of the kingdom of heaven. That’s partly what these great buildings do for us—they give us a vision for something greater than ourselves—they are something of a window into heaven, or perhaps more helpfully, a kind of foyer, beyond which the true glories lie.

The Christian faith asks us to hold two ideas of God together. On the one hand, the idea of God as transcendent—out there, beyond us, as Dolly might say; and on the other hand, a God of immanence—here in this moment and space.

Those concepts are important for a lively faith; because God is God, God is transcendent and immanent at the same time. We need to be careful because vocabulary always begins to restrict God to our own understanding, but we have to start somewhere. God exists in the now and the not yet—the kingdom of God runs, rough-shod, over human ideas of time and space. Sometimes such an idea is scary or just plain incomprehensible, but strangely it should be liberating. Understanding that God is not like you or me, or indeed anything we can conceive should liberate us, because we should not be trying to be like God.

Our worship today plays out these themes of immanence and transcendence. For in this Eucharist we come to find God, and God comes to us, in word and sacrament. The Word is carried into the people. God comes to us in word in the good news, the gospel that has just been brought nearer to you and in so doing the kingdom was there just then. The good news in today’s gospel sounded to Peter anything but good news as Jesus explained that he would undergo great suffering. Peter’s desire on hearing this—as might yours or mine be, was to prevent it from happening. Jesus speaks those too often misquoted words ‘Get behind be Satan.’ That would be to put a stumbling block in the path of salvation. Peter has gone from being the one on whom Jesus would build his church as last week’s gospel proclaimed, to being equated with the devil, in danger of stalling God’s work.

Jesus goes on to tell the disciples that following him means taking up a cross. For the avoidance of doubt, that doesn’t mean going off and looking for a real or metaphorical cross whose size and weight suits us, or indeed acting out some martyr-like behaviour. Rather, it is a call to humility—taking us back to the beatitudes. It relates also to the reading we heard from Paul to the Romans where Paul gives a clear delineation—hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good. Paul takes that further though—something of the cross that early Christians, and why not you or me have to bear is spelled out; bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep—get alongside as Jesus did; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Do not repay evil for evil. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Those are just the tip of the iceberg and none of us can begin to do any of that in our own strength. We need God and to put our trust in God and therefore we need to look or listen, reach out and be open to God’s work.

That is why worship is important. We deliberately do something, go to a particular building and engage with others in a seeking after God. Worship will have many forms, and we will each articulate our spirituality differently and articulate how, when, where we find ourselves especially aware of God’s presence.

What is particular to the celebration we share this morning is the extraordinary way in which the Eucharist helps us engage with God in both a transcendent way and an immanent way.

The celebrant at the altar will be facing east—you can read that two ways. Either that they turn their back on us and that’s terribly rude and bad theatre; that is to miss the point and have the focus too much on self. For in facing away from us, there is an emphasis on God’s transcendence. We are reminded that God exists beyond our concepts of space and time and we are all facing the same way in this search. We need to reach out to God; that God isn’t your God, my God, our God. God is God, God is love from whom the whole universe finds its origin.

But only a little later, we move to a moment of very powerful immanence. For God is very close indeed—not only close, but our host for this meal. The gift of the Holy Spirit makes Christ present with us in the bread and wine of the Eucharist; we are fed with the bread from heaven; God isn’t somewhere out there, heaven isn’t a land over rainbow, we find ourselves right there. We come here, we pray, and God is right here with us.

Part of the power of the sacrament of the eucharist is that with you and I as vessels, Christ’s presence is carried out from this church to all those places we will go; to be with all the people that we will see and speak to. God is not someone or something ‘out there’. God, through the mystery of the Holy Trinity is transcendent—existing beyond our wildest imaginings; but is immanent too—here, present and connected in the sacrament of the Eucharist.

I end with words of St Alphonsus Liguori.

O Bread of heaven, beneath this veil
Thou dost my very God conceal:
My Jesus, dearest treasure, hail;
I love thee and adoring kneel;
Each loving soul be thee is fed
This thine own self in form of bread.