The Man Who Fell In Love With God
Sermon
A SEASON OF SAINTS
Sermons For Festivals And Commemorations After Pentecost
August 28
Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, 430
Augustine was the bishop of the North African town of Hippo in the late fourth and fifth centuries, and is perhaps the most important figure in the history of the Christian faith, next to Jesus and the apostle Paul. The most important teachings of the Catholic Church and of most Protestant doctrinal traditions are rooted in the writings of Augustine. Martin Luther was an Augustinian monk, and was heavily influenced by the namesake of his order. John Calvin and John Wesley both drew on Augustine's thought in their writings. Our doctrines of original sin, of salvation by God's grace and of the church and the sacraments are all derived from what Augustine wrote nearly 1600 years ago.
But doctrines and theology aren't our main concern today, nor are the controversies Augustine settled in the early church. When I think about Augustine, I think first of a man who fell in love with God - deeply and passionately in love with God. And that's what makes Augustine a great saint for us.
The modern world is often described as a secular world. In other words, modern people don't see things primarily in relation to God. God and religion are an important part of our lives, but one we often keep separate from other parts. One of the things we believe we need to do in life is to have a relationship with God, but we also need to attend to our jobs, our finances, our automobiles, our sickness and health and politics and other things that we don't consider religious concerns.
We chop our lives in different parts and strive for goals that lie in all different directions. We try to have a religious life, a family life, a recreational life, a professional life and a civic life. As a result we are restless, confused and divided. When we say of someone who has a lot of problems that they need to "get it all together," we are exactly right. Our frustration and our longing for peace of mind are the results of our being divided and pulled apart by conflicting goals and loyalties.
Augustine was a pulled-apart person, too, until he discovered that all his dividedness was actually caused by his being separated from God. One of his two greatest books was called the Confessions, the story of his spiritual pilgrimage and his conversion to Christianity. And he begins the Confessions by writing to God, "You have created us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you."19 But that realization only came to Augustine after a lifetime of searching and struggling.
He was the son of an ambitious middle-class father who wanted him to be successful and famous, and a Christian mother who wanted him to be faithful and devout. From the beginning he was torn between a father who encouraged him to compete and strive for success and a mother who taught him to be humble and penitent. Naturally, as a teenager he was more impressed by his dad's view of the world, and studied rhetoric so he could become a famous Roman orator, which was to the Romans what a Joe Montana or a Bruce Springsteen is to us. Along the way, he discovered that a rising star of oratory turned the heads of the young ladies. So by the time he was 19, he had a reputation as a promising orator - maybe headed for Rome itself - as well as a live-in girlfriend and a baby boy.
It wasn't long, though, before a new opportunity presented itself to Augustine, in the marriageable daughter of a prominent Roman family. So the young orator put his concubine on a boat to the far side of the Mediterranean and kept his son. He later wrote that sending his lover away was like tearing a chunk of flesh out of his own body, and that he mourned for weeks. But apparently a chunk of his flesh was a small price to pay for fame.
He was never to marry that Roman girl, though. He was beginning to realize that his life had brought him only misery and a compelling restlessness. No achievement, no friendship, no love affair, no public praise, no wealth in all North Africa had really made him feel fulfilled. So instead of going to Rome, getting married and becoming a senator, he turned to the study of religion. He joined a peculiar cult called the Manichaeans and discovered that they didn't have any answers. He studied the best of Greek philosophy and found hints there of the truth he was seeking, but it still eluded him. And the splitting of his soul, the war within his members that Paul had written about (Romans 7:23), grew more and more intense.
We can recognize Augustine as a person like ourselves, can't we? Looking at him, we see the youngster crying out for public attention and approval, the young adult preoccupied with wealth and upward mobility, the man in a mid-life crisis when his worldly success has left him unsatisfied; we see the sexual revolution and cults; we see philosophy and intellectualizing about the world. We see all the things people in our own time do to try to find wholeness and meaning in life. And at the end of the whole process we see a man who is beginning to think that the only way to put an end to his frenzied grasping for wholeness is simply to do away with himself.
But through all these years of struggling and searching, Augustine's mother, Monica, had stayed by him. And he had never forgotten her wishes and prayers that he would turn his life over to God and join the church. Since he had tried everything else, he thought he might try God. He began attending church and reading the Bible. He somehow knew that if he was ever going to be healed, it would be through faith in God. But it just wouldn't come. He wrote this: "A new will, which had begun within me, to wish freely to worship you and find joy in you, O God, the sole sure delight, was not yet able to overcome that prior will, grown strong with age."20
At the deepest point of his spiritual crisis, he pleaded with God the way he would plead with a lover. He later remembered his pleading this way: "O Lord, ... arouse us and call us back; enkindle us and draw us to you; grow fragrant and sweet to us. Let us love you, and let us run to you."21 His yearning for God was nothing short of a passion. He had discovered that only God could satisfy the longing of his soul. His sin was having other loves besides God, and his salvation was seeing that his heart would never be at peace until it was completely within the will and mind and love of God.
Only one problem remained for Augustine, but it was a terrible one. The God whom he wanted so desperately to love was eternal and bigger than the universe. Teenagers infatuated with inaccessible Hollywood stars are frustrated in love, but this man was in love with God, the Lord of the Universe! How could he have a satisfying and comforting relationship with someone who was the invisible, eternal principle of truth?
Jesus, that's how. That's what Augustine finally found in the Scriptures. Yes, God is invisible and eternal and universal, but he became a human being precisely so that we could see and feel his love and love him in return. Even that, though, could be a problem, since Jesus had been gone from the earth close to 400 years by Augustine's time. Could God still be seen and known and loved on earth?
Yes - in the church, which is the body of Christ. And in the members of the church, who are joined to the life of Christ through baptism. And in the Word of God preached in the church. And in the sacraments, in which God comes to be with us: especially the sacrament of the very body and blood of Christ. Once the significance of the incarnation of the Son of God became clear to Augustine, he never lacked objects for his love of God.
Finally, his divided soul was healed. Now he read in Scripture that he could sell all he had and give to the poor, that he could put off the flesh and its impure desires and put on the Lord Jesus Christ. All the things that had pulled him away from God had no pull any more. Instead he felt the steady pull, the irresistible allure, the firm embrace of God.
And once he had fallen in love with God, he was able to love the world again, but in a proper way. Something Augustine taught that still sounds astonishing today was that there is nothing that is evil. God created everything; therefore everything is good. It is only our sinfulness that makes good things evil. Sex is good, the world is good, human society is good, food and drink are good, material possessions are good, except when we forget to see those things as part of our relationship to God. Seeing God as only part of our lives and other parts of our lives as independent of God is what is evil, and what causes all our suffering.
Overpowered by the beauty and truth and grace of God, Augustine fell in love. God, he wrote, is "the true and highest sweetness."22 More than anything else, then, the commemoration of Saint Augustine is an invitation to you and me to feel the allure, the pull of God's love; to see the beauty of God -
in fact, to see that only God is beauty; and to fall in love. Fall in love with God, with Jesus the God-Man, with his church, his Word, his world, his people. "You have made us for yourself, O God, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you." Amen.
Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, 430
Augustine was the bishop of the North African town of Hippo in the late fourth and fifth centuries, and is perhaps the most important figure in the history of the Christian faith, next to Jesus and the apostle Paul. The most important teachings of the Catholic Church and of most Protestant doctrinal traditions are rooted in the writings of Augustine. Martin Luther was an Augustinian monk, and was heavily influenced by the namesake of his order. John Calvin and John Wesley both drew on Augustine's thought in their writings. Our doctrines of original sin, of salvation by God's grace and of the church and the sacraments are all derived from what Augustine wrote nearly 1600 years ago.
But doctrines and theology aren't our main concern today, nor are the controversies Augustine settled in the early church. When I think about Augustine, I think first of a man who fell in love with God - deeply and passionately in love with God. And that's what makes Augustine a great saint for us.
The modern world is often described as a secular world. In other words, modern people don't see things primarily in relation to God. God and religion are an important part of our lives, but one we often keep separate from other parts. One of the things we believe we need to do in life is to have a relationship with God, but we also need to attend to our jobs, our finances, our automobiles, our sickness and health and politics and other things that we don't consider religious concerns.
We chop our lives in different parts and strive for goals that lie in all different directions. We try to have a religious life, a family life, a recreational life, a professional life and a civic life. As a result we are restless, confused and divided. When we say of someone who has a lot of problems that they need to "get it all together," we are exactly right. Our frustration and our longing for peace of mind are the results of our being divided and pulled apart by conflicting goals and loyalties.
Augustine was a pulled-apart person, too, until he discovered that all his dividedness was actually caused by his being separated from God. One of his two greatest books was called the Confessions, the story of his spiritual pilgrimage and his conversion to Christianity. And he begins the Confessions by writing to God, "You have created us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you."19 But that realization only came to Augustine after a lifetime of searching and struggling.
He was the son of an ambitious middle-class father who wanted him to be successful and famous, and a Christian mother who wanted him to be faithful and devout. From the beginning he was torn between a father who encouraged him to compete and strive for success and a mother who taught him to be humble and penitent. Naturally, as a teenager he was more impressed by his dad's view of the world, and studied rhetoric so he could become a famous Roman orator, which was to the Romans what a Joe Montana or a Bruce Springsteen is to us. Along the way, he discovered that a rising star of oratory turned the heads of the young ladies. So by the time he was 19, he had a reputation as a promising orator - maybe headed for Rome itself - as well as a live-in girlfriend and a baby boy.
It wasn't long, though, before a new opportunity presented itself to Augustine, in the marriageable daughter of a prominent Roman family. So the young orator put his concubine on a boat to the far side of the Mediterranean and kept his son. He later wrote that sending his lover away was like tearing a chunk of flesh out of his own body, and that he mourned for weeks. But apparently a chunk of his flesh was a small price to pay for fame.
He was never to marry that Roman girl, though. He was beginning to realize that his life had brought him only misery and a compelling restlessness. No achievement, no friendship, no love affair, no public praise, no wealth in all North Africa had really made him feel fulfilled. So instead of going to Rome, getting married and becoming a senator, he turned to the study of religion. He joined a peculiar cult called the Manichaeans and discovered that they didn't have any answers. He studied the best of Greek philosophy and found hints there of the truth he was seeking, but it still eluded him. And the splitting of his soul, the war within his members that Paul had written about (Romans 7:23), grew more and more intense.
We can recognize Augustine as a person like ourselves, can't we? Looking at him, we see the youngster crying out for public attention and approval, the young adult preoccupied with wealth and upward mobility, the man in a mid-life crisis when his worldly success has left him unsatisfied; we see the sexual revolution and cults; we see philosophy and intellectualizing about the world. We see all the things people in our own time do to try to find wholeness and meaning in life. And at the end of the whole process we see a man who is beginning to think that the only way to put an end to his frenzied grasping for wholeness is simply to do away with himself.
But through all these years of struggling and searching, Augustine's mother, Monica, had stayed by him. And he had never forgotten her wishes and prayers that he would turn his life over to God and join the church. Since he had tried everything else, he thought he might try God. He began attending church and reading the Bible. He somehow knew that if he was ever going to be healed, it would be through faith in God. But it just wouldn't come. He wrote this: "A new will, which had begun within me, to wish freely to worship you and find joy in you, O God, the sole sure delight, was not yet able to overcome that prior will, grown strong with age."20
At the deepest point of his spiritual crisis, he pleaded with God the way he would plead with a lover. He later remembered his pleading this way: "O Lord, ... arouse us and call us back; enkindle us and draw us to you; grow fragrant and sweet to us. Let us love you, and let us run to you."21 His yearning for God was nothing short of a passion. He had discovered that only God could satisfy the longing of his soul. His sin was having other loves besides God, and his salvation was seeing that his heart would never be at peace until it was completely within the will and mind and love of God.
Only one problem remained for Augustine, but it was a terrible one. The God whom he wanted so desperately to love was eternal and bigger than the universe. Teenagers infatuated with inaccessible Hollywood stars are frustrated in love, but this man was in love with God, the Lord of the Universe! How could he have a satisfying and comforting relationship with someone who was the invisible, eternal principle of truth?
Jesus, that's how. That's what Augustine finally found in the Scriptures. Yes, God is invisible and eternal and universal, but he became a human being precisely so that we could see and feel his love and love him in return. Even that, though, could be a problem, since Jesus had been gone from the earth close to 400 years by Augustine's time. Could God still be seen and known and loved on earth?
Yes - in the church, which is the body of Christ. And in the members of the church, who are joined to the life of Christ through baptism. And in the Word of God preached in the church. And in the sacraments, in which God comes to be with us: especially the sacrament of the very body and blood of Christ. Once the significance of the incarnation of the Son of God became clear to Augustine, he never lacked objects for his love of God.
Finally, his divided soul was healed. Now he read in Scripture that he could sell all he had and give to the poor, that he could put off the flesh and its impure desires and put on the Lord Jesus Christ. All the things that had pulled him away from God had no pull any more. Instead he felt the steady pull, the irresistible allure, the firm embrace of God.
And once he had fallen in love with God, he was able to love the world again, but in a proper way. Something Augustine taught that still sounds astonishing today was that there is nothing that is evil. God created everything; therefore everything is good. It is only our sinfulness that makes good things evil. Sex is good, the world is good, human society is good, food and drink are good, material possessions are good, except when we forget to see those things as part of our relationship to God. Seeing God as only part of our lives and other parts of our lives as independent of God is what is evil, and what causes all our suffering.
Overpowered by the beauty and truth and grace of God, Augustine fell in love. God, he wrote, is "the true and highest sweetness."22 More than anything else, then, the commemoration of Saint Augustine is an invitation to you and me to feel the allure, the pull of God's love; to see the beauty of God -
in fact, to see that only God is beauty; and to fall in love. Fall in love with God, with Jesus the God-Man, with his church, his Word, his world, his people. "You have made us for yourself, O God, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you." Amen.
