In a letter from Sheila Grant to Ron S. Dart, dated June 19, 1998, she typed out the following sermon notes from George's time at McMaster.
In a p.s. to the letter, Sheila left this note: "I enclose this sermon, mainly for its ending. It expresses G.’s kind of “theology of the Cross” quite well, though in note form."
Notes for Sermon at McMaster (1961?)
Rite
(1) talk about the Holy Communion
(2) call it what you will.
(3) Shared by all.
(4) It is what it is and petty differences don’t matter.
(5) It can be looked at in many ways.
(6) The feast of the suffering of the innocent.
(7) Suffering in general – the way of the world. Not our own, which is terrible – but others’.
(8) It is on suffering that the faiths of the western world divide.
(9) Humanism: N. America from liberalism.
European from existentialism.
Russia from Marxism.
Faced with suffering – man must make a world in which it does not exist.
The idea of God impossible in the face of suffering.
(10) This is where Christianity says no.
In some strange way suffering must be consented to.
It is part of the divine purpose.
(11) This is of course the terrible stumbling block in Christianity for the humanist.
(12) Let me make clear what I mean by consent – not consent to what we can do anything about;
(13) But there are things … that we can do nothing about.
(14) Not only present but past. Spartacus revolt.
(15) How are we to make consent to that, to love God through and in that?
(16) Marxists love the future.
(17) But we love God – the perfection which is now.
(18) How are we to make that act of consent, -- consent to that evil which may completely destroy us?
(19) Let us admit that most of us do not make that act of consent – that is for the saints and not many of us are that.
(20) The question is not then to make it – but to learn to approach it – to fix our gaze upon its perfection.
(21) We see it at many places in the world – families where a tide of evil and despair sweeps through – nothing seems to be able to break through – the only way it is broken is when a member of that family consents to that evil for herself or himself. Such consent is innocence –is the purity which alone breaks the cycle of evil. It is the just man or woman who consents to the consequence of evil.
(22) We see this always in the greatest literature of all eras, from Homer to Dostoievsky. Homer’s Iliad – force and violence and horror is what men live amongst – Cassandra consents, bears it.
(23) And of course the supreme act of consent is that of X in the Garden of Gethsemene. Here the absolutely pure, the absolutely just, the absolutely innocent consents to bear, to accept the full weight of the evil of his day,
[24] – the full weight of the Roman Empire, the evil of the ecclesiastics of his own race. And think what it cost him. “His sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.” Think how we tremble and shake when we ourselves suffer – whether we consent to it or not. But this was the absolute consent. The perfect act.
(25) And as such it is the act of God himself, for only God can consent to be nothing. This to use language which is difficult for modern people – yet which is supremely significant. In the Garden of Gethesemene we see the very consent within God – as we say between the Father and the Son – that act which is love itself.
(26) It is that act of consent – far beyond any of our imagining of what consent could be – it is that perfection which is given us at every Christian altar – perfection upon which we can fix our attention.
(27) And it seems to me that this is finally why we should go to Church. I often ask myself, what is the use of going to Church when I am in such a mood – rushed, moody, quite involved in my own evil. Get the children through breakfast, see one’s neighbours in Church who one doesn’t much like. Why go when there is no spontaneity in one’s heart – when God seems far away?
One goes to contemplate that perfect act in which the innocent has absolutely consented to his suffering – that is to contemplate the divine act itself.
Announce Hymn 86. When I survey the wondrous Cross.
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