Fr. Geoff Coupland Sermon, 18 January 2026
Second Sunday after Epiphany

And he said to me, You are my servant Israel in whom I will be glorified.  But I said, I have labored in vain. I have spent my strength for nothing in vanity. Yet surely my cause is with the Lord and my reward with God. May only your word be spoken here, O Lord, and only your word heard in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Please be seated.
You know after so many years of preaching on the Gospel, Peter, I decided I'd try something different for a change.  There are times, I think, for all of us, when nothing good seems worthwhile or of value. Doing good, living virtuously, serving God, praying, being loving towards our neighbor, all seem pointless.  We seem sometimes to have lost our taste for everything spiritual.  We should hardly bear to go to church.  To remain any time at prayer seems to require an impossible effort.  We see those without faith, virtue or religion, prosperous and happy, and we are tempted to say with the people described in Malachi, It is vain to serve God. What is the good of our keeping is charger of walking as in mourning before the Lord of hosts. Henceforth we deem the arrogant blessed. Evil doers not only prosper, but when they put God to the test they escape. 
Malachi chapter 3 verse 14.
We become apathetic and without zeal, saying to ourselves, What is the point?  Now, let us now imagine that a mood of discouragement and apathy threatens to overwhelm us.  And I'm sharing this because over the last three or four months, I'm part of a number of different groups.  And this depression, the spiritual depression is overwhelming many.  So let us imagine that a mood of discouragement and apathetic threatens to overwhelm us. What kind of thoughts will foster it? How can we check the chain of discouraging reflections and overcome our spiritual weariness?
Most of us looking back on the course of our lives so far, and I count myself among you, can be brought when assailed by negative feelings, to see them as we're some successions of spoiled occasions and lost opportunities.  How often have we in our personal lives spoiled a wonderful occasion for enriching an existing relationship or opening a new one? Our selfishness, bad temper, or sheer insensitivity to others have marred, often, what might have been a joyful memory. We can hardly look back upon a holiday or minor celebration without acknowledging that we could have made it much happier.  When, more seriously, we look back upon the years of parenting, how often does the regret exceed the joy in our recollection?  Again, how many opportunities have we lost because of a lack of motivation, a lack of love, and inability to rise to the occasion?  Are not our lives meaningless because we have ignored or thrown away What might have given them meaning
Certainly, few of us, if we could live our lives over again, would want to leave them, want to leave them just as they have been.  Most of us are filled with some dissatisfaction with our lives. And in our weak moments, we are tempted to give up trying and let ourselves drip apathetically, weary of the effort to do good.  How shall we counter the temptation to give up?
You're with me so far  The first requirement is that we acknowledge that we are finite.  Acknowledge it. Not Justin's words, but in a practical realization of what it means to be limited, fallible creatures.  But the talk of acknowledging our finitude is to speak in two grand a manner and to block the acknowledgement we are trying to make. Each of us needs to recognize his or her limitations. We are each of us in a particular way of limited talent, of limited intelligence, of limited energy, of limited virtue, of limited spiritual growth.  Now, the pursuit of unlimited economic growth dominates our society.  Unlimited material growth has seemingly become the one aim of social policy.  inadequate as applied to economic activity itself. The pursuit of unlimited growth is disastrous when transferred to the other areas of human living. It replaces the reality of human existence with illusory dreams. It destroys the joy in the reality of what we are and what we have. And fills the empty space with crappy desires.  A tranquil and patient acceptance of our limitations as human beings is the first protection against a frequent sinking into listless discouragement to accept who we are with all our limitations. The second requirement for avoiding a lapse into spiritual weariness is to call a halt to that incessant busyness which is a form of self-inflicted violence. It is a violence to allow ourselves to be constantly carried away by a multitude of projects, concerns, and activities. We take on too much.
We take on too much.
We suppose we can help everyone in everything.
We think we are doing fine when we have a moment to rest or gather our thoughts. I repeat that such busyness is a form of violence. We destroy joy. We kill the spirit. No wonder we provoke a spiritual sadness and are overcome by weariness While we drive ourselves forward by frenetic effort  We need and John I'm not picking on you  we need to shake off the false conviction that we are not accomplishing anything unless we are caught up in a tumult of activity.  We need to sometimes just sit and be.  The third line of resistance against spiritual weariness is engagement in the process of redeeming our sins. We are all sinners. And we sin daily.  Even the saints sin.  Sin basically is a failure to love. It is a failure to meet the occasion with the love or spiritual energy it calls for. Demands are made upon us which we can meet only by rising above ourselves. Going beyond our own self-interest, beyond our own pleasure, comfort, or advantage, we fail because our openness to others and to reality is too limited to meet the challenge. Whether in small things or in great, we choose ourselves as we are rather than God or reality, which includes ourselves as we might be if we had greater love. We are constantly sinning, but we can undo sin. Yes, God is our Redeemer as well as our Creator. 
But how?
 The future gives meaning to the past. 
You hear that?
That seems strange, but it is true. Suppose, for example, if Winston Churchill had died in 1938 before the start of World War II, how differently we would assess his life?  As it is, his whole life seems now to have been a preparation for his leadership during the dark days of that war.  Again, the first beginnings of Rome as a city were at that time only an unimportant local event. The future changed their meaning.  We do not as yet know the full meaning of the present events in the Middle East.  or in the Ukraine.
or in America.
 But to go back to the Middle East, what will they mean from the standpoint of the future of Islam? Israel.
The world.
The present meaning of our own individual lives can be radically changed by some event.
like childbirth or marriage, which will give a new meaning to all that has happened up to so far.
It is not simply that we do not know the future, but that the future which is still open will change the meaning of the present and the past.
So now to the point.  The process of redemption is when God's future, becoming our future, transforms our past into a new constellation, a new shape, and gives our lives a new meaning. In other words, redemption is an openness to the future that allows our past to be transformed into the shape of love. Repentance is not a mere regret for the past, which would be barren. It is a transformation which purifies the past by taking it up into a new pattern as an occasion of growth, a warning, a revelation of fallibility and sinfulness. Redemption is a dynamic process of transformation which becomes part of the rhythm of our daily lives. It counteracts spiritual weariness. Whatever may have been the past, whatever may be the present, God's future lies open before us. God calls us to share in that future, despite our lowliness as weak and limited creatures, despite our constant lapsing into fallible and sinful humanness. The openness of the future.  is the Creator of power of God's love. If God's love thus keeps the future open to redeem the past, transform the present, and bring new possibilities to fulfillment, why should we ever lose heart?