Sermon St. Augustine

Today we remember, St Augustine of Hippo, known as one of the patriarchs of the church, he helped define many of the theologies that we take as common understandings in our faith.

Augustine was born in AD 354 in North Africa. His father, Patricius, was end of life convert to Christianity, while his mother, Monica, was a devoted Christian whose faith was an important part of Augustine's story.

Augustine was highly intelligent and highly educated man, and remarkably similar the stereotype of 21st century university students.  He wrote in he autobiography about his years drinking, carousing and playing pranks with his fellow students.  Trying out different religious and philosophical in his attempts to find meaning.

Augustine eventually experienced a profound conversion to Christianity. He was baptized in AD 387, later becoming became a then Bishop of Hippo, a coastal city in North Africa.

He preached, taught, wrote, baptized, celebrated the Eucharist, counselled people, defended the faith, and dealt with the controversies and divisions of his time.

Yet what makes Augustine so relatable is his understanding the human experience. He understood its desires, its struggles, its restlessness, its capacity for love, and its tendency to turn away from God.

In his famous book Confessions, Augustine wrote: "Our hearts are restless until they rest in you."

Augustine spent many years searching for happiness. He pursued education, success, passions, pleasure, philosophy, and intellectual achievement. He wanted to understand what was the truth of life, and in doing so he also discovered something very important about himself. It is possible to know what is right and still lack the strength to do it. It is possible to know about God and yet remain far from God. He came to understand that salvation is first and foremost the work of God's grace.

This is one of Augustine's greatest contributions to the Church. He reminds us that we can not save ourselves. We do not earn God's love by becoming sufficiently religious or good or faithful.

It is God who comes to us first.  It is God who seeks us before we seek him.  It is God who loves us before we are able to love him.  God's grace which reaches out to us even when we are running in the opposite direction.

The Christian life begins not with our achievement but with God's grace in the face of our sins.  For Augustine, sin was not simply a matter of breaking rules. Sin was something much deeper, It was a disordering of our love.

God created us to love him above all things and to love our neighbour in him. But our hearts continually become attached to other things. We can love money more than generosity. We can love success more than faithfulness. We can love our reputation more than truth. We can love comfort more than compassion. We can even love our own desires more than God.

This is why the Christian life is more than simply trying to behave better. Faith is about allowing God to transform what we love. It is about having our hearts turned again toward the One for whom we were created.

This was especially important because Augustine lived at a time when the Church was experiencing serious divisions.  Recall it was around this time that people were debating the formation of the creeds…the very foundational beliefs of our faith. 

 There were disagreements about the nature of the Church, the sacraments, the holiness of Christian ministers and even about the divine nature of Christ. Augustine defended the unity of the Church and emphasized that the power of the sacraments ultimately comes from Christ, not from the personal perfection of the person administering them. 

A reminder that every Christian is a work in progress, that none of us are perfect, that we all sin and yet Christ continues to work through his Church.

Augustine also taught the Church that faith and reason belong together. He was one of Christianity's greatest thinkers, and he spent his life reflecting deeply upon Scripture, creation, the Trinity, human nature, sin, grace, the Church, and the Christian life, writing prolifically and creating the understanding that many of us still adhere to and yet his faith was never merely academic.

For Augustine, the purpose of knowing about God was ultimately to know and love God.  He taught that we should never be afraid of questions. Never be afraid of truth. That we can ask difficult questions about Scripture. We can wrestle with suffering. We can think carefully about the world. We can use our minds and our reason. But knowledge by itself is not enough; A person can know a great deal about God and still fail to love God.

Augustine understood this because he had spent years searching for fulfilment. Eventually discovering that the deepest longings of the human heart cannot be satisfied by anything in this world.

We can possess everything the world has to offer and still be restless. Because we were created for God. As Augustine said and believed "Our hearts are restless until they rest in you."

And perhaps that is the greatest contribution Augustine made to the Church. Beyond all his theological arguments and writings, he gave the Church the testimony that a human heart wanders, restless until it finds its home in Christ.  In Christ who is always reaching out for us, yearning to bring us home.

Augustine reminds us that God's grace is greater than our failures.

His teaching reminds us that our hearts must be turned toward God.

His theology reminds us that we can love God with both our hearts and our minds.

And his prayer reminds us of the deepest truth about ourselves: our hearts are restless because we were made for God.

So let us pray that the Holy Spirit will continue the work of grace in us.

That God might turn our hearts away from those things that cannot satisfy and toward the One who alone can.

That he might give us the humility to confess our sins, the courage to seek truth, the grace to love our neighbours, and the faith to trust in Christ.

And that when our hearts are restless, may we remember the lesson of St Augustine: that our true home is not found in success, possessions, or human approval, but in the loving presence of God.

For in the end, Augustine discovered what Christ has always promised: that the restless heart can find its rest in God.