Last week we kept the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord with anointing in the oil of chrism representing the touch of the Holy Spirit.
I am pleased to report that one or two individuals experienced something afterwards that reminded them God was alongside them.
We are God’s Church and must be open to his surprises.
In today’s readings we have evidence of how God is in the business of surprising his devotees.
The call of Samuel was a great surprise to him. The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread. We are told. Yet At that time Eli, whose eyesight had begun to grow dim so that he could not see, was lying down in his room; the lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the Lord, where the ark of God was. Then the Lord called, ‘Samuel! Samuel!’ and he said, ‘Here I am!’ and ran to Eli, and said, ‘Here I am, for you called me.’
After two rebuttals we heard how Eli perceived that the Lord was calling the boy.
Samuel – and Eli – have a surprise of the Spirit which they need to come to terms with. In consequence of Samuel’s recognition of God’s call Israel receives a new start that leads through Samuel to Saul, David and the Kings.
For our second reading we had a passage from the Revelation of Saint John the Divine. I have actually been to Patmos, the Island where we’re told John’s vision came to him when he was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day. I attended the Orthodox Liturgy on the Island and when you read the passage of the priestly elders falling down before the sacrificial Lamb you could imagine John dreaming at the eucharist which is so structured – led by elders we gather round the altar as Christ’s sacrifice is represented and we behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
The book of Revelation is a mighty surprise of the Spirit to any who read it with devotion. We had a particularly upbeat section of it read for us today.
Then the Gospel reading has Philip found by Jesus. What a surprise! So much taken up was Philip, we read, that he went and got Nathanael, Saint Bartholomew, who, initially sceptical of Jesus was won over by the surprising knowledge Jesus had of his being under the fig tree.
Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel! He says in homage to Jesus who presents him with this astounding promise that extends to all believers:
I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.
Now that will be a surprise for us on the last day or on the day of our death as it was for those first disciples when they saw their friend and Lord ascending into heaven at the end of his earthly ministry.
So what can we draw for ourselves from today’s readings?
That God is a living and therefore surprising God.
We can’t tie him down in human categories since we are to him as dust to the heavens above. Indeed in God’s house whether you’re the greatest saint or worst sinner puts you either top or bottom of the carpet so to speak.
In that respect what’s most surprising is God’s actual interest in us humans in the first place. How he takes trouble to call Samuel, John, Philip, Nathanael – and, yes, you and I - for we too are called and to be equipped for his purposes?
C.S.Lewis wrote a book ‘Surprised by Joy’ to describe the confounding of his dismal atheism by a surprising encounter with the living God.
Sometimes it can be the same for us. We go through phases of practical atheism when God doesn’t seem to count much in our lives only to be woken up like Samuel by a voice from above spoken through our circumstances as were the people touched in last week’s anointing.
Here I am, for you called me, we find ourselves saying in obedience to God’s surprising intervention.
If you want to make God laugh, just tell him your plans. The point is we need an openness to his possibilities that’s bred in humility.
At the end of the day we’re not ultimately in control of our lives - God is.
God must many a time be amused at the presumption of humanity in the plans we make since we can’t possibly comprehend the variables as we look forward in life as he does.
Plan we must, as this New Year gets underway, but let our plans leave us open to welcoming the surprises of the Holy Spirit.
Sunday, 15 January 2012
Sunday, 8 January 2012
Baptism of the Lord 8.1.12
John the Baptist said: I have baptised you with water; but he will baptise you with the Holy Spirit Mark 1:8
Why do we need the Holy Spirit?
To pray, to love, to serve, to evangelise, to be obedient, to forgive, to heal…
Without the Holy Spirit:
God is far away,
Christ stays in the past,
the Gospel is a dead letter,
the Church is simply an organisation,
authority is a matter of domination,
mission is a matter of propaganda,
the liturgy no more than an evocation,
Christian living a slave morality.
But in the Holy Spirit:
the risen Christ is there,
the Gospel is the power of life,
the Church shows forth the life of the Trinity,
authority is a liberating service,
mission is a Pentecost,
the liturgy is both memorial and anticipation,
human action is deified.
(Words for Pentecost Sunday from the Greek Orthodox Archbishop Athenagoras)
As baptised, confirmed - and some of us - ordained Christians we possess the Holy Spirit!
We possess the Spirit - but does he possess us? That is the key to a spiritual vitality!
As Our Lord says in St John Chapter 7:37-39 If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.
Our renewal in the Holy Spirit is about the releasing of the life of the Spirit within us.
The late Dom Ian Petit of Ampleforth wrote these words in his book 'You Will Receive Power': Baptism and Confirmation confer a supernatural gift, but ignorance or lack of understanding of the gift, can block its full effect. In other words, while the sacrament is valid and has been given, the effect has been blocked. When the block is removed then the full effect floods in...(a) baptism in the Holy Spirit… an opportunity for awakening in (people) their sacraments of initiation..
The New Year begins with a liturgical reminder about our ongoing need for this unblocking and awakening to the power of the Holy Spirit who visits us in every Eucharist. We have the possibility after the sermon of receiving anointing on our foreheads with the oil blessed by the Bishop for use at baptism, confirmation and ordination. We call it chrism oil and it represents the anointing in the Holy Spirit given in baptism, confirmation and ordination. We are allowed to use it occasionally to express and effect the renewal of faith and baptism as this morning.
The Feast of the Baptism of the Lord is the grand reminder that Christians are people who have woken up to Jesus and to the Gift of the Holy Spirit, to the living God - nothing less.
An awakening to the Spirit, a releasing of the Spirit, an unblocking of his flow – this is the invitation and challenge of today’s Feast!
There is one baptism for the forgiveness of sins and it confers the Holy Spirit. A gift though is given that needs to be received. For Christians to seek the renewing power of the Spirit – as we do as we receive Holy Communion every Sunday - is a matter of seeking to be more fully what we are in Christ and nothing more or less than that!
We want to be a people that live knowing their need of grace!
The Spirit is waiting to confirm to us the same words that were spoken to Our Lord at his baptism: You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.
Christians share in the anointing of the Anointed One – Jesus is the Christ or Anointed One so he can share his anointing with us and speak into our hearts those words of adoption: You are my son, my daughter; with you I am well pleased.
There’s a great tale from C.S. Lewis' about a doubting Bishop. Lewis once imagined an additional scene at the Marriage at Cana - a sceptical bishop sitting further down the table from Our Lord and Our Lady. There are the guests with the water turned into wine. As everyone enjoys the new wine of the Kingdom Feast the doubting bishop is holding up his glass and scrutinising, "How can this be? How can water become wine? How can the philosophical difficulties about an interventionist God be overcome? Is this some sort of conjuring trick?" All the while the rest of them at table are drinking up the Spirit in whatever sense you like!
There are many who make an 11th Commandment Thou shalt not commit thyself! Such folk – and they are around in the Church today – miss out on Christian basics, on the empowering promised in today’s feast.
If you hesitate about coming forward this morning shelve your doubts! Be open to the touch of the Lord through his Church.
I have baptised you with water; but he will baptise you with the Holy Spirit. This baptism or gift of the Holy Spirit is an ongoing reality for those who will commit themselves. The Gift is not so much a once for all thing or commodity but rather something dynamic and ongoing.
Baptism in the Holy Spirit is a process in which the relationship that opens up at baptism involves an ongoing flow of love, praise and power leading into ongoing consecration in the Truth.
It is worth recalling that though Our Lord himself was conceived by the Holy Spirit he waited 30 years for his Baptism in Jordan. So it can be – as it was for me and can be for you- that though I had received the Spirit through Infant Baptism, Confirmation and Ordination the first deep experience came many years later – and through, of all things, a crisis of faith – and a recommitment!
I have mentioned my faith crisis before and how I went on a retreat years back and prayed God if you’re there show yourself, give me a vision of yourself more to your dimensions and less to mine – and he did – but it needs refreshing!
Another way to look at it is like this: if the Christian life is like a rose bush there are great spurts of growth from time to time that push out new branches with new flowers. One such branch and its some branch in its fruitfulness – is, if you like, a new opening up to the Spirit. Yet the life of the rose bush before and after such a new spurt of growth is the same life.
We possess the Spirit - but does he possess us? That is the question we are being asked on this feast of the Lord’s Baptism. There is a commitment issue here we need to address.
As we come to receive Jesus in Holy Communion are we really committed and open to his empowering? Are we ready to hear and to believe those wonderful words: You are my son, my daughter; with you I am well pleased.
After the silence you have a chance to act in faith upon those wonderful words and come forward for the Father’s touch and anointing expressed sacramentally through his minister’s anointing touch upon your forehead.
As this happens we will continue in prayer and sing hymns to the Spirit.
Why do we need the Holy Spirit?
To pray, to love, to serve, to evangelise, to be obedient, to forgive, to heal…
Without the Holy Spirit:
God is far away,
Christ stays in the past,
the Gospel is a dead letter,
the Church is simply an organisation,
authority is a matter of domination,
mission is a matter of propaganda,
the liturgy no more than an evocation,
Christian living a slave morality.
But in the Holy Spirit:
the risen Christ is there,
the Gospel is the power of life,
the Church shows forth the life of the Trinity,
authority is a liberating service,
mission is a Pentecost,
the liturgy is both memorial and anticipation,
human action is deified.
(Words for Pentecost Sunday from the Greek Orthodox Archbishop Athenagoras)
As baptised, confirmed - and some of us - ordained Christians we possess the Holy Spirit!
We possess the Spirit - but does he possess us? That is the key to a spiritual vitality!
As Our Lord says in St John Chapter 7:37-39 If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.
Our renewal in the Holy Spirit is about the releasing of the life of the Spirit within us.
The late Dom Ian Petit of Ampleforth wrote these words in his book 'You Will Receive Power': Baptism and Confirmation confer a supernatural gift, but ignorance or lack of understanding of the gift, can block its full effect. In other words, while the sacrament is valid and has been given, the effect has been blocked. When the block is removed then the full effect floods in...(a) baptism in the Holy Spirit… an opportunity for awakening in (people) their sacraments of initiation..
The New Year begins with a liturgical reminder about our ongoing need for this unblocking and awakening to the power of the Holy Spirit who visits us in every Eucharist. We have the possibility after the sermon of receiving anointing on our foreheads with the oil blessed by the Bishop for use at baptism, confirmation and ordination. We call it chrism oil and it represents the anointing in the Holy Spirit given in baptism, confirmation and ordination. We are allowed to use it occasionally to express and effect the renewal of faith and baptism as this morning.
The Feast of the Baptism of the Lord is the grand reminder that Christians are people who have woken up to Jesus and to the Gift of the Holy Spirit, to the living God - nothing less.
An awakening to the Spirit, a releasing of the Spirit, an unblocking of his flow – this is the invitation and challenge of today’s Feast!
There is one baptism for the forgiveness of sins and it confers the Holy Spirit. A gift though is given that needs to be received. For Christians to seek the renewing power of the Spirit – as we do as we receive Holy Communion every Sunday - is a matter of seeking to be more fully what we are in Christ and nothing more or less than that!
We want to be a people that live knowing their need of grace!
The Spirit is waiting to confirm to us the same words that were spoken to Our Lord at his baptism: You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.
Christians share in the anointing of the Anointed One – Jesus is the Christ or Anointed One so he can share his anointing with us and speak into our hearts those words of adoption: You are my son, my daughter; with you I am well pleased.
There’s a great tale from C.S. Lewis' about a doubting Bishop. Lewis once imagined an additional scene at the Marriage at Cana - a sceptical bishop sitting further down the table from Our Lord and Our Lady. There are the guests with the water turned into wine. As everyone enjoys the new wine of the Kingdom Feast the doubting bishop is holding up his glass and scrutinising, "How can this be? How can water become wine? How can the philosophical difficulties about an interventionist God be overcome? Is this some sort of conjuring trick?" All the while the rest of them at table are drinking up the Spirit in whatever sense you like!
There are many who make an 11th Commandment Thou shalt not commit thyself! Such folk – and they are around in the Church today – miss out on Christian basics, on the empowering promised in today’s feast.
If you hesitate about coming forward this morning shelve your doubts! Be open to the touch of the Lord through his Church.
I have baptised you with water; but he will baptise you with the Holy Spirit. This baptism or gift of the Holy Spirit is an ongoing reality for those who will commit themselves. The Gift is not so much a once for all thing or commodity but rather something dynamic and ongoing.
Baptism in the Holy Spirit is a process in which the relationship that opens up at baptism involves an ongoing flow of love, praise and power leading into ongoing consecration in the Truth.
It is worth recalling that though Our Lord himself was conceived by the Holy Spirit he waited 30 years for his Baptism in Jordan. So it can be – as it was for me and can be for you- that though I had received the Spirit through Infant Baptism, Confirmation and Ordination the first deep experience came many years later – and through, of all things, a crisis of faith – and a recommitment!
I have mentioned my faith crisis before and how I went on a retreat years back and prayed God if you’re there show yourself, give me a vision of yourself more to your dimensions and less to mine – and he did – but it needs refreshing!
Another way to look at it is like this: if the Christian life is like a rose bush there are great spurts of growth from time to time that push out new branches with new flowers. One such branch and its some branch in its fruitfulness – is, if you like, a new opening up to the Spirit. Yet the life of the rose bush before and after such a new spurt of growth is the same life.
We possess the Spirit - but does he possess us? That is the question we are being asked on this feast of the Lord’s Baptism. There is a commitment issue here we need to address.
As we come to receive Jesus in Holy Communion are we really committed and open to his empowering? Are we ready to hear and to believe those wonderful words: You are my son, my daughter; with you I am well pleased.
After the silence you have a chance to act in faith upon those wonderful words and come forward for the Father’s touch and anointing expressed sacramentally through his minister’s anointing touch upon your forehead.
As this happens we will continue in prayer and sing hymns to the Spirit.
Sunday, 1 January 2012
Christmas 1 1st January 2012
Is there anything new in Christianity?
Surely it’s the same old truths that we need to be continually apprehending!
As G.K. Chesterton wrote Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.
In today’s gospel we have Mary’s example of dwelling on Christian truth with an eye to implementing it. When the shepherds saw the circumstances of the nativity, they made known what had been told them about this child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.
How do we recover this capacity to treasure the mysteries of Christ and ponder them in our heart so we can better put our faith into practice?
We need, some of us, to get recollected in heart - but this may need the reframing of our mental processing as well.
Last year my IT literate son bought me a book called Future Minds by Richard Watson that considers how the digital age is changing our minds, why this matters and what we can do about it. He admitted he needed to read it more than I!
Watson picks up on how the sheer volume of information brought our way by computers and the internet is drowning out learning and wisdom.
I picked up from this book Einstein’s distinction between what he called the intuitive and rational minds. ‘The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant’ Einstein wrote. ‘We have created a society that honours the servant and has forgotten the gift’.
Our minds are given us to reflect deeply on the world around us and help us make a difference. This intuitive sense is far above the so-called rational mind which, computer-like, serves processing information.
Part of healthy living is giving our minds space day by day for reflection upon our life situation and engagement with creative study. The technology that serves to gather knowledge and spread information at high speed can distract us from this vital activity of what we call cogitation, chewing things over in our mind.
As cows eating grass must chew the cud for it to create milk so our take up of information needs pauses for reflection by the intuitive mind if we are to be creative.
Through the discipline of mental reflection we mirror our creator in his over sight of the world and enter more into his creativity.
New Year’s Day is the first day of the rest of our lives as well as 2012.
Will it be a holiday, a holy day, doubled as it is with tomorrow, in which I can take time to assess what’s really important in my life, what are the main things, and how I can keep the main things the main things?
Indeed this may be a good Sunday to remind everyone of the fourth commandment: Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy. For six days you shall labour and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God.
As Christian believers in a 24-7 culture we need to attend to the truth of the Sabbath which is a call to turn attention once a week from the work of the Lord to the Lord of the work and what he’s got to say to us about the main things in life!
We’ve got his warning about good time management, the 4th Commandment, on the wall for us to see everytime we leave the altar after Holy Communion.
Good time management isn’t the be all and end all but it’s a vital component of living a peacable life.
For myself I take the most part of a day a month to reflect on my work as a priest, the liturgical, teaching, administration and pastoral demands and how best to prioritise. I would recommend to anyone this discipline of sitting down for a time with nothing much in front of you and just thinking. I spent a day in the British Library doing this last week.
It’s the release of the mind’s intuitional gifting made possible by getting off the rational treadmill which serves our getting on with the next thing or inventing an excuse for not doing so! The mind can’t take us where the heart refuses to go.
So let’s go on from mind to heart since our text is Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.
Just as a discipline of mental reflection serves the good organisation of our life so a discipline of daily prayer aids our Christianity.
Prayer in one definition is the lifting of heart and mind to God. For example if I decided to take the news sheet away and use it for prayer supplemented by browsing the church website to read this sermon again that would be a mental decision.
Then I could read the scripture, and the events and sick list, until something tugged my heart.
When I did this I was struck both by the invitation to ponder in Luke 2 and by the last phrase of the Isaiah 61 You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God.
When I put thought together for this sermon I picked up a heart tug from that verse and used it at my daily prayer time.
In that time I spent 20 minutes settling my mind by slowly repeating the Jesus prayer: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.
In this way I managed to empty my mind of thoughts about what to have for breakfast or what task to do first thing and to centre my being on God. Then I read, as if from God, the beautiful affirmation from today’s first lesson: You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God.
Lastly I dwelt in silence upon the Lord attending to this scripture verse.
Just an example, from my own recent practice, to encourage you to make prayer a treasuring of God’s words, a pondering of them in your heart.
If we find prayer difficult – who doesn’t? – it may well be because we need to settle our mind from being a tree full of monkeys so we can attend unimpeded from our heart to God. The main discipline of prayer is making that 14” or so journey from the brain to the heart so we can centre our being on God heart to heart.
As you know I commend the Jesus Prayer as a means to attaining this settling and am ready to explain it in more detail to any interested. I will be leading a quiet day on it for the Bible Reading Fellowship at St Cuthman’s Coolham on Thursday 15th March if any are interested.
There is nothing new in Christianity, only the age old truths we need to get refreshed and applied to our lives. Another more accessible aid might be committing this year to our monthly St Giles night with a spiritual focus. On Tuesday week 10th January we’ll have investment manager Simon Witheridge leading on how faith links to life and work.
Let’s make 2012 a time to take a leaf out of Mary’s book, setting apart time to treasure the main things in life, Sabbath time, and to pray, so our outward actions may ring more true to the faith we profess!
Surely it’s the same old truths that we need to be continually apprehending!
As G.K. Chesterton wrote Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.
In today’s gospel we have Mary’s example of dwelling on Christian truth with an eye to implementing it. When the shepherds saw the circumstances of the nativity, they made known what had been told them about this child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.
How do we recover this capacity to treasure the mysteries of Christ and ponder them in our heart so we can better put our faith into practice?
We need, some of us, to get recollected in heart - but this may need the reframing of our mental processing as well.
Last year my IT literate son bought me a book called Future Minds by Richard Watson that considers how the digital age is changing our minds, why this matters and what we can do about it. He admitted he needed to read it more than I!
Watson picks up on how the sheer volume of information brought our way by computers and the internet is drowning out learning and wisdom.
I picked up from this book Einstein’s distinction between what he called the intuitive and rational minds. ‘The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant’ Einstein wrote. ‘We have created a society that honours the servant and has forgotten the gift’.
Our minds are given us to reflect deeply on the world around us and help us make a difference. This intuitive sense is far above the so-called rational mind which, computer-like, serves processing information.
Part of healthy living is giving our minds space day by day for reflection upon our life situation and engagement with creative study. The technology that serves to gather knowledge and spread information at high speed can distract us from this vital activity of what we call cogitation, chewing things over in our mind.
As cows eating grass must chew the cud for it to create milk so our take up of information needs pauses for reflection by the intuitive mind if we are to be creative.
Through the discipline of mental reflection we mirror our creator in his over sight of the world and enter more into his creativity.
New Year’s Day is the first day of the rest of our lives as well as 2012.
Will it be a holiday, a holy day, doubled as it is with tomorrow, in which I can take time to assess what’s really important in my life, what are the main things, and how I can keep the main things the main things?
Indeed this may be a good Sunday to remind everyone of the fourth commandment: Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy. For six days you shall labour and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God.
As Christian believers in a 24-7 culture we need to attend to the truth of the Sabbath which is a call to turn attention once a week from the work of the Lord to the Lord of the work and what he’s got to say to us about the main things in life!
We’ve got his warning about good time management, the 4th Commandment, on the wall for us to see everytime we leave the altar after Holy Communion.
Good time management isn’t the be all and end all but it’s a vital component of living a peacable life.
For myself I take the most part of a day a month to reflect on my work as a priest, the liturgical, teaching, administration and pastoral demands and how best to prioritise. I would recommend to anyone this discipline of sitting down for a time with nothing much in front of you and just thinking. I spent a day in the British Library doing this last week.
It’s the release of the mind’s intuitional gifting made possible by getting off the rational treadmill which serves our getting on with the next thing or inventing an excuse for not doing so! The mind can’t take us where the heart refuses to go.
So let’s go on from mind to heart since our text is Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.
Just as a discipline of mental reflection serves the good organisation of our life so a discipline of daily prayer aids our Christianity.
Prayer in one definition is the lifting of heart and mind to God. For example if I decided to take the news sheet away and use it for prayer supplemented by browsing the church website to read this sermon again that would be a mental decision.
Then I could read the scripture, and the events and sick list, until something tugged my heart.
When I did this I was struck both by the invitation to ponder in Luke 2 and by the last phrase of the Isaiah 61 You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God.
When I put thought together for this sermon I picked up a heart tug from that verse and used it at my daily prayer time.
In that time I spent 20 minutes settling my mind by slowly repeating the Jesus prayer: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.
In this way I managed to empty my mind of thoughts about what to have for breakfast or what task to do first thing and to centre my being on God. Then I read, as if from God, the beautiful affirmation from today’s first lesson: You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God.
Lastly I dwelt in silence upon the Lord attending to this scripture verse.
Just an example, from my own recent practice, to encourage you to make prayer a treasuring of God’s words, a pondering of them in your heart.
If we find prayer difficult – who doesn’t? – it may well be because we need to settle our mind from being a tree full of monkeys so we can attend unimpeded from our heart to God. The main discipline of prayer is making that 14” or so journey from the brain to the heart so we can centre our being on God heart to heart.
As you know I commend the Jesus Prayer as a means to attaining this settling and am ready to explain it in more detail to any interested. I will be leading a quiet day on it for the Bible Reading Fellowship at St Cuthman’s Coolham on Thursday 15th March if any are interested.
There is nothing new in Christianity, only the age old truths we need to get refreshed and applied to our lives. Another more accessible aid might be committing this year to our monthly St Giles night with a spiritual focus. On Tuesday week 10th January we’ll have investment manager Simon Witheridge leading on how faith links to life and work.
Let’s make 2012 a time to take a leaf out of Mary’s book, setting apart time to treasure the main things in life, Sabbath time, and to pray, so our outward actions may ring more true to the faith we profess!
Sunday, 25 December 2011
All age Christmas eucharist address 2011
If there are children with a favourite present to show us could they be ushered to the front?
While they’re on the way let’s try a joke or two, like:
What did the reindeer say before launching into his comedy routine?
This will sleigh you.
What do you call the fear of getting stuck in a chimney?
Santaclaustrophobia
What do you get when you eat the Christmas decorations?
Tinselitis
Christmas is here and it’s time to be thankful for Jesus.
All the gifts we’ve been given this morning are given to honour the greatest Gift from the greatest Giver!
So what gifts have we been given?
Time for children to share.
I’ve brought my gift in – I got it early for Christmas and it’s the book from the David Attenborough TV series Frozen Planet.
Any other dads or mums got this too?
There’s a jingle on TV about it to the tune wonderful world that goes through some of its breath-taking images of polar animals.
Here’s one – what is it? p133
Polar bear
Here’s another – what is it? p165
Penguin chick
And these? p122
Killer whales
But this is my favourite (p75). It’s the Arctic woolly bear caterpillar.
Each year it feeds for just three weeks - as you may be able to see - on Arctic willow leaves. Then it gets frozen solid.
Fourteen times this living creature gets frozen solid and then after 14 years it becomes a moth and is able to fly.
According to my book it survives its annual freezing by producing glycerol. This prevents ice crystals forming inside it and damaging its vital functions.
Isn’t God wonderful?
The maker of the Arctic woolly bear caterpillar would have had no trouble planning his own way into human existence in the birth of Jesus.
Now a history test for the oldies in Church this morning!
If Jesus is the most famous who is the second most famous Jewish person of all time?
Albert Einstein lived between 1879 and 1955 and is the most distinguished of all scientists whose ideas on the working of the universe are still being confirmed by experiments.
Just before Christmas experiments with the Hadron Collider, the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator, confirmed the likely existence of the long-sought Higgs boson or God-particle that was predicted by Einstein’s theory of relativity.
Einstein openly admitted amazement at the harmony of the laws of nature which he said reveals an intelligence of such superiority that compared with it all systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection.
Be it Einstein’s thinking or David Attenborough’s observations we can’t doubt that the world around us is the product of someone very, very clever indeed.
What must he be like who made the Arctic woolly bear caterpillar, or the Higgs boson?
Christmas gives us an answer.
As the Maker of All isn’t a thing but a person he was in a position to get in touch when he saw it was the right time and to show us more of who he is. This he did by taking human form in Bethlehem around 2000 years ago.
God showed us God in Jesus born of Mary - going on to teach and heal, suffer and die, rise, ascend and give us the Holy Spirit.
The power that made the universe, baby penguins and killer whales, Arctic caterpillars and Higgs bosons, is a person.
Actually he’s three persons in one God, a Trinity, because only a being who shares love within himself can be a God of love – for how could God be love when there was nothing to love 14 billion years ago?
He had to be love within himself, love of a Father for a Son and a Son for a Father with that go-between of love we call the Holy Spirit.
That first Christmas God’s love, poured by the Spirit into Mary, came to land on the earth in baby Jesus.
This Christmas the same love is destined for earth again - only for your heart and my heart.
Do not be afraid; for see - I am bringing you good news of great joy.
In the joy of this morning you may know many limitations in your life – regrets, fears and anxieties – but perfect love has come today to cast out fear.
Today God who made each of us out of love invites us to open ourselves to him so we can know afresh the glorious liberty of the children of God!
O holy Child of Bethlehem, descend to us we pray. Cast out our sin and enter in, be born in us today!
Let’s pause for a quiet moment to reflect on all of this.
While they’re on the way let’s try a joke or two, like:
What did the reindeer say before launching into his comedy routine?
This will sleigh you.
What do you call the fear of getting stuck in a chimney?
Santaclaustrophobia
What do you get when you eat the Christmas decorations?
Tinselitis
Christmas is here and it’s time to be thankful for Jesus.
All the gifts we’ve been given this morning are given to honour the greatest Gift from the greatest Giver!
So what gifts have we been given?
Time for children to share.
I’ve brought my gift in – I got it early for Christmas and it’s the book from the David Attenborough TV series Frozen Planet.
Any other dads or mums got this too?
There’s a jingle on TV about it to the tune wonderful world that goes through some of its breath-taking images of polar animals.
Here’s one – what is it? p133
Polar bear
Here’s another – what is it? p165
Penguin chick
And these? p122
Killer whales
But this is my favourite (p75). It’s the Arctic woolly bear caterpillar.
Each year it feeds for just three weeks - as you may be able to see - on Arctic willow leaves. Then it gets frozen solid.
Fourteen times this living creature gets frozen solid and then after 14 years it becomes a moth and is able to fly.
According to my book it survives its annual freezing by producing glycerol. This prevents ice crystals forming inside it and damaging its vital functions.
Isn’t God wonderful?
The maker of the Arctic woolly bear caterpillar would have had no trouble planning his own way into human existence in the birth of Jesus.
Now a history test for the oldies in Church this morning!
If Jesus is the most famous who is the second most famous Jewish person of all time?
Albert Einstein lived between 1879 and 1955 and is the most distinguished of all scientists whose ideas on the working of the universe are still being confirmed by experiments.
Just before Christmas experiments with the Hadron Collider, the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator, confirmed the likely existence of the long-sought Higgs boson or God-particle that was predicted by Einstein’s theory of relativity.
Einstein openly admitted amazement at the harmony of the laws of nature which he said reveals an intelligence of such superiority that compared with it all systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection.
Be it Einstein’s thinking or David Attenborough’s observations we can’t doubt that the world around us is the product of someone very, very clever indeed.
What must he be like who made the Arctic woolly bear caterpillar, or the Higgs boson?
Christmas gives us an answer.
As the Maker of All isn’t a thing but a person he was in a position to get in touch when he saw it was the right time and to show us more of who he is. This he did by taking human form in Bethlehem around 2000 years ago.
God showed us God in Jesus born of Mary - going on to teach and heal, suffer and die, rise, ascend and give us the Holy Spirit.
The power that made the universe, baby penguins and killer whales, Arctic caterpillars and Higgs bosons, is a person.
Actually he’s three persons in one God, a Trinity, because only a being who shares love within himself can be a God of love – for how could God be love when there was nothing to love 14 billion years ago?
He had to be love within himself, love of a Father for a Son and a Son for a Father with that go-between of love we call the Holy Spirit.
That first Christmas God’s love, poured by the Spirit into Mary, came to land on the earth in baby Jesus.
This Christmas the same love is destined for earth again - only for your heart and my heart.
Do not be afraid; for see - I am bringing you good news of great joy.
In the joy of this morning you may know many limitations in your life – regrets, fears and anxieties – but perfect love has come today to cast out fear.
Today God who made each of us out of love invites us to open ourselves to him so we can know afresh the glorious liberty of the children of God!
O holy Child of Bethlehem, descend to us we pray. Cast out our sin and enter in, be born in us today!
Let’s pause for a quiet moment to reflect on all of this.
Midnight & Dawn Eucharists 2011
Fear not the coming of your God: fear not his friendship. He will not straighten you when he comes, rather he will enlarge you...You see then, if you love, how much room he gives you. Fear is a suffering that oppresses us. But look at the immensity of love.
Words on Christmas from Saint Augustine who lived at the turn of the fifth century.
I was taken by his image of Christianity as enlarging.
It’s so against people’s perception of what we’re about.
Yet the Babe of Bethlehem accepted those swaddling bands to give us the glorious liberty of the children of God.
God got straightened, bound up, so we could find new spaciousness and the power to become children of God.
Recently I had one of those awkward medical examinations and I amused my examiner by muttering courage equals fear plus the Holy Spirit.
To be a Christian is to have a capacity to rise through natural fear into the glorious liberty of the children of God.
You see then, if you love, how much room he gives you. Fear is a suffering that oppresses us. But look at the immensity of love.
To know you are loved, that God’s Spirit has been poured into your heart, is to connect with the centre of the universe and see his perfect love casting out your fear and its oppression over you.
One of the saddest caricatures of Christianity is that it’s narrow minded, a sort of strait laced morality. That Christians are holier than thou’s sent as moral policemen to keep the world in order.
I’ve been there, and maybe still am there, God knows!
A priest once had the privilege of speaking to the comedian Groucho Marx. I’d like to thank you, Mr. Marx the priest said, for all the joy you’ve brought into the world. Quick witted as ever Groucho replied And let me thank you, Father, for all the joy you’ve taken out!
God forgive us Christians for making our religion seem so constricting.
Tonight/today Jesus was bound in swaddling bands to set us free but we’ve undone his work trying to bind the world with strictures not of his making.
The Victorian priest Father Frederick Faber captured this in two verses of his hymn There’s a wideness in God’s mercy:
For the love of God is broader than the scope of human mind, and the heart of the eternal is most wonderfully kind. But we make his love too narrow by false limits of our own; and we magnify his strictness with a zeal he will not own.
When people look at a Church door they too often think of it as a way to narrow down your existence. Jesus did say enter by the narrow gate!
Once you come through the Church door – and I mean really come through into day by day discipleship and week by week worship - it’s more like the door of Doctor Who’s Tardis. You enter another dimension, the very dimension opened up by tonight.
I believe the new glazed doors serve this perception in the way they open up St Giles to our visitors.
God became man in Palestine and lives today in bread and wine – so he can live in you and me, opening up our horizons to his and widening our human possibilities into his.
There are people in Horsted Keynes this Christmas who’re struggling through cancer, unemployment, family breakdown or whatever who know this – I’ve seen them brave their fears and take a larger view!
When the One born to raise the sons of earth comes into our lives he enlarges us to make the most of the world around us in all its frailty.
Man is the macrocosm wrote Saint Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain. The whole created universe is the microcosm.
Human beings are pivotal to the universe because they bring the mind and thought of God into matter and there’s no thought or word of God without power.
Welcoming God’s love and his Holy Spirit gives us a life. It makes us what we’re meant to be according to God’s plan for the cosmos.
O Christian, be aware of your nobility wrote St Leo in another 5th century Christmas sermon. Be aware of your nobility. It is God’s own nature that you share: do not then, by an ignoble life, fall back into your former baseness.
Or St Augustine once again: Fear not the coming of your God: fear not his friendship. He will not straighten you when he comes, rather he will enlarge you...You see then, if you love, how much room he gives you. Fear is a suffering that oppresses us. But look at the immensity of love.
Look indeed, on this holy night/morning, and see in the Crib that immense love which makes you noble!
Pray for yourself and for all of us to live as God made us to live!
Words on Christmas from Saint Augustine who lived at the turn of the fifth century.
I was taken by his image of Christianity as enlarging.
It’s so against people’s perception of what we’re about.
Yet the Babe of Bethlehem accepted those swaddling bands to give us the glorious liberty of the children of God.
God got straightened, bound up, so we could find new spaciousness and the power to become children of God.
Recently I had one of those awkward medical examinations and I amused my examiner by muttering courage equals fear plus the Holy Spirit.
To be a Christian is to have a capacity to rise through natural fear into the glorious liberty of the children of God.
You see then, if you love, how much room he gives you. Fear is a suffering that oppresses us. But look at the immensity of love.
To know you are loved, that God’s Spirit has been poured into your heart, is to connect with the centre of the universe and see his perfect love casting out your fear and its oppression over you.
One of the saddest caricatures of Christianity is that it’s narrow minded, a sort of strait laced morality. That Christians are holier than thou’s sent as moral policemen to keep the world in order.
I’ve been there, and maybe still am there, God knows!
A priest once had the privilege of speaking to the comedian Groucho Marx. I’d like to thank you, Mr. Marx the priest said, for all the joy you’ve brought into the world. Quick witted as ever Groucho replied And let me thank you, Father, for all the joy you’ve taken out!
God forgive us Christians for making our religion seem so constricting.
Tonight/today Jesus was bound in swaddling bands to set us free but we’ve undone his work trying to bind the world with strictures not of his making.
The Victorian priest Father Frederick Faber captured this in two verses of his hymn There’s a wideness in God’s mercy:
For the love of God is broader than the scope of human mind, and the heart of the eternal is most wonderfully kind. But we make his love too narrow by false limits of our own; and we magnify his strictness with a zeal he will not own.
When people look at a Church door they too often think of it as a way to narrow down your existence. Jesus did say enter by the narrow gate!
Once you come through the Church door – and I mean really come through into day by day discipleship and week by week worship - it’s more like the door of Doctor Who’s Tardis. You enter another dimension, the very dimension opened up by tonight.
I believe the new glazed doors serve this perception in the way they open up St Giles to our visitors.
God became man in Palestine and lives today in bread and wine – so he can live in you and me, opening up our horizons to his and widening our human possibilities into his.
There are people in Horsted Keynes this Christmas who’re struggling through cancer, unemployment, family breakdown or whatever who know this – I’ve seen them brave their fears and take a larger view!
When the One born to raise the sons of earth comes into our lives he enlarges us to make the most of the world around us in all its frailty.
Man is the macrocosm wrote Saint Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain. The whole created universe is the microcosm.
Human beings are pivotal to the universe because they bring the mind and thought of God into matter and there’s no thought or word of God without power.
Welcoming God’s love and his Holy Spirit gives us a life. It makes us what we’re meant to be according to God’s plan for the cosmos.
O Christian, be aware of your nobility wrote St Leo in another 5th century Christmas sermon. Be aware of your nobility. It is God’s own nature that you share: do not then, by an ignoble life, fall back into your former baseness.
Or St Augustine once again: Fear not the coming of your God: fear not his friendship. He will not straighten you when he comes, rather he will enlarge you...You see then, if you love, how much room he gives you. Fear is a suffering that oppresses us. But look at the immensity of love.
Look indeed, on this holy night/morning, and see in the Crib that immense love which makes you noble!
Pray for yourself and for all of us to live as God made us to live!
Christingle service 2011
What do we most like about Christmas?
I like the quiet. Everything stops and there’s time to wonder.
Because the nights are dark and long there’s time to wonder about the moon, the planets and the stars.
I look at them and think ‘what must he be like who made all of these?’
If I can fill my mind with the sight of the moon, Jupiter, Orion, the Pleiades and so on I can imagine the mind of God.
If my mind can take in the starry sky God’s mind can take in so much more because he sees all and loves all.
God doesn’t just see one section of the sky he sees the whole of it and all the skies above all the planets in the universe.
God sees right back through history to the when there were no stars at all!
Who’s sitting by the List of Rectors of Horsted Keynes?
Can you give me the dates of the first Rector? Richard de Berkyng became Rector in 1177.
That means Christmas has been celebrated in this Church at least 834 times.
When did people first come to this area?
500,000 years ago – the earliest human remains were found 20 years ago in Boxgrove outside Chichester.
When did life on earth begin?
5 billion years ago. That’s 5000,000,000 years.
How old is the universe?
14 billion years. That’s three times as old as life itself.
It began with what scientists call the Big Bang but Christians know that by another name.
Tonight we are celebrating the revelation of the meaning and origin of the universe.
At one point in time chosen by him as the best time, the Creator of the Universe chose to show his face in Bethlehem in Judea some 2011 years ago.
This Jesus, the anniversary of whose birth we keep tonight, is nothing less than the Big Bang!
We know this from the way he died and rose at Easter more than from the stories of his birth, as in one of the earliest Christian texts from the letter to the Hebrews Chapter 1 verse 2. There it says Jesus, born in Bethlehem, is God’s Son whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds, the one who reflects God’s glory, the exact imprint of God’s very being who sustains all things by his powerful word.
This Jesus born of Mary in a stable made the Big Bang bringing time and space into being. He sustains all things which means he holds you and I together! He is to be heir or inheritor of all things.
We come from him, belong to him and we go to him.
So Christmas to me is a time to wonder!
To wonder at the stars above, the earth below, the existence of life and why human beings are here – and to see afresh in Jesus the power that brought us into being.
What sort of power?
The power of love - love wider than the ocean, immense as the earth and stars and cosmos - love that sees and enfolds all that is!
Love that came down at Christmas. The Love that set the world in motion to begin with became one of us for 33 years starting in Bethlehem.
This is nothing we could ever work out for ourselves but something God has revealed to us. Being a personal God he could do so and did do so in the birth, life, suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus his Son.
Christmas is about the love that makes the world go round!
The orange, the candle and the red band tonight stand for the world, the light of the One who made it and the blood he shed for us out of love upon the Cross.
Love came down at Christmas – so let’s celebrate it with our Christingles.
I like the quiet. Everything stops and there’s time to wonder.
Because the nights are dark and long there’s time to wonder about the moon, the planets and the stars.
I look at them and think ‘what must he be like who made all of these?’
If I can fill my mind with the sight of the moon, Jupiter, Orion, the Pleiades and so on I can imagine the mind of God.
If my mind can take in the starry sky God’s mind can take in so much more because he sees all and loves all.
God doesn’t just see one section of the sky he sees the whole of it and all the skies above all the planets in the universe.
God sees right back through history to the when there were no stars at all!
Who’s sitting by the List of Rectors of Horsted Keynes?
Can you give me the dates of the first Rector? Richard de Berkyng became Rector in 1177.
That means Christmas has been celebrated in this Church at least 834 times.
When did people first come to this area?
500,000 years ago – the earliest human remains were found 20 years ago in Boxgrove outside Chichester.
When did life on earth begin?
5 billion years ago. That’s 5000,000,000 years.
How old is the universe?
14 billion years. That’s three times as old as life itself.
It began with what scientists call the Big Bang but Christians know that by another name.
Tonight we are celebrating the revelation of the meaning and origin of the universe.
At one point in time chosen by him as the best time, the Creator of the Universe chose to show his face in Bethlehem in Judea some 2011 years ago.
This Jesus, the anniversary of whose birth we keep tonight, is nothing less than the Big Bang!
We know this from the way he died and rose at Easter more than from the stories of his birth, as in one of the earliest Christian texts from the letter to the Hebrews Chapter 1 verse 2. There it says Jesus, born in Bethlehem, is God’s Son whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds, the one who reflects God’s glory, the exact imprint of God’s very being who sustains all things by his powerful word.
This Jesus born of Mary in a stable made the Big Bang bringing time and space into being. He sustains all things which means he holds you and I together! He is to be heir or inheritor of all things.
We come from him, belong to him and we go to him.
So Christmas to me is a time to wonder!
To wonder at the stars above, the earth below, the existence of life and why human beings are here – and to see afresh in Jesus the power that brought us into being.
What sort of power?
The power of love - love wider than the ocean, immense as the earth and stars and cosmos - love that sees and enfolds all that is!
Love that came down at Christmas. The Love that set the world in motion to begin with became one of us for 33 years starting in Bethlehem.
This is nothing we could ever work out for ourselves but something God has revealed to us. Being a personal God he could do so and did do so in the birth, life, suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus his Son.
Christmas is about the love that makes the world go round!
The orange, the candle and the red band tonight stand for the world, the light of the One who made it and the blood he shed for us out of love upon the Cross.
Love came down at Christmas – so let’s celebrate it with our Christingles.
Sunday, 18 December 2011
Advent 4 18th December 2011
How does Jesus come into our lives?
He comes by the Holy Spirit.
He comes by the Sacraments.
He comes by the Word of God.
He comes by holy people as they rub off on us.
He comes by circumstances – which links to a second question:
Why does Jesus come into our lives?
He comes to bring us into his life, death and resurrection – and here is the rub.
Look, as the Church invites us to do so today, at his Mother.
She was first to welcome Jesus into her life – and where did it lead her?
She was led into hardship, led to a shaming pregnancy and a Cross of sorrows before taking the shine of glory.
I want Jesus in my life. I want the shine of glory – but, if I am honest, I don’t want hardships!
This is where Jesus sorts us out because it's by endurance of hardship that salvation is forged.
The great Christian writers speak of the need to gratefully accept most of what comes our way, including suffering and hardship.
Sharing life with Jesus means self-sacrifice.
Mary gives us the clue. I am the Lord's servant, she says in today’s Gospel, let it be for me according to the Lord's will and not my own.
Jesus gives us the Holy Spirit, the sacraments and scripture.
He also gives us hardships but we have to decide whether to endure them or quit.
In that decision we bring Jesus closer or we push him further away.
In recent weeks a good number of us in the congregation have had to endure hardships directly or alongside a loved one. Some of us have shown remarkable fortitude.
Last Sunday’s preacher announced he’d started chemotherapy and so engaged us dramatically with the practical side of faith.
He left me feeling I was a fair weather Christian!
I was reminded that the means by which we grow in holiness aren’t necessarily sermons or books or forms of prayer, the right sort of retreat or spiritual guide.
The means of our sanctification, of our cleansing from sin, healing from hurt and so on lies in the day to day circumstances of our life as we welcome them as the Lord’s gift.
As we read in Psalm 112:6,7 the righteous will not be overthrown by evil circumstances...he does not fear bad news, nor live in dread of what may happen. For he is settled in his mind that the Lord will take care of him.
The spiritual writer De Caussade in his book Self-abandonment to Divine Providence emphasises how our welcoming of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament Sunday by Sunday focuses the welcoming of the Lord in every circumstance that comes our way.
Jesus is as ready to meet us in the circumstances of our life as he is to meet us in the Sacrament of Bread and Wine.
To be glad deep down in your heart in every situation is a grace given by God, a grace we have to seek - just as Mary sought divine help to brave her expressed fear: How can this be?
If we aren't glad at heart it may be because we’re not fully submitted to God’s will revealed in the circumstances of our life.
Jesus comes into our lives – by the Spirit, Sacrament, Scripture or by circumstances - to bring us into his own life, death and resurrection.
He is ready to help us face discomfort so that his resurrection life may grow in us by the Spirit and our old proud and sinful nature is further humiliated and put down.
As we prepare for Christmas may we have our spiritual ears open to hear God speaking into our lives so that we might decrease in self orientation and gain within us the love of Christ that will never fail.
He comes by the Holy Spirit.
He comes by the Sacraments.
He comes by the Word of God.
He comes by holy people as they rub off on us.
He comes by circumstances – which links to a second question:
Why does Jesus come into our lives?
He comes to bring us into his life, death and resurrection – and here is the rub.
Look, as the Church invites us to do so today, at his Mother.
She was first to welcome Jesus into her life – and where did it lead her?
She was led into hardship, led to a shaming pregnancy and a Cross of sorrows before taking the shine of glory.
I want Jesus in my life. I want the shine of glory – but, if I am honest, I don’t want hardships!
This is where Jesus sorts us out because it's by endurance of hardship that salvation is forged.
The great Christian writers speak of the need to gratefully accept most of what comes our way, including suffering and hardship.
Sharing life with Jesus means self-sacrifice.
Mary gives us the clue. I am the Lord's servant, she says in today’s Gospel, let it be for me according to the Lord's will and not my own.
Jesus gives us the Holy Spirit, the sacraments and scripture.
He also gives us hardships but we have to decide whether to endure them or quit.
In that decision we bring Jesus closer or we push him further away.
In recent weeks a good number of us in the congregation have had to endure hardships directly or alongside a loved one. Some of us have shown remarkable fortitude.
Last Sunday’s preacher announced he’d started chemotherapy and so engaged us dramatically with the practical side of faith.
He left me feeling I was a fair weather Christian!
I was reminded that the means by which we grow in holiness aren’t necessarily sermons or books or forms of prayer, the right sort of retreat or spiritual guide.
The means of our sanctification, of our cleansing from sin, healing from hurt and so on lies in the day to day circumstances of our life as we welcome them as the Lord’s gift.
As we read in Psalm 112:6,7 the righteous will not be overthrown by evil circumstances...he does not fear bad news, nor live in dread of what may happen. For he is settled in his mind that the Lord will take care of him.
The spiritual writer De Caussade in his book Self-abandonment to Divine Providence emphasises how our welcoming of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament Sunday by Sunday focuses the welcoming of the Lord in every circumstance that comes our way.
Jesus is as ready to meet us in the circumstances of our life as he is to meet us in the Sacrament of Bread and Wine.
To be glad deep down in your heart in every situation is a grace given by God, a grace we have to seek - just as Mary sought divine help to brave her expressed fear: How can this be?
If we aren't glad at heart it may be because we’re not fully submitted to God’s will revealed in the circumstances of our life.
Jesus comes into our lives – by the Spirit, Sacrament, Scripture or by circumstances - to bring us into his own life, death and resurrection.
He is ready to help us face discomfort so that his resurrection life may grow in us by the Spirit and our old proud and sinful nature is further humiliated and put down.
As we prepare for Christmas may we have our spiritual ears open to hear God speaking into our lives so that we might decrease in self orientation and gain within us the love of Christ that will never fail.
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