Saturday 9 June 2018

Trinity 1 (10B) St Bartholomew, Brighton 10.6.18

It’s hard to gather up a few lines of encouragement and challenge in less than 10 minutes from scripture passages that set so many hares running.



‘We believe and therefore speak’ Paul says in the passage from 2 Corinthians but if we believe what do we speak? That ‘the abundant grace might through the thanksgiving of many redound to the glory of God.’ Yes, may that be so in the next 10 minutes - the preacher really needs that grace - come, Holy Spirit!

We move on to the holy Gospel from Saint Mark Chapter 3 - what do we make of it?

First we have Our Lord’s family, including we presume his blessed Mother, going out ‘to lay hold on him: for they said, “He is beside himself” (v21). Yesterday I was at Mass to commemorate the Immaculate Heart of Mary - how could the sinless Mother of God be part of the opposition so to speak?

Second we have talk of division and demonic possession and how ‘if Satan rise up against himself and be divided, he cannot stand, but hath an end’. What are we to make of that talk on the 10th June 2018?

The third hare, so to speak, is Our Lord’s solemn utterance about the unforgivable sin against the Holy Spirit. ‘Verily I say unto you, All sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of men, and blasphemies wherewith soever they shall blaspheme: But he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation. (v28-29) Can I catch and tame that hare and serve it up for you?

Here goes - come, Holy Spirit!

Evangelical commentaries on this Gospel passage somewhat delight in what they see as evidence of Mary’s sinfulness or at least her distance from her Son’s mission. The Church though has never built her doctrine - and the sinlessness of Mary is universal church doctrine - on a scripture text or two but on the whole Canon of Scripture as it interprets itself to the whole church over the Christian centuries. I commend to you my article on John Henry Newman in this month’s New Directions, an excellent Church of England publication. What matters with Mary is the consensus of Christian believing as Newman taught - and strangely he had problems with Marian doctrine that slowed his departure from the Anglican to the Roman Catholic fold. Newman of course was a major influence on our church founder Fr Wagner. Back to the Gospel. We imagine Our Lord’s engagement with those on the fringes of society, the outcasts and, yes, demon-possessed rattled a great number of cages which must have included his cousins who here set out to restrain him. Yet how could they restrain his Sacred Heart, as we heard his words in Friday’s festal reading from Luke 12:49 ‘I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled’.

This verse was quoted in the hurried ending of Bishop Michael Curry’s sermon at the Royal Wedding in a reference to geologist priest Teilhard de Chardin. Teilhard saw the fiery interior of the earth as pointer to the fire of love God wants the earth inflamed with. That preacher packed a lot into 13 minutes - my own minutes tick down!

Back again to the Gospel and Our Lady’s role. Isn’t it answered right at the end of this passage when Our Lord summarises his outreach in these words: ‘whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and my sister, and mother’. Can we not see Mary his Mother in this sentence - ‘the angel of the Lord brought tidings to Mary… behold the handmaid of the Lord be it unto me according to thy will … and the word was made flesh and dwelt among us’? Let scripture interpret scripture!

Second hare - all that talk of the devil and demons. Perhaps its best summarised by the etymology of diabolos which is slanderer. The goodness of God shown in Jesus Christ shines forth but it casts shadows, it speaks the truth that sets free but it draws forth lies, what we might call misinformation, disinformation or fake news even! It rattles the devil: ‘if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but his end has come’ says the Lord whose exorcisms are timely announcement of the descent of God’s love to earth. The personification of evil in the devil remains the church’s understanding yet as C.S.Lewis wisely said she steers a path between those who disbelieve in him and those obsessed with him. The devil’s only power is that of the lie, but he has that power, a spellbinding power which Jesus breaks. ‘You will know the truth’, Jesus says in John 8:32, ‘and the truth will make you free’. I remember being told of an Easter Vigil service with a drunk snoring at the back who woke up to hear the priest ask the congregation, ‘do you reject Satan, all his pomps and vanities’. ‘The bastard’ he shouted.

Third hare - coming back to the Gospel - the sin against the Holy Spirit. If a drunk swearing - or a priest swearing in Church can be the work of the Holy Spirit - how can action against the Spirit takes us to hell? ‘Verily I say unto you…  he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation.’ We’re almost up to time, I’m not ducking but will take a quick dive into the writings of Blessed John Paul II who taught blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is ‘refusal to accept the salvation which God offers to man through the Holy Spirit’. That’s a positive and inclusive definition I think. The Spirit comes to us again and again in Christ’s body and blood which we receive with our lips but we need to welcome that love in our hearts without refusal. Do I presume I have the Spirit - a charismatic sin if you like? ‘We do not presume’, but trust God for his ‘manifold and great mercy’, and that through baptism, confirmation and the Eucharist far from blaspheming we indeed have the Holy Spirit. Do I despair - the opposite error - thinking the Holy Spirit is nowhere - that’s when you’re not connecting all we’re about here at St Bart’s with the reality of your life. I’ve only space to say priests are always available for counsel, prayer, healing ministry or confession after Masses.

Come, Holy Spirit, as you came upon Mary! Come to us in Jesus as he came to those bound by despair in the days of his flesh! Come, save us from presumption and warm our cold hearts in  the furnace of Christ’s love that opened to us on Calvary and remains open to us in the Mass!

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