Trinity 6 (17C) St Edward, Burgess on prayer 28.7.19

Lord, teach us to pray they asked Jesus.

I want to look this morning at six aspects of prayer, of looking to Jesus: listening, friendship, warfare, benevolence, recollection, and lastly empowerment. 

Prayer, looking unto Jesus, is listening.  You can’t look to Jesus unless you give ear to him, unless you attend to him.  Our whole life depends on right listening – to other people and to ourselves at times – but chiefly to Jesus.

Through prayer we hear from God.  We catch his inspirations for our life and for the world.

How do we look to Jesus in listening?

A discipline of time offered to attend directly to God. 

Michael Ramsey’s quote – he prayed for 2 minutes but took 30 minutes to get there.

Scripture is a means of looking to Jesus through listening to his Word. There is great power in imaginative listening to scripture. One way you can do this is to make the words of scripture more personal by changing the case of the pronoun in the passage. Take that Colossians passage. You could make it into a This is the Word of the Lord about John or whoever you are. It could read: When I John was buried with Christ in baptism, I was also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead. And when I was dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of my flesh, God made me alive together with Christ, when he forgave me all my trespasses. As I read the passage like this it reminds me how God sees me and how I should see myself, as one dead to sin and alive to him. There are times when such an observation can be very powerful.

This sort of exercise is about experiencing what we already possess as Christians, seeing ourselves as God sees us in his word. You read through prayerfully until God touches your Spirit and then hold yourself at that point once such a prayerful impulse has been given to you.

Prayer, looking to Jesus is secondly about friendship.  We seek our friends’ attention and he seeks ours.

When friends meet they light up and so it is with Jesus and ourselves as we come before him in contemplation.

When did you last sit in quiet before the Lord?  What is it that keeps you from doing so? Could you imagine Jesus your friend doing you any harm?

Contemplative prayer has been described as ‘spiritual radiotherapy’. St Augustine once said that the whole purpose of life is the healing of the heart’s eye through which God is seen. Heart surgery of the Holy Spirit: the melting of coldness within cf heavenly microwave

A major barrier to contemplation is the way our minds get so distracted which hinders our hearts from contemplation. This is where the repeating of short words that engage and focus the mind can be helpful as in the Orthodox Jesus prayer. This involves repeating again and again the gospel prayer Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me a sinner. The value of the Jesus Prayer is commended all through the Christian tradition as in the writings of early Christian writer, Hesychius of Jerusalem who captures something of the positive, joyful goodness that seems to flow from this discipline even if such graces are inevitably sporadic. The sun, passing over the earth, produces daylight; the holy and worshipful Name of the Lord Jesus, constantly shining in the mind, produces a measureless number of sun-like thoughts. 

Please don’t hesitate to talk to me afterwards if you want guidance on the Jesus Prayer as I’ve written a book about it (show). Not that I’m expert - any expertise I possess is to know that when it comes to prayer we’re all on the bottom rung of the ladder!

Looking to Jesus in prayer though, to summarise the second heading, is about building friendship, about lighting one another up so that in the words of Nehemiah (8v10) the joy of the Lord [becomes] our strength. 

Looking to Jesus is thirdly warfare against the deadening spiritual impact of the world, the flesh and the devil. Prayer is warfare because Jesus calls us to a fullness of humanity that involves our shedding constraints, shaking off what Hebrews calls the weight and the sin that clings so closely (12v1b).

He who is in you, St John says, is greater than he that is in the world.  1 John 5:4

In prayer we see ourselves in a true light and take action against the dark forces that impel us. Self-examination has been described as being like going under water.  You experience an upthrust, an opposition. There is a power at work totally opposed to self-knowledge. Satan is fearful of both our knowing God and our knowing ourselves.  He wants us to live in ignorance so that we can comply with his schemes! 

Did you know any Anglican Communicant can find a spiritual director through their clergy or by a phone call directly to Diocesan Church House who’ll give you names of potential prayer guides to try out within a short distance of where you live? 

It's also possible to approach visiting priests for one-to-one confidential help in knowing the assurance of God’s forgiveness. We have a saying about use of this ministry of confession among Anglicans: ‘all may, none must, some should’. Sometimes making a sacramental confession can refresh your prayer - ‘Square with God and he will square with you’.

Prayer is warfare. There is a power at work opposed to self-knowledge and we need courage to battle against it, holding to faith God always has our best interests at heart in the costly business of facing up to ourselves, warts and all.

Looking to Jesus fourthly is benevolence, the capacity to enter the good will of God for all people, especially in intercessory prayer.

Christianity is not merely a doctrine or a system of beliefs Thomas Merton wrote, it is Christ living in us and uniting people to one another in His own life and unity.  For Merton a hermit monk there is only one true flight from the world; it is not an escape from conflict, anguish and suffering, but … flight from disunity and separation to unity and peace in the love of other [people].

The prayer of intercession is true to the invitation to benevolence in Galatians where St Paul invites his readers to bear one another’s’ burdens and so fulfil the law of Christ.  6:2)

We look to Jesus to be with us as we intercede.  He lifts us up into His Perfect Offering. In intercession we come before the Lord with people and needs on our heart to entrust them to him with confidence.

Here’s one suggested method used by Dorothy Kerin:

By an act of the will place yourself in the presence of Our Lord.

With an act of faith ask him to empty you of self and of all desire save that his will may  be done and that it may illuminate your heart and mind.

Then gather to mind all those you are to intercede for and hold them silently up to him.

Make no special request but just rest with them in him.

Desire nothing but that Our Lord may be glorified in them.

In this simple way of approach Our Lord makes known his will and gives himself to us and to those for whom we intercede – in quietness.

Through intercessory prayer, in the words of Professor Hallesly we couple the powers of heaven to our helplessness…the powers which can awaken those who sleep in sin and raise up the dead … that can capture strongholds and make the impossible possible.

Fifthly looking to Jesus is prayer of recollection, prayer that takes stock of your life and celebrates what God has done and is doing and looks forward to what God is going to do in us and through us.

The value of prayer journaling. Tis grace both led me safe thus far … and grace will lead me home. A good exercise is to look back over your life and recollect with Jesus the five biggest spiritual milestones along the way, your five most powerful desires, your five worst fears. Recollection is about such reminiscing or calling to mind.  It is also about ‘collecting again’ or recovering control of oneself. Through looking to God we gain self-possession. 

Attention to God, mindfulness of Jesus is at the heart of the Christian life.The recollected woman or man inhabits her or his words, and is able to be present to Jesus at all times so that Jesus can be in them and show through them.

Prayer, looking to Jesus is lastly empowerment.  If you then, who are evil, know how to give your children what is good, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him (Luke 11:13).

Well we did ask for the Spirit - or others asked, at baptism and confirmation, the birth of our Christian commitment and in the receiving of Holy Communion - but we need to keep inviting him by asking regularly for the Holy Spirit. 

Prayer is an empowerment especially by the gift of the Holy Spirit. As we pray we can at times feel God’s touch upon our heart, see some sort of vision or be led to some particular scripture verse as we look to Jesus. This is charismatic prayer, literally graced or given prayer in which our looking to Jesus and waiting before him is answered by a heavenly gift.

Looking to Jesus in prayer then is listening, friendship, warfare, benevolence, recollection and empowerment. 

May the Lord turn our eyes more and more upon himself so that our earthly pursuits may lose some of their enticement as we see more of him through seeking him in prayer. So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.

St Bartholomew, Brighton Trinity 5 (16C) 21st July 2019

Martha and Mary – who chose the better part?

Our Lord’s commending Mary is clear statement that contemplation beats activism. Not that practical work, of which St Martha is patron, has no place, only we need to watch out less such work shifts us from the priority of resting in the Lord.

The preacher’s danger is Mary’s. In thinking out and handing on what should be we run more risk of neglecting to act out our faith in good works. As if saying what’s right is complete without doing it. So many scriptures warn how faith without works is like a flabby muscle needing strengthening by exertion.

Our Lord’s favouring Mary is less of a challenge to Christian thinkers and contemplatives than Christian activists who forget to root their good works in prayer. Its an English heresy - Christianity is doing good, as if that were unique to Christianity. When we abide in God, God abides in us, steering our lives towards fruitful action, action that points people back to him

God desires mortals to have intimacy with himself - this is the central truth of Christianity.

50 years on this weekend from the Apollo 11 moon landing we look up in awe at the night sky, at the moon and planets and stars beyond it.  We look up at them and think, the God who made the immensity of the cosmos desires intimacy with mortals!

We heard in the epistle from Colossians of the majesty of Christ ‘in [whom] all things in heaven and earth were created…’ (Colossians 1v15-28)

In the Gospel His Majesty, Our Blessed Lord, addresses us through his rebuke to a dear friend: ‘Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her’ (Luke 10v42)

God desires to have union with us, intimate union, heart to heart.

Today’s scripture ponder the majesty and yet the availability of God.

How is this intimacy brought to us?

On God’s side by the gift of the Spirit - on our side, we receive his friendship by humility and expectancy.

On God’s Side - how can God be one with us? The Maker of the stars hold me close, answer my prayers, guide me, free me from fear, heal me, forgive me? God is after all different.

The answer is by the Holy Spirit who is God and who through Christ brings God in his fullness to fill my heart. The ocean is no less for filling a pool. So it is with God, as St Paul explains to the Corinthians: ‘the Spirit searches the depths of God… (and) we have received the Spirit… who… interprets spiritual truth’ (1 Corinthians 2:10)

On my side intimacy with God is established as a gift that is welcomed. 

How? 

By humility and by expectancy… the two balancing Christian virtues commended by St. Francis de Sales.

To be humble like its etymology ‘humous - of the earth’ is readiness to see our nothingness before God and our less than nothingness through sin.

Then expectant on God, confident in God. St. Therese of Lisieux lived as a nun in the late 19th century when she pondered the invention of the electric lift. We have her Story of a Soul, a Christian classic, read with profit across Christian traditions, first commended to me by a Baptist minister. In her story Therese tells of her confidence God would make her a Saint. As surely as we enter an electric lift to be raised effortlessly to great height we can put our whole life into God’s hands seeking to be made holy. This is her so-called Little Way.

Intimacy with God is God’s gift by his Spirit. It is welcomed by humility and expectancy.

The eucharist is the great parable and seal of all of this...here God gives his Spirit, his own Life, par excellence… here we come empty-handed, in total humility before the Lord and yet with expectancy...

‘Lord I am not worthy...but only say the word’

Ronald Rolheiser in his book ‘Forgotten among the Lilies’ writes: ‘Perhaps the most useful image of how the Eucharist functions is the image of a mother holding a frightened, tired and tense child. In the eucharist God functions as a mother. God picks us up; frightened, tired, helpless, complaining, discouraged and protesting children, and holds us to her heart until the tension subsides and peace and strength flow into us’

Such is the intimacy we are privileged to share this morning and day by day in the Lord’s Presence.

‘There is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her’ Luke 10.42

‘He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives in me and I live in him’ John 6.56

Rusper & Cuckfield (15th of Year) Luke 10.25-37 14th July 2019

It’s hard to love.

This morning (evening)’s readings set out the vision, task and equipment for love found in Jesus Christ. 

The first reading sets out something of the vision, the Good Samaritan reading the task and the second reading how you get equipped for the task of love.

Let’s start with the vision of love in Moses’s farewell discourse in Deuteronomy 30:9-14 set for our first reading. It refers to obeying the Lord your God by observing his commandments and decrees that are written in [the] book of the law but goes on to announce a new facet of such visionary obedience. Like Jeremiah, who prophesied near the time of the writer up of Moses’s discourse, we’re told of law beyond the Ten Commandments written on stone. The law of love is something that seeks to be written on the heart. The word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe. This thought or vision of love, last line of today’s Old Testament reading, is pointer to the enactment of love set forth in today’s Gospel. 

There are few bible passages as familiar as Luke 10:25-37. In the story of the Good Samaritan we need to know that touching a corpse led to ritual defilement so that the priest and Levite were doing right by the ritual law. The Samaritan who wasn’t a Jew followed a higher law, that of love. His action illustrates love as a task. It’s not just benevolence let alone tolerance but doing concrete acts for people in concrete need. Our Lord turns the lawyer’s question who is my neighbour? back on him by the question which of these three was a neighbour, or in another translation, proved neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers? 

Loving your neighbour in Jesus’s book doesn’t mean loving some but not loving others. It means loving all, good and bad. This teaching was acted out when Jesus died outside the walls of Jerusalem. The Christian vision of love links to a God of love who acts concretely to serve and save outsiders so that Jesus Christ’s last conversation was with the thieves crucified with him outside Jerusalem. To the generous one he said words we all hope to hear on our deathbed. Today you will be with me in paradise. Luke 23:43

I must leave you to work out in your own situation the relevance of today’s scripture to the xenophobia evident in our nation through the Brexit debate. Can there ever be outsiders so far as God’s concerned? Can we trust a nationalism that falls short of the deep British sense of fair play and inclusion, itself built from 1500 years of Christianity? On the issue of Islamophobia I can’t understand how people can deride people of Muslim belief without whose courteous service the NHS in Sussex would collapse. 

We want a society that doesn’t just tolerate difference but which respects those who’re different. As Christians we’re also nowadays among those who’re different. We are also losing respect in society. Once or twice I’ve had to say to someone ‘Whilst I respect your views, I am intolerant of your intolerance of my views’. [Badges from Ian Hislop’s I Dissent exhibition 2018-9]

Building respect is costly in time and trouble. It refuses to pass by on the other side, especially when it comes to the disadvantaged. The Samaritan exemplifies this in the concrete tasks he took on. When he saw him, he was moved with pity. Then, from the heart’s motivation, followed these concrete tasks. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, “Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.”  

The vision, the task, and thirdly the equipment for love. The first reading set out the vision, the Good Samaritan Gospel reading shows us the task now we look at the second reading which touches on how we get equipped for the task of love.

Paul writes to the Christians in Colossae of his prayer that they be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding   to lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as they bear fruit in every good work and… grow in the knowledge of God. He adds May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and… be prepared to endure everything with patience. (Colossians 1:9-11). The vision of love leads us into the task of love, that is, good works, that require the strength that comes from God’s glorious power that serve endurance.  

We come to Church to join the angels, as the Glory to God and Holy, holy, holy chants affirm, in looking forward to the certainty of heaven. Our Sunday celebrations lift us up beyond the changes and chances of life, the hardships we bear in love, to the certain, all embracing love of God that will be ours in heaven with the angels and saints. In so doing the Eucharists we celebrate bathe us in heavenly love.

We come to Church primarily to worship God but through word and sacrament, prayer and fellowship we are also edified, built up, equipped. Church is a temple more than a place of edification but it is both. When we hear the word, offer ourselves in Christ’s Sacrifice and receive his body and blood we are better equipped to love. The Holy Spirit comes again and again in prayer and worship. 

Through reading the Bible day by day we’re further strengthened because there’s no word of God without power. To experience such empowerment we need to know our Bibles, to be familiar with the promises of God, bringing these to bear in the situations we face day by day. That last sentence of our second reading is awesome if you can see it addressed to you personally and put it in the singular. He has rescued me from the power of darkness and transferred me into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom I have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. The darkness that descends upon us periodically in life loses its power for one confident they can never be taken out of Christ’s kingdom and love. Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil for you are with me; your rod and staff they comfort me. Psalm 23:4

It’s hard to love – in our own strength. It’s hard to persevere through tribulations small or great. The readings today set out the vision, task and equipment for love found in Jesus Christ. They awaken us to God’s vision of what it is to love, far more than the Ten Commandments inscribed on church walls, a vision to be written on our hearts. The Gospel reminds us of the task of love and how respect triumphs over tolerance in Christianity. Lastly we’re reminded how the commandment to love brings with it love’s supply in abundance through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.

St Richard, Haywards Heath 14C 7 July 2019

The harvest is rich but the labourers are few, so ask the Lord of the harvest to send labourers to his harvest Luke 10:2

The French have a military saying ‘reculer pour mieux sauter’ – retreat, coil up, draw back in order to better jump forwards.

Each Sunday St. Richard’s has work ahead, Gospel work, and she needs our labour – so we need to prepare, to get ready.

The Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them out ahead of him in pairs..

There’s work ahead. We need to prepare, ‘reculer’, to draw back somewhat into ourselves, to retreat before attempting an advance for God in our community

Two thoughts first on ‘reculer’, on retreat – and they are about seeking deeper humility and confidence in God.

Then two thoughts on ‘sauter’, on jumping forwards – the need to work at prayer and invitation as joint scissor blades that will cut a way ahead for us.

First then thoughts about how we might need to ‘coil up’ in readiness for effective outreach. St Francis de Sales taught two essential virtues for Christians which we are always in need of deepening.  They are humility and confidence in God.

1. Humility

To go into ourselves, ‘reculer’ must be about deepening our humility as individuals and as a Church.

Don’t you feel humbled at the very idea of mission?  Who are we to commend Almighty God to folk at a time when religion to many people is more source of evil than good?

Who are we to tell Haywards Heath it needs Our Lord?

Good thinking – our greatest resource for mission as Christians must be humility, a sense of our own inadequacy.

The more we’re aware of God’s mercy to us in all humility, the more we’re able to reflect it towards others – and the more affinity we have with our fellow human beings.

Just as our flesh literally weighs us down there’s a gravitational field of self-centredness that makes human life without God the burden it is. When we discover mercy we discover our nothingness and our less than nothingness through sin.

It is precisely in owning that nothingness in the virtue of humility that we grow wings that lift us away from self towards God and neighbour.

Freed more and more from taking ourselves so seriously we take flight. Here supremely at Mass, week by week, is a school of humility. We’re humbled by an ever-fuller vision of God in his magnificence and mercy – and we indeed take flight.

2. Confidence in God

A second virtue for us to work on is confidence.

By confidence I mean confidence in God and not self-confidence. To ‘coil up’ and gain energy as Christians preparing to spring forwards we need to renew a different sort of confidence – confidence in God.

God, Almighty God, is far worthier of our trust than we will ever believe on this earth.

Through the new bible study group, through our forthcoming pilgrimage, through our own reading about the faith or through conversations with one another including our priests we build confidence in Our Lord, his promises and his possibilities so as to be in a better position to bring in the new Church members we hope to see in St. Richard’s.

We need confidence in God coupled to humility – it is this combination that resources us for outreach. Our admission we’re nothing before God saves us from being presumptuous in witnessing to others. Our confidence that God desires to be everything to us and to everyone balances this and helps put spring in our steps as we commend Christian Faith.

Lastly two thoughts on ‘sauter’, on jumping forwards – the need to work at prayer and invitation.

3.  Prayer

These two things - prayer and invitation are like two powerful blades in a scissor action lying ahead for St. Richard’s as we work for yet more effective outreach.

As Hallesly wrote: ‘It is by prayer that we couple the powers of heaven to our helplessness ...the powers which can awaken those who sleep in sin and raise the dead, the power which can capture strongholds and make the impossible possible’.

Thousands around us are living and dying without Christ and we want them to discover a purpose for living and a reason for dying - the very purpose and reason we have as Christians here at St. Richard’s. As today’s Gospel implies we’re called to act - you are called to act.

I am asking you each day to pray for the growth of the Church mentioning particular individuals known to you upon whom you desire God’s richest blessing.

It may be a matter of praying the Our Father slowly, ‘Thy Kingdom come in Haywards Heath, in Sussex, in the life of my friends, or of taking up afresh the parish monthly intention sheet, or of saying a prayer of our own like, ‘Lord Jesus draw him to Yourself with a special intention for particular friends.

We have an ongoing Mission -  and you and I are on its executive Committee - we are to act - by the prayer we offer day by day and by the invitations we give out to our friends for special events, especially social events at Church like last night.

4.  Invitation

Invitations for people to join in some of our events requires forethought.  The idea of inviting folk must be around as we make new friends or as we relate to our existing friends and family members. We need a whole attitude of ‘invitation’, to make ourselves, or let the Holy Spirit make us more and more a living ‘invitation’ to meet with Our Lord and his Church

Both our prayer and our invitation require a right attitude, one of wholeheartedness.

So we move back from ‘sauter’ to ‘reculer’, from planning our advance to planning the right sort of preparation.

Do you think it is the will of Our Lord for his Church to grow? Today’s Gospel says yes, it is!

Do you think we at St. Richard’s have something the friends we are called to pray for are missing out on?

We need to believe this if our prayer and our invitations are to be wholehearted.

Let me put it the other way around. How will you feel when the friend or neighbour you are going to pray for comes with you to Church? Will you feel embarrassed? If so, why should you feel so?

Is the celebration of your own faith helpful to your human and social flourishing? How good is the gospel to you - good enough to be worth sharing? Or is your faith something private, something weird and wonderful, special for Sundays but nothing you would dare to trouble your friends and neighbours with?

May the Lord touch us this morning as we welcome Him in the Blessed Sacrament - touch us in our heart of hearts, so we can touch others for him! God refresh in us the purpose for living and the reason for dying given to us in our Risen Lord. As God is so near to us may he make himself near to all whom we entrust to him in the weeks ahead. The Gospel is good! This Church is a place of purpose in a confused world, a place of belonging in a lonely world. May more belong here with us to Jesus!