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!