Trinity 10 (18th of Year) 31st July 2016

Let your merciful ears, O Lord, be open to the prayers of your humble servants; and that they may obtain their petitions make them to ask such things as shall please you we prayed in the age old Collect for the Tenth Sunday after Trinity.

We prayed it looking back on a day by day chronicle of violent indiscriminate attacks on civilians recently claiming hundreds of innocent lives across Europe. The attack just miles away on a Christian eucharist in Normandy and the murder of a village priest is an extraordinary sacrilege which has impacted those who gather with me at this altar day by day.

Where are ‘God’s merciful ears’ when priests are being slaughtered at the altar? How can we be ‘obtaining our petitions’ in this spate of killings? How can we find and pray for what ‘pleases God’ in this extraordinary scenario?

I put these three questions linked to today’s Collect as a way into capturing afresh the way Christian faith grasps reality’s deepest significance, lighting up God’s big picture and the future he beckons us to.

First let’s look at mercy. The mercy logo on the front of our service booklets this year will have been displayed at Saint-Etienne du Rouvray in Rouen. It is the symbol of the Year of Mercy we’re sharing in Chichester Diocese with the Roman Catholic Church.  Let your merciful ears, O Lord, be open to the prayers of your humble servants. At Mass Fr Jacques would read as I did, for him among the last words he heard, the prophecy of Jeremiah Chapter 14 Tears flood my eyes night and day, unceasingly, since a crushing blow falls… prophets and priests…are at their wit’s end. How those words ring true today!

We have in St Giles a stained glass window of St Etienne. He is St Stephen, the first martyr, who knelt, as Jacques knelt, only to be stoned to death. One of those who stoned Stephen, Saul of Tarsus, was utterly transformed by that experience and became the arch-apostle of Christ.  May our new martyr’s blood avail to turn the wrath of humankind to God’s praise in like measure! Those who murdered Fr Jacques shouted God is great. Today’s collect, and the example of so many holy martyrs, remind us how God’s greatness is found chiefly in his mercy. When we’re made aware of that mercy in the suffering and death of Jesus, of God’s merciful ears attending to our brokenness, we lose any desire for violence. Those aware of their need of mercy have no need to lord it over others, let alone to murder them.

The events of the last two weeks – Nice, Munich, Ansbach, Tokyo and Rouen – are rooted in personal resentments and mental health issues as much as ideology let alone religion.  Let your merciful ears, O Lord, be open to the prayers of your humble servants - prayers for those who know not what they do, perpetrators who’re themselves victims of minds unhinged by the exigencies of 21^st century life.

How can we be ‘obtaining our petitions’ in this spate of killings? I asked earlier. Last Sunday we gave thanks for two ladies in our coffee group whose lives were spared when Penny’s car turned over and crashed. Today we’re thinking about the murder of a priest in Church. How do these two square up?

Our Christian faith is nothing obscure and nor is it geared to outward appearance. To have faith is simply to see your life and your surrounds opening up repeatedly to God’s future, seeing the transforming work of the Holy Spirit in the depth of things, bringing light to the world through both joyful and sorrowful happenings, growing hope and love. Christianity is in this sense the biggest of ‘big picture thinking’.

In a recent publication Pope Francis wrote of faith in these words. Faith appears as a process of gazing, in which our eyes grow accustomed to peering into the depths… each of us comes to the light because of love, and each of us is called to love in order to remain in the light… in this circular movement the light of faith illumines all our human relationships, which can then be lived in union with the gentle love of Christ.

To the eye of faith there’s something deep going on below all the mayhem of world events. Just as we’re gifted by faith to see Jesus behind the words of scripture and the preacher and under the form of bread and wine, the same gift of faith enables us to see beyond the 24-7 news flow something that’s heading to glory. Something moving, as Christ himself moved through suffering and death, into the glorious future of the resurrection spoken of at the end of the Bible when the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away. (Revelation 21:3-4)

Back to the Collect for the Tenth Sunday after Trinity Sunday: Let your merciful ears, O Lord, be open to the prayers of your humble servants; and that they may obtain their petitions make them to ask such things as shall please you

We’ve reflected upon God’s mercy and how Christian faith sees its operation by opening us up to the depths of reality. Lastly we might ask, contemplating the unpredictable godless violence we’re living through How we can find and pray for what ‘pleases God’ in this extraordinary scenario?

In this last consideration I invite you to move from what I’ve shared about how God’s merciful love enfolds the world and beckons it forward into his possibilities on to how we best play our part in working for that best future.

Prayer, yes, is work, work that starts from the facts of life. In the current situation there are a number of indisputable facts we must lift to God:

·      The responsibility of civic and national leaders to improve the world by addressing the sources of injustice and conflict

·         The responsibility of people of faith, and especially faith leaders, to dialogue with one another and also to remind their own communities of the positive things said in their traditions about non-adherents

·         The responsibility of everyone on the earth to see the atrocities shown on our TV screens not primarily as a call to retribution let alone revenge but as a call to recover common humanity and a fresh sense of our need of mercy from God and from one another.

These are some ends that are surely pleasing to God which might inform our working out of the beautiful, thoughtful and challenging collect for today:

Let your merciful ears, O Lord, be open to the prayers of your humble servants; and that they may obtain their petitions make them to ask such things as shall please you; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.                        

Let your merciful ears, O Lord, be open to the prayers of your humble servants; and that they may obtain their petitions make them to ask such things as shall please you; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.                         Common Worship Collect for Trinity 10

Trinity 8 Martha and Mary 17th July 2016

Genesis 18v1-10; Ps 15; Colossians 1v15-28; Luke 10v38-42

Martha and Mary – who chose the better part?

God desires us to have intimacy with himself - this is the basic truth of Christianity.

The wonder of the stars…

The God who made all of them, who holds all of them in his hand, desires intimacy with me!

The hospitality of Abraham – icon of the hospitality of the Trinity (Genesis 18)

The majesty of Christ ‘for in him all things in heaven and earth were created…’ (Colossians 1v15-28)

‘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.

The Majesty and yet the availability....How is this intimacy brought to us?

On God’s side by the gift of the Spirit - on our side, we receive our 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 brings God in all His Fullness to fill my heart eg. The ocean which is no less for filling a pool... eg. 1 Cor 2v10 ‘the Spirit searches the depths of God...we have received the Spirit...who...interprets spiritual truth (intimacy)’

On my side the intimacy is established as a gift welcomed. How?

By humility and by expectancy...cf. St. Francis de Sales twin virtues.

Humble cf. Humous - of the earth, a readiness to see our nothingness before God and our less than nothingness through sin...

Then Expectant on God, Confident in God... St. Therese ...& the Sacred Heart, her faith that God could make her a Saint - the Lift...

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, & 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

Trinity 7 (15th of Year) Luke 10.25-37 1st July 2016

It’s hard to love.

This morning’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.

As I share from Scripture I want also to touch on an important anniversary tomorrow that’s explained in July’s P&P. There you can read how this bible was brought back from the Somme battlefield by Jack Knight who lived in Timbers, Church Lane. Jack who lost his leg in the conflict picked it up from the body of a dead soldier and later on gave it to Nick Turner who’s sent it to St Giles archive. It’s inscribed: Bombadier J Knight (455), RGA 69^th Siege Battery, Found on the battlefield of the Somme Nr Contalmaison July 11^th 1916. Tomorrow is the Centenary of that discovery so I want to weave thoughts about this Bible with those I have described about the vision, task and equipment of love.

Let’s start then 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 being beyond what’s written on stone, in our context over the chancel arch. The vision of what it is to love isn’t just the Ten Commandments over the chancel arch you look up to when you return from Communion. 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.

In the P&P article there’s speculation on what the slain soldier was doing holding his bible. Could it be that knowing he was mortally wounded he was using it for comfort as his life ebbed away?

The words and commandments of the Bible are a reminder of God’s objective presence we need to sustain us subjectively. We pray that soldier already had God’s Word in his soul, that it was in [his] heart for [him] to observe, so that he died with a vision of a God over all with love for all whose grace lit up the carnage around him so he fell own and yet up into the everlasting arms. As those words later on in Moses’s discourse express it in one translation: the eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.

The vision of love is given to rest in the heart though it rests ultimately in the certainty of God’s overarching love. We must bear heartfelt changes and chances, and what heartfelt terror surrounded this bible a century ago on the Somme. We Christians like the next man bear uncertainty and hardship in love, but we do so sustained by worship, word and sacrament en route to certainty: the certain, all embracing love of God we’ve seen in Jesus Christ.

In him we find the vision, task and equipment for love. 

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 death bed. Today you will be with me in paradise. Luke 23:43

I must leave you to work out for yourself the relevance of today’s scripture to the xenophobia sweeping Britain in the wake of the referendum. 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?

We want a society that doesn’t just tolerate difference but which respects those who’re different. 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 the better equipped to love. The Holy Spirit comes again and again in prayer and worship. Through reading the Bible we’re further strengthened because there’s no word of God without power. Coming back to the Somme Bible our P&P writer Nick Turner speculates on what the slain soldier was doing holding his bible in his last hour. Could it be that he was clutching it to give him courage to press on in that bloody fray which took 420,000 British, 200,000 French and 500,000 German casualties.

There’s no word of God without power. The Bible the soldier held precious might link to having God’s Word in his soul, in [his] heart for [him] to observe. A century ago people knew the Bible, they knew the promises of God, they held as I hope we hold to one or two choice texts. That last sentence of our second reading is awesome if you can see it as 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 terrible darkness of the Somme loses its power for one marching forward confident he 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 Commandments over the chancel arch, 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.

Trinity 7 (15th of Year) Luke 10.25-37 1st July 2016

It’s hard to love.

This morning’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.

As I share from Scripture I want also to touch on an important anniversary tomorrow that’s explained in July’s P&P. There you can read how this bible was brought back from the Somme battlefield by Jack Knight who lived in Timbers, Church Lane. Jack who lost his leg in the conflict picked it up from the body of a dead soldier and later on gave it to Nick Turner who’s sent it to St Giles archive. It’s inscribed: Bombadier J Knight (455), RGA 69^th Siege Battery, Found on the battlefield of the Somme Nr Contalmaison July 11^th 1916. Tomorrow is the Centenary of that discovery so I want to weave thoughts about this Bible with those I have described about the vision, task and equipment of love.

Let’s start then 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 being beyond what’s written on stone, in our context over the chancel arch. The vision of what it is to love isn’t just the Ten Commandments over the chancel arch you look up to when you return from Communion. 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.

In the P&P article there’s speculation on what the slain soldier was doing holding his bible. Could it be that knowing he was mortally wounded he was using it for comfort as his life ebbed away?

The words and commandments of the Bible are a reminder of God’s objective presence we need to sustain us subjectively. We pray that soldier already had God’s Word in his soul, that it was in [his] heart for [him] to observe, so that he died with a vision of a God over all with love for all whose grace lit up the carnage around him so he fell own and yet up into the everlasting arms. As those words later on in Moses’s discourse express it in one translation: the eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.

The vision of love is given to rest in the heart though it rests ultimately in the certainty of God’s overarching love. We must bear heartfelt changes and chances, and what heartfelt terror surrounded this bible a century ago on the Somme. We Christians like the next man bear uncertainty and hardship in love, but we do so sustained by worship, word and sacrament en route to certainty: the certain, all embracing love of God we’ve seen in Jesus Christ.

In him we find the vision, task and equipment for love. 

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 death bed. Today you will be with me in paradise. Luke 23:43

I must leave you to work out for yourself the relevance of today’s scripture to the xenophobia sweeping Britain in the wake of the referendum. 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?

We want a society that doesn’t just tolerate difference but which respects those who’re different. 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 the better equipped to love. The Holy Spirit comes again and again in prayer and worship. Through reading the Bible we’re further strengthened because there’s no word of God without power. Coming back to the Somme Bible our P&P writer Nick Turner speculates on what the slain soldier was doing holding his bible in his last hour. Could it be that he was clutching it to give him courage to press on in that bloody fray which took 420,000 British, 200,000 French and 500,000 German casualties.

There’s no word of God without power. The Bible the soldier held precious might link to having God’s Word in his soul, in [his] heart for [him] to observe. A century ago people knew the Bible, they knew the promises of God, they held as I hope we hold to one or two choice texts. That last sentence of our second reading is awesome if you can see it as 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 terrible darkness of the Somme loses its power for one marching forward confident he 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 Commandments over the chancel arch, 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.