Advent 1 The Return of the Lord 27th November 2016

Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour. Matthew 24:44

We're about ends and beginnings this morning, the end of one church year dedicated to mercy and the beginning of another dedicated to the Bible, the end of the ordinary green season and the beginning of the solemnity of Advent season when the Church dresses in purple to contemplate death, judgement, heaven and hell

We dress in solemn purple for the end of man as we always do to face death at funeral liturgies

Death is our enemy, there’s no getting round it, even though Christian faith addresses it directly through faith in Jesus Christ who died, is raised and will come again. I gave a clear statement of Christian faith in regards the last things to our 50 or so visitors on All Souls Day earlier this month which I felt led to repeat to the congregation this morning, so I apologise to a handful of you if you'll be hearing this bit of the sermon for the second time.

It is Christian faith that at the moment of death the soul is judged by God to pass toward one of two ultimate destinations, bliss or loss, heaven or hell. In that passage the prayer of the Church surrounds and helps all those souls the Christian community commends to God who will welcome help, the origin of the maligned term purgatory. 

God wishes nothing or no one to be lost from the sight of his holiness. We imagine the moment of death, however merciful physically through palliative care, will be for most of painful as we come to see God, turning our eyes away at his loving, holy glance. 

His invitation to look him in the eyes, like that of any good parent chastising his child, will be painful on account of our sins. Purgatory can be thought of, some theologians hold, as just momentary. A moment of pain as holiness meets the unrepentant sin within us, then the soul passing on to await the next stage of cosmic history.

Those who die without sin face God, as if in heaven, and begin to see him face to face, but heaven is not yet heaven until that vision is shared in the company of all the saints. Those without love continue their self-chosen loneliness into hell, which God permits as he permits free will, but doesn’t will for them such choices.

The Christian hope is consummated by the return of Jesus Christ. As we shall shortly affirm in the words of the Nicene Creed will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end. That final judgement will complete our individual judgement at the moment of death. Scripture indicates the general judgement as bringing humanity of past ages to bodily resurrection to greet Christ’s return and be clothed afresh with the body, to make their heaven fully heaven, or their hell fully hell, in the life of the world to come. In that world the faithful departed will continue in a salvation that is personal, practical, purposeful and permanent. 

We will continue to know personally, only unveiled, the one who so knows and loves us. We will experience the practical benefit of our sins being cast away from us. We will be fully taken into the purpose of God and with permanence. The pains we've suffered will be lost in celestial praise which can only be made perfect once God's purpose for the world is made complete at the return of his Son. 

This teaching has also been the subject of our Premier Christian Radio series from Horsted Keynes which concluded earlier this morning with this clip from Alison Bellack (play programme 4))

http://www.premierchristianradio.com/Shows/Sunday/Seeing-Salvation

I wonder how you see heaven? How often you think of it? When you’re saved it’s natural to look forward to this, the fulfilment of God’s call upon your life.

The great poet Saint Augustine of Hippo described heaven as the time when we shall rest and we shall see, we shall see and we shall love, we shall love and we shall praise. 

He speaks in the plural for salvation’s a shared gift of God in Christ, as Paul indicates when speaking in Ephesians 3v19 of having the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, (to) be filled with all the fullness of God.

This fullness is the fullness of salvation.

What I have shared is an outline of Christian salvation projected from the promises of God in scripture which open the eyes of faith to see death as a vanquished enemy for those who hold to the Saviour. 

Christian faith is built on the risen Christ. We do not, as believers, know fully what’s there so much as who’s there after death. Our Lord Jesus Christ - he is there! He is there as sure as he’s the same yesterday, today and forever!

Just as we see the risen Lord behind every crucifix so we see those we love alive with Him beyond the dust.

It is Advent Sunday but it is also the Lord's Day! The same Jesus who came, died, rose and says to us this morning it is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day.... Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day.  (John 6:38, 54)

Remembrance Sunday 13th November 2016

Might the fact a supposedly Christian Europe devoted four years to self-destruction be our greatest sadness as we gather on the Centennial Anniversary of the Somme?

The sadness that flows down the last century from that conflict lies of course in the families and descendants of the 72,200 whose names are recorded at Thiepval some of whose names are replicated on our own memorial.

The Somme commemoration began on 1^st July this year which was the day of the first offensive by our troops. Fighting was focussed in the area close to the village of Thiepval and the valley of the River Ancre. Thiepval was captured in late September 1916 although it fell back briefly into German hands during the spring offensive of 1918 just before the final end of the Great War.

Thiepval today is famous for its Lutyens memorial to the missing, an enormous brick arch that stands on a ridge, a canopy over Lutyens classic stone of remembrance which is a common feature of larger war cemeteries. The stone and arch recall the traditional altar and covering ascended by many steps as to be found in Westminster Cathedral which has a feature on Thiepval in its November Magazine.

On Remembrance Sunday we ascend the altar of God in heart and mind through such images for, in words uttered at this altar earlier this morning, although death comes to us all, yet we rejoice in the promise of eternal life; for to your faithful people life is changed, not taken away; and when our mortal flesh is laid aside an everlasting dwelling place is made ready for us in heaven.

It is Christian faith that the sadness of death gives way to the bright glory of immortality as expressed on that Somme memorial stone Their name liveth for evermore. There is reverent ambiguity about whether that evermore is on earth or in heaven. This leads me to an aside, if we are talking about the earthly memorial side, to salute those who work with the Royal British Legion and Commonwealth War Graves Commission in this village to maintain our war memorial, the Knapp grave and ensure the peaceable beauty and good ordering of our Churchyard. It is a considerable burden to our hardy group of volunteers led by Hilary Nicholson and is worthy of not just the voluntary but the civic support it receives and sorely needs.

Back to the ambiguity about how we see those words on the Somme memorial their name liveth for evermore. Our scripture readings give insight and indeed challenge concerning the otherworldly sense of that statement about the honourable dead. The reading from Ecclesiasticus is a prayer of entreaty which could well be imagined as from a battle field: My soul drew near to death, and my life was on the brink of Hades below. They surrounded me on every side, and there was no one to help me; I looked for human assistance, and there was none. Then I remembered your mercy, O Lord, and your kindness from of old, for you rescue those who wait for you and save them from the hand of their enemies. (Ecclesiasticus 51:6-8)

How could such a prayer be unanswered by a merciful God? Even through death, being taken to God, since the ultimate victory is beyond armed conflict but the one over death itself. This is the frame for our Royal British Legion service hosted on the Lord’s day, the day of resurrection. As our second reading expresses this: Listen, I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die, but we will all be changed… For this perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality…. thanks be to God, who gives us [the] victory [over death] through our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Corinthians 15:51, 53, 57)

Here is the full sense of Lutyens’ altar stone inscription. It’s not evident to the intellect unaided by the gift of faith to listen as Paul invites to Jesus Christ and take him at his word as the death defying Lord he is to us, through whom, indeed, our name liveth for evermore.

To know you have eternal life through openness to Christ’s gift is wisdom, for the greatest knowledge you can ever find must be about what defies death, since all of us live in its shadow.

Such knowledge doesn’t exclude sadness. Christians, someone said, are sad people saved from despair by the Cross of Christ. Looking at the world this Somme Centennial weekend there’s so much you might despair about a century on, not least at the scenarios our armed forces are engaging with in the Middle East, God bless them. Yet to know a love that’s overall and in all the hearts who’ll welcome its embrace is to draw the sting of despair reducing it to residual sadness at man’s inhumanity to man.

Today we have such sadness but it’s something we need to search deeper into inasmuch as we’re able. Premature death in war, or even the self-pitying thought of our own death is saddening but we’re called to search deeper into sadness. As a country priest I’ve been drawn to the French writer George Bernanos Diary of a Country Priest which covers the bearing of sadness in the priesthood. You could summarise his book as a statement that the only sadness worth having is sadness about not wanting to be a saint. To want to be anything less than holy and see the full flowering of all that you are into what God intended is very sad indeed. Many people believe wrongly that to be holy is to be stifled, less free, less themselves and how sadly wrong they are!

Lack of holiness, lack of self-possession, humility and love is at the root of the self-destruction of warfare, which is why we have it in ourselves to act counter to this vanity, which is why the Royal British Legion Service invites us to make a commitment to responsible living and faithful service part of this morning’s commemoration.

God desires to give us the desires of our heart (Psalm 37:4). His call for us to be holy is for us to come close to him in regular worship and prayer and be fulfilled, which is not to repress but rather to expand our deepest desires.

You can become a saint. No one and nothing can stop you - and your choice, besides reducing your sadness, will impact the peace of the world over the next century and beyond.

All Souls memorial eucharist Saturday 5th November 11am

It is the day of the dead.

Our vestments are black as we contemplate the loss of life and proximity of those we love but see no longer.

Death for Christians is a vanquished enemy.

That he has power is evidenced especially within the gathering of the recently bereaved at the Church’s annual commemoration of the departed. The death of a loved one is a life changer, a loss of life, literally and psychologically.

How we miss those who lit up our lives for a season now veiled from our sight even if we believe today’s scripture as it proclaims God will destroy... the shroud cast over all peoples and... will swallow up death forever (Isaiah 25:7-8)

Death is our enemy, there’s no getting round it, even though Christian faith sees through it. Just as we see the risen Lord behind every crucifix so we see those we love alive with Him beyond the dust.

On All Souls Day the Easter Candle stands in the sanctuary to help us see through death to the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.

It is Christian faith that at the moment of death the soul is judged by God to pass toward one of two ultimate destinations, bliss or loss, heaven or hell. In that passage the prayer of the Church surrounds and helps all those souls the Christian community commends to God who will welcome help, the origin of the maligned term purgatory.

God wishes nothing or no one to be lost from the sight of his holiness.

We imagine the moment of death, however merciful physically through palliative care, will be for most of painful as we come to see God, turning our eyes away at his loving, holy glance. His invitation to look him in the eyes, like that of any good parent chastising his child, will be painful on account of our sins. Purgatory can be thought of, some theologians hold, as just momentary. A moment of pain as holiness meets the unrepentant sin within us, then the soul passing on to await the next stage of cosmic history.

Those who die without sin face God, as if in heaven, and begin to see him face to face, but heaven is not yet heaven until that vision is shared in the company of all the saints.

Those without love continue their self-chosen loneliness into hell, which God permits as he permits free will, but doesn’t will for them such choices.

The Christian hope is consummated by the return of Jesus Christ who will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead. That final judgement will complete our individual judgement at the moment of death. Scripture indicates the general judgement as bringing humanity of past ages to bodily resurrection to greet Christ’s return and be clothed afresh with the body, to make their heaven fully heaven, or their hell fully hell, in the life of the world to come.
In that world the faithful departed will continue in a salvation that is personal, practical, purposeful and permanent.

We will continue to know personally, only unveiled, the one who so knows and loves us. We will experience the practical benefit of our sins being cast away from us. We will be fully taken into the purpose of God and with permanence. The pains we've suffered will be lost in celestial praise. Such is salvation.

What I have shared is an outline of Christian salvation projected from the promises of God in scripture which open the eyes of faith to see death as a vanquished enemy for those who hold to the Saviour.

As today’s Collect and Gospel affirm, Christian faith is built on the risen Christ. We do not, as believers, know fully what’s there so much as who’s there after death.

Our Lord Jesus Christ - he is there! He is there as sure as he’s the same yesterday, today and forever!

It is the day of the dead, but it is also Jesus' day!

The same Jesus who came, died, rose and says to us this morning it is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day.... Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day.  (John 6:38, 54)

Amen - come Lord Jesus, in the eucharist, and on the last day, when you are sole hope and consolation for us and those we love but see no longer!