St Bartholomew, Brighton Mothering Sunday 31st March 2019

It is a strange paradox that this year’s Gospel for Mothering Sunday is that of the Father’s love. It’s not deliberate, just that we’re in the year of Luke and no Lucan passage is more Lent suited than that of the Prodigal Son! The fact Lent 4 is Mothering Sunday is secondary as far as the Lectionary goes. It’s a universal Lectionary and many countries don’t keep Mother’s Day today.

In the story of the Prodigal Son we have a beautiful demonstration of what Lent’s all about – the healing joy of repentance. At its centre is the welcome home of the prodigal. I love the King James Bible version of this story with its rich cadences: But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him. And the son said unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son. But the father said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet: And bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry: For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found. Luke 15.20-24

     What wonderful words! They serve as few other words have ever done to provide a vivid invitation to seek God as our Father. That paragraph provides the heart of the story involving three characters each of whom we may find ourselves identifying with.

    First the openness of the prodigal - how ready am I to admit my mistakes? As Christians we believe we’re sinners in need of grace. What is so surprising about a sinner sinning? Yet many of us are slow to seek forgiveness from God or neighbour.

Our slowness sometimes links to the judgmentalism around typified by the elder brother in the parable whose attitude is far from forgiving! Lent is a time to challenge the judgmental ‘elder brother’ within us. It’s a time to challenge the sins that get on top of us. C.S.Lewis once wrote a caution about despairing over our habitual sins: I know all about the despair of overcoming chronic temptation.  It is not serious, provided self-offended petulance, annoyance at breaking records, impatience, etc. don't get the upper hand. No amount of falls will really undo us if we keep on picking ourselves up each time.  We shall of course be very muddy and tattered children by the time we reach home.  But the bathrooms are all ready, the towels put out, and the clean clothes in the airing cupboard.  The only fatal thing is to lose one's temper and give it up. It is when we notice the dirt that God is most present in us: it is the very sign of His presence.  Daily Readings p122-3

The main figure in the Parable is the loving Father who represents God. Jesus teaches God is always helpfully present to us in his holiness and ready to show us the dirt and dysfunction in our lives.  He makes himself present in practical love to remedy our situation - the bathrooms are all ready, the towels put out, and the clean clothes in the airing cupboard.

Our Lord cleanses us of sin and guilt by practical demonstrations geared to our humanity. That’s particularly true of the sacrament of reconciliation also known as sacramental confession in which we play the part of the prodigal in a re-enactment of Luke 15. There is great freedom to be attained through celebrating this sacrament so misunderstood in Anglican circles. We have set times for this sacrament in St Bartholomew’s nearer Easter but you can make an appointment with one of our priests today to give your status anxiety and greed a knock with that envy linked to competitiveness!

The father in Our Lord’s parable may represent God but he is also an example of the love a parent, father or mother, is called to show his or her children. Lack of affirmation by parents, lack of generous reconciliation in family life, is the root of so much domestic misery.

In Henri Nouwen’s The Return of the Prodigal Son the author speaks of his being inspired by Rembrandt’s famous painting of that title. The gnarled yet welcoming hands of the Father in Rembrandt’s picture symbolise God’s hands stretched out for us upon the Cross.  They challenge us to pay the price ourselves for a more affirming attitude to those falling short around us. The great inspiration of this book is the Christian call to a ministry of affirmation.

Be compassionate as your Father is compassionate Our Lord says earlier in Luke’s Gospel.

As we come to the altar this morning on behalf of ourselves or those on our hearts we come as the prodigal son knowing our need of forgiveness. We come repenting of the ‘elder brother’ in us, that critical spirit which subtracts from the joy God wants in our hearts. We come finally for grace to be like our Father, capable of love for other sinners.

The readiness to treat others as better than they are is simple imitation of God’s readiness to treat us as far better than we are. We can ask the Holy Spirit to build that affirming capacity within us so that having received the Blessed Sacrament we may be better equipped to embrace others as instruments of the divine mercy granted us by the body, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ who embraces us now in Holy Communion.

The bathrooms are all ready, the towels put out, and the clean clothes in the airing cupboard.

Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet: And bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry: For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.

St Bartholomew, Brighton Ash Wednesday 6 March 2019

I’m just back from my annual retreat at Mirfield, home from home for me with its beautiful plainchant, wise monks and memories of priestly formation there.

On retreat you refresh your sense of the Church tackling your ‘individualitis’, the bad ways you get into spiritually, engaging more with the church’s worship and discipline of prayer alongside self-examination helped by a companion retreat conductor.

We can’t all find time to go on retreat but we all have the invitation of Lent which is the church’s annual retreat, her invitation to tackle DIY Christianity and renew grasp of the church’s fellowship and teaching.  

On my travels around the Diocese covering vacancies I was given a book by Andrew and Rachel Wilson from Eastbourne about the experience of parenting not one but two autistic children. I’ve read philosophical defences of God in the face of suffering and much ecclesiology but ‘The Life You Never Expected’ surprised me with its deep insight on God and the Church. They compare their experience to emperor penguins huddling over their eggs through months of frozen darkness which explains the penguin cover. ‘This is almost unbearable, and it's almost worth quitting, but the sun is on its way. Hang in there’.

They gave me that word ‘individualitis’, a term for what’s plaguing our culture and parts of the church, especially their own Evangelical tradition with such prioritising of the individual’s one-to-one with God. Andrew and Rachel testify to discovering Christianity as a corporate entreprise, helped as they are in their struggle to survive as parents by the counsel and companionship of fellow Christians.  I quote them: ‘In God’s global mission, the role of extraordinary people doing exceptional things is probably far smaller than we imagine - and the role of ordinary people doing everyday things is probably far greater than we imagine.

If you think you’re exceptional, that will come as a nasty shock. But when you get mugged by life, and find out just how ordinary you are, it’s thoroughly liberating. Carl Trueman was right: ‘My special destiny as a believer is to be part of the church; and it is the church that is the big player in God’s wider plan, and not me’’.

That last quote touched my heart and mind by its admission of how Christians are in Christianity more effectively together and not just individually. Christ is head of a body we’re part of for ever, God’s never-ending family, ‘the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church’.

Lent’s ahead for us then as a body building operation not in the gym but in a spiritual gym, that deepening we seek of our individual sense of the body of the Church. We have plenty of choice to meet with others with Lent courses locally and elsewhere - I’m joining St Martin-in-the-Fields course on St Augustine’s Confessions - or online if you’re connected that way, as I know a good number of us are even when we’re in New Zealand!

Even if Lent reduces to recapturing the Friday fast, making our Confession, going to a weekday Mass or committing to Holy Week services we have set before us an invitation to check the ‘individualitis’ blinding our sense of the Church and hiding God and neighbour from us. As Pope Francis asks in his booklet on holiness, a Lent resource I commend in Faith in Sussex, ‘What endures, what has value in life, what riches do not disappear? Surely these two: the Lord and our neighbour. These two riches do not disappear’.

May Lent enrich us as the retreat it is, deepening our love for God and neighbour, turning us that bit more inside out as we prepare to renew our baptismal vows at the Easter Festival.