St Bartholomew, Brighton Easter 2 Hope 28th April 2019

There’s a lot around to remind us how reversible human progress is. False optimism protects us from voicing overmuch falling living standards, the poor unemployment prospects of our children, empty pension pots let alone our approaching death, harsh reality that it is.

Though it’s widely admitted people need religion to shape and give meaning to their lives this often comes down to a sort of ‘no wonder people turn to religion to escape this awful scenario’. The assumption widely held is that religious belief provides an escape from reality – and the realities we live through seem to demand such an escape, however irrational. Another coping mechanism we might identify is denial so that when you ask people how they’re getting on they come up with more and more bullish American style answers than the historic English pessimism that’s worked to date for the weather upwards.

What does Easter have to say to such pessimism? Is what I’m about as a Christian just otherworldly escapism? How does the Easter good news engage with the reality of human suffering and how can it best impact the loss of hope around us?

As I reflect with you on this Octave Day of the Easter Feast I look back eight days to our blessing of the Paschal Candle on Holy Saturday Night when five pins were stuck in it to represent the wounds of Christ, commemorating today’s Gospel reading. Jesus said to Thomas, 'Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.' Thomas answered him, 'My Lord and my God!'

How did Our Lord deal with Thomas’ pessimism? He pointed him to those very same wounds the Risen Christ carried from his crucifixion. In other words ‘you can be sure it is I, Thomas, and you can lay hold of sure and certain hope in the face of all in your world that would confound you’.

As Peter and the apostles answered the high priest in our first reading from Acts Chapter 5: The God of our ancestors raised up Jesus, whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree. The Jesus raised up at Easter is the same Jesus killed by hanging … on a tree in other words the Cross. That’s why the Church decorates, if that is the right word, its Easter candle symbol with the wounds. As the priest says piercing the candle with the five studs at the Easter Vigil: By his holy and glorious wounds may Christ our Lord guard and keep us.

The Paschal Candle is a triumphant witness, standing tall that says God is above death. It also reminds us he’s not above suffering. That is so very, very important to us as witnesses to Christ in a world that’s losing hope. God, the God and Father of Jesus, expects nothing of us he’s not prepared to go through himself. This is the main ground of hope we cling to as Christians, a hope that isn’t just out of this world – though the resurrection is all of that - but a hope rooted in human reality.

What I am about as a Christian IS an engagement with otherworldly consolation, it’s absolutely true. Christianity is a metaphysical religion, it’s beyond (meta) the physical because of Christ’s resurrection. Yet it’s rooted in human reality for God revealed the resurrection by sending his Son to die for us. The five wounds of Christ on his arms, legs and side are the great symbol of this and as such they engage with our sorrows for he is and he remains for us as Isaiah prophesied a man of sorrows acquainted with grief (Isaiah 53v3).

If I am talking about Christian hope this morning I am talking not about a shallow optimism but the resurrection faith firmly rooted in Christ as the suffering Saviour from all eternity. Second century Bishop Melito of Sardis in an Easter sermon wrote of how Christ’s sufferings should be seen in the suffering of holy people right back through the Old Testament: He is the Passover of our salvation. He was present in many so as to endure many things. In Abel he was slain; in Isaac bound; in Jacob a stranger; in Joseph sold; in Moses exposed; in David persecuted; in the prophets dishonoured. He became incarnate of the Virgin…buried in the earth, but he rose from the dead, and was lifted up to the height of heaven. He is the silent lamb, the slain lamb, who was born of Mary the fair ewe. He was seized from the flock and dragged away to slaughter.  

In Christ’s sufferings we see human suffering in a new light. I can’t speak too well myself, my sufferings have been slight in life so far, but I’ve been close to women and men of God who say so, who say God in Christ comes close in suffering. I think of a dying priest I’m visiting telling me how important and helpful the holding cross was that he’d been given. I think of many such instances where marking the cross in holy oil on the foreheads and palms of the sick, an action in itself a memorial of Christ’s wounds, lifts their spirits. Péguy said a Christian is a sad man saved from despair by the Cross of Christ.

In the book of Revelation we read of how grace… and peace come from Jesus Christ… the firstborn of the dead, who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood. St John goes on to predict the risen Christ’s return Look! He is coming with the clouds; every eye will see him, even those who pierced him. The wounds of Christ are source of hope to believers, though they will be troublesome to those who pierced him and that includes you and I through unrepented sins.

Easter is incomplete until the Lord’s Return. Charles Wesley’s Advent hymn Lo he comes enters imaginatively into the sight of the risen Christ coming to be judge of the world:

Those dear tokens of his passion still his dazzling body bears; 
cause of endless exultation to his ransomed worshipers; 
with what rapture gaze we on those glorious scars!

Indeed it will be, and that is our sure and certain hope, which should help us bring all pessimists to Christ’s Cross.

We Christians are saddened by suffering but our sadness is saved from despair by that very Cross and by the out of this world resurrection truth we’re celebrating in these great days of Eastertide!

Alleluia Christ is risen - he is risen indeed, alleluia.

St Bartholomew, Brighton Easter Vigil Mass 20 April 2019

Tonight the full visual stops of the Liturgy are pulled out. Light and darkness, candles, the sprinkling of water – all go beyond words.

Christ is Risen - and as no tomb could contain him, no words can fathom the wonder of  the Resurrection - we rely on symbols. This annual reminder of the foundation of our Faith gives exuberance to our spirits. O truly blessed night, worthy alone to know Christ’s rising…let Mother Church rejoice, arrayed with the lightning of his glory, let this holy building shake with joy… let the trumpet of salvation sound our mighty King’s triumph!

Archbishop Anthony Bloom preached once on the story in the Acts where the miracles of the Apostles led them to be mistaken as living gods. ‘Look statues have become living men’ they said of them. We are all in a sense like statues, said the Archbishop, but as an Easter People we have become in a profound sense a living people. He went on: ‘Meeting us – me and you – can people say, ‘Yes, it is true. Christ is risen, because this woman, this child, this man is alive with a life of which I had no suspicion, a life I couldn’t even imagine’.

All of this is coming about in our lives because of the historical event we commemorate this evening. In four slightly different accounts we have the record of how, when the disciples went to the tomb of Christ, they found his grave clothes folded and no sign of the dead. In the next six weeks the Resurrected Christ was seen, according to Paul, by over 550 people on 11 different occasions. The disciples’ lives were transformed and the Church grew at an astonishing rate surviving 20 centuries to this day. Over these centuries, particularly the last two highly sceptical centuries, critical investigation has failed to overturn the historical base of the resurrection.

To capture the exuberance of Easter we have to let the historical facts and their implications take full hold of us by open-ness to the Holy Spirit. Over the centuries Spirit-given exuberance has led missionaries to the four corners of the earth. Thousands of martyrs have cheerfully faced death in the hope of the eternal kingdom opened up to the eye of faith this Easter Night!

Christ is raised – and look – so are the people here in St Bartholomew’s – they too are raised. ‘Statues have become living men’.

Those of you who follow social media may have seen an inconclusive  discussion about the timing of this service in St Bartholomew’s. When I was at Theological College this Vigil was kept at dawn at the end of an arduous week of prayer, study, fasting and community work. As the sun broke through the East window of the Community Church at Mirfield the Gloria was intoned. Grown men broke down into tears through the emotion of that moment.

Our exuberance continued throughout this Great Easter Day as gin bottles opened after 40 days! I have a good supply for later today!

Drink is good to ‘cheer the heart of man’ as Scripture says. It can also make statues of living men, as my encounter with a paralytically drunk Irish Man on St. Patrick’s Day once showed me. Years back I found a man lying as if dead on the street and got a friend to help me carry him to the nearby hospital where he was diagnosed merely paralytic!

If drink can make us as if we were dead, the Risen Christ is in the opposite business. In Anthony Bloom’s words, he’s in the business of making living men out of statues.

His joy and delight is to see people brought fully alive as the One who came to bring ‘life to the full’, the indestructible life of the resurrection gifted to us  this most holy night.

‘Meeting us – me and you –  may people say, ‘Yes, it is true. Christ is risen, because this woman, this child, this man is alive with a life of which I had no suspicion, a life I couldn’t even imagine’.

Alleluia, Christ is risen - he is risen indeed, alleluia!

St Bartholomew, Brighton Maundy Thursday 18 April 2019

Do this in remembrance of me!

"Was ever command so obeyed? For century after century, spreading slowly to every continent and country and among every race on earth, this action has been done, in every conceivable human circumstance, for every conceivable human need from infancy and before it to extreme old age and after it, from the pinnacles of earthly greatness to the refuge of fugitives in the caves and dens of the earth".

"Men have found no better thing to do for kings at their crowning and for criminals going to the scaffold; for armies in triumph or for a bride and bridegroom in a little country church; for the proclamation of a dogma or for a good crop of wheat; for the wisdom of the Parliament of a mighty nation or for a sick old woman afraid to die; for a schoolboy sitting an examination or for Columbus setting out to discover America; for the famine of whole provinces or for the soul of a dead lover;

“Week by week and month by month, on a hundred thousand successive Sundays, faithfully, unfailingly, across all the parishes of Christendom, the pastors have done this just to make the holy common people of God".

Do this in remembrance of me! Was ever a command so obeyed?

In these striking words Anglican monk, Gregory Dix celebrates the awe and wonder of the Holy Eucharist instituted on this most sacred night. In his book The Shape of the Liturgy still used in Anglican Theological Colleges Fr Dix writes "the eucharistic action (is) inextricably woven into the public history of the Western world...the eucharist (has the) power of laying hold of human life, of grasping it...in the particular concrete realities of it..laying hold of them and translating them into something beyond time".

Our Lord Jesus ordained the sacrament of the Eucharist in order that we might be able to join on earth in the pleading of His eternal sacrifice sealed in his blood before the face of God the Father. Then, secondly, that he might feed our souls with his sacred Body and Blood and unite us into One Body, the Church, the Body of Christ.

I wonder how many of us would remember or believe or continue to hold fresh in our memories from Confirmation training those facts

- I mean: Our Lord giving us the eucharist first to allow us to plead his memorial Sacrifice and offer our lives with him to be consecrated lives and then second, second, note, to give us heavenly Food and make us one Bread, one Body? Or do we tend to make our default the second purpose of the Eucharist? Do we come to Church like we go to Sainsbury’s to get supplied for ourselves and to meet our friends?

That should come second. We come first to offer the eucharist - to plead Christ's Sacrifice for the needs of the living and the dead, for others as well as for ourselves. That long list from Gregory Dix reminds me how all through my life the Eucharist has been means of sanctifying the lives I minister to, of taking, blessing, breaking sometimes a situation brought on my heart to the Altar for Christ to carry in Sacrifice to his Father.

Each Eucharist, majestic or simple, pleads Calvary.  Pleads, note, not repeats. Christ died once for all. His death can’t be repeated but his Sacrifice abides for ever. It is that sacrifice being solemnly renewed before us this evening as he blesses bread and wine through his priest."This is my Body...this is my Blood" offered for you to the Father, given to you in Communion. It's a good Anglican practice to bow or bend the knee as we come into Church or leave Church, or as we approach or leave the Altar, a practice saluting the Real Presence of Christ. Outside the eucharist, Christ is present, truly present, under the veil of the Tabernacle. To honour that perpetual presence by bowing or bending the knee does not deny that presence elsewhere through the reading of Scripture, in Christian Fellowship, in nature, in holy people and so on.

Yet mindful of Christ's Presence let us never forget its vital link to the first purpose of every Eucharist, announced by Our Lord on this Eve of his passion, which is action, sacrificial action. We are to give our lives, our souls and bodies, our needs, our joys, our sorrows, our hopes, our fears, in union with his perfect Offering.  Lives so given are lives consecrated, lives transformed by the Gift of the consecrated elements, "The Body of Christ", "Amen","The Blood of Christ", "Amen".

Through Him, with Him and in Him, then, let us give glory to God the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit this most holy night, confident that God will accept our self offering and as ever give us more than we can ask or imagine in this most Holy Sacrament.

St Bartholomew, Brighton Palm Sunday 14th April 2019

Why did Jesus die?

The Creed answers he was crucified for us. It does so after it names him God from God, light from light, true God from true God.

Because of who Jesus is what he suffered in Holy Week carries forward to all times in a way only God can accomplish.

When the celebrant takes bread and wine in a moment what Jesus did then will become a living reality for us now.

This is the Church’s faith, that the death of Jesus impacts us today, but where is this impact on my life?

How you see Jesus is inseparable from how you see his death and what difference it makes for you.

For what Jesus has done for us in Holy Week to come real to us we need to put our lives on the line, to act as if he were alongside us still – then we understand.

Why did Jesus die?

He died for us, say the Bible and the Creed. When you approach the crucifixion with faith in Christ’s divinity you see it as an action demonstrating the truth that God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. John 3.16

It is an awesome act of substitution in which Jesus dies in our place so as to live in our place bringing us his own immortal life.

To believe in the crucifixion of Jesus is to commit to a holy God who loves us and reaches out to us in love though we’re sinners most especially in Holy Communion.

In his holiness God cannot be reconciled to sin, but through the sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross the horror of sin is overcome and we’re credited with God’s own love and holiness.  

The power of evil over humankind is overcome by the Cross.   When we see that power being overcome in our own lives the Cross makes sense. We see benevolence flowing where there was self-seeking and humility where there was self-sufficiency.

In recognising those sinful tendencies and finding the merciful therapy of God in Jesus Christ we discover how wonderful the Cross is, what awesome yet living and practical truth it contains. This Week priests are available on request to help us go to the Cross and receive the assurance of God’s forgiveness individually in the sacrament of confession.

The letter to the Ephesians affirms God has made us acceptable in the beloved. By the death of his beloved Son God has made all who abide in Christ acceptable to himself.

God seeks intimacy with us. To achieve this, in an awesome mechanism beyond human understanding, Jesus Christ was crucified for us.  

This is good news to all who will face both the truth of it and the truth about themselves as sinners in need of the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. Amen.