St Wilfrid & Presentation, Haywards Heath Wednesday in Holy Week 31.3.21

‘If it were true it would be cosmic child abuse’ I’ve heard in and outside Christian circles in response to the understanding of God’s love shown in the Cross. 

The idea of God willing his Son to suffer and die to make things right in the world raises more questions for some people than living agnostic with the wrongs. 

That there is no official doctrine of atonement - how God and humanity are made one in Christ - makes for another complication. So does the simplification of thinking on the Cross to throw a line to Christian seekers not to mention poetic licence employed in hymns about the passion of Christ. 

Evangelical songwriter Stuart Townend weathered criticism for these lines in his hymn In Christ Alone: ‘on that cross, as Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied’. At the other side of the Christian spectrum this phrase in a Roman Catholic prayer has detractors: ‘Look, we pray, upon the oblation of your Church and… the sacrificial Victim by whose death you willed to reconcile us to yourself’. The same talk of God satisfying justice through sacrificing his Son is found in the middle of the Christian spectrum in an Anglican text, the Book of Common Prayer, which speaks of Christ’s ‘full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world’.

Where is God’s love in the suffering of Jesus? When the hymn speaks of ‘the wrath of God being satisfied’ by Christ’s suffering on our behalf it is a wrath against sin not against his Son. 

It is hate, not wrath, which is the opposite to love, something taught us in family life. 

A mother had a son she loved very deeply. He was a tearaway and always let her down. One day he commits a shameful act and is filled with guilt at his sin. How does that mother feel at the evil which has gripped her dearest one? What agonies that mother bears at the shame her son has brought upon himself holding wrath against the wrongdoing.  The mother suffers far more than her son who is not holy or loving enough to register the evil. 

In the suffering and death of Christ God’s heart breaks for us. How can God look into my soul and be my friend? The answer is he can and he will have fellowship with me but that fellowship has come at a price and that price was paid in the loving initiative of the Cross which traces back through Bethlehem into the very heart of God.

We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you, because by your Holy Cross you have redeemed the world.

St Wilfrid & Presentation, Haywards Heath Monday in Holy Week 29.3.21

In Holy Week I am addressing the significance of the Cross in three talks, this morning, Wednesday morning and Good Friday afternoon.

Why did God allow his Son to suffer so for us? 

This is a mystery over which words crack but one we need to enter again and again as we do at this eucharist. 

It is a mystery of love beyond words.

There is one thing stronger than death and it is the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

God made us for friendship.

Our self interest, we call sin, is a barrier to that friendship.

God sent his Son to die so as to lift that barrier restoring us to his friendship.

We see that lifting and that friendship as we open our lives to Jesus Christ who is invisibly alongside every woman and man on the earth awaiting their response so he can bless them with his immortal life. 

Dying Christ destroyed the power of sin, fear, death and the devil over humankind and we lay hold of that victory as we trust in Jesus

Rising Jesus demonstrated that for believers ‘life is changed and not ended and when the body of this earthly dwelling lies in dust an everlasting dwelling place is made ready in heaven’.

Christianity is about life. No way is it death dealing. If life in Christ has boundaries these boundaries serve the freedom of the Spirit for without order in your life there can’t be freedom. 

Christianity is life over death. To build your life on material things, solid as they are, is to miss out on life to the full. To build your life on the risen Christ is to find an order in life that brings joy and security. 

Through prayer and sacrament the triumph of the Cross brings cleansing and renewal into lives and communities. Jesus is seen again and again acting against evil, rescuing people from its destructive power when they seek him at the Cross. 

The spread of evils such as social inequality, unjust trade, wars and so on are linked to the misuse of free will. A loving God, despite his holiness, is bound to allow evil so as to respect this freedom.  

Christians misuse free will just like non-Christians. They get sick and die like anyone else. 

They also experience a lifting of destructive powers such as sin, sickness and death when they seek their Lord. 

The death and resurrection of Christ are found to counter the powers of evil when the risen Lord is given freedom to do so in lives opened up to him. 

In Holy Week we open our lives afresh to the Saviour who died for us praying that he will show us the sins that bind us, lead us afresh to repentance and with that a fresh anointing in the Holy Spirit.

Jesus died in our place to lift our sins from us through forgiveness.

Jesus would live in our place by his Holy Spirit.

We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you, because by your Holy Cross you have redeemed the world.

St Richard, Haywards Heath Palm Sunday 28.3.21

Last week Fr Chris invited me to preach today and also to dig a pit for the Cross outside. I said you are giving me the same task physically and verbally because the founders of the priestly Society of the Holy Cross described our task as ‘digging a pit for the Cross’.

As the Cross stands tall outside may the truth of Christ crucified stand tall in our lives and in my preaching. For the Cross to stand tall we needed a deep pit. Our Christianity commends itself outwardly when we have depths about us which is a gift of the Spirit we have to dig out self to make space for.

I was talking on the phone to a church member who on return to Church was struck by the number of new faces. She told me how she had been given fresh confidence to talk to others about how much she is helped by use of the Sacrament of Reconciliation. We joked about how people think folk who go to Confession are odd but agreed God has an eye to the odd.

God himself is odd. He has a sameness to us, yes, but God is profoundly different from us. Love is his sameness, holiness his difference. My Facebook friend Chris put this comment on a picture of the Cross I posted last week: It is a very challenging question of Christian's when asked..."Why do you worship someone that insisted on a human sacrifice for him to forgive the people. If he was such a divine and noble figure… surely he would have just forgiven them anyway. The lesson that seems to come from this account is that forgiveness will only be given after sacrificial and excruciating punishment’.

This was my answer to Chris: ‘When people outside Christian circles debate with us about the Cross we find common ground in a perception that the world needs putting right by forgiveness. To get beyond the stumbling block of divine love willing suffering requires a vision of God with loving sameness to yet holy difference from us. Attaining such a vision can follow scrutiny of Christian basics where there is readiness to take seriously what God might have said of God, history and the future through scripture and the community of faith. Faith seeming to contradict logic brings an invitation to seek the understanding beyond reason the Holy Spirit supplies seekers’. On the same conversation thread Bishop Lindsey added in a simpler way: ‘The minute you take your eyes off the crib when you gaze on the cross, your doctrine of the atonement becomes mystifying rather than a mystery. ‘God was in Christ...’

It takes God to understand God and God to explain the Cross. I could dig a pit for the Cross outside but no words of mine can dig down far enough to provide a reasoned base for the Cross from the pulpit. God speaks of it in his word today. ‘His state was divine, yet Christ Jesus did not cling to equality with God but emptied himself… accepting death on the cross’ (Philippians 2:6-8) ‘I offered my back to those who struck me, my cheeks to those who tore at my beard; I did not cover my face against insult and spittle’ (Isaiah 50:6).

The loving action of God in sending his Son to suffer goes back to the design of creation and its intended redesign in Christ to make eternal friendship with God possible by dealing with what breaks that friendship. Jesus died in our place to live in our place. He accepted the just penalty for sin in the face of God’s holiness on our behalf. This has become a transformative power in our lives as Christians. When we come repeatedly to the Cross our sinful nature is repeatedly put to death and the life of his Holy Spirit repeatedly gains power within us. That nature will rise again and again to our dying day but the death of Christ reveals its number is up - the decisive victory over sin, death and the devil has been achieved though we remain in a ‘mopping up operation’ in the wake of that victory.

The conflict of those two powers, one life-giving and the other death-dealing, is evident to faith. Priest poet Raneiro Cantalamessa writes: ‘In the Alps in summer, when a mass of cold air from the north clashes with hot air from the south, frightful storms break out disturbing the atmosphere; dark clouds move around, the wind whistles, lightning rends the sky from one end to the other and the thunder makes the mountains tremble. Something similar took place in the Redeemer’s soul where the extreme evil of sin clashed with the supreme holiness of God disturbing it to the point that it caused him to sweat blood and forced the cry from him, “My soul is sorrowful to the point of death… nevertheless Father, not my will but yours be done.”’ 

Holy Week is an invitation to climb down to the level ground at the foot of the Cross where all are on a level due to sin. As we seek forgiveness for our pride, anger, lust, envy, gluttony, avarice and sloth sin’s power over us is broken. As a priest privileged to hear Confessions I see again and again people coming to that level ground before the Cross and being lifted up by the loving forgiveness shown there for them as individuals. ‘Go in peace, the Lord has put away your sins’. I hope to hear those words tomorrow at the Monastery. 

A last thought. The pandemic has also dug a pit for us. We and many in our circle are in bereavement, frustration, depression, loneliness, anxiety and confusion. By allowing the Cross into this pit, by welcoming afresh the mystery of Christ’s love in Holy Week, there can be transformation. Burdens lifted. Intercession gaining a spring in its step. Discernment coming afresh. Grace to accept things we cannot change. Courage to make changes we ought to make. All is grace - this is made clear to us in Holy Week - all is grace! 

We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you, because by your holy Cross you have redeemed the world!

St Wilfrid & Presentation, Haywards Heath Vigil of the Annunciation 24.3.21

As a beautiful hymn expresses it:Then gentle Mary meekly bowed her head. ‘To me be as it pleaseth God.’ She said.’ 

This morning God wants your Yes a Yes said in spiritual communion – Amen to the Body of Christ - a Yes from the depth of your heart of allegiance to Christ on his Mother’s Feast Day.

We say Yes as Mary did because God has said Yes to us through his stated plan to establish and gather together all things in Christ. He needs our Yes as he did Mary’s for that to be accomplished. Yes to the unification of the cosmos. 

To say No is hell – the Trinity or hell, there is no middle way - that’s Christian Faith.

Let’s look at how your Yes or my Yes might be voiced this morning.

It may be that there’s a scheme ahead that’s very right for you and yours but requires something of a calculated risk, a leap of faith, a costly Yes. Say it this morning at this eucharist.

Or it might be the pain linked to the restrictions placed upon us by COVID-19 begging from you a more profound surrender to your state of life. So often the answer to our problems lies in changing the way we look at our life and especially in positive resignation to the will of God in our circumstances. Sometimes we lack joy and gladness and that deficit traces to a fighting of harsh circumstances that need acceptance, as with lockdown, so we pray with Mary, Yes, Lord, be it unto me according to your will. 

Dare I say, is it Mary you need to say yes to? She is Jesus’s Mother and Mother of believers. Welcome her, say Yes Jesus, with you I love the One you love above all. Shall we not love thee Mother dear whom Jesus loves so well?

We live in a rich place with richly gifted people. How do we get more of these riches consecrated to God’s praise and service? 

It’s a key question the addressing of which affects the future of St Wilfrid’s and The Presentation because it affects another key question, namely, how do we get more people to embrace the love, truth and empowerment that is in Jesus?

Christianity isn’t just a crutch for the weak – it’s that OK I well know it – it’s a direction of strength to good. So many strengths are put to destructive use, yes, even in this town! To accept and say Yes to Jesus is to lose ourselves to gain ourselves and contribute to the gaining of God’s universal plan to bring all things to himself.  In the process we gain confidence, not self confidence, but the certainty that rests on the certainty of God we’ve given way to. 

With this comes the Spirit’s anointing. It came with that first great Yes from Mary in Nazareth.  Behold the servant of the Lord be it unto me according to your will she said and the Holy Spirit overshadowed her. 

God sought Mary’s Yes and he seeks ours so he can anoint us as he anointed her. He seeks our gifts to be employed for his praise and service. In the frustrations we bear it is good to be reminded that God seeks our Yes before he seeks our success both as individuals and as a church.  

St John, Burgess Hill Lent 5 Chalice Bearers 21 March 2021

Some Greeks…came to Philip…and said to him, ‘Sir, we wish to see Jesus.’

That phrase, ‘Sir, we wish to see Jesus.’ is written around many a pulpit. In some pulpits the crucifix faces the preacher as a reminder to present the Cross and not their own thinking.

Here in St John’s our central feature is the crucifix above the altar.

Carving a figure of Jesus to present to people is the preacher’s labour of love and not least in Passiontide. 

It is as if the literal veiling of the Cross calls urgent attention to the central mystery of the faith.

Today’s Old Testament reading from Jeremiah Chapter 31 speaks of a promised new covenant when instead of commandments written on stone God will write his law on human hearts by the gift of the Spirit. This covenant is founded on the blood of Christ, This is my blood of the new covenant which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins we hear daily at the altar.

The second reading from Hebrews Chapter 5 speaks of God’s choice of his Son to take high priesthood on behalf of humanity so as to be able to become the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him. That choice is proved, according to the author of Hebrews, by Christ’s own evident reluctance shown in the Garden of Gethsemane. In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission.  Our Lord did not want honour for himself but made submission to his Father, dedicating his whole life and humanity unreservedly to the will of God.

That renunciation of will in Gethsemane is summarised in the Gospel passage from St John Chapter 12 ‘Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say—“Father, save me from this hour”? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.’

Self-offering that wins glory is built into the life of God himself.

The great French priest scientist Teilhard de Chardin speaks of how that principle applies to our best development as the human race: To allow God, when it so pleases him, to grow within us, and, by death, to substitute himself for us: that is now our duty; that, if one may use the word, is our opportunity; and that is the only attitude that can finally bring salvation. 

Teilhard is struck by the liturgical repetition in Passiontide of the refrain from Philippians ‘Christus factus est’ – Christ was obedient unto death. Commenting on this refrain he writes: That is obviously the exact and profound significance of the cross: obedience, submission to the law of life – and to accept everything, in a spirit of love, including death, there you have the essence of Christianity.

Our Lord lived to die a death for the life of the world. We too are called as Christians to lose our lives, all that is governed by wrong self-interest and self-concern, so that his life may flow in us to bring glory to God.

‘Sir, we wish to see Jesus.’ 

Our best response to that request happens many a time unwittingly as people see us being carried along by the Lord as we carry something of a cup of sufferings, cheerfully and obediently, with faith in Jesus who is become the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.

Passiontide reminds us in this pandemic that no sorrow on earth need be wasted. 

By being taken up into the mystery of Christ’s love, in his passion and in the eucharist, there is transformation. This comes as we gain grace to accept with serenity the things that can’t be changed or courage to change the things that should be changed in our lives. To accept everything, in a spirit of love, including death, there you have the essence of Christianity.

On account of the pandemic there are no Chalice bearers at the eucharist. In a profound sense we are they. In this harsh season we carry the cup of hardship with as good cheer as we can muster through the grace of God. This is a powerful witness. As another French writer, Charles Peguy, wrote: ‘A Christian is a sad man saved from despair by the Cross of Christ’. We are sad at what we are carrying, so many deaths, so much bereavement, frustration, depression, loneliness, anxiety and confusion. As Chalice bearers we intercede for others to be saved from despair and brought with us to the altar of God. That altar is a place of joy and a place of sadness just as surely as our risen Lord went through his passion. In the coming fortnight we have an opportunity to see ourselves on that journey with him as we prayerfully carry the hurts of Burgess Hill and its surrounds in the chalice of intercessory prayer.

‘Sir, we wish to see Jesus.’

I end with Teilhard’s great meditation on the hands of our Saviour:

Into your hands I commend my spirit. To the hands that broke and gave life to the bread, that blessed and caressed, and were pierced – to the hands that are as our hands, of which we can never say what they will do with the objects they hold, whether shatter them or care for them, but whose whims, we may be sure, are full of kindness and will never do more than hold us in a jealous grasp – to the kindly and mighty hands that reach down to the very marrow of the soul – that mould and create – to the hands through which so great a love is transmitted – it is to these that it is good to surrender our soul.

We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you because by your holy cross you have redeemed the world.

St Wilfrid & Presentation Church, Haywards Heath St Patrick 17.3.21

Today the Christian world honours St. Patrick, Apostle of Ireland. As we do so our prayers join his for peace with justice in the land he first evangelised back in the 5th century especially in the wake of the ongoing Brexit settlement.

We can have no better thought, on St Patrick's Day, than his own famous invocation: Christ be beside me, Christ be before me, Christ be behind me, King of my heart.  Christ be within me, Christ be below me, Christ be above me, never to part.

St Patrick's breastplate, so called, is dear to both Catholics and Protestants in the Emerald Isle. Today's Saint helps us rise above denominationalism and sectarianism to Christ who is above all and in all.  

Jesus Christ is more real than any other reality in the world.  By his resurrection he is all present and all powerful.  "He is before us and behind us", as Patrick affirmed, "below us and above us".  In Christ all things were made and hold together.  By his blood, that of "an eternal Covenant", he is become "the Great Shepherd of the sheep" (Hebrews 13:20), desiring to bring us all into one fold.

With St Patrick today we magnify Christ knowing that it is the very purpose of the universe to be brought together in Jesus.  Christ is the centre of all things and he is drawing humankind into that centre we call the Communion of Saints.  

There is through another force and with that comes a tendency to division and separation. One of many endearing features of this great missionary Saint is his awareness of his sins. We forget that saints are sinners. Their great grace is the awareness of their sin. In the case of Patrick the awareness of God’s mercy in covering his sin made him the saint he was. He was all the better able to tell people of the Lord’s goodness.

I wonder what Patrick would make of our situation today? He’d rejoice that Jesus Christ is still a reality to so many in our land. He’d lament the divisions of both church and society. Perhaps above all he’d want to remind people to seek the Lord’s mercy.

The God who covers our individual sins when we seek him can also cover the sins of his church. No church or Christian anywhere exists without the grace and mercy of God. We all need mercy for the ways we’ve failed the Lord. The level playing field we must find is the ground at the foot of the Cross. To take up Patrick's breastplate, to make his prayer, is to put faith in the power of Christ following from there which overcomes the evil of sin within us. 

Take Christ, then, on your right hand, Christ on your left hand, Christ all around you, shield in the strife … light of your life. So be it!

[Image from Missionaries of the Sacred Heart website]

St Wilfrid & Presentation, Haywards Heath 10.3.21

In 2020 I visited the William Blake exhibition at Tate Britain in London and among the exhibitions was this sketch of Moses receiving the Law made around 1780.  Blake, famous as author of the poem Jerusalem our unofficial English anthem, captures the contrast between Christ and Moses in his poem ‘The Everlasting Gospel’:

"Jesus was sitting in Moses Chair/They brought the trembling Woman There 

Moses commands she be stoned to Death/What was the sound of Jesus breath

He laid his hand on Moses Law/The Ancient Heavens in Silent Awe

Writ with Curses from Pole to Pole/All away began to roll" 

In today’s eucharistic readings we focus on the gift of God’s Law through Moses fulfilled in Christ. In Deuteronomy 4 we heard how keeping the Law among Jews would lead to other nations applauding them as a godly people. Our Lord in the Gospel passage from Matthew 5 insists he has not come ‘to abolish but to complete’ the Law and the Prophets. He goes on to say the one ‘who infringes even one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be considered the least in the kingdom of heaven’. 

It is important to see the severity of this Gospel passage in context. It follows the key teaching of the Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount which summarises the Law of Moses in the commandment to love God and to love your neighbour as yourself. St Matthew’s Gospel is addressed to Jewish Christians so it emphasises the continuity between Moses and Christ with both going up a mountain to teach. Blake’s impressive figure of Moses receiving the Law up in the clouds of Mount Sinai is fulfilled by Christ both on the Mount of Beatitudes and Mount Calvary. ‘The curses roll from pole to pole’ on account of Our Lord’s conquest upon the Cross of the power of sin which defeated the Law of Moses again and again in the experience of God’s people. When they brought a woman caught in adultery Jesus in Blake’s words ‘laid his hand on Moses Law’ as he breathed in the Spirit and asked who would cast the first stone. Such a radical challenge to the religious authorities condemning sin but loving the sinner prepared the way for Our Lord’s execution. His death and resurrection overcame sin through the power of God as well as useless condemnation of powerless sinners. We are saved by that gracious power not by dutiful allegiance to Law.

The good news of Christianity does not abolish the Ten Commandments but goes to the heart of what it means to obey them. When we see our obedience to what is right as a response to God’s love shown to us in Christ it flows in a new way empowered by the Holy Spirit. That tenth commandment - you shall not covet - is against a transgression of the heart impossible to counter without the grace of the Holy Spirit. In the Sermon on the Mount Our Lord reveals the heart of human disobedience rests in the human heart with its envy, greed and lust. After teaching this Our Lord released the grace for us to cleanse and mould our hearts so as to more perfectly love God and neighbour. This grace comes at immense cost to himself, dying in our place as sinners so as to live in our place by the Holy Spirit. This is the centre of Lenten devotion.

We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you, because by your holy Cross you have redeemed the world.

St Wilfrid & The Presentation, Haywards Heath 3 March 2021

Our scripture today is full of conflict relating to the conflict of Christ and the sort of conflict Christians should be about.

In the first reading we read of the conflict surrounding the prophet Jeremiah. ‘They said, "Come, let us make plots against Jeremiah - for instruction shall not perish from the priest, nor counsel from the wise, nor the word from the prophet. Come, let us bring charges against him, and let us not heed any of his words.’ (Jeremiah 18:18). The prophet Jeremiah is a pointer to Our Lord in his speaking truth to power. The foes of the prophet rationalised that they could do without him! The priests, the wise and the other prophets would give totally adequate instruction without him, they said. Seven centuries before Christ Jeremiah conflicted with a religious establishment responsible for widespread unfaithfulness to God which he prophesied as being responsible for the destruction of the original Jewish Temple by the Babylonians in 587BC. The people had been warned again and again not to make plans discounting God and his covenant.

In the gospel reading from Matthew Chapter 20 Our Lord speaks of the conflict he will have like his forbear Jeremiah with the religious authorities: ‘We are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn him to death; then they will hand him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified; and on the third day he will be raised. (Matthew 20:18-19). The death and resurrection of Jesus link also to his prophecy of the destruction of the second Jewish Temple by the Romans in 70AD.

Then, in the Gospel, we hear of a more personal conflict involving James and John and their mother who want Jesus to push down the other ten apostles. This gives Our Lord opportunity to open up the heart of these conflicts, the heart of the human problem, a problem we all face, rooted in the heart itself, namely pride. ‘You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. It will not be so among you; but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave; just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many." (Matthew 20:26-28)

In Lent many of our readings, hymns and prayers address this basic conflict, the toppling of pride by humility. The teaching of Jeremiah and Jesus coincided with the toppling of the Temple and its religious establishment but the toppling of pride requires more deep seated action, for which the self giving love of Calvary is eternal instrument. Examining our conscience before the Cross in Lent shows up the idolatry of pride of which James and John were guilty, indulging in thoughts of superiority out of obstinacy and a domineering attitude. They were to learn, as we have to learn, to conflict pride by the cultivation of humility. 

A good Lenten discipline is to ask Our Lord to help us in our struggle against pride by a gift of humility from the Holy Spirit. May the Lord help us deepen this gift, enabling us to ascribe more genuinely to him all the good talents and abilities we possess. More than that, to see our nothingness apart from God and actually less than nothingness through our sins of thought, word, deed and omission. Our Lord asks us, as he asked the mother of Zebedee and her sons, ‘Can you drink the cup that I am going to drink?’ Praise God, we do not need to drink the Chalice he drank for us save at the eucharist as memorial of his redeeming love. God help us, though, to follow his lead in conflicting with pride, with wrong self-assertion including making important plans without reference to him. Also, as James and John learned, to embrace our humiliations after his example and hide our talents and virtues with Christ in God. 

‘Whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave’. It is a struggle, our Lenten conflict, but we are on the winning side on account of the life of Christ poured out for us in Holy Week. That life is ours through the Holy Spirit given at Pentecost. Through our baptism and confirmation the Spirit of humility is in us but, to our dying day, alongside our pride. Christ is in us and so is sin. May these weeks of Lent help us do down pride and raise up humility and love some more. In that way we can be made greater Christians.