St Bartholomew, Brighton Trinity 20 (31C) Matters of the Heart 30.10.10

I want to speak about what I will call matters of the heart. This is prompted by today's Gospel reading from Luke 19. Like Zacchaeus we have to descend to meet with Jesus – not 18 feet from a tree but 18 inches – the distance between our brains and our hearts.

To speak of the heart is to speak of the centre of our personal being. Scripture regards the heart as the sphere of divine influence which contains the real, hidden man. It represents and conceals the true character of a man or woman. At the same time the heart, source of the hidden springs of our personal life, can through sin defile the whole circuit of our action.

Proverbs 3 tells us that a man whose heart is trustful upon God has "healing in his flesh" and "refreshment in his bones" and that is saying an awful lot about the influence of what Our Lord calls "honest and good hearts" upon the bodies and minds of those possessing such a blessing.

If our hearts are right the health there spills into body and mind, emotions, thoughts and intentions.

Christianity concerns the heart. It continually challenges us to go deep, to seek the freedom of the kingdom of God which is within us through our baptism and to find and value the centre of our personal being, the heart.

Some time ago I watched a sort of Brains Trust on TV when the select group of intellectuals were asked if there were any causes left that people might be prepared to die for. Only the religious man said that could be so. It seemed that the sorts of beliefs that the others assented to were not really worth the candle. Only the man who had been seized in his heart by the awesome Reality of God had to admit that to believe as he did could one day call him to sacrifice himself for his principles and not vice versa. As a diversion I would applaud the fact that we now have a prime minister with a seemingly definite religion and a heart assent to the good values associated with Hinduism

There is little heart assent, real assent to truth around. As Christians we have made an assent to Our Lord in baptism, confirmation and, for myself, ordination, but that assent can grow superficial. We live so much at the level of our external bodily appetites or our emotions or our intellects and these can drown the heart’s yearning.

What is divine and also simple is to live at the deepest level, the level of the heart.

God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is a personal God and he seeks to build a personal relationship with us. This is set up in principle through Baptism and nourished through the Eucharist and through preaching and prayer and so on. We need to appropriate the Lord’s personal invitation set forth in these ways. 

This means welcoming God to our personal centre and for that to happen we need to be at home there - in our hearts. Often we are so busy living at the level of bodily appetite or mental stimulus that, however much we profess Christianity, we have no heart to heart with God. We live on the surface. As Zacchaeus descended that tree to do business with Our Lord we also should be drawn to descend with Jesus, descend down into our hearts. 

Are there any good strategies to achieve this? I have found one many others have found useful. This is continual repetition of the age old Jesus Prayer which runs: ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner’ This Prayer centres me. It reminds me of God’s love present alongside me and within me in Jesus Christ. Slowly repeating those words, ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner’ lowers my being eighteen inches from mind to heart. It dispels selfish external preoccupations and provides an outward focus upon those around me wherever I am, including God. The Lord uses the discipline of continuous recitation to turn me out of myself in loving intercession towards my neighbours. It requires the will to pray, of course, which comes from the Holy Spirit who is always at hand to cleanse the thoughts of our heart if we ask him.

The heart, as the centre of our life, commands our conscious being - but is often at the mercy of our unconscious being. Sometimes we find it hard to face ourselves, let alone possess ourselves as we are, however much we believe God loves us. Our failure to give out to others can link to this failure to know, love and possess ourselves - you can’t give what you don’t possess!

The knocks we take in life are very often passed over consciously and stored in the unconscious. Sometimes situations cause us to react out of all proportion. Very often the stored hurts, resentments and so on constrict our hearts, our personal life. I don't want to dwell on this more than to say again we must possess ourselves before we can give ourselves. Scrutiny of our hearts, time taken in self examination and inner healing will reward us with a sort of "deconstricting" of the heart. Talking to a priest or finding a spiritual director or counsellor can help here.

‘Zacchaeus, come down, hurry because I must stay at your house today’. Our Lord has the same invitation to us this morning and we will say in response ‘Lord, I am not worthy, that thou shouldest come under my roof’. May our welcome of him in the Blessed Sacrament reach beyond our lips into our centre, our home, which is our heart. Continual echoing of the ‘Lord, I am not worthy’ welcome words might serve you in this as you follow up receiving Communion by repeating the Jesus Prayer to yourself hour by hour: ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner’.

Christianity concerns the heart. It challenges us to go deep, to seek the inner freedom of the kingdom of God which is within us and needs to be owned. Jesus meek and lowly of heart make our hearts like unto your Heart! Come, Holy Spirit! 

St Richard, Haywards Heath Jesus Prayer Trinity 19 (30C) 23.10.22

How can I live a simpler Christian life? 

Is there a summary of faith that’s clear, memorable and portable?  A biblical aid to praying at all times?  A means of Holy Spirit empowerment which can bypass a distracted mind? Is there an instrument of Jesus Christ useful to carrying his worship into life and vice versa?

The Jesus Prayer of Eastern Orthodoxy, ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner’ is such an instrument. Thoroughly biblical, carried forward by the faith of the church through the centuries, it stands as a unique gift and task.

It’s based on the prayer of the tax-collector in today’s Gospel from Luke 18 verses 9 to 14. This so-called Publican’s prayer is there contrasted by Our Lord with the ostentatious prayer of the Pharisee. The man would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast saying ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner’. From this prayer the Jesus Prayer is built, a simple repeated prayer for quiet individual use with capacity to empower and lead into simplicity of life.

I have come to believe there’s nothing new in Christianity, just the need to enter the day by day newness of Jesus. That newness refreshes me day by day through attending Mass and through reciting ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner’ in an aspiration to carry my Communion forward obedient to the biblical injunction to pray at all times. The Jesus Prayer is inhabited by Jesus who is an effective reminder that God is love and has mercy on us frail mortals.  

It’s a prayer discipline in use across the Christian world since the 5th century and preserved to this day across Eastern Orthodoxy from where it is spreading as a blessing to us in the western Church. 

The Jesus Prayer states the simple good news of Christianity, provides Holy Spirit empowerment to bypass distracted minds, links worship and life and resonates with the faith and prayer of the church through the ages. 

We live in times when many find themselves burdened by anxiety or mental distraction and are seeking help from Buddhist type mindfulness exercises. If only they could enter the spiritual discipline Christians have built from today’s Gospel!  The Jesus Prayer is a ‘God-given mantra’.‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner’. Repeating that sentence brings power to bear upon the soul besides helping us as Christians in relating worship to life.

I knew of the Jesus Prayer for thirty years before I welcomed it as the gift and task it is to help us ‘pray without ceasing’ (1 Thessalonians 5:17).  As a priest leading worship, attending to people’s joys and sorrows and the stresses and strains of church administration I have found the Jesus Prayer an invaluable aid and this is because of the simple message it holds before me - that God loves me and all that is, minute by minute, day by day and for all eternity.  

In the early years of the Church, when there was heavy persecution, if a Christian met a stranger in the road, he sometimes drew one arc of a simple fish outline in the dirt. If the stranger drew the other arc, both believers knew they were in safe company. The early Christians used the secret sign of the fish because the Greek word for fish ‘icthus’ was an acronym for ‘Jesus Christ, Son of God and Saviour’, the earliest creed and the shortest statement of Christian faith. The Jesus Prayer is a short expansion of that personal creed. ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God’ implies the historical figure of Jesus is universal Lord and Son of God. Behind the statement is a conviction that the invisible God has in one human life at one time and place made himself visible, supremely upon the Cross, showing us his love to be witnessed to every generation. 

God who made all and loves all desires to claim all - starting with the human race made in his image.  The first clause of the Jesus Prayer affirms the good news Jesus brings to our lives, news that we come from God, we belong to God and we go to God. ‘The eternal God is our refuge and underneath are the everlasting arms’ (Deuteronomy 33:27 NIV)

It’s that faith I express when, for example, in the gym.  ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner’ I repeat on the machine. Time in the gym helps get me out of my mind into my body and that’s especially welcome when been sitting around at home with the family or on the computer. Gym time helps our bodily well being. It can also be deep thinking time, though this can turn into anxious mental preoccupation, which is why I think many people wear headphones to engage their minds as they exercise their bodies. No headphones on occasion for me in the gym, but rather a conscious coming back into the Lord’s presence.  As I recover repeating the Jesus Prayer it flows with the movement of the gym machines just as its pace fits the natural rhythm of breathing in and out. 

‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner’ 

As the prayer centres me I become aware again of God’s love present alongside me in Jesus, of a dispelling of negative preoccupation and an outward focussing upon those around me wherever I am.  The Lord uses the discipline of continuous recitation to turn me out of myself in loving intercession towards my neighbours. ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God’ I repeat the Jesus Prayer under my breath, and find myself emphasising the second phrase ‘have mercy on me a sinner’.  The phrase ‘have mercy on me a sinner’ in the Jesus Prayer echoes both today’s Gospel and a phrase that recurs in Christian worship: kyrie eleison, literally ‘O Lord take pity on me’:

To show mercy is to treat others as better than they are. In the Jesus Prayer we are not so much asking the Lord repeatedly to demonstrate mercy to us but affirming and celebrating that quality and allowing it to brush off on us and make us more fully his instruments of forbearance. 

The great thinker Simone Weil writes ‘that two great forces rule the universe: gravity and grace. Gravity causes one body to attract other bodies so that it continually enlarges by absorbing more and more of the universe into itself. Something like this same force operates in human beings. We too want to expand, to acquire, to swell in significance. …Emotionally, Weil concluded, we humans operate by laws as fixed as Newton’s. “All the natural movements of the soul are controlled by laws analogous to those of physical gravity. Grace is the only exception.” Most of us remain trapped in the gravitational field of self-love, and thus we “fill up the fissures through which grace might pass.”’ 

The choice to live for God is a choice to live under grace and mercy and not under compulsion. It is an ongoing choice which the Jesus Prayer can facilitate. The beauty of the Prayer is its being a continual reminder both of God’s mercy towards us and of our call to imitate it in our dealings towards others and towards ourselves. It is a reminder true to the action we’re part of this morning in the eucharist as we see that mercy before us in Christ’s body broken and his blood poured forth, mercy we all the better carry out with us after Mass through the quiet discipline of reciting the Jesus Prayer.

Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us!

We do not presume to come to this your table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in your manifold and great mercies. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner!

St Richard, Haywards Heath Feast of St Wilfrid 12.10.22

Our Church building has stood here for almost a century. I have seen a picture of the laying of the foundation stone by the Bishop accompanied by Fr Wyatt from St Wilfrid’s.

On his feast we recall how this Christian community was raised up by St Wilfrid in two aspects. Our mother Church historically is up on the hill but that church and its own mother, our grandmother, at Cuckfield trace back to St Wilfrid.

It was St Wilfrid who led the first Christian missionaries to Sussex in 681 AD. 

For 50 generations Jesus Christ has been made known in Sussex through “the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, the breaking of bread and prayer” (Acts 2.42). 

The story of St Richard’s is part of the story of Jesus making himself known to each generation through the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, the breaking of bread and prayer. To this day in Haywards Heath the Christian faith is being taught, the body of Jesus Christ is being built up, the sacraments are being celebrated and people are praying and serving.

Our story is the story of Jesus Christ making his mark on the world and Sussex tracing back to the energetic mission of today’s Saint to the South Saxons, a brief excursion from his main ministry in the north, so extraordinary was the man.

The Christian faith is always a generation away from extinction. Today’s feast reminds us we are torch bearers in a relay race handing on the fire of the Holy Spirit.

Our Church is a building, yes, but the story of our founder St Wilfrid is a reminder that the Church is primarily a people and a movement.

Through this community, with all its strengths and fragilities, the Christian faith is being taught, the body of Jesus Christ is being built up, the sacraments are being celebrated, people are praying - and serving.

The story of St Wilfrid’s seventh century mission to the Saxons is now our story as surely as Bishop Martin is his successor 1400 years on. 

May the Holy Spirit kindle our hearts at Wilfrid’s prayer this evening so that, through us, others in our circle and our parish may find the purpose for life in Jesus Christ reaching beyond death into the immortal kingdom where today’s saint joins our other patron, Richard, on the throne of God cheering us on our way. Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. Hebrews 12:1-2

St Mary, Balcombe Trinity 17 (28C) Thankfulness

I have no tattoos myself nor have any of my children or grandchildren but I am increasingly surrounded, as we all are, by young people who have them, especially when I go to the gym. That can be a good place for conversation. The other day I met a young man called Lewis who had a very significant tattoo mainly visible to himself and not to others. On his wrist he had the word ‘Gratitude’ embellished which he told me was an aide memoire. Hour by hour he looked down on his wrist recalling things he was grateful for.

Lewis trains boxers. He is convinced he’s a better trainer because he cultivates gratitude since thankfulness is a key character quality. Each day he’d try and find two or three things to be thankful for, thankful in his case towards the universe. I talked with him about how my own gratitude was towards to God, who is the source of all good things, and we agreed to put our chance encounter with one another on each of our gratitude lists. 

‘Count your blessings, name them one by one, and it will surprise you what the Lord has done’. 

Today’s readings pick up on this theme of thankfulness alongside the theme of healing. In the Old Testament story from 2 Kings Chapter 5, Syrian army commander Naaman is healed by bathing in the Jordan. This reading was chosen in parallel to that of the story in Luke Chapter 17 of the ten lepers healed more simply just by meeting Jesus. This story is a reminder of what healing is in Christianity, beautifully and concisely expressed by Bishop Morris Maddocks: ‘Christian healing is Jesus Christ meeting people at their point of need’. 

I wonder, as we gather to the Lord in this eucharist, whether there are people here aware of a deep need. Like Naaman they may be too shy, or even too proud, to bring that need forward to the Lord this morning. May this sermon prompt you, as the young girl who served Naamon’s wife prompted him, to approach the God of Israel and see Jesus meet you at your point of need. The Bread and Wine, or the priest’s hands outstretched in blessing, are to be the Lord who awaits you later on in this service. Think about it, look to God and expect him to meet you at your point of need this morning!

In the second part of the Gospel one leper is praised for showing gratitude. ‘Were not ten made clean?’ Our Lord asks. ‘But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?’ Then he said to the Samaritan, ‘Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well’ - translated whole, or saved in other Bibles.

Notice the nine were spoken of by Our Lord as being ‘made clean’ but the thankful leper was said by Jesus to have been healed inside as well as outside. In other words, thankfulness is a quality that demonstrates the fullness of life we Christians call salvation. It’s a sign we’re living life to the full, life as God wills it. Archbishop Michael Ramsey described thankfulness as ‘a soil in which pride finds it hard to take root’. If we see our whole life as given by God that recognition protects us from obsessive self interest. 

To walk through life with gratitude on our wrist, or better still, in God’s company, makes us less out for ourselves and more out for those on the heart of God.

‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest’ he says in Matthew 11:28. As Christians we are bearers of that invitation through practical action towards those in our circle overwhelmed, for example, by the cost of living. Of course there’s politics here, issues of lifestyle, family breakdown and the like. The beauty of thankful living is that it helps you to go blind to all of that and, to see all you have as a gift, including those you meet, hour by hour, to be welcomed as part of that gift.

Today 9 October is kept as the commemoration of Saint John Henry Newman, an ecumenical saint who died in 1890 after a life of service both as Anglican and then Roman Catholic priest. Saint John Newman was canonised by Pope Francis three years ago. I preached at Roman Catholic Vespers in St Paul’s Haywards Heath on that day as part of local celebrations. I mentioned then as I do now Newman’s motto ‘Cor ad cor loquitur’, let heart speak to heart, which captures what it is to live thankfully with compassion towards others. I want to end with Newman’s famous fragrance prayer, his prayer for grace to radiate Christ to a needy world.

Dear Jesus, help me to spread your fragrance everywhere I go.
 Flood my soul with your spirit and life.
 Penetrate and possess my whole being so utterly, 
that my life may only be a radiance of yours.

 Shine through me, and be so in me 
that every soul I come in contact with
 may feel your presence in my soul.
 Let them look up and see no longer me, but only Jesus!

 Stay with me and then I shall begin to shine as you shine,
 so to shine as to be a light to others; 
the light, O Jesus, will be all from you; none of it will be mine;
 it will be you, shining on others through me.

 Let me thus praise you the way you love best, by shining on those around me.
 Let me preach you without preaching, not by words but by my example,
 by the catching force of the sympathetic influence of what I do, 
the evident fullness of the love my heart bears to you. Amen.  

Wivelsfield Church & St Richard, Haywards Heath Our Father Luke 11:1-4 5 Oct 2022

 As we read this month through the gospel of St Luke at weekday eucharist we have reached the start of Chapter 11 and Luke’s version of the Lord’s Prayer. It's shorter than Matthew’s but is still formative of the prayer we will use later on in our worship.

The prayer Jesus taught us has five aspirations: belonging, purpose, empowerment, forgiveness and direction. 

It starts Our Father which is an aspiration for the world to be a place of belonging that goes beyond this world. The building of bridges between Jews and Gentiles by Peter and Paul referred to in the passage from Galatians was an extraordinary new beginning in terms of inclusion. When we pray to God as Christians we pray Our Father, that is on behalf of all - especially, yes, on behalf of those who know Jesus, but also on behalf of all people since God ultimately wants everyone and everything to be gathered together in Christ.

This is captured as Jesus teaches us to pray Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done. All three phrases effectively say the same, that God won’t let us waste our energies but direct them towards what’s right - and what’s right is the building of unity in the truth that is in Jesus, in our circle, community, nation and across the world.

Thirdly Jesus brings empowerment of body and spirit. Give us this day our daily bread. Even in Sussex that prayer applies to physical bread in the case of some of us, but Jesus promises food not just for the body. He came to bring the food for the spirit that’s given us day by day through prayer, the bible and the eucharist. At this eucharist we ask that Holy Spirit for ourselves and all who’re overwhelmed by the cares and crises of the world.

Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. No one else is equipped as Jesus is to bring forgiveness and a new start to all of us who’re caught by our past wrongdoing. Joseph called him Jesus because he saves his people from their sins.

The prayer moves to its conclusion with a plea for discernment. Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. God sent Jesus so you and I could know what’s important in our lives and do it. God loves us so much he doesn’t want our lives lost in trivial things but caught up into his grand scheme. 

As we prepare to celebrate the eucharist we aspire as ever for what Jesus wants - for us and for the whole world – belonging for the isolated, purpose for the lost, empowerment for the overwhelmed, forgiveness for sinners and direction for those who’re wasting their lives. So be it - for the kingdom, the power and the glory are his for ever. Amen

St Bartholomew, Brighton Trinity 19 (27th of Year) Keep the Faith 2nd October 2022

 

Keep faith and keep the Faith!

This morning’s scripture speaks of faith in two aspects, the quality by which one believes in God through Jesus and that which is believed by Christians.

As believers we respond to God subjectively and in different situations but we also hold to the faith of the church through the ages expressed in the creed and church catechism.

Faith has a subjective and an objective aspect, an individual and collective side, all of which is illustrated by our readings with the Old Testament and Gospel readings going for the subjective, the epistle for the objective aspect. 

Habakkuk affirms in the NRSV translation the righteous live by their faith (2.4) and Our Lord in Luke 17, following a warning to beware of stumbling blocks to faith, gives a shocking response to the apostles’ demand: Increase our faith! saying were your faith the size of a mustard  seed you could say to this mulberry tree, “Be uprooted and planted in the sea”, and it would obey you. A little faith in a great God goes a long way. Jesus goes straight on, though, to warn against overconfident believing paralleling the obedience of faith. We are merely servants: we have done no more than our duty (Luke 17.10).

Keep faith – he’s saying – but keep it humbly. 

Keep the faith – is the invitation of the second reading which again has a latent warning against individuals setting themselves above themselves as believers.  The set passage from 2 Timothy is preceded by this affirmation from Paul of personal faith: I know the one in whom I have put my trust. This precedes our passage’s affirmation of the need to grasp the consensus of Christian believing handed down from the apostles. Keep as your pattern the sound teaching that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. You have been trusted to look after something precious; guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us. 2 Timothy 1.14

At the end of 2 Timothy Paul summarises this as Keeping the Faith. These later New Testament writings called the Pastoral Epistles show the Church adapting after the death of the apostles to a succession of faith guardians from which our bishops descend. When I became a priest I became so before the congregation assembled with the Bishop making a declaration of assent to apostolic faith in these words professing the faith uniquely revealed in the Holy Scriptures and set forth in the catholic creeds, which faith the Church is called upon to proclaim afresh in each generation. Over my 45 years as a priest I have faithfully endeavoured to hand on the faith uniquely revealed in the Holy Scriptures and set forth in the catholic creeds over almost two generations and at considerable cost. It’s meant challenging thinking: that Sunday obligation’s unbiblical, baptism’s a form of baby blessing, hell’s questionable, marriage’s renegotiable, ordination’s leadership, male and female are interchangeable, the devil’s a myth - and I’ll stop there! Keep the Faith I say to myself and to others. If you don’t keep to it, Christian faith in its fullness, the whole counsel of God as Paul puts it elsewhere, the catholic or whole faith, if you don’t keep to it, you’ll end up not keeping faith. The Jesus you see will diminish from the contours or dimensions of apostolic faith.  The way you see God will be the way you see him, not as he has actually revealed himself and handed down through the apostles and their successors, witnessed by the creed, the sacraments, the commandments and the Lord’s Prayer.  You have been trusted to look after something precious; guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us.

Keep faith and keep the Faith.

I am reminding you to fan into flame the gift that God gave you when I laid my hands on you. Paul writes to Timothy in today’s lesson; God’s gift was not a spirit of timidity, but the Spirit of power, and love, and self-control.

Without God’s grace, without the Holy Spirit’s anointing, without knowing our Bibles, welcoming Holy Communion, praying, confessing our sins, we will be unable to live in that obedience which is Christian faith.

To live forgiving all who hurt us and thinking of others more than ourselves, to live with both enthusiasm for the Gospel and sympathy for the many in our acquaintance who’re far from Christ – all of this we flag at accomplishing without the Holy Spirit, whose life within us, given at baptism, needs rekindling again and again!

We need the Holy Spirit to keep faith, and we need him to keep us abreast of the Faith, to grasp again and again the rich wonder and cohesion of Christian faith and draw us back from settling for Christianity-Lite!  Of course we can’t make the best the enemy of the good, and the Lord gives us the most brilliant example here, affirming marriage as unbreakable and yet protecting an adulterous woman, applauding utter integrity and yet absolving a thief.

Keeping the faith is something for you and I. Judging unbelief is a matter for God. As Chesterton said, looking through history, with various upsets and persecutions, Christianity has appeared to be going to the dogs seven times over its history - each time the dog has died! Currently our heels are being snapped at by arrogant secularism, behaving as if all the immense knowledge we now have is more significant than the wisdom of past generations. Then there is resurgent Islam at our heels with its naïve and wrathful simplification of Christianity.

The lectionary today recalls faith in two aspects, the quality by which one believes in God through Jesus and that which is believed by Christians. How well do you know your faith?  Confirmation classes might be a long time back, the world has moved on from there, even if Christianity remains with the unalterable newness of Jesus! Might it help you to pursue a fuller grasp of Faith than a sermon can give, attend the next study group, or find a good book on Christian basics to help you field the questions people put to you rather than keeping your head down when religion’s an issue. I have some copies of my ‘Elucidations - light on Christian controversies’ (show) which Fr Ben has commended and some church members are reading. Do have a chat with one of the clergy after Mass if you want guiding to teaching resources.

Religion will always be an issue, God-given yet man-handled! 20 centuries of Christianity carry wisdom but that wisdom is ours to seek and you don’t get it any more here in Britain by osmosis. Indeed without actively seeking to increase your apprehension of Christian Faith there’s so much that’s counter it around that the default is more and more renegotiation if not surrender to its plausible yet deceptive alternatives.

Faith in the Christian perspective is as Paul defines it in Romans 5:11 is exultant trust in God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Our Lord, who has abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. 

Keep faith – keep the Faith – and may the Holy Spirit anoint you this morning through the eucharist so that you gain fresh resolve to seek the Lord and get yourself more abreast of the faith of the Church which is the good treasure entrusted to you..(by) the Holy Spirit who lives in us.