St Mary, Balcombe Easter 3 & St George 23.4.23

This Sunday in Easter Season takes precedence over the feast of England’s patron saint so the church calendar moves full celebration of St George to tomorrow. Nevertheless the flag of St George flies across the land today so it’s good to start with him in opening up the scripture for today. The tradition is that George, a soldier, was martyred at Lydda in Palestine during the persecution of Emperor Diocletian in 303 AD. With his military background he was seen as a great warrior for Christ and legends built of his slaying a dragon, symbol of Satan, making him patron of the spiritual battle Christians cannot escape. This conflict has two fronts: spiritual deepening and evangelism - inside of us in accepting Christ’s reign and shaking off futile pursuits and outside of us in working to establish Christ’s reign in our circle, nation and world. 

To pause on that last point for a minute or two, the flag of St George flies today over a nation preparing to gather around the altar at Westminster Abbey in two weeks time for a Coronation Eucharist where a disabled ramp has just been built (picture). On TV the nation will see something there as strange to them as to many villagers of Balcombe - this action - the taking, blessing, breaking and sharing of bread and wine linked to renewing Christian commitment at the Eucharist. At the end of the service the King and Queen will take off their crowns and kneel to offer their souls and bodies as a living sacrifice in union with that of Christ and receive Holy Communion. They will commit, as we are  this morning, to Christian service. As they do so  three dragons, three enemies of faith, prowl round them and us. These are relativism (the view religions stand side by side with none pre-eminent), secularisation (the view religion has had its day) and atheism (the view dismissing God altogether). Charles and Camilla will be inaugurated, as Bishops and priests are, at a Christian Eucharist, but theirs and ours is a nation as strange to Christianity as the Eucharist today is strange to Balcombe, a nation like the nations St George evangelised 1700 years ago leaving such a mark on Europe as to be made patron saint of England, Ethiopia, Georgia and Portugal.

Back to our scripture and how it marries with the challenge of St George to spiritual deepening and evangelism. Developing these two aspects are vital to our Christian witness. The spiritual depth and force of Saint Peter permeates the first two readings and what a response there was to that with as many as three thousand seeking baptism! In the wake of the anointing of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost Peter stands up and proclaims: ‘Let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified’ (Acts 2:36). The core of evangelism, of the good news, is Christ’s divinity which is to fill our hearts by the Spirit as we do, as Peter says, namely: ‘Repent, and be baptised… in the name of Jesus Christ so that [our] sins may be forgiven; and [we] receive the gift of the Holy Spirit’ (v38). 

On Easter Tuesday I was busy in London recording my new series for Easter Season on Premier Christian Radio, ‘Finding Joy in the Lord’ which starts tonight at 7.30pm on Freeview Channel 725. The 20 minute programmes will be available week by week on listen again at premierchristianradio.com/joy. The overall thesis of the series is that of the verse just quoted, Acts 2v38, that as we turn afresh to the risen Lord Jesus, repent of our sins and renounce evil, his presence is renewed within us. This brings joy to our hearts as we own our baptism afresh, put faith in Jesus, seek cleansing from sin and welcome the Holy Spirit into the circumstances of our life. Finding joy in the Lord relates to our turning again and again in faith and repentance to the risen Lord Jesus and welcoming his Spirit into every circumstance of our life. The joy of the Lord becomes our strength as heart to heart knowledge of Christ grows. As with St Peter in Acts that joy overflows and infects others rooted as it is in conviction towards God in Christ.

In our second reading Peter in his first letter affirms, again with a note of certitude, ‘Through Christ you have come to trust in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are set on God… now you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth so that you have genuine mutual love, love one another deeply from the heart’ (1 Peter 1:21-22). St Peter insists that trusting in God who raised Christ from the dead opens believers to the outpouring of love which forms believers into a caring community. The spiritual deepening of believers is inseparable from such Christian fellowship nurtured by word and sacrament. The meaning and power of scripture and the eucharist are presented obliquely in the Gospel passage from Luke 24:13-35. Here two disciples walking to Emmaus, whose dreams had been shattered, were consoled and energised by a stranger opening scripture to them, warming their hearts, and making himself known as God in Christ as he breaks bread. This is gentle evangelism, that of the Emmaus Road, making Christ known in a process, contrasting with the forceful one-off impact in the story in Acts of Paul’s blinding conversion by light from heaven in his own journey on the Damascus Road.  

This morning’s readings on St George’s Day present us with the reminder of our work in hand as Christians, a work of spiritual deepening and evangelism. As the second reading expresses it our deepening in love for God best comes in recognising as we do at every Eucharist the work of Our Lord who is the Lamb of God slain for us all from the foundation of the world: ‘You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your ancestors, not with perishable things like silver or gold but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without defect or blemish… destined before the foundation of the world… Through him you have come to trust in God’  That trust and its accompanying joy are the spring of evangelism, our desire to spread the good news of amazing sacrificial love. The love and truth recalled and presented to us in every Eucharist is also a wellspring of spiritual purification if we will accept its refreshing of the parts of us no one but the Holy Spirit can reach and cleanse.

So be it, though there be cost and conflict for us, inside of us to cast off futile ways and outside of us to graciously tackle the ‘dragons’ or deceptions of the world, the flesh and the devil. To quote CT Studd  ‘If Jesus Christ be God and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for Him’.  So at the Eucharist, the church’s great thanksgiving for redemption, we offer our souls and bodies as a living sacrifice in union with Christ, to whom with the Father and the Holy Spirit be all might, majesty, dominion and power, henceforth and for evermore. Amen.