St Mary, Balcombe Trinity 8 (17A) Hidden Treasure 30.6.23

 

The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. Matthew 13.44

One Sunday in January 1927 this passage from Matthew 13 was the subject of a sermon by a predecessor of mine as Rector of Horsted Keynes, The Revd Frank Stenton-Eardley. It was an exceptionally profitable sermon. One of the congregation from nearby Broadhurst Manor went home, dug in a field there and unearthed a hoard of sixty-four gold nobles. This gold, deposited 500 years before, is now in the British Museum.

How profitable will this sermon be? Indeed how profitable is any sermon? Did you know you can engage with the sermon not only by grabbing the preacher over coffee but also by going on his blog? I was at the Eucharist on Friday and before the service I was putting £5 in the online donor box when I bumped into the celebrant, who is a friend. ‘I’m putting in a fiver’ I said ‘It’d better be a good sermon’. Fr Vlad promised me my money back! It was a good sermon.

There is no word of God without power. The preacher’s role is to read and study it and read and study his people and their context and make connections in a 10-15 minute talk that will help such an engagement with Our Lord that it will echo on in their lives in the coming week.

The guy who found the treasure remembered the preacher’s sermon when his spade clinked the treasure. What does today’s preacher suggest you might find memorable about the same Scripture?

I don’t know enough about the circumstances of the finding of the sixty-four gold nobles to say whether the finder gained, though I guess he did, or was it the then owner of the Manor? 

What I think you and I can gain a century on is the reminder to renew our spiritual alertness and determination. These are the clue to an ongoing welcome of treasure that’ll never be shipped off from us to the British Museum!

The two parables of the treasure and the pearl remind Christians of the need to put supreme value on building our longing for God and his kingdom.

It is not what you are or have been that God looks at with his merciful eyes but what you would be wrote the mystic author of that Medieval classic, The Cloud of Unknowing.

What would you be? Where’s your heart set? 

In our first reading from the book of Kings we heard of Solomon’s being approached by God in a dream with a similar question: Ask what I should give you. He answers with a prayer for wisdom and is praised accordingly. God said to him, ‘Because you have asked this, and have not asked for yourself long life or riches, or for the life of your enemies, but have asked for yourself understanding to discern what is right, I now do according to your word. Indeed I give you a wise and discerning mind; no one like you has been before you and no one like you shall arise after you. 

God wants aspirations towards him to be of supreme value to us and we can’t attain these without alertness and determination, two virtues that come out of the parables of the treasure and the pearl in our gospel reading from the end of Matthew Chapter 13. Like the Broadhurst Manor labourer, if we live our lives attending to every moment we don’t have to go far to find God and his riches. The purpose of scripture, of sermons and bible study, is to school us to be alert to the possibilities of God breaking into our situation, as the clink of the spade on the gold alerted the farm worker schooled by the Sunday sermon preached from the pulpit.

Speaking personally I always find the number of God-incidences in a day linked to the fervour or length of my morning prayer. The more something of God’s eternal wisdom has touched my heart the more alert I am to the need to give ear to the person I meet on the street, phone or e mail.  Treasured encounters come to me inasmuch as my heart is set to evaluate everyone I meet as if they were Christ, to see my diary as containing what’s ultimately important as well as what’s merely pressing upon me.

The treasure parable of God’s kingdom is a reminder to recognize the treasure that’s already there in our lives and the joy its discovery brings. Over the summer we’ve got great opportunities to rediscover the joy of family and friends as the demands of work lift from many of us. 

If this parable is a reminder to be alert to God’s moments the parable of the merchant is a reminder to be spiritually determined. The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it. Jesus emphasises in this parable how being his follower takes you on a determined spiritual search. The cost of this will be eclipsed by the outcome but there is a cost.

To be better disciples of Jesus we need opportunities to discipline ourselves so our personal agendas give way more and more to his. This cannot occur, Jesus cannot reach into our lives, without prayer, scripture and the eucharist. 

It is not what you are or have been or are that God looks at with his merciful eyes but what you would be. Saint Seraphim, a great Russian spiritual teacher, was asked what was the secret that lay behind people who appear to have more of the Holy Spirit than others. Just their determination was his reply.

May the Lord build that determination for him as well as the day by day, hour by hour alertness to the treasure we don’t need to go on holiday to find since it lies buried and awaiting us in Balcombe.

St Bartholomew, Brighton Trinity 5 (Wk 14) 9.7.23

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

When we hear the readings read on Sunday we examine what we’ve heard. In St Bartholomew’s we then look up, as you’re doing now, an awesome 15 feet to the preacher for understanding. Today’s Gospel invites us to look up a lot further, beyond Edmund Scott’s 45 foot baldacchino or 135 foot ceiling of allegedly the tallest parish church in Europe, to imagine how God sees the revelation we’re seeking.

‘Jesus exclaimed, “I bless you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for hiding these things from the learned and clever and revealing them to mere children. Yes, Father, for that is what it pleased you to do’ Matthew 11:25.

Our Blessed Lord rejoices at the start of this passage which helps him convey a wonderful truth about God above and beyond us. This is the joy he shares with his Father in revealing himself to those who seek him. If you are here in St Bartholomew’s to seek God this morning be assured God is seeking you and more than seeking you - God delights in this very moment at our attention towards him! God the Son continually, moment by moment, chooses to reveal his eternal Father in the Holy Spirit. God’s joy is ours at a revelation, an opening of the inner eye of faith, so that today’s words of Zechariah in the first reading, used months back on Palm Sunday, have a special resonance with the Gospel: ‘The Lord says this: Rejoice heart and soul, daughter of Zion! Shout with gladness, daughter of Jerusalem! See now, your king comes to you’ Zechariah 9:9.

God comes to us this morning and this truth is more powerful than the simpler truth we have come to Mass in St Bartholomew’s. Of course there are many times we come to Church, look up to God, hear the Bible read and join in the Eucharist without feeling a thing. Today’s Gospel gives us a fresh perspective in its reminder of how worship begins and ends beyond us in the life of the Trinity and the communion of saints. God’s joy at our attention to God this morning and openness to what God might reveal to us is a given. By pondering Our Lord’s announcing that truth in today’s Gospel we can be infected with joy as our second reading suggests. ‘If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, then he who raised Jesus from the dead will give life to your own mortal bodies through his Spirit living in you’ Romans 8:11.

Sometimes we need grace to see things the other way round - as God says he sees things - in the words of scripture. Yes it's the case that we Christians are one with the rest of a large part of our society in seeking the truth but unlike the rest we know the Truth is continually seeking us and revealing himself less to the learned and clever and more to the humble who believe. Like many we are appalled at how the war against Ukraine shows truth being lost particularly in the Russian media. George Orwell in his novel 1984, published in 1949, portrayed the world we now see in which a government declares war is peace, freedom is slavery and ignorance is strength. When it comes to the state of the world the abandonment of truth telling is tragic but it doesn’t negate the work of the Holy Spirit who is always bringing truth to bear and working especially through those humble before God to establish justice, love and peace. As believers we have the privilege of seeing things the other way round, so to speak, as God would have us see things.

If that’s so for politics, seeing things from the God-perspective scripture encourages can also help our prayer as the great 16th century Saint Teresa of Avila taught. She was, it should be said first, a very down to earth lady. When her horse threw her in the mud she famously shook her fist at heaven and said, ‘God, if that's how you treat your friends, it's not surprising you have so few’. The same Teresa taught people to pray in this way. ‘Imagine’, she said, ‘that you see Jesus standing before you. He is looking at you lovingly and humbly. Prayer comes as you notice he is looking at you lovingly and humbly’. This insight is one with today’s Gospel which celebrates God’s joy at revealing himself to all who persist in coming before God in prayer and worship. Not only, says Teresa, does God look upon us with love, he looks upon us humbly. That means he thinks of himself as less than us! 

‘Jesus exclaimed, “I bless you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for hiding these things from the learned and clever and revealing them to mere children. Yes, Father, for that is what it pleased you to do’ Matthew 11:25

God is pleased to reveal God-self and that is basic Christianity working itself out in prayer and politics. As we come forward for Holy Communion this morning let us come with an expectation that God’s life and joy will be deepened within us for ‘if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, then he who raised Jesus from the dead will give life to your own mortal bodies through his Spirit living in you’ Romans 8:11. So be it.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

St John the Evangelist, Burgess Hill Trinity 4 (Wk 13) Eucharistic Sacrifice 2.7.23

Sunday by Sunday we have an invitation to participate in a blessing and distribution of bread and wine that impacts the cosmos through the eucharistic sacrifice of Jesus who died in our place and comes here and now, there and then, to be in our place and that of the whole world before our Father. His institution of the eucharist calls forth obedience - ‘do this in remembrance of me’ - but more profoundly obedient self-offering by ourselves into his own Offering for our salvation and that of the whole world.

When I participate in the eucharist it is like getting on a celestial lift. Though its a brief journey timewise, a few minutes when it comes to specifically pleading Christ’s Sacrifice, I am aware that people and needs already on my heart get lifted to God with powerful consequences. With our patron Saint John I see the lifting of Christ in bread and wine drawing the cosmos to him ‘the bread of God which (also) comes down from heaven and gives life to the world (John 6:33). With Saint Paul I am lifted with Christ through separate consecration and display of bread and wine imagining a showing, a piercing through the Church walls, of divine love to irradiate our suffering world. Our striking west windows expand on Paul’s teaching in 1 Corinthians 11 verse 26, one with a picture of the Crucifixion and the other of the priest at the altar enfolded by the second half of that verse ‘Ye do show the Lord’s death until He comes’. Those who built St John’s were intent it should be less a preaching house and more a temple of God so that what we do this morning is the movement to heaven of Christ’s self offering into which we are drawn, ‘our souls and bodies as a living sacrifice’.

The Old Testament reading today from Genesis 22 is profound and difficult. It is the one used on Good Friday to illuminate the offering of the Son of God upon the Cross. Abraham’s offering of his son, Isaac mirrors God the Father’s sacrifice. It is a difficult passage to read mindful as we are of contemporary abuse and even killing of children by parents and quasi-mentors. The story of how in obedience to God Abraham takes his beloved son and prepares to sacrifice him is graphic. An angel calls back his hand with the knife as it prepares to descend on little Isaac. A ram caught by its horns in a thicket is revealed to replace Isaac as a sacrifice to God. On Good Friday this scripture of a father prepared to offer his son but spared doing so is a pointer to One who actually does so. The profound action of that Day is put into a sentence by Paul two chapters on from today’s second reading: ‘God did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us’ (Romans 8:32).

For that reason we show the Lord’s death day by day at the altar, as our church windows illustrate. Unlike Abraham God did not withhold his Son for us. Rather, through God's Offering of Christ there is made as the Articles of Religion describe ‘once for all, perfect redemption, propitiation, and satisfaction, for all the sins of the whole world’ (Article 31). God who created the world and human beings in his image, seeing the havoc caused by humans through misuse of free will, provided the remedy once for all. Though that havoc continues it is countered day by day as people come to the Cross for forgiveness, healing and to offer themselves in love to God’s praise and service. This is picked up in our second reading from Romans Chapter 6 where Saint Paul reminds his readers that since they have welcomed the living Christ who has freed them from the power of sin they should live accordingly. Like us, those Roman Christians needed reminding that through Christ’s sacrifice the power of sin had been potentially countered in our lives but our own grateful sacrifice is needed to release the potential of that saving gift. ‘Just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to greater and greater iniquity, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness for sanctification… now you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sanctification. The end is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord’ (Romans 6:19, 22-23).

At every Eucharist in St John’s we plead Christ’s Sacrifice on Calvary made present among us in Bread and Wine and join to it the sacrifice of ourselves. ‘Pray, my brothers and sisters’ the priest invites ‘that this, my sacrifice and yours, may be acceptable to God, the almighty Father’. ‘May the Lord accept this sacrifice at your hands’ we respond ‘for the praise and glory of his name, for our good, and the good of all his holy Church’. We go on later in the service to offer ‘our souls and bodies as a living sacrifice’. 

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday today and always, across the timespan of creation, the glorious redemption effected upon the Cross displayed in the resurrection, moving on through our own engagement and that of billions, towards the end of history ‘when he will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead’ and make God everything to everyone who accepts his love. To effect today’s Gospel, which presents believers as Christ’s instruments, we need an eye to the once for all Sacrifice of Christ, its renewal in the Eucharist and our own response in self offering. ‘Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me… and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple - truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward’ (Matthew 10:40, 42) 

Though you’ve been listening to me, I hope, and maybe feel encouraged, St John’s, as our windows warn, is built not as a preaching house but, with its heavenward-pointing spire, as a temple for the worship of God in Burgess Hill. Going to the Eucharist can sometimes be reduced to the spiritual equivalent of going to Waitrose. Whilst I hope you’ll be encouraged by your attendance this morning, it's not what you feel that matters but how real the worship of God has been to you over this hour.  In our church window - do look at it afterwards - the priest faces east to lead the people Godwards. A Waitrose type consumerist approach to the sacred mysteries is suggested by recent liturgical changes - Mass in the round - as well as the obligation to listen and reflect upon the homily or keep quiet after Communion. These helpful elements are geared more to serve our own needs than to what is historically central to the eucharist - the worship of God through pleading the Sacrifice of Christ for the suffering and triumph of the cosmos into which our own renewed self-offering Sunday by Sunday has a key part.

Seeing such profundity beyond the brief action of this hour with scripture and bread and wine has been for me a gift from teaching received and engagement with holy priests and people. Over the course of my life they have lifted for me the veil covering the sacred mysteries, not least my own mother Elsie, who, as my son John is now, was a regular attender at our Wednesday Eucharist. In recognising the power of Christ’s Sacrificial Prayer to which my intentions are joined day by day I have gained confidence in a transformative dynamic summarised in Our Lord’s promise that ‘I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself’ (John 12:32). All people, but also all things as St Paul writes of all things being ultimately put ‘in subjection under Christ, so that God may be all in all’ (1 Corinthians 15:28). Such ultimately is the power of the eucharist which draws us up to God and out into service of what the Gospel calls ‘the little ones’ of Burgess Hill.

‘May the Lord accept the sacrifice which is yours and mine for the praise and glory of his name, for our good, and the good of all his holy Church’.