St Richard, Haywards Heath Holy Innocents Feast 28.12.22

Introduction

Our intention at Mass is the repose of the souls of innocent children destroyed in the womb day by day and the worldwide campaign against abortion, infanticide and child abuse.

Though the world clothes Christmas in tinsel the Church’s liturgy and Octave goes in another direction altogether. There is no sentimentality in the day by day recalling of suffering - Stephen, Thomas Becket and today, very troublesome, the mindless slaughter of children by King Herod in his attempt to eliminate the threat to his throne by the King of the Jews announced to him by the wise men. Joy and sorrow are entwined in Christian faith. As we prepare to celebrate this Mass let us call to mind our failure to extend compassion to those who suffer as well as those times when our faith flags before the darkness and evil we see daily on the news.

Sermon

What do we make of the sobbing and loud lament heard in Ramah recorded by Saint Matthew weeks after the birth of Our Lord? Besides its link with the slaughter of the innocent children by King Herod, Ramah has sorrowful association for the Jewish people. Jacob’s wife Rachel died there and in the sixth century before Christ Jews gathered there to set off to exile in Babylon after the Temple was destroyed. What do we make of the Ramah’s set before us today in Ukraine, Afghanistan, Yemen, Nigeria and so on? Last week one of my friends hosting a Ukrainian mother and her children had news that after the recent bombing of their town her husband had escaped to Poland and should soon be with them in Lindfield. We all have stories like that of the horrors around and how they get redeemed to a degree.

‘Time has not softened the sharpness of the impression which is made upon thoughtful spectators by the sight of the sorrows of life’ wrote bible scholar Bishop Westcott. ‘Christ fulfilled man’s destiny, fellowship with God, by the way of sorrow; and the divine voice appeals to us to recognize the fitness of the road. [As Scripture says] ‘It became Him’ - most marvellous phrase - ‘It became Him for whom are all things, and through whom are all things, in bringing many sins unto glory to make the Author of their salvation perfect through sufferings’ (Hebrews 2:10). 

Our Christian faith weaves together suffering and glory. It is convincing because it opens us to the glory of the world to come whilst not devaluing suffering, as in today’s commemoration of the Innocents. It ‘became God’ to be born in poverty, suffer rejection and crucifixion so as to show the possibilities of human nature and Love’s triumph in the resurrection. Christ indeed fulfilled our destiny of eternal fellowship with God by the way of sorrow and invites us to see ‘the fitness of that road’. 

May the Holy Innocents who await fellowship with us beyond the grave implore the grace of God for us that we keep compassion for those who suffer, especially the unborn, whilst having an eye to the glory Christmas opens up to us. Let’s have a moment of reflection enriched by a few verses from St Paul: ‘We are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ - if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him…. The sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies’ (Romans 8:16-23). 

 

St Mary, Balcombe Easter 4 Friendship 8th May 2022

 

We live as ‘the connected generation’ and we live as Christians. When we make our communion we network with all those in this Church and with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven. It’s great to be just a small part of such a wonderful whole that’s going to be revealed in its fullness beyond death. It’s great to have faith in the Risen Lord who connects us with one another, with the whole church and the risen Christ’s transformation of the cosmos. 

The great priest and thinker Teilhard de Chardin saw the pathway of creation moving from inanimate being to the animation which is life, then from life to self-consciousness as in human beings made in God’s image. He saw that the next obvious stage would be the connecting up of human consciousness globally, which we now see in the internet. Teilhard de Chardin prophesied almost a century ago the connecting up of conscious beings into the collective consciousness we call the World Wide Web.  The picture that came out of his thought and prayer is of the whole cosmos resembling a cone with the movements within it converging upon Jesus as the apex or omega point. Our individual futures, that of the universal church and the whole created order rests in Jesus and is to end in Jesus. As we heard in the Gospel, his gift to us is eternal life. This is the ultimate vision of what it is to ‘be connected’ and to be Christian and it is based on the truth of the risen Lord Jesus Christ underlined to us year by year in the Easter season.

The internet and the growth of high speed electronic communication seems to me, to be part of a God planned connecting, but, it inevitably has a downside. Electronic communications have facilitated ever tighter personal and work schedules that seem to be squeezing out family and village engagement, though of course they can and do serve these. There are many people living in the village deprived of time to stand and stare which is harsh for them and for us. Villages lose heart when people haven't time for one another.

Connecting is different nowadays. There is ‘e-anxiety’, the feeling that comes on as soon as you’re unable to check your email or take a look on social media.

How many of your children or grandchildren will sit with you this Sunday lunchtime with their phone on the table? Of course they’re only doing what human beings have always done – polyphasing, keeping in with different networks, only simultaneously – simultaneously, there’s the rub. You can’t be with someone truly if you’re on the phone as well!

To bring ourselves back to the sorts of connecting that gel with the Christian vision, that rests and ends in Jesus, we need to be reminded about the nature of friendship and how it is rooted in friends being fully present to one another in space as well as time.

Living in a village, worshipping at a parish Church, provides the opportunity for making lifelong friendships through being regularly present to one another. 

You can have friends on Facebook and Instagram – I have and I tweet them – but the friends that really matter are those you’ve lived close to over time. Through the common life of village and church we build friends who can help rub off our rough corners and make us better instruments of bringing all things together in Christ.

They say a dog can be your best friend (picture). More profoundly, friendship’s a spiritual reality. We see our inner selves, as if in a mirror, through our friends, with their honesty about us, something we can best bear from a friend.

Friendship holds us to principle. It’s also empowering to know someone who’ll be on your side through thick and thin. In the first reading Dorcas seems to have had many friends who grieved at her passing and no doubt rejoiced at her return to them.

A year or so back I bumped into a young man at the gym with an eight digit number tattoed on the inside of one arm. Curiosity got the better of me. Jokingly I asked him which jail he’d been in. ‘No jail’ he said. ‘It’s the military number of my best friend. He died in Afghanistan’. I praised him for keeping his friend’s memory and sacrifice alive. It got me thinking.

Christianity’s a religion of friendship.

God made us for friendship. Sin came in as a barrier. By his dying and rising Jesus Christ removes that barrier making us friends with God.

Just as that young man had his friend’s number tattoed on his arm so Our Lord has got your name and mine written on him.

‘See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands’ the Lord says in Isaiah 49 verse 16.

In this Church, through its worship and supremely through the eucharist, the memory and sacrifice of our friend Jesus are kept alive.  Christianity builds beyond earthly friends and networks towards a communion with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven. Through friendships with Our Lord built up as we engage with scripture and sacrament it populates heaven, no less! As we heard in the Gospel: ‘My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me.  I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand’ (John 10:27-28).

May our hearts burn as we reflect now upon Jesus our Good Shepherd as he speaks his word to us this morning and may our eyes be opened as he makes himself known to us afresh in the awesome encounter ahead which is Holy Communion in his Body and Blood, Christ in us the hope of glory.

St Wilfrid & Presentation, Haywards Heath St Mary at the Cross 15.9.21

We come this morning with Mary to the foot of the Cross. We come, at this eucharist, to plead with Mary her Son’s Sacrifice for a broken world.

We come to the eucharist this morning with all the sorrow and confusion of Holy Mary on Good Friday. Like her we’re looking at a crucifixion but ours is a crucifixion of the world by pandemic, yes, but also by terrorism, with the memory of 9-11 and the agony Afghanistan weighing upon us.

Like her we look beyond the foot of the Cross to the light of the resurrection - for whenever we look at a crucifix believers see their risen Lord standing behind.

The challenge of international crises puts a particular responsibility on Christian people to stand with St Mary by the Cross of her Son and pray with Jesus and Mary to the Father: Our Father - in this situation - hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done...deliver us from evil.

By his cross and resurrection Jesus has, in Paul’s words, disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in what he has done.

We Christians are salt and light because like Mary we can ask Jesus, by the sufferings he has borne uniquely, once and for all, to soak up the evil around us and turn the tables on it.

Our prayers and eucharists bring the potential of the Cross, which is like a mighty engine out of gear, into gear so the love of God floods into Afghanistan and the anguish felt through 9-11.

Paul says God’s love has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. It was true of Mary at her Annunciation and it is equally true of us in our baptism and confirmation. That love is poured upon us so that, at our prayer, it may cascade extravagantly upon all whom we bring to the foot of the Cross.

With Mary we stand at the Cross on behalf of a troubled, hurting, godless nation and a troubled world this morning - but if we go out from this eucharist church fired up to pray all the more for our nation he who is in us will show himself more powerful than those troubles.

Jesus living in Mary live in us is our prayer in church at every eucharist. Jesus living in Mary live in them is our prayer of intercession as we encounter the needy in the media and closer to home. 

God sees what is in your heart. Keep lifting the pain you see on the TV to him. Stand with Mary by Jesus crucified. Treat those you see suffering as if they were Christ upon the Cross. Ask the Father to send them healing love and resurrection!

As you do so, pray in your own words. Use the slow recitation of the Lord’s Prayer. Use  the Jesus Prayer, Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner. Use the Hail Mary if you know it. 

Take up the weapon of prayer to come before the Lord with this aching nation upon your heart day by day, hour by hour in the coming week. Mary at the Cross, pray with us and for us!