St Mary, Balcombe Trinity 4 (15C) 10.7.22

 

No other religion puts such a store on love. We are clear in principle - the Beatles put it right: ‘All you need is love’. Unfortunately Christianity as a movement over 20 centuries has fallen short of that principle. Though we’ve built hospitals and schools, framed laws to protect human rights and raised up saints through those centuries, Christianity has also seen crusades, cruelty and a degree of abuse in the name of Christ. As GK Chesterton wrote, defending our Faith, ‘The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried’. It's important we take that point as Christians whilst not being deterred in aspiring to live our faith as best we can with the assistance of the Holy Spirit. 

There are few bible passages that spell out practical love as clearly as the one we just heard, Luke 10:25-37, the Parable of the Good Samaritan. In the story we need to know that in age old Jewish tradition, linked to hygiene, touching a corpse led to ritual defilement so the Priest and Levite were actually doing right by their law. The Samaritan who wasn’t a Jew followed a higher law, that of love. His action illustrates love as not so much an ideal but a task. It’s not just benevolence let alone tolerance but doing concrete acts for people in concrete need. Our Lord turns the lawyer’s question who is my neighbour? back on him by the question which of these three was a neighbour, or in another translation, proved neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers? 

Loving your neighbour in Jesus’s book doesn’t mean loving some but not loving others. It means loving all, good and bad. This teaching was acted out when Jesus died outside the walls of Jerusalem. 

The Christian vision of love links to a God of love who acts concretely to serve and save outsiders so that Jesus Christ’s last conversation was with the thieves crucified with him outside Jerusalem. To the generous one he said words in Luke 23:43 believers will joyfully accept on our deathbeds: Today you will be with me in paradise. 

I must leave you to work out for yourself the relevance of today’s scripture to the elements of xenophobia sweeping through the world, Britain included. Can there ever be outsiders so far as God’s concerned? Can we trust a nationalism that falls short of the deep British sense of fair play and inclusion, itself built from 1500 years of Christianity? 

We want a society that doesn’t just tolerate difference but which respects those who’re different. Building respect is costly in time and trouble. It refuses to pass by on the other side especially when it comes to the disadvantaged. The Samaritan exemplifies this in the concrete tasks he took on. When he saw him, he was moved with pity. Then, from the heart’s motivation, followed these concrete tasks. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, “Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.”  The hospitality offered in Balcombe to Ukrainian refugees is a vivid example of where many villagers are coming from in their readiness to give practical service to people at the sharpest end of the war in Europe. 

We come to Church to join the angels, as the Glory to God and Holy, holy, holy chants affirm, in looking forward to the certainty of heaven. Our Sunday celebrations lift us up beyond the changes and chances of life, the hardships we bear in love, to the certain, all embracing love of God that will be ours in heaven with the angels and saints. ‘All you need is love’.

We come to Church to worship God and bathe in his love through word and sacrament, prayer and fellowship which builds us up. Church is a temple more than a preaching house but it is both. When we hear the word, offer ourselves in Christ’s Sacrifice and receive his body and blood we are the better equipped to love. The Holy Spirit comes again and again in prayer and worship. Through reading the Bible we’re further strengthened since there’s no word of God without power. 

It’s hard to love – in our own strength. It’s hard to persevere through tribulations small or great. The story of the Good Samaritan awakens us to God’s vision of what it is to love, a vision to be written on our hearts. The word of God this morning has reminded us of the task of love and how respect triumphs over mere tolerance in a Christian culture. The worship ahead brings love’s supply to help that, through Holy Communion, through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.

It’s my prayer for all assembled that we experience that love more fully through daily prayer, Sunday worship, reading the Bible, serving others and regular reflection upon our need for God and for one another as God’s people. ‘All you need is love’. 

Conversion of St Paul Ardingly College 25 January 2017

How do you get to know God?

Some get to know him in a blinding flash, others find gradual illumination and many stay in the dark.

My own illumination has been through gradual flashes. Ardinian, or rather Giggleswickian, served by confirmation classes at my old school. The Chaplain counted a lot as Fr David counts for many of you.

It came also through a doctorate in Chemistry researching carbon polymers. As I opened up new realms of knowledge through neutron scattering, I had a sense Someone had seen these things before. 

Science works through humility so that hypotheses that get disproved are good news bringing advance. My old research field is a bit strange to me nowadays. I was fascinated though to read in last month's Scientific American of carbon-breathing batteries that use Aluminium to suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere whilst making electricity. 

How do you get to know God?

We scientists pursue truth but many of us have a sense truth is with us and awaiting us. Reason and faith both lift us to God. Saul of Tarsus whose Conversion we’re celebrating today, originally followed a reasoned religion lacking faith. He lacked openness to the transcendent. God was in his religious books and laws so he was rattled to encounter the first Christians. They spoke of laws and indeed life itself transcended through the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.

It was too much. He raged against it. But Saul was to become Paul, the reasoned man became the man of faith as heavenly light came over him on the Damascus Road. His eyes were opened to a God built less to his dimensions and more to those of God who is God!

How do you get to know God?

As God is truth you need to seek truth, but that's not enough. You need to be open to truth as something or Someone seeking you! 

The best of scientists like old Archimedes get eureka moments - I see it! These moments are, like Paul’s today, a lesson in humility, that is, in disbelieving yourself so as to see something more wonderful. To get to know God – and what an awesome, joy-giving and life-enhancing business that is - you need a readiness to loosen from self pre-occupation, see the big picture of reality and be put in your place!

That happened to Saul of Tarsus in a flash which really put him in his place. He was temporarily blinded, and had to be led by the hand into Damascus where he joined the very body he was persecuting.  Later on Paul wrote of this in 1 Timothy 1:16 I received mercy, so that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display the utmost patience, making me an example to those who would come to believe in him for eternal life.  Paul saw himself as the foremost of sinners since he had persecuted the very body he came to join and lead. If God can use me, he says, he can use anyone.

How do you get to know God?

Former Ardinian, Private Eye editor Ian Hislop writes of his formative days here and how each day he walked out on to the terrace to look at the view with friends as they shared aspirations for the future. God is before you in that inspiring view as much as he’s before you in Chapel. It’s a bit of a leap from Ian Hislop to St Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain but here goes. St Nicodemus who lived on Mount Athos in the 18^th Century also admired the grand views there. He pondered and came up with an astonishing two liner that captures what it is to be in the image of God. Human beings are the macrocosm. The whole universe is the microcosm. I repeat: Human beings are the macrocosm. The whole universe is the microcosm.

You can find God by pondering yourself, or, one step back, reflecting on what it is to reflect.  As your mind and heart contain the view from the terrace, and indeed, in a thought, the whole universe, you become in a sense greater than all that is as you contain it. Human beings are the macrocosm. The whole universe is the microcosm.

God is God and always will be God. We’re made in God's image capable of his glory but that capacity isn't automatic. People miss God through two deceptions. They reason to the exclusion of faith or they believe to the exclusion of reason.

The greatest threats to peace on earth are folk who deny the transcendent and folk in possession of mindless religion. God is love and love transcends reason – it goes beyond but not against reason.

To know God who is truth you need to be drawn beyond any mental construct. You might also need freeing, as Paul was, from false and compulsive images of God.

A few ideas this evening on how you get to know God. 

I want to encourage you to pray sometime, in quiet, on your own – maybe on the terrace as you admire the view, maybe in the Chapel Crypt before the Blessed Sacrament, to pray this honest and risky prayer:  God if you're there and you love me show yourself to me. Give me a vision of yourself more to your dimensions and less to my own.

It's an honest prayer - saying 'if you're there' tames reason as it admits we can't prove God is there however strong the evidence. It's a risky prayer because you're expressing a readiness to be put right on God by God – but… God is love! It’s an ongoing prayer - you need to wait for an answer. God if you're there and you love me show yourself to me. Give me a vision of yourself more to your dimensions and less to my own.

If you already know God you’re asking for a fuller vision of him, something I find myself doing often, but not as often as I should so I’m preaching this evening at myself too.

Have a go - you won't regret it!

In Paul’s own words to Corinth, God give you the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. (2 Corinthians 4v6)

God who shone on Paul shine on us all!

Ardingly College St Edmund the Martyr 20th November 2013

According to legend when they beheaded St Edmund for not renouncing Christ they threw his head into the forest. It was found later on by friends who followed the cries of a wolf calling, 'Hic, hic, hic' which Latinists here will know says 'Here, here, here'.

It's a good story, and a parable as well, for there are many issues around I'd like supernatural help to address and hear a 'eureka' - to switch my Classical languages - let alone a 'Hic, hic, hic'.

Take the dreadful Typhoon which afflicted 13 million people in the Philippines. I know quite a few Philipinos around Haywards Heath, indeed without them our residential homes would be much the poorer. Last week I had issues with God when I thought of the extraordinary damage done to their homeland.

Earlier in the week the preacher on Remembrance Sunday had mentioned a friend's father who served in the First World War and never went to church again afterwards being convinced any loving God wouldn't allow the carnage he had seen firsthand.

Or, to make a threesome, what about the people I come across all too regularly who's minds are decaying so they no longer know who they are, where they belong or any purpose they have in life.

Where's my hic, hic, hic - here, here, here's the answer?

Issues of natural catastrophe, human cruelty and mind decay are no mere hiccups - excuse the pun! They're seriously real, don't go away and make an invisible loving God look metaphysical in a bad sense.

You know, like the way the former Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell dismissed duff ideas as 'so much theology'.

Now as a priest I'm much engaged with people on the sharp end including victims of accident, abuse of their fellows or Alzheimer’s. I engage but I don't often give theology. There's nothing more insulting that to explain someone's hardship to them without lifting a finger to alleviate it. My main task is to anoint, bring Holy Communion or say a prayer. People don't like to be preached at but, on the whole, they rather like being prayed for.

I remember visiting a brilliant novelist with a brain tumour in Princess Royal. As we got talking he said early on I should watch my step as he wasn't a believer. It happened I'd just read Mother Teresa's Autobiography which gave extensive cover to her doubts. (Yes - you can be a great believer and still have doubts). Anyway I mentioned he wasn't alone - even the holy nun had doubts - and as we talked a doctor walking by and stopped in his tracks. 'Mother Teresa', he said. 'I knew her personally. I trained with her medical team in Calcutta'. Then, to our amazement he unbuttoned his shirt and showed us a holy medal she'd given him. We both touched it.

As the doctor passed on I asked my friend if he wanted me to say a prayer for him and, atheist that he was, he readily agreed!

It was a 'Hic, hic, hic' moment. Pure serendipity, the mention of Mother Teresa bringing us a doctor's advice that led us to pray together! I never met him again but sense that three way meeting of the doctor, he and I went to four just as the three men in the fiery furnace were seen to be four outside because Christ came by them.

Why does a good God allow devastating typhoons, trench warfare or the decay of people's minds?

In his book 'The Reason for God' the American Christian writer Timothy Keller has these wise words: 'If you have a God great and transcendent enough to be mad at because he hasn't stopped evil and suffering in the world... you have... a God great and transcendent enough to have good reasons for allowing it to continue that you can't know... you can't have it both ways'.

I like it. A God you set up in your mind and then shoot down because he falls short in terms of what can be measured, mapped or scientifically explained. How literally small-minded! Greater the mind with the humility to know its place, that’s got a sense of the intersection of time with eternity so bad things that happen are seen in a larger context.

The trouble with the materialism of our age is it denies that larger context. The confidence it's given us in terms control of the material world makes us think we can control the metaphysical realm as well and put God in his place.

Whatever dark truth lurks round the typhoon the lightest shade is something along the lines 'God is God and he always will be God'.

Being the Philippines they're putting Crosses up besides their fallen churches to do what we're doing this evening. That’s saying in a way that our God expects nothing of us he hasn't been through himself in a particularly cruel death.

In tragic circumstances, be they natural or manmade, God's worthiness for worship is inevitably questioned but the questions seem louder to me when I see the blind submission required by Islam, or the smiling detachment of the Buddha, than when I behold God in the broken body and shed blood of Christ.

Hic, hic, hic - Edmund's head was found!

Hic, hic, hic - here, here, here in the Cross is my answer!

Or rather, not the answer, but the Answerer.

Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Blessed are those called to the supper of the Lamb!