St Bartholomew, Brighton Midnight Mass 2019

‘Glory to God in the highest and peace to his people on earth’

You’ve come to Midnight Mass, to glorify God, welcome him into your heart and be made a channel of his peace. This day is set apart from all other days to begin with Holy Communion, Christmas is Christ Mass nothing less. 

We’re glorifying God, led by choir and orchestra, in Brighton’s greatest Church. We’re prepared for Our Lord to enter our hearts in the Blessed Sacrament. We’re expecting the peace promised ‘to his people on earth’ to flow in and through us.

St John of the Cross describes the soul prepared for God as like a house grown still and silent. Centred on God we leave the inner chatter of self behind to welcome and be absorbed by the presence of the Prince of Peace. From such inward stillness flows the outward peace the world longs for.

In this great Church, in this great city there’s a miracle gift tonight which is ‘the peace of God which passes all understanding filling our hearts and minds with the knowledge and love of God and of his Son Jesus Christ’.

‘Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.’

If the soul is like a house it’s openness to God floods it with peace so beyond understanding it intrigues it’s neighbours. St Seraphim of Sarov says famously, ‘acquire peace in your heart and thousands around you will find salvation.’

My son works at Brandwatch on Middle Street and when we meet up there I pass the Brighton Buddhist Centre round the corner. Hundreds enrol there on a quest for peace through meditation. I quote a comment on their website: ‘A wonderful location for Sunday morning yoga and meditation with great teachers, calm atmosphere and welcoming environment’. Thousands more, including this congregation, engage with Christianity to be made instruments of peace. That peace for us is less an end in itself - God as the genie in your lamp - but more part of life lived glorifying God in heaven and building peace on earth. 

‘Rejoice in the Lord always’ the apostle Paul writes from prison ‘and the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus’ (Philippians 4:4,7). As we look to praise God tonight may that peace descend to us and through us to all in our circle. It’s peace beyond understanding as Paul knew in prison and many other hard-pressed believers have discovered.

Walter Ciszek spent 23 years in Soviet prisons and Siberian labour camps. Over those years he lived with brief respite between four walls, yet he writes these words in his autobiography ‘He leadeth me’ : ‘No one can know greater peace… no one can achieve a greater sense of fulfilment in their life than the one who believes in this truth of the faith… to accept every moment of every day as a gift from the hands of God and strive always to do his will… it’s to know a peace, to discover a meaning in life, that surpasses all understanding’.

Our trials aren’t prison walls - for now! They’re real enough though - family strains, living alone, unemployment, bereavement or depression. Keeping in God’s peace links to ‘accepting every moment of every day as a gift from the hands of God’. How did you feel 10 o’clock on 12 December? Were you able to accept the exit poll and its consequences? Maybe you rejoiced, maybe you lost peace for a day or two? Acceptance of what God sends day by day, hour by hour is pivotal to Christianity, even if we have to work at times to change those circumstances in accordance with his will. That the process is finally in hand to leave the European Union is a relief to many. It’s a sad outcome for others. Christians fall on both sides but we shouldn’t lose peace over it.

‘Glory to God in the highest and peace to his people on earth’

Tonight we entrust earth’s peace and justice to God, including the needs of our nation, as we give him glory and welcome his presence in Holy Communion. Christmas Communion is a sign we own Christianity and the reason and purpose it gives to life. In an age of anxiety, with mental health high on the social agenda, the message of the angels is as ever timely. It’s as ever timely as Our Lord is ever new, ‘the same yesterday and today and for ever’ (Hebrews 13:8). Living in that perpetual newness is the gift above all gifts since it brings peace beyond understanding.

Bless the Buddhists for their witness to detachment and mindfulness but what the world needs is not mindfulness but thoughtfulness, the overflow from knowing you’re loved forever by the almighty love revealed at Bethlehem. To live close to God is to welcome that love and gain a peace that prevails through earthly trials. Practically, as Walter Ciszek reminds us, that peace flows from acceptance of both the Lord and our circumstances as in some way his gift.

As you start Christmas with this hour be inspired to start each Sunday with it and each day with prayer so the Lord’s peace may fill your life and make you his channel to intrigue those in your circle. ‘Acquire peace in your heart and thousands around you will find salvation’ wrote Seraphim. Let your soul be made Bethlehem, the house of bread, in Christmas Communion so your soul be made a still, house with outflowing peace: ‘Glory to God in the highest and peace to his people on earth’

Baptism of the Lord (translated) St Bartholomew, Brighton 14.1.18

Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you became believers? Acts 19:2

The Feast of the Baptism of the Lord is a shade neglected in the western compared to the eastern Church. Today’s commemoration in the Eastern Orthodox community is the apex of Christmas known in Greek as Theophany, God’s revelation, with outdoor ceremonies literally chilling the blood, folk diving into pools made in the ice and the like. We’ll not go there - but we will go rather this morning to something or Someone who warms the heart: the Holy Spirit.

Today by the Holy Spirit Jesus was revealed as God’s Son, the Christ, the Anointed One so as to share with us Holy Spirit anointing and there’s nothing more warming to the heart than the Holy Spirit for none can guess its grace, till he become the place wherein the Holy Spirit makes his dwelling.

On this Feast of Christ’ Baptism we sing come down, O Love divine, seek thou this soul of mine and visit it with thine own ardour glowing! May we, like those disciples in Ephesus who hadn’t heard of the Holy Spirit gain ardour (Acts 19:6). May we, like our Lord, anointed by the Spirit, hear God’s voice saying to us individually at this Mass, : ‘You are my Son, my daughter, with you I am well pleased’ (Mark 1:11).

What me? You might ask. How could I be worthy of that? Of God filling my life, of the empowerment in love, joy and peace that Our Lord knew? Well he knew it in his flesh so you could know it! He was anointed so you could be anointed as John the Baptist said in the Gospel: I have baptised you with water; but he will baptise you with the Holy Spirit.

Today we’re talking not just a one-off Theophany, or manifestation of God, but of the choice of and manifestation of God to you and I represented in our Christian allegiance and our sealing by the Spirit at our baptism, confirmation, and our welcoming Christ Sunday by Sunday in Holy Communion that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us.

The Son of God became Son of Man so children of men could be children of God. That’s our good news which though in the providence of God, remains mighty strange!

Both Our Lord’s earthly origins and our own Christian origins thrill with paradox! As the preacher in All Saints, Margaret Street told us the other Sunday Christianity has an ‘extraordinary particularity’. Incidentally I told him afterwards I was helping here and he commented, you’ve got a bigger place to fill than we have! Very true - but the same Catholic religion in London-by-the sea as there at Brighton-in-land!

I’ve distracted you - that phrase ‘extraordinary particularity’ is a good one and is worth examining. Just as the wise men found there own way to Jerusalem but needed special revelation to find Bethlehem so the universal instinct for God needs revelation of where in particular we can find Him.

Christianity’s no man-made religion. It’s nothing made up - its revealed! God so loved the world he revealed - he gave - himself. That revelation unlike that of other faiths is rooted in well evidenced historical events, those we mark at Easter, and in the choice and call the Holy Spirit brings to individuals in every age.

It is as outrageous to logic that you and I welcome the Holy Spirit at this Mass as it is that the Founder of Christianity should appear in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the King. That though is the recipe for salvation planned before the foundation of the world.

On this feast we ponder something given to us that goes beyond but not against reason - the privilege Christ shares with us as his sisters and brothers, children of God, who hear again with him those awesome words: ‘You are my Son, with you I am well pleased’.

The Son of God became Son of Man so children of men could be children of God. 

Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you became believers? Yes, you did, but you need to truly believe it! Believe as surely as Our Lord Jesus is the particular Theophany or revelation of God that you in particular are, through the Spirit’s calling, in words spoken of you at your baptism, a child of God and inheritor of the kingdom of heaven.

You have that grace - even if like sugar put in tea it needs stirring to sweeten the drink.
God sweeten our lives by stirring up the Spirit he’s put within us. May he bless us as we welcome his coming afresh by his Spirit into our lives in the most holy Sacrament. This is my body given for you.. this is my blood shed for you…  O Christian, recall your nobility! God has chosen you, made you his child and fills you with his Spirit!