St Wilfrid, Haywards Heath & St Bartholomew, Brighton Wed 27 April 2022

‘Look to the Lord and be radiant’ our Psalm invites (Psalm 34:5). For ‘God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not be lost but may have eternal life’ (John 3:16) The Gospel passage from John 3:16 explains the origin of Christian radiance. 

To believe is to look to the Lord and welcome the radiance Paul calls ‘the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ’ (2 Corinthians 4:6)

‘The light has come into the world’ we read in today’s Gospel. Not a blinding light but one we can be bathed in through belief in Christ - or lose through turning ourselves away from the revelation of God in Jesus. It's a choice - once you see it - like the famous choice of prisoners: ‘Two men looked through prison bars, one saw mud and one saw stars’. Our choice, that of Christian faith, is to look up to the risen Lord and welcome his radiance! (Visual by Coaching 4 Life Ltd)

Easter season is a time for refreshing our gaze upon the Lord who lovingly shines upon us in the risen Lord Jesus Christ. His gaze towards us, with which we can engage day by day in prayer and sacrament, is a healing ray. It reaches into our cold heartedness as microwaves reach into frozen food. We need not avert his gaze, but confessing our unworthiness, hold ourselves to God with humility and determination.

God’s love spoken of in today’s Gospel is to be welcomed by each and every one of us. It is more than benevolence or good will but a reality linked to our coming into existence which would lay hold of us to bring us to our destiny with all the saints.  

I come from God. I belong to God. I go to God. The Lord is my first beginning and my final end. This is the Christian revelation shown to us in the dying and rising of Jesus through which his Spirit is poured into hearts that welcome his love and leading.

How much we need that love! CS Lewis writes: ‘Our whole being… is one vast need; incomplete, preparatory, empty yet cluttered, crying out to him who can untie things that are now knotted together and tie up things that are still dangling loose’.

‘By love God is caught and held, by thinking never’ we read in the 14th century mystical book Cloud of Unknowing. When you pray, wrote 16th century Saint Teresa of Avila, be still and let God love you. See his smile and it will generate your own smile. God loves you with an enormous love and wants to look upon you with that same, generous love whilst awaiting your engagement.

‘God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not be lost but may have eternal life’. At the eucharist we repeatedly make a choice, an act of faith in our prayer, to take him at his word, look to him and welcome the radiance of Jesus in word and sacrament. So be it!

 

St John the Evangelist, Burgess Hill Lent 4 27th March 2022

It is a strange paradox that this year’s Gospel for Mothering Sunday is that of the Father’s love. 

It’s not deliberate, just that we’re in the year of Luke and no Lucan passage is more Lent suited than that of the Prodigal Son! The fact Lent 4 is Mothering Sunday is secondary so far as the Lectionary goes. It’s a universal Lectionary and many countries don’t keep Mother’s Day today.

In the story of the Prodigal Son we have a beautiful demonstration of what Lent is all about – the healing joy of repentance.

At its centre is the welcome home of the prodigal. I love the King James Bible version of this story with its rich cadences: 

But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him. 21 And the son said unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son. 22 But the father said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet: 23 And bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry: 24 For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found. And they began to be merry. Luke 15.23-27

What wonderful words! They serve as no other words do to give us an invitation to seek God as our Father.

That paragraph provides the heart of the story involving three characters each of which we may find ourselves identifying with.

First the openness of the prodigal - how ready am I to admit my mistakes? As Christians we believe we are sinners in need of grace. What is so surprising about a sinner sinning?  Yet many of us are slow to seek forgiveness from God or neighbour. Our slowness links to the judgmentalism around typified by the elder brother in the parable whose attitude is far from forgiving! Lent is a time to challenge that judgmental ‘elder brother’ within each one of us. It’s a time to challenge the habitual sins that get on top of us. C.S.Lewis once wrote a caution about despairing over our habitual sins:

I know all about the despair of overcoming chronic temptation.  It is not serious, provided self-offended petulance, annoyance at breaking records, impatience, etc. don't get the upper hand. No amount of falls will really undo us if we keep on picking ourselves up each time.  We shall of course be very muddy and tattered children by the time we reach home.  But the bathrooms are all ready, the towels put out, and the clean clothes in the airing cupboard.  The only fatal thing is to lose one's temper and give it up.  It is when we notice the dirt that God is most present in us: it is the very sign of His presence.  Daily Readings p122-3

The main figure in the Parable is the loving Father who represents God. Jesus teaches God is always helpfully present to us in his holiness and ready to show us the dirt and dysfunction in our lives.  He makes himself present in practical love to remedy our situation - the bathrooms are all ready, the towels put out, and the clean clothes in the airing cupboard.

Our Lord cleanses us of sin and guilt by practical demonstrations geared to our humanity. That’s particularly true of the sacrament of reconciliation also known as sacramental confession in which we play the part of the prodigal in a re-enactment of Luke 15. There is great freedom to be attained through celebrating this sacrament so misunderstood in Anglican circles but familiar to some here at St John’s. If you want to book for this sacrament contact the priest after any service.

The father may represent God but he is also an example of the love a parent, father or mother, is called to show his or her children. Lack of affirmation by parents, lack of generous reconciliation in family life, is the root of much domestic misery.

In Henri Nouwen’s The Return of the Prodigal Son the author speaks of his being inspired by Rembrandt’s famous painting of that title. The gnarled yet welcoming hands of the Father in Rembrandt’s picture symbolise God’s hands stretched out for us upon the Cross. They challenge us to pay the price ourselves for a more affirming attitude to those falling short around us.

The great inspiration of this book is the Christian call to a ministry of affirmation. Be compassionate as your Father is compassionate as Jesus said elsewhere.

As we come to the altar this morning on behalf of ourselves or those on our hearts we come as the prodigal son knowing our need of forgiveness. We come repenting of the ‘elder brother’ in us and all that critical spirit that subtracts from the joy God wants in our hearts. We come finally for grace to be like our Father, capable of love for sinners.

The readiness to treat others as better than they are is simple imitation of God’s readiness to treat us as far better than we are. We can ask the Holy Spirit to build that affirming capacity within us so that we may be better equipped to embrace others as instruments of the divine mercy.

The bathrooms are all ready, the towels put out, and the clean clothes in the airing cupboard.

Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet: And bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry: For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found. 

St Wilfrid & Presentation, Haywards Heath Trinity 14 (23B) Poverty of spirit 5 September 2021

Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him?  James 2:5

There’s an obvious link between today’s Old Testament and Gospel reading about the unsealing of the ears of the deaf – it’s about Our Lord fulfilling the Old Testament as Messiah, the promised one who comes to help people hear the word of God.

I felt God lead me though to the reading that stands rather on its own – the epistle of James Chapter 2 which speaks of the blessings of poverty. It seems as if James’ church had rather forgotten what Jesus said about the poor since the rich were getting the best seats in church! At any rate the apostle makes a striking point that it’s those who are poor according to the world…God chose to be rich in faith.

What do we make of this? Or for that matter of the blessing Jesus himself announces upon the ‘poor in spirit’ in his Sermon on the Mount.

Seeing all those refugees and would be refugees from Afghanistan puts in your mind’s eye how, faced with the need to flee, what would you take with you, or even, less emotively, faced as we often are with short breaks what not to take!  That sort of review touches on a key feature of spiritual poverty, the call to detachment which goes alongside confidence we should have as children of God in Our Father to provide for us in all circumstances. God bless the many migrants across the world who are fellow believers and victims of international unrest with such confidence and provision.

There’s a school of Christian faith that speaks of abandonment to providence. Jesus is said by St. Paul to have ‘emptied himself, taking the form of a slave’ in his abandonment to God’s will. It is this sort of poverty that’s in Christ himself that’s spurred on his Saints all through the ages. St Francis of Assisi is the great example, casting even his clothes to one side to belong wholly to the church as servant of God! There’s a story of how the Bishop of Assisi one day said to Francis: ‘Your way of life without possessions of any kind seems to me very harsh and difficult’. ‘My Lord’, Francis answered, ‘If we had possessions we should need arms for their defence. They are a source of quarrels and lawsuits, and are usually a great obstacle to the love of God and one’s neighbour. That is why we have no desire for temporal goods’. There’s wisdom there! The migrants on TV again speak of this!

The wealth of the rich is their strong city we read in Proverbs 18:11-12, in their imagination it is like a high wall…but humility goes before honour. The ‘high wall’ riches can literally raise up can all too easily put worldly honour before humility. This ‘honour’ is also the false lure of materialism into which we are brainwashed day by day – the valuing of people for what they possess rather than for who they are as those loved by God bearing his image!  

What does it mean to be ‘poor in Spirit’? It means to have a true knowledge of God for who he is and of ourselves as who we are. To know God in his infinite grandeur is to know oneself as a child of God yet materially nothing and less than nothing through sin. 

We all want progress writes C.S.Lewis but if you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back on the right road; and in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive. To be poor in spirit is to be progressive in that you go further when you’re travelling light. When you repent of ‘seemingly little sins’ and turn back from an alluring path you’re not regressing on your spiritual journey but progressing. You’re seeing all sins are great and you’re moving forward in the knowledge of God as the great God he is and as his beloved daughter or son.

Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements – surely you know! Have you commanded the morning since your days began, and caused the dawn to know its place? Job 38:4,5,12 Words from God provided through the poetry of the book of Job. If you’re ever feeling self-satisfied pick up your Bible and turn to Job 38 – it puts you in your place more than any other passage I know and moves progress for you in the sense we’re examining! What must he be like who made the earth, who provides the dawn new every morning? Who stretches out the stars above? 

From our town we enjoy splendid views of the South Downs and have ready access to the beauty of Mid Sussex which motivated my ‘Fifty Walks from Haywards Heath’ with its quotes from scripture and the Sussex poets. What must he be like who designed the grandeur of the Downs? 

When James warns being ‘rich in faith’ means poverty according to the world this must be at the heart of his concern – that a true knowledge of God in his infinite grandeur brings with it humbling recognition of one’s inadequacy! Our capacity to do harm is a deadly quality even though balanced by capacity to do good things.

As someone put it, our poverty is like that of a song compared to the singer. We are like a song of the Lord – he is the singer, we are the song. How can the ‘song’ compare itself to the singer?

Yet it is our privilege to be able to live in the praise of God! Here at the Eucharist, the great thanksgiving sacrifice of the Church we can admit this truth – all things come of God and of his own do we give him… through, with and in Jesus Christ!

If poverty of spirit is about detachment, abandonment to providence and humility it is also a whole sphere where we find Christ in this world. In Matthew 25 Our Lord’s picture of the Last Judgement portrays the poor as manifesting his own hidden presence. As C.S.Lewis again wrote, next to the Blessed Sacrament your neighbour should be to you the most sacred object on the earth. 

We are to welcome Jesus in a moment in the Blessed Sacrament. God in the material order, hidden in bread and wine. As we welcome him here, may he open our eyes to see him elsewhere in the material order - particularly in the run of our lives in the coming week - that we may encounter him in the needy - those who are enduring personal ordeals in need of attention - our attention, our time, our money if needs be, especially to serve Afghan refugees. 

God free us to travel lighter in our Christian pilgrimage more detached from material things, abandoned more to his purposes. The Lord deepen our humility, strengthen confidence in his provision and set our hearts more into the praise of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, to whom be ascribed all might, majesty, dominion and power now and henceforth and to the end of the ages. Amen.

St Wilfrid’s talk on contemplation 9.12.20

Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Matthew 11:28

Taking up that invitation is what Christianity is all about - the regular putting aside of worldly concerns to contemplate the Lord Jesus Christ and enter his rest.

The task of prayer and contemplation is one of heart and will. The mind with its reason and language can take us to God but only the heart can drink of him – by love he is holden not by thought as a medieval writer puts it.

Contemplation, like prayer as a whole, has few absolute rules other than truthfulness. As C.S.Lewis wrote: The prayer preceding all prayers is “May it be the real I who speaks.  May it be the real Thou that I speak to”. Any yearning for contemplative prayer is inseparable from the openness to God we express in penitence for sin and also the readiness to allow all our images of God to give way before the sense of his Presence, a sort of ‘iconoclasm’.  

Spiritual guidance is important in all of this. Talk to a priest if you want help finding a spiritual director locally

Contemplation links to the whole of life. Thomas Merton wrote his great book Seeds of Contemplation show book which I deeply recommend. He was also a passionate advocate against the Vietnam War, nuclear arms and racism.

Activism and prayer are essential to our Faith, though many recognise it is the neglect of the latter, transcendent element that most weakens the church in our day. It is significant that meditation and medicine are words with the same root – we need healing of spirit as well as healing of body and mind.

The Italian writer, Carlo Carretto, inspired by the spirituality of Charles De Foucauld wrote: The closer you come to God as you ascend the slopes of contemplation, the greater grows your craving to love human beings on the level of action.

Much of what I have said about contemplation refers to prayer of all kinds – we are bound to confess, thank and intercede as well as to contemplate – and some of us are bound to the liturgical office.

Now a little advice on the nitty gritty of the prayer of contemplation.

We need a place that is quiet – not too quiet, some say, since a little amount of noise around us helps balance the inner noise we all suffer inside of us!

We need agreement from our family, unless we live alone, for a set time apart from them. 

We need some form of preparation before we sit or kneel to pray. There are various what I call ‘springboards’ to dive off towards the Lord.

We can prepare something to read from scripture or a passage or prayer that has struck us from our spiritual reading – you can’t be a contemplative without living close to scripture and the writings of Christians through the ages.

Some find being before the Reserved Sacrament in Church a helpful aid, or the time immediately after say a quiet weekday Eucharist when they can dwell on Christ in us the hope of glory Colossians 1:27b. Icons, similarly, can serve as a springboard for contemplation.

It is possible to contemplate springing off from natural beauty, even on what I call a ‘prayer walk’ though spiritual writers recommend a constant posture of the body, straight back etc. as a helpful basis for the spiritual exercise involved.  Walking at a constant pace on a known route can serve.

A decision about which means to use as a basis for contemplation is important before you arrive at the place of prayer.  Sometimes, very often, we pick up on where we left off the day before, which is the value of a spiritual journal show.  It helps to pen a couple of lines after your daily prayer to help monitor your work of prayer.

When we finally sit down or kneel there is value in an act of offering of the time to God and an invocation of the Holy Spirit to anoint our contemplation.  Some of us will want to fit self-examination, thanksgiving, intercession and the Office alongside the higher prayer of contemplation into our major daily prayer offering.

Relaxation exercises for the body which help prepare for prayer are well dealt with in Tony De Mello’s writings, especially Sadhana and Praying Body and Soul show.

The choice and use of a  mantra or holy phrase to settle the mind is another feature that may need attending to before we get going in our prayer. I use the Jesus Prayer for this - Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Show book

Then we contemplate. Distractions will assail us. We stick at a set posture and duration, resisting the natural desire to quit or change direction unless there is a clear lead from God to do so.

Michael Ramsey when asked how long he prayed for each day was said to answer ‘a couple of minutes’. He added that it usually took half an hour to get there! In many ways the duration of time and the discipline to stick with it is pivotal to a life of contemplation. God bless us all in our response to the invitation in today’s Gospel: 

Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.

St Bartholomew, Brighton Trinity Sunday 16th June 2019

Theology – the science of God – is vital because the God you attend to will change you. Attend to a wishy washy God and you’ll go wishy washy. Attend to a moral policeman and you’ll get censorious. To an indulgent God and you’ll enjoy yourself at the expense of others. Worship God as the genie in your lamp and he’ll never change you. Worship God as a distant Father figure and you’ll project bad life experience and make it ultimate.

Attend to the Trinity and you’ll become a child of God and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven.

The Christian religion calls us to attend to a God who’s revealed in holy scripture and affirmed by the catholic creeds and the church’s liturgy. Today’s collect affirms that the confession of a true faith is to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity and in the power of the divine majesty to worship the Unity.

What does this mean? That God’s shown us through Jesus he’s Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Trinity Sunday’s slotted in at the end of six months when readings in church have followed the life of Our Lord up to his death and resurrection and the sending of the Spirit at Pentecost.

This Sunday we sum up Christianity as we affirm God to be three persons in one God. Why? Because that’s what he says he is. We’d never work this out for ourselves. It’s revealed from the action of God in history.

There are various illustrations. Take the water one - ice, water and steam are one substance with three forms – or take the love one - If God is love how could he be love before the world was made other than by being love within himself?

Or take that of a trellis supporting a vine. The word trellis means ‘woven with three threads’. God who is three is like a trellis supporting a fruitful vine, the church of Jesus Christ we’re part of. Unlike the trellis supporting a vine, the Trinity’s a living trellis. Without his life giving support the vine that’s the church would be a fruitless enterprise.

How you see God - theology - is vital because the God you attend to will change you.

In the eucharist we draw life from the living and true God through Christ who lives and reigns with the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit. It’s the way things are. God’s a fact - Father, Son and Spirit - though people have a million ideas about him. If people turn their backs on the Trinity they regress into muddled ideas of God which take you nowhere.

Not only ideas, spiritual experiences alleged to be of God mislead if they’re not seen in the light of the grace of Our Lord, the love of God the Father and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes people say to me ‘I feel God’s presence daily and don’t need your dogmas’. C.S.Lewis had a good answer to such a person: ‘I quite agreed with that man… he had probably had a real experience of God... and when he turned from that experience to the Christian creeds… he… was turning from something real to something less real… if a man has once looked at the Atlantic from the beach, and then goes and looks at a map of the Atlantic, he will also be turning from something real to something less real: turning from real waves to a bit of coloured paper. But here comes the point. The map is… only coloured paper, but… it's based on what… thousands of people have found out by sailing the real Atlantic...it has behind it masses of experience just as real as the one you could have from the beach; only, while yours would be a single isolated glimpse, the map fits all those different experiences together. In the second place, if you want to go anywhere, the map is absolutely necessary. As long as you’re content with walks on the beach, your own glimpses are far more fun than looking at a map. But the map is going to be more use than walks on the beach if you want to get to America’.

The doctrine of the Trinity is a God-given map to the world opened up by the resurrection, a world you can’t reach by your own insight or efforts but, as the Gospel says, through the Spirit of truth who leads you into all truth. (John 16:13) As we heard in the passage from Romans we have hope of sharing the glory of God through faith that brings us the peace of Christ and God’s love [being] poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit. (Romans 5:1,2,5). This is the wherewithal, the map if you like, to get to glory.

We come from God, we belong to God, we go to God.

Attending to God is our calling from all eternity. We were each of us made to see the King, the Lord of hosts, in his beauty. We began as babies attending very much to ourselves and end, or should end, by attending to God. What changes isn’t self love so much as the self that we love. As our lives expand in relationships into maturity we see that our self interest is one with that of the whole human community and of God three in one who made and makes it. This is how the Trinity saves us.

So to God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, be ascribed as is most justly due all might majesty dominion and power, now and for ever and to the ages of ages. Amen.

St Bartholomew, Brighton Mothering Sunday 31st March 2019

It is a strange paradox that this year’s Gospel for Mothering Sunday is that of the Father’s love. It’s not deliberate, just that we’re in the year of Luke and no Lucan passage is more Lent suited than that of the Prodigal Son! The fact Lent 4 is Mothering Sunday is secondary as far as the Lectionary goes. It’s a universal Lectionary and many countries don’t keep Mother’s Day today.

In the story of the Prodigal Son we have a beautiful demonstration of what Lent’s all about – the healing joy of repentance. At its centre is the welcome home of the prodigal. I love the King James Bible version of this story with its rich cadences: But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him. And the son said unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son. But the father said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet: And bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry: For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found. Luke 15.20-24

     What wonderful words! They serve as few other words have ever done to provide a vivid invitation to seek God as our Father. That paragraph provides the heart of the story involving three characters each of whom we may find ourselves identifying with.

    First the openness of the prodigal - how ready am I to admit my mistakes? As Christians we believe we’re sinners in need of grace. What is so surprising about a sinner sinning? Yet many of us are slow to seek forgiveness from God or neighbour.

Our slowness sometimes links to the judgmentalism around typified by the elder brother in the parable whose attitude is far from forgiving! Lent is a time to challenge the judgmental ‘elder brother’ within us. It’s a time to challenge the sins that get on top of us. C.S.Lewis once wrote a caution about despairing over our habitual sins: I know all about the despair of overcoming chronic temptation.  It is not serious, provided self-offended petulance, annoyance at breaking records, impatience, etc. don't get the upper hand. No amount of falls will really undo us if we keep on picking ourselves up each time.  We shall of course be very muddy and tattered children by the time we reach home.  But the bathrooms are all ready, the towels put out, and the clean clothes in the airing cupboard.  The only fatal thing is to lose one's temper and give it up. It is when we notice the dirt that God is most present in us: it is the very sign of His presence.  Daily Readings p122-3

The main figure in the Parable is the loving Father who represents God. Jesus teaches God is always helpfully present to us in his holiness and ready to show us the dirt and dysfunction in our lives.  He makes himself present in practical love to remedy our situation - the bathrooms are all ready, the towels put out, and the clean clothes in the airing cupboard.

Our Lord cleanses us of sin and guilt by practical demonstrations geared to our humanity. That’s particularly true of the sacrament of reconciliation also known as sacramental confession in which we play the part of the prodigal in a re-enactment of Luke 15. There is great freedom to be attained through celebrating this sacrament so misunderstood in Anglican circles. We have set times for this sacrament in St Bartholomew’s nearer Easter but you can make an appointment with one of our priests today to give your status anxiety and greed a knock with that envy linked to competitiveness!

The father in Our Lord’s parable may represent God but he is also an example of the love a parent, father or mother, is called to show his or her children. Lack of affirmation by parents, lack of generous reconciliation in family life, is the root of so much domestic misery.

In Henri Nouwen’s The Return of the Prodigal Son the author speaks of his being inspired by Rembrandt’s famous painting of that title. The gnarled yet welcoming hands of the Father in Rembrandt’s picture symbolise God’s hands stretched out for us upon the Cross.  They challenge us to pay the price ourselves for a more affirming attitude to those falling short around us. The great inspiration of this book is the Christian call to a ministry of affirmation.

Be compassionate as your Father is compassionate Our Lord says earlier in Luke’s Gospel.

As we come to the altar this morning on behalf of ourselves or those on our hearts we come as the prodigal son knowing our need of forgiveness. We come repenting of the ‘elder brother’ in us, that critical spirit which subtracts from the joy God wants in our hearts. We come finally for grace to be like our Father, capable of love for other sinners.

The readiness to treat others as better than they are is simple imitation of God’s readiness to treat us as far better than we are. We can ask the Holy Spirit to build that affirming capacity within us so that having received the Blessed Sacrament we may be better equipped to embrace others as instruments of the divine mercy granted us by the body, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ who embraces us now in Holy Communion.

The bathrooms are all ready, the towels put out, and the clean clothes in the airing cupboard.

Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet: And bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry: For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.