Holy Trinity, Cuckfield Easter 2 with commemoration of Prince Philip RIP 11th April 2021

Introduction to eucharist

On Classic FM yesterday Alan Titchmarsh said the room lit up when Prince Philip entered. Despite his sharp side the Duke of Edinburgh had a great spirit and possessed deep Christian faith. In yesterday’s Times obituary there is this quote from him: ‘Religious conviction is the strongest and probably the only factor in sustaining the dignity and integrity of the individual’. On this last of the eight days of Easter Octave we will be making a solemn commemoration of his passing at the end of the eucharist, standing in silence for a minute then listening to the National Anthem. As we begin this Easter eucharist we recall our own sharp side - no one of us is free from sin - and take a moment to entreat God’s mercy, so we also may better light up the lives around us.

Sermon

‘Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe’ (John 20:25). 

Thomas’s question chimes deep into lockdown experience. Refusal to believe in the face of tragic circumstances. For us those circumstances are parallel with the death of close friends through COVID and a wave of depression deadening those we love. All of us share this morning to some degree the sadness of the Queen and Royal Family. Though I rejoice to stand with you in Holy Trinity for the first time in months to celebrate Easter my joy is qualified by that reality akin to that of Thomas, bereaved and in that upper room lockdown. 

Yes, it is heartening to read evidence of people turning to religion to give shape and meaning to their empty lives. As the Duke of Edinburgh said, faith sustains our dignity and integrity. By contrast cynics see the current turning to faith as evidencing desperation to find escape from an awful scenario. The assumption is that religion is about escape from reality – and, yes, the brutal realities we’re living through seem to demand escape. 

What does Easter have to say to cynics and pessimists? Is what I’m about as a Christian otherworldly escapism? How does the Easter good news engage with the reality of human suffering and how can it best impact the loss of hope around us? We celebrate the eucharist this morning alongside the Paschal Candle into which five pins are pressed to represent the wounds of Christ in commemoration of today’s Gospel. ‘Jesus said to Thomas, 'Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.' Thomas answered him, 'My Lord and my God!' (John 20:27-28) 

How did the risen Lord deal with Thomas’ pessimism? He pointed him to the wounds he still carried from his crucifixion. In other words ‘you can be sure it is I, Thomas, and you can lay hold of sure and certain hope in the face of all in your world that would confound you’. The Jesus raised at Easter is the same Jesus killed through awful suffering upon the Cross. That’s why the Church adorns its Easter candle with nails. As the priest says, piercing the candle with five studs at the Easter Vigil: ‘By his holy and glorious wounds may Christ our Lord guard and keep us’. 

The Paschal Candle is a triumphant witness, standing tall, that says God is above death. It is also a reminder that God is not above suffering. That should be very important to us as witnesses to Christ in a world so lacking hope. The God and Father of Jesus, expects nothing of us he’s not prepared to go through himself. This is the ground of hope we cling to as Christians, hope that isn’t just out of this world – though the resurrection is all of that - but hope rooted in human reality. Again following the media coverage of Prince Philip’s death I recall Nicholas Witchell’s observation of how the Queen’s Christian faith would be an important consolation in her loss.

What we are about as Christians IS an engagement with otherworldly consolation, that’s absolutely true. Christianity is a metaphysical religion, it’s beyond (meta) the physical because of Christ’s resurrection. Yet it’s rooted in human reality for God revealed the resurrection by sending his Son to die for us. The five wounds of Christ on his arms, legs and side are the great symbol of this human reality. They engage with our sorrows, for he is and he remains for us, as Isaiah prophesied, ‘a man of sorrows acquainted with grief’ (Isaiah 53v3). 

If I am talking about Christian hope this morning I am talking not about a shallow optimism but resurrection faith firmly rooted in Christ as the suffering Saviour from all eternity. Second century Bishop Melito of Sardis in an Easter sermon wrote of how Christ’s sufferings should be seen in the suffering of holy people right back through the Old Testament: ‘He is the Passover of our salvation. He was present in many so as to endure many things. In Abel he was slain; in Isaac bound; in Jacob a stranger; in Joseph sold; in Moses exposed; in David persecuted; in the prophets dishonoured. He became incarnate of the Virgin…buried in the earth, but he rose from the dead, and was lifted up to the height of heaven. He is the silent lamb, the slain lamb, who was born of Mary the fair ewe. He was seized from the flock and dragged away to slaughter’.  

In Christ’s sufferings we see human suffering in a new light. I can’t speak too well myself, my sufferings have been slight in life so far, but I’ve been close to women and men of God who say so, who say God in Christ comes close in suffering. I think of Ursilla telling me how important and helpful the holding cross was she’d been given at the Hospice. Or when, the day before he died, as he lay on his bed, Colin welcomed anointing on his head and hands by sitting up and stretching his arms right out, as if on the Cross with Jesus. I think of Tom, of marking the cross in holy oil on him before he died marking this Easter week, like the Easter Candle, with a sorrowful Cross for his family.  No wonder Péguy said a Christian is a sad man saved from despair by the Cross of Christ. Life is a vale of tears.

In our second reading Saint John the evangelist ‘declares to us the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us in Jesus Christ… who is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world’ (1 John 1:2, 2:2). Elsewhere in Revelation the evangelist predicts the risen Christ’s return ‘Look! He is coming with the clouds; every eye will see him, even those who pierced him’ (Revelation 1:7). The wounds of Christ are a source of hope to believers, though they will be troublesome to those who pierced him and that includes you and I through unrepented sins. That scripture is the basis of Charles Wesley’s Advent hymn ‘Lo he comes’ that enters imaginatively into the sight of the risen Christ coming to be judge of the world: 

Those dear tokens of his passion still his dazzling body bears;

cause of endless exultation to his ransomed worshipers;

with what rapture gaze we on those glorious scars! 

Indeed it will be - that is our sure and certain hope, which should help us bring all pessimists to Christ’s Cross. We Christians are saddened by suffering but our sadness is saved from despair by that very Cross and by the out of this world resurrection truth we’re celebrating in these great days of Eastertide!

St John, Burgess Hill Lent 5 Chalice Bearers 21 March 2021

Some Greeks…came to Philip…and said to him, ‘Sir, we wish to see Jesus.’

That phrase, ‘Sir, we wish to see Jesus.’ is written around many a pulpit. In some pulpits the crucifix faces the preacher as a reminder to present the Cross and not their own thinking.

Here in St John’s our central feature is the crucifix above the altar.

Carving a figure of Jesus to present to people is the preacher’s labour of love and not least in Passiontide. 

It is as if the literal veiling of the Cross calls urgent attention to the central mystery of the faith.

Today’s Old Testament reading from Jeremiah Chapter 31 speaks of a promised new covenant when instead of commandments written on stone God will write his law on human hearts by the gift of the Spirit. This covenant is founded on the blood of Christ, This is my blood of the new covenant which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins we hear daily at the altar.

The second reading from Hebrews Chapter 5 speaks of God’s choice of his Son to take high priesthood on behalf of humanity so as to be able to become the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him. That choice is proved, according to the author of Hebrews, by Christ’s own evident reluctance shown in the Garden of Gethsemane. In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission.  Our Lord did not want honour for himself but made submission to his Father, dedicating his whole life and humanity unreservedly to the will of God.

That renunciation of will in Gethsemane is summarised in the Gospel passage from St John Chapter 12 ‘Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say—“Father, save me from this hour”? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.’

Self-offering that wins glory is built into the life of God himself.

The great French priest scientist Teilhard de Chardin speaks of how that principle applies to our best development as the human race: To allow God, when it so pleases him, to grow within us, and, by death, to substitute himself for us: that is now our duty; that, if one may use the word, is our opportunity; and that is the only attitude that can finally bring salvation. 

Teilhard is struck by the liturgical repetition in Passiontide of the refrain from Philippians ‘Christus factus est’ – Christ was obedient unto death. Commenting on this refrain he writes: That is obviously the exact and profound significance of the cross: obedience, submission to the law of life – and to accept everything, in a spirit of love, including death, there you have the essence of Christianity.

Our Lord lived to die a death for the life of the world. We too are called as Christians to lose our lives, all that is governed by wrong self-interest and self-concern, so that his life may flow in us to bring glory to God.

‘Sir, we wish to see Jesus.’ 

Our best response to that request happens many a time unwittingly as people see us being carried along by the Lord as we carry something of a cup of sufferings, cheerfully and obediently, with faith in Jesus who is become the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.

Passiontide reminds us in this pandemic that no sorrow on earth need be wasted. 

By being taken up into the mystery of Christ’s love, in his passion and in the eucharist, there is transformation. This comes as we gain grace to accept with serenity the things that can’t be changed or courage to change the things that should be changed in our lives. To accept everything, in a spirit of love, including death, there you have the essence of Christianity.

On account of the pandemic there are no Chalice bearers at the eucharist. In a profound sense we are they. In this harsh season we carry the cup of hardship with as good cheer as we can muster through the grace of God. This is a powerful witness. As another French writer, Charles Peguy, wrote: ‘A Christian is a sad man saved from despair by the Cross of Christ’. We are sad at what we are carrying, so many deaths, so much bereavement, frustration, depression, loneliness, anxiety and confusion. As Chalice bearers we intercede for others to be saved from despair and brought with us to the altar of God. That altar is a place of joy and a place of sadness just as surely as our risen Lord went through his passion. In the coming fortnight we have an opportunity to see ourselves on that journey with him as we prayerfully carry the hurts of Burgess Hill and its surrounds in the chalice of intercessory prayer.

‘Sir, we wish to see Jesus.’

I end with Teilhard’s great meditation on the hands of our Saviour:

Into your hands I commend my spirit. To the hands that broke and gave life to the bread, that blessed and caressed, and were pierced – to the hands that are as our hands, of which we can never say what they will do with the objects they hold, whether shatter them or care for them, but whose whims, we may be sure, are full of kindness and will never do more than hold us in a jealous grasp – to the kindly and mighty hands that reach down to the very marrow of the soul – that mould and create – to the hands through which so great a love is transmitted – it is to these that it is good to surrender our soul.

We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you because by your holy cross you have redeemed the world.