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’

Midnight Mass St Mary, Balcombe 2017

Any preacher at Midnight Mass speaks into a maelstrom of emotion.

Christmas is a milestone in lives and families bringing back memories of past joys and not least those we love but see no longer who’ve passed beyond this world.

It’s a feast of family. Even now I look back at the excitement of finding my Christmas stocking to be emptied before Church, the pillowcase of presents before lunch and an ongoing tradition of listening to the Queen at 3pm.

To enter the spiritual joy of Christmas though we have to go behind and beyond such experience however hard that can be.

To gain the forward looking newness of Jesus which is the spiritual force of tonight, our looking back needs to go further. Instead of looking back at our experience of the Feast, we’ve got to look back a lot further, beyond our lifespan and even the lifespan of Christianity to the Old Testament and make its eager longing for the Lord our own. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness - on them light has shined. For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Those words of Isaiah are fulfilled by God’s speaking to us not just in words but personally through the arrival of his Son onto the earth. Isaiah’s brother prophet Micah, also writing 800 years before Christ, predicts the geography of tonight when he writes in Chapter 5 verse 2: You, O Bethlehem of Ephrathah who are one of the little clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to rule in Israel.

Micah, Isaiah, Hosea, Jeremiah, Zechariah, David and the Psalm writers, all witness to those summary words of expectation in Isaiah Chapter 9 that the day will come when they’ll say The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness - on them light has shined. Israelites held – and Jews still hold by rejecting Jesus - that God will act in the future to redress the darkness in the world by bringing something new – Someone new.

When that newness broke into the world that first Christmas, Easter and Whitsun the writer of our second reading expresses the truth of it in an awesome UIKeyInputDownArrowsentence, Hebrews 1 verse 1: Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds.  Later on in that epistle the writer speaks of God’s appointment of Jesus Christ, the same, yesterday and today and for ever. (Hebrews 13:8). Something new, Someone new who can never grow old, in whom we too find newness tonight.

The Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth. Those words from tonight’s Gospel put the Christmas message in a sentence repeated in another way by Saint John two chapters later: For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. (John 3:16)

Tonight we stand with the eager longing of Isaiah, Micah and the prophets before a revelation of God of immense spiritual force and possessing the capacity to turn our lives round tonight.

The one true and loving God planned and made human beings for eternal life with him.

Knowing that once made we’d need renewing again and again on account of the errors we’d make that dull our spirits God came to embrace us face to face. Love needs a body to express itself and in that way to bring renewal to the one who is loved. As God in the child of Bethlehem first embraced his mother he embraces us tonight through the physical elements of bread and wine we call Christmass.

The prophets cried out to God for 1000 years about the errors of the people but into their cries God spoke a promise that would be fulfilled on a time scheme of his own so that as St Matthew says, Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the King. (Matthew 2:1)

God who is love spoke through the prophets and then as the second reading says in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds.

I can point you tonight to the Bible and its witness to God’s speaking to us over 3000 years. I can point you to the Christian revelation of God in Jesus Christ 2000 years back and the building of St Mary’s to homage that truth 1000 years ago.

More powerfully and immediately though, my task as preacher is to point you to Someone outside the pages of history who is here for us right now. Someone new who is waiting to bring something of his unending newness right into your soul tonight in the Blessed Sacrament of his body and blood.

To be a Christian is to be made new, day by day and hour by hour, by welcoming the perpetual newness of God’s love in the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. (2 Corinthians 4:6b)

Christmas isn’t ultimately about nostalgia but about newness gained through the unique reaching out of God to us in Jesus Christ.

May we sense with the prophets that gift of renewal which is ours day by day as we engage with the stupendous fact of God made flesh, made flesh to live in our flesh, Jesus, who came and died and rose, whose Spirit is knocking on the door of our heart tonight.

Jesus who came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God. (John 1:11-12)

Lord Jesus, the same, yesterday, today and for ever, bring your newness to our souls tonight in this sacrament of your body and blood.

O come to my heart, Lord Jesus, there is room in my heart for you!

Holy Family 27th December 2015

Imagine a land of pure delight.

Imagine a kingdom shining through and through with glory.

Imagine a place abounding in joy and laughter where each cared for all and all for each.

Imagine a country with no fear and the only tears those of joy unbounded and gladness unalloyed.

Imagine joy and glory and love in that country flowing between its citizens and their Ruler who is source of beauty and joy and love and glory and so gives to whom he wills.

Imagine the enthusiasm of that Ruler of the glorious Kingdom to welcome other beings into the sharing of endless laughter and mutual encouragement, into glorious light and peace beyond understanding.

Then imagine this ruler becoming mindful of planet earth of the solar system and of beings there capable of becoming citizens of the glorious kingdom.

Imagine that he came to us. He came from the glory. He came from the glorious kingdom.

I can imagine such a kingdom and such a King. I see hints of glory in the sky at dusk and dawn. I see bold red colouration reflected in the clouds and at times, as the setting sun hides them, an incredible brightness, an incredible shining and I see this sight as a glimpse of something far more glorious, a reflection of Someone far more wonderful.

I can sense in the smile of a believer something that transcends, I mean something that goes right beyond this world.

In particular as I visit people in enormous pain and yet with shining faces I look beyond them and see the glorious kingdom in my mind’s eye. I imagine that land of pure delight I’ve been speaking of and its Ruler.

I imagine – but, then, suppose my very imagination were the inspiration of that distant Ruler?

Suppose more than that.

Suppose the Ruler of the glorious Kingdom, so mindful of the earth and billions of souls eligible for his fullest blessing, had come in Person to open up a way from this world into that glorious Kingdom?

Suppose, because his nature were love, there was no question of forcing people into his Land but He were to set before us a choice.

Suppose the only way He could make human beings capable of glory was to win and enter their hearts so his indestructible life could be in them for ever? And that whether his life entered a soul was for that person to choose?

Suppose that were true – that the King of the heavenly country had come, had chosen to bring his own glorious life and join it to ours? Or join it to those who would receive him?

Suppose He came! Suppose He came from the glorious Kingdom. Oh yes, believer, He came from the glory.

Suppose He came - that the Word became flesh. God became man.

The Virgin Mary had a baby boy, the glorious King pitched his tent on earth in a human family – Jesus, Mary and Joseph, the Holy Family?

Suppose the Prince of the heavenly Kingdom has come and his invitation is before me. Suppose I have chosen to invite him into my life?

Then I am not imagining that country of pure delight. I am destined for it. I have my citizenship.

Suppose the King of Heaven has come and opened his kingdom to mere mortals?

Then I have everything in the world to look forwards to, everything in this world and in the world to come!

Why? Because if He is indeed the King of glory, his possibilities go beyond my imagining.

In my imagination I can’t see a future for this mortal body beyond an earthly grave.

But if the Son of God brings his reality, his life, his power, his joy, his possibilities into the world and into my life I’m drawn by a love quite beyond what I can imagine.

Then, if He should choose to renew his life in me through the Bread which is his body – Christ Mass – So be it. I will not argue any more.

He came from the glory. He came from the glorious Kingdom.

The King who came to Palestine is coming now in Bread and Wine – that you and I may be raised beyond our fondest imaginings to his glorious Kingdom. So be it. Amen.

Midnight Mass & 8am 2015

Any preacher at Midnight Mass/Christmas speaks into a maelstrom of emotion.

Christmas is a milestone in lives and families bringing back memories of of past joys and not least those we love but see no longer who’ve passed beyond this world.

It’s a feast of family. Even now I look back at the excitement of finding my Christmas stocking to be emptied before Church, the pillow case of presents before lunch and listening to the Queen at 3pm all my life.

To enter the spiritual joy of Christmas though we have to go behind and beyond such experience however hard that can be.

To gain the forward looking newness of Jesus which is the spiritual force of tonight/today, our looking back needs to go further. Instead of looking back at our experience of the Feast, we’ve got to look back a lot further, beyond our lifespan and even the lifespan of Christianity to the Old Testament and make its eager longing for the Lord our own. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness - on them light has shined. For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Those words of Isaiah are fulfilled by God’s speaking to not just in words but personally through the arrival of his Son onto the earth. Isaiah’s brother prophet Micah, also writing 800 years before Christ, predicts the geography of tonight when he writes in Chapter 5 verse 2: You, O Bethlehem of Ephrathah who are one of the little clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to rule in Israel.

Micah, Isaiah, Hosea, Jeremiah, Zechariah, David and the Psalm writers, all witness to those summary words of expectation in Isaiah Chapter 9 that the day will come when they’ll say The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness - on them light has shined. Israelites held – and Jews still hold by rejecting Jesus - that God will act in the future to redress the darkness in the world by bringing something new – Someone new.

When that newness broke into the world that first Christmas, Easter and Whitsun the writer of our second reading expresses the truth of it in an awesome sentence, Hebrews 1 verse 1: Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds. 

Later on in that epistle the writer speaks of God’s appointment of Jesus Christ, the same, yesterday and today and for ever. (Hebrews 13:8). Something new, Someone new who can never grow old, in whom we too find newness tonight.

The Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth. Those words from tonight’s/today’s Gospel put the Christmas message in a sentence repeated in another way by Saint John two chapters later: For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. (John 3:16)

Tonight/this morning we stand with the eager longing of Isaiah, Micah and the prophets before a revelation of God of immense spiritual force and possessing the capacity to turn our lives around tonight.

The one true and loving God planned and made human beings for eternal life with him.

Knowing that once made we’d need renewing again and again on account of the errors we’d make that dull our spirits God came to embrace us face to face. Love needs a body to express itself and in that way to bring renewal to the one who is loved. As God in the child of Bethlehem first embraced his mother he embraces us tonight/today through the physical elements of bread and wine we call Christmass.

The prophets cried out to God for 1000 years about the errors of the people but into their cries God spoke a promise that would be fulfilled on a time scheme of his own so that as St Matthew says, Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the King. (Matthew 2:1)

God who is love spoke through the prophets and then as the second reading says in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds. 

I can point you tonight/this morning to the Bible and its witness to God’s speaking to us over 3000 years. I can point you to the Christian revelation of God in Jesus Christ 2000 years back and the building of St Giles to homage that truth 1000 years ago.

More powerfully and immediately though, my task as preacher is to point you to someone outside the pages of history who is here for us right now. Someone new who is waiting to bring something of his unending newness right into your soul tonight in the Blessed Sacrament of his body and blood.

To be a Christian is to be made new, day by day and hour by hour, by welcoming the perpetual newness of God’s love shown to us in the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. (2 Corinthians 4:6b)

Christmas isn’t ultimately about nostalgia but about newness gained through the unique reaching out of God to humanity in Jesus Christ.

May we sense with the prophets that gift of renewal which is ours day by day as we engage with the stupendous fact of God made flesh, made flesh to live in our flesh, Jesus, who came and died and rose, whose Spirit is knocking on the door of our heart tonight/today.

Jesus who came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God. (John 1:11-12)

Lord Jesus, the same, yesterday, today and for ever, bring your newness to our souls tonight/today in this sacrament of your body and blood.

O come to my heart, Lord Jesus, there is room in my heart for you!

Midnight Mass & 8am 2014

Tonight in an instant God’s constant love is revealed.

Your all-powerful word leapt from heaven, from the royal throne into the midst of the land that was doomed. Wisdom 18 verse 15

When a tree is felled in an instant we see the constant bark circles.

When Jesus is born we see what’s been true for all ages. There is a God who made us and so loves us he reverses our doom to fit us for glory.

In an instant tonight angels sing because God’s constant love is revealed.

We live between the instant and the constant.

The Christmas marketplace has devices that promise the world in an instant, at the press of a button or at the click of a mouse.

Instantly I can be in touch with 350 villagers through Facebook, though it has to be said what I advertise gets ‘liked’ by a handful.

Christianity has wisdom about the instant and the constant since we are about the intersection of time and eternity.

To live my life, which is instant by instant, moment by moment, I need the framework of what’s constant – my faith, marriage, family, home, village, nation, world.

Each instant of my life is best lived in the light of eternity. If I try to crowd too many tasks into my life it gets doomed and loses appeal both to me and to those in my sphere.

Through prayer, dwelling for some time in God’s constant love, I find the instants of my life bearing more fruit.

The other day though I had such a lot of people to visit I couldn’t schedule them but prayed and set off – and there they all were, almost waiting for me to come round!

Yet other days I have allowed the constants in my life to get eclipsed by the instant gratification of social media and the like. It’s all very well tweeting stuff in an instant, lazing indulgently over the paper, and putting the better side of your life forward on Facebook but that flow of instants can betray my here and now constant allegiances.

To live each moment in the constant light of eternal love is to be loosened from over preoccupation with stuff I think needs doing and it makes me available to those near to me here and now.

We live between the instant and the constant.

Your all-powerful word leapt from heaven, from the royal throne into the midst of the land that was doomed.

A few days ago Anne and I went to Birling Gap at the end of the Seven Sisters on the South Downs. Things had changed since we last visited with some cliffs and buildings gone due to erosion by the sea. On a stormy day we watched huge breakers striking the cliffs and thought of the constant erosion of that doomed land.

Tonight we celebrate a constant power far greater than that afflicting the doomed settlement of Birling Gap.

Wide, wide as the ocean, high as the heavens above. Deep, deep as the deepest sea is my Saviour’s love.

That constant love has in an instant, through the incarnation, made transformation of this doomed earth starting with you and me.

That love is beside those parents in Pakistan whose children were murdered last week.

It is expressed in hearts torn across the earth on their behalf and the political resolve to counter the extremism behind their killing.

As we take in instant by instant the 24-7 news cover woe betide us if our hearts get hardened to the doom of others and lose that constant godly concern in the flow of instant communication.

Your all-powerful word leapt from heaven, from the royal throne into the midst of the land that was doomed.

The child whose birth we celebrate tonight became famous as a teacher and miracle worker. There are many things people rightfully say about Jesus but there are two truths captured in this scripture which, if you miss you’ve actually missed what’s good news about Christianity. They are that this child is God come among us his word leaping from heaven and secondly that Jesus came into the midst of the land that was doomed to save sinners.

Tonight, in an instant, God’s constant love is shown in the birth of Jesus Christ, true God and true Man.

May all our instants, all our moments be lived mindful of constant love wide as the ocean and high as the heavens above so that the peace in our hearts makes us good news to all around us.

For those here or abroad who bear the anguish of living in a doomed land we pray Jesus Emmanuel be in their moments of sadness and use us to bless them. We bend the knee before your altar this Christmas night for Wide, wide as the ocean, high as the heavens above. Deep, deep as the deepest sea is my Saviour’s love.

Midnight Mass and 8am 25th December 2013

The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it. John 1:5

They say religion is a leap in the dark. I was on the train a week or two back and was disconcerted to hear two business men discussing family members who’d turned religious, lamenting it as something obscure and undesirable. Their whole attitude summarised that of the false enlightenment that surrounds us which sees religion as a leap into the dark.

In recent months the ‘enlightened’ attitudes of British secularism have obscured the age old institution of marriage, eroded the prohibition of suicide and opened the way towards three parent children.  The obscuring of our Christian moral foundation as a society is a direct consequence of pushing faith to the margins of public life.

Over the same period many of us have been digesting a new icon of faith within the world community in Pope Francis.  This man’s welcome engagement with the poorest people in the world and marginalised people in western society, such as refugees and gay people, has led many people not of his communion, including myself, to read his words.

Francis’ first encyclical was published in June and I recently reviewed it for Chichester Magazine and the Church of England magazine New Directions. What brilliance, I thought, as I read it, to counter perceptions of faith as a leap in the dark or obscurantism with a papal encyclical that shines with the light of faith!  

The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.

What is faith? Francis paints his picture in bright colours and I now quote his words. In the great cathedrals light comes down from heaven by passing through windows depicting the history of salvation. God’s light comes to us through the account of his self-revelation... In the love of God revealed in Jesus, faith perceives the foundation on which all reality and its final destiny lies… Faith knows that God has drawn close to us, that Christ has been given to us as a great gift which inwardly transforms us, dwells within us and thus bestows on us the light that illumines the origin and the end of life. 

I was struck by Francis’ image of faith as a realising of God’s self disclosure being like the way daylight lights up our stained glass representation of tonight’s story. If it were day you’d see the nativity scene here because light will have come from beyond this building.

At Midnight Mass we ask the light of the Holy Spirit to shine in our hearts to warm them to that manger scene, and what St Paul describes as the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. (2 Corinthians 4:6b)

To have faith is nothing obscure. It’s to hear God’s call, to see your life as part of his awesome reality and to touch the Lord in the sacraments. It is ‘to grasp reality’s deepest meaning and to see how much God loves this world and is constantly guiding it towards himself.’

Far from going into some obscure realm Christian faith’s about living our lives in this world with ever greater commitment and intensity. That commitment to the good of the world is a commitment to partnership with people of good will wherever they are, as the Christmas angel song reminds us – Glory to in the highest and on earth peace to people of good will.

God’s self disclosure – he is love, love of a Father for his Son in the Spirit – God’s self-disclosure given in Bethlehem by the Son taking flesh, announces love as the be all and end all of the universe.

God, who made all that is, loves all that is, just because it is – including you and me! This is heartening good news. It puts heart into those working in the name of that Love, alongside all of good will on this planet, to create wealth and distribute it justly, to feed the hungry, bring peace with justice to the troubled nations and hope for the future.

The light of faith born at Christmas isn’t so much about brightening church interiors like tonight (this morning) as about building hope for the future. Tonight’s feast marks God’s investment in humanity. The Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14)

Far from a leap in the dark the Christian religion is about coming into the light of Jesus Christ and bringing the world into it. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it. For twenty centuries the light of Jesus Christ has warmed and defrosted frozen hearts into extraordinary service. Ann Govas’ splendid book on our church windows recalls such service kindled within these very walls. Take that warm light which shone through St Giles school teacher Sidney Peek who gave his life as a missionary in what is now Malawi, dying at 21 of black water fever and recalled in St Stephen’s window. Or how the same light shone through Katherine Marshall and Lucy Foster who founded a home for sick and incurable children in Kilburn, recalled in the window of St Monica.

(This morning) Tomorrow at dawn God’s natural light (shone) will shine again through these windows - the nativity window and those of Sidney, Katherine and Lucy - to make the images come alive. (Does) Will his supernatural light find a welcome in this congregation here assembled, so we too can be caught up into building God’s future for the world? 

We don’t need to be lifted from obscurity into being the subject of a church window, but if we too are to lighten the world’s obscure darkness we do need knowledge of the Love that first dawned on Christmas day.

God bless you this night, and raise you out of darkness into the light of his self-disclosure which is Love, into the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

All age Christmas eucharist address 2012

Please could we have the children up front to the choir stalls, especially those with a present to show.

While they’re on the way let’s try a joke or two at the expense of our trumpeter.

How do you know you’ve got a trumpet player at your door?

The doorbell shrieks!

How do you get a trumpet player to play softly? 

Take away his instrument.

Why did the chicken cross the road?

To get away from the trumpet players.

Well, we’re no chickens - we really appreciate you Lawrence!

So, welcome young people. Let’s light our Christmas candle from one of the Advent candles.

Sunday Club member to light candle.

Christmas is here and it’s time to be thankful for Jesus.

All the gifts we’ve been given this morning are given to honour the greatest Gift from the greatest Giver!

So what gifts have we been given?

Time for children to share.

Please take your seats in the choir stalls for the rest of the talk.

Now I need a strong volunteer – Daisy!

It’s Christmas morning and your gifts have arrived.

Let’s have Santa’s elf.

I want you to have this and this and this

The server comes and loads the volunteer with presents.

So how lucky you are to have all of those presents.

Now. Here’s a present worth all of those presents put together and I want you to have it. I really want you to have it. The only thing is - you’ll only get it if you catch it because I’m going to throw it to you.

One, two, three – here you are…

Throw special present which has the Cross of Jesus in it. Daisy drops her other presents and catches it.

Would you like to open your present?

A Cross

If you want the most important thing in the world you need empty hands.

God can’t get to us unless we’re available to him.

Sometimes things happen in life that make us drop everything so we can catch one of God’s surprises.

This last year St Giles got a grant of £50,000 from the Verity Waterlow Trust. We had to drop everything and raise the extra £20,000 and lo and behold that’s almost completed. God-willing we’ll be thanking him over the 19^th -20^th January weekend for a hall with a new feel, a new glorious view and a new usefulness to the village. We still need to land the £5000 beyond our contingency caused by unexpectedly having to lay on 3 phase electricity to the Martindale.

The Christmas story would be no story if the Blessed Virgin Mary, Saint Joseph, the shepherds and wise men hadn’t dropped everything to receive the immense gift of God coming among us. Neither would the Martindale story have come about if Marion Lott and her team had been otherwise preoccupied

How many things might I have done with profit this year but didn’t do because I was wrongly preoccupied?

Here’s an image of preoccupation I’m not a million miles from.

Adrian walks round church with their blackberry and I tap him on the shoulder.

The great thing about living in a village is we’ve got people around us we know who tap us on the shoulder at times. We’re drawn out of the mini-world world of the family and the mega-world of the internet into the flesh and blood world of the 2000 folk who live here.

Horsted Keynes is a world full of God’s surprises if only we had hands to grasp them. I’m not just thinking of the beauty around us but the inner beauty we glimpse in souls.  

I was visiting a very gracious elderly couple hard pressed by health problems that were grinding them down. Meanwhile another villager phoned me with an offer to help support folk under pressure. In one of God’s surprises the couple who were stressed said they’d much welcome a visit from this man and so it came to pass bringing encouragement all round.

People ready to be of service and people needing help are all around in the village and we need to be open to God’s surprises in bringing them together. With this in mind the Church Council has some sort of street warden scheme in mind we want the village on board with. This would serve, among other things, those put on the sharp end by the recession and bring support to them.

Do not be afraid; for see - I am bringing you good news of great joy

In the joy of this morning you will have many preoccupations in your life – regrets, fears and anxieties – but the good news of God and his love is once again presented to you to make you a better instrument of his love in the world.

God can’t get to you, though, unless you’re available to him.

As the act of receiving Christmas Communion outwardly demonstrates, to gain the most important thing in the world you need to empty and lift your hands to receive what he has for you.

Let’s reflect now as the organ plays.

Midnight Mass & First Eucharist of the Day 2012

If I were asked to put Christianity into a Tweet I’d quote Matthew 11.28:

‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.’ ²⁹

It’s less than 140 characters and it gives the whole Gospel in one sentence.

Come to the Lord Jesus Christ who came tonight to be God present with us.

Offload on him, on his broad shoulders, and welcome what the world yearns for – inner peace.

Christianity shows itself in all who’ve got that peace - for there’s nothing more infectious!

As we come to the crib tonight/this morning Jesus wants no less for us than to lay down our burdens and come to him for rest so we can infect the world around us with his peace.

He’s here – Jesus is always here in St Giles in this Sacrament – he’s here and he’s waiting!

‘Two African women boarded a train. Each one carried an enormous basket of goods on her head. On being seated one woman laid her basket on the floor. The other woman continued to carry it on her head for the entire journey. The train journey ended. One woman, refreshed and rested, gladly lifted her burden and peacefully resumed her journey. The other woman, tired and disgruntled, wearily plodded along’  (Bible Alive notes 2 Dec 2012).

I wonder as you sit in your pew which woman you are tonight/this morning?

Are you sitting with the world on your head?

Put it down in Church! Lay it before the altar! Take it to the Crib!

This isn’t magic. Trusting Jesus is a practicality we have to work at hour by hour.

‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens’

The endless whirring of your mind can be stilled as you see his mind thinking beside you.

The physical aches and pains of life will feel different when you admit him to tend for them.

Friendship with him makes it easier to befriend those who’ve unfriended you, and I’m not just talking Facebook unfriending.

Coming to Jesus refreshes our hearts and makes them like his.

One lady on the train kept the burden on her head. We resolve to do the same when we trap ourselves in fear, resentment, anger or anxiety.

We’re living in what’s been called a ‘culture of contempt’ in which contempt and unforgiveness are at a premium. The Church isn’t immune as the women bishops and same sex blessing divides show.

A parish magazine had this amusing advertisement: “Churchyard maintenance is becoming increasingly difficult and it will be appreciated if parishioners will cut the grass around their own graves”.

There’s a laugh but one illustrating a very serious point. We all need a fair sized cemetery to bury the faults of our friends.

We need to bring our faults and theirs to Jesus because if we fail to forgive our neighbour we end up locking ourselves in the prison of our own unforgiveness.

‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.’ ²⁹

Is there a heavy burden of unforgiveness pressing you down tonight/this morning. As you kneel at the altar for Christmas Communion lay it down.

‘I will give you rest’ the Lord promises.

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

Christianity is no one line tweet or sound bite but a peaceful disposition.

'Acquire that spirit of peace’ wrote St Seraphim ‘and a thousand souls around you shall be saved'.

We acquire it by coming to Jesus, trusting he’s here, and opening our hearts to him day by day, hour by hour.

That pain in your heart – he knows all about it! That useless anxiety – he laments! That whirring mind that won’t settle into commitment – he sees, sympathises with and regrets!

Seek his healing presence tonight/this morning in the eucharist and he will satisfy the deepest hunger of your heart.

‘Come to me’, he says, ‘all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.’ ²⁹

Midnight Mass 2009

The battle to save the world is one between expanders and restrainers.

The Copenhagen climate summit set those wanting economic expansion with rising consumption against those who want to restrain growth to save the planet.

George Monbiot, an avowed restrainer, sees this conflict as a battle to redefine humanity. Some want us to become more greedy. Others want us to become more philanthropic.

The expanders want our western economies to grow much as in the past with a trickle down to the needy. The restrainers want us to change so we can live mindful of the human race as a whole.

It’s hard for a species used to ever-expanding frontiers to accept that our survival depends on our living within limits.

This is a good illustration of what Christmas is all about.

We’re finding through a rather long and painful way round what God has been trying to tell us since the coming of Jesus we celebrate tonight.

God is into restraint as the basis for right expansion.

Isn’t the coming of God to earth the biggest illustration ever upon the earth of restraint?

His coming to Bethlehem restrains him, as clearly as the child Jesus was restrained in swaddling bands.

Jesus is restrained so the world can expand into new freedom.

Just as Jesus was bound to set us free we must be bound, the human race, the world, must be bound to enter the glorious liberty of the children of God.

The clue to following up the Copenhagen summit is accommodation between restrainers and expanders. Accommodation is also what tonight is all about, what Christianity is all about.

In Christ God can accommodate to human circumstances and we can accommodate to God.

This is a wonderful night because it shows extravagant love to be at the heart of reality. Extravagant love that bears restraint, because true love does just that for the one it loves.

My love for someone, my children for example, is demonstrated more by the pain I suffer on their behalf than by the gifts I shower on them. So it is with the Lord our God.

The nations of the world will serve the human race not by expanding unbridled self interest but by adopting costly restraint. So it is with the Lord our God.

In coming to live as one of us God did not express unbridled self interest but costly restraint.

By coming to live in a stable with the poorest of the poor he says to us, ‘I’ll accommodate to you. I’ll change for you. I’ll serve you and help your life expand - though it costs me’.

Jesus came and died for us. God accommodated to our nature and brought it into his. When we ponder all the restraints Our Lord endured we know God expects nothing of us he’s not prepared to go through himself and we recognise the invitation he gives us to share his divinity.

O Holy Night! The stars are brightly shining; it is the night of the dear Saviour's birth.
Long lay the world in sin and error pining. Till He appeared and the soul felt its worth.

Jesus died in our place to live in our place and show us our worth.

He accepted the ultimate restraint of death so we could expand into the divine nature. That’s the Christian good news.

As we heard in the Christmas gospel from Saint John: The Word became flesh and lived among us…to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God

Or as we read in St Paul’s letter to the Philippians Christ Jesus, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death - even death on a cross.

Christmas is a grand commemoration of the love that accepts restraint and teaches us to do likewise in the service of one another.

It’s costly to adjust your life to others. I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t feel some cost in becoming your servant and parish priest. All those endless expectations to be served, yet balanced by much loving support and appreciation, not least the many Christmas cards for which our thanks.

A last thought. Some people see Christianity as a sort of straitjacket.

They mock our commitment to forgiveness, faithful marriage, giving to God’s work and so on.

They think we’re bound and want to free us to be happy pagans!

But we have freedom. Don’t we? To know you’re loved as extravagantly as we’re loved by Jesus is something tremendously freeing. Human beings are most free and alive in loving relationships.

We become ourselves in love - but loving relationships always involve restraint and a loss of independence.

‘Is it easy to love God?’ ‘It is easy to those who do it.’ From the outside it looks like a strait jacket but from the inside it feels like heaven.

Think of a world class singer and the hours she puts in training for her performance. How she adjusts her use of time to the cause she loves! Is she in a strait jacket?

When we gain a heart for the great cause that will outlast us all – the cause of hallowing God’s name, building his kingdom and accomplishing his will - we lose lesser concerns. Christmas and New Year is a time for taking up training, like the vocalist, to improve our Christian performance.

God help us and the world to restrain ourselves and keep close to Jesus giving him our devotion, so his kingdom advances in Horsted Keynes as more of us see our lives expanding into the glorious liberty of the children of God!

Christingle service 24th December 2009 4pm

You’re all going to get a Christingle now but what on earth is one of them.

Well the main things are the candle which stands for God and the orange that stands for the world.

What’s the connection between an orange and the world? Who can tell me?

It’s round

What’s the connection between a candle and God? Who can tell me?

God is light.

The best image we could ever have for God is light.

Just think of what goes missing every night. What goes missing?

The sun

We miss the sun because the world’s kept going by it day and night. We miss the sun because the world turns round every 24 hours so everyone on it gets heat and light and their crops grow.

The sun’s the most important object to the world because it brings it heat and light.

It’s a big clue to thinking about God our Maker.

But the world doesn’t just have objects like sun, earth, moon, seas, fields, and houses. It’s got persons – you and I for a start.

We’re actually the biggest clue to God in the world. The fact there are billions of thinking and loving people points to a Maker with a very big mind and a very big heart.

The Christingle orange stands for the world. The Christingle candle stands for God.

The Christingle red ribbon stands for the blood of Jesus who came to die for the world.

How do you explain that?

Hands up if you’ve got a fish tank in your home?

What happens when you go close to the tank?

The fish fly away.

I sometimes think about God as like a lover of tropical fish.

If you love tropical fish you get a big tank for them like God made for us when he made us the world.

If you love your tropical fish you take care to get the water warm for them, just like God’s made the world warm enough for human beings compared to other planets. You also feed your fish, just like God provides the crops of the field and the animals for us to eat.

But those tropical fish, they’re yours, you care for them and you feed them, but they’re scared of you! When you go up to the tank they dart away from you!

You’ve got tropical fish but they’re not keen to be friends with you.

God made us but we dart away from him. We run away from him.

So what did he do at Christmas?

He came to be one of us in baby Jesus.

The coming of Jesus to us is as if the tropical fish owner became a tropical fish. In that way he could be among his fish, get known by them and make friends with them.

It cost him. When he came into the tank to make friends the fish caused problems. They turned on him and bit him to death. That didn’t stop him doing what he came for though. When he was killed he rose and moved back to his home in heaven. In doing so he opened a way for us to be like God for ever outside the tank of this world in God’s own world we call heaven.

The Christingle red ribbon stands for the blood of Jesus who came to die for the world.

Baby Jesus is the Son of God become Son of Man – he’s the tropical fish owner become tropical fish.

As the candle is stuck in the Christingle orange the Son of God has stuck himself into our world. He did so to make a way out for us, as if the tropical fish owner changed the fish so they could live in his house and not in a fish tank.

You see this world is like a fish tank. Christmas reminds us of another world that’s deeper than the oceans and higher than the heavens God wants us to be part of.

The Son of God became the Son of Man so children of men could become children of God. Let’s say that and act it out.

The Son of God (up) became the Son of Man (heart) so children of men (shoulders) could become children of God (up).

It’s Christmas Eve and we’re looking forward to bedtime and waking up to presents. Mum and dad brought us to church tonight to remind us that the best present of Christmas is baby Jesus.

Baby Jesus, the Son of God became the Son of Man so children of men could become children of God.

Because Christians know that gift we’re glad to give to others. This service has a practical outcome. We’ve got a collection for the work with needy families of the Church of England Children’s Society.

During the collection you’ll get your Christingle.