Alas for those who lie on beds of ivory says Amos in the first of three hard-hitting scripture readings this morning.
I wonder what went through Harold Macmillan’s mind as he heard those words and the parable of Dives and Lazarus sitting here in St Giles 25 years ago?
I say so because I have just enjoyed reading Supermac his latest and most authoritative biography by Richard Thorpe who I am hoping we can get to our historical society. It’s a great read - in more sense than one!
Macmillan, Prime Minister 1957-1963, died in 1986, was one of those good all-rounders getting all the rarer in our specialised world. He ticked boxes in the worlds of the university, commerce, the military and religion. His politics were liberal yet conservative, rebel yet loyalist. He was a crofter’s great-grandson yet his father-in-law was a Duke. Possessing all these qualities guarantees personal complexity and an interesting biography.
Great men and women are usually people who have suffered. In this way their humanity appeals through the braving of fear. Macmillan’s courage was forged in the trenches of the First World War and a near death experience in the Second World War. His family life was traumatic but he braved humiliation sticking it seems to Christian principle and refusing to contemplate divorce. The courage he possessed made him his own man. He stood alone in cabinet when he told the aged Churchill his days as Prime Minister needed to end. Macmillan even dared to suggest to Pope Pius XII he would serve Christian unity by recognising the orders of Anglican priests – to be received by silence!
Harold Macmillan was a great wit. Interrupted in a speech by Khruschev banging his shoe on the table at the United Nations he looks up and says quietly, ‘Well, I would like it translating if you would.’ Unveiling a bronze of Mrs Thatcher at the Carlton Club he makes an audible stage whisper, ‘Now I must remember that I am unveiling a bust of Margaret Thatcher, not Margaret Thatcher’s bust.’ On a trip to Russia, told ‘dobry den’ means ‘good day’ he regales everyone with the words ‘double gin’!
His brilliant intellect made him too clever for some, including Churchill who saw him as an opinionated subordinate. Macmillan saw his undergraduate reading parties as the very anticipation of heaven. Throughout his life his work was energised by his reading times. His experience at the sharp end of things did something to redeem his cerebral tendency but a negative image persisted. His Labour political opponent Aneurin Bevan saw him as a poseur. Bevan concluded cruelly that having watched the man carefully for years ‘behind that Edwardian countenance there is nothing’.
His fellow Tory rival Butler was kinder and saw two sides to him ‘the soft heart for and the strong determination to help the underdog, and the social habit to associate happily with the overdog’.
It was this phrase that came to mind as I finished reading Macmillan and started reading the scripture set for the 17th Sunday after Trinity in the third of our three year cycle.
Amos thundered against those who like ivory couches. Like Macmillan many of us have a tendency to associate happily with the overdog, like the Rector of Horsted Keynes – I am the Rector of Horsted Keynes. Like my predecessors I have access to people at the top of the academic, political, commercial and military worlds as this goes with the job alongside its more humble pursuits . I know Fr Mark Hill-Tout read to Macmillan in his final illness. A previous Rector allowed Macmillan to change the lectionary reading the Sunday Churchill died to ‘let us now praise famous men’. Dorothy Baxter, now 96, will tell you how Macmillan used to keep the choir in order.
This is not a ‘books I have recently read’ sermon – I am getting to the point, believe me!
Macmillan once said ‘It is thinking about themselves that is really the curse of the younger generation...a curious introspective attitude towards life, the result no doubt of two wars and a dying faith’.
The danger of self-absorption lies behind what prophet Amos, Saint Paul and Our Lord and Saviour are speaking of in this morning’s readings.
Those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction says Paul. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains. Those pains are described in the chilling parable I read chosen for today’s Gospel. Chilling is hardly the word for it describes the fires tormenting Dives – the rich man – on account of his neglect of poor Lazarus. Remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.
It is always chilling to encounter people whose self-absorption with pleasing themselves has made them totally indifferent to the needs of those around them. I think for a start of the people who walk across Victoria station texting away and bumping into everyone else – but I wouldn’t quite wish them hell fire!
Let me go back to Macmillan. He possessed a clear sense of divine providence working through the historical events that propelled his career and the illness that saved his addressing the prime ministerial succession. To his Christian sensibilities we owe the appointment of two of the Church of England’s most famous 20th century clerics, Michael Ramsey to Canterbury and Mervyn Stockwood to Southwark.
What is evident in Richard Thorpe’s biography, which brings out the Christian side, is Macmillan’s own sadness in his later years at the self-preoccupation that seemed to have grown up in the wake of the decline in Christian allegiance. He ends the book quoting his call to ‘restore and strengthen the moral and spiritual as well as the material’ rather countering the materialist ‘you’ve never had it so good’ association people make with Harold Macmillan.
Today’s scripture is a wake-up call. Rather as David Cameron said to the Pope last Sunday Christian faith is something to make us ‘sit up and think’. If we really believe in God this should take us out of ourselves and waken us up to the realities around us, both God and neighbour, whose service brings perfect freedom in this world and the next.
Among these realities are the eight Millennium Development Goals which take us into the global politics Harold Macmillan served for so many years. These eight goals all 192 United Nations member states and at least 23 international organizations have agreed to achieve by the year 2015. They are:
• To eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
• To achieve universal primary education
• To promote gender equality and empower women
• To reduce the child mortality rate
• To improve maternal health
• To combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases
• To ensure environmental sustainability
• To develop a global partnership for development
If today’s gospel says anything it is a warning about the failure of partnership and its consequences.
The rich man was guilty not of being rich but of being a bad steward of his possessions. By God’s generosity he possessed, as we possess, an awful lot, and yet he would not imitate that generosity by sharing with those in need, with Lazarus ‘who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table’.
Today’s scripture is hard hitting. The needs of the world are very urgent. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon has said ‘World military spending has now risen to over $1.2 trillion dollars. This incredible sum represents 2.5% of Gross Domestic Product. Even if 1% of it were redirected towards development, the world would be much closer to achieving the Millennium Development Goals’.
God raise up new Macmillan’s to work in politics for these ends, and raise up generosity in his people here, not least in our support for St Anne’s Hospital, Tanzania in today’s charitable giving.
God free us from ourselves through the eucharist, the thanksgiving for his love we offer day by day, to be more centred on his heart which encompasses poor and rich, near and far. So be it.
Showing posts with label Easter Jesus Hope Horsted Keynes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Easter Jesus Hope Horsted Keynes. Show all posts
Sunday, 26 September 2010
Sunday, 18 July 2010
Trinity 7 18th July 2010
Genesis 18v1-10; Ps 15; Colossians 1v15-28; Luke 10v38-42
Martha and Mary – who chose the better part?
God desires us to have intimacy with himself - this is the basic truth of Christianity.
The wonder of the stars…
The God who made all of them, who holds all of them in his hand, desires intimacy with me!
The hospitality of Abraham – icon of the hospitality of the Trinity (Genesis 18)
The majesty of Christ ‘for in him all things in heaven and earth were created…’ (Colossians 1v15-28)
‘Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her’ (Luke 10v42)
God desires to have union with us, intimate union, heart to heart.
The Majesty and yet the availability....How is this intimacy brought to us?
On God’s side by the gift of the Spirit - on our side, we receive our friendship by humility and expectancy...
On God’s Side...how can God be one with us? The Maker of the stars hold me close, answer my prayers, guide me, free me from fear, heal me, forgive me?
God is after all different...
The answer is by the Holy Spirit who is God and who brings God in all His Fullness to fill my heart eg. The ocean which is no less for filling a pool... eg. 1 Cor 2v10 ‘the Spirit searches the depths of God...we have received the Spirit...who...interprets spiritual truth (intimacy)’
On my side the intimacy is established as a gift welcomed. How? By humility and by expectancy...cf. St. Francis de Sales twin virtues.
Humble cf. Humous - of the earth, a readiness to see our nothingness before God and our less than nothingness through sin...
Then Expectant on God, Confident in God... St. Therese ...& the Sacred Heart, her faith that God could make her a Saint - the Lift...
Intimacy with God is God’s gift by his Spirit It is welcomed by humility and expectancy.
The eucharist is the great parable and seal of all of this...here God gives his Spirit, his own Life, par excellence...here we come empty-handed, in total humility before the Lord and yet with expectancy...
‘Lord I am not worthy...but only say the word’
Ronald Rolheiser in his book ‘Forgotten among the Lilies’ writes: ‘Perhaps the most useful image of how the Eucharist functions is the image of a mother holding a frightened, tired and tense child. In the eucharist God functions as a mother. God picks us up; frightened, tired, helpless, complaining, discouraged and protesting children, & holds us to her heart until the tension subsides and peace and strength flow into us’
Such is the intimacy we are privileged to share this morning and day by day in the Lord’s Presence.
‘There is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her’ Luke 10.42
‘He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives in me and I live in him’ John 6.56
Martha and Mary – who chose the better part?
God desires us to have intimacy with himself - this is the basic truth of Christianity.
The wonder of the stars…
The God who made all of them, who holds all of them in his hand, desires intimacy with me!
The hospitality of Abraham – icon of the hospitality of the Trinity (Genesis 18)
The majesty of Christ ‘for in him all things in heaven and earth were created…’ (Colossians 1v15-28)
‘Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her’ (Luke 10v42)
God desires to have union with us, intimate union, heart to heart.
The Majesty and yet the availability....How is this intimacy brought to us?
On God’s side by the gift of the Spirit - on our side, we receive our friendship by humility and expectancy...
On God’s Side...how can God be one with us? The Maker of the stars hold me close, answer my prayers, guide me, free me from fear, heal me, forgive me?
God is after all different...
The answer is by the Holy Spirit who is God and who brings God in all His Fullness to fill my heart eg. The ocean which is no less for filling a pool... eg. 1 Cor 2v10 ‘the Spirit searches the depths of God...we have received the Spirit...who...interprets spiritual truth (intimacy)’
On my side the intimacy is established as a gift welcomed. How? By humility and by expectancy...cf. St. Francis de Sales twin virtues.
Humble cf. Humous - of the earth, a readiness to see our nothingness before God and our less than nothingness through sin...
Then Expectant on God, Confident in God... St. Therese ...& the Sacred Heart, her faith that God could make her a Saint - the Lift...
Intimacy with God is God’s gift by his Spirit It is welcomed by humility and expectancy.
The eucharist is the great parable and seal of all of this...here God gives his Spirit, his own Life, par excellence...here we come empty-handed, in total humility before the Lord and yet with expectancy...
‘Lord I am not worthy...but only say the word’
Ronald Rolheiser in his book ‘Forgotten among the Lilies’ writes: ‘Perhaps the most useful image of how the Eucharist functions is the image of a mother holding a frightened, tired and tense child. In the eucharist God functions as a mother. God picks us up; frightened, tired, helpless, complaining, discouraged and protesting children, & holds us to her heart until the tension subsides and peace and strength flow into us’
Such is the intimacy we are privileged to share this morning and day by day in the Lord’s Presence.
‘There is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her’ Luke 10.42
‘He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives in me and I live in him’ John 6.56
Sunday, 4 July 2010
Trinity 5 4th July 2010 8am
As you know I spent some time as a priest working in the interior of Guyana, South America and we have the Bishop here with us later on this morning.
There was actually a place called ‘El Dorado’ in my parish, that of the Rupununi.
Goldminers regularly passed through the village from the ‘Gold Shouts’.
My wedding ring has Guyana gold in it from a ‘Gold Shout’.
A ‘Gold Shout’ happens when a miner finds some gold worth shouting about. The only thing is, he doesn’t actually shout. He hides the information about a seam of gold as long as he can.
‘Jesus Christ’ writes the apostle Paul, ‘is the key that opens all the hidden treasures of God’s wisdom and knowledge’
To discover Christ is like a ‘Gold Shout’. It can be a first discovery – what we call evangelism – in which folk speak dramatically of being found after being lost.
It can also be an ongoing discovery as more of Christ’s riches dawn upon us. Either way there’s something about Jesus worth making a noise about.
In a Guyanese ‘Gold Shout’ there is a loss to the discoverer if he shouts too soon.
When we spread our news about Jesus it causes us further gain and not loss.
Love is something that if you give it away, you end up having more…just like a Magic Penny runs the children’s song.
As the seventy appointed in the Gospel went out for Jesus they returned shouting for joy at the blessings that accompanied there evangelistic outing. As we in turn take courage to give out in deed and word for Jesus’ sake we get richer in spirit.
Gold is magic but it can’t rival the magic of Jesus.
A ‘Gold Shout’ is actually quite a dangerous place where the miners readily fight for their coveted discovery.
When we find Jesus we have found something, or rather, someone, we fight not to keep but to give away, to draw people’s attention to, to share or even shout about.
In this Holy Eucharist we welcome afresh the treasure which is Jesus.
With all our heart we should affirm in a moment our Christian faith.
Lord, you are more precious than silver. Lord you are more costly than gold – and nothing I desire compares with you
There was actually a place called ‘El Dorado’ in my parish, that of the Rupununi.
Goldminers regularly passed through the village from the ‘Gold Shouts’.
My wedding ring has Guyana gold in it from a ‘Gold Shout’.
A ‘Gold Shout’ happens when a miner finds some gold worth shouting about. The only thing is, he doesn’t actually shout. He hides the information about a seam of gold as long as he can.
‘Jesus Christ’ writes the apostle Paul, ‘is the key that opens all the hidden treasures of God’s wisdom and knowledge’
To discover Christ is like a ‘Gold Shout’. It can be a first discovery – what we call evangelism – in which folk speak dramatically of being found after being lost.
It can also be an ongoing discovery as more of Christ’s riches dawn upon us. Either way there’s something about Jesus worth making a noise about.
In a Guyanese ‘Gold Shout’ there is a loss to the discoverer if he shouts too soon.
When we spread our news about Jesus it causes us further gain and not loss.
Love is something that if you give it away, you end up having more…just like a Magic Penny runs the children’s song.
As the seventy appointed in the Gospel went out for Jesus they returned shouting for joy at the blessings that accompanied there evangelistic outing. As we in turn take courage to give out in deed and word for Jesus’ sake we get richer in spirit.
Gold is magic but it can’t rival the magic of Jesus.
A ‘Gold Shout’ is actually quite a dangerous place where the miners readily fight for their coveted discovery.
When we find Jesus we have found something, or rather, someone, we fight not to keep but to give away, to draw people’s attention to, to share or even shout about.
In this Holy Eucharist we welcome afresh the treasure which is Jesus.
With all our heart we should affirm in a moment our Christian faith.
Lord, you are more precious than silver. Lord you are more costly than gold – and nothing I desire compares with you
Sunday, 23 May 2010
Pentecost Sunday 23rd May 2010
Introduction
Welcome to the triumphant end of Easter season when we celebrate the descent of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost also called Whitsunday.
We’ve just sung about becoming the place wherein the Holy Spirit makes his dwelling.
How can we understand this?
I’ve got an illustration.
Each one of us human beings is like a coffee pot.
We’re filled with so much goodness, love and patience to give out to others.
We give out and out and out - until we get empty. Then we find the difference between Christians and others.
What do you think that difference is?
Believers have found there's a lid on our coffee pot and a God willing to refill us, through it, with love, power and praise exactly when we’re empty and needy.
The 'lid' is faith and what gets poured in by the Spirit's power is 'grace'.
Our sin is linked to our self sufficiency, to our attempts to live in our own strength without the help of the Holy Spirit.
Let’s read through the confession before we say it together and ask God’s forgiveness.
Homily
So what were the signs when the Holy Spirit first came down?
Rush of wind, tongues of fire, sense of filling, speaking in other languages.
Remember the coffee pot getting filled, opening up for a refill of love and empowerment when the going gets tough in life? It had been tough for the first disciples, but they prayed for the Spirit and the Spirit came.
We believe he comes in every act of Christian prayer but especially at the eucharist where he speaks through the bible and makes bread and wine our heavenly food.
The first Pentecost must have been quite a wild occasion, all that wind and fire and speaking in tongues. Elsewhere in the bible the Holy Spirit speaks more quietly. He is also a still, small voice.
In 1985 a Canon John Dorman I hardly knew wrote to me with to share how the Holy Spirit had laid on him to write from Guyana to ask me to consider running a theological college for Amerindian priests. It was a job for two single priests and married priests were not under consideration.
The problem was that though I was then in the Company of Mission Priests who take annual promises to stay single I had been praying about marriage! So it was with some reluctance that I came to see John Dorman’s letter as the voice of the Holy Spirit.
How could you see the hinterland of Guyana deprived of the sacraments because I wouldn’t leave my comfort zone! I needed to go. I went and as I went, in God’s loving kindness, I met Anne. She was at the USPG College of Ascension where Fr Allan Buik and I went to train before going to Guyana.
Though Anne was going to Argentina to serve in the diocesan office both the Bishop of Argentina and the then Bishop of Guyana agreed to our marriage which was celebrated on Pentecost Sunday 1988.
It was a great Pentecost Day. The whole village came to the celebration which began with the slaughter of a cow at dawn and cost me a bag of rice, sugar and flour! A Hindu business man I played squash with provided a plane to fly in our parents. The Holy Spirit was there working to smooth the logistics of marriage in the jungle!
I’m telling you all this because I know the Holy Spirit is the soul of the Church. He is all powerful. He also writes straight through crooked lines as Anne and I have discovered.
You know that our charitable giving is for our new Guyana link this Sunday and next – we use the orange envelopes for this. This is why I want to underline Pentecost as a Sunday which sets our eyes on the mission field. The fact that the Bishop of Guyana is visiting us in six weeks time is also relevant. We want to give him our collection personally. You can read about the new bishop and the mission of the church in Guyana by taking away a free copy of El Dorado from the back of church
Meanwhile the Holy Spirit is also filling lives around us here in Horsted Keynes. I wish more of us could have been here last Sunday night with Fr Martin when two teams ministered prayer and anointing to a group of folk who seemed to gain a real lift!
God is at work here – here and now. Let’s stand to acclaim him as we welcome the holy gospel.
Welcome to the triumphant end of Easter season when we celebrate the descent of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost also called Whitsunday.
We’ve just sung about becoming the place wherein the Holy Spirit makes his dwelling.
How can we understand this?
I’ve got an illustration.
Each one of us human beings is like a coffee pot.
We’re filled with so much goodness, love and patience to give out to others.
We give out and out and out - until we get empty. Then we find the difference between Christians and others.
What do you think that difference is?
Believers have found there's a lid on our coffee pot and a God willing to refill us, through it, with love, power and praise exactly when we’re empty and needy.
The 'lid' is faith and what gets poured in by the Spirit's power is 'grace'.
Our sin is linked to our self sufficiency, to our attempts to live in our own strength without the help of the Holy Spirit.
Let’s read through the confession before we say it together and ask God’s forgiveness.
Homily
So what were the signs when the Holy Spirit first came down?
Rush of wind, tongues of fire, sense of filling, speaking in other languages.
Remember the coffee pot getting filled, opening up for a refill of love and empowerment when the going gets tough in life? It had been tough for the first disciples, but they prayed for the Spirit and the Spirit came.
We believe he comes in every act of Christian prayer but especially at the eucharist where he speaks through the bible and makes bread and wine our heavenly food.
The first Pentecost must have been quite a wild occasion, all that wind and fire and speaking in tongues. Elsewhere in the bible the Holy Spirit speaks more quietly. He is also a still, small voice.
In 1985 a Canon John Dorman I hardly knew wrote to me with to share how the Holy Spirit had laid on him to write from Guyana to ask me to consider running a theological college for Amerindian priests. It was a job for two single priests and married priests were not under consideration.
The problem was that though I was then in the Company of Mission Priests who take annual promises to stay single I had been praying about marriage! So it was with some reluctance that I came to see John Dorman’s letter as the voice of the Holy Spirit.
How could you see the hinterland of Guyana deprived of the sacraments because I wouldn’t leave my comfort zone! I needed to go. I went and as I went, in God’s loving kindness, I met Anne. She was at the USPG College of Ascension where Fr Allan Buik and I went to train before going to Guyana.
Though Anne was going to Argentina to serve in the diocesan office both the Bishop of Argentina and the then Bishop of Guyana agreed to our marriage which was celebrated on Pentecost Sunday 1988.
It was a great Pentecost Day. The whole village came to the celebration which began with the slaughter of a cow at dawn and cost me a bag of rice, sugar and flour! A Hindu business man I played squash with provided a plane to fly in our parents. The Holy Spirit was there working to smooth the logistics of marriage in the jungle!
I’m telling you all this because I know the Holy Spirit is the soul of the Church. He is all powerful. He also writes straight through crooked lines as Anne and I have discovered.
You know that our charitable giving is for our new Guyana link this Sunday and next – we use the orange envelopes for this. This is why I want to underline Pentecost as a Sunday which sets our eyes on the mission field. The fact that the Bishop of Guyana is visiting us in six weeks time is also relevant. We want to give him our collection personally. You can read about the new bishop and the mission of the church in Guyana by taking away a free copy of El Dorado from the back of church
Meanwhile the Holy Spirit is also filling lives around us here in Horsted Keynes. I wish more of us could have been here last Sunday night with Fr Martin when two teams ministered prayer and anointing to a group of folk who seemed to gain a real lift!
God is at work here – here and now. Let’s stand to acclaim him as we welcome the holy gospel.
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