Advent 3 The Lord is Near – Asking 15th December 2013

Advent 3   The Lord is Near – Asking                    15^th December 2013

   

This morning St Giles is being made much of through two broadcasts on London-based Premier Christian Radio internet apart receivable by 11 million people in the UK of whom an estimated 143,000 listen daily for 12 hours or more. Today’s the third of a four part Advent series I produced which we’re drawing into both eucharists today.

‘The Lord is near’ series engages through scripture, song and story in the wonder of Advent season. It’s about the journey to Christmas in Horsted Keynes as we go through Advent this year seeking to come close to the Lord.

We chose four headings suited to Advent - repent, believe, ask, receive - and in the third programme we are looking at asking. Advent means coming. We ask the Lord Jesus who came at Bethlehem to come again as Lord of the earth and as we do so the prayer he gave us has special force. ‘Thy Kingdom come’, we ask, ‘on earth as it is in heaven’. As we ask we commit ourselves to action.

As parish church of Horsted Keynes we’re working with others to speed the coming of God and his Kingdom and realise the vision at the end of the Bible where St John speaks in Revelation Chapter 11, verse 15 of ‘the kingdom of this world becoming the kingdom of our God and of his Christ’.

How are we working for that to happen in Horsted Keynes? For a village population 2000 we’ve got a remarkable total of 40 organisations many involving church members – Brownies, Friends of Chernobyl’s Children, Lift scheme, Royal British Legion, Toddler Group are just five of them that make a difference to lives. I think of one example of how this autumn, through the church led lift scheme, Beryl Webb was taken daily to hospital in Brighton for radiotherapy through a dozen or so volunteer drivers. Beryl phoned me this week to thank those of us who’ve been praying for her as she’s found her tumour has indeed shrunk which facilitates the next stage of her treatment.

The vision for building God’s kingdom is kindled when we pray ‘Thy kingdom come’ at the eucharist, ‘eating the bread and drinking the cup, proclaiming the Lord’s death until he comes’ (1 Corinthians 11:26). Let’s listen to the end of Noel Richards and Gerald Coates song which expresses the church’s prayer for the coming of Jesus in Advent season:

Hymn: Great is the darkness (Come, Lord Jesus)

Fr John:  Advent’s a call to ask for the Lord’s return and for ‘the kingdom of this world to become the kingdom of our God and of his Christ’.

As I kneel in St Giles I think of those who’ve knelt here before me with a passion for that kingdom. Archbishop Robert Leighton who ended his days here after his struggle to pour oil on the troubled waters of 17^th century church disputes. School teacher Sidney Peek who died in 1910 of black water fever in Africa on missionary service aged just 21. Former Prime Minister Harold Macmillan who, by contrast, lived to 92. All of these, and many others, sought wisdom here from God to build his kingdom and not their own.

Today’s disciples are about the same work of seeking the kingdom of God.

James Nicholson churchwarden speaks about how we have special pray weekly for the work of St Giles and how we’ve acted in recent years to build God’s kingdom locally through upkeep of our church building and churchyard, pastoral care of villagers and initiatives like the village lunch, as well as overseas through Faith in Action, Liuli and Guyana Diocesan Association.

5.5min

Fr John: Let’s listen now to Our Lord’s description of how God’s kingdom grows in the world

Female voice from Premier staff.

A reading from Saint Mark’s Gospel, Chapter 4  

Jesus said, ‘The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.’ He also said, ‘With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.’ Here ends the reading.

Fr John: In Advent season we think of the coming King and his kingdom and of how that kingdom is already growing around us first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. This mysterious growth is all around us, watered by the prayer and work of believers.

Veronica Griffiths describes how Family Support Work has grown up as a work that advances God’s kingdom through service of the needy across Sussex and how St Giles and villagers contribute to that work through prayer, financial giving and through food, clothes, toys etc.

Fr John: ‘Thy kingdom come’ is the Advent prayer and the subject of Lewis Hensley’s great hymn:

Song: Thy kingdom come, O God

St Giles was once the focus of the nation’s attention when back in 1986 we hosted the funeral of Harold Macmillan. People remember how Mrs Thatcher led world leaders here and how the cottages along Church Lane had security personnel guarding the scene from upstairs windows.

This last week of celebrations centring on Nelson Mandela makes me wonder whether he visited here for Macmillan’s grave in our churchyard became for a time a shrine for African nationalists. It was Macmillan who oversaw the dismantling of Britain’s colonial legacy starting with his 1960 ‘winds of change’ speech in the South African Parliament. People remember President Kennedy’s visit here to Macmillan just before his assassination in 1963 which has also been a recent news focus 50 years on. We treasure the legacy of Harold Macmillan, his faith and his work for God’s kingdom enthused by his Christian vision expressed in regular church attendance at St Giles.

Repent, believe, ask, receive – Macmillan like the rest of us asked for wisdom and no doubt he also failed to ask at times so that his decision making fell short. Advent reminds us of God’s coming kingdom and our need to seek it so the world is put right.

Let’s end with a moment of reflection actually asking God in our hearts to make us better instruments of building his kingdom of justice, love and peace as we approach the Christmas feast together.

Trinity 17 26th September 10am

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.