St Wilfrid & Presentation, Haywards Heath Treasure 28.7.21

The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. Matthew 13.44

One Sunday in January 1927 this passage from Matthew 13 was the subject of a sermon by my predecessor as Rector of Horsted Keynes Frank Stenton-Eardley. It was an exceptionally profitable sermon. One of the congregation from nearby Broadhurst Manor went home, dug in a field there and unearthed a hoard of sixty-four gold nobles. This gold, deposited 500 years before, is now in the British Museum. [Picture of gold nobles by Paul Hudson]

The guy who found the treasure remembered the Rector’s sermon when his spade clinked the treasure. What does today’s former Rector suggest you might find memorable about the same Scripture?

The two parables of the treasure and the pearl remind Christians of the need to put supreme value on building our longing for God and his kingdom.

It is not what you are or have been that God looks at with his merciful eyes but what you would be wrote the mystic author of that Medieval classic, The Cloud of Unknowing.

What would you be? Where’s your heart set? 

God wants his aspirations to be of supreme value to his children and we can’t attain these without alertness and determination, two virtues that come out of the parables of the treasure and the pearl in our gospel reading from the end of Matthew Chapter 13. 

Like the Horsted Keynes labourer, if we proceed about our lives with wise mindfulness we don’t have to go far to find God and his riches. The purpose of scripture, of sermons and bible study, is to school us to be alert to the possibilities of God breaking into our situation, as the clink of the spade on the gold alerted the farm worker schooled by the Sunday sermon in January 1927. 

The treasure parable of God’s kingdom is a reminder to recognize the treasure that’s already there in our lives and the joy it's discovery brings. Over the summer we’ve got great opportunities to rediscover the joy of family as the demands of work and lockdown lift from us. 

If this parable is a reminder to be alert to God’s moments the parable of the merchant is a reminder to be spiritually determined. The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.  Jesus emphasises in this parable how being his follower takes you on a determined spiritual search. The cost of this will be eclipsed by the outcome but there is a cost.

To be better disciples of Jesus we need opportunities to discipline ourselves so our personal agendas give way more and more to his. This cannot occur, Jesus cannot reach into our lives, without prayer, scripture and the eucharist. 

May the Lord build that determination for him as well as the day by day, hour by hour alertness to the treasure we don’t need to go on holiday to find since it lies buried and awaiting us where we live.

St Wilfrid & Presentation, Haywards Heath Trinity 7 (16B) 18.7.21

 

‘We will heal together’ said Gareth Southgate on Monday morning following Sunday’s defeat of England’s men’s football team by Italy. The same day saw graphic illustration in the Telegraph of Southgate’s capacity as a healer with two pictures side by side. One showed England’s manager being comforted 25 years ago by Terry Venables at Euro96 after he himself missed at a penalty shoot out for England. The other came from Sunday with Gareth Southgate embracing the distressed player, Bukayo Saka, who had the same fate. Southgate seemed well equipped to comfort Saka as a wounded healer, someone who had been in the same pain a quarter of a century ago.

Those pictures are a window into this Sunday’s scripture linked to healing. We read in the Gospel from Mark 6 of Jesus showing compassion for the crowd around him, seeing them as ‘sheep without a shepherd’. That phrase echoes the first reading from Jeremiah 23 prophesying a future shepherding and healing for God’s people. With the coming of Christ that healing begins, as we read at the end of today’s Gospel: ‘Wherever Jesus went…they laid the sick in the market places, and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched it were healed’ Mark 6:56.

We take the counsel of people who have suffered more into our hearts. The remarkable scene just described surrounds one who was approaching his passion, already bearing rejection with nowhere to lay his head, yet releasing power to heal even through his clothes. The second reading from Ephesians lays out the basis of divine healing in the extraordinary consequences of the rejection and crucifixion of Christ. God is no longer to be seen as God who embraces just the Jews but as God who embraces all, Gentiles - that is non-Jews - and Jews. I quote again this extraordinary passage: ‘In Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us… reconcil(ing) both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility (between Jews and Gentiles) through it. So he came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; for through him both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father’. (Ephesians 2:13-18)

The main issue for the church today is – how much of a vision of God do we have? Do we believe in the power of the Cross conveyed to us this morning in the eucharist? Do we see and take heart from passages like Ephesians 2 in the face of the dividing walls in the world today? These are made more evident through social media as last weekend proved. Social media brough 32 million of us to Sunday’s game but the consequence of that was in part to reveal a sorry amount of racial prejudice flowing through the same media. When Gareth Southgate said ‘we will heal together’ he spoke for us all since facing up to the truth together is the bottom line for healing under God. The England team are giving a powerful lead on inclusion and collaborative working. As Christians we can’t but see the invitation to repent of racial prejudice as a laying hold of the divine initiative that has impacted, that potentially breaks all walls between us, through the incarnation, death and resurrection of Christ. As we read in St John’s Gospel Chapter 11 verse 52, ‘Jesus died not for the Jewish nation only, but to gather into one the dispersed children of God’. 

How big is your God? How real? As real as to engineer through history such a gathering of his dispersed children? Real enough to take your life and mine and lives like Gareth Southgate to be witnesses and instruments of divine healing 

You can be sure of this – however magnificent and real God is to you today there’ll be a greater magnificence and reality in store for you!

On a few occasions in my ministry I have been on the scene when the glory of Jesus evidently illuminated and healed someone.

I think of Bernard who came stumbling around to the Clergy House of my Curacy beaming all over his face.  Was he drunk? I thought. No. Jesus had come real to him. The Holy Spirit had opened his inner eyes.  

I think of an older man to whose troubled deathbed I’d been summoned. As I read the 23rd Psalm deep peace descended upon him.  It was as if Jesus appeared and just took him away. He died joyfully as I prayed.

Or some time back when a young man described to me how for several months he had helped his wife cope with a spiritual problem, Jesus made himself known. James started a confirmation course. A short meeting opened my eyes with his to God’s wonder and magnificence.

Over my time at St Giles, Horsted Keynes I saw eyes opening to the heart and mind expanding vision of God that’s at the heart of this eucharist, people testifying to transformation of their lives in some degree or other.

What a difference it makes to someone when they see Jesus!  They see glory – glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

To see Jesus is to catch hold of a radiant beauty quite out of this world, a beauty that is compelling and extraordinary in its attractiveness, that makes human divisions pale into insignificance.

Could we wish anything more wonderful for anyone than a personal revelation of the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ?

It can be ours this morning at the Eucharist. With St John we are to call out: Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God, the Almighty; he was, he is and he is to come.

In this celebration earth is joined to heaven. There steals on the ear the distant triumph song as our words of praise find echo and amplification from angels and archangels, and all the company of heaven.

God grant us a vision of himself more to his dimension and less to ours as we come before him this morning to thank him for his goodness and healing!

Palm Sunday 8am 9th April 2017

This morning is something of an unforgettable experience for me.

Anne and I are sharing like Jesus a last week with everyone before death and resurrection - I speak half in jest. Haywards Heath also is no paradise compared to Horsted Keynes.

This morning's liturgy blends the triumph and sorrow associated with Experiencing Christ's Love, the title of my new book, of which I mentioned last week 8 o’clockers would get pre-launch availability. Its sub title is establishing a life of worship, prayer, study, service and reflection and it’s somewhat autobiographical

The large palm branches on its cover represent triumphant love which works out, as our reading of the Passion illustrated, through bearing sorrow.

As your parish priest bearing many of your joys and sorrows I have carried Christ from you. He has rubbed off on me as I hope he's rubbed off from Anne and I to you. Worshipping, praying, studying, serving and reflecting here for 8 years has been immensely fruitful for us.

The book is one fruit grown from the partnership between priest and people we’ve exercised together and it’s about holding yourself to a rule of life.

The clue to effective living is to find the main things and keep the main things as the main things.

For over 60 years I’ve been working with a rule of life at both finding and holding myself to those things. I still have work to do. As a priest for most of my life you’d have thought I’d have this sorted by now, but, though theological expertise helps me speak and write about experiencing Christ’s love, its outworking in real life is all the more challenging.

There are no professional Christians, though some get paid for their work. We are all amateurs, hopefully in the sense of devotees rather than incompetents!

As I prayed for God-given competence to frame my book the Lord drew me to an image of his hand reaching down to me and my own hand grasping his with its five digits expressing five loves commended in his own summary of the Law in Matthew 22:37-39: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.”

Worship and prayer are to be seen as heart and soul of our love for God, Jesus implies, but without study, engaging the mind with divine teaching, that love will be ill formed, and without service, love of neighbour, and reflection, loving care of self, our loving God is a delusion.

Those five commitments - worship, prayer, study, service, reflection - make a hand that can grasp the hand of God reaching down to us in Jesus Christ to raise us into his praise and service with all the saints, an image of Love's endeavour for us in Holy Week. The five commitments provide the chapter headings of this short book of 90 pages commissioned and published by the Bible Reading Fellowship.

The God and Father of Jesus is a God of joyful goodness who loves us through and through and whose grace is overall and in all. That loving grace isn’t a quantity so much as a quality of helpfulness given us by God who simply desires it for us, not because we’ve done anything to earn it. This benevolence shown by God toward the human race is at the heart of the good news of Jesus we're celebrating in Holy Week.

‘God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ' Paul writes to Ephesus.

'By grace you have been saved - and [God] raised us up with [Christ] and seated us with him in the heavenly places’. (Ephesians 2:4-6)

After seeing a 1960s street advertisement Austin Farrer amusingly compared the Church of England to corsets: 'for ladies, for comfort and for general uplift'. It's a half truth- my mother tells me she's struck by the number of men at St Giles!

Christianity is indeed 'for comfort and uplift'. To be raised up we need to welcome and respond to God’s grace, putting faith in him, placing our hand in his, and that’s going out of our way. It’s a countering of self-deception as expanded in this book. 

Attending worship may be inconvenient but ‘where there’s a will there’s a way’. The discipline of prayer isn’t necessarily accompanied by feeling God’s presence. Awkward questions about the Bible matter and there are times to get your head down to address them. We’ll never be good at serving others without a readiness to shoulder life’s little humiliations that break the ego’s shackle round us. Unless we are ready to regularly examine ourselves and confess our sins to God ‘the truth is not in us’ (1 John 1:8).

Christians live under the favour of God which is grace with a big aim - God’s glory and the world’s salvation - and a tight focus expressed as we worship on Sunday, pray every day,  study the Bible, serve our neighbour and reflect upon our lives confessing our sins. That big aim and tight focus is taken up into the love of Christ for God, for us and for all.

‘All is grace’.

The clue to effective living is to find that main thing reaching out continually in worship, prayer, study, service and reflection to grasp ‘the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit’. 2 Corinthians 13:14

Through this book, through Holy Week or in whatever way he opens to you I repeat the bidding of the last line of my book from Ephesians 3:19 'May you know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God’.  

St Giles Festival 8am 11th September 2016

The scripture readings on this our Patronal Festival of St Giles give us a window into heaven and advice on how we get there.

The visionary John exiled on the island of Patmos is given consolation from God to share with his persecuted fellow believers. They are to fix their gaze on the consequences of keeping faith which will appear soon, the consequences for faithful believers of the death and resurrection of the Lord:

They are before the throne of God, and worship him day and night within his temple, and the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them. They will hunger no more, and thirst no more; the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat; for the Lamb at the centre of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.

Immensely powerful poetry – and only God inspired poetry can speak of what’s of course beyond time. This window into heaven was followed today by the passage from Luke Chapter 6 (p1041 Lectionary) which speaks again of the reward for bearing hardship: Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you…   rejoice in that day and leap for joy your reward is great in heaven Luke 6:22-23

A window into heaven from Revelation, and advice on how we get there by bearing hardships as Christians in the second reading.

Then our Saint, what does blessed Giles add to the mix? And lastly what are we to take away for practical application on this Festival Sunday?

We know little about Giles save his being a French Saint whose cult was brought by the Normans and that he is paradoxically the Saint of cripples and hunters.

The word bridge comes to mind. The dedication of St Giles Church is a reminder of how the population of this village and its surrounds has seen immigration – a Frexit if you like, the French leaving their continent in the 11^th century. The very architecture of St Giles bridges Saxon and Norman, as you can see above me with the Saxon bits left in, or the North door which is Saxon even if it’s been moved by both Normans and Victorians.

The bridging of St Giles is more graphically illustrated in our wooden medallion besides the organ – there he is stuck with the arrow protecting the deer.  The story runs that 7^th century Giles lived in southern France as a hermit in the forest and there was a deer who sustained him on her milk. Hunters one day tried to kill the deer and shot an arrow at her but Giles jumped over the deer and took the arrow. This is why he’s patron Saint of both cripples and hunters. I think the story makes him a bit more biased to the first than the second – but that’s a distraction to my main thought that Giles, as a bridge Saint, reached out to the deer at a cost to himself.

Christians reach out to the vulnerable and get wounded. We are active symbols of Christ who reaches out to sinners and suffers on their behalf.

To live like a bridge is to get walked over.

So to practical application.

I can’t risk showing my political colours with a desire to bridge the French-English divide, and some of you may walk over me on that!

I must say, staying with friends in France last month I detected little sadness over Brexit, but my own conviction is its better to bring nations together than pull them apart. I’m not going to defend the Norman invasion however.

If St Giles and the history and architecture of this Church are a bridging tale relevant to the potential bridge breaking of June 2016, what do we make for ourselves of the second element of St Giles as bridge icon.

It’s a reminder of the Lord Giles encourages us to serve, the Lord who died in our place to live in our place, who died for our sins so we can live with new life by his Spirit.

The readiness of Giles to bear hurt in reaching across the deer is a reminder of the need to be ready to build bridges. As Pope Francis said recently ‘Those who build walls and break down bridges can hardly be called Christians’. We’re getting a bit of politics this morning aren’t we!

The pains you’re bearing in your soul are most likely linked to bridge building. It’s hard to live with divided loyalties, with unresolved agendas, but you’d be less than you are if you closed your heart and pulled up the drawbridge in those situations.

Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you…   rejoice in that day and leap for joy your reward is great in heaven.

Come Holy Spirit and make us bridges, your bridges so we may put love where there’s no love and see love grow!

St Giles our Patron, pray that we, like you, may be generous towards the needy, animals especially. That we may face those who hunt and seek the downfall of others, that their eyes be opened to the work of mercy.

Lord Jesus be their shepherd, and guide us all to springs of the water of life, when you will wipe away every tear from our eyes.

Blessed Virgin Mary 14th August 2016

There are five windows dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary in St Giles that trace her involvement in the saving work of her Son.

In the Lady Chapel we have the representation of the Annunciation, the Angel Gabriel’s visit, and the Visitation, when Mary was praised by her cousin Elizabeth and herself praised God in her Magnificat.

In the south aisle she is there at the birth of our Saviour in the Benson Window. At the west end Mary is depicted with Joseph presenting Jesus in the Temple in the beautiful Kempe window.

This evening on the Feast of the Blessed Virgin, our eyes lift to the east window which shows her at the foot of the Cross.

Then they are lowered to view the Bread on the altar which is the representation of her Son’s Body, crucified yet risen, given to us from the altar in Holy Communion, tonight enthroned for Mary’s feast.

We come this evening with Mary to the foot of the Cross.

We come, as at the eucharist, to plead with Mary her Son’s Sacrifice for a broken world.

This Church was built for that purpose, shaped initially like a Cross, so that the people of Horsted Keynes could bring their joys and sorrows to God with, through and in the offering of Christ’s body and blood.

Within these walls people gathered to celebrate Magna Carta, to mourn the Black Death, to hear the scriptures read in English for the first time, to mourn the fire of London, to celebrate the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo and to mourn the death of Queen Victoria.

In November 1963 Harold MacMillan suggested the Rector change the Sunday readings after President Kennedy’s assassination.

I wonder what MacMillan would have made of the times we are living through and the best Christian response? Our prayers must surely be with his successor as Prime Minister as she serves Britain’s best engagement with the world crisis of our own day.

I was at my window last month completing my tax return when I saw a car leaping across Station Road and crashing upside down. Two ladies from Thursday’s coffee group were pulled out relatively unscathed.

We gave thanks to God in St Giles the following Sunday.

Two days later the murder of a priest at the altar in Normandy shocked us all, and most especially this small group that worships with me in our own parish Church day by day.

We lamented before God in St Giles the following Sunday.

Faith’s an intuition that attempts, day by day, week by week, to make sense of events as disparate as these.

It’s the basis of hope, which is faith for the future where what happens tomorrow, good or ill, is seen to be in the hand of the God who in the words of the Psalmist turns the wrath of man to his praise. (Psalm 76v10)

We have placed the Holy Sacrament tonight beneath the most eloquent sight in Horsted Keynes: St Giles’ spire. 

It’s a silent witness inviting all around to gather beneath it, to give thanks and pray to God.

As we, the faithful, obey its call to Sunday worship, we don’t always see answers to life’s upsets such as the two contrasting ones I’ve just shared, but we do regain our balance to be better equipped to love and serve.

We come to church this evening with the sorrow and confusion of our Holy Mother Mary on Good Friday. Like her we’re looking at a crucifixion but ours is a crucifixion of the world  by forces of anarchy.

Like her we look up to Jesus on the east window cross and then down to the light of the risen Lord, before us in Communion, and also resident in our hearts by faith - for whenever believers look at a crucifix they see their risen Lord standing beside.

The challenge of the world’s crises puts a particular responsibility on Christian people to stand with St Mary by the Cross of her Son and pray with Jesus and Mary to the Father: Our Father - in this situation - hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done...deliver us from evil.

We Christians are salt and light because like Mary we can ask Jesus, by the sufferings he has borne uniquely, once and for all, to soak up the evil around us and turn the tables on it.

Our prayers and eucharists bring the potential of the Cross, which is like a mighty engine out of gear, into gear so the love of God floods into this aching world.

Paul says God’s love has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. It was true of Mary at her Annunciation and it is equally true of us in our baptism and confirmation. That love is poured upon us so that, at our prayer, it may cascade extravagantly upon all whom we bring to the foot of the Cross.

So with Mary, before the risen Lord present in this Holy Sacrament, we keep silence before the Lord this evening, with joy at that presence and with sorrow at the troubled world that is far more on his heart than ours.

Jesus living in Mary live in us might be our prayer.

Jesus living in Mary live in them might be our prayer of intercession.

Let’s voice our prayer in silence for two minutes.

Mary at the Cross, Our Lady of Sorrows, pray with us and for us!

Easter 5 Election 3rd May 2015

We stand at an important junction in national life so let’s take guidance from the word of God as we prepare to play our part in the events of the coming week.

Today’s scripture was in place before they set Election Day five years ago for 7^th May. What do the lectionary readings have to say to us?

The first reading from Acts has significance for a nation that’s had Christianity in its fabric as long as any other. A court official of Candace, queen of Ethiopia is on a journey that takes him onto another one at the hand of St Philip. Through the operation of the Holy Spirit he enters the journey of faith and is first to take the good news of God’s love revealed in Jesus Christ to Africa where it can still be found today.

How Queen Candace’s Chancellor of the Exchequer fared on his return to Ethiopia we’re not told but he’s a timely reminder of how much the good of any nation rests on the goodness of its rulers and whether they have the Holy Spirit. In my election leader in May’s parish magazine I quote T.S. Eliot who wrote of the futility of dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good. Politics stands or falls on personnel as much as policy. I went on to salute stalwart village Councillors standing down this month, Rory Clarke after 45 years and Jim Brimfield after 25 years, whose contributions we have greatly valued. On Thursday we have opportunity to elect new councillors, some of the candidates being church members entering the fray with  determination to serve the good of our village. We want the best folk to serve, those who know the ground and, hopefully, those gifted with a strong moral compass who’ll be their own men and women.

All I can tell you to do from the pulpit is vote! How you vote is a matter of conscience, but informed conscience of course and sermons are meant to be about the education of conscience, which is why I outlined in the magazine three vital moral considerations at this time, starting with the need to counter discrimination against ‘second class citizens’ of the UK and the world especially those who live in hunger.

Our second reading touches on this with its reminder that practical action to serve our neighbour, not least the million Britons now having to queue at food banks, is proof of faith in a loving God. Please read with me the last two sentences of the second lesson this morning from the first letter of St John Chapter 4 verses 20 and 21:  Those who say, ‘I love God’, and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.

This morning we’ll be singing at the offertory G.K.Chesterton’s hymn O God of earth and altar, number 481 in our hymnbook with its lovely Vaughan Williams harmonisation. Gilbert Chesterton was one of the brightest Christian minds of the last century. I like this story about him. When a newspaper asked several writers to answer the question “What is wrong with the world?” Chesterton answered: Dear Sirs, I am.  Sincerely yours, G. K. Chesterton

That underlines the point made earlier about right government coming best from right people, or people as right as they can be given the sinfulness of the human condition. The moments in the election campaign that have had most impact on me have been those rare ones where there’s been humility exhibited, something very difficult with the power and pride of 24-7 mass media.

Chesterton’s 1906 hymn starts with the sentiment of human frailty:

O God of earth and altar, bow down and hear our cry, our earthly rulers falter, our people drift and die; the walls of gold entomb us, the swords of scorn divide, take not thy thunder from us, but take away our pride.

His reference to entombing walls of gold link to my mind with the second moral consideration I voiced in the magazine on how our national debt entombs us souring relations between generations and how it’s important to vote in a government with a sound strategy for decreasing it. Chesterton’s hymn reference to entombing walls of gold also voices the materialism of our age, much heightened I guess a century on from his, so that day by day we’re suffering a bribe campaign vis a vis where our bank balances might head after Thursday.

The major challenge in our society has been described as the transformation of consumers into citizens. People resist the call to public service through a self interest unconcerned about the common good beyond making sure they have the consumables they want and the neighbourhood watch functions in case others want to take these from them. The lack of readiness among people to take responsibility for civic life and the common good is alarming. So many of us live in the mini world of our household and the mega world of social media Facebook, Twitter etc leaving out the midi world of the local community including the parish church . We salute those prepared to be candidates for election to Horsted Keynes parish council. As retiring chairman Jim Brimfield writes in the magazine: The new council will have the difficult task of completing the Neighbourhood Plan. I wish them well. This matter can be divisive. I very much hope that any differences which arise, will be overcome by calm discussion and compromise, so that no long term ill feelings will result.

There is a lot at stake locally, nationally and internationally from our visits to the Village Hall on Thursday! Those visits and votes are our taking responsibility for our village, county and nation as the citizens we are.

Let’s move on to the last reading from the holy Gospel, St John Chapter 15. It is an agricultural image of connectedness. I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine-grower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit

I can’t resist using it to illustrate my third moral consideration for you this Sunday before the election which is the Green agenda, namely looking to voting in a government with evident determination to address the crisis impacting the world through abuse of the environment.  Climate change is linked to human abuse of the environment. It’s good we have grapes now growing in our parish but further south there are deserts growing, unfriendly to human habitation, which will do nothing to arrest the northward flow of migrants. Tackling those migrants is a vast, complicated issue for any government balancing our capacity to be hospitable against the capacity of each national infrastructure.

Linking the environmental issue to Our Lord’s teaching on Christian solidarity is poetic licence though. The right explanation of the gospel is elsewhere of course in its call to intimate union with Jesus Christ.  Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches.  John 15:4-5a

In this eucharist we take the fruit of the vine and the work of human hands to become our spiritual food and drink. Though many we’re made one by that Food as we abide in Christ and he in us. Together we stand like branches coming forth from Jesus Christ the true vine and our aspirations for the world at election-tide can’t be separated from that vision for unity. Our scripture readings this morning remind us of how the Holy Spirit can raise world leaders, build justice for the poor, create wealth and a better stewardship of the environment. To find the Holy Spirit, as a rule, though, we need to find Jesus, and to find Jesus and to dwell in him we need his body and blood, his word and the fellowship of his Church which is the vanguard of God’s kingdom.

May the kingdom of this world advance a little towards becoming the kingdom of God through this eucharist, through our prayer, through our voting on Thursday and through a new wave of the Holy Spirit pouring his love upon our village, county, nation and world. Amen.

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.

Easter all age eucharist 20th April 2014

The workmen in Lindfield let me take a Road closed sign that had been run over, possibly by an angry motorist, which was destined for a skip in any case!

For 13 weeks we’ve driven to Haywards Heath via Ardingly or Walstead  instead of Lindfield. Renewing the water main in Lindfield has made life that much harder in Horsted Keynes. We’ve had to take a long road, or, if by Walstead, a bumpy potholed road without edges at times, to get to the station.

Some of our commuters have lost an extra half an hour a day for 13 working weeks which I make 32.5 hours or well over a day of their life. Now the road is open alleluia! Traffic lights, yes, from Tuesday but it’s open – the way to Haywards Heath is no longer closed.

It’s Easter Day and there’s another road been opened.

We have little roads in our cemetery to carry the remains of people who’ve died to their graves. The children have just been running there.

Those paths – one more is due – lead to graves but on this day the Man who’d been carried down the path to his grave on Good Friday was there alive in the cemetery.

Remember what they said in the reading we just heard: They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.

The Road death closed was now open!

It isn’t my job to explain how it happened but to point upwards, as those first witnesses did, to the One who did it, who mastered death for us, opening the then closed way to glory.

The Bible passages we read today point to an historical event, probably in April 27AD – the time keeping lost 6 years somewhere –  an event that is held by a third of the earth’s population today to reveal a love extravagant enough to make death pale away into nothingness.

When Jesus Christ suffered and died God was in him. There was a sort of divine judo at play. Death flew at God and ended up upside down and out at the count.

For, as we shall hear in a moment, when Peter came to Jesus’ grave he saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself.

God had been at work, for Christians a God who’s big enough to work his way through death.

God is still at work, not least here in Horsted Keynes.

One of the great joys we’ve had at St Giles recently is seeing eight of the regular church attenders now receiving Holy Communion with us.

All eight were confirmed by Bishop Mark last month and on Sunday we’d a lovely lunch to welcome them organised by our outgoing Churchwarden James Nicholson with other church members. It was a great occasion.

I’ve invited one or two of them to share something of how they came to make this move and how God’s been at work in their lives.

Nick, Raychell and Karoline share about how God’s been at work in their lives of late.

God’s at work – he’s still at work opening up the dead ends we encounter in life.

Many of have taken time these last weeks of Lent to write these letters to God to be shortly consigned to him via a flame from the Easter Candle. I don’t know about yours but mine’s things for which I want resurrection in my life and that of St Giles.

You’ve still got a minute or two, maybe after communion to write a sentence or two inside the envelope to join the other letters as a sign of offering. Why not give him some of the seeming dead ends you’re facing?

Resurrection, Easter, is about breaking through dead ends, of which driving again via Lindfield to the station is a significant reminder.

It’s a parable of life, for few of us avoid times when ‘you have to drive through Ardingly to Haywards Heath’. Times when we must take a long road on account of unemployment, cancer treatment or bereavement are our making or un-making.

The Christian faith commends that long road in life as Jesus hands us suffering and death to be the way to grow into his resurrection stature. Positive resignation to the will of God redeems every circumstance because it brings with it the Holy Spirit’s anointing.

At Easter that ‘Road ahead closed’ sign left the road to Lindfield just as we begin to celebrate the rising of God’s Son who has taken the same sign away from the hour of our death.

To continue the analogy, we of faith press on in our journey to God taking courage from him to bear its twists and turns, bumps and potholes believing the pains of life will one day be lost in the praise we sing.  Alleluia!