St Richard, Haywards Heath Candlemas 2020

We come to Church to worship and to be enlightened.

Jesus came first to the Temple on this day with those two ends of self offering and edification.

His parents made an offering on his behalf and they heard Simeon's prophecy of their Son becoming 'a light to lighten the nations'.

Candlemas gives us an opportunity to pause and reflect about what we do when we come to this Temple Sunday by Sunday.

It is a Temple before it is a preaching house, a place of teaching, yes, but primarily not a place of edification but a place of worship.

In this Chapel the worship of the eucharist has been offered day by day for over 80 years. People in their thousands have joined here to offer the unbloody sacrifice initiated by Jesus Christ we call the eucharist.

They've come 'to offer themselves, their souls and bodies as a living sacrifice' with, in and through Jesus Christ.

Today, his first visit to the one earthly Temple of his day, we recall that event as a prefiguring of Christ's eternal sacrifice. The turtle doves sacrificed on his behalf in that Temple gave way, with all animal sacrifices, to his once for all offering made on a repeat visit to Jerusalem in his 33rd year.

The priests and people then took no doves but an innocent Lamb, and as they did so the prophecy about his mother Mary in today's Gospel was fulfilled. 'A  sword will pierce your heart'. In St Martin’s Brighton, a Church I know well, that very image of Our Lady is provided at the foot of the Cross, graphically in black and with a sword stuck into her heart.

We come to Church to worship and to be enlightened.

Part of that enlightenment, as Mary and Joseph found, is the bringing of understanding and hence more creative involvement with the dark times of our life.

We all live with these - bereavement, chronic illness or the necessity to live with unresolved situations where there may be conflict. With Mary and Joseph this morning we welcome holy Simeon's words with gratitude since they speak of peace coming, as it does again and again, through heavenly illumination.

Jesus Christ is the light who lightens all nations and all ages.

May his light shine on us and into our various life situations this morning as we come to worship 'offering ourselves, our souls and bodies as a living sacrifice' with in and through Jesus Christ.

Like Simeon we see in Jesus one who removes the fear of death and promises perpetual light to his family as they travel forward in his light to their fulfilment in the house of the Lord together and forever.

I end with a beautiful prayer of John Donne, sixteenth century Dean of St Paul’s which captures that aspiration: 

Bring us, O Lord God, at our last awakening into the house and gate of heaven to enter into that gate and dwell in that house, where there shall be no darkness nor dazzling, but one equal light; no noise nor silence, but one equal music; no fears nor hopes, but one equal possession; no ends nor beginnings, but one equal eternity; in the habitations of thy glory and dominion, world without end. Amen

St Bartholomew, Brighton Feast of the Holy Family 29th Dec 2019

This morning the liturgy moves from Bethlehem via Egypt to Nazareth. On Wednesday we celebrated the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem. Today we celebrate the beginning of his childhood in Nazareth. As we heard at the end of the holy gospel, the angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph and he left [Egypt] for the region of Galilee [and] settled in a town called Nazareth. 

I once went to Nazareth. I’ll never forget seeing two young boys at a well drawing water for their families. They could have been Jesus and his cousin John. The water was probably from the same source as that drawn on 2000 years ago, for wells do not move. This morning we are all going in heart and mind to Nazareth, to the household of Jesus, Mary and Joseph. We’re going, with the scriptures and the holy liturgy to seek inspiration from the Holy Family for our own families and for the family we enjoy here at St. Bartholomew’s as a local expression of God’s never-ending family, the holy, catholic church.

As we go to Nazareth we find welcome, challenge and empowerment.

We find firstly a welcome. The hearth of Mary and Joseph is an open hearth. How could it be otherwise? How could this couple who welcome God into their earthly home be guilty of turning any away?

In the Holy Family there is hospitality, the generous reception of friends and strangers alike. To enter the story of Jesus, Mary and Joseph is to find yourself welcomed into that great hospitable procession of the people of God heading for the heavenly Temple. Mary and Joseph remind us we can never have Jesus to ourselves. To be a Christian is to be one with Mary and Joseph and Bartholomew and Francis and Clare – and the list goes on!

In the Holy Family we find the welcome that marks the church from its beginning, God’s people belonging to God and belonging together. 

You and I haven’t chosen one another but God has chosen us together to be his family here at St Bartholomew’s. As we heard in the first reading from Colossians: Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts. (Colossians 3:13-15a) In Nazareth we see an image of Christian family, of mutual belonging. Jesus, Mary and Joseph are present to one another in a way we can only hope to imitate by the grace of God.

Our families and church families need to go to Nazareth, so to speak, and learn there how to be more present to one another. As we go to Nazareth we find such a welcome – and also a challenge. It is the Feast of the Holy Family today. 

There’s so much sentimentality surrounding Mary and Joseph, we need to get back to scripture to see them as they are – two of God’s holy ones and holiness is nothing comfortable but rather something challenging. This morning’s Gospel gives evidence of St. Joseph’s capacity to hear the voice of God and guide the Holy Family. And Mary! If she had not been what we call ‘ascetic’, a woman set apart and well disciplined in the spiritual life, she would not have become the God-bearer by whom God came down to live in your life and mine. As someone wrote, it was as if the human race were a little dark house, without light or air, locked and latched. The wind of the spirit had beaten on the door, rattled the windows, tapped on the dark glass, trying to get in – and yet the Spirit was outside. But one day a woman opened the door, and the little house was swept pure and clean by the wind. Seas of light swept through it, and the light remained in it; and in that little house, God was born as a Child.

As we go to the home in Nazareth we encounter the challenge of holiness, what Pascal said was the most important influence in the world. We see a Holy Child formed by a Holy Mother and her Spouse. How can we enter such a home?

There are families I know where there is such a sense of the Holy Spirit that I am made to feel deeply challenged. Some households have about them a transcendent quality, a joy that is pointer to heaven our true home. 

This is also true of churches. Just welcoming visitors is not enough. They need to be challenged, intrigued by what they see inside our buildings, both the worship of Jesus and the people of Jesus in their self-lessness and joy.

This morning we go to Nazareth to takes our seats in the school of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, of a welcoming love and a challenge to holiness. Lastly we will find at Nazareth a source of empowerment.

For 2000 years people have been empowered by the saving grace of Jesus Christ born of Mary. What a Saviour – a practical Saviour! As practical as his foster father, Joseph, in carpentry where Our Lord picks up his capacity to mend, yes, even families.

How many of us have had to bring our marriages and our families to be mended? To the Carpenter, the One who anoints and empowers and saves – and seen the difference Christian Faith makes?

How much we need to get back to Nazareth, to Jesus, Mary and Joseph and see there a work of intense spiritual transformation open to all. And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favour St Luke relates (Luke 2:52). He did so that we too might increase in the same fashion!

Either Jesus Christ makes a difference, either he is born ‘to raise the sons of earth’ or our religion is moralistic do-gooding. If Christianity is about ‘do gooding’ it is only in the sense that Christians have access to a power beyond this world that incidentally helps you do what is right. 

For that empowerment, for the challenge and welcoming love the Holy Spirit brings we go in gratitude once more this morning to Nazareth!

Through modelling Jesus, Mary and Joseph, may our families and our church be places of welcome so people may find a home with us and with the Lord!

May our families and our church be challenging places where people get intrigued by Jesus Christ living in the midst of his people!

Father grant that our families and our churches may become places of spiritual empowerment where we share in the anointing of your anointed Son, who with you and the Holy Spirit live and reign, one God for ever and ever. Amen.

Trinity 10 Faith 8 August 2010

What does it mean to have faith?

Faith is trust in a person or thing. Christian faith is wisdom to trust God.

We all have faith in things - like our car getting us to the station or that our wages will go into the bank. Often that faith disappoints Sometimes we put too much confidence in a person or in things which prove to be unfaithful like the stock exchange, housing market, job opportunities, marriages and other "things". You could ask whether there is anything truly worthy of our faith.

Jesus, we might answer. The one who’s been through it for us, who expects nothing of us that he’s not been through himself and who brings his possibilities into our empty situations.

I was with a lady who has stage 4 cancer this week. She brought alive to me the definition of faith we had in this morning’s first reading: faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. (Hebrews 11v1). For this lady and her husband faith is not just a reaching out to something in the future that’s absent. It’s the experience of future blessings spilling into present day life. All the time the cancer has been spreading faith has been growing and bringing a solid future reality into their lives. Remarkable opportunities for special forms of radiotherapy have opened up. There is a peace and joy in their household that demonstrates the reality of God alongside them. It has been a privilege to visit and share and pray with people whose trust in God for the future is solid – even in the face of cancer.

When we put faith in God this affects our future because God is Lord of the future. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. If this is the day that the Lord has made so is tomorrow.

Tomorrow also is God’s.

When you get thinking about the flow of time a materialistic view of life crumbles to pieces. What a deceit we live with! Just because we have lots of control nowadays over our physical environment we close our minds to what we have no control at all over - the flow of time and the eternity that lies beyond it!

Belief that there’s nothing after death is the main demoralisation of humanity in our age. This materialistic view of human beings misses the point. It misses out on the glorious future there is for us in God. It demoralises - for why should you sacrifice yourself or your possessions for others if you believe deep down that in the end nothing you do ultimately makes any difference?

But what if Christ is raised? What if the purpose that brings people to church on Sunday, the Day of Resurrection, be true?

What if we admit material things fail to satisfy and reach out to the life Christ has opened up beyond this life, a life we know intuitively, are driven towards and yet cannot describe?

That would be faith. To be one with those who in the words of our reading desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; indeed, he has prepared a city for them.

Faith is accepting truth for things you may not fully comprehend, believing and expecting things you cannot see. By faith that goes beyond but not against reason we accept Jesus as the Son of God, the redeemer, forgiver of our sins, giver of the Holy Spirit and promiser of eternal life. This is why we say in our baptism service, faith is the gift of God to his people.

When we accept Christ we show our faith by acting to lay our sinful nature aside, asking for forgiveness and seeking God’s direction for all that we do day by day.

When we turn to Christ, repenting of our sins, renouncing evil he shines the light of our glorious future into our lives right now. His Spirit within us, ‘this little light of mine’, acts as a moral compass for us and an inspiration to those around us.

Jesus. Here lies the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things unseen. (Hebrews 1v1).

In Christian belief God’s revealed himself and given us right now the substance of things hoped for. We look forwards alongside Jesus who’s conquered sin, death and the devil.

Today Sunday 8th August has within it unspeakable joy from the eternal Sundays of the resurrection ahead of us. Like the cinema trailer this Sunday is preview of forthcoming attractions in the country of resurrection where God is all in all.

The Christian church is the most forward looking body on the earth. God has invested in her and you can’t have God with you in Jesus without the knowledge that the future’s worth waiting for and working for.

Tomorrow also will be good - as good as God is good.

This is the Christian faith.