St John, Burgess Hill & St Richard, Haywards Heath Masses 17.5.23

 

There’s some good teaching practice in our first reading where we go with Paul to Athens. The good teacher he was Paul had done his own homework. Though Christianity was novel to the Athenians the apostle saw in their shrine to an unknown God a pretext to say how Jesus Christ fulfils their aspirations in giving a face to the divinity worshipped without a face. He goes on to quote Greek poets and the consensus about God that ‘in him we live and move and have our being’.

I once walked up the Acropolis to the Parthenon in Athens in conversation with a few friends I made there on pilgrimage. We were from Roman Catholic, Anglican, Orthodox and Protestant churches on pilgrimage with some 700 people including 100 bishops and priests under the auspices of True Life in God and there was much helpful dialogue. The pilgrimage meant spending time with people formed in different Christian traditions. Our dialogue with one another happened mainly as we sat in conversation on longish coach journeys to holy places like the Parthenon.

We learn from one another as we get into conversation with one another.  Paul questioned the Athenians about their Unknown God. He quoted their poets. He had researched Greek culture to find an opening for the good news of Jesus. My visit to Athens reminded me Christianity is no monologue, just us speaking of Jesus, but a dialogue in which we listen and speak within our culture. Dialogue takes more humility than monologue. It takes time and patience and, above all, love. Just as dialogue between Christians and non-Christians can be transformative so can conversations among believers of different hue.

One fruit of such conversations on my visit to Greece in the footsteps of St Paul was catching onto the Jesus Prayer used among Eastern Orthodox Christians. This form of prayer repeats the sentence ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner’ constructed from the Gospels. It is one expression of faithfulness to Paul’s call to the Thessalonians to ‘pray without ceasing’ (1 Thessalonians 5.17). The devotion is seen to centre prayer in the heart and cools an over busy mind.

‘In God we live and move and have our being’. The ancient Greeks saw this and Christianity makes this plain. In practising the presence of Jesus Christ we are drawn closer to God through prayerful reflection upon scripture and our entering into the movement of Christ’s self offering in the Mass. In closing I invite you to listen to me say the Jesus Prayer three times and then go on for a minute or so making the same prayer in the silence of your heart.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.

Lord God, at this Mass we ask your help as we help spread the good news of your love. Allow us to see you in all the people and tasks you put before us.

Give us generous spirits to be enthusiastic and sympathetic as we engage with others about you.

St Bartholomew, Brighton Trinity 20 (31C) Matters of the Heart 30.10.10

I want to speak about what I will call matters of the heart. This is prompted by today's Gospel reading from Luke 19. Like Zacchaeus we have to descend to meet with Jesus – not 18 feet from a tree but 18 inches – the distance between our brains and our hearts.

To speak of the heart is to speak of the centre of our personal being. Scripture regards the heart as the sphere of divine influence which contains the real, hidden man. It represents and conceals the true character of a man or woman. At the same time the heart, source of the hidden springs of our personal life, can through sin defile the whole circuit of our action.

Proverbs 3 tells us that a man whose heart is trustful upon God has "healing in his flesh" and "refreshment in his bones" and that is saying an awful lot about the influence of what Our Lord calls "honest and good hearts" upon the bodies and minds of those possessing such a blessing.

If our hearts are right the health there spills into body and mind, emotions, thoughts and intentions.

Christianity concerns the heart. It continually challenges us to go deep, to seek the freedom of the kingdom of God which is within us through our baptism and to find and value the centre of our personal being, the heart.

Some time ago I watched a sort of Brains Trust on TV when the select group of intellectuals were asked if there were any causes left that people might be prepared to die for. Only the religious man said that could be so. It seemed that the sorts of beliefs that the others assented to were not really worth the candle. Only the man who had been seized in his heart by the awesome Reality of God had to admit that to believe as he did could one day call him to sacrifice himself for his principles and not vice versa. As a diversion I would applaud the fact that we now have a prime minister with a seemingly definite religion and a heart assent to the good values associated with Hinduism

There is little heart assent, real assent to truth around. As Christians we have made an assent to Our Lord in baptism, confirmation and, for myself, ordination, but that assent can grow superficial. We live so much at the level of our external bodily appetites or our emotions or our intellects and these can drown the heart’s yearning.

What is divine and also simple is to live at the deepest level, the level of the heart.

God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is a personal God and he seeks to build a personal relationship with us. This is set up in principle through Baptism and nourished through the Eucharist and through preaching and prayer and so on. We need to appropriate the Lord’s personal invitation set forth in these ways. 

This means welcoming God to our personal centre and for that to happen we need to be at home there - in our hearts. Often we are so busy living at the level of bodily appetite or mental stimulus that, however much we profess Christianity, we have no heart to heart with God. We live on the surface. As Zacchaeus descended that tree to do business with Our Lord we also should be drawn to descend with Jesus, descend down into our hearts. 

Are there any good strategies to achieve this? I have found one many others have found useful. This is continual repetition of the age old Jesus Prayer which runs: ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner’ This Prayer centres me. It reminds me of God’s love present alongside me and within me in Jesus Christ. Slowly repeating those words, ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner’ lowers my being eighteen inches from mind to heart. It dispels selfish external preoccupations and provides an outward focus upon those around me wherever I am, including God. The Lord uses the discipline of continuous recitation to turn me out of myself in loving intercession towards my neighbours. It requires the will to pray, of course, which comes from the Holy Spirit who is always at hand to cleanse the thoughts of our heart if we ask him.

The heart, as the centre of our life, commands our conscious being - but is often at the mercy of our unconscious being. Sometimes we find it hard to face ourselves, let alone possess ourselves as we are, however much we believe God loves us. Our failure to give out to others can link to this failure to know, love and possess ourselves - you can’t give what you don’t possess!

The knocks we take in life are very often passed over consciously and stored in the unconscious. Sometimes situations cause us to react out of all proportion. Very often the stored hurts, resentments and so on constrict our hearts, our personal life. I don't want to dwell on this more than to say again we must possess ourselves before we can give ourselves. Scrutiny of our hearts, time taken in self examination and inner healing will reward us with a sort of "deconstricting" of the heart. Talking to a priest or finding a spiritual director or counsellor can help here.

‘Zacchaeus, come down, hurry because I must stay at your house today’. Our Lord has the same invitation to us this morning and we will say in response ‘Lord, I am not worthy, that thou shouldest come under my roof’. May our welcome of him in the Blessed Sacrament reach beyond our lips into our centre, our home, which is our heart. Continual echoing of the ‘Lord, I am not worthy’ welcome words might serve you in this as you follow up receiving Communion by repeating the Jesus Prayer to yourself hour by hour: ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner’.

Christianity concerns the heart. It challenges us to go deep, to seek the inner freedom of the kingdom of God which is within us and needs to be owned. Jesus meek and lowly of heart make our hearts like unto your Heart! Come, Holy Spirit! 

St Richard, Haywards Heath Jesus Prayer Trinity 19 (30C) 23.10.22

How can I live a simpler Christian life? 

Is there a summary of faith that’s clear, memorable and portable?  A biblical aid to praying at all times?  A means of Holy Spirit empowerment which can bypass a distracted mind? Is there an instrument of Jesus Christ useful to carrying his worship into life and vice versa?

The Jesus Prayer of Eastern Orthodoxy, ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner’ is such an instrument. Thoroughly biblical, carried forward by the faith of the church through the centuries, it stands as a unique gift and task.

It’s based on the prayer of the tax-collector in today’s Gospel from Luke 18 verses 9 to 14. This so-called Publican’s prayer is there contrasted by Our Lord with the ostentatious prayer of the Pharisee. The man would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast saying ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner’. From this prayer the Jesus Prayer is built, a simple repeated prayer for quiet individual use with capacity to empower and lead into simplicity of life.

I have come to believe there’s nothing new in Christianity, just the need to enter the day by day newness of Jesus. That newness refreshes me day by day through attending Mass and through reciting ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner’ in an aspiration to carry my Communion forward obedient to the biblical injunction to pray at all times. The Jesus Prayer is inhabited by Jesus who is an effective reminder that God is love and has mercy on us frail mortals.  

It’s a prayer discipline in use across the Christian world since the 5th century and preserved to this day across Eastern Orthodoxy from where it is spreading as a blessing to us in the western Church. 

The Jesus Prayer states the simple good news of Christianity, provides Holy Spirit empowerment to bypass distracted minds, links worship and life and resonates with the faith and prayer of the church through the ages. 

We live in times when many find themselves burdened by anxiety or mental distraction and are seeking help from Buddhist type mindfulness exercises. If only they could enter the spiritual discipline Christians have built from today’s Gospel!  The Jesus Prayer is a ‘God-given mantra’.‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner’. Repeating that sentence brings power to bear upon the soul besides helping us as Christians in relating worship to life.

I knew of the Jesus Prayer for thirty years before I welcomed it as the gift and task it is to help us ‘pray without ceasing’ (1 Thessalonians 5:17).  As a priest leading worship, attending to people’s joys and sorrows and the stresses and strains of church administration I have found the Jesus Prayer an invaluable aid and this is because of the simple message it holds before me - that God loves me and all that is, minute by minute, day by day and for all eternity.  

In the early years of the Church, when there was heavy persecution, if a Christian met a stranger in the road, he sometimes drew one arc of a simple fish outline in the dirt. If the stranger drew the other arc, both believers knew they were in safe company. The early Christians used the secret sign of the fish because the Greek word for fish ‘icthus’ was an acronym for ‘Jesus Christ, Son of God and Saviour’, the earliest creed and the shortest statement of Christian faith. The Jesus Prayer is a short expansion of that personal creed. ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God’ implies the historical figure of Jesus is universal Lord and Son of God. Behind the statement is a conviction that the invisible God has in one human life at one time and place made himself visible, supremely upon the Cross, showing us his love to be witnessed to every generation. 

God who made all and loves all desires to claim all - starting with the human race made in his image.  The first clause of the Jesus Prayer affirms the good news Jesus brings to our lives, news that we come from God, we belong to God and we go to God. ‘The eternal God is our refuge and underneath are the everlasting arms’ (Deuteronomy 33:27 NIV)

It’s that faith I express when, for example, in the gym.  ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner’ I repeat on the machine. Time in the gym helps get me out of my mind into my body and that’s especially welcome when been sitting around at home with the family or on the computer. Gym time helps our bodily well being. It can also be deep thinking time, though this can turn into anxious mental preoccupation, which is why I think many people wear headphones to engage their minds as they exercise their bodies. No headphones on occasion for me in the gym, but rather a conscious coming back into the Lord’s presence.  As I recover repeating the Jesus Prayer it flows with the movement of the gym machines just as its pace fits the natural rhythm of breathing in and out. 

‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner’ 

As the prayer centres me I become aware again of God’s love present alongside me in Jesus, of a dispelling of negative preoccupation and an outward focussing upon those around me wherever I am.  The Lord uses the discipline of continuous recitation to turn me out of myself in loving intercession towards my neighbours. ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God’ I repeat the Jesus Prayer under my breath, and find myself emphasising the second phrase ‘have mercy on me a sinner’.  The phrase ‘have mercy on me a sinner’ in the Jesus Prayer echoes both today’s Gospel and a phrase that recurs in Christian worship: kyrie eleison, literally ‘O Lord take pity on me’:

To show mercy is to treat others as better than they are. In the Jesus Prayer we are not so much asking the Lord repeatedly to demonstrate mercy to us but affirming and celebrating that quality and allowing it to brush off on us and make us more fully his instruments of forbearance. 

The great thinker Simone Weil writes ‘that two great forces rule the universe: gravity and grace. Gravity causes one body to attract other bodies so that it continually enlarges by absorbing more and more of the universe into itself. Something like this same force operates in human beings. We too want to expand, to acquire, to swell in significance. …Emotionally, Weil concluded, we humans operate by laws as fixed as Newton’s. “All the natural movements of the soul are controlled by laws analogous to those of physical gravity. Grace is the only exception.” Most of us remain trapped in the gravitational field of self-love, and thus we “fill up the fissures through which grace might pass.”’ 

The choice to live for God is a choice to live under grace and mercy and not under compulsion. It is an ongoing choice which the Jesus Prayer can facilitate. The beauty of the Prayer is its being a continual reminder both of God’s mercy towards us and of our call to imitate it in our dealings towards others and towards ourselves. It is a reminder true to the action we’re part of this morning in the eucharist as we see that mercy before us in Christ’s body broken and his blood poured forth, mercy we all the better carry out with us after Mass through the quiet discipline of reciting the Jesus Prayer.

Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us!

We do not presume to come to this your table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in your manifold and great mercies. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner!

St Peter & St John, Wivelsfield Trinity 6 (17C) on prayer 24 July 2022

 

Lord, teach us to pray they asked Jesus. I want to look this morning at four aspects of prayer, of looking to Jesus: listening, friendship, recollection, and lastly empowerment. [ask children about what’s best and worst about school eg listening - we’re all being schooled]

Prayer, looking unto Jesus, is listening.  You can’t look to Jesus unless you give ear to him, unless you attend to him.  Our whole life depends on right listening – to other people and to ourselves at times – but chiefly to Jesus.Through prayer we hear from God.  We catch his inspirations for our life and for the world.

How do we look to Jesus in listening? A discipline of time offered to attend directly to God. 

Michael Ramsey’s quote – he prayed for 2 minutes but took 30 minutes to get there.

Scripture (show) is a means of looking to Jesus through listening to his Word. There is great power in imaginative listening to scripture. One way you can do this is to make the words of scripture more personal by changing the case of the pronoun in the passage. Take that Colossians passage. You could make it into a This is the Word of the Lord about John or whoever you are. It could read: When I John was buried with Christ in baptism, I was also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead. And when I was dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of my flesh, God made me alive together with Christ, when he forgave me all my trespasses. As I read the passage like this it reminds me how God sees me and how I should see myself, as one dead to sin and alive to him. There are times when such an observation can be very powerful. This sort of exercise is about experiencing what we already possess as Christians, seeing ourselves as God sees us in his word. You read through prayerfully until God touches your Spirit and then hold yourself at that point once such a prayerful impulse has been given to you.

Prayer, looking to Jesus is secondly about friendship.  We seek our friends’ attention and he seeks ours. [children - are you looking forward to seeing more of your friends in the holidays?]

When friends meet they light up and so it is with Jesus and ourselves as we come before him in contemplation. When did you last sit in quiet before the Lord?  What is it that keeps you from doing so? Could you imagine Jesus, your friend, doing you any harm?

Contemplative prayer has been described as ‘spiritual radiotherapy’. St Augustine once said that the whole purpose of life is the healing of the heart’s eye through which God is seen. Heart surgery of the Holy Spirit: the melting of coldness within cf heavenly microwave. A major barrier to contemplation is the way our minds get so distracted which hinders our hearts from contemplation. This is where the repeating of short words that engage and focus the mind can be helpful as in the Orthodox Jesus prayer. This involves repeating again and again the gospel prayer Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me a sinner. The value of the Jesus Prayer mentioned on is commended all through the Christian tradition.  

Please don’t hesitate to talk to me afterwards if you want guidance on the Jesus Prayer as I’ve written a book about it (show). Not that I’m expert - any expertise I possess is to know that when it comes to prayer we’re all on the bottom rung of the ladder!

Looking to Jesus in prayer though, to summarise the second heading, is about building friendship, about lighting one another up so that in the words of Nehemiah (8v10) the joy of the Lord [becomes] our strength. 

Looking to Jesus is thirdly recollection, prayer that takes stock of your life and celebrates what God has done and is doing and looks forward to what God is going to do in us and through us.

The value of prayer journaling (show). Tis grace both led me safe thus far … and grace will lead me home. A good exercise is to look back over your life and recollect with Jesus the five biggest spiritual milestones along the way, your five most powerful desires, your five worst fears. Recollection is about such reminiscing or calling to mind.  It is also about ‘collecting again’ or recovering control of oneself. Through looking to God we gain self-possession. 

Attention to God, mindfulness of Jesus is at the heart of the Christian life.The recollected woman or man inhabits her or his words, is able to be present to Jesus at all times so that Jesus can be in them and show through them.

Prayer, looking to Jesus is lastly empowerment. As we heard in the Gospel: If you then, who are evil, know how to give your children what is good, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him (Luke 11:13).

Well we did ask for the Spirit - or others asked, at baptism and confirmation, the birth of our Christian commitment and in the receiving of Holy Communion - but we need to keep inviting him by asking regularly for the Holy Spirit.  Prayer is an empowerment especially by the gift of the Holy Spirit. As we pray we can at times feel God’s touch upon our heart, see some sort of vision or be led to some particular scripture verse as we look to Jesus. This is charismatic prayer, literally graced or given prayer in which our looking to Jesus and waiting before him is answered by a heavenly gift.

Looking to Jesus in prayer then is listening, friendship, recollection and empowerment. It's also as today’s Gospel reminds us about intercession which could provide another sermon!

For now though, may the Lord turn our eyes more and more upon himself so that our earthly pursuits may lose some of their enticement as we see more of him through seeking him in prayer. 

So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.

St John the Evangelist, Burgess Hill Unity 29th May 2022

‘May they all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.’ John 17:21 

It seems to me Our Lord’s invitation reaches us as a church at three levels, local, national and universal.

First local. It has always been a privilege for me to serve St John’s, starting 21 years ago as diocesan mission & renewal adviser working with Fr Clay and Fr Kevin and more recently in your pastoral vacancy. With no parish priest our Churchwardens with Deacon Stephen have worked hard through thick and thin to build our collaboration as we seek to promote Christianity in Burgess Hill and we salute that work as the vacancy draws thankfully to a close. 

Fr David comes among us with welcome oversight to develop the life of St John’s with an eye to renewing worship, engaging youth and families and enhancing our buildings for better Christian service and outreach. He will need our support and prayers from day one as he presides over the coalition of catholic, evangelical and liberal Christians here at St John’s, keeping us united and outwardly focussed.

Our Lord’s invitation to be one as he is one within the Godhead reaches us as a church at a second level, nationally. 

Through the Five Guiding Principles the Church of England is fully committed to all orders of ministry being open equally to all, without reference to gender. It also remains committed to ensuring those who cannot receive the ministry of women priests or bishops are able to flourish, continuing their witness to the Church of England’s claim to hold the faith and practice of the universal church. The majority decision to ordain women in 1992 failed to take the minority with it. There’s a majority but no consensus. This is a slow burner made more complicated by the ordination of women to the episcopate in 2015 which was effected under the understanding spelled out in the Five Guiding Principles. 

St John’s members have given exemplary patience in bearing with the national division over views of the ordained ministry. It isn’t sexist to hold to the Bible and the practice of the worldwide church, Catholic and Orthodox over 20 centuries. Neither is it a betrayal of Christian principle to seek the ordination of women. It’s just that changing holy orders, one of the seven sacraments, is like changing the heating system in a church. There’s an upheaval and a chilling effect – and the national church remains in the middle of it! No easy answers here, just patience. The Holy Spirit is saying one thing to part of the church and another thing to the rest. We must wait and see and avoid knee jerk reactions, seeking to maximise unity as a national church which believes its part of the ‘one, holy, catholic and apostolic church’.

Thirdly let’s look at how Our Lord’s invitation to be one with one another gels with the international level of the universal church. In first century Corinth there were Chloe’s and Apollos’ and Cephas’ groups. In the world of the 21st century there are not three but 45,000 Christian denominations! Reversing this astonishing, alarming disunity seems impossible - but with God nothing is impossible! 

Today’s second reading, looking to the Lord’s return, reminds us that the joy of Easter season is incomplete. ‘Surely, I am coming soon. Amen, come Lord Jesus’ (Revelation 22:20). Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again! As we move next week to Pentecost, the end of Easter season, we also move towards Advent. In the letter to the Ephesians scripture likens Christ our risen and ascended Lord to a heavenly Bridegroom preparing to gather his Bride the Church after her purification from sin, including her divisions, is ended and her holiness is made complete. The world will not be ready for this until the church is ready - that is, made one and holy - which is an astonishing thought! What we are celebrating this morning, our being made one bread, one body, is an anticipation of what is to come, of the Christ who is to come in his fullness. 

The divisions of the world at this moment, linked to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, are linked to Christian divisions, a reminder of how we fail to serve the overarching plan of God to gather a people to himself through his church from every people and nation. Part of the tragedy is the failure of Orthodox Church leaders to present that vision, keep their flock united, condemn the killing of church members by other church members or even call for a ceasefire. The Pope’s intervention has been striking in condemning Patriarch Kirill. This sets back ecumenical relations though it makes clear that the cause of the kingdom of God, of justice, love and peace comes first and church unity rides on the back of that aspiration.

Only as the different churches come together to the foot of Christ’s Cross and admit their need of his forgiveness are they ever going to be made one, as he desires. This happens worldwide whenever Christians opt to maximise holiness and cooperation with their sister churches. As Edward Pusey said ‘it is what is unholy on both sides that keeps us apart’. I am aware that the Jesus Prayer I pray hour by hour - ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner’ - is a gift from Russian orthodoxy. Though much harm flows from Russia at this time there is also holiness in  many new monastic communities and that holiness is overflowing across the world 

Christian unity grows – locally, nationally or internationally - as Christians grow together in both holiness and love. Let’s make that our priority as much as we can as a new partnership of priests and people emerges here from June 9th. 

‘May they all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.’

St Barnabas, Hove St Agnes Feast 21.1.22

Our thoughts determine our lives.

Be they self-centred, neighbour-centred or God-centred - and they’re bound to be a mixture of all three for believers.

Controlling our thoughts is difficult. We can’t easily do it because they’re a river flowing through our minds. The danger is seizing a wrong one and implementing it on impulse. Our more measured thoughts help life flow well. Our best thoughts are the making of us and of the world. 

So flowed my own thoughts looking at the martyrdom of St Agnes, a 12 year old girl we know little about save her paying the highest price for chaste thoughts and, being named after Jesus Lamb of God, becoming an icon of self offering. Her story is of a Christian girl resolved to stay single for the sake of the Gospel, who, threatened by an aggressive suitor, is forced into a legal conflict. Agnes’ faith went on trial during the Diocletian persecutions of 304 AD. Her name, mentioned in the oldest eucharistic prayer, means chaste in Greek and lamb in Latin hence our two themes of purity and self-sacrifice.

Being a retired priest gives me more time for relaxation and conversation and - thank you Fr John - attending and leading worship. The other day I got into a conversation with a 21 year old lad who confided in me his decision to turn away from the pornography so many of his friends were getting immersed in. ‘I don’t want my future relationships spoiled’ he said with telling wisdom. 

Our thoughts determine our lives. St Augustine captured the damage done in his lustful youth when he talked of memory being ‘a sad privilege’. Many of us know first hand the truth he speaks of. Thoughts of things from the past intrude the flow of our thinking and fuel action destructive of our relationships. The Feast of St Agnes is a call to purity of thought, word and deed including custody of the eyes and the avoidance of salacious television and reading material.

Secondly, today’s Saint calls us to think on her namesake Jesus Agnus dei. This image may be familiar to some of us - show book ‘The Bound Lamb’ by Francisco de Zurbarin who lived in the 17th century.  It’s an image that often appears on Nativity scenes, the Shepherds’ offering which anticipates Christ’s sacrifice. As Jeremy Paxman wrote in the Church Times of this painting: ‘no image I know so perfectly captures the astonishing force of the Christian story’. Jesus fulfils the sacrifice of the Old Testament Passover Lamb whose blood daubed on doors  protected the households of believers. Unlike the Old Testament lambs, Our Lord’s sacrifice is voluntary and as such takes away sin.  Our Lord on Calvary takes the full force of sin and death for us at the cost of his life. 

Today on our patronal feast we make the memorial of the Offering of Jesus and enter into that Self-Offering. It is through the sacrificial Lamb of God that we can make a perfect offering to the Father, our sinful bodies made clean by his body..our souls washed through his most precious blood. There is a deep continuity between the sacrifices of the Old Testament - Abel, Abraham and Melchizedek - the offering of Jesus the Lamb of God, the Eucharistic Sacrifice and our own sacrificial living as Christians. They all hang together. In a culture full of self-interest what we are about this evening is powerfully counter-cultural. Here, in union with Christ, we are offering our souls and bodies to be a living sacrifice 

As St Agnes teaches, sacrifice is at heart about voluntary choice about how we direct our lives - it is about love before it is about death.  It is about joyous living just as sure as ‘God loves a cheerful giver’. It is not so much about forgoing what we desire but of binding our energies to what God desires. 

Our thoughts determine our lives - be they indulgent or geared to purity and sacrifice.

A couple of practical suggestions to help order our thinking and action more into those two qualities of St Agnes captured in her name, one about using the Jesus Prayer and another about making a Morning Offering. 

Repeating under our breath the Jesus Prayer of Eastern Orthodoxy, ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner’ is very powerful, as people have found praying it for 1500 years. It's a succinct summary of faith with capacity to empower us against useless and harmful thoughts. The power in the name of Jesus is such that, when we are tempted by base thoughts, repetition of this prayer sees them fly away. ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner’. We need the will to pray, but knowing and using this prayer is a key aid to purity. 

Secondly the Morning Offering. The idea is to sit on your bed as soon as you get up and, whilst letting the blood reach your head, get into gear spiritually by praying something like, ‘Lord, I thank you for who you are and your love for me and all that is. I give myself to you. Take me and use me for your praise and service and the building up of the body of Christ. Come, Holy Spirit'. When you have made such a prayer at the start of the day you recognise spiritual needs and opportunities around you and the hand of God working in your life in the hours that follow. I know this from when I forget to pray it - my day turns rather useless! The Morning Offering is linked to Christ’s Offering and invitation to join in it at Mass where we pray, ‘May he make of us an eternal offering to you’.

Our thoughts determine our lives. May the prayer of St Agnes inspire us to take continual battle against bad thoughts and make of our lives an ever more complete offering to God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, to whom be all might, majesty, dominion and power now and henceforth and to the ages of ages. Amen.

St Wilfrid & Presentation, Haywards Heath St Mary at the Cross 15.9.21

We come this morning with Mary to the foot of the Cross. We come, at this eucharist, to plead with Mary her Son’s Sacrifice for a broken world.

We come to the eucharist this morning with all the sorrow and confusion of Holy Mary on Good Friday. Like her we’re looking at a crucifixion but ours is a crucifixion of the world by pandemic, yes, but also by terrorism, with the memory of 9-11 and the agony Afghanistan weighing upon us.

Like her we look beyond the foot of the Cross to the light of the resurrection - for whenever we look at a crucifix believers see their risen Lord standing behind.

The challenge of international 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.

By his cross and resurrection Jesus has, in Paul’s words, disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in what he has done.

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 Afghanistan and the anguish felt through 9-11.

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.

With Mary we stand at the Cross on behalf of a troubled, hurting, godless nation and a troubled world this morning - but if we go out from this eucharist church fired up to pray all the more for our nation he who is in us will show himself more powerful than those troubles.

Jesus living in Mary live in us is our prayer in church at every eucharist. Jesus living in Mary live in them is our prayer of intercession as we encounter the needy in the media and closer to home. 

God sees what is in your heart. Keep lifting the pain you see on the TV to him. Stand with Mary by Jesus crucified. Treat those you see suffering as if they were Christ upon the Cross. Ask the Father to send them healing love and resurrection!

As you do so, pray in your own words. Use the slow recitation of the Lord’s Prayer. Use  the Jesus Prayer, Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner. Use the Hail Mary if you know it. 

Take up the weapon of prayer to come before the Lord with this aching nation upon your heart day by day, hour by hour in the coming week. Mary at the Cross, pray with us and for us!