St Bartholomew, Brighton 14C 3rd July 2022

 

The harvest is rich but the labourers are few, so ask the Lord of the harvest to send labourers to his harvest Luke 10:2

The French have a military saying ‘reculer pour mieux sauter’ – retreat, coil up, draw back in order to better jump forwards.

Each Sunday St. Bartholomew’s has work ahead, Gospel work, and she needs our labour – so we need to prepare, to get ready. 

The Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them out ahead of him in pairs..

There’s work ahead. We need to prepare, ‘reculer’, to draw back somewhat into ourselves, to retreat before attempting an advance for God in our community

Two thoughts first on ‘reculer’, on retreat – and they are about seeking deeper humility and confidence in God.

Then two thoughts on ‘sauter’, on jumping forwards – the need to work at prayer and invitation as joint scissor blades that will cut a way ahead for us.

First then thoughts about how we might need to ‘coil up’ in readiness for effective outreach. St Francis de Sales taught two essential virtues for Christians which we are always in need of deepening.  They are humility and confidence in God.

1. Humility

To go into ourselves, ‘reculer’ must be about deepening our humility as individuals and as a Church.

Don’t you feel humbled at the very idea of mission?  Who are we to commend Almighty God to folk at a time when religion to many people is more source of evil than good?

Who are we to tell Brighton it needs Our Lord? 

Good thinking – our greatest resource for mission as Christians must be humility, a sense of our own inadequacy.

The more we’re aware of God’s mercy to us in all humility, the more we’re able to reflect it towards others – and the more affinity we have with our fellow human beings.

Just as our flesh literally weighs us down there’s a gravitational field of self-centredness that makes human life without God the burden it is. When we discover mercy we discover our nothingness and our less than nothingness through sin. [Picture from ‘Gravity’ film promotion]

It is precisely in owning that nothingness in the virtue of humility that we grow wings that lift us away from self towards God and neighbour.

Freed more and more from taking ourselves so seriously we take flight. Here supremely at Mass, week by week, is a school of humility. We’re humbled by an ever-fuller vision of God in his magnificence and mercy – and we indeed take flight.

2. Confidence in God

A second virtue for us to work on is confidence.

By confidence I mean confidence in God and not self-confidence. To ‘coil up’ and gain energy as Christians preparing to spring forwards we need to renew a different sort of confidence – confidence in God.

God, Almighty God, is far worthier of our trust than we will ever believe on this earth. 

Through our occasional study groups, through our forthcoming pilgrimage, through our own reading about the faith or through conversations with one another including our priests we build confidence in Our Lord, his promises and his possibilities so as to be in a better position to bring in the new Church members we hope to see in St. Bartholomew’s.

We need confidence in God coupled to humility – it is this combination that resources us for outreach. Our admission we’re nothing before God saves us from being presumptuous in witnessing to others. Our confidence that God desires to be everything to us and to everyone balances this and helps put spring in our steps as we commend Christian Faith.

Lastly two thoughts on ‘sauter’, on jumping forwards – the need to work at prayer and invitation.

3.  Prayer

These two things - prayer and invitation are like two powerful blades in a scissor action lying ahead for St. Bartholomew’s as we work for yet more effective outreach.

As Hallesly wrote: ‘It is by prayer that we couple the powers of heaven to our helplessness ...the powers which can awaken those who sleep in sin and raise the dead, the power which can capture strongholds and make the impossible possible’.

Thousands around us are living and dying without Christ and we want them to discover a purpose for living and a reason for dying - the very purpose and reason we have as Christians here at St. Bartholomew’s. As today’s Gospel implies we’re called to act - you are called to act.

I am asking you each day to pray for the growth of the Church mentioning particular individuals known to you upon whom you desire God’s richest blessing. It may be a matter of praying the Our Father slowly, ‘Thy Kingdom come in Brighton, in Sussex, in the life of my friends, or of taking up afresh the parish monthly intention sheet, or of saying a prayer of our own like, ‘Lord Jesus draw her to Yourself with a special intention for particular friends.

We have an ongoing Mission -  and you and I are on its executive Committee - we are to act - by the prayer we offer day by day and by the invitations we give out to our friends for special events, especially special events at Church like next month’s patronal festival - I’m making a phone call to someone who’s lapsed about that.

4.  Invitation

Invitations for people to join in some of our events requires forethought.  The idea of inviting folk must be around as we make new friends or as we relate to our existing friends and family members. We need a whole attitude of ‘invitation’, to make ourselves, or let the Holy Spirit make us more and more a living ‘invitation’ to meet with Our Lord and his Church

Both our prayer and our invitation require a right attitude, one of wholeheartedness.

So we move back from ‘sauter’ to ‘reculer’, from planning our advance to planning the right sort of preparation. 

Do you think it is the will of Our Lord for his Church to grow? Today’s Gospel says yes, it is!

Do you think we at St. Bartholomew’s have something the friends we are called to pray for are missing out on?

We need to believe this if our prayer and our invitations are to be wholehearted.

Let me put it the other way around. How will you feel when the friend or neighbour you are going to pray for comes with you to Church? Will you feel embarrassed? If so, why should you feel so? 

Is the celebration of your own faith helpful to your human and social flourishing? How good is the gospel to you - good enough to be worth sharing? Or is your faith something private, something weird and wonderful, special for Sundays but nothing you would dare to trouble your friends and neighbours with?

May the Lord touch us this morning as we welcome Him in the Blessed Sacrament - touch us in our heart of hearts, so we can touch others for him! God refresh in us the purpose for living and the reason for dying given to us in our Risen Lord. As God is so near to us may he make himself near to all whom we entrust to him in the weeks ahead. 

The Gospel is good! This Church is a place of purpose in a confused world, a place of belonging in a lonely world. May more belong here with us to Jesus!

St Wilfrid & Presentation, Haywards Heath 14 July 2021

 

Moses looked; there was the bush blazing, but it was not being burnt up…and God called to him..”Here I am” he answered. Exodus 3:1-8

Though formerly diocesan mission officer I struggle daily with the idea of mission. If ever there was an area in the life of the Church full of variety, confusion and oversimplification it is this area.

‘The Church exists by mission as fire by burning’ they say. 

Yet is ‘mission’ really the fire that keeps the Church burning with zeal?

‘Mission’ - or ‘Mystery’?

I would say that the Church exists for ‘Mystery’, the worship of Almighty God before it exists for ‘Mission’.

Look at Moses in our first reading this morning. We see his vocation to mission born as he encounters the mystery of God in the burning bush. Awestruck he could not refuse the Lord’s invitation to carry out the greatest mission in the Old Testament – the Exodus.

Look at Isaiah whose vision of God’s holiness is enshrined forever in our Eucharistic prayers. He first heard the angelic hymn we repeat again and again: Holy, holy, holy… the mystery brought him like Moses to ‘take off his shoes’ and fall down before the divine majesty.

Again and again in scripture we see the calling to mission flowing from an encounter with God cloaked in awe and mystery.

Abraham, Moses, Joshua, Samson, Gideon, Samuel, David, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Our Lady, SS. Peter & Paul...all find their vocation in encounters with God that are both personal and mysterious, moving the recipients to worship.

This morning in this eucharistic gathering the Lord Jesus is wonderfully in our midst, the Holy One. How much do we sense that holiness? How much do we sense our own unworthiness to attend this altar?

The fellowship, mission, and service of Christians flows from their encounter with mystery, their sharing, as we are now sharing, in the worship of the Trinity. 

In my own humbler faith pilgrimage I can trace the missionary zeal that flows in me to a mysterious challenge at a particular stage in my life.

It was the ‘something about’ a priest that made all the difference. As an Oxford undergraduate I fell under the influence of a man who was charismatic in the old sense. The sense of presence and conviction about Fr. John Hooper so intrigued me it won me to his Oxford tea table and then to his Confessional, bowled over by a sense of the immediacy of God about the man. His was a Church where sermons were long but full of the glorification of God. Little logic in those sermons, looking back, but plenty of presence and conviction in the preacher. 

His services were also long. High Mass with ceremonial imbued with a spirit of adoration.

Looking back, ‘evangelisation’ at St. Mary Magdalene’s was one depth sounding across to another, deep chords rung in the heart. There was no newsletter, no home groups, no mission action plan but godliness, awe and wonder. 

The burning bush that kindled my vocation was the sure, unselfconscious majesty of Sunday worship in the great tradition of the church, evoking awe before the mystery of God in a way that no self-conscious construct can achieve.

There was force of conviction about the mystery of the Faith and this bowled me over.

‘Mission’ in my case is about ‘Mystery’. I yearn to see the church rid of so much anaemic, diluted Christianity.

It was the mystery of divine revelation that kindled the missionary call of Moses and God has not changed.

Encountering the mystery of Christ is at the heart of what the church is all about or it is about nothing at all!

Whether we are ‘high church’ or ‘low church’ or ‘broad church’ we need to be deep church if people are to be reached by the Lord through us. 

St Richard, Haywards Heath 14C 7 July 2019

The harvest is rich but the labourers are few, so ask the Lord of the harvest to send labourers to his harvest Luke 10:2

The French have a military saying ‘reculer pour mieux sauter’ – retreat, coil up, draw back in order to better jump forwards.

Each Sunday St. Richard’s has work ahead, Gospel work, and she needs our labour – so we need to prepare, to get ready.

The Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them out ahead of him in pairs..

There’s work ahead. We need to prepare, ‘reculer’, to draw back somewhat into ourselves, to retreat before attempting an advance for God in our community

Two thoughts first on ‘reculer’, on retreat – and they are about seeking deeper humility and confidence in God.

Then two thoughts on ‘sauter’, on jumping forwards – the need to work at prayer and invitation as joint scissor blades that will cut a way ahead for us.

First then thoughts about how we might need to ‘coil up’ in readiness for effective outreach. St Francis de Sales taught two essential virtues for Christians which we are always in need of deepening.  They are humility and confidence in God.

1. Humility

To go into ourselves, ‘reculer’ must be about deepening our humility as individuals and as a Church.

Don’t you feel humbled at the very idea of mission?  Who are we to commend Almighty God to folk at a time when religion to many people is more source of evil than good?

Who are we to tell Haywards Heath it needs Our Lord?

Good thinking – our greatest resource for mission as Christians must be humility, a sense of our own inadequacy.

The more we’re aware of God’s mercy to us in all humility, the more we’re able to reflect it towards others – and the more affinity we have with our fellow human beings.

Just as our flesh literally weighs us down there’s a gravitational field of self-centredness that makes human life without God the burden it is. When we discover mercy we discover our nothingness and our less than nothingness through sin.

It is precisely in owning that nothingness in the virtue of humility that we grow wings that lift us away from self towards God and neighbour.

Freed more and more from taking ourselves so seriously we take flight. Here supremely at Mass, week by week, is a school of humility. We’re humbled by an ever-fuller vision of God in his magnificence and mercy – and we indeed take flight.

2. Confidence in God

A second virtue for us to work on is confidence.

By confidence I mean confidence in God and not self-confidence. To ‘coil up’ and gain energy as Christians preparing to spring forwards we need to renew a different sort of confidence – confidence in God.

God, Almighty God, is far worthier of our trust than we will ever believe on this earth.

Through the new bible study group, through our forthcoming pilgrimage, through our own reading about the faith or through conversations with one another including our priests we build confidence in Our Lord, his promises and his possibilities so as to be in a better position to bring in the new Church members we hope to see in St. Richard’s.

We need confidence in God coupled to humility – it is this combination that resources us for outreach. Our admission we’re nothing before God saves us from being presumptuous in witnessing to others. Our confidence that God desires to be everything to us and to everyone balances this and helps put spring in our steps as we commend Christian Faith.

Lastly two thoughts on ‘sauter’, on jumping forwards – the need to work at prayer and invitation.

3.  Prayer

These two things - prayer and invitation are like two powerful blades in a scissor action lying ahead for St. Richard’s as we work for yet more effective outreach.

As Hallesly wrote: ‘It is by prayer that we couple the powers of heaven to our helplessness ...the powers which can awaken those who sleep in sin and raise the dead, the power which can capture strongholds and make the impossible possible’.

Thousands around us are living and dying without Christ and we want them to discover a purpose for living and a reason for dying - the very purpose and reason we have as Christians here at St. Richard’s. As today’s Gospel implies we’re called to act - you are called to act.

I am asking you each day to pray for the growth of the Church mentioning particular individuals known to you upon whom you desire God’s richest blessing.

It may be a matter of praying the Our Father slowly, ‘Thy Kingdom come in Haywards Heath, in Sussex, in the life of my friends, or of taking up afresh the parish monthly intention sheet, or of saying a prayer of our own like, ‘Lord Jesus draw him to Yourself with a special intention for particular friends.

We have an ongoing Mission -  and you and I are on its executive Committee - we are to act - by the prayer we offer day by day and by the invitations we give out to our friends for special events, especially social events at Church like last night.

4.  Invitation

Invitations for people to join in some of our events requires forethought.  The idea of inviting folk must be around as we make new friends or as we relate to our existing friends and family members. We need a whole attitude of ‘invitation’, to make ourselves, or let the Holy Spirit make us more and more a living ‘invitation’ to meet with Our Lord and his Church

Both our prayer and our invitation require a right attitude, one of wholeheartedness.

So we move back from ‘sauter’ to ‘reculer’, from planning our advance to planning the right sort of preparation.

Do you think it is the will of Our Lord for his Church to grow? Today’s Gospel says yes, it is!

Do you think we at St. Richard’s have something the friends we are called to pray for are missing out on?

We need to believe this if our prayer and our invitations are to be wholehearted.

Let me put it the other way around. How will you feel when the friend or neighbour you are going to pray for comes with you to Church? Will you feel embarrassed? If so, why should you feel so?

Is the celebration of your own faith helpful to your human and social flourishing? How good is the gospel to you - good enough to be worth sharing? Or is your faith something private, something weird and wonderful, special for Sundays but nothing you would dare to trouble your friends and neighbours with?

May the Lord touch us this morning as we welcome Him in the Blessed Sacrament - touch us in our heart of hearts, so we can touch others for him! God refresh in us the purpose for living and the reason for dying given to us in our Risen Lord. As God is so near to us may he make himself near to all whom we entrust to him in the weeks ahead. The Gospel is good! This Church is a place of purpose in a confused world, a place of belonging in a lonely world. May more belong here with us to Jesus!

Sowing, reaping, keeping Presentation Church, Haywards Heath 16th July 2017

The parables of Jesus thrill with harvest imagery, sowing on the ground, reaping the fields and keeping grain in barns.

As a countryman in the days of his flesh it was natural for Jesus to use sowing, reaping and keeping to illustrate the purposes of God.

As Jesus’ disciples we serve a threefold process of sowing, reaping and keeping. The kingdom of God, Jesus says in Mark 4v26 is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground...the seed would sprout and grow...but when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.

We interpret such parables, like today's Gospel of the Sower, as encouragements to sow God's love and harvest a response in God's good time which bears fruit in a body kept faithful in God's praise and service. 

We can use Jesus's parables of sowing, reaping and keeping as a form of self examination for ourselves and our Christian community.

How much of our energies are put into serving others for their own sake - which is sowing?

When we find people ready to commit themselves in love to God, have we the courage and means to reap for him by inviting and sealing that commitment?

Are the spiritual disciplines of worship, prayer, study, service and reflection so active in me and my church that newcomers naturally come close to God with and through us?

These soul searching questions trace back to the words and deeds of Jesus who sowed himself upon the Cross like a grain of wheat to reap and keep a harvest of love for God through the Church's praise and service.

Let's follow then such soul searching as we look for a few minutes at sowing, reaping and keeping using three pictures that address these headings.

SOWING - How much of our energies are put into serving others for their own sake?

I'm asking you to answer for yourself or for the Presentation to which I'm a new comer.

Helping people into Christian Faith requires countering a lot of misinformation, notably affirming 'God is good' and 'the Church is OK' (ecumenical brief)

REAPING - When we find people ready to commit themselves in love to God, have we the courage and means to reap for him by inviting and sealing that commitment?

Missed opportunities - value of Alpha Course etc in providing a pathway into commitment and empowerment by the Spirit.

KEEPING - Are the spiritual disciplines of worship, prayer, study, service and reflection so active in me and my church that newcomers naturally come close to God with and through us?

The church's mission is weak because its prayer is weak.

I want to end by reading a passage from a book I wrote just published by Bible Reading Fellowship entitled Experiencing Christ’s Love which a fivefold template for a Christian rule of life:

·        Sunday church attendance

·        day by day formal and free prayer times

·        ongoing study of the bible and the church’s faith

·        occasions spending time serving others

·        regular self-examination and occasions for confession/guidance

The Christian discipline of reflection is a reminder of love, being loved and loving, and of our failure to love in which attitudes are key. This book has at its heart a reminder to stick at loving God through five attitudes commended by Jesus Christ knowing ‘we love because he first loved us’ (1 John 4:19). The Lord Jesus gives us this overarching rule: ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.. and your neighbour as yourself’ (Matthew 22:37, 39b). 

Loving God with your heart and soul can be seen as what worship and prayer are primarily about, linked to loving him with your mind in study, your neighbour in service and yourself through reflection. 

To experience Christ’s love we’re therefore invited to follow five disciplines interrelated, like the thumb and fingers of the human hand, set to grasp the hand of God that reaches down to us in Jesus Christ.  Worship and prayer are heart and soul of our love for God but without engaging our minds with his teaching our love will be ill formed, Jesus implies, and without service, love of neighbour, and reflection, loving care of self, our loving God will be a delusion.

Like the Hamsa hand symbol of hope and peace the five loves invited by Jesus in Matthew 22:37-39 are a call to and a reminder of balanced and effective discipleship.  What’s distinctive about Christian as opposed to other spiritual disciplines is the ‘hand up’ of grace they engage with. If Christian disciplines attain salvation they do so by grasping the hand of the Saviour. Experiencing Christ’s love in the five disciplines of worship, prayer, study, service and reflection is a taking of God’s hand in ours, the welcoming of his loving provision of forgiveness and healing that’s a hand up into his possibilities.

Experiencing Christ's Love book p83-84