Lent 5 St Bartholomew, Brighton 18 March 2018

Some Greeks…came to Philip…and said to him, ‘Sir, we wish to see Jesus.’

That phrase, ‘Sir, we wish to see Jesus.’ is written around many a pulpit. In Holy Cross Church by Kings Cross Station there is a pulpit crucifix which unlike ours, facing the people, faces the preacher.

In my old parish of St Giles, Horsted Keynes there’s a carved figure of Our Saviour on the pulpit flanked by four saints. Each figure took 90 hours to carve we read in the parish history.

Carving a figure of Jesus to present to people is the preacher’s labour of love especially in Passiontide.

It is as if the literal veiling of the Cross calls urgent attention to the central mystery of the faith.

Today’s reading from Hebrews Chapter 5 speaks of God’s choice of his Son to take high priesthood on behalf of humanity so as to be able to become the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him. That choice is proved, according to the author of Hebrews, by Christ’s own evident reluctance shown in the Garden of Gethsemane. In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission.  Our Lord did not want honour for himself but made submission to his Father, dedicating his whole life and humanity unreservedly to the will of God.

That renunciation of will in Gethesemane is summarised in the Gospel passage from St John Chapter 12 Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say—“Father, save me from this hour”? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.

Self-offering that wins glory is built into the life of God himself.

The great French priest scientist Teilhard de Chardin speaks of how that principle applies to our best development as the human race: To allow God, when it so pleases him, to grow within us, and, by death, to substitute himself for us: that is now our duty; that, if one may use the word, is our opportunity; and that is the only attitude that can finally bring salvation. 

Teilhard is struck by the liturgical repetition in Passiontide of the refrain from Philippians ‘Christus factus est’ – Christ was obedient unto death.

Commenting on this refrain he writes: That is obviously the exact and profound significance of the cross: obedience, submission to the law of life – and to accept everything, in a spirit of love, including death, there you have the essence of Christianity.

Our Lord lived to die a death for the life of the world. We too are called as Christians to lose our lives, all that is governed by wrong self-interest and self-concern, so that his life may flow in us to bring glory to God.

 ‘Sir, we wish to see Jesus.’

Our best response to that request happens many a time unwittingly as people see us being carried along by the Lord as we carry something of a cup of sufferings, cheerfully and obediently, with faith in Jesus who is become the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.

Passiontide reminds us that no sorrow on earth needs to be wasted.

By being taken up into the mystery of Christ’s love, in his passion and in the eucharist, there is transformation. This comes as we gain grace to accept with serenity the things that can’t be changed or courage to change the things that should be changed in our lives.

‘Sir, we wish to see Jesus.’

I end with Teilhard’s great meditation on the hands of our Saviour that ends with an act of surrender into those same holy and venerable hands:

Into your hands I commend my spirit. To the hands that broke and gave life to the bread, that blessed and caressed, and were pierced – to the hands that are as our hands, of which we can never say what they will do with the objects they hold, whether shatter them or care for them, but whose whims, we may be sure, are full of kindness and will never do more than hold us in a jealous grasp – to the kindly and mighty hands that reach down to the very marrow of the soul – that mould and create – to the hands through which so great a love is transmitted – it is to these that it is good to surrender our soul.

Lent 5 Holiness 22nd March 2015

I only point the way - a sign doesn't have to go where it points.

As your parish priest I am a pointer to holiness through my special dress and functions and it’s not surprising the devil puts that one liner into my mind.

I only point the way - a sign doesn't have to go where it points.

No, no, no. If I’m ever a sad priest my sadness should most of all be about not being a saintly one.

I must persevere in self-sacrifice, in guarding myself from ritual service in the empty sense of 'go where I point but not here I go. Do as I say but not as I do'.

This little confession is my way into today's readings on self-sacrifice. 

Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain, but if it dies, it bears much fruit. John 12:24

Sometimes the office of a priest requires you to challenge your people and, especially then, it's all the more important your own failings are being challenged, through counsel you seek and receive, lest you contradict the message you provide.

We priests, we Christians, need to turn our eyes upon Jesus who both challenged and gave himself. 

Today's readings are haunted by Gethsemane.

The Gospel: my soul is troubled. The epistle from Hebrews which states in the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. Although he was a Son he learned obedience through what he suffered; and having been made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him, having been designated by God a high priest. Hebrews 5:7-10

In Gethsemane Jesus made self-sacrifice. 'Nevertheless' he says - and what wonders in that word - 'nevertheless, Father, not my will but thine be done'.

Holiness is linked to self-sacrifice. You can't be a sign of Christ without it. And it's a 24-7 business that permeates thought, word and deed.

The writer A.J.Cronin tells of Olwen Davies, a middle-aged district nurse whose cheerful service of the people of Tregenny impressed him in his days as medical officer to a Welsh mining company. Cronin was so worried about her low pay he brought it up in conversation after a strenuous day they'd shared together. 'Why don't you make them pay you more? It's ridiculous you should work for so little?' She smiled. 'I've got enough to get along with'. 'No, really, God knows you're worth an extra pound a week at least'. There was a pause. 'Doctor if God knows I'm worth it, that's all that matters to me'.

What is worthiness? It's a similar question to that about holiness. Unworthiness is a shade easier to define, maybe as living just for yourself. John Ruskin said when a man is wrapped up in himself, he makes a pretty small package. 

Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain, but if it dies, it bears much fruit.

Seeing our organ dismantled reminded me of the magnetic islands in the Arabian Knights tale which wrecked ships by drawing out their nails and bolts. When people live just to themselves their lives fall to pieces in the end, just like our organ, but not constructively but destructively. 

Lives magnetised by God are held together with joy. Can you think of anyone who has attained joy, permanent happiness, without self denial?

I can think of a few folk I've met over my years as a priest who've regretted their occupation with selfish pursuits, nominally in their bread winner role, which ended up excluding those now grown but nominally near and dear to them. 

Passiontide challenges us with the way of sacrifice followed by Jesus and invited of us as the sure path from self-centredness into holiness.

The famous Christian writer CS Lewis wrote of his 'bewilderment and amazement' after the death of his wife: 'If my house has collapsed at one blow, that is because it was a house of cards... If I had really cared, as I thought I did, about the sorrows of the world, I should not have been overwhelmed when my own sorrow came. It has been an imaginary faith playing with innocuous counters labelled 'Illness', 'Pain', 'Death', 'Loneliness'. I thought I trusted the rope until it mattered to me whether it would bear me. Now it matters, and I find it didn't'

Elsewhere he summarises this trauma which showed the need for his faith to mature, saying of God 'he always knew that my temple was a house of cards. His only way of making me realise the fact was to knock it down'. 

Lewis' words 'bewilderment and amazement' are words used in the Gospel of Jesus in Gethsemane facing the supreme sacrifice of himself for us all. All the little and all the big challenges to our self interest must be measured up to this if we want to be holy. For Lewis it was the pain of bereavement through which skin deep cerebral faith gave way to something deeper, but only at a price to his self interest.

A sign doesn't have to go where it points. The sign of the Cross is 'I' crossed out. We can't get around that, but we try to!

It's quite natural to shy away from suffering and many times it's right to do so, and what a blessing it is to read in scripture how Jesus himself, in his full humanity, shied away from suffering. He offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death and the way he was heard by God was in grace to accept that Cup into which was poured all evil for him to drink to the dregs on Calvary.

You and I take his Sunday Cup so we can more willingly take the Cup he supplies Monday to Saturday. This is supplied by life, by those near and dear, as well as those put on our hearts from our neighbourhood including the agonies presented daily on the screens in our living places.

Our quest for joy is inseparable from self-sacrifice and is aided by our growing closer to Jesus whose dying and rising are made part of us in baptism and its weekly renewal in the Sacrament of his body and blood. 

Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain, but if it dies, it bears much fruit.