St Wilfrid & Presentation, Haywards Heath Easter 4 30 April 2023

 

I love the fifty days of Eastertide. They balance and outweigh the forty days of Lent lending our lives a dynamic of life, growth and movement which is well captured in today’s readings.

‘I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly’ we just heard in John 10:10 at the end of the Gospel - what a summary of Christianity! 

That life has its origin in the events of Holy Week as the second reading reminds us, especially its last two verses 1 Peter 2:24-25: ‘Jesus Christ bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness… for you were going astray like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls’.

To know you can be freed from sin is life giving. I had the joy of giving someone one to one assurance of God’s forgiveness last week. The man arose with new energy, a lighter speedier step to his life. That’s an occasion when priests very much act as ‘under shepherds’ for the Good Shepherd to bring his sheep healing into righteousness, literally right living.

Life, growth and movement. We see that movement and growth in the Acts Sunday readings of Eastertide as today, Acts 2:42, 47:  ‘They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers… and day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved’.

Then lastly in our Gospel from Saint John in Chapter 10 that movement is captured in the action of the Good Shepherd, earliest image of the risen Christ, who: ‘calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice’.

We Christians have life, and have it in abundance, and its a life on the move which draws others into its dynamic since we follow the risen Lord who gives us that life through scripture and the Breaking of Bread through his ‘under shepherds’, we priests with the bishops and, thinking of Saturday, Christian leadership in our nation.

This morning as we ‘devote ourselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers’ we gain like my friend earlier in the week, a new spring in our step. We leave Church with a new eagerness as resurrection people who know more surely that our risen Lord the Good Shepherd treads before us out through the Church door. We, his sheep, ‘follow him because we know his voice’. As today’s Post Communion prayer implies we believers are ‘kept always under his protection, and given grace to follow in his steps’.

That’s our Christian faith, knowing the promise of God to give life to the full and forever in Jesus Christ was fulfilled on Easter Sunday! Its something infectious, just as it was seen to be in the Acts of the Apostles when ‘day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved’ (Acts 2:47). 

As you may have read in the weekly bulletin I’ve been busy on a series for Eastertide being broadcast on Premier Christian Radio Freeview 725 every Sunday 7.30pm until 21 May. 

‘Finding Joy in the Lord’ has five 20 minute episodes with Easter hymns and readings. The second programme is tonight and all episodes will be available on listen again at premierchristianradio.com/joy. The first episode is already available at that address. I mention this series because it was motivated by the love for the fifty days of Eastertide I mentioned earlier which balances and outweighs the forty days of Lent lending our lives a joyful spiritual dynamic.

This first episode centres on joy as the gift of the risen Lord Jesus to all who believe and trust in him. I’ve been reflecting a lot on joy as we have a family member struggling with Alzheimer’s. It's a learning curve for us all in which we feel hurt by circumstances in which someone we love is growing in forgetfulness. Happiness eludes our grasp many times so far as our emotions go but we possess a joy which goes deeper than happiness. 

Jesus Christ is risen - that’s our faith - and in his presence is the fullness of joy. The joy sustaining us links to our belonging to the Christian community, a community founded on the resurrection whose existence can’t be explained without it. The New Testament record of how Christ’s sad and defeated disciples were changed into fearless missionaries is hard to explain without a cataclysmic external impact upon their lives. The abandonment by devout Jews of a weekly tradition of Friday Sabbath to keep Sunday as the day of resurrection has no rival explanation. There is no grave venerated for the founder of Christianity compared to founders of other religions, only the empty tomb in Jerusalem. These considerations are brush strokes painting a picture of an event pointing beyond itself to the unique action of God in raising Jesus from the dead, pledge of an imperishable hope and source of joy to a third of the world’s population today.

We may not have Alzheimer’s but each one of us will one day develop a terminal illness and life is either totally meaningless or totally meaningful, depending on the vantage point we have on that fact. Thornton Wilder paints the dilemma of two vantage points, one without and one with the perspective of the resurrection of Jesus: ‘Some say that…to the gods we are like the flies that boys kill on a summer day. And some say, on the contrary, that the very sparrows do not lose a feather that has not been brushed away by the finger of God’. What we see about death depends upon our vantage point. The atheist Bertrand Russell had this to say about life and death: ‘There is darkness without, and when I die there will be darkness within.  There is no splendour, no vastness anywhere, only triviality for a moment and then nothing’. Contrast this sad vision of death with a joy-filled statement of resurrection faith from the writings of the nineteenth century theologian Kohlbrugge who once imagined someone finding his skull a century later: ‘When I die - I do not die anymore, he wrote. If someone finds my skull, let this skull still preach to him and say: I have no eyes, nevertheless I see Him; though I have no lips, I kiss him; I have no tongue, yet I sing praise to Him with all who call upon His name.  I am a hard skull, yet I am wholly softened and melted in His love…All suffering is forgotten’. 

Finding joy in the Lord links to such a conviction about the love, truth and empowerment that lies in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ witnessed to by the New Testament. Our joy as Christians is founded upon the supreme power of love seen in the risen Lord Jesus Christ. We believe that by dying Christ destroyed the power of death, and by rising again opened up a new and imperishable life to all believers and says to us ‘I came that you might have life, and have it abundantly’. That life is all that matters ultimately. Yes - the only meaningful thing in life is what conquers death - not what but who! In Jesus Christ we gain not ideas, doctrines, rules but Life, life that breaks out beyond this world in the joy of the resurrection - alleluia!

Advent 1 The Return of the Lord 27th November 2016

Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour. Matthew 24:44

We're about ends and beginnings this morning, the end of one church year dedicated to mercy and the beginning of another dedicated to the Bible, the end of the ordinary green season and the beginning of the solemnity of Advent season when the Church dresses in purple to contemplate death, judgement, heaven and hell

We dress in solemn purple for the end of man as we always do to face death at funeral liturgies

Death is our enemy, there’s no getting round it, even though Christian faith addresses it directly through faith in Jesus Christ who died, is raised and will come again. I gave a clear statement of Christian faith in regards the last things to our 50 or so visitors on All Souls Day earlier this month which I felt led to repeat to the congregation this morning, so I apologise to a handful of you if you'll be hearing this bit of the sermon for the second time.

It is Christian faith that at the moment of death the soul is judged by God to pass toward one of two ultimate destinations, bliss or loss, heaven or hell. In that passage the prayer of the Church surrounds and helps all those souls the Christian community commends to God who will welcome help, the origin of the maligned term purgatory. 

God wishes nothing or no one to be lost from the sight of his holiness. We imagine the moment of death, however merciful physically through palliative care, will be for most of painful as we come to see God, turning our eyes away at his loving, holy glance. 

His invitation to look him in the eyes, like that of any good parent chastising his child, will be painful on account of our sins. Purgatory can be thought of, some theologians hold, as just momentary. A moment of pain as holiness meets the unrepentant sin within us, then the soul passing on to await the next stage of cosmic history.

Those who die without sin face God, as if in heaven, and begin to see him face to face, but heaven is not yet heaven until that vision is shared in the company of all the saints. Those without love continue their self-chosen loneliness into hell, which God permits as he permits free will, but doesn’t will for them such choices.

The Christian hope is consummated by the return of Jesus Christ. As we shall shortly affirm in the words of the Nicene Creed will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end. That final judgement will complete our individual judgement at the moment of death. Scripture indicates the general judgement as bringing humanity of past ages to bodily resurrection to greet Christ’s return and be clothed afresh with the body, to make their heaven fully heaven, or their hell fully hell, in the life of the world to come. In that world the faithful departed will continue in a salvation that is personal, practical, purposeful and permanent. 

We will continue to know personally, only unveiled, the one who so knows and loves us. We will experience the practical benefit of our sins being cast away from us. We will be fully taken into the purpose of God and with permanence. The pains we've suffered will be lost in celestial praise which can only be made perfect once God's purpose for the world is made complete at the return of his Son. 

This teaching has also been the subject of our Premier Christian Radio series from Horsted Keynes which concluded earlier this morning with this clip from Alison Bellack (play programme 4))

http://www.premierchristianradio.com/Shows/Sunday/Seeing-Salvation

I wonder how you see heaven? How often you think of it? When you’re saved it’s natural to look forward to this, the fulfilment of God’s call upon your life.

The great poet Saint Augustine of Hippo described heaven as the time when we shall rest and we shall see, we shall see and we shall love, we shall love and we shall praise. 

He speaks in the plural for salvation’s a shared gift of God in Christ, as Paul indicates when speaking in Ephesians 3v19 of having the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, (to) be filled with all the fullness of God.

This fullness is the fullness of salvation.

What I have shared is an outline of Christian salvation projected from the promises of God in scripture which open the eyes of faith to see death as a vanquished enemy for those who hold to the Saviour. 

Christian faith is built on the risen Christ. We do not, as believers, know fully what’s there so much as who’s there after death. Our Lord Jesus Christ - he is there! He is there as sure as he’s the same yesterday, today and forever!

Just as we see the risen Lord behind every crucifix so we see those we love alive with Him beyond the dust.

It is Advent Sunday but it is also the Lord's Day! The same Jesus who came, died, rose and says to us this morning it is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day.... Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day.  (John 6:38, 54)

Advent 4 The Lord is Near – Receiving 22nd December 2013

We’re using the last programme of our Advent series ‘The Lord is near’ that’s been following the journey to Christmas in Horsted Keynes with the hundreds of thousands of listeners to Premier Christian Radio.

If Christmas is about welcoming Christ, Advent shows us the way. Four ways – it’s a call to repent, believe, ask, receive - and in our last programme we’re looking at receiving.

Christmas means Christ’s Mass so receiving Communion in bread and wine is at the heart of what’s otherwise become a commercial feast. Whereas 50 people make their Communion every week in St Giles there’ll be 150 on Christmas day and an overall attendance of 500 at services, a quarter of the population of the village. Hinting at what receiving Communion entails these words from John’s Gospel will be read at Midnight Mass: ‘to all who received Christ, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God’.

On the last Sunday before Christmas the Lady Chapel of St Giles is the focus. It’s got a window showing the Angel Gabriel’s visit to Mary which made her the first mortal to receive Christ.

Let’s hear part of a beautiful Advent carol telling the story of that visit.

Hymn: The Angel Gabriel from heaven came (Annunciation Carol)

Fr John:  In the last week of Advent the Virgin Mary’s placed centre stage as reminder of the Christian call to receive from God. How could Mary be God-bearer without receiving from God – and how can we carry out what God wants of us without our receiving from him?

There are various ways of receiving from God - Scripture, Holy Communion, Christian fellowship – of which, day by day, prayer is fundamental. The Bible tells us Mary ‘treasured God’s words and pondered them in her heart’ and that’s a lovely definition of contemplation.  Each day, either at home or in St Giles, I spend an hour of prayer which includes contemplation. One of the encouragements within my ministry of late has been to connect with people rediscovering the ancient wisdom of contemplation, to balance the activism around in the world and in the church.

‘What is this life, if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare?’

Jamie Large speaks about how he has found value in the discipline of contemplative stillness as an aid to centring and energising his life and how such contemplation can enrich our approach to the Christmas feast.

Fr John: Let’s listen now to St Paul’s heartfelt call for us to receive the indwelling of Christ:

Female voice from Premier staff.

A reading from the letter of St Paul to the Ephesians, Chapter 3  

I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Here end the reading.

Fr John: The last days of Advent are busy days for clergy as, besides planning Christmas services and the decorating of church they make themselves available to individuals seeking to make their Confession before the Christmas feast.

Mary Mitchell-Gogay describes what is involved in making a sacramental confession and how her own receiving of Christmas Communion is enriched by it year by year.

Fr John: The words of our last hymn are taken from the age old refrains used at evensong in the last week of Advent: O come, O come, Emmanuel

Song: O come, O come, Emmanuel

‘Rejoice in the Lord always;’ Paul says to the Philippians, ‘again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near.’ As Christmas approaches it brings joy to believers for ‘the Lord is near’ and ‘in his presence is the fullness of joy’. (Psalm 16:11)

That joy is built on repentance and faith. It comes as we turn from our woeful shortcomings to welcome afresh the embrace of Jesus as Lord and Saviour. It comes from asking him to come near to us and from receiving all he’s got to give us, not least in the Sacrament of his body and blood.

In this last week of Advent I’m asking God to give me a bigger vision of himself, more to his dimensions and less to mine. With Mary I want to magnify the Lord so he increases in my reckoning, and I decrease in that same reckoning! How else can I prepare to be a channel of his love towards all who’ll seek him in the worship I’ll lead in the next few days.

Repent, believe, ask, receive – this is the invitation of Jesus coming Saviour and Judge – cast out your sin, that I may enter in to be born in you afresh, so you may know my love that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God

Let’s end with the Advent prayer to the One who comes near to us as Lord and Saviour:

Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness and to put on the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which your Son Jesus Christ  came to us in great humility; that on the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.                      

Advent 1 The Lord is Near – Repentance 8am

We’re starting Advent on a day St Giles is being made much of internationally through two broadcasts on London-based Premier Christian Radio. Today’s the start of a four part Advent series I produced which we will draw into both eucharists today.

‘The Lord is near’ is a four part series engaging through scripture, song and story in the wonder of Advent season. It’s about the journey to Christmas in Horsted Keynes as we go through Advent this year seeking to come close to the Lord.

Advent is about the coming of the Lord, first to Bethlehem at Christmas and second on the last day as Judge of the world. It’s about his coming near to us and our coming near to him.

‘The Lord is near’ the apostle Paul says to the Philippians. If we want to experience that nearness the Bible makes plain four things we need to do – repent, believe, ask, receive.

As we have a look with Premier Radio at what Advent represents we’ll be weaving our thoughts round those four headings using the four programmes, starting today with the call to repent.

Let’s listen now to a clip from the programme that catches the end of an Advent hymn that centres on St John the Baptist and his message to make way for Christ through repentance:

Hymn: On Jordan’s bank

Fr John:  Advent’s a call to repentance.

This is expressed by the look of church interiors.

I want to take you with me in mind and spirit to the beautiful village of Horsted Keynes where I’m parish priest. There from the village green I want you to walk down Church Lane and then up towards tour Norman Church with its noble spire. Come with me through the ancient porch to pass with me, in your mind, through the glazed doors to a further ascent in mind and heart through sight of its high Norman arches that lift your eyes to the altar.St Giles is no ordinary village church for its proportions are lavish. As William the Conqueror's retinue swept up from Hastings they made a mark on Sussex visible a thousand years on. The Church in Horsted Keynes has kept the Advent season for half the Christian era.  

This doesn’t just happen. It’s the achievement of the sacristans who prepare our beautiful church for worship day by day.

Peter Vince speaks about the penitential season of Advent, about repentance, preparing the crib from around 2min 44sec to 5min 268 on Recorder

Fr John: Let’s listen now to a bible passage we read in Advent that speaks of what it means to repent.

Female voice from Premier staff.

A reading from the letter of St Paul to the Romans, Chapter 13

Brothers and sisters, you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armour of light; let us live honourably as in the day, not in revelling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarrelling and jealousy. Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires. Here ends the reading.

Fr John: If you’ve ever heard of Horsted Keynes before it’s probably for one of three reasons – it’s Grade 1 Norman Church, it’s being where former prime minister Harold MacMillan’s buried or lastly because it’s there you find the Bluebell Railway.

Sound of steam engine.  

Fr John: Every year in Advent I preach, or as Bluebell Railway Chaplain depute a visiting preacher to speak, standing on the front of a steam engine on Horsted Keynes station.

It’s a great evening and the biggest evangelistic service in Advent attended by over 500 people who cram the three platforms to hear the good news of Jesus.

Caroline Collins describes something of the Bluebell railway, what a great year it’s been for us, and describes the atmosphere of the Bluebell carol service with the steel band playing on the platform . 270 on recorder or iPhone Cc Bluebell file

Fr John: It’s time for another Advent song, one that speaks of the joy of the Lord’s coming:

Song: Joy to the world

Do you know why Advent’s my favourite church season? It’s because of the JOY it invites.

And where does that joy come from, save repentance?

Repent, believe, ask, receive – and the Lord comes to be with you and, as the Psalmist writes, ‘in his presence is the fullness of joy’ (Psalm 16:11).

‘The Lord is near’ is true for all of us since he made us and upholds us. He’s the very source of life, yours and mine, but he wants to be more than that! He wants to come and dwell within us to give us a share in his life. That’s why Jesus came – the Son of God became Son of man so we children of men could become children of God.

When we repent, when we turn to the Lord, he anoints us with his Spirit and we receive infectious joy. It’s the best receipe for a joyous Advent - to turn afresh in the coming month towards our Saviour  the Lord Jesus Christ ‘in whose presence is the fullness of joy’.