St Bartholomew, Brighton New Year’s Day 2022

 

Today Christmas thoughts of eternity entering time in Jesus Christ give way to thoughts about time itself. 

It’s New Year’s Day under the patronage of the Blessed Virgin Mary and with this new day the calendar moves further into the second decade of the second millennium.

The bible says in the book of Psalms that we’re made for seven decades, maybe eight. I’m well through and have lived almost all my life by that reckoning.

How many New Year’s Days lie ahead for you and I?

Time like a never ending stream bears all its sons away. They fly forgotten like a dream dies at the opening day.

This morning we’re reminded that our time is running out and will one day carry us out as mortality wears us away. This last year has seen the last days of several parishioners. I think especially of Mark Mytton and William Parker. Our prayers this morning are with them and with so many who have passed on through COVID and with their families

We’re frail mortals. We should approach a New Year with humility because we’re from the earth and will return to the earth.

We’ve also grounds for confidence though. God loves mortals and desires to plant immortal life within them in Jesus Christ whose naming we mark today. 

If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, says Paul he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.

Today is the first day of the rest of our lives.

What’s most important as I live my life in the days and years ahead is to possess the Spirit who gives life to mortal bodies in this world and the next.

Every Eucharist is a calling down of the same Spirit, upon the gifts and upon the people, making holy gifts and holy people. 

Let’s welcome the holy and life giving Spirit as 2022 begins. He’ll be our main asset, the ground of Christian confidence to face the uncertainties ahead. Let’s give an invitation for him to empower us now in a moment of silence before we profess our faith together.

Good news from a good God (2) 13th July 2014 A teaching series on the letter of Saint Paul to the Romans Chapters 7 and 8

This morning we move to the second of a four part sermon series this month on the letter to the Romans we’ve called Good news from a good God bringing an explanation of the Christian good news. Our subtitle today is ‘God calls us to believe’ and we’re building from last Sunday’s examination of ‘God’s call to repentance’. We thought then about Paul’s description in Chapter 7 of his letter to the Romans of our knowing what to do but not doing it, an insight from God’s Word that psychology reinforces. We saw how the Christian good news of God’s love offers what psychology will never be able to offer – opportunity  to repent, turn from our inadequacies to the source of grace and holiness which is in Jesus Christ.

In the Sunday lectionary we turn the page today from Romans 7 to Romans 8 which begins with one of the most assuring verses in scripture: There is … no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. What a wonderful verse and how much we need to believe it!

Why should we believe it? Why should we believe Christians are saved from judgement? Verses 2 to 4 of Romans 8 explain all. The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.  

St Paul talks of three laws here – that of the Spirit, that of sin and death and that given through Moses, the Ten Commandments  which are up on the sanctuary walls by the high altar. The first two laws he speaks of set a contrast picked up throughout today’s passage between a way of blessing – that of the Spirit – and a way of disaster, that of sin and death. The third moral law has what Paul calls a just requirement which can’t be properly enforced on we who live according to the flesh under the law of sin and of death. As we saw last week from Romans 7 no way can our lives be made pleasing to God and free from condemnation by our own efforts but only by God’s grace which makes us acceptable in his Son Jesus Christ which is the good news from a good God.

Peake’s commentary on these initial verses of Romans 8 has this helpful summary: Moses’ law has right but not might; sin’s law has might but not right; the law of the Spirit has both right and might. God’s intervention involved ‘sending his own son’ into the human situation dominated by Sin, not to be contaminated by it but to decontaminate it, in a word to expose and overthrow the power of evil in its occupied territory.

I like that quotation. The law has rights over us but sin has might over us – the very conundrum we looked at last week. I do not do what I want Paul said repeatedly in Chapter 7. Now in Chapter 8 he shows great excitement about the Holy Spirit who has both rights over us and might to help us supply behaviour that’s right. As Saint Augustine – himself transformed by reading the letter to the Romans writes – give me the grace to obey what you command and command what you will.

The ongoing decontamination of our lives by Jesus Christ is good news from a good God. I know how far he’s got to go with me, but at least I have knowledge of what they call ‘a Man who can’.  When your computer is contaminated and the anti-virus has failed you have to take it to be decontaminated by ‘a man who can’ in Haywards Heath or wherever. You can’t deal with it yourself. So it is with the tendency to exalt self over God and neighbour and that deep seated pride, anger, lust, envy, gluttony, avarice and sloth – remember ‘pale gas’, the mnemonic for the seven deadly sins. Our inner contamination requires external treatment through what Jesus does for us, which is spelled out in today’s Romans reading which ends with these words: If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.

Think about those words. Do you believe them? That weekly act of receiving Holy Communion – do you see it for what it is, your decontamination and revitalisation?  This section of Romans 8 sets forth a great divide. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. 

There is a great divide between living at a physical level, a life which evidently gets lost in physical death, and living at a spiritual level, in the power of the Holy Spirit, with a quality of life stronger than physical death through the power of Christ’s resurrection.  If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.

The letter to the Romans, like most of New Testament writings, thrills with the perceived consequence of laying hold of the risen Lord Jesus Christ through faith and baptism, Jesus who gives life to our mortal bodies through his Spirit that dwells in us.

At every funeral in this Church we place the Paschal Candle besides the coffin as a sign of this and sprinkle the body with holy water as a reminder of the truth of our baptism - that the risen Christ’s indwelling gives life to our mortal bodies through his Spirit. How many of these celebrations ring true to the deceased? Inasmuch as our lives are in the orbit of the Church we have the opportunity to engage with Jesus Christ in word and sacrament. He in turn, throughout our lives, seeks to engage and draw forth the opening and offering of our hearts.

O come to my heart, Lord Jesus, there is room in my heart for thee we sing, but too often we are wording Christian faith.

I love this picture. It’s from St Paul’s Cathedral and it’s a call to faith. Holman Hunt’s Light of the world can be found in the north aisle chapel just off the Dome. It shows Jesus Christ standing before a symbol of the human heart, knocking on a door covered in ivy, a door without a handle – on the outside! The scripture text below it from Revelation 3:20 makes plain what Jesus Christ wants from you and I. came on earth it invites. Behold I stand at the door and knock. If any man hear my voice and open the door I will come in to him and will sup with him and he with me.

The human heart, the centre of our being, is designed to open from the inside. Until it opens Jesus cannot come close nor can his Spirit come in to indwell us. To return to our passage, verses 9-10  you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. 

As I invite you to read and ponder Romans Chapter 8 in the coming weeks I am pointing to good news that’s not only believable but transformative! Whenever we welcome Jesus and open the door to him his life pours into us, life that’s immortal and insuppressible for the life of Jesus will never be put down – it will never die.

That life is ours for the taking and it’s to be ours in Holy Communion this morning as we open our hearts to Jesus. Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Blessed are those who are called to his supper. Lord, I am not worthy to receive you but only say the word, and I shall be healed. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.

The Letters of Saint Paul (2) Paul’s view of God Second of four sermons – Sunday 9th June 2013

To encourage us to pick up our Bibles more and follow up on what we have read to us on a Sunday I’m inviting you to look with me this summer at the letters of St Paul and what he teaches there about man, God, the Church and the future.

Last week, after some background on Paul himself, we looked at what he has to say about human nature, the good and bad in us and how we get our nature to be in its right mind. In Paul’s understanding we’ve got God’s likeness so God is within us - yet so is sin and the wonder of Christianity is the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ accepting us as we are, overcoming our deficiencies and making us more fully what we were born to be.

I said last week that Paul’s one of the most accessible of all biblical figures since we’ve got more biography and autobiography for him than we have even for Jesus himself. Today’s second reading is a brilliant example. 

The letter to the Galatians shows Paul’s irritated humanity but it also evidences how God took him, with all his imperfections, and made him his chosen instrument. I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origin; for I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. You have heard, no doubt, of my earlier life in Judaism. I was violently persecuting the church of God and was trying to destroy it.  I advanced in Judaism beyond many among my people of the same age, for I was far more zealous for the traditions of my ancestors.   But… God, who had set me apart before I was born and called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, so that I might proclaim him among the Gentiles.

That passage stands alongside two accounts in the book of Acts of Paul’s conversion and it underlines to us the significance of the man and his writings for our Christian faith.

When God became one of us in Jesus it took the choice of another man to set forth the significance of that revelation.That man was Paul of Tarsus who lived from around 10AD to 64AD when he was most likely martyred in the Rome of Emperor Nero.

How then did Paul see God?

He saw, in Michael Ramsey’s analogy with a phrase in the Psalms, that ‘God is Christlike and in him in no unChristlikeness at all’. Because of the coming, death and resurrection of Jesus God is to be seen in a new and extraordinary fashion. He saw to quote Ephesians 2:4-6 that   God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ - by grace you have been saved -and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

In witnessing to God’s love shown in Jesus’ death and poured into our hearts by his Spirit Paul announces a God whose unity is shown in the fellowship of three persons, as in 2 Corinthians 13:13: the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.

To believe this is to believe God isn’t One but One God in three persons. Paul can write with particular authority because as he says in today’s reading I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. He received how God had sent his Son in our likeness to be our Saviour, something no one could have ever worked out for themselves but something God himself had demonstrated in human history – that God is a triune God.

As we might have read from Paul in two weeks time in Galatians Chapter 2, save the readings are changed for dedication feast, I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. Galatians 2:19b-20

For Paul God is Christlike and would have us be the same. As Christ was crucified the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me so Paul speaks for himself of the life I now live being life with faith in the Son of God who now lives in him. As we heard last week human beings have sin within them that can be countered by inviting God’s loving presence to dwell within them on account of Jesus.

Christians are ‘J shaped’. The letter ‘J’ is like an ‘I’ pressed down that’ll spring up again. All through his letters, like in the Ephesians passage I just quoted, believers are said to die, get buried, rise and ascend just like Jesus. God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ — by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

What is true of God who in love came, died and rose is to be true of us Paul writes. I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

The sacrament of baptism contains all of this potential shaping of our lives to be like God as Paul taught in his letter to Rome. I strongly commend reading Romans for more meat of the kind I am sharing. It is probably the most significant Christian writing and it’s shaped the Christian vision of God as much as words can ever shape that vision.  Do you not know Paul writes in Romans 6:3-4 that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?  Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.

Paul’s view of God is inseparable from Jesus Christ with whom he has a mystical union. He looks at the Cross and sees our  cleansing from sin into holiness. He walks with the risen Lord Jesus who gives us newness of life. He witnesses in his writings how the Holy Spirit pours the love of Jesus into our hearts.

If you’ve no time to read much of Paul this week, at least try reading Romans Chapter 8. It’s one of my own purple passages that speaks of life and love in Jesus Christ. In verse 11 it speaks of God who gives life to (our) mortal bodies…through his Spirit that dwells in (us). It goes on in v28 of Romans 8 to say words of supreme encouragement: all things work together for good for those who love God. The last verse of Chapter 8 in the Message translation reads: Absolutely nothing can get between us and God’s love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us.

The letter to the Romans and Paul’s other twelve letters are a tonic to anyone’s Christian faith. Last week I mentioned how the four shortest letters could be remembered using the vowel alphabet – a, e, i, o – Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians. We’re reading Galatians on Sundays. Why not read Ephesians, full of God’s truth and readable in 20 minutes, or Philippians, just as short and full of joy or Colossians, again just 4 Chapters.  

My purpose this month and next is to give you a taster of Paul’s letters. You need more than a ten minute sermon to get into Paul’s wisdom on God and once again times up – though I’d again encourage you to put in extra time at home, pick up your bible and let Paul speak to you himself – and God through him.