St Mary, Balcombe Trinity 24 (33A) Stewardship 19.11.23

‘It is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them; to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away’ (Matthew 25:14).

Its Stewardship Sunday so far as the Sunday Lectionary goes, a reminder from the Lord that we have been entrusted with time, talents and treasure for a lifetime and must answer for it at death or at his Return. The Zephaniah passage challenging complacent living is a pointer to the Gospel.

Archbishop Rowan Williams once said: “What we do with our money proclaims who we think we are – whether we know it or not, whether we like it or not. All our actions in some degree reveal us; why should our economic life be different? Why should this too not be an area in which we help to shape our eternal destiny, a matter of sin or holiness?”

In my travels up and down the Diocese both as Diocesan Mission & Renewal Adviser and now as retired priest with permission to officiate I’ve come across many instances of good stewardship linked to the generosity of the people of God throughout Sussex alongside a great deal of energy and hard work invested in maintaining and beautifying our churches including here – there’s an army of folk in this place who give their time and their talents to sustain its life and its witness.

I looked up what the diocesan website says about stewardship - here’s a couple of paragraphs: 

‘The major source of the Diocesan Board of Finance's income comes from the generosity of parishes through the Parish Share.  Parish Share represents approximately 80% of the Diocese’s total income.  In addition, the Diocese generates investment income from historic endowments and from letting out vacant properties. 

‘The majority of the Diocese’s expenditure is spent on the clergy who serve our parishes.  The cost of providing ministry across the diocese represents approximately 80% of total expenditure. This covers clergy stipends, NI, pension, housing, and the costs of training current and future clergy. It also includes money spent on supporting ministry through the work of the Archdeacons, Rural Deans, Continuing Ministerial Development and the payment of removal and resettlement grants. The remaining expenditure is spent on parish support services such as the provision of buildings advice, supporting church schools and safeguarding services, as well as a contribution to the National Church’.

 

In those words the Diocese recognises it is predominantly through the generosity of folk such and you and I that the Church of England in Sussex keeps its roof on and pays its clergy including pensioners like myself.  Another thing that strikes me as former diocesan officer and parish priest at Horsted Keynes is the range of motivations people have in giving their money and their energy to the Church.

So may I ask: why do you do it? Give money or time or talent, I mean, to support St Mary’s? 

Former diocesan colleagues did some careful research about this

• Some people, they found, place great value in buildings (Come to a place like this you can see why). Is that you?

• Others are drawn in by the church’s service to the community 

• Others are motivated by the church as a centre of evangelism – the sharing of Christrian faith and values. Is that you?

• And others place great value in the act of joining together for worship. Where worship is ‘done well’, congregations are growing. Perhaps that is you?

Different people – different motivations – different things that are precious or valuable to people.

• Let me tell you what I value about the Church.

Firstly, the church helps me to know God, the God who seems to do something quite remarkable - quite inexplicable – at Easter. Luke quotes Peter “this man Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, God raised from the dead.” (Acts 4:10b). Now raising from the dead is not something that happens very often and when I read about God raising people from the dead I’m tempted to think that God is winding the clock back a bit, restoring life – putting things back to how they were before death. But no – what is happening in Jesus is God is winding the clock forward – not back. This is what it will be like for everybody, says Paul, when he talks about Christ being the first fruits – the forerunner - as it’s a Christian’s destiny to have life after death - not restored life, not life like we know it here, but something new “Look out for the new thing I am going to do” (Isaiah 43v19)

The second thing I like is what Jesus offers us. Forgiveness. Reconciliation. Distrust turning to trust. Paul keeps on making this contrast. Do you put your trust in the past, or do you know Christ Jesus? I particularly love the bit you get in Luke’s gospel – just after Easter – about Jesus walking with his disciples on the Emmaus Road here is a Jesus that is prepared to walk with us a whole day – a whole lifetime probably – in the wrong direction before he gently turns us round and points us back to where we should be heading. The only ultimately meaningful thing in life is what conquers death - and Jesus offers this!

And the third thing I value is salvation - the extraordinary relationship between God and humankind that somehow Jesus Christ makes possible for us even while we’re still here, enjoying, as it were, life before death. As today’s second reading voices it: ‘God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, so that… we may live with him’ (1 Thessalonians 5:9-10). The assurance of this salvation is a lot to do with the Holy Spirit. After resurrection – if that wasn’t dramatic enough - Jesus promises something else, someone else who’ll make us feel as if we’ve been born again. And in the power of this Holy Spirit, we’ll recognise how we relate to God - Not foot soldiers, with God as our commanding officer; Not slaves, with God as our master, but as children, with God as our Father, someone who loves us beyond reason as many human parents do. That love is poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit.

‘It is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them; to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away’.The Parable of the Talents is a reminder all we’re about as mortal beings flows from God who in giving us life lends us time, talents and treasure in the hope we will, like the good steward in the parable, one day hear his words: ‘Well done, good and trustworthy [one]; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your [Lord]’. (Matthew 25:23)

Yours, Lord, is the greatness, the power, the glory, the splendour and the majesty; for everything in heaven and earth is yours. All things come from you, and of your own do we give you.

St Mary, Balcombe Trinity Sunday 12th June 2022

 

Today we celebrate the revelation of God as an eternal fellowship of love, three persons equal in majesty, undivided in splendour, yet one God.

The doctrine of the most holy and undivided Trinity is challenging, relevant, intriguing and essential – four headings to steer our delving this morning into foundational truth and life.

Firstly it’s a challenge. Reason takes you so far in Christianity. We could never have invented God in three persons, its revealed truth. Then you have the question of weighing other revelations – Islam and Hinduism besides the Judaism from which the Trinitarian revelation came. 

Preachers go on leave this Sunday for fear of a seemingly cold, calculated, mathematical doctrine. Three in one and one in three. Why three? Why not one, says Islam, why not more says Hinduism, why not none says the atheist mocking our feeble attempts to get our mind round God three in one.

There’s the challenge set before us in Trinitarian faith but that challenge is based on historical events. These clearly reveal the nature of God in the coming of Jesus, whose death and resurrection we’ve been following up to Ascension Day, and the coming of the Spirit on Pentecost Day. It’s a challenge that might lead you to the library or the internet so you can better answer for your faith to those who believe in one God, no God or many gods as opposed to one God in three persons.

Secondly the doctrine of the Trinity is utterly relevant. I’ve been busy preparing couples for marriage recently and how good that’s been, yes, how countercultural even given the falling away in this commitment. Marriage as a union of life-giving love points us to the Trinity, because human beings are in the image of God who is himself a union of life-giving love. Keeping true to ourselves as human beings, and true to the life-giving nature of marriage is keeping true to God as he has revealed himself to us.  God as love within himself. How could God be so without the distinction of persons within him? 

Challenging, relevant – thirdly the doctrine of God should be intriguing. The eternal fellowship of love that is God draws us into himself. What after all is the Church for other than to serve God’s purpose to bring as many souls on earth as possible into fellowship with him? 

The doctrine of the Trinity is revealed first of all in Our Lord’s coming into a human family with Mary and Joseph, into village life in Nazareth, then into the missionary partnership of the disciples. That divine society continues after his resurrection and the gift of the Spirit as one, holy catholic and apostolic church which is God’s never-ending family!

How intriguing God is, and we are. If you want evidence for God look in the mirror and read Psalm 8 You have made (us) little lower than the angels and crown (us) with glory and honour. More than that, a human being in isolation isn’t a true human for, in John Donne’s words, no man is an island. What’s intriguing about God as divine society mirrors what we find intriguing about ourselves, namely our desire for society and friendship. This desire will be fully satisfied only in the communion of saints who can be thought of as standing near God as a corona or crown around the sun.

Challenging, relevant, intriguing – lastly the Trinitarian doctrine of God is essential.

It is essential because Christianity is a religion of salvation and that salvation stands or falls on the divinity of Jesus Christ. We read Jesus words in today’s Gospel all that the Father has is mine…the Spirit will take what is mine and declare it to you (John 16:15). 

Does my eternal destiny depend on my own good works, lacking as they are, or on a relationship freely offered me by God in his Son? 

In Jesus do we really meet with God himself? 

These, as they say, are the twenty four thousand dollar questions hidden behind keeping a feast day for the Blessed Trinity. 

The doctrine might sound cold and mathematical but it follows a logic of love, love beyond all measure, extravagant, unconditional love for God so loved the world that he gave his only Son Jesus Christ so that all who believe in him should not perish but have everlasting life. (John 3:16)

To believe this is to believe God isn’t One but One God in three persons. 

It’s challenging to so believe – God is God and has revealed himself in this way and not another way.

It’s relevant - the way we see God affects the way we see ourselves and steers us from unworthy pursuits.

It’s intriguing because the loving fellowship of God in three persons chimes in with our sociable nature and draws it to joyful completion in the communion of saints

It’s essential doctrine because without it the divinity of Christ falls, the word of God is emptied of power and the sacraments become empty ritual as God’s coming to us in Jesus and the Spirit is denied.

May all I have shared enrich the eucharist we now offer through, with and in Jesus Christ, to whom, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, be all might, majesty, dominion and power now and for evermore. Amen.

St Gabriel, Pimlico Churchill Gardens Assumption 15th August 2021

 

When we look at human origins we enter troubled waters for those who stick to biblical literalism. Sometime back I read Douglas Palmer’s book Origins – human evolution which provides a fascinating summary of the 20 million year evolution of the human family going from the Proconsul plant-eating monkey to chimpanzee-like descendants up to 2 million years back. Then homo habilis, erectus, neanderthalensis and sapiens. Here above is an illustration capturing the sense of this.

The issue of creation versus evolution has been a consuming issue for some but the main flow of Christian biblical interpretation goes hand in hand with God’s other reference book, the book of nature. We expect truth from both sources, God’s written word and the study of the creation we call science. The truth about salvation is, of course, only in one of those books. Christians believe the Bible can’t be mistaken as it presents the good news of Jesus to honest seekers but we don’t claim its infallibility as a science text book.

When we look back at human origins we’re bound to the biblical doctrine of our being created in the image of God and human beings’ fall expressed in the poem of Adam and Eve and in the doctrine of original sin. ‘All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God’ we read in the letter to the Romans 3v23. How we see the emergence of consciousness, the soul and its capacity to be both one with God and to sin is an important question that needs setting in perspective and the best perspective is to look forward from our origins to our destiny. Today’s Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary provokes above all days the thought of human destiny as we ponder the first of the redeemed.

God gave us life through the great chain of being described both by science and by Genesis. This chain started with one cell organisms and moved through multicellular organisms to plants, reptiles then mammals climaxing in the human family. 

God gave us life so he could give us his life. It is a difficult question to answer, exactly when the human soul first emerged, exactly when a human being first welcomed, worshipped and sinned against God.

If the supposed 4.6 billion year history of the earth is crammed into a single day, the whole of recorded history is compressed into one fifth of the second before midnight, a blink of an eyelid. 

In that blink we have the emergence of the soul and human sin.

In the same blink we have the emergence of a soul perfectly open to God.

When the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman… so that we might receive adoption as children. (Galatians 4v4)

The process of creation, the evolution of the human race, led to the woman ‘fairest of that race’ whose soul opened to welcome the life of God and its consequences so that we might receive adoption as children of God.

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God...(who) for us and for salvation came down from heaven, was incarnate from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and was made man. (Nicene Creed)

Through Mary the Son of God became the Son of Man so that children of men could become children of God.

God came into the soul and body of the Blessed Virgin forever. It was a new creation as important as the first. God, who made all out of nothing, who set up and steers the chain of evolution, went deeper with the world. 

Having established by his grace perfect obedience in a human heart he entered the depths of that heart and opened up a new chain of being that we’re part of, the communion of saints.

In Christian tradition we look backwards to Eve. We look forwards to Mary.  The greeting of Gabriel, Hail, in Latin Ave can be written backwards, Eva, Eve. Mary is the new Eve as Christ is the new Adam. The great Anglican hymn writer Bishop Ken’s hymn speaks of this:

As Eve, when she her fontal sin reviewed, wept for herself and all she should include,

Blest Mary, with man’s Saviour in embrace, joyed for herself and for all human race.

Then speaking of today of Mary’s heavenly birthday the hymn goes on:

Heaven with transcendent joys her entrance graced, near to his throne her Son his Mother placed;

And here below, now she’s of heaven possest, all generations are to call her blest.

We see the exaltation of Mary in all our scripture readings today. It’s an exaltation to be the lot of all who welcome Our Lord as she did. Mary is first redeemed and first fruits of the harvest of souls God planned when he made the world and re-made it through her.

This feast of Mary, Mother of the Lord, centres on human destiny.

We came to this day through the animation of the material world, the evolutionary process from cells to plants and animals to monkeys to homo sapiens.

We can head from this day towards the fulfilment of the new creation beyond this world in heaven for God who gave us life has given us his life which is immortal.

That life first planted in Mary is open to all who’ll direct their attention away from self-indulgence and self-centredness to let Jesus make them members of his family of redeemed humans we call the church.

We were made, however that may be, in God’s image.

We are destined, however that might be, for God’s glory.

The ‘how’ of our creation is beyond us.  Not so the ‘how’ of our redemption. 

Just as Mary cooperated with God, so must we. This is the only way for human nature to flourish as it’s meant to. 

Salvation is human flourishing in this world and the next. It’s  communal, being one with the church in this world and the next. 

God gave us Jesus through Mary and with Mary he gave us a new destiny that we need to choose and own. 

It’s not what you have been or what you are that God looks at with his merciful love but what you would be. So wrote the author of the medieval book, The Cloud of Unknowing.

God has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly says Mary in today’s Gospel.

God lifts those who’ll let him lift them - like Mary herself, those with a heart for God’s future.

Mary stands close to us and to the whole church as an example and as one who prays with the company of the saints that surrounds us for all of us to reach the destiny God has for those who’ll be uplifted.

We can’t save ourselves. God can but without us he cannot. Without our permission God can’t get his life into ours nor join us to the company of the redeemed.

Getting that Christ-life into our hearts is what Christianity is all about, what the bible’s all about, what the eucharist’s all about, what Mary’s all about and what the church is all about.

That all comes down to obedience and discipline, as it did for Our Lady, Blessed Mary. 

She was supremely anointed by the Spirit and she was supremely obedient. There’s no anointing, no heavenly joy without earthly devotion.

God grant us such devotion, with and to the Blessed Virgin, and grant, that we who are redeemed by his blood may share with her in the glory of his eternal kingdom. Amen.

Ascension & St Richard, Haywards Heath Salvation - Gift, Promise, Choice John 6 1.8.21

 

Has anyone ever asked you if you were saved? How would you answer?

This morning's Gospel has a lot to say about salvation and what it is to be saved. This month on Sundays we’re reading through the 6th Chapter of St. John's Gospel, a chapter that ends with Peter's famous summary: Lord, to whom shall we go to? You have the message of eternal life, and we believe; we know that you are the Holy One of God.

Salvation, eternal life, is a gift, a promise and a choice - three headings gathering up the teaching of St. John Chapter 6 - so we'll take them one by one!

1. The Gift

Looking over the whole Chapter we see a tremendous emphasis on the wonder and mystery of the gift of Jesus.

The chapter starts with a tale of miraculous feeding. Five thousand are fed - an image of overflowing, wondrous grace.

Then Jesus begins to make many points about this sign, bringing out not just the meaning of that lunch in Tiberias but the ultimate meaning of all things - and how we can enter into that.

The bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world he says in the passage we read this morning, v33.

The multiplication of the loaves represents the abundance of life-giving grace that has come to the earth.

Who is the bread of God? He answers in the passage we will hear next week, I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live for ever. v51.

What a gift! To live for ever! Always we are longing, we human beings. We long for security, for love, for identity, for purpose and reason for life - and here it is, all of that for which we long, offered at last - through the great mystery of Jesus, God come to earth, lifting earthbound beings to live with him for ever!

To be saved is to welcome the gift of Jesus, the Bread of Heaven. The passage on the Heavenly Bread interprets and brings out the full meaning of the gift we welcome in this service week by week.

Can there be a passage in the Bible which speaks more strongly about the need to participate in the Eucharist than verse 53 of St. John Chapter 6: Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.

Salvation is about welcoming Jesus - and what he has done by the separating of his body and blood in sacrifice. It is a gift given for us in the coming to earth, dying and rising of Jesus. You can't be saved, says Jesus, by contemplating your navel, by the vague religiosity of crystals and New Age, or even by our efforts for justice and peace, admirable as they are - but by welcoming the gift of Christ into our souls 

Salvation is presented there as a gift - and also, secondly as a promise.

2. The Promise

You have the words of eternal life says Peter at the end of the chapter. He is confirming his understanding of the earlier teaching where Jesus makes it clear that when we welcome him we also inherit a promise, the promise of eternal life: Anyone who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life

When someone asks you if you are saved they are really touching on whether you feel sure that your life will not be lost when you die.

Are you sure?  Do you know that you have eternal life?

I remember someone rather surprisingly asking a holy and thoughtful priest whether he believed in God.  There was a long pause.  Finally the wise old man replied - I'm not sure, but I'm sure of this - that God believes in me. Those humble, thoughtful words back away from arrogant certainty and they reach powerfully into our spirits.

We may lack belief but that doesn't stop God believing in us. We may be unworthy of salvation - but that does not stop God promising it! If I know I am saved it is because God has promised it to believers and I believe God - I trust God to keep his word to me - the key is knowing the promise.

Evangelism is about spreading good news, which means letting people know about the gift and the promises of God so that they can choose for themselves to believe - which brings us onto the last heading.

3. The Choice

At the end of this sixth chapter of St John’s Gospel we read in v60 that many of the followers of Jesus said, "This is intolerable language.  How could anyone accept it? And they choose to leave Jesus. He then says to the Twelve later in the passage: What about you, do you want to go away too? 

When we contemplate the mystery of Christ we should be profoundly moved, awed by the generosity of God in sending his Son to save us and then giving us the choice of whether we accept him or not. This is awesome - for us to be given a choice.  Awesome, but also perilous for us to be so honoured with freedom to choose in a matter affecting our eternal welfare. There is a further mystery of how God himself seems to make a hidden choice of those who do respond positively to him, so that our choice of God is almost pre-empted by his choice of us.

What a wonder and a mystery - the choices of God! We are saved by choice not by chance. No one has a right to heaven.  You may think you're as good as the next person - but what does that matter when we are talking about having eternal life with God? Who are we, so full of deceit and inadequacy, made of the dust of the earth, full of frailty, to be worthy of God in his holiness? 

Only by God's gift and his promise - and our choice of him.

Lord, to whom can we go?  You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.

To whom can we go?  There is one giver of salvation who gives us today his flesh and blood as life to our spirit!

You have the words of eternal life  You, Jesus, Bread of Life, promise us through our communion with you a quality of life that is in its nature unending.

And we believe Given such a gift and such a promise the choice is ours, to live not by chance but by a definite choice, a choice for Jesus our Saviour, to whom be glory, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, now and for ever. Amen.