St Wilfrid & Presentation, Haywards Heath Vigil of the Annunciation 24.3.21

As a beautiful hymn expresses it:Then gentle Mary meekly bowed her head. ‘To me be as it pleaseth God.’ She said.’ 

This morning God wants your Yes a Yes said in spiritual communion – Amen to the Body of Christ - a Yes from the depth of your heart of allegiance to Christ on his Mother’s Feast Day.

We say Yes as Mary did because God has said Yes to us through his stated plan to establish and gather together all things in Christ. He needs our Yes as he did Mary’s for that to be accomplished. Yes to the unification of the cosmos. 

To say No is hell – the Trinity or hell, there is no middle way - that’s Christian Faith.

Let’s look at how your Yes or my Yes might be voiced this morning.

It may be that there’s a scheme ahead that’s very right for you and yours but requires something of a calculated risk, a leap of faith, a costly Yes. Say it this morning at this eucharist.

Or it might be the pain linked to the restrictions placed upon us by COVID-19 begging from you a more profound surrender to your state of life. So often the answer to our problems lies in changing the way we look at our life and especially in positive resignation to the will of God in our circumstances. Sometimes we lack joy and gladness and that deficit traces to a fighting of harsh circumstances that need acceptance, as with lockdown, so we pray with Mary, Yes, Lord, be it unto me according to your will. 

Dare I say, is it Mary you need to say yes to? She is Jesus’s Mother and Mother of believers. Welcome her, say Yes Jesus, with you I love the One you love above all. Shall we not love thee Mother dear whom Jesus loves so well?

We live in a rich place with richly gifted people. How do we get more of these riches consecrated to God’s praise and service? 

It’s a key question the addressing of which affects the future of St Wilfrid’s and The Presentation because it affects another key question, namely, how do we get more people to embrace the love, truth and empowerment that is in Jesus?

Christianity isn’t just a crutch for the weak – it’s that OK I well know it – it’s a direction of strength to good. So many strengths are put to destructive use, yes, even in this town! To accept and say Yes to Jesus is to lose ourselves to gain ourselves and contribute to the gaining of God’s universal plan to bring all things to himself.  In the process we gain confidence, not self confidence, but the certainty that rests on the certainty of God we’ve given way to. 

With this comes the Spirit’s anointing. It came with that first great Yes from Mary in Nazareth.  Behold the servant of the Lord be it unto me according to your will she said and the Holy Spirit overshadowed her. 

God sought Mary’s Yes and he seeks ours so he can anoint us as he anointed her. He seeks our gifts to be employed for his praise and service. In the frustrations we bear it is good to be reminded that God seeks our Yes before he seeks our success both as individuals and as a church.  

Blessed Virgin Mary: God’s Yes 16th August 2015

Words from the second letter of St Paul to Corinth, Chapter 1v19-20

For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you, Silvanus and Timothy and I, was not "Yes and No"; but in him it is always "Yes." For in him every one of God's promises is a "Yes." For this reason it is through him that we say the "Amen," to the glory of God.

Christianity – for Paul or for us – rests not on a truth we build but on a God who is truth, who speaks truth, who acts out truth in sending his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem us and who promises to lead those who trust him into all truth. God’s Yes has no ambiguity about it, unlike our own affirmations.  No "Yes and No"; but in him it is always "Yes."  

That cry years back of Barack Obama yes, we can fulfilled now but in part catches us especially as Christians because our religion is a real ‘yes, we can’ religion and our bishops and priests and people are ideally ‘yes, we can’ guys mirroring their ‘yes, we can’ Lord and his ‘yes, we can’ Mother.

Today’s eucharist booklet for the Festival of the Blessed Virgin Mary has a Yes theme at top and bottom because she above all Christians embodies what it is to say ‘yes, I can’. [As we just sang] [As that beautiful hymn expresses it:] Then gentle Mary meekly bowed her head. ‘To me be as it pleaseth God.’ She said.’

This morning God wants your Yes – a sung Yes in a moment – a Yes said at the altar rail – Amen to the Body of Christ - and a Yes from the depth of your heart, a yes of allegiance to Christ on his Mother’s Feast Day.

We say Yes as Mary did because God has said Yes to us through his stated plan to establish and gather together all things in Christ.

He needs our Yes for that to be accomplished. Yes to the unification of the cosmos.

To say No is hell – the Trinity or hell, there is no middle way - that’s Christian Faith.

Let’s look at how your Yes or my Yes might be voiced this morning.

It may be that there’s a scheme ahead, possibly financial, that’s very right for you and yours but requires something of a calculated risk, a leap of faith, a costly Yes. Say it this morning at the altar.

Or there might be an inner restlessness or loneliness that begs from you a more profound surrender to your state of life. So often the answer to our problems lies in changing the way we look at our life and especially in positive resignation to the will of God in our circumstances.

Sometimes we lack joy and gladness and that deficit traces to a fighting of harsh circumstances that need acceptance, as in job loss, marital breakdown or bereavement, so we pray with Mary, Yes, Lord, be it unto me according to your will.

Perhaps there’s a parenting challenge, a health challenge or the demands of caring for a sick relative that are wearing you down and has bred an anxiety not of God that you need to surrender him. I’ll say Yes, Lord! Yes today!

Dare I say, is it Mary you need to say yes to? She is Jesus’s Mother and Mother of believers. Welcome her, say Yes Jesus, with you I love the One you love above all. Shall we not love thee Mother dear whom Jesus loves so well?

We live in a rich place with richly gifted people. How do we get more of these riches consecrated to God’s praise and service?

Does the size of my standing order to St Giles or what I place in my envelope evidence a serious commitment to God’s work in this place? How does it compare with what I spend on recreation to please myself rather than God?

God seeks the Yes of someone prepared to serve with David as Churchwarden and that is a costly gift of service most necessary for the building up of Christ’s body.  God wants the Yes of that person from this village as much as he wanted Mary’s from Nazareth!

Peter Vince is having so much pain he needs an operation for a new knee. Our lead Sacristan will be off for a month from next weekend and we need someone to help prepare the altar. There’s need for someone to go under Marion’s wing and help with copying service booklets. Or to help Chris, Rhoda, Marion and the team build bridges between church and young families and our school. Or to work with deacon David to build up the team, young and old, that serves on the altar.

Imagine if Mary had missed God’s affirming invitation or said No to God? What would have become of our salvation?

Imagine looking back on your life in 10 years time and see in your mind’s eye the difference you’ll have made as a result of your wholehearted surrender to God?

Imagine how bare your life history would look if you continue to do it your way and not his?

How do we get more of our gifts consecrated to God’s praise and service? It’s a key question the addressing of which affects the future of St Giles because it affects another key question, namely, how do we get more people to embrace the love, truth and empowerment that is in Jesus?

Christianity isn’t just a crutch for the weak – it’s that OK I well know it – it’s a direction of strength to good. So many strengths are put to destructive use, yes, even in this village! Nimby-ism is one facet. We’re in God’s backyard actually, look at the fields!

To accept and say Yes to Jesus is to lose ourselves to gain ourselves and contribute to the gaining of God’s universal plan to bring all things to himself.  In the process we gain confidence, not self confidence, but the certainty that rests on the certainty of God we’ve given way to.

With this comes the Spirit’s anointing. It came with that first great Yes from Mary in Nazareth.  Behold the servant of the Lord be it unto me according to your will she said and the Holy Spirit overshadowed her. She received the seal upon her and the gift of his Spirit in her heart as a first instalment.  There was a second instalment for her at Pentecost and now she is surely at the centre of that establishing and gathering up of all things in her Blessed Son Jesus Christ.

God sought Mary’s Yes and he seeks ours so he can anoint us as he anointed her. He seeks our gifts to be employed for his praise and service.  He seeks our devotion. With devotion comes anointing in the Spirit, you rarely see one without the other. 

With devotion comes anticipation on earth of the joyful goodness of saints made perfect in heaven as a first instalment.

God seeks our Yes before he seeks our success both as individuals and as a church. He seeks our devotion more than our mission strategy, important as this is.

As with the Corinthians and Paul his faithfulness, his great ‘Yes’ will carry us forward into the spiritual battle that is ours and the consummation of it in the unification of the cosmos.

So to God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, from the heart of blessed Mary and all the faithful be ascribed as is most justly due all might, majesty, dominion and power henceforth and for evermore. Amen.

Palm Sunday I’ll say Yes, Lord 13th April 2014

I’ll say yes to celebration, yes to sorrow, yes to today, yes to tomorrow.

It’s the third heading – yes to today – that I want to major on as part of our preparation for Easter when I hope a good few of us will be moved to write a letter of self offering to God for consumption in the flame of the Easter Candle, symbol of our Risen Lord.

On the suggested framework we've got four headings linked to giving God things we’re grateful for, sorry for, needful of and concerned about. Today’s third theme is about identifying our exact needs for today to give to God.

Give us this day our daily bread we pray. In this last week of Lent we have an opportunity to seek just what those words might mean for you and I in this third week of April 2014.

This is the day that the Lord has made writes the Psalmist (Psalm 118.24). Today is the day of salvation writes Paul (2 Corinthians 6.2).

Just for today, what does it matter, O Lord, if the future is dark? wrote St Therese of Lisieux. To pray now for tomorrow – I am not able. Keep my heart only for today, give me your protection today, grant me your light – just for today.

Our Lord promised us daily bread, bread for today. When God gave bread from heaven to the Israelites in the desert it went off at the end of each day as he was intent his people should seek him day by day. O that today you would listen to his voice: harden not your hearts wrote the Psalmist picking up on this Exodus story (Psalm 95.7-8a)

That reading of the Passion is for today. It’s set annually for Palm Sunday, the only Sunday in the year the Passion of Christ is read, designed to catch those who can’t make Good Friday, but it’s a word from God for this hour, this day.

The Son of God loved me and gave himself for me, as Paul puts it to the Galatians in Chapter 2.20b

God’s love is here for me today, at this mid morning hour on the 13^th April 2014 and I am called to welcome the good news of it.

If we endeavour to live with that love in the present moment we see a number of things getting sorted out in our lives.

What’s important gets underlined from among all that’s pressing upon us. Our wants are sifted through so that we establish our needs.

Under the heading Yes to celebration we thought how we live  as eucharistic people giving God thanks for all he’s given us.  Last week as Passiontide began we considered our need to say Yes to sorrow in the sense of owning up to our sin and seeking the remedy Christ provides for all upon the Cross.

Lord I thank you, Lord I’m sorry – and now our third prayer: Lord I am needful.

In these days of Holy Week we have a privileged time to look at our lives in the light of that Love, which over and around us lies, that finds its focus in the story we just heard from St Matthew’s Gospel.

Thomas Merton described this focussing as like that of the sun shining through a magnifying glass. Just as a magnifying glass concentrates the rays of the sun into a little burning knot of heat that can set things on fire, so the passion of Christ concentrates the ray of God's light and fire to such a point that it sets fire to the human spirit .

The Son of God loved me and gave himself for me.

In the light of his love we see ourselves most clearly - our wants are purified so what we need is made most clear to us - and among our greatest needs is to enter the vulnerability of God in the passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

I end with a story about finding that, and in it, finding our needs, from a passage called Wounded Healers in Elizabeth Basset’s Anthology Beyond the Blue Mountain.

I met him on the train, and before long, I felt I knew him. I felt I could trust him. He was in education: ‘Learning for Life’, he called it.

I said I was interested in education too, so he invited me to come with him to where he taught and learned. It was off the main road, near the fire station.  It didn’t look like a school. You walked in the door of a second-hand shop, and going through the back, you came into a big room, with a lot of people in it.

We stood and looked around.

In the corner was an old man with a white stick. Beside him sat a girl reading him a newspaper. ‘Nice to see young folk helping the blind’, I said. ‘Oh’, he replied, ‘he’s actually teaching her how to see.’

Across the floor in the direction of the toilets came a wheelchair. A palsied boy of eighteen sat in it and a boy of the same age pushed it. ‘It’s great when friends help each other’, I said. ‘Yes, it is…’ he replied. ‘The boy in the chair is teaching the other how to walk.’

An old woman lay in a bed at the bottom of the room. She was covered with open sores. A woman much her junior was bathing her and dressing her wounds. ‘Is she a nurse?’ I asked. ‘Yes’, he replied. ‘The older woman is a nurse. She’s teaching the other how to care.’

Seated round a table were a group of young couples. A doctor in a white coat was talking to them about childbirth. He spoke slowly and used sign language with his hands. ‘I think it is only fair that deaf people should know about these things’, I said. ‘But they do know about these things’, my friend replied. ‘They are teaching the doctor how to listen.’

And then I saw a woman on a respirator breathing slowly. These were her last breaths. And around her were her friends soothing her brow, holding her hands. ‘It’s not good to die alone’, I said. ‘That’s right’, he replied. ‘But she is not dying alone. She is teaching the others how to live.’

Confused and not knowing what to say I suggested we sat down.

After a while, I felt I could speak. ‘Seeing all this’, I said, ‘I want to pray. I want to thank God that I have all my faculties. I now realise how much I can do to help.’

Before I could say more, he looked me straight in the face and said: ‘I don’t want to upset your devotional life – but I hope you will also pray to know your own need, and not to be afraid to be touched by the needy’.                                  

Lent 5 - I'll say Yes, Lord - Baptism of Dexter Elwell 6th April 2014

It is a special joy to welcome Dexter with his mum and dad this morning.

Craig and Samantha were married in 2004, divorced and then remarried two years ago. In their own words they’ve gone back to the truth.

Their choice of Amazing Grace for this service captures their being lost and found as will the baptism promises they make for Dexter this morning.

Today though we’re all invited by our Lent challenge to come back to the truth by writing a Letter to God and returning it in a sealed envelope via the collection plate, to be burned on Easter Day as a sign of offering.

‘I’ll say Yes, Lord’ is the theme of these last two weeks of Lent – yes to celebration, yes to sorrow, yes to today, yes to tomorrow – and the yes artwork includes a Cross.

The sign of the Cross is ‘I’ crossed out – in one interpretation. In another it says ‘Jesus came down from heaven to earth and died upon the cross for me’.  This is the truth we all come back to at Easter.

Incidentally you don’t have to be Roman Catholic or Orthodox to make the sign of the Cross. Our service booklet has the invitation to do so and a pointer to where we might do so together. Anglicans have always included the sign of the cross in their worship and especially in baptism.

Saying Yes to God in the baptism service is about Craig and Sam with Dexter committing to regular worship with God’s family, as the promise puts it ‘with the help of God’.  It’s saying God I turn to you, I repent of my sins, I renounce evil.

In a similar way we as a congregation are being invited to voice a Yes to God in a confidential letter, giving him our strengths and weaknesses, hopes and fears, as concrete expression of our love for him and commitment with him to love and serve a hurting and needy world.

Just as St Giles is getting a spring clean this week, so her members are being invited to make Lent the springtide of the soul it should always be by coming back from all our delusions and pretensions to the truth. That truth we call Christianity, which is relationship with God and one another. Its truth that energises us, as faith comes again and again to life, through God’s amazing grace.

What’s suggested won’t involve going to extra services so much as examining your life and saying Yes to celebration, sorrow, today and tomorrow. Those four headings touch on gratitude, penitence and seeking God’s provision for today and tomorrow. Sometimes it takes putting pen to paper, or keyboard to screen, to present our thanksgivings and needs to ourselves and to God. Talking to him in this way can take us deeper into his love and open up more of what he’s got in store for us.

Doing this together, symbolised by placing our letters in the Easter fire, will I believe have enormous repercussions for St Giles, especially as we look from next week at the annual reports and ready ourselves  for the Annual Meeting in three weeks time with the opportunities there for commitment to service.

How might my letter look, as your parish priest?

Yes to celebration – I would tell God I’m so grateful St Giles is the high achieving church it is in terms of community service.

Yes to sorrow – I would say sorry our ownership of proportionate giving to his work is so weak, reflecting not just suspicion about where the money goes but lack of faith in the future he has for us.

Yes to today – I would tell God in my letter that we need today Elishas to follow Elijah’s like James Nicholson, new leaders to be elected as church officers at the APCM, and leaders in prayer to back them up – today!

Yes to tomorrow – I would tell God of our concern to be a church that grows in faith, love and numbers and of our need for toilet facilities so as to make for that better tomorrow in terms of access to Christian community.

Those are just some of my ideas I’ll give God in my Easter letter, alongside personal thanksgiving for lives I’ve helped touch for him, regrets over my shortcomings, prayer for his Spirit to empower me today and discernment about best future employment of my gifts.

Yes to celebration, yes to sorrow, yes to today, yes to tomorrow is our prayer. It is also that of Craig and Samantha with Dexter. Craig is au fait with the sort of strategic thinking I’ve presented through the large team he runs at EDF Energy. He knows any organisation must struggle to keep the important things the important things. Sam is a good foil to him in her child care work which is less strategic and more of a going with the day by day hour by hour flow of things.

I’ve talked to them and at least two other young families recently about the struggle to get to Church on a Sunday. It seems the answer is a matter of discipline and nothing less. If, as the promises of baptism indicate, church is be all and end all, how can we fail to keep Sunday, the Lords’ day, but with the Lord’s family around the Lord’s table?

Children need a path to follow, they need both to know and to honour the most important things in life. Daily prayer, Sunday eucharist, bible reading, knowing the creed, welcoming the sacraments, confessing your sins, placing your time, talents and money into God’s service are part of serving the great cause that will outlast us all - that of the Love which moves the sun and the stars.

Today’s gospel reading showed us this love as Jesus wept over the death of Lazarus and then showed his power raising him from the dead. I believe Jesus weeps over me and over you and what is deadly within us through sin. Then, again and again, he says ‘come out!’ drawing forth from us the immortal life of his Spirit.

My letter to God will have words like the first sentence of the gospel, ‘Lord, he whom you love is ill’.  Sickness of spirit is our condition but it’s a condition with a remedy. God who made us anticipated this sickness, caused by misuse of our freedom, and provides in Jesus Christ the remedy for sin, sickness, fear, doubt, death and the devil! When we call on God he counters these evil powers with forgiveness, healing and deliverance - but we need to call on him!

This morning we join Samantha and Craig in calling on God for Dexter and his future.  We join them in saying ‘Yes to God’ who offers spiritual regeneration to all who believe and are baptised. Just as this couple strayed from one another and yet came back, so we all stray from God day by day and still find our way back, drawn by his magnetic love. The Letter to God exercise is his call to come back to the truth and love that is in Jesus. 

God wants our yes and our success but he wants our yes more than our success – a costly yes signed, as Dexter will be, with the cross.

Mothering Sunday 30th March 2014

It’s Laetare Sunday, Rejoice Sunday.  ‘Rejoice Jerusalem’ I read for the opening antiphon on Mothering Sunday. We’re allowed a little respite from Lent – today is also called Refreshment Sunday - and we even have flowers. The daffodils will appear at the end for you to take away.

We rejoice today in Mother Church, our Jerusalem on the hill but also the heavenly Jerusalem above spoken of in today’s epistle. As God is our Father the Church is our Mother. The world has reduced this to our earthly mothers, which is no bad thing, especially when, as for many of us, our faith is owed to good mothering as well as fathering.

There is another mother I need to speak to and her image is over the altar.  ‘I am the handmaid of the Lord’ she says in the Gospel we read on Lady Day last week ago: ‘Let what you have said be done to me’.

Her ‘Yes’ to God is become the model for a spiritual exercise we’re inviting of our members over the last three weeks of Lent. This is to compose a Letter to God to be returned in a sealed envelope via one of the Sunday collections. These will be set alight outside by a flame from the Easter Candle at the end of the 10am All age Easter eucharist symbolising the offering of our lives to God.

Week by week there will be teaching on the theme ‘I’ll say Yes, Lord’ to help you in this and the last page of this booklet provides an optional guide to structure your letter.

We’re called like Our Lady to let Christ and his kingdom prevail. This means being attentive to God’s gracious demands, as Mary awaited the call of Gabriel.

We best serve God and others through discerning and then effecting best harnessing of our gifts into his praise and service, and this discernment stems from a determination to listen to God like Mary.

The more real Jesus becomes to us and in us, not least through our Lenten devotion, the more our actions will grow loving as he is loving. It’s not how much we do or say or even listen that matters so much a how much love we put into it so to speak, which is why our listening to God is so important.

How can we best give more of ourselves? The Letter to God exercise might be a tool to do this. It will involve listening to God and then secondly to ourselves with Mary. Mary encourages us towards a positive self-regard. The Almighty has done great things for me she says as part of her Magnificat which is the subject of the second window in this Chapel.

These last weeks of Lent you and I have an invitation to take stock of all that Jesus is doing in our lives and rejoice! To take stock also of the ingrained selfishness, the ‘dog in the manger’ bit so we can give it to God in confession maybe through the Letter to be burned at Easter.

Listen to God, listen to yourself, sift and purify your agenda, then listen to those God puts your way who need your ears! As we listen to others on this feast of family with our outer ears let’s keep two inner ears listening to God and to our own reaction to what we hear lest it get in the way. Like Mary let’s be there for people without getting in their way.  

Let’s go more for surrendering ourselves, as at this Eucharist, to whatever God wants of us so we’re made better Christ-bearers under the watchful care of the Mother of believers. 

Jesus who was first carried by Mary at Bethlehem, who is carried to us in Bread and Wine this morning, waits to be carried by you and I to a waiting world!