Midnight Mass 2018 at St Bartholomew, Brighton

Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. Luke 2:10

Fear not - trust! Trust God - he is above all to be trusted!

There is great tumult in our nation. As 2018 ends no one knows how 2019 will shape Britain’s future in relation to the rest of the world. The credibility of Parliamentary democracy has taken a tumble with that of ministers, politicians and the media leaving many bewildered not knowing who to trust.

Fear not - trust! Trust God - he is above all to be trusted!

His are truth, goodness and beauty and those qualities remain evident among us. Such is the crisis in truth telling that the second and third qualities are becoming preferable pointers to him, beauty especially.

As we gather to celebrate Midnight Mass we owe much to our choir and orchestra and the composer Joseph Haydn for the beautiful music these words interrupt to speak of truth. In his Credo there is no mistaking his witness to Christian truth in the incarnation and resurrection as we shall see.

Haydn like us knew tumult. Whilst he lay dying in the Vienna of 1809 Napoleon was bombarding his neighbourhood. Such was his international reputation as a composer that Emperor Napoleon sent guards to his house to protect him.

The score of the St Nicholas Mass is marked ‘in nomine deo’ as were all Joseph Haydn’s works. With all his flaws Haydn put trust in God seeking the Holy Spirit to make him his conduit of beautiful composition, musical beauty we are being fully immersed in this Christmas night.

Fear not - trust! Trust God - he is above all to be trusted!

In the tumult of an earlier age, as the Roman Empire fell apart in the 5th century, St Augustine of Hippo preached these words in his Christmas sermon on the same text I gave you from Luke 2:10: Fear not the coming of your God: fear not his friendship. He will not straighten you when he comes, rather he will enlarge you...You see then, if you love, how much room he gives you. Fear is a suffering that oppresses us. But look at the immensity of love.

I was taken by his image of Christianity as enlarging. It’s so against people’s perception of what we’re about.

Yet the Babe of Bethlehem accepted those swaddling bands to give us the glorious liberty of the children of God.

God got straightened, bound up, so we could find new spaciousness and be granted power to become his children.

To be a Christian is to have a capacity to rise through natural fear into the glorious liberty of the children of God.

You see then, if you love, how much room he gives you. Fear is a suffering that oppresses us. But look at the immensity of love.

To know you are loved, that God’s Spirit has been poured into your heart, is to connect through trust in God with the centre of the universe and see his perfect love casting out your fear and its oppression over you.

One of the saddest caricatures of Christianity is that it’s narrow minded, a sort of strait laced morality. That Christians are ‘holier than thou’s’ sent as moral policemen to keep the world in order.

A priest once had the privilege of speaking to the comedian Groucho Marx. ‘I’d like to thank you, Mr. Marx’ the priest said, ‘for all the joy you’ve brought into the world.’ Quick witted as ever Groucho replied And let me thank you, Father, for all the joy you’ve taken out!

God forgive us Christians for making our religion seem so constricting.

Tonight Jesus was bound in swaddling bands to expand us out of fear into the joyful immensity of divine love!

When people look at a Church door they might think of it as a way to narrow down your existence. Jesus did say enter by the narrow gate!

Once you come through the Church door – and I mean really come through into day by day discipleship and week by week worship - it’s more like the door of Doctor Who’s Tardis. You enter another dimension, the very dimension opened up tonight.

God became man in Palestine and lives today in bread and wine – so he can live in you and me, opening up our horizons to his and widening our human possibilities into his.

Fear not - trust! Trust God - he is above all to be trusted!

There are people in Brighton this Christmas struggling through cancer, unemployment and family breakdown. Where there’s faith in the Christ Child these circumstances aren’t able to bind and restrict Christian joy – I’ve seen it for myself in many I’ve been privileged to minister to here at St Bartholomew’s.

When the One ‘born to raise the sons of earth’ comes into our lives he enlarges us so we can embrace the world around us in all its frailty and tumult.

Tonight we celebrate God’s investment in humanity giving us new value through a new creation started in the Virgin Mary’s womb. We celebrate the Child of Bethlehem bound in swaddling clothes who went on to be bound on the Cross so we could expand into a whole new dimension of life.

St Augustine once again: Fear not the coming of your God: fear not his friendship. He will not straighten you when he comes, rather he will enlarge you...You see then, if you love, how much room he gives you. Fear is a suffering that oppresses us. But look at the immensity of love.

Look indeed, on this most holy night, and see in the Crib that immense love which enlarges you!

As you welcome Christmas Communion pray for yourself, and for all of us, to live as God made us to live - with greater trust in him!

Trinity 10 (21st of Year) Therefore 24th August 2014

We have just heard 700 words of scripture but its one word I want to call attention to this morning at the start of the second reading in Romans 1 verse 12 and its ‘therefore’.

I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice.

In Greek this is a little word oun just three letters but it’s a great hinge so that the ethical teaching in Romans 1 to 15 has been called oun ethics. All the doctrine taught in Romans Chapters 1 to 11 brings ethical implications spelled out somewhat unsystematically in Romans 12 to 15 and the key or hinge conjunction or adverb is oun – therefore.

Christianity is something beautiful that holds together without seams doctrine, worship, ethics and prayer so that you can’t have one without the other. At St Giles School assemblies as in confirmation classes we teach the Creed, the seven sacraments, the Ten Commandments and the Lord ’s Prayer and we teach them as interconnected as they are.

In the last few months we’ve followed St Paul teaching in his letter to the Romans the new life from God Jesus brings. Now he goes on from Chapter 12 to spell out application – how the new life from God becomes a new life lived for God and verse 2 of our reading gives us a major principle: Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.

A great novelist was sitting down after Church to Sunday lunch with his mother and she asked about the sermon. ‘It said the obvious’ he replied. ‘But what did it say about applying the obvious’ his mother replied.

Here’s the rub for any preacher. Paul knew this because all of his letters, even this most theological letter to Rome, contain help to apply the truth revealed in Jesus Christ.

People need to be reminded more than they need to be instructed wrote Dr Johnson. One of the most difficult things to comprehend is how people can forget events and gifts on which their life and salvation depends.

I summarized the core teaching of Romans in my four part series last month as dynamite with two blasts concerning law and history. Romans challenges the part of us that seeks to earn good will legalistically through good actions and the other part of us that’s deep down lost hope for the future of the world.

The first eleven chapters of Romans says reaching into a right relationship with God is impossible from our side but that God has reached down to us in Jesus to lift us to his heights.  The righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith is banner heading of the letter, Chapter 1:17 saying we’re saved ultimately not by following laws but by welcoming grace.

The second blast of Romans is that the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ has rewritten the history of the world, making the church God’s new Israel and tying in the very destiny of the cosmos with that of God’s children so that, as we read in Romans 8:21 the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

Saint Paul, having taught this in Romans 1-11 moves on to describe its practical or ethical implications and how the doctrine of Christ has power to reset our life and our hope if we apply it. From next week we shall hear more of the practical outworking of faith as the Sunday Lectionary moves forward into Romans 12. 

Like this practical advice from verse 9 headed in my Bible ‘Marks of the True Christian’:  Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honour. Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. 

Paul’s teaching against legalism finds application in outdoing one another in showing honour. His teaching against pessimism about the state of the world is applied by the fortitude that Rejoices in hope, [is] patient in suffering [and] perseveres in prayer.

There is a link between what we believe of Christ and how we live our lives and this extends into how we worship and how we pray.

I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

Christianity is a seamless robe. It is very different to the patchwork of post-modern society which stitches a bit of this belief and that practice together, gives a nod to worship at Christmas and admires Buddhist meditation.

Our Christian faith is something very beautiful, a beautiful as the One who holds us together in his church that weaves together without seams doctrine, worship, ethics and prayer. If at times I as a priest get despondent about change in the Church it’s because so much of the propounded changes – like those of marriage discipline or holy orders – tear that seamless robe, or patch onto it things that are alien to it lessening its beauty. Marriage and holy orders are sacraments,  fountains of grace instituted of God, with age old disciplines. When w change those disciplines or doctrines even there’s a knock on effect that has implications for ethics, prayer and worship as well as the doctrine.

There is a link between what we believe and how we live our lives and this extends into how we worship and how we pray.  All of this is implied by those first two verses of our second reading this morning from Romans Chapter 12.

In the life of St Giles this is becoming more evident as the worship and prayer of the Christian community links more into its biblical and doctrinal moorings and into outgoing care for the community as evidenced for example by the village lunch. I remain convinced many more would profit from this event initiated by some of our members if more of our members who’re around on third Friday lunchtimes took trouble to identify and bring folk along to something that gives heart to Horsted Keynes.

We have a great brand as Christians but, individually as much as together, we need to value its seamless beauty and use it to cloth the needy God sends to us.

I end with what’s probably that simplest of prayers of application we call the choristers’ prayer:

Bless, O Lord, your servants who minister in your temple. Grant that what we sing with our lips we may believe in our hearts, and what we believe in our hearts we may show forth in our lives. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.