St Bartholomew, Brighton Feast of St Matthias, Apostle 14.5.22

 

Today’s Collect rejoices at ‘how God’s love has been allotted to us’.

Do you ever think why the Lord has allotted you a place in the company of the saints and not your neighbour or your sister or your brother?

The mystery of the choices of God is something to ponder so as to deepen humility. As the entrance antiphon from John 15:16 reminded us: ‘It was not you who chose me, says the Lord, but I who chose you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last.’

Today’s Saint must have pondered ‘the lot of God’s love’. Matthias wasn’t one of the original Twelve but after the betrayal of Our Lord and death of Judas Iscariot, someone was needed to take his place. Two men were selected, and lots were drawn to see which should be made an Apostle and we read in today’s passage from Acts how the lot fell on Matthias. 

Being chosen by casting lots seems a random choice at one level but, being a gamble set up by the Holy Spirit after prayer, its consequence came to be seen as expressing God’s will. It was a way of putting the important choice to make up the Twelve into the hands of God.

My presence and yours at Mass this morning traces back both to people we have met who have influenced us towards Christ and, like Saint Matthias, a readiness to put to God’s service the gifts and talents he has given us. It's humbling to consider the seemingly random element of ‘how God’s love has been allotted to us’.

‘It was not you who chose me, says the Lord, but I who chose you to go and bear fruit’. God has chosen us, with our needs and inadequacies as well as with our gifts and strengths to be his servants - and before that to be his.

We work for God, yes, but today’s feast reminds us of the beautiful grace that lies behind that reality. It reminds us as we celebrate Mass, or serve, do the flowers or whatever that the work of the Lord flows from the Lord of the work who is ours for ever.

The Lord make us aware, at the prayer of St Matthias, of his love allotted to us from beyond this world, the One we love before we make the object of our employment.

May your love be upon us, O Lord! It is that love we trust - may you, the Lord of our work, always come before the work we do for you at the altar, in the Sacristy or out there in the world that awaits us after Mass!

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.

Baptism of the Lord (translated) St Bartholomew, Brighton 14.1.18

Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you became believers? Acts 19:2

The Feast of the Baptism of the Lord is a shade neglected in the western compared to the eastern Church. Today’s commemoration in the Eastern Orthodox community is the apex of Christmas known in Greek as Theophany, God’s revelation, with outdoor ceremonies literally chilling the blood, folk diving into pools made in the ice and the like. We’ll not go there - but we will go rather this morning to something or Someone who warms the heart: the Holy Spirit.

Today by the Holy Spirit Jesus was revealed as God’s Son, the Christ, the Anointed One so as to share with us Holy Spirit anointing and there’s nothing more warming to the heart than the Holy Spirit for none can guess its grace, till he become the place wherein the Holy Spirit makes his dwelling.

On this Feast of Christ’ Baptism we sing come down, O Love divine, seek thou this soul of mine and visit it with thine own ardour glowing! May we, like those disciples in Ephesus who hadn’t heard of the Holy Spirit gain ardour (Acts 19:6). May we, like our Lord, anointed by the Spirit, hear God’s voice saying to us individually at this Mass, : ‘You are my Son, my daughter, with you I am well pleased’ (Mark 1:11).

What me? You might ask. How could I be worthy of that? Of God filling my life, of the empowerment in love, joy and peace that Our Lord knew? Well he knew it in his flesh so you could know it! He was anointed so you could be anointed as John the Baptist said in the Gospel: I have baptised you with water; but he will baptise you with the Holy Spirit.

Today we’re talking not just a one-off Theophany, or manifestation of God, but of the choice of and manifestation of God to you and I represented in our Christian allegiance and our sealing by the Spirit at our baptism, confirmation, and our welcoming Christ Sunday by Sunday in Holy Communion that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us.

The Son of God became Son of Man so children of men could be children of God. That’s our good news which though in the providence of God, remains mighty strange!

Both Our Lord’s earthly origins and our own Christian origins thrill with paradox! As the preacher in All Saints, Margaret Street told us the other Sunday Christianity has an ‘extraordinary particularity’. Incidentally I told him afterwards I was helping here and he commented, you’ve got a bigger place to fill than we have! Very true - but the same Catholic religion in London-by-the sea as there at Brighton-in-land!

I’ve distracted you - that phrase ‘extraordinary particularity’ is a good one and is worth examining. Just as the wise men found there own way to Jerusalem but needed special revelation to find Bethlehem so the universal instinct for God needs revelation of where in particular we can find Him.

Christianity’s no man-made religion. It’s nothing made up - its revealed! God so loved the world he revealed - he gave - himself. That revelation unlike that of other faiths is rooted in well evidenced historical events, those we mark at Easter, and in the choice and call the Holy Spirit brings to individuals in every age.

It is as outrageous to logic that you and I welcome the Holy Spirit at this Mass as it is that the Founder of Christianity should appear in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the King. That though is the recipe for salvation planned before the foundation of the world.

On this feast we ponder something given to us that goes beyond but not against reason - the privilege Christ shares with us as his sisters and brothers, children of God, who hear again with him those awesome words: ‘You are my Son, with you I am well pleased’.

The Son of God became Son of Man so children of men could be children of God. 

Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you became believers? Yes, you did, but you need to truly believe it! Believe as surely as Our Lord Jesus is the particular Theophany or revelation of God that you in particular are, through the Spirit’s calling, in words spoken of you at your baptism, a child of God and inheritor of the kingdom of heaven.

You have that grace - even if like sugar put in tea it needs stirring to sweeten the drink.
God sweeten our lives by stirring up the Spirit he’s put within us. May he bless us as we welcome his coming afresh by his Spirit into our lives in the most holy Sacrament. This is my body given for you.. this is my blood shed for you…  O Christian, recall your nobility! God has chosen you, made you his child and fills you with his Spirit!