St Wilfrid, Haywards Heath & Holy Trinity, Cuckfield Distraction 21.7.21

 As he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up (Matthew 13:19)

Distraction - this is what came to me from today’s Gospel - and guilt about it. Our Lord’s interpretation of this passage given later on in Matthew 13 names spiritual distraction as the theft of fruitful living symbolised by the birds eating the heaven sent seeds. Besides being a phenomenon of lockdown, distraction in its spiritual sense is, as Simone Weil describes it, ‘the root of sin’. Taking attention away from love of God and neighbour is to lack understanding and let ‘the evil one come and carry off what was sown in your heart like the one who received the seed on the edge of the path’. 

Because we’ve had so much time to ourselves distraction from such an aim and focus has been inevitable. One of the penalties for many of internet engagement is the continual flow of tempting options to view or engage with that can distract us from attending to God and other people, even if the internet, as at this moment, can bring us close to both.

The spiritual writer Simone Weil wrote: Concentration is the essence of prayer… distraction is the root of sin. This saying came back to me after reading the Gospel image of the seed falling on the field edge inspiring me to write a poem entitled ‘Distraction’ which I will now read. It has four verses:

In a moment of distraction I read

‘Distraction is the root of sin’.

It is certainly a short fall.

Losing sight of the ball

can lose you the game.

A poem though is a distraction

from the prose flow of life,

affirming a higher level,

reminding me I can stand

in mind above that flow.

Other thinking and acting

takes me lower.

Knowing what I ought to do

I am taken from that

by sinful distraction.

To live in the present moment 

serving obligations

yet attending to the high call 

of God and neighbour

will keep me on course.

My poem takes up how distractions can be both welcome and unwelcome. I’d never have written this homily unless I’d been distracted into a poem from the focus required in writing. 

One church member unknowingly helped me prepare this sermon telling me of his own struggle with distraction, working from home with a young child, knowing what he ought to do whilst lacking focus and enthusiasm to get on with it. We talked about the wonder of living in the presence of God and the importance of devices that help keep us in God’s presence at all times not just at worship and in prayer. 

My device to counter spiritual distraction is repeating the Jesus Prayer at all times, unless I get distracted! I want to invite you to join me in repeating it three times and then, it's easy to memorise, do continue on your own into the silence after the homily:

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.

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’.