St Mary, Balcombe Trinity 19(28B) 10.10.21

 

‘Jesus, looking at him, loved him’ Mark 10:21

We are God's sons and daughters and we're going to God's glory. That's the wonderful truth of our faith. 

We come from him, we belong to him, we go to him. We are going forwards and we should ‘hold fast’ to our faith as today’s epistle from Hebrews warns, pressing forwards and not being dragged forwards.

The main incentive to this ‘pressing forward’ as Christians is surely the love and mercy of the Lord.

We need to keep before us his all seeing eye. He sees what we are and he sees what we will be. Yes, as Amos warns, the eye of God sees our shortcomings, but these are no obstacle to his desire for us to cooperate in growing into his design, which is ‘the measure of the fullness of the stature of Christ’ (Ephesians 4:13). We want more of God's vision of how things should be in our lives to dawn afresh upon us and this means searching the Scriptures which can ‘judge the thoughts and  intentions of the heart’ (Hebrews 4:12). There is real power in this searching, power to shake off habitual sins and pessimism and see fresh dawning of God’s vision of how he wants us and how he wants the world.

Yet beyond the truth about us that he’s ready to reveal lies, as I say, his love and mercy towards us which, please God, we are called to capture in a more positive and relaxed attitude towards ourselves.

Someone once said "God picks his friends but he does not pick them to pieces". 

It balances that saying of St. Teresa of Avila, whose feast is on Friday, when her horse threw her in the mud, ‘God, if that's how you treat your friends, it's not surprising you have so few’.

If you feel God is picking at you at this time it will be for a purpose and never destructive of your soul. Let the Lord speak as you examine yourself in his light, always remembering that you are already 100% his child and He is 100% your Father waiting to draw you into what is to be yours as his beloved daughter or son.

The same Teresa of Avila taught people to pray in this way. ‘Imagine’, she said, ‘that you see Jesus standing before you. He is looking at you lovingly and humbly. Prayer comes as you notice he is looking at you lovingly and humbly’. This insight comes from today’s Gospel which shows Our Lord’s look of love towards the rich young man.

Not only, says Teresa, does God look upon us with love, he looks upon us humbly. That means he thinks of himself as less than us! 

Jesus our Lord and God bows down before us as he bowed before his first disciples to wash their feet.

Can there be any more wonderful or encouraging thing in the world than knowing Jesus loves me?

The miracle is this - God loves me even before I do what pleases him. I may love for what I can get out of people but he loves for what he can put in - pure, gracious, generous love!

Love that deals with me according to my needs and not according to my deserts!

Isn’t that true of the way we relate to our own children? I love my sons even when what they do isn’t pleasing to me. Why should that be less true of God my Father’s love for me? Rather it is a million times more true of him!

Now there are times when our children try to teach us something in the way children do. St. Peter was like that with Our Lord when he insisted on washing the Lord’s feet, refusing to allow Jesus to wash his own. ‘Peter!’ The Lord said, ‘If I do not do this, and if you will not let me do it, you have no part in me!’. 

Could it be that Our Lord is challenging you and I this morning as a good parent challenges an overconfident child and says, ‘No - let me go first’? In other words recognise my love for you comes first in all you do. Nothing you do can earn that love. Nothing can remove it either - but things you do can hide it from your perception.

God wants us put in our place. He wants that so he can love and serve us effectively. This is so because only as the truth ‘God loves me’ enters deep into my being can I have the sort of security that removes the burdens and pressures of earthly life.

I end with a famous quotation from the great 18th Century Anglican Teacher, William Law. In his book ‘A Serious Call to the Devout Life’ he writes: ‘Would you know the blessing of all blessings? It is this God of Love dwelling in your soul, and killing every root of bitterness, which is the pain and torment of every earthly, selfish love. For all wants are satisfied, all disorders of nature are removed, no life is any longer a burden, every day is a day of peace, everything you meet becomes a help to you, because everything you see or do is all done in the sweet, gentle element of love.’ 

‘Jesus, looking at him, loved him.’ Mark 10:21  ‘Let us therefore approach (him) with boldness (to) receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.’ Hebrews 4:1

St Wilfrid & Presentation, Haywards Heath Easter Sunday 4.4.21

 

‘Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?’ (Mark 16:3)

The question of the women chimes deep into lockdown experience. When will we get out of this trial? It's a weight upon us with so many dimensions: physical, emotional, spiritual and social. The economic consequences have been dreadful through loss of employment and income. The loss of close friends through COVID and a wave of depression deadening those we love has been harsh. Though I rejoice to stand with you in St Wilfrid’s for the first time in months to celebrate Easter my joy is qualified.

‘Who will roll away the stone for us?’

Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome came to complete the burial rite for Our Lord.  Sabbath restrictions had ended so they were free to do so. The stone was lifted for them - not only the stone but the legalism of Sabbath and the Sabbath itself. Within a short time this gave way to gatherings like this ‘early on the first day of the week when the sun had risen’. The Lord’s people now gather on the Lord’s day - Sunday - on account of what those women experienced. The Lord’s people gather on the Lord’s day around the Lord’s table and, yes, today, most joyfully in the Lord’s house. Well done all who worked hard with Arthur, Derek and this morning, Fr Mike, to get us back in style! ‘This is the day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it… this is the day Jesus Christ vanquished hell, broke the chains of death and rose triumphant from the grave’.

‘Who will roll away the stone for us?’

For those with a weight of intellectual questioning we can offer no proof of Christ’s resurrection, only strong evidence. That is the case for any past event. Belief in the resurrection of Jesus stems from the faith of the church and an accumulation of evidence. Christianity stands or falls on the event which has a documented history captured by the impressive list in our second reading: ‘I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles’ (1 Corinthians 15:3-7).

‘Who will roll away the stone for us?’

The women approached the tomb with a question expressing outwardly the weight inside of them, upon their hearts, through the loss of the one they loved. 

In lockdown we share aspects of bereavement with them this morning, asking where is God in all of this. Our annual Holy Week celebration is grand reminder that God expects nothing of us that he is not prepared to go through himself. Christianity is inseparable from suffering and, this morning, the supernatural working through it.

On Easter Sunday we are gathered to One uniquely qualified to lift hearts from despair. ‘A Christian is a sad man saved from despair by the Cross of Christ’ wrote Charles Peguy. The pandemic is a tremendous weight. We and many in our circle are in bereavement, frustration, depression, loneliness, anxiety and confusion. By allowing the Cross into this darkness, by welcoming afresh the mystery of Christ’s love at Easter, there can be transformation. Burdens lifted. Intercession gaining a spring in its step. Discernment coming afresh. Grace to accept things we cannot change. Courage to make changes we ought to make. All is grace - this is made clear to us on Easter Sunday - all is grace! The gracious God and Father of Jesus does what we could never do or earn or even imagine. God brings all that is out of nothing, Jesus from a Virgin womb and life out of death!

‘Who will roll away the stone for us?’

One weight I feel upon my own heart is the fact this feast of feasts is being celebrated around seven altars or tables in Haywards Heath this morning. Yet I have suggested to me an image of uplift in this scenario. The three women approaching the tomb represent three church sisters, Catholic, Protestant and Pentecostal. On Wednesday morning fifty faces were on zoom convened by St Wilfrid’s to an ecumenical stations of the Cross offered for Haywards Heath. They came from our two Churches, our fellow Churches of The Ascension and St Richard’s and from the Baptist, Methodist, Roman Catholic and Ruwach Pentecostal Churches. We went around the fourteen stations of the Cross hearing thoughts and prayers in turn from the three great traditions, Catholic, Protestant and Pentecostal. The Holy Spirit seemed to be upon us as seven Haywards Heath churches came to kneel at the foot of the Cross. This morning we stand up again recognising afresh that we live best as Churches knowing our individual need of mercy. Whether we are Catholic, Anglican, Protestant or Pentecostal we stand in the same place when it comes to Holy Week.

‘Who will roll away the stone for us?’

It is you, Jesus, you who have done this, are doing it and will do it for us as individuals and churches! There is no knock down proof of a past event but that of Christ’s resurrection invites three questions. Is the evidence for it trustworthy or is it not? Is Jesus the Son of God or is he not? Are you and I destined for eternal splendour or not? As Alexander Schmemann affirms: ‘The only meaningful thing in life is what conquers death, and not “what” but “who” - Christ. There is undoubtedly only one joy: to know him and share him with each other’. May such joy, qualified by the pain we share, lift us so lockdown eases in both its inward and outward aspects.  ‘This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. Alleluia!

Trinity 10 (18th of Year) 31st July 2016

Let your merciful ears, O Lord, be open to the prayers of your humble servants; and that they may obtain their petitions make them to ask such things as shall please you we prayed in the age old Collect for the Tenth Sunday after Trinity.

We prayed it looking back on a day by day chronicle of violent indiscriminate attacks on civilians recently claiming hundreds of innocent lives across Europe. The attack just miles away on a Christian eucharist in Normandy and the murder of a village priest is an extraordinary sacrilege which has impacted those who gather with me at this altar day by day.

Where are ‘God’s merciful ears’ when priests are being slaughtered at the altar? How can we be ‘obtaining our petitions’ in this spate of killings? How can we find and pray for what ‘pleases God’ in this extraordinary scenario?

I put these three questions linked to today’s Collect as a way into capturing afresh the way Christian faith grasps reality’s deepest significance, lighting up God’s big picture and the future he beckons us to.

First let’s look at mercy. The mercy logo on the front of our service booklets this year will have been displayed at Saint-Etienne du Rouvray in Rouen. It is the symbol of the Year of Mercy we’re sharing in Chichester Diocese with the Roman Catholic Church.  Let your merciful ears, O Lord, be open to the prayers of your humble servants. At Mass Fr Jacques would read as I did, for him among the last words he heard, the prophecy of Jeremiah Chapter 14 Tears flood my eyes night and day, unceasingly, since a crushing blow falls… prophets and priests…are at their wit’s end. How those words ring true today!

We have in St Giles a stained glass window of St Etienne. He is St Stephen, the first martyr, who knelt, as Jacques knelt, only to be stoned to death. One of those who stoned Stephen, Saul of Tarsus, was utterly transformed by that experience and became the arch-apostle of Christ.  May our new martyr’s blood avail to turn the wrath of humankind to God’s praise in like measure! Those who murdered Fr Jacques shouted God is great. Today’s collect, and the example of so many holy martyrs, remind us how God’s greatness is found chiefly in his mercy. When we’re made aware of that mercy in the suffering and death of Jesus, of God’s merciful ears attending to our brokenness, we lose any desire for violence. Those aware of their need of mercy have no need to lord it over others, let alone to murder them.

The events of the last two weeks – Nice, Munich, Ansbach, Tokyo and Rouen – are rooted in personal resentments and mental health issues as much as ideology let alone religion.  Let your merciful ears, O Lord, be open to the prayers of your humble servants - prayers for those who know not what they do, perpetrators who’re themselves victims of minds unhinged by the exigencies of 21^st century life.

How can we be ‘obtaining our petitions’ in this spate of killings? I asked earlier. Last Sunday we gave thanks for two ladies in our coffee group whose lives were spared when Penny’s car turned over and crashed. Today we’re thinking about the murder of a priest in Church. How do these two square up?

Our Christian faith is nothing obscure and nor is it geared to outward appearance. To have faith is simply to see your life and your surrounds opening up repeatedly to God’s future, seeing the transforming work of the Holy Spirit in the depth of things, bringing light to the world through both joyful and sorrowful happenings, growing hope and love. Christianity is in this sense the biggest of ‘big picture thinking’.

In a recent publication Pope Francis wrote of faith in these words. Faith appears as a process of gazing, in which our eyes grow accustomed to peering into the depths… each of us comes to the light because of love, and each of us is called to love in order to remain in the light… in this circular movement the light of faith illumines all our human relationships, which can then be lived in union with the gentle love of Christ.

To the eye of faith there’s something deep going on below all the mayhem of world events. Just as we’re gifted by faith to see Jesus behind the words of scripture and the preacher and under the form of bread and wine, the same gift of faith enables us to see beyond the 24-7 news flow something that’s heading to glory. Something moving, as Christ himself moved through suffering and death, into the glorious future of the resurrection spoken of at the end of the Bible when the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away. (Revelation 21:3-4)

Back to the Collect for the Tenth Sunday after Trinity Sunday: Let your merciful ears, O Lord, be open to the prayers of your humble servants; and that they may obtain their petitions make them to ask such things as shall please you

We’ve reflected upon God’s mercy and how Christian faith sees its operation by opening us up to the depths of reality. Lastly we might ask, contemplating the unpredictable godless violence we’re living through How we can find and pray for what ‘pleases God’ in this extraordinary scenario?

In this last consideration I invite you to move from what I’ve shared about how God’s merciful love enfolds the world and beckons it forward into his possibilities on to how we best play our part in working for that best future.

Prayer, yes, is work, work that starts from the facts of life. In the current situation there are a number of indisputable facts we must lift to God:

·      The responsibility of civic and national leaders to improve the world by addressing the sources of injustice and conflict

·         The responsibility of people of faith, and especially faith leaders, to dialogue with one another and also to remind their own communities of the positive things said in their traditions about non-adherents

·         The responsibility of everyone on the earth to see the atrocities shown on our TV screens not primarily as a call to retribution let alone revenge but as a call to recover common humanity and a fresh sense of our need of mercy from God and from one another.

These are some ends that are surely pleasing to God which might inform our working out of the beautiful, thoughtful and challenging collect for today:

Let your merciful ears, O Lord, be open to the prayers of your humble servants; and that they may obtain their petitions make them to ask such things as shall please you; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.                        

Let your merciful ears, O Lord, be open to the prayers of your humble servants; and that they may obtain their petitions make them to ask such things as shall please you; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.                         Common Worship Collect for Trinity 10

Octave Sunday of Divine Mercy 3rd April 2016

On this Divine Mercy Sunday in the Diocesan and global Year of Mercy we’re reminded Easter’s more deeds than words.

Easter’s an event. It’s a mercy mission from God believers become part of that’s changing the world.

The mercy of God is a torrent that has burst its banks wrote St John Vianney. It carries off our hearts in its wake.

Brendan Woodhouse is a volunteer with the United Society supported Lighthouse Refugee Relief which provides care for refugees arriving on the Greek island of Lesvos. He recalls how he helped to save the life of a baby after a boat carrying refugees capsized at night in freezing water about 30 metres from the shore.

He writes: ‘people were hysterical, screaming, sobbing and frightened. On sound in particular I will never forget: the screams of a mother who had lost her baby. ‘While everyone else was facing he shore shouting for help, she was facing out to sea. She shouted at me and pointed out to sea. About 15 metres away I could see a little black dot, bobbing up and down in the water.

‘I swam as fast as I could, knowing I was putting my life in danger as I’m not the greatest of swimmers. Eventually I reached it: a five-month-old baby girl, wrapped in a blanket, face down in the water, with no lifejacket. I grabbed her and look at her face. Her eyes were rolled back. She was not breathing. She was as white as can be, but I knew she stood a chance.

‘I swam backstroke, facing the stars, with the little baby on my chest. I kicked a fast as I could. With my left arm I paddled, and with my right arm I pressed up and down on her chest, ‘I swam past people screaming for help. I swam with everything I had and more. I prayed to God, begging for her life.

Eventually I reached down with my feet and touched rock. I balanced as best I could and gave her five rescue breaths. After the second breath, she sicked up water from her lungs and started to cry. It was the most beautiful sound in the world because I knew I had breathed life back into her’.

Brendan reached the shore where other volunteers took over. The baby’s condition was stabilised. Then she was reunited with her mother and rushed to hospital, where she made a full recovery. Henry Hartley, of Lighthouse Refugee Relief, said: ‘The funding we have received from United Society is directly responsible for saving lives’.

You helped save that baby and others. You did so by your gifts to United Society, formerly USPG, in our orange envelopes from January to March that the PCC doubled before sending it to this mercy mission.

That graphic human story reminds us how the resurrection of Christ is like dynamite. It has wide and enormous impact for it’s an ongoing explosion of love, joy and peace which counters all that’s wrong in the world. It’s about life, life after death of course, but life before death as well.

The year of mercy is a reminder of this. In the year’s mercy logo, which we’ve blown up this week, you see the risen Lord Jesus taking the lost on his shoulders, just as Brendan Woodhouse took and carried that baby. Jesus carries us, in our weakness, to the home of the Father. I have been very aware of this mercy ministry these last weeks as I’ve been his instrument in helping carry dying brothers and sisters.

Our Lord’s mercy mission is the conquest of death. It’s also collaborative conquest of death-dealing hunger, injustice and disease afflicting those in the prime of life. Jesus invites us to carry others in God’s mercy mission of redemption.

In the image on the eucharist booklet, the eyes of Jesus merge with the eyes of our fallen nature. Christ sees with the eyes of Adam and Adam can now see with the eyes of Christ. Easter is about the gift of those eyes in a new nature, a new capability to see possibilities beyond mortal imagination.

Moving from the troubled shores of a Greek island to a peaceful Sussex village you might wonder where God’s mercy mission is here - hope you do! I hope you give yourself each day, as I do, to be used as best you can to his praise and service.

In Lent a dozen of us met in the Martindale to look at the Acts of the Apostles with an eye to serving the needs of the community: Acts for Action. The PCC looked at some of the points raised there at its meeting on Thursday. In particular we thought about using P&P to celebrate month by month the different organisations, some 40 in number, that impact our life together as a village, and to give thanks for them also in Church on occasion.

Loneliness was something that came up, as did parenting. Engaging both these areas is a mercy mission, incredibly important, incredibly difficult. Difficult to allay and to help, save a life orientation of service that’s what we as Easter people are committed to.

The village empties of workers and their children each morning. At this holiday season it empties for a week or so. As you go round visiting homes as I do, you find in the day, away from weekends and out of holiday season, a sprinkling of home based workers, young mums, elderly and housebound. The bus stop’s a big feature, elderly folk getting out, getting away, meeting others there and beyond in Haywards Heath.

How do you help the lonely or those struggling as parents? Being there, whilst not getting in the way, is our mercy mission. Inviting folk to Thursday coffee, or the third Friday village lunch. If you can, going on the coffee or chef rota. Both ventures are a mercy mission. You might have read Faith in Sussex – do pick up a copy of this month’s Diocesan magazine. There our village lunch is styled a mercy project, providing as it does a place of belonging for all through a high quality £4 a head lunch at which all are welcome. Bishop Martin is coming to it on 16^th September.

St Giles does a lot to help parents across Sussex through collections and food gifts towards Diocesan Family Support Work. My wife Anne has just retired from promoting FSW in deaneries and has exceptionally written a report in this month’s P&P. Veronica Griffiths is still the representative for St Giles, linking us with that work and has appealed repeatedly for someone to take over.

Easter’s deeds more than words. It’s an event, a mercy mission from God believers are part of that’s changing the world primarily through little acts, like that of Brendan with the baby, like what, less dramatically, you’ve got planned ahead this week, or the spaces and times you leave unplanned for surprises of the Holy Spirit.

The mercy of God is a torrent that has burst its banks. It carries off our hearts in its wake.

In our day to day, hour to hour living we are carried by Our Lord, and with him carry others, as we discern, being his instruments. There is an ocean of need around. Our prayer and merciful action looks a drop in that ocean – but it matters! It will matter more, impact more, if we see ourselves as we really are, caught into the torrent of mercy that flows from the cross, bursting banks and carrying our hearts in its wake.

Easter Day 2015

The Pope has declared next year a Jubilee year with the theme of mercy.

It got me thinking of how mercy is God’s great quality beyond reason that is revealed in the resurrection.

Its unreasonable human beings live beyond a reasonable lifespan.

Its unreasonable what exists should come out of what doesn’t exist.

Its unreasonable wrong doings held against us be lifted when we’re sorry for them.

Or that the power of sickness be broken by healing, the thrall of evil powers be lifted by deliverance.

Yet… I believe it is so!

I believe in Jesus Christ who on the third day rose again… in the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.

In short I believe in mercy.

This morning Jesus Christ shows the triumph of mercy over judgement.

The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord Romans 6:23

Death and punishment for wrong follow reason but God’s mercy goes beyond reason!

In the letter of James Chapter 2 verse 13 it says Mercy triumphs over judgement and this is shown to us supremely this morning.

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it but because by it I see everything else. That lovely quote from C.S. Lewis is on his memorial stone in Westminster Abbey.

The Sun has risen this morning but this dawn is a dawning not just of light for 5^th April but of light from the Spirit that opens inner eyes of faith so we see the Lord and, as Lewis says, once you’re Christian you see all things in the light of the Lord.

The light of mercy!

The mercy of Easter Sunday overcomes sin with unconditional joful acceptance. It does so as surely as Jesus forgave his first broken disciples their denial and betrayal of him.

The forgiveness of sins is inseparable from the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. The risen Christ announces the same on Easter night. Peace be with you he says to his broken, guilty followers. Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them. John 20:21-23

I believe in the resurrection! I believe in mercy!

God’s mercy triumphing over my judgment of myself.

The lie that I’m worthless, good for nothing and unworthy of being God’s child is countered by the blood Jesus shed for me. Shame has no hold on me once I give the risen Lord my sins.

God’s mercy triumphing over the judgment of others we’re so prey to. As resurrection children we’re not to be controlled or held captive to the judging of others. Jesus is going ever before us countering ‘tit for tat’, breaking the judgemental chains that snare us.

The community of the Resurrection, which is the Church, welcomes every outsider and especially those bound by the chains of judgment and pain.

For freedom Christ has set us free.

God’s Son came to love and free everyone on earth who’ll humble their pride, turn and follow him. So it is that we, as Jesus followers, come to be known by compassion for everyone no matter how rich, poor, sick or healthy they are.

To believe in Jesus risen is to believe in mercy.

God’s mercy triumphing over judgment.

The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Peace be with you… Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them.

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it but because by it I see everything else.

Living a simpler Christian life (1) 16th November 2014 A four part sermon series looking at the Jesus Prayer

Words from the end of today’s second reading from 1 Thessalonians Chapter 5v11: God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.

How can I live a simpler Christian life?

Is there a summary of faith that’s clear, memorable and portable?  A biblical aid to praying at all times?  A means of Holy Spirit empowerment to bypass a distracted mind? Is there an instrument of Jesus Christ useful to carrying his worship into life and vice versa?

The Jesus Prayer of Eastern Orthodoxy, ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner’ is such an instrument. Thoroughly biblical, carried forward by the faith of the church through the centuries, it stands as unique gift and task.

Over the next six weeks I will be sharing four sermons on the Jesus Prayer, it’s simple good news and capacity to empower with practical guidance on how to welcome and use it along with encouragement to attain the simplicity of life it offers.

I have come to believe there’s nothing new in Christianity, just the need to enter the day by day newness of Jesus. In this sermon series I’ll look at how that newness has refreshed me through reciting ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner’ so as to realise in my life the biblical injunction to pray at all times.

The Jesus Prayer is inhabited by Jesus who is an effective reminder that God is love and has mercy on us frail mortals.  It is a prayer discipline that states the simple good news of Christianity, provides Holy Spirit empowerment to bypass distracted minds, links worship and life and resonates with the faith and prayer of the church through the ages.

I want to think with you about the good news basic to the Jesus Prayer and show how the spiritual discipline of continuously saying it, which is found in Orthodox Christianity, builds from its biblical base. We’ll then change gear to look at how the simplification to anxiety and mental distraction that many people seek in Buddhist type mindfulness exercises can be found in the Jesus Prayer as a ‘God-given mantra’. We’ll end with practical advice about saying the Jesus Prayer, how it helps in relating worship to life and in building up the integrity of Christian believers.

I had known of the Jesus Prayer for thirty years before I welcomed it as the gift and task it is to help us ‘pray without ceasing’ (1 Thessalonians 5:17).  As a priest leading worship, attending to people’s joys and sorrows and the stresses and strains of church administration  I have found the Jesus Prayer an invaluable aid and this is because of the simple message it holds before me that God loves me and all that is, minute by minute, day by day and for all eternity. 

In the early years of the Church, when there was heavy persecution, if a Christian met a stranger in the road, he sometimes drew one arc of a simple fish outline in the dirt. If the stranger drew the other arc, both believers knew they were in safe company. The early Christians used the secret sign of the fish because the Greek word for fish ‘icthus’ was   an acronym for ‘Jesus Christ, Son of God and Saviour’, the earliest creed and the shortest statement of Christian faith. The Jesus Prayer is a short expansion of that personal creed which is expressed by St Paul, for example, when he says: ‘I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me’(Galatians 2:20b).

‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God’ implies the historical figure of Jesus is universal Lord and Son of God. Behind that statement is the implication that the invisible God has in one human life at one time and place made himself visible, supremely upon the Cross, showing us his love to be witnessed to every generation.

God who made all and loves all desires to claim all - starting with the human race made in his image.  The first clause of the Jesus Prayer affirms the good news Jesus brings to our lives, news that we come from God, we belong to God and we go to God. ‘The eternal God is our refuge and underneath are the everlasting arms’ (Deuteronomy 33:27 NIV)

It’s that faith I expressed when, for example the other day I was in the gym.  ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner’ I repeated on the rowing machine. Time in the gym helps get me out of my mind into my body and that was especially welcome as I’d lacked exercise that day. I’d been sitting around at prayer, with the family or the computer, the school head, a bereaved family, home communicants and a troubled parent as well as putting my mind to celebrating the eucharist, burying cremated remains and finishing the weekly news sheet. 

Gym time helps our bodily well being. It can also be deep thinking time, though this can turn into anxious mental preoccupation, which is why I think many people wear headphones to engage their minds as they exercise their bodies. No headphones today, I thought, but a conscious coming back into the Lord’s presence.  As I recovered the Jesus Prayer again it flowed with the rowing movement just as its pace fits to the natural rhythm of breathing in and out.

As the prayer centred me I became aware again of God’s love present alongside me in Jesus, of a dispelling of negative preoccupation and an outward focussing upon all those exercising around me.  The Lord used my recovered discipline of continuous recitation to turn me out of myself in loving intercession towards my neighbours which was expressed later on in some friendly greetings and one conversation with a young man intrigued about why some of his friends had started attending a neighbouring church that was full of young people. ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God’ I repeat the Jesus Prayer under my breath, and find myself emphasising the second phrase ‘have mercy on me a sinner’.

The phrase ‘have mercy on me a sinner’ in the Jesus Prayer echoes both heartfelt prayers to Jesus in the Gospels and a phrase that recurs in Christian worship: kyrie eleison, literally ‘O Lord take pity on me’

The Greek verb eleeo used in many prayers to Jesus in the Gospels and in the kyrie eleison of Christian worship ‘signifies, in general, to feel sympathy with the misery of another, and especially sympathy manifested in action’. The New Testament revelation in Jesus Christ is of ‘God who is rich in mercy’. (Ephesians 2:4) who in the words of today’s epistle has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.

To show mercy is to treat others as better than they are. In the Jesus Prayer we are not so much asking the Lord repeatedly to demonstrate mercy to us but affirming and celebrating that quality and allowing it to brush off on us and make us more fully his instruments of forbearance.

The great thinker Simone Weil writes ‘that two great forces rule the universe: gravity and grace. Gravity causes one body to attract other bodies so that it continually enlarges by absorbing more and more of the universe into itself. Something like this same force operates in human beings. We too want to expand, to acquire, to swell in significance. …Emotionally, Weil concluded, we humans operate by laws as fixed as Newton’s. “All the natural movements of the soul are controlled by laws analogous to those of physical gravity. Grace is the only exception.” Most of us remain trapped in the gravitational field of self-love, and thus we “fill up the fissures through which grace might pass.”’ 

The choice to live for God is a choice to live under grace and mercy and not under compulsion. It is an ongoing choice which the Jesus Prayer can facilitate. The beauty of the age old Jesus Prayer is its being a continual reminder both of God’s mercy towards me and of my call to imitate it in my dealings towards others and towards myself. It is a reminder true to the action we are part of this morning in the eucharist as we see that mercy before us in Christ’s body broken and his blood poured forth.