St Wilfrid & Presentation, Haywards Heath Remembrance Sunday 12.11.23

Muster Green changed character 99 years ago on November 30th 1924 when Lord Leconsfield unveiled the Haywards Heath war memorial to replace a temporary provision at the town’s ancient road junction. With the appalling slaughter of World War One fresh in their minds, hundreds gathered for the blessing of the seven and a half ton granite slab from Cornwall. 

This morning our parish priest leads a commemoration there of those who died in war for our country in which the war dead of the world today will be much in mind. Palestine and Israel with Ukraine, so much in the news, then, currently less newsworthy but with thousands of dead in the last year: Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Myanmar, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. 

In his Rector’s letter this week Fr Edward quoted from our first reading 'Wisdom is radiant and unfading, and she is easily discerned by those who love her, and is found by those who seek her.' (Wisdom 6.12) going on to pray that the nations might pursue Holy Wisdom in their endeavours, working to bring peace, justice and reconciliation to the world. All week I’ve been wrestling with the other two readings from 1 Thessalonians on death and Matthew 25 on the wise and foolish bridesmaids linked to the Wisdom passage. I thought of telling my story of waiting 45 minutes for a bride up at Highbrook on a chilly December afternoon, or that of our family’s getting ready for son James’ marriage in April at Horsted Keynes - but, after reflection, I decided I’d just comment on the Gospel and head for depth study of the 1 Thessalonians which fits Remembrance Sunday. 

Where are the dead? What has become of them? Will we see them again?

The questions folk at Thessalonica put to Paul are just as important today - as is his answer. This passage has two parts, the second optional in the universal lectionary but compulsory in the Church of England. Let’s listen again to the first section, 1 Thessalonians 4:13-14: ‘We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died’.

Grief for Christians is not without hope. Our faith is built on a revelation well founded in history - the life, teaching, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  Alexander Schmemann writes of this: ‘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’ (unquote). We gather every Sunday, the Lord’s day, as the Lord’s people, around the Lord’s table to celebrate that Jesus died and rose again. That celebration is linked to knowing and sharing Jesus and professing faith in the everlasting love of God. This takes the sting out of grief at the passing of those we love. 

Let’s read on in the second reading from verses 15 to 18: ‘For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will by no means precede those who have died. For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel's call and with the sound of God's trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage one another with these words’ (1 Thessalonians 4:15-18). That second to last sentence says all - ‘we will be with the Lord forever’. 

Its difficult imagery, though, that of the Lord descending from above and the dead coming up from the earth within a three decker universe. In the 21st century we see beyond a three-decker universe to what has been called a multiverse with many dimensions but this does not contradict the Christian Creed.  We just have new symbols of our passing into eternity. One such symbol is the saving of the file of our life into the computer memory of God. That salvation after death, the ultimate hope of Christians, is, according to scripture, Christ-focussed and corporate. 

On Remembrance Sunday as poppies are laid on the ground we affirm that faith founded upon our risen Lord who helps us see through death to ‘the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting’. 

Where are the dead? What has become of them? Will we see them again?

It is Christian faith that at the moment of death the soul is judged by God to pass toward one of two ultimate destinations, bliss or loss, heaven or hell. In that passage the prayer of the Church surrounds and helps all those souls the Christian community commends to God who will welcome help, the origin of the maligned term purgatory. 

God wishes nothing or no one to be lost from the sight of his holiness.

We imagine the moment of death, however painful or merciful physically, will be painful spiritually for most of us as we come to see God, turning our eyes away at his loving, holy glance. His invitation to look him in the eyes, like that of any good parent chastising his child, will be painful on account of our unrepented sins. Purgatory can be thought of, some theologians hold, as just momentary. A moment of pain as holiness meets the unrepentant sin within us, then the soul passing on to await the next stage of cosmic history.

Those who die without sin face God, as if in heaven, and begin to see him face to face, but heaven is not yet heaven until that vision is shared bodily in the company of all the saints.

Those without love continue their self-chosen loneliness into hell, which God permits as he permits free will, though the choice to turn our backs on him forever is not God’s will but something made out of human perversity.

The Christian hope is consummated by the return of Jesus Christ ‘who will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead’. That final judgement will complete our individual judgement at the moment of death. Today’s second reading indicates the general judgement as bringing humanity of past ages to bodily resurrection to greet Christ’s return and be clothed afresh with the body, to make their heaven fully heaven, or their hell fully hell, in the life of the world to come.

In that world the faithful departed will continue in a salvation that is personal, practical, purposeful and permanent. We will continue to know personally, only unveiled, the one who so knows and loves us. We will experience the practical benefit of our sins being cast away from us. We will be fully taken into the purpose of God and with permanence. The pains we've suffered will be lost in celestial praise. Such is salvation - and here is its anticipation as the Lord’s people gather around the Lord’s table. Happy are those who are called to his supper, to receive in Bread and Wine the pledge of future glory! God open our eyes more fully, and the spiritual eyes of those who have died, to see death vanquished through a Crucified Saviour who opens his arms to us and to them and to all eager to embrace and be embraced by everlasting love in the company of the saints!

St Richard, Haywards Heath All Souls' Day 2 November 2022

The Bible begins and ends in a garden, the garden of paradise. We read in the opening pages of Scripture that "God planted a garden eastward in Eden". In that garden "the Lord God walked" and He walked in close friendship with man.

The refusal by man of friendship with God led him into exile from that garden. No longer in peace with God and nature, man saw his garden overgrown and his destiny to labour by the sweat of his hands. Again and again God offered his friendship. Speaking of his people Israel, God said through Isaiah in Chapters 51 & 58: ‘Her desert shall be like the garden of the Lord…you shall be like a watered garden’.

Finally God came himself in the flesh, taking our human nature, to walk in a garden. St. John says in Chapter 18 that ‘over the brook Kedron in Jerusalem there was a garden’, and into that garden the Son of God came to sweat blood and tears for our redemption. Man created to walk with God in a garden is redeemed by perfect obedience offered by perfect humanity in a garden, the garden of Gethsemane.

That redemption is finally revealed to believers in a garden. ‘Now in the place where he was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb where no one had ever been laid. They laid Jesus there’.

Then on the third day the Risen Lord Jesus stands in that garden and addresses the weeping Magdalen: "Woman, why are you weeping? Whom do you seek?" supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, "Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him and I will take him away". Jesus said to her, "Mary." she turned and said to him in Hebrew, "Rabboni!" (Which means teacher).

The gate of heaven is opened to all believers in a garden, the Easter Garden! She supposing him to be the gardener. St. John recognises the significance of that empty garden tomb and the hailing of Christ as "Gardener".

Was it not fitting that he who had acted in creation to form man in a garden should also recreate man in the flesh of his own glorious humanity once again in a garden? And walk once again in a garden, side by side with women and men restored by the resurrection to new friendship with him, through the will offered in Gethsemane and the blood on Calvary?

Mary Magdalene, Peter, John, walking with our Redeemer in the resurrection garden is a pledge of the eternal destiny of all who welcome what Jesus did for them in the garden secretly, and on the cross on high. We too will walk one day with our redeemer in a garden! For the Bible ends as it begins with a garden. St. John the Divine writes in chapters 2 & 22 ‘To him who conquers, I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God...then he showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the lamb’.

Man created in a garden had his eternal destiny opened up in Gethsemane and the Easter Garden and he will enjoy that eternal destiny in another garden, the garden of paradise. Of this garden scripture uses few words save an affirmation that ‘no unclean thing shall enter there’ and that those who enter must be ‘washed in the blood’ of the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ. No good works, however good, lived by the holiest of men will provide robes suitable for the garden of paradise where man is to walk as first intended, in step with God.

It is All Souls' Day and our thoughts and prayers focus on those we love in Christ but see no longer. Inasmuch as they are washed in his Blood, inasmuch as they plead Jesus' perfect offering and not their own righteousness, Scripture says they will have a place in the garden of paradise. 

Yet ‘no unclean thing may enter there’.  Unrepented sin in the heart - this has no place in a Saint destined to walk eternally at the side of a holy God. So our thoughts turn into prayer today as we pray for those we love but see no longer. We pray a washing and cleansing of hearts set on Christ at the hour of their death, so that their uncleanness may disappear and their entry into paradise be gained. 

As we pray we recognise that we cannot change the basic orientation of departed souls, only beg the Lord to speed the cleansing and entry into eternal joy of those He is drawing already to himself.

The cleansing of souls I speak of reminds me of my own cleansing of an old Vicarage garden in North London.  Where the potential is there the Lord allows it to blossom by removing all constraints, just as I removed the briars and ivy to see that garden flourish on the slopes of Alexandra Palace. Our prayer for the Holy Souls today and always is like my efforts in the garden - in both cases we help God to have His Way. 

All Souls' Day reminds every mortal man and woman of their approaching death and the offer of an eternal destiny. That destiny is not automatic. It needs to be sought from the One who planned it in that first garden of Eden, won it in another garden of Gethsemane and now welcomes Holy Souls washed by his spirit in his blood into the garden of rest eternal and light perpetual, of gladness unalloyed and perfect bliss.

God make the picture words falteringly make of such a garden, a word picture supplied by the word of God no less, into a reality for us and all those we love in Christ but see no longer.

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord - and let light perpetual shine upon them! May the garden of paradise be their eternal recreation! 

Trinity 15 (26C) Dives & Lazarus St Richard, Haywards Heath 25.9.22

‘May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest’ was King Charles’s last word and prayer for his mother our late Queen Elizabeth. The phrase from Hamlet is borrowed by Shakespeare from the age old Christian funeral liturgy

‘May holy angels lead you into paradise; may they receive you and with Lazarus, once poor, may you have eternal rest’.

Those beautiful words, used at the procession of a coffin out of Church, capture movement of the soul from earth to heaven parallel to the carriage of the body to earth. They are built from today’s Gospel of Dives and Lazarus from Luke 16:19-31 and they provide opportunity for reflection on our ultimate destiny as believers. 

In the Gregorian chant for this closing rite of Requiem Mass the melodic highpoint comes on the name of Lazarus, the poor beggar in Our Lord’s parable. The musical lifting is a pointer to the poor man’s lifting, Lazarus ‘was carried away by the angels to the bosom of Abraham’.

In today’s parable Our Lord takes an age old story of the reversal of riches and poverty in the afterlife to challenge ‘those among the Pharisees who loved money’ reminding us how those who care nothing for those less fortunate than themselves will receive harsh judgement from God in the life to come.

It’s an uncomfortable piece of scripture underlined by today’s first reading from Amos challenging those who lounge in luxury. I remember Cardinal Hume saying after visiting famine victims in Ethiopia how today’s Gospel haunted him more than any other passage in the Bible. It’s hard to shake off its force. Given our knowledge through the media of needs in Pakistan and elsewhere are we not like Dives - Latin for the money-loving man in the story - unless we give at times to help relief of the destitute?

With that thought let’s change gear to look at the Church’s teaching on the afterlife, something I’ve been treating in my Premier Christian Radio series build from my book ‘Pointers to Heaven’ (show). A passage like today’s Gospel has a prime place in funeral liturgy but its imagery needs unpacking to unveil ‘the life of the world to come’. 

Such an unveiling happened to me personally fifty two years ago on Michaelmas Day 29th September 1970.  I was just 21 then and was travelling on my Lambretta from Harwell, where I’d completed some neutron scattering on a polymer specimen, to Oxford. 

As I drove along the front tyre blew and despite repeated application of front and rear brakes the vehicle veered across the road into the path of a lorry. I said what I thought were my last prayers. Amazingly I passed just in front of the lorry landing on the kerb with a sprain to my thumb and shoulder and lived to tell the tale. Coming so close to death made for a fuller evaluation of the significance of my life. It contributed no doubt to a radical career switch a few years later from polymer scientist to parish priest.

My interrupted journey - it entailed a brief visit to hospital - pointed me beyond my own pursuit of truth as a scientist to Truth’s pursuit of me. Heaven came close. It  became more real to me, especially as the accident occurred on 29th September, Feast of St Michael and All Angels. As for many, God became real to me not through thinking or feeling but through circumstances that stopped me literally in my tracks. It was natural to interpret my survival to divine intervention through an angel steering my scooter a shade. I lived on, and continue to live on, aware of an unseen realm, how it pierces through on occasion into our life experience, especially at Holy Mass, and will accompany us as we look to the Lord on the day of our death.

‘May the angels lead you into paradise; may they… receive you and with Lazarus, once poor, may you have eternal rest’.

A few thoughts to conclude on the Christian doctrine of judgement.

Christian tradition distinguishes an individual judgement at the moment of death and a general judgement which completes God’s righteous task at the Lord’s return when the dead are raised in body as well as soul. After death scripture speaks of two ultimate destinies, heaven and hell, although there is a qualification that no one dying with unrepented sin can face the Lord without cleansing, since no unclean thing shall enter his presence as stated in Revelation 21v27. This is the origin of the doctrine of purgatory which speaks of the need for the faithful departed to be purged or cleansed of residual sin to come close to God. 

Our minds argue against judgement because they think they know best.  Actually God knows best in the end.  When we look into the eyes of Christ at his return there will be pain, but an ‘if the cap fits, wear it’ sort of pain. Purgatorial pain may be as short as that. Our wrong actions affront God in his holiness but he has given us a remedy in repentance. Hell, refusal to face God, will be our choice. As the video of my life is prepared for showing on judgement day Christ has power to edit out the unacceptable points if I give them to him. Mercy triumphs over judgement when we repent and allow Christ a place in our hearts! 

‘There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus’ we read in Romans 8v1. God looks on those who are in Christ with the same love with which he looks upon his Son. Judgement has in a profound sense been passed already for those who have accepted God’s judgement on their lives. To accept one’s sinfulness and inadequacy is in the Christian tradition the pathway to joyful freedom. Such acceptance springs from the vision of God given in Jesus Christ we celebrate at every Mass, vision of a God of majesty, yes, but also a God more concerned to give us what we need than to give us what we deserve.

To believe in Jesus Christ who ‘will come to judge the living and the dead’ is therefore to face the future with an infectious hope. If faith shows you that the whole world is in God’s hands so is its future. 

Christianity provides a deep sense of certainty that any perceived triumph of evil will be seen ultimately as an illusion. All will come right in the end because in the end there will be the grace and truth of Jesus Christ (John 1v14, 17). 

Ultimately there will be grace – mercy - for repentant sinners and truth to prevail over all who live and act deluded by falsehood.

‘May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest’ is an aspiration drawn from today’s Gospel suited to Lazarus and to our late Queen Elizabeth whose Christian faith coloured the superb Anglican liturgy the nation shared on Monday. Like her, may we live watchful of our thoughts, words and deeds, accountable to God day by day until the hour our guardian angels come to carry us home.

I conclude with John Donne’s prayer used at the Queen’s funeral which implies the angels’ help bringing us to God after death: ‘Bring us, O Lord God, at our last awakening into the house and gate of heaven, to enter into that gate and dwell in that house, where there shall be no darkness nor dazzling, but one equal light; no noise nor silence, but one equal music; no fears nor hopes, but one equal possession; no ends nor beginnings, but one equal eternity: in the habitations of thy majesty and glory, world without end. Amen.’

Trinity 15 (26C) St Bartholomew, Brighton 29.9.19

In paradisum deducant te angeli. ‘May the angels lead you into paradise; may they receive you and with Lazarus, once poor, may you have eternal rest’.

Those beautiful words from our funeral liturgy capture movement of the soul from earth to heaven parallel to the carriage of the body to earth. They are built from today’s Gospel of Dives and Lazarus and they provide opportunity for reflection on our ultimate destiny as believers. 

In the Gregorian chant for this closing rite of Requiem Mass the melodic highpoint comes on the name of Lazarus, the poor beggar in Our Lord’s parable. The musical lifting is pointer to the poor man’s lifting, Lazarus ‘was carried by the angels to be with Abraham’.

In today’s parable Our Lord takes an age old story of the reversal of riches and poverty in the afterlife to challenge ‘those among the Pharisees who loved money’ reminding us how those who care nothing for those less fortunate than themselves will receive harsh judgement from God in the life to come.

It’s an uncomfortable piece of scripture underlined by today’s first reading from Amos challenging those who lounge in luxury. I remember Cardinal Hume saying after visiting famine victims in Ethiopia how today’s Gospel haunted him more than any other passage in the Bible. It’s hard to shake off its force. Given our knowledge through the media of needs in Yemen and elsewhere are we not like Dives - Latin for the money-loving man in the story - unless we give at times to help famine relief?

With that thought let’s change gear to look at the Church’s teaching on the afterlife, something last year’s Unbelievable? group considered as we went through the last paragraph of the Creed. A passage like today’s Gospel has prime place in funeral liturgy but its imagery needs unpacking to unveil ‘the life of the world to come’. 

Such an unveiling happened to me personally forty nine years ago on this day, Michaelmas Day 29th September 1970.  I was just 21 then and was travelling on my Lambretta from Harwell, where I’d completed some neutron scattering on a polymer specimen, to Oxford. As I drove along the front tyre blew and despite repeated application of front and rear brakes the vehicle veered across the road into the path of a lorry. I said what I thought were my last prayers. Amazingly I passed just in front of the lorry landing on the kerb with a sprain to my thumb and shoulder and lived to tell the tale. Coming so close to death made for a fuller evaluation of the significance of my life. It contributed no doubt to a radical career switch a few years later from polymer scientist to parish priest.

My interrupted journey - it entailed a brief visit to hospital - pointed me beyond my own pursuit of truth as a scientist to Truth’s pursuit of me. Heaven came close. It  became more real to me, especially as the accident occurred on 29th September, Feast of St Michael and All Angels. As for many, God became real to me not through thinking or feeling but through circumstances that stopped me literally in my tracks. It was natural to interpret my survival to divine intervention through an angel steering my scooter a shade. I lived on, and continue to live on, aware of an unseen realm, how it pierces through on occasion into our life experience, especially at Holy Mass, and will accompany us as we look to the Lord on the day of our death.

‘May the angels lead you into paradise; may they… receive you and with Lazarus, once poor, may you have eternal rest’.

A few thoughts to conclude on the Christian doctrine of judgement, some of which we shared during November’s Creed group.

Can there really be a final catalogue of wrongdoing?  Surely there can! As surely as a computer memory contains a million records, the memory of God is established.  To him all hearts are open and all desires known. Furthermore, and this is the good news Christians know, by his sharing in our nature and his boundless compassion Jesus Christ is well appointed to judge the living and the dead.  Did he not welcome and put the best slant on thieves and prostitutes, always ready to treat people as better than they were? As believers in such love can we fear meeting Our Lord face to face?

Christian tradition distinguishes an individual judgement at the moment of death and a general judgement which completes God’s righteous task at the Lord’s return when the dead are raised in body as well as soul. After death scripture speaks of two ultimate destinies, heaven and hell, although there is a qualification that no one dying with unrepented sin can face the Lord without cleansing, since no unclean thing shall enter his presence as stated in Revelation 21v27. This is the origin of the doctrine of purgatory which speaks of the need for the faithful departed to be purged or cleansed of residual sin to come close to God. 

Our minds argue against judgement because they think they know best.  Actually God knows best in the end. When we look into the eyes of Christ at his return there will be pain, but an ‘if the cap fits wear it’ sort of pain. Purgatorial pain may be as short as that. Our wrong actions affront God in his holiness but he has given us a remedy in repentance. Hell, refusal to face God, will be our choice. As the video of my life is prepared for showing on judgement day Christ has power to edit out the unacceptable points if I give them to him.   Mercy triumphs over judgement when we allow Christ a place in our hearts! 

‘There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus’ we read in Romans 8v1. God looks on those who are in Christ with the same love with which he looks upon his Son. Judgement has in a profound sense been passed already for those who have accepted God’s judgement on their lives. To accept one’s sinfulness and inadequacy is in the Christian tradition the pathway to joyful freedom. Such acceptance springs from the vision of God given in Jesus Christ we celebrate at every Mass, vision of a God of majesty, yes, but also a God more concerned to give us what we need than to give us what we deserve.

To believe in Jesus Christ who ‘will come to judge the living and the dead’ is therefore to face the future with an infectious hope. If faith shows you that the whole world is in God’s hands so is its future. 

Christianity provides a deep sense of certainty that any perceived triumph of evil will be seen ultimately as an illusion. All will come right in the end because in the end there will be the grace and truth of Jesus Christ (John 1v14, 17). 

Ultimately there will be grace – mercy - for repentant sinners and truth to prevail over all who live and act deluded by falsehood.

On this his Feast we end by invoking St Michael to protect us from any such delusion, especially the neglect of the poor, conscious or unconscious, using a prayer that used to be said to the Archangel after every Mass. My prayer ends with a threefold plea to the heart of Jesus which I invite you to repeat with me.

Holy Michael, Archangel, defend us in the day of battle; be our safeguard against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray; and do thou, Prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God thrust down to hell, Satan and all wicked spirits who wander through the world for the ruin of souls. Amen.

Most sacred heart of Jesus have mercy on us! Most sacred heart of Jesus have mercy on us! Most sacred heart of Jesus have mercy on us

St Mary, Balcombe Trinity 3 (11B) 17th June 2018

In Dostoyevsky’s classic novel The Brothers Karamazov two brothers argue about the evil in the world and whether there is ultimate justice. The debate comes to a point where one of the brothers says he is so outraged by the suffering of children that, given a place in heaven, he would refuse it in protest. The other brother replies by pointing to the suffering of Jesus. Does God expect anything of us that he has not been through himself? The judge of the world is not aloof, he has come to us, been one of us, suffered with and for us, only without sin.

In Christian faith Jesus Christ will provide the ultimate righting of wrongs for he will come to judge the living and the dead. As Paul states in our first reading from 2 Corinthians Chapter 5 and verse 10: all of us must appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may receive recompense for what has been done in the body, whether good or evil.

How are we to understand this teaching?

God has invested in the human race.  One day he will get a return on that investment.  To believe in the judgement of the living and the dead is to believe in the coming of God’s kingdom and the trumping of the rule of evil and injustice in this world by God at Christ’s return which is a process working out in history - the detente between the US and North Korea is part of this with our ongoing prayer that detente works! The two parables of seed sown and the mustard seed in today’s Gospel from Mark Chapter 4 illustrate that historical process from small beginning to grand ending.

Jesus Christ died for all, Paul writes in verse 15 of the epistle so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them. Jesus came, died and rose but has yet to complete his great and saving purpose we’re all part of, along with everyone and everything. In a bible image from Ephesians this purpose and process is the seeking of a bride by a heavenly bridegroom. To the eye of Christian faith the whole of human and cosmic history has this purpose: to prepare a holy people for God’s possession. The church is this, a bride being prepared without spot or wrinkle (Ephesians 5v27) for a heavenly destiny when her Lord comes again. In this eternal perspective all the sufferings of this world endured in faith will work for good for those who love the Lord (Romans 8v28)

Christ had died!  Christ is risen! Christ will come again!  This is Christian faith and it brings an assurance that evil’s triumph in this world will end. God will turn the wrath of humanity to his praise by building up the body of Christ as a people for his own possession (1 Peter 2v9).  This is why God invested in the human race by creating us and sending Jesus to draw the destructive sting of evil from us through his cross and through the sending of the Holy Spirit

How can judgement be possible?  Can there really be a final catalogue of wrongdoing?  Surely there can, Christian faith replies. As surely as a computer memory contains a million records, the memory of God is established.  To him all hearts are open and all desires known.  

By his sharing in our nature and his boundless compassion Jesus Christ is well appointed to judge the living and the dead.  It is the love of Christ that urges us on we heard in the epistle. Did not that love put the best slant on thieves and prostitutes, a love always ready to treat people as better than they were?  A love we’re welcoming this morning in Holy Communion showing to us in Bread and Wine manifold and great mercy!

Christian tradition distinguishes an individual judgement at the moment of our death from the general judgement referred to in the epistle which will complete God’s righteous task at the Lord’s return. After death scripture speaks of two ultimate destinies, heaven and hell, although there is a qualification that no one dying with unrepented sin can face the Lord without cleansing since no unclean thing shall enter his presence (Revelation 21v27). This is the origin of the doctrine of purgatory which in its plain sense of the need for the faithful departed to be purged or cleansed of residual sin to come close to God is hard to counter. The other historical understanding of purgatory as a place where the closeness to God of the departed can be engineered or even bought by appropriate religious services or exercises was rightly opposed at the reformation.

How could God inflict pain?  

Our minds argue against judgement because they think they know best.  Actually God knows best in the end.  When we look into the eyes of Christ at his return there will be pain, but an if the cap fits wear it sort of pain.  Hell will be our choice.  Our wrong actions are an affront to God but he has given us a remedy.  

As the DVD of my life is prepared for showing on judgement day Christ has power to edit out the unacceptable points if I give them to him.   Mercy can triumph over judgement if we will allow Christ a place in our hearts!

There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus Paul writes elsewhere to the Romans in Chapter 8 verse 1. God looks on those who are in Christ with the same love with which he looks upon his Son.  Judgement has in a profound sense been passed already for those who have accepted God’s judgement on their lives. To accept one’s sinfulness and inadequacy is in the Christian tradition the pathway to joyful freedom. Such acceptance springs from a vision of God given in Jesus Christ, a God more concerned to give us what we need than to give us what we deserve.

To believe all of us must appear before the judgment seat of Christ is to face the future with an infectious hope. If faith shows you that the whole world is in God’s hands so is its future. Christianity provides a deep sense of certainty that any perceived triumph of evil will be seen ultimately as an illusion. All will come right in the end because in the end there will be the grace and truth of Jesus Christ (John 1v14, 17). Ultimately there will be grace – mercy - for repentant sinners and truth to prevail over all who live and act deluded by falsehood.

So to God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit be all might, majesty, dominion and power now, henceforth and to the ages of ages. Amen.

All Souls memorial eucharist Saturday 5th November 11am

It is the day of the dead.

Our vestments are black as we contemplate the loss of life and proximity of those we love but see no longer.

Death for Christians is a vanquished enemy.

That he has power is evidenced especially within the gathering of the recently bereaved at the Church’s annual commemoration of the departed. The death of a loved one is a life changer, a loss of life, literally and psychologically.

How we miss those who lit up our lives for a season now veiled from our sight even if we believe today’s scripture as it proclaims God will destroy... the shroud cast over all peoples and... will swallow up death forever (Isaiah 25:7-8)

Death is our enemy, there’s no getting round it, even though Christian faith sees through it. Just as we see the risen Lord behind every crucifix so we see those we love alive with Him beyond the dust.

On All Souls Day the Easter Candle stands in the sanctuary to help us see through death to the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.

It is Christian faith that at the moment of death the soul is judged by God to pass toward one of two ultimate destinations, bliss or loss, heaven or hell. In that passage the prayer of the Church surrounds and helps all those souls the Christian community commends to God who will welcome help, the origin of the maligned term purgatory.

God wishes nothing or no one to be lost from the sight of his holiness.

We imagine the moment of death, however merciful physically through palliative care, will be for most of painful as we come to see God, turning our eyes away at his loving, holy glance. His invitation to look him in the eyes, like that of any good parent chastising his child, will be painful on account of our sins. Purgatory can be thought of, some theologians hold, as just momentary. A moment of pain as holiness meets the unrepentant sin within us, then the soul passing on to await the next stage of cosmic history.

Those who die without sin face God, as if in heaven, and begin to see him face to face, but heaven is not yet heaven until that vision is shared in the company of all the saints.

Those without love continue their self-chosen loneliness into hell, which God permits as he permits free will, but doesn’t will for them such choices.

The Christian hope is consummated by the return of Jesus Christ who will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead. That final judgement will complete our individual judgement at the moment of death. Scripture indicates the general judgement as bringing humanity of past ages to bodily resurrection to greet Christ’s return and be clothed afresh with the body, to make their heaven fully heaven, or their hell fully hell, in the life of the world to come.
In that world the faithful departed will continue in a salvation that is personal, practical, purposeful and permanent.

We will continue to know personally, only unveiled, the one who so knows and loves us. We will experience the practical benefit of our sins being cast away from us. We will be fully taken into the purpose of God and with permanence. The pains we've suffered will be lost in celestial praise. Such is salvation.

What I have shared is an outline of Christian salvation projected from the promises of God in scripture which open the eyes of faith to see death as a vanquished enemy for those who hold to the Saviour.

As today’s Collect and Gospel affirm, Christian faith is built on the risen Christ. We do not, as believers, know fully what’s there so much as who’s there after death.

Our Lord Jesus Christ - he is there! He is there as sure as he’s the same yesterday, today and forever!

It is the day of the dead, but it is also Jesus' day!

The same Jesus who came, died, rose and says to us this morning it is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day.... Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day.  (John 6:38, 54)

Amen - come Lord Jesus, in the eucharist, and on the last day, when you are sole hope and consolation for us and those we love but see no longer!