St Richard, Haywards Heath 24th Sunday (A) 17 September 2023

‘As the heavens are high above the earth so strong is his love for those who fear him. As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our sins.’ Psalm 103:11

The words of today’s Psalm jumped out at me as I pondered one of life’s by-products, dimethyl sulfide likely present in a planet 120 million light-years from our solar system. The observation came from NASA’s new James Webb Space Telescope and it got me thinking of the immensity of space and God.

How big is your God? That his choicest gift of life might be widespread is humbling. 

Humbling also this week, though, has been the loss of thousands of precious lives in the Moroccan earthquake and Libyan floods. 

How can human life, so precious it images God, be treated so casually by the universe? As a student I hitch hiked with a friend on ox carts in the Atlas Mountains staying in houses like those shown sunk into the ground with immense loss of life. ‘God - what are you about?’ has been my prayer, and no doubt yours, at the dreadful scenes of the recovery operation.

‘As the heavens are high above the earth so strong is his love for those who fear him. As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our sins.’ 

Our Christian faith provides a perspective on life, on the universe, on evil including unforgiveness and, supremely, upon the life of the world to come. The readings today hardly need a sermon to explain them. Our Lord's parable of the unforgiving servant demonstrates how paltry is the human grasp upon the miracle of forgiveness which is rooted in the resurrection. We go like children ‘tit for tat’ and our minds and hearts need expanding to cope with our sins being written off.

Have you ever thought - it's as astonishing as God allowing life at the other end of the universe - that when you give your sins to God they fly away as far as the east is from the west? The writer of Ecclesiasticus had his heart expanded into the truth Our Lord Jesus reveals when he wrote the words we just heard read: ‘If a man nurses anger against another, can he then demand compassion from the Lord?

Showing no pity for a man like himself, can he then plead for his own sins?

Mere creature of flesh, he cherishes resentment; who will forgive him his sins?

Remember the last things, and stop hating, remember dissolution and death, and live by the commandments’ (Ecclesiasticus 28).

‘I cancelled all that debt of yours when you appealed to me’ the Lord says in the Gospel from Matthew 18. ‘Were you not bound, then, to have pity on your fellow servant just as I had pity on you?” 

How big is your God? The Christian religion is a revelation of ‘the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting’ (Apostles’ Creed). It is primarily a supernatural religion which is why the flame of Christian faith is burning less in materialistic Europe and more in Africa, Asia and South America. When Anne, John and I were in Guyana we hardly met an atheist. People looked to the all-powerful and ever-living God revealed in Jesus Christ as our be-all and end-all. The God who puts your sins away when you ask forgiveness is the same God who lifts the pall of death to reveal the resurrection and gather us into the communion of saints in his never-ending family.

This world with all its great and beautiful gifts cannot offer what today’s Gospel celebrates - the supernatural grace of Christianity - forgiveness and resurrection. The two are linked - unforgiveness imprisons people’s souls just as death will one day imprison their bodies. One of my greatest privileges as a priest is to pronounce words of absolution to penitent sinners, as from Christ's Cross, by his authority vested in me - and to hear those words for myself in confession. Another privilege is the invitation to attend death beds and see Christian souls loosening themselves from worldly attachments in preparation for the life of the world to come. How often in my ministry I’ve seen long delays in that process through the dying person loosening from unforgiveness or more often awaiting reconciliation with unforgiving children. ‘If a man nurses anger against another, can he then demand compassion from the Lord?’ 

Welcoming the forgiveness of Our Lord is preparation for heaven. It is central to Mass where it is conveyed to us in the Lord’s body broken for us and his blood shed for that forgiveness. When we receive the body and blood of the Lord his forgiveness enters us in the Bread and Wine. That forgiveness and acceptance expands our hearts, if we will but let it, with his Sacred Heart, to others especially those in the prison of unforgiveness or living in the shadow of death as many are today in Morocco and Libya who await our prayer and giving.

‘As the heavens are high above the earth so strong is his love for those who fear him. As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our sins.’ 

That is our good news and where on earth or heaven or across the universe could it be found other than in God’s gracious action revealed to us in the bearing of sin upon Calvary and the relief it brings us at Mass, the supernatural resurrection of our soul and the promise of supernatural resurrection of our body with all the saints in ‘the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ’ (2 Corinthians 4:6) 

‘The body of our Lord Jesus Christ which was given for you and his blood which was shed for you preserve your body and soul unto everlasting life. Amen’.

Picture: Anne Twisleton

St Mary, Balcombe Easter 6 9th May 2021

Of those to whom much is given much is required. Because we’re people who see God we’ve got responsibility to seek him more and to see him more fully as he is and not in the image we make of him.

I find a root sin of mine is negligence in that sense. I neglect to ponder the picture that scripture and Christian tradition give of God and to make that more my own.

I am called, we are called, to think of God ever more magnificently. The scripture set for the sixth Sunday of Easter opens up something of God’s magnificent power and love.

In the first reading Peter’s Jewish friends were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles, for they heard them speaking in tongues and extolling God. 

Two astounding things. Speaking in tongues, a supernatural prayer language of love, sign of the difference the Holy Spirit can make to folk. Then God, God of the Jewish Covenant, giving evidence of his acceptance of non-Jews.

Miracles, miraculous talk, shake the control we think we’ve got over life. From time to time God shakes our comfort and complacency and does His own thing. If we were really in love with God we’d welcome such surprises of the Spirit and not dismiss them as religious hysteria. St Francis, the Curé D’Ars, Pope John 23rd all spoke in tongues and many do so today.

Then secondly in that reading we’re awoken to God proving himself a God to whom no one, Gentile or Jew, is an outsider. Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have? 

How many times do we get humbled by the generosity and spiritual wisdom of our non-Church friends? God can and does speak to us through them since he is not just God of our lives but God of the whole of life. People in God’s image can speak God’s word even if they don’t know who God is and that he’s made them godlike.

Sometimes the Church gets woken up to God’s truth by outsiders, as, sad to say, is happening over child protection. The Holy Spirit has been powerfully at work outside the community of the Church from the beginning, speaking truth and holiness into her, keeping her humble and on her toes. This is because God is God not just of the Church but God of the whole world. 

Then, as our second reading from 1 John 5 and Gospel from John 15 remind us God is love. As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. The Holy Spirit, Saint Paul says, is God’s love outpoured into our hearts.

By his dying and rising Jesus Christ, the Son of God, has overcome all that separates us from God to make us his friends. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. Because of this friendship we Christians live in friendship with one another: This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.

The second reading speaks similarly of how our awakening to the love of God awakens us to the love of God’s children: Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the parent loves the child. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. The writer’s logic in the First Letter of St John is sometimes confusing. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. I would suggest, coming back to my sin of negligence, that failure to seek after and recognise the love of God shown in Jesus bears fruit in failure to obtain the love that covers a multitude of sins so far as our neighbour goes. Failure also to attain to the promise of Jesus at the end of today’s Gospel where he says I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last.

The clue is to think of God ever more magnificently. When God shrinks in our thinking and praying you can be sure, I can be sure, that other people’s faults will loom higher and a critical spirit emerges that’s counter to love of my neighbour.

Victory over that critical spirit might be what St John is touching on when he speaks of a spiritual battle in the second reading. And his commandments are not burdensome, for whatever is born of God conquers the world. And this is the victory that conquers the world, our faith. Who is it that conquers the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?

To have faith in a God who’s magnificently a God of love and forgiveness helps us conquer the tendency to do down our neighbour. To know how God treats us is the best tonic towards treating others well, in other words, as better than they are. And this is the victory that conquers the world, our faith (1 John 5:4).

So, brothers and sisters, may the eucharist be a tonic to you this morning, a fresh immersion in the love that comes to you through scripture and fellowship, through celebration and the offering and receiving of bread and wine. No one has greater love than this, Jesus says, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. 

So be it! May we wake out of our negligence and seek a vision of God that’s ever more magnificent, built more and more to his dimensions and less to ours!

Friday in Eastertide 16.4.21

 

It’s Easter season when we celebrate as in this morning’s Gospel from St John Chapter 20 the risen Lord passing through doors closed out of fear to meet his friends.

All across the land doors are still largely closed through justifiable fear of infection yet the risen Lord finds his way through to open hearts. Then, through those open hearts, by their intercession, to many others bringing peace beyond understanding.

It’s my practice to spend the first hour of the day with the Lord. At this season my heart feels deeply the call to intercession. I’ve got my circle of acquaintance on an alphabetical sequence Sunday to Saturday. Sometimes, as I pray, the Lord lights up one or two names in front of me and gives me a task - that of contacting them in the way best for them in these circumstances. This means a text, e mail, online message or phone call later in the day.

People don’t like being preached at. They rarely dislike being prayed for. When I message my friends I say something like ‘I was thinking of you this morning in my prayers and will keep remembering you, as this morning, every Friday’. At first I thought this was too much like spiritual showing off, John Twisleton telling everyone he’d got a prayer list and he used it! I’ve come through this because it’s been the Lord’s invitation to do so and in social isolation the reminder others are praying for you is precious.

It’s precious because the risen Lord through our prayer and messaging reaches through closed doors into troubled hearts to say what he first said at Easter: ‘Peace be with you’ (John 20:19-22)

That peace is a gift of the Holy Spirit breathed on the first disciples in conjunction with sending them out. ‘As my Father has sent me, even so send I you’. In a profound sense that sending is from one heart to another. Just as we gain solace from friends who give ear to our own troubles so we are sent to others to give ear to theirs allowing the peace in us to flow to them.

Our prayer for others is immune from lockdown, as is our capacity to listen and speak to others indirectly. By devoting ourselves to regular intercession we focus away from self and are more disposed to the peaceable anointing of the Holy Spirit.

We can never underestimate the spiritual power released. As St Seraphim of Sarov wrote, ‘acquire the peace of the Spirit in your heart and thousands round you will find salvation’. 

More at https://elucidatingcontroversy.blogspot.com/

Holy Trinity, Cuckfield Easter 2 with commemoration of Prince Philip RIP 11th April 2021

Introduction to eucharist

On Classic FM yesterday Alan Titchmarsh said the room lit up when Prince Philip entered. Despite his sharp side the Duke of Edinburgh had a great spirit and possessed deep Christian faith. In yesterday’s Times obituary there is this quote from him: ‘Religious conviction is the strongest and probably the only factor in sustaining the dignity and integrity of the individual’. On this last of the eight days of Easter Octave we will be making a solemn commemoration of his passing at the end of the eucharist, standing in silence for a minute then listening to the National Anthem. As we begin this Easter eucharist we recall our own sharp side - no one of us is free from sin - and take a moment to entreat God’s mercy, so we also may better light up the lives around us.

Sermon

‘Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe’ (John 20:25). 

Thomas’s question chimes deep into lockdown experience. Refusal to believe in the face of tragic circumstances. For us those circumstances are parallel with the death of close friends through COVID and a wave of depression deadening those we love. All of us share this morning to some degree the sadness of the Queen and Royal Family. Though I rejoice to stand with you in Holy Trinity for the first time in months to celebrate Easter my joy is qualified by that reality akin to that of Thomas, bereaved and in that upper room lockdown. 

Yes, it is heartening to read evidence of people turning to religion to give shape and meaning to their empty lives. As the Duke of Edinburgh said, faith sustains our dignity and integrity. By contrast cynics see the current turning to faith as evidencing desperation to find escape from an awful scenario. The assumption is that religion is about escape from reality – and, yes, the brutal realities we’re living through seem to demand escape. 

What does Easter have to say to cynics and pessimists? Is what I’m about as a Christian otherworldly escapism? How does the Easter good news engage with the reality of human suffering and how can it best impact the loss of hope around us? We celebrate the eucharist this morning alongside the Paschal Candle into which five pins are pressed to represent the wounds of Christ in commemoration of today’s Gospel. ‘Jesus said to Thomas, 'Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.' Thomas answered him, 'My Lord and my God!' (John 20:27-28) 

How did the risen Lord deal with Thomas’ pessimism? He pointed him to the wounds he still carried from his crucifixion. In other words ‘you can be sure it is I, Thomas, and you can lay hold of sure and certain hope in the face of all in your world that would confound you’. The Jesus raised at Easter is the same Jesus killed through awful suffering upon the Cross. That’s why the Church adorns its Easter candle with nails. As the priest says, piercing the candle with five studs at the Easter Vigil: ‘By his holy and glorious wounds may Christ our Lord guard and keep us’. 

The Paschal Candle is a triumphant witness, standing tall, that says God is above death. It is also a reminder that God is not above suffering. That should be very important to us as witnesses to Christ in a world so lacking hope. The God and Father of Jesus, expects nothing of us he’s not prepared to go through himself. This is the ground of hope we cling to as Christians, hope that isn’t just out of this world – though the resurrection is all of that - but hope rooted in human reality. Again following the media coverage of Prince Philip’s death I recall Nicholas Witchell’s observation of how the Queen’s Christian faith would be an important consolation in her loss.

What we are about as Christians IS an engagement with otherworldly consolation, that’s absolutely true. Christianity is a metaphysical religion, it’s beyond (meta) the physical because of Christ’s resurrection. Yet it’s rooted in human reality for God revealed the resurrection by sending his Son to die for us. The five wounds of Christ on his arms, legs and side are the great symbol of this human reality. They engage with our sorrows, for he is and he remains for us, as Isaiah prophesied, ‘a man of sorrows acquainted with grief’ (Isaiah 53v3). 

If I am talking about Christian hope this morning I am talking not about a shallow optimism but resurrection faith firmly rooted in Christ as the suffering Saviour from all eternity. Second century Bishop Melito of Sardis in an Easter sermon wrote of how Christ’s sufferings should be seen in the suffering of holy people right back through the Old Testament: ‘He is the Passover of our salvation. He was present in many so as to endure many things. In Abel he was slain; in Isaac bound; in Jacob a stranger; in Joseph sold; in Moses exposed; in David persecuted; in the prophets dishonoured. He became incarnate of the Virgin…buried in the earth, but he rose from the dead, and was lifted up to the height of heaven. He is the silent lamb, the slain lamb, who was born of Mary the fair ewe. He was seized from the flock and dragged away to slaughter’.  

In Christ’s sufferings we see human suffering in a new light. I can’t speak too well myself, my sufferings have been slight in life so far, but I’ve been close to women and men of God who say so, who say God in Christ comes close in suffering. I think of Ursilla telling me how important and helpful the holding cross was she’d been given at the Hospice. Or when, the day before he died, as he lay on his bed, Colin welcomed anointing on his head and hands by sitting up and stretching his arms right out, as if on the Cross with Jesus. I think of Tom, of marking the cross in holy oil on him before he died marking this Easter week, like the Easter Candle, with a sorrowful Cross for his family.  No wonder Péguy said a Christian is a sad man saved from despair by the Cross of Christ. Life is a vale of tears.

In our second reading Saint John the evangelist ‘declares to us the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us in Jesus Christ… who is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world’ (1 John 1:2, 2:2). Elsewhere in Revelation the evangelist predicts the risen Christ’s return ‘Look! He is coming with the clouds; every eye will see him, even those who pierced him’ (Revelation 1:7). The wounds of Christ are a source of hope to believers, though they will be troublesome to those who pierced him and that includes you and I through unrepented sins. That scripture is the basis of Charles Wesley’s Advent hymn ‘Lo he comes’ that enters imaginatively into the sight of the risen Christ coming to be judge of the world: 

Those dear tokens of his passion still his dazzling body bears;

cause of endless exultation to his ransomed worshipers;

with what rapture gaze we on those glorious scars! 

Indeed it will be - that is our sure and certain hope, which should help us bring all pessimists to Christ’s Cross. We Christians are saddened by suffering but our sadness is saved from despair by that very Cross and by the out of this world resurrection truth we’re celebrating in these great days of Eastertide!

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!

St Bartholomew, Brighton Easter Vigil Mass 20 April 2019

Tonight the full visual stops of the Liturgy are pulled out. Light and darkness, candles, the sprinkling of water – all go beyond words.

Christ is Risen - and as no tomb could contain him, no words can fathom the wonder of  the Resurrection - we rely on symbols. This annual reminder of the foundation of our Faith gives exuberance to our spirits. O truly blessed night, worthy alone to know Christ’s rising…let Mother Church rejoice, arrayed with the lightning of his glory, let this holy building shake with joy… let the trumpet of salvation sound our mighty King’s triumph!

Archbishop Anthony Bloom preached once on the story in the Acts where the miracles of the Apostles led them to be mistaken as living gods. ‘Look statues have become living men’ they said of them. We are all in a sense like statues, said the Archbishop, but as an Easter People we have become in a profound sense a living people. He went on: ‘Meeting us – me and you – can people say, ‘Yes, it is true. Christ is risen, because this woman, this child, this man is alive with a life of which I had no suspicion, a life I couldn’t even imagine’.

All of this is coming about in our lives because of the historical event we commemorate this evening. In four slightly different accounts we have the record of how, when the disciples went to the tomb of Christ, they found his grave clothes folded and no sign of the dead. In the next six weeks the Resurrected Christ was seen, according to Paul, by over 550 people on 11 different occasions. The disciples’ lives were transformed and the Church grew at an astonishing rate surviving 20 centuries to this day. Over these centuries, particularly the last two highly sceptical centuries, critical investigation has failed to overturn the historical base of the resurrection.

To capture the exuberance of Easter we have to let the historical facts and their implications take full hold of us by open-ness to the Holy Spirit. Over the centuries Spirit-given exuberance has led missionaries to the four corners of the earth. Thousands of martyrs have cheerfully faced death in the hope of the eternal kingdom opened up to the eye of faith this Easter Night!

Christ is raised – and look – so are the people here in St Bartholomew’s – they too are raised. ‘Statues have become living men’.

Those of you who follow social media may have seen an inconclusive  discussion about the timing of this service in St Bartholomew’s. When I was at Theological College this Vigil was kept at dawn at the end of an arduous week of prayer, study, fasting and community work. As the sun broke through the East window of the Community Church at Mirfield the Gloria was intoned. Grown men broke down into tears through the emotion of that moment.

Our exuberance continued throughout this Great Easter Day as gin bottles opened after 40 days! I have a good supply for later today!

Drink is good to ‘cheer the heart of man’ as Scripture says. It can also make statues of living men, as my encounter with a paralytically drunk Irish Man on St. Patrick’s Day once showed me. Years back I found a man lying as if dead on the street and got a friend to help me carry him to the nearby hospital where he was diagnosed merely paralytic!

If drink can make us as if we were dead, the Risen Christ is in the opposite business. In Anthony Bloom’s words, he’s in the business of making living men out of statues.

His joy and delight is to see people brought fully alive as the One who came to bring ‘life to the full’, the indestructible life of the resurrection gifted to us  this most holy night.

‘Meeting us – me and you –  may people say, ‘Yes, it is true. Christ is risen, because this woman, this child, this man is alive with a life of which I had no suspicion, a life I couldn’t even imagine’.

Alleluia, Christ is risen - he is risen indeed, alleluia!

SS Philip & James, New Bentley, Doncaster Patronal Festival 3 May 2018

It’s good to be home - I was born in Doncaster - and I’m grateful to be back in the place and at the altar where my priestly ministry took birth 40 years ago. As a Society priest its a privilege to concelebrate with Bishop Glyn in Sheffield Diocese, alongside my friend Fr Dickinson who’s given 10 times more love and care to you than I did over two and a half years - congratulations, Father, on your 25th here! 10 times more work and its been twice the work with Arksey as well. You and I are Facebook friends but there’s nothing to beat a real time and place meet up - what better time or place than the Festival of St Philip & St James in New Bentley!

We come from God, we belong to God, we go to God.

We just asked the prayers of SS Philip & James for our faith journey, that we be given a share in the passion and resurrection of Jesus Christ so we can go to God and behold him for ever. In the second reading we heard how James saw Jesus risen from the dead and our Gospel included Philip’s stated desire to see God. By describing himself as ‘The Way’ Our Lord reminds us of the direction we can find in life that leads to the vision of God.

We come from God, we belong to God, we go to God.

As Christians we don’t expect to be dragged backwards to God at our death but to be more and more at ease with the forward movement of life - even if it brings increased frailty, loss of mobility and the need to depend on others. The passion of Our Lord takes the strain as we give our pain to him. I keep Gladys Protheroe in my prayers, regular at daily Mass in my day. How much I learned from her, from her patient struggle with disability, offering it up as she sought Our Lord in the Most Holy Sacrament. 

Fr Pannell and I - he sends his blessing - we live very much apart nowadays with me near his native Brighton and he much more a northerner than I. When I served here with Father within the Company of Mission Priests the most awesome event was that day in November 1978 when our housekeeper Eunice Mitchell came to the door at 7 o’clock to tell me there’d been an accident at the pit and Jim hadn’t come home. I can’t forget her walking that next Sunday in the Blessed Sacrament procession for Christ the King, a widow, Jim killed in the paddy train crash, singing angels saints and nations sing praise be Jesus Christ our King. Or their little Stewart to whom Arthur Scargill sent a miner’s lamp as reminder of his dad’s death, part of the price of coal. On our way to God pains are sweetened as we keep close to Christ in his passion and resurrection. Grant us … a share in the passion and resurrection of your Only Begotten Son that we may merit to behold you for eternity.

We come from God, we belong to God, we go to God.

As Christians we travel to God like anyone else through suffering and joy but with the difference of thankfulness for the joy and assurance of God’s love in the suffering. Our Lord who’s the Way has trodden that way before us and expects nothing of us he’s not been through himself which is the message of Holy Week.

Looking back Fr Pannell was more the humorist than I - we’d some good times at the Clergy House then in Daw Wood - and each of us needed cheering up at times. I remember the night I got chased after youth club by wild teenage girls who sprayed me with hairspray! Then in winter when we walked in our cloaks to Church Father got cross when they shouted Robin at him. Being the taller I was always bat man! 

When we look back on our faith journey we see suffering and resurrection. Keeping a good sense of humour’s one secret of spiritual resurrection. Two weeks ago I took the funeral in Brighton of Margaret Blewitt, mother of my best friend at Giggleswick School, who was a dentist in Rotherham. One of our confirmation candidates at SS Philip & James was a lovely girl with her pathological fear of dentists clear from the look of her. Fr Pannell and I persuaded Audrey Cull to come with us to visit Margaret. Margaret with her kindness and forcefulness saw to her there and then. Audrey’s faith took a real upturn with her new teeth - she was a new lady - its hard to believe in God unless you believe in yourself.

My faith journey took a downturn my second year at New Bentley. God seemed a long way off. I went to talk to a Mirfield monk. ‘Maybe God’s not gone but your vision of him’ was the advice. ‘Seek the Holy Spirit for a vision more to God’s dimensions and less to your own’. I did seek and I did experience the renewing power of the Holy Spirit which was something of a resurrection of faith. When I came back from Mirfield to the parish I remember Bernard Shaw was touched in the same way - how sorry I am to learn of Anne’s passing - and I remember how it concerned and confused then Churchwarden Doug Clark. 

Doug and Peggy, rest their souls, were kindness itself to Fr Pannell and I, just as their daughter Ann and husband John are being to me tonight, taking me in for Bed & Breakfast! Ann’s dad always said those not attending Mass would do so readily if only they realised what they were missing - I know Ann’s taken a leaf out of dad and mum’s books and is like me a daily Mass goer. 

SS Philip & James were very tolerant of my fancy vocabulary after 10 years of Chemistry and Theology at University and brought me gently down to earth!  

Doug would forgive me telling this story against him. Doug helped me move to Moorends where my new found zeal made me an evangelist for the Catholic Faith. He helped me carpet a Vicarage bedroom to be an Oratory - fancy word for a little chapel. He was heard saying to someone: ‘you should have seen the devil of a job we had getting that carpet into Father’s orifice’!! I still have an Oratory in our little house in Haywards Heath and precious memories of Doug who first set me up with one.

We come from God, we belong to God, we go to God.

You and I, each one of us are on that journey with Our Lord who is himself the way.    On that journey keeping close to him in his passion and resurrection sweetens our sorrow and deepens our joy, as does the fellowship we have with one another in God’s holy Church. I’ve been blessed over the last 40 years to keep up with and receive such encouragement from Brian and Sue Dutton, who again have always been kindness itself to me, Charlie Brough, rest his soul, his daughters and others from here.

You too have been blessed in the faithful care of your priests and, in the difficulties we all share in the Church of England’s ongoing crisis, of Bishops like Bishop Glyn. I’m so grateful to Fr Dickinson for ongoing news of church members - he has a real heart for you - and once again thank and blame him for letting me loose tonight in my old haunt!  

May what I’ve shared hearten us for the ongoing journey of faith which will one day, as it has for many we love but see no longer, vanish into sight. Then, in a prayer I’ve said so many times at the altar in the old translation: when every tear is wiped away we shall see God as he is. We shall become like him and praise him for all eternity. Grant us, Lord, a share in the passion and resurrection of your Only Begotten Son so that we may indeed merit to behold you for all eternity.

Easter 3(B) St Bartholomew, Brighton 15.4.18

Christ is risen from the dead! He has crushed death by his death and bestowed life upon those who lay in the tomb!

Words from the Orthodox Easter service. Since I last stood here at the Easter Vigil I’ve celebrated Easter again in Greece with fireworks and all!

We can’t get enough of Easter. It’s the Queen of the Church’s year. The Paschal Candle standing proud in the sanctuary, alleluias galore and an especially joyful repertory from the choir over these great 40 days - for we read in Acts 1:3 how after Christ’s suffering he presented himself alive to his disciples by many convincing proofs, appearing to them during forty days speaking about the kingdom of God.

As some of you know I spent Lent preparing 40 pointers to Christ’s resurrection to release in Easter Season via a daily blog on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, address on the back of the readings sheet. https://40resurrectionpointers.blogspot.co.uk/

People get intrigued into church as much as they get persuaded by good fellowship, intelligent preaching and sound liturgy - and there’s nothing more intriguing than resurrection - and social media is one way to intrigue people on this, especially as I’ve attempted using 40 or so paintings of the risen Lord each with a 100 word caption setting forth evidence for the truth of Easter.  As former Lord Chief Justice of the United Kingdom, Lord Darling, observed about Christ's Resurrection: In its favour there exists such overwhelming evidence, positive and negative, factual and circumstantial, that no intelligent jury in the world could fail to bring in a verdict that the Resurrection story is true.

Let’s go back to the readings for this third Sunday of Eastertide. First the passage from Acts 3. It follows on from the apostles’ healing of a lame man who went leaping and bounding into the Temple. How intriguing that must have been! Something worth following – someone worth following!  Let’s read what’s actually v16 on our sheet: we are witnesses… faith in the name of Jesus hath made this man strong, whom you see and know; yea, the faith which is is by him hath given him this perfect soundness in the presence of all of you.

When God is at work people get drawn in - and God’s at work here at St Bart’s! People are talking of him being with them, sometimes through their trials, as they live with health or relationship or employment challenges, other times as they go leaping and bounding forward into a new future.

It’s always heartening to me as a priest to hear of resurrection occurring, of the risen Christ coming to bear on the lives of parishioners, very often uplifting them and carrying them through suffering and humiliation into God’s best future.

Moving on to today’s Gospel reading from St Luke’s Gospel Chapter 24.  Our Lord provides here an an intriguing demonstration of the physicality of the resurrection, showing his wounded yet glorified hands and feet and eating a piece of broiled fish.

Those who were at the Easter Vigil two weeks ago will recall that when we blessed the Pascal Candle we placed four nails in its side to represent the crucifixion. As we read in today’s Gospel Thus is written, and thus it beloved the Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day: and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. The point Our Lord makes is the same point St Peter makes in the first reading: it is written, that the Christ is to suffer.

The atheist writer Albert Camus once debated the resurrection with French Dominicans. He complained that the resurrection was an unreal and unsatisfactory happy ending. They answered by pointing to this text. God came to share our suffering which served to expiate the sin of the world. No suffering we have to endure is now strange to God. As one of Wesley’s hymns puts it: Those dear tokens of his passion still his dazzling body bears. Cause of endless exultation to his ransomed worshippers. With what rapture gaze we on those glorious scars.

Thus is written, and thus it beloved the Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day: and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name.

This morning the risen Christ invites us once more to repent, to turn to him for forgiveness, so that his light may shine in us and through us.

St Barts as a light house? Maybe, if you and I become lighthouses, little candles lit from the Easter Candle? Lit with this faith – that the most meaningful thing in life is what conquers death.

In Jesus Christ we gain not ideas, doctrines, rules but Life - and where that life is to be found – as I believe it is here at St Bart’s – people who possess it will intrigue and infect others who’ve yet to find it!

The source of false religion is the inability to rejoice, or rather, the refusal of joy, whereas joy is absolutely essential because it is without any doubt the fruit of God’s presence. So wrote Orthodox priest Alexander Schmemann.  

So then - let our focus this Sunday in Easter season be on rejoicing for eucharist and Christian life itself means no less than thanks and praise.

Christ is risen! ‘In his, in God’s presence is the fullness of joy and at his right hand there are pleasures for evermore’ says the Psalmist.

Alleluia Christ is risen! He is risen indeed, alleluia!