St Richard, Haywards Heath 27th August 2017

How rich are the depths of God - how deep his wisdom and knowledge - and how impossible to penetrate his motives or understand his methods! Who could ever know the mind of the Lord… All that exists comes from him; all is by him and for him. To him be glory for ever! Amen 

Though Scripture makes God known it occasionally puts him at a distance.

The passage we heard from Romans reminds us God is God. It comes as St Paul completes teaching we heard in last week’s portion about how the Jews remain dear to God, and will be included in his final scheme, despite their rejection of Jesus Christ as Messiah. The summary line on Israel’s disobedience is the verse before this passage, verse 32 of Romans Chapter 11: For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all. In other words God has sin in hand, even if we need to fly from it ourselves.  He allows disobedience and over rules it. The same thought is presented at the Easter Vigil when, at the blessing of the new Fire, the deacon sings: O happy fault, that earned so great, so glorious a Redeemer!

In Christianity God has both a sameness to us, and a difference from us.

God is same and different.

God has a sameness to us through the incarnation. He is one with us in Jesus, one with us in our joys and sorrows.

We have sameness to him bearing his image, endowed with intelligence, capable of joyful goodness, appreciative of truth and beauty so that Christianity is humanity in its right mind. In Jesus Christ we see and grow into what we are meant to be, such is God’s affinity with us.

God though, as this scripture reminds us, is also very very different from us.

How rich are the depths of God - how deep his wisdom and knowledge - and how impossible to penetrate his motives or understand his methods! Who could ever know the mind of the Lord… All that exists comes from him; all is by him and for him. 

We are different from Him as we live in one time and place compared to his eternal omnipresence. Our knowledge is limited compared to his omniscience. We are feeble, looking again and again to his omnipotence. Then, as the Romans passage implies, morally we pale into insignificance before his holiness. We are nothing before him, and less than nothing through sin.

How can we as creatures compare to our Creator? How can a song understand its singer?

All that exists comes from him; all is by him and for him.
In the Mass we have 5 sections called the Ordinary that we recite Sunday by Sunday.

The Kyrie Eleison and Agnus Dei speak of God’s sameness, his sympathy with us and mercy towards us. Lord, have mercy… O Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us… grant us thy peace.

The Gloria in Excelsis and Sanctus speak of God’s difference from us in joyous yet awesome terms. For Thou only art holy; thou only art the Lord…. Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts, heaven and earth are full of thy glory.

The difference and sameness of God from and to us are both fully expressed in the Credo or Creed we shall recite shortly:

God is professed as God the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible who could not be more different to us as his dependent creatures. God whose Son is God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God demonstrates his sameness, his loving affinity for each and all of us humans when for us men and for our salvation he came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man, and was crucified for us.

In bowing at these words we salute the wonder of the God and Father of Jesus, so different from us, yet making himself one with us in such great humility and love.

If God weren’t both same and different to us there’d be no hope for us. As it is, we, who are made in his image, are destined to share a property distinct from our condition - I mean the glory of God.

By the gift of the Son of God made Son of Man, by the Spirit of Christ, we, in Paul’s words elsewhere to Corinth, are being fitted for glory. All of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit. (2 Corinthians 3:18)

In the Eucharist we see and consume God in bread and wine, God in his sameness with the  promise of something utterly different which is in his gift for the grace of Communion is a foretaste of glory.

O Christ, whom now beneath a veil we see, may what we thirst for soon our portion be, to gaze on thee unveiled and see thy face, the vision of thy glory and thy grace.

How rich are the depths of God - how deep his wisdom and knowledge - and how impossible to penetrate his motives or understand his methods! Who could ever know the mind of the Lord… All that exists comes from him; all is by him and for him. To him be glory for ever! Amen 

Good news from a good God (1) 6th July 2014 A teaching series on the letter of Saint Paul to the Romans Chapters 7 and 8

Good news from a good God is the title of a four part sermon series this month on Romans bringing an explanation of the Christian good news. We’ll be looking at the psychological insight of Romans 7 - I do not do the good I want – and the good news from Romans 8 which speaks of how we reach a place of no condemnation, look positively to the future and welcome the assurance that nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God. The series will weave in for our application God’s call to repent, believe, ask and receive as four sub-headings.

This morning we read Romans 7.15-25 which began with a profound statement that must have rung true to each and every one of us. I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. How is it that human beings know what’s right and are tortured by their failure to do so? I know I must speak well of all people, because all are loved by God and in his image, yet I get seduced into repeating negative assessments about them, what we call detraction. I know my life is animated by God, surrounded by his love, yet I act sometimes as if he weren’t there and didn’t care – and so on.

The letter to the Romans was written to engage exactly with this wretchedness, and the grace from above that frees us from it, the grace spoken of at the end of today’s second reading. Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God … Jesus Christ our Lord!

We are talking this morning good news from a good God who knows our plight through and through – has lived in it and through it in Jesus – and whose all powerful goodness can operate in us if we repent and believe in him, ask him in and receive his assurance. This is a scene setting for four weeks of teaching on the basis of Christianity now we move on to look more closely at the letter to the Romans itself which Coleridge called the most profound work ever written.

In the New Testament it’s placed first after the historical accounts of the four Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles and before the earlier writings of Paul that deal with particular problems in Corinth, Galatia, Ephesus and so on. The letter to the Romans is Paul’s credo written around 55AD to summarise 20 years reflection on the meaning of Jesus Christ. Paul is never an easy read – read through Romans with me in July but not in King James! Use a less poetic but more accessible translation. Be careful though. In reading and getting to grips with Romans you’re handling dynamite! Many who’ve read it – Augustine, Luther and so on – have had to press a reset button on their life.

The dynamite has two blasts and they concern law and history. Reading Romans challenges both that part of us that seeks to earn good will legalistically through good actions and that other part of us that’s deep down lost hope for the future of the world. Such is its power, the power of the Word of God no less, to reset our life and our hope.

The letter to the Romans says first of all that to reach into a right relationship with God is impossible from our side but that God has reached down to us in Jesus to lift us to his heights.  The righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith is banner heading of the letter, Chapter 1:17 saying we’re saved ultimately not by following laws but by welcoming grace.

The second blast of Romans is that the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ has rewritten the history of the world, making the church God’s new Israel so that the very destiny of the cosmos is tied in with that of God’s children and, as we read in Romans 8:21 the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

Over the next four weeks the Sunday Lectionary covers Romans 7 and 8 which are the hinge of 16 Chapters on the good news of God’s goodness. Chapters 1 to 8 of Romans are theological – they are about God, the individual and the church and we will be reading Paul’s summary of these Chapters over the next month in Chapters 7 and 8. Chapters 9 to 11 reflect on the purpose of history, how the Church is the new Israel and how the old Israel will yet find a place in his plan. Chapters 12 to 15 are on Christian ethics, that is, on the practical application to our lives of the truth about God, law and grace, history and the church expounded in the first part of the letter.

So – to practical application this morning – with more thoughts on the section of Romans 7 you have in your service booklet. The passage is a profound reflection on our human condition. When Augustine read it he had the school of thought Lord, make me chaste, but not yet. Like us he knew of the good and evil within him and was complacent. We human beings know our worth, know what we can and might be, but we fall short of it and of the desire for it. To speak of our sinning is to speak as they do in archery of a life that falls short of its target. We know we’re made by God for community to love God and the community but with that knowledge comes the deep frustration of   distrust, or even at times hatred, of God and the community. For I do not do what I want, writes Paul in verse 15 of Chapter 7 but I do the very thing I hate. 

How can I please God? We live dangerously when we think our churchgoing or confirmation or ordination is what ultimately pleases him. It doesn’t displease him but its insufficient to give access to him in his holiness. ‘Lord you are the source of all holiness’ the priest says in the eucharistic prayer, going on to ask God in that holiness to make bread and wine holy for us. It is precisely that body and blood of Christ represented in bread and wine which can make us pleasing to God. The letter to the Hebrews says in Chapter 11 verse 6 that without faith it is impossible to please God. What pleases God is to be found in the body and blood of Jesus as Paul says in Ephesians 1:6-7 glorious grace [is] freely bestowed on us in the Beloved… [Jesus Christ in whom] we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses. The good news of the goodness of God to us is that though so different, awesome, immense and holy he thought to make us in his image so as to be transformed into his glory and be history makers.  To effect that plan for the future of the cosmos he needed to take our nature and provide sinners with a way into his holiness by incorporating us into the body of Jesus Christ that’s acceptable to God.

By uniting us to the sacrifice of Jesus, made present at this and every eucharist, God makes us acceptable in the Beloved, since, in the words of Romans 3:23 all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God [but] are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. This earlier teaching in Romans lies behind the end of today’s passage: Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God … Jesus Christ our Lord!

Read Romans 1 to 7 to get more insight into this need for God to take flesh in Jesus and so provide needful sacrifice for sin - but this morning I leave you with God’s call to repentance. You’ve read Paul’s description of our knowing what to do but not doing it, insight from God’s Word that psychology reinforces. With me accept what psychology will not be able to offer which is the call to repent, to turn from your inadequacy to the source of grace and holiness which is Christ in you – Christ who is coming to you in word and sacrament this morning. Repent, turn to him whose power in you is able to alleviate your wretchedness and work within you by his power to make your life pleasing to God who has made you for his glory.

Here’s a taster for you – but do pick up your bible in the coming week – a modern translation – and savour Romans! 

Palm Sunday 24th March 2013: I believe in the forgiveness of sins

Like Muslims it could be said that Christians have five pillars that support their faith: The Bible, The Creed, The Sacraments, The Commandments and The Lord’s Prayer. During Lent we’ve been refreshing our grasp of one of these pillars - The Apostles Creed during the renewal of baptismal vows. Though it has twelve articles of belief we’ve split it into five. 

On the first three Sundays of Lent we looked at belief in God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit and the Church. Next Sunday we’ll look appropriately at the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. This morning’s article is the forgiveness of sins so I want us to consider these four questions: What is sin? What is forgiveness? Why do we believe in the forgiveness of sins? How do we receive the forgiveness of sins?

What is sin?

·         Something young people do not know or care about (Survey of the beliefs of "generation Y" (15-to-25-year-olds)) shows they don't have any real sense of sin.

·         Sin is as alien to the contemporary mind as fetching water from a well or darning your socks  (Guardian)

·         Alas so is the sense of a personal God which defines sin – a failure in our relationship with God. A culture that doesn't even care about sin has truly cut itself off from God's grace and is therefore sinful in the most profound sense.

·         Sin, as defined in the Bible, means "to miss the mark." The mark, in this case, is the standard of perfection established by God and evidenced by Jesus. Viewed in that light, it is clear that we are all sinners. The Apostle Paul says in Romans 3:23: "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." 

·         PALE gas is a mnemonic for the seven deadly sins – pride, anger, lust, envy, gluttony, avarice, sloth which miss the mark of seven God-like qualities: humility, patience, chastity, love, temperance, generosity, diligence.

·         In his Divine Comedy Dante ranks sins that damage the community such as pride, violence and fraud as more damaging than sins of the flesh.

·         Culpability for sin links to how seriously an action was intended

What is forgiveness 
Letting go of the need for revenge and releasing negative thoughts of bitterness and resentment. 

In January of 1990 after the fall of the Berlin wall Erich Honecker, the brutal and hated dictator of East Germany, found himself sick and homeless. So despised was he that no one could be found to provide him shelter. They contacted Pastor Uwe Holmer who directed a church-run convalescent center in the village of Lobetal. Pastor Holmer had bitter memories of Honecker and his regime. Honecker had personally presided over the building of the wall, the wall that separated Holmer's family and kept him from attending his own father's funeral. He had even greater reason to resent Honecker's wife, who ran the East German ministry of education. Holmer's ten children had been denied admission to any university because of their faith. It would be easy for Pastor Holmer to turn Honecker away because the church's retirement home was full and had a long waiting list. But because Honecker's need was urgent, Pastor Holmer decided he had no choice but to shelter the couple under his own roof! Pastor Holmer's charity was not shared by the rest of the country. Hate mail poured in. Some members of his own church threatened to leave or cut back their giving. Pastor Holmer defended his actions in a letter to the newspaper. "In Lobetal," he wrote, "there is a sculpture of Jesus inviting people to himself and crying out, 'Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.' We have been commanded by our Lord Jesus to follow him and to receive all those who are weary and heavy laden, in spirit and in body, but especially the homeless… What Jesus asked his disciples to do is equally binding on us."

 Why do Christians believe in the forgiveness of sins?

·         To believe in Christianity is to believe in new starts.  The Resurrection of Jesus is the greatest new start ever given to humanity and the forgiveness of sins flows from this.  

·         The interpretation in scripture of Christ’s death and resurrection: If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.1 John 1.9 And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. Acts 2.38

·         The Apostle's Creed associates faith in the forgiveness of sins with faith in the Holy Spirit, the Church and in the communion of saints. This is because Our Lord gave the Holy Spirit to his apostles it came with authority to forgive sins: "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained."

·         Is God fair to forgive? People can react very unfavourably to talk of Christian forgiveness, especially in the case of very hurtful sin.  The God and Father of Jesus has holiness that is affronted by wrong. That holiness which is above us is coupled to a love that is beyond us. Jesus came to give us what we need before he came to give us what we deserve.  If God is fair He goes beyond fairness. He treats us as really much better than we are.  His holiness and mercy came together on the Cross of Jesus.                       

How do Christians receive the forgiveness of sins?

·         By facing up to and not excusing our sins. C.S. Lewis: The trouble is that what we call "asking God's forgiveness" very often really consists in asking God to accept our excuses. What leads us into this mistake is the fact that there usually is some amount of excuse, some "extenuating circumstances." We are so very anxious to point these things out to God (and to ourselves) that we are apt to forget the very important thing; that is, the bit left over, the bit which excuses don't cover, the bit which is inexcusable but not, thank God, unforgivable.. What we have got to take to Him is the inexcusable bit, the sin. We are only wasting our time talking about all the parts which can (we think) be excused. When you go to a Dr. you show him the bit of you that is wrong - say, a broken arm. It would be a mere waste of time to keep on explaining that your legs and throat and eyes are all right. You may be mistaken in thinking so, and anyway, if they are really right, the doctor will know that.

·         Christianity is not guilt-ridden because it encourages people to do something about sin. It is in fact guilt-ridding! 

·         Through the church Christ offers forgiveness. The church does this supremely in baptism and then through prayer, scripture promises and sacramental ministry. 

·         In sacramental confession the priest acts for Christ in welcoming sinners who wish to confess aloud.  This rite echoes Christ’s story of the prodigal son who returned to his father’s embrace. The whole point of sacraments is to give outward and visible signs of inward and invisible gifts from God. The inward gift of forgiveness is brought with visible assurance for many by their coming to the priest, as God’s representative, to receive an individual word of forgiveness. For other Christians it is more a matter of taking God at his word in scripture. If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins (1 John 1v9).

There is a condition for being granted forgiveness: penitence, being truly sorry for your sins.  You cannot be truly sorry without resolving to put right the damage you’ve done as far as it can be put right.  There is one other condition for receiving forgiveness: the readiness to forgive others.

·     
 To believe in the forgiveness of sins is to believe in a God who is more ready to give us what we need than he is to give us what we deserve. He treats us as really much better than we are and challenges us to do the same by being ourselves generous to those who are in our debt.