St Bartholomew, Brighton Trinity 20 (31C) Matters of the Heart 30.10.10

I want to speak about what I will call matters of the heart. This is prompted by today's Gospel reading from Luke 19. Like Zacchaeus we have to descend to meet with Jesus – not 18 feet from a tree but 18 inches – the distance between our brains and our hearts.

To speak of the heart is to speak of the centre of our personal being. Scripture regards the heart as the sphere of divine influence which contains the real, hidden man. It represents and conceals the true character of a man or woman. At the same time the heart, source of the hidden springs of our personal life, can through sin defile the whole circuit of our action.

Proverbs 3 tells us that a man whose heart is trustful upon God has "healing in his flesh" and "refreshment in his bones" and that is saying an awful lot about the influence of what Our Lord calls "honest and good hearts" upon the bodies and minds of those possessing such a blessing.

If our hearts are right the health there spills into body and mind, emotions, thoughts and intentions.

Christianity concerns the heart. It continually challenges us to go deep, to seek the freedom of the kingdom of God which is within us through our baptism and to find and value the centre of our personal being, the heart.

Some time ago I watched a sort of Brains Trust on TV when the select group of intellectuals were asked if there were any causes left that people might be prepared to die for. Only the religious man said that could be so. It seemed that the sorts of beliefs that the others assented to were not really worth the candle. Only the man who had been seized in his heart by the awesome Reality of God had to admit that to believe as he did could one day call him to sacrifice himself for his principles and not vice versa. As a diversion I would applaud the fact that we now have a prime minister with a seemingly definite religion and a heart assent to the good values associated with Hinduism

There is little heart assent, real assent to truth around. As Christians we have made an assent to Our Lord in baptism, confirmation and, for myself, ordination, but that assent can grow superficial. We live so much at the level of our external bodily appetites or our emotions or our intellects and these can drown the heart’s yearning.

What is divine and also simple is to live at the deepest level, the level of the heart.

God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is a personal God and he seeks to build a personal relationship with us. This is set up in principle through Baptism and nourished through the Eucharist and through preaching and prayer and so on. We need to appropriate the Lord’s personal invitation set forth in these ways. 

This means welcoming God to our personal centre and for that to happen we need to be at home there - in our hearts. Often we are so busy living at the level of bodily appetite or mental stimulus that, however much we profess Christianity, we have no heart to heart with God. We live on the surface. As Zacchaeus descended that tree to do business with Our Lord we also should be drawn to descend with Jesus, descend down into our hearts. 

Are there any good strategies to achieve this? I have found one many others have found useful. This is continual repetition of the age old Jesus Prayer which runs: ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner’ This Prayer centres me. It reminds me of God’s love present alongside me and within me in Jesus Christ. Slowly repeating those words, ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner’ lowers my being eighteen inches from mind to heart. It dispels selfish external preoccupations and provides an outward focus upon those around me wherever I am, including God. The Lord uses the discipline of continuous recitation to turn me out of myself in loving intercession towards my neighbours. It requires the will to pray, of course, which comes from the Holy Spirit who is always at hand to cleanse the thoughts of our heart if we ask him.

The heart, as the centre of our life, commands our conscious being - but is often at the mercy of our unconscious being. Sometimes we find it hard to face ourselves, let alone possess ourselves as we are, however much we believe God loves us. Our failure to give out to others can link to this failure to know, love and possess ourselves - you can’t give what you don’t possess!

The knocks we take in life are very often passed over consciously and stored in the unconscious. Sometimes situations cause us to react out of all proportion. Very often the stored hurts, resentments and so on constrict our hearts, our personal life. I don't want to dwell on this more than to say again we must possess ourselves before we can give ourselves. Scrutiny of our hearts, time taken in self examination and inner healing will reward us with a sort of "deconstricting" of the heart. Talking to a priest or finding a spiritual director or counsellor can help here.

‘Zacchaeus, come down, hurry because I must stay at your house today’. Our Lord has the same invitation to us this morning and we will say in response ‘Lord, I am not worthy, that thou shouldest come under my roof’. May our welcome of him in the Blessed Sacrament reach beyond our lips into our centre, our home, which is our heart. Continual echoing of the ‘Lord, I am not worthy’ welcome words might serve you in this as you follow up receiving Communion by repeating the Jesus Prayer to yourself hour by hour: ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner’.

Christianity concerns the heart. It challenges us to go deep, to seek the inner freedom of the kingdom of God which is within us and needs to be owned. Jesus meek and lowly of heart make our hearts like unto your Heart! Come, Holy Spirit! 

St Peter & St John, Wivelsfield Trinity 6 (17C) on prayer 24 July 2022

 

Lord, teach us to pray they asked Jesus. I want to look this morning at four aspects of prayer, of looking to Jesus: listening, friendship, recollection, and lastly empowerment. [ask children about what’s best and worst about school eg listening - we’re all being schooled]

Prayer, looking unto Jesus, is listening.  You can’t look to Jesus unless you give ear to him, unless you attend to him.  Our whole life depends on right listening – to other people and to ourselves at times – but chiefly to Jesus.Through prayer we hear from God.  We catch his inspirations for our life and for the world.

How do we look to Jesus in listening? A discipline of time offered to attend directly to God. 

Michael Ramsey’s quote – he prayed for 2 minutes but took 30 minutes to get there.

Scripture (show) is a means of looking to Jesus through listening to his Word. There is great power in imaginative listening to scripture. One way you can do this is to make the words of scripture more personal by changing the case of the pronoun in the passage. Take that Colossians passage. You could make it into a This is the Word of the Lord about John or whoever you are. It could read: When I John was buried with Christ in baptism, I was also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead. And when I was dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of my flesh, God made me alive together with Christ, when he forgave me all my trespasses. As I read the passage like this it reminds me how God sees me and how I should see myself, as one dead to sin and alive to him. There are times when such an observation can be very powerful. This sort of exercise is about experiencing what we already possess as Christians, seeing ourselves as God sees us in his word. You read through prayerfully until God touches your Spirit and then hold yourself at that point once such a prayerful impulse has been given to you.

Prayer, looking to Jesus is secondly about friendship.  We seek our friends’ attention and he seeks ours. [children - are you looking forward to seeing more of your friends in the holidays?]

When friends meet they light up and so it is with Jesus and ourselves as we come before him in contemplation. When did you last sit in quiet before the Lord?  What is it that keeps you from doing so? Could you imagine Jesus, your friend, doing you any harm?

Contemplative prayer has been described as ‘spiritual radiotherapy’. St Augustine once said that the whole purpose of life is the healing of the heart’s eye through which God is seen. Heart surgery of the Holy Spirit: the melting of coldness within cf heavenly microwave. A major barrier to contemplation is the way our minds get so distracted which hinders our hearts from contemplation. This is where the repeating of short words that engage and focus the mind can be helpful as in the Orthodox Jesus prayer. This involves repeating again and again the gospel prayer Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me a sinner. The value of the Jesus Prayer mentioned on is commended all through the Christian tradition.  

Please don’t hesitate to talk to me afterwards if you want guidance on the Jesus Prayer as I’ve written a book about it (show). Not that I’m expert - any expertise I possess is to know that when it comes to prayer we’re all on the bottom rung of the ladder!

Looking to Jesus in prayer though, to summarise the second heading, is about building friendship, about lighting one another up so that in the words of Nehemiah (8v10) the joy of the Lord [becomes] our strength. 

Looking to Jesus is thirdly recollection, prayer that takes stock of your life and celebrates what God has done and is doing and looks forward to what God is going to do in us and through us.

The value of prayer journaling (show). Tis grace both led me safe thus far … and grace will lead me home. A good exercise is to look back over your life and recollect with Jesus the five biggest spiritual milestones along the way, your five most powerful desires, your five worst fears. Recollection is about such reminiscing or calling to mind.  It is also about ‘collecting again’ or recovering control of oneself. Through looking to God we gain self-possession. 

Attention to God, mindfulness of Jesus is at the heart of the Christian life.The recollected woman or man inhabits her or his words, is able to be present to Jesus at all times so that Jesus can be in them and show through them.

Prayer, looking to Jesus is lastly empowerment. As we heard in the Gospel: If you then, who are evil, know how to give your children what is good, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him (Luke 11:13).

Well we did ask for the Spirit - or others asked, at baptism and confirmation, the birth of our Christian commitment and in the receiving of Holy Communion - but we need to keep inviting him by asking regularly for the Holy Spirit.  Prayer is an empowerment especially by the gift of the Holy Spirit. As we pray we can at times feel God’s touch upon our heart, see some sort of vision or be led to some particular scripture verse as we look to Jesus. This is charismatic prayer, literally graced or given prayer in which our looking to Jesus and waiting before him is answered by a heavenly gift.

Looking to Jesus in prayer then is listening, friendship, recollection and empowerment. It's also as today’s Gospel reminds us about intercession which could provide another sermon!

For now though, may the Lord turn our eyes more and more upon himself so that our earthly pursuits may lose some of their enticement as we see more of him through seeking him in prayer. 

So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.

St John, Burgess Hill & St Richard, Haywards Heath Wed 5 Jan 2021

The Son of God became Son of Man so children of men can become children of God through his lowering a ladder from heaven.

We read about that ladder in today’s Gospel from John 1:43-51 where the context is the drawing of Andrew and Peter, then Philip and Nathanael to the Lord. Philip's confidence in Jesus shared with Nathanael - known to us as St Bartholomew - paves the way for his encounter with the Lord.

47 When Jesus saw Nathanael coming he said of him, "There is an Israelite who deserves the name, incapable of deceit!" 48 “How do you know me?” said Nathanael. “Before Philip came to call you,” said Jesus " I saw you under the fig tree. 49 Nathanael answered, "Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!"

To understand this encounter we need to go back to Genesis 28 and the story of Jacob. Nathanael ‘incapable of deceit’ is contrasted with Jacob who deceived Isaac his blind father. The contrast continues in v51 of John Chapter 1 where the vision Jacob was granted of angels ascending to heaven on a ladder on one occasion is contrasted with the ultimate vision promised to Nathanael and all Christian believers.

What impresses Nathanael and brings him to faith is Our Lord's 'gift of knowledge'.  Jesus refers to some incident in Nathanael's life 'under a fig tree' known to Nathanael alone.  The sharing of this information establishes Jesus wisdom and trustworthiness so Nathanael is drawn to confess those great words: "Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!"

Our Lord deals with us as he did with Nathanael as individuals. Though we gather together at this eucharist we worship and do business with him also as individuals. The Lord wishes the objective love and truth that he is to become subjectively real to us and in us, challenging our fear of change, reluctance to accept suffering or let go of resentments. In this way the grand aims of Christianity get tighter hold on our flesh and blood and heart and mind. One of the most common sicknesses of the soul is disbelief in the love of God though that’s as real as 2+2 makes 4 or the irrefutable law of gravity: what goes up must come down!

50 Jesus replied, "You believe that just because I said: I saw you under the fig tree. You will see greater things than that." 51 And then he added, "I tell you most solemnly, you will see heaven laid open, and, above the Son of Man,  the angels of God ascending and descending" .

These words echo the Pauline promise in 2 Corinthians 3:18 'And 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'. 

Coming back to the parallel with Jacob's ladder in Genesis that vision came after the experience of Jacob wrestling with an angel. So it is with us, our struggles with God in our individual circumstances are heartened by glimpses of where those struggles will lead.

'No ladder now', writes Archbishop William Temple in his commentary on this verse, contrasting it with Genesis 28. 'No ladder now; the Messiah Himself is the meeting point of human need and divine blessing or judgement.'

'Christian Healing is Jesus Christ meeting us at our point of need' (Morris Maddocks). Nathanael is promised no ladder to heaven but One who himself 'opens wide the gate of heaven to man below'. Jesus is the Mediator. He is the One who draws heaven to earth and human beings to God. 

Our Lord is the meeting point of human need and divine blessing. For some of us, some of the time, that meeting will bring forgiveness from sin or physical healing from sickness or breaking an emotional bondage or an opening up of the eye of faith. Sometimes such a meeting comes through meeting a priest one to one for counsel or confession and we priests are here for that above all things.

At this eucharist we meet Jesus Christ in word and sacrament. How about our points of need?  Are we bringing them to him expecting healing and transformation? If we are not sure of our needs are we asking to be shown them? Blest are those who know their need of God!

I tell you most solemnly, you will see heaven laid open, and, above the Son of Man, the angels of God ascending and descending" .

Intercessions

Blest are those who know their need of God! We seek that blessing, Lord, at this eucharist. Show us our exact needs as we begin this New Year and help us to put more faith in you to supply them by your grace. Lord hear us

‘You will see heaven laid open, and, above the Son of Man, the angels of God ascending and descending’. We pray, Lord, for Christian leaders that they better help your people look to heaven to receive the healing and transformation they need in preparation for full union with you. Lord hear us

We thank you, Lord, for all who seek and all who provide the ministries of confession, healing and spiritual direction. May these ministries be more available in the wake of the COVID epidemic Bless each and everyone who enters this Church regularly or occasionally. Lord hear us 

St Bartholomew, Brighton Trinity 8 (16B) 22.7.18

The Lord’s prayer opens up Christianity as a place of belonging, purpose, empowerment, forgiveness and direction.  Reflecting on this Sunday’s readings I find they illuminate each clause of the prayer Jesus taught us. We’ll go for these five headings as a way to understand today’s scripture, as a framework for reflecting on the Lord’s Prayer and as a reminder of the main blessings we possess as Christians: belonging, purpose, empowerment, forgiveness and direction.

First belonging. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Our first reading from Ephesians stated that we believers have access in one Spirit to the Father. To be a Christian is to belong to God as Father and to one another. The Church is God’s never ending family. Sunday by Sunday we come to say ‘Our Father’ - not my Father but Our Father for the God and Father of Jesus is your God and my God. Jesus died to gather together the scattered children of God and that gathering occurs through baptism and through faith.

Someone asked that heroine of Calcutta’s slums Mother Teresa how she prayed and she answered I just say again and again ‘Our Father’. When we pray we affirm our belonging both to God and to our neighbour. Hallowed be thy name - Jesus leads us in contemplation of God as his Father and ours. Today’s Gospel is a striking example and reminder of our need to set time apart day by day to contemplate God and to say the Our Father. Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while, Jesus says. How can we take up that invitation in our own daily routine? To contemplate our belonging to God and bring to our loving Heavenly Father in prayer the sisters and brothers he has put on our hearts?

Second purpose. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done That purpose, that will is stated in the New Testament. Its a purpose for the cosmos and for the church, one stated in Colossians of bringing all things together in Christ and in today’s first reading stated as one of growing into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God. As Christians we’ve a purpose in life: drawing the world together. I think of how iron filings randomly scattered form up beautifully when magnetised. You and I are here in Church to be magnetised by the love of God shown us through word and sacrament in Jesus Christ. We leave Church that bit more assured of God’s love and that bit better instruments of healing and reconciliation in a broken world.

I was preaching last Sunday in Bordeaux and quoted this saying from the Abbe de Tourville: Say to yourself very often about everything that happens, ‘God loves me! What joy! And reply boldly, ‘And I truly love Him too!’ Then go quite simply about all that you have to do and do not philosophize any more. For these two phrases are beyond all thought and do more for us than any thought could do; they are all-sufficing. We sometimes make Christianity more difficult than it is - its purpose, our purpose is to welcome the fact we’re loved and hand on that amazing truth to others.

Third empowerment. Give us this day our daily bread - being Christian is counter to self-sufficiency. We’re called to live in the love of God with an eternal perspective. In other words living in the here and now, in the present moment - for God is there and nowhere else. We don’t find God or life in the mental constructs of the past or future but in the present. And the present has a present! Give us this day our daily bread. This phrase has all sorts of interpretations, here at the eucharist for example when the Lord’s prayer is said as preparation for receiving Christ’s body in the form of Bread.

Christianity ultimately is empowerment. They found that empowerment in Jesus Christ from the very start as we heard in today’s Gospel. Jesus we heard had compassion for them... A God who answers prayers, who gives us the Holy Spirit. They laid the sick in the marketplaces, and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched it were healed. It may be as you sit in Saint Bartholomew’s this morning you sit with a weight of care. Ask the Lord to empower you by taking that burden from you, to free you to be his more effective servant. He will do - if you ask!

Fourthly forgiveness. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Some say Christianity’s heavy on guilt. Its precisely the opposite because the Holy Spirit that impacts us from the Cross of Jesus delivers every penitent heart from guilt. As we heard in the first reading: in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace… Jesus has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility caused by unrepented sin.

To know your sins are forgiven is knowledge the whole world would quickly seek if only it knew it was on offer in Christianity. We come to church to receive that assurance in Jesus’s Hour, the hour of Sunday Mass which irradiates us with God’s love and mercy. Let all that is on your conscience be given to him this morning - prepare for the new start forgiveness offers week by week, hour by hour if need be!

Fifth and last direction. Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. If Christianity brings belonging, purpose, empowerment and forgiveness it lastly provides spiritual direction. As we heard in the Gospel how many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and Jesus began to teach them many things. That teaching is handed on by the church through a network of spiritual directors with gifts of listening and teaching relevant to discerning the forward course in life set by the Holy Spirit. Did you know Anglican Communicants can be put in touch with a spiritual director by their clergy or by a phone call to the diocesan office?

To pray the Lord’s prayer is to set yourself against sin, temptation and evil. Jesus himself we know was impermeable to these but he left a prayer for us with a couple of phrases irrelevant to him. Since Our Lord came into the world to provide the remedy for sin the prayer he taught is a realistic prayer for us. We so often find ourselves going in a direction away from the prompting of the Holy Spirit through nameless fear, anxiety, inappropriate sadness, self-centredness, the tendency to see endless snags ahead or through a basic lack of hope. These feelings can prevent us doing what’s best and we need to counter them and seek help from God and maybe other Christians to do so. Our clergy are here too to help with guidance.

To sum up, the Lord’s prayer displays Christianity as a place of belonging, purpose, empowerment, forgiveness and direction. Ours is a deep, hopeful and forward looking religion.

The Lord bless us as we pray the ‘Our Father’ prayer of belonging and contemplate God day by day, as we pray and act according to his purpose with the empowerment of his Spirit, seeking forgiveness and spiritual direction.

For thine, Lord, is the kingdom, the power and the glory for ever and ever. Amen.