St Bartholomew, Brighton New Year’s Day 2022

 

Today Christmas thoughts of eternity entering time in Jesus Christ give way to thoughts about time itself. 

It’s New Year’s Day under the patronage of the Blessed Virgin Mary and with this new day the calendar moves further into the second decade of the second millennium.

The bible says in the book of Psalms that we’re made for seven decades, maybe eight. I’m well through and have lived almost all my life by that reckoning.

How many New Year’s Days lie ahead for you and I?

Time like a never ending stream bears all its sons away. They fly forgotten like a dream dies at the opening day.

This morning we’re reminded that our time is running out and will one day carry us out as mortality wears us away. This last year has seen the last days of several parishioners. I think especially of Mark Mytton and William Parker. Our prayers this morning are with them and with so many who have passed on through COVID and with their families

We’re frail mortals. We should approach a New Year with humility because we’re from the earth and will return to the earth.

We’ve also grounds for confidence though. God loves mortals and desires to plant immortal life within them in Jesus Christ whose naming we mark today. 

If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, says Paul he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.

Today is the first day of the rest of our lives.

What’s most important as I live my life in the days and years ahead is to possess the Spirit who gives life to mortal bodies in this world and the next.

Every Eucharist is a calling down of the same Spirit, upon the gifts and upon the people, making holy gifts and holy people. 

Let’s welcome the holy and life giving Spirit as 2022 begins. He’ll be our main asset, the ground of Christian confidence to face the uncertainties ahead. Let’s give an invitation for him to empower us now in a moment of silence before we profess our faith together.

Talk on praying help and guidance in the pandemic at St Wilfrid, Haywards Heath streamed eucharist on Wednesday in Christmas Octave 30.12.20

As a pensioner I take a good interest in the Christmastide readings which featured elderly Simeon yesterday and 84 year old Anna today engaging with the Lord. 

Anna ‘never left the temple but worshiped there with fasting and prayer night and day’. As Jesus was presented and blessed by Simeon ‘she came, and began to praise God and to speak about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem’. 

This elderly lady was immersed in prayer. She was therefore open to the prompting of the Holy Spirit. There she was as our Lord and Saviour comes to his Temple with Mary his mother and Saint Joseph.

As we read Luke’s Gospel Chapter 2 we sense afresh what it means to be open to the Holy Spirit. It means being available to God in worship and prayer, attentive to the scriptures and to the service of others. Anna is called a prophetess which underlines her openness to the Holy Spirit. On that day, like Simeon, she was led to recognise the unique event of the coming of the Child Jesus to the Temple. Anna goes on to ‘[speak] of the child to all who looked forward to the deliverance of Jerusalem’.

I don’t know if like me you have had similar experiences of being in the right place at the right time with unique consequences. You and I may not be prophets in the sense of Anna and Simeon but through our baptism we share in a prophetic gifting. By our immersion in prayer we make ourselves open to the Holy Spirit’s leading and this can have remarkable consequences in our daily lives. May this be so for us especially today as so many in our circle are impacted by COVID-19.

I think of many lost opportunities to serve the Lord through my lack of watchfulness, day by day, hour by hour, for doors he has opened for me to enter. Yes, there are days when I am especially prayerful and watchful and have a sense of being used by God. Other days, when I slip my discipline of prayer and attentiveness to others, I look back in the evening with less satisfaction.

The Christmas stories remind us how eternity intersects with time in Jesus Christ and his followers. By the Holy Spirit the eternal God entered time through Our Lady. By the same Spirit he intersects with us, as at this eucharist through the scriptures and the breaking of the Bread. 

Just as prayerful Anna was in the right place at the right time, so, by the discipline of worship and prayer, we too position ourselves in life to enter possibilities of God beyond our imagining. 

It is a matter of devotion to God as God of the world and Lord of time and expectancy upon him to use us as he wishes. 

Wherever we are the Holy Spirit is present and when we meet others he is especially present. In this season of lockdown old and young are primarily in one place yet we retain a variety of means to engage with others. 

Like Anna let us look up generously to God, immersing ourselves in prayer and praise, expecting the Holy Spirit to make us his instruments. 

It’s a privilege and a responsibility to live close to Jesus Emmanuel, God with us. 

God take us and use us through this eucharist making us responsive to the Holy Spirit as we leave worship to live life with the eternal perspective Christmas opens up for us. May the Lord use our prayer, listening to and action on behalf of others today as the COVID-19 pandemic accelerates.