St Wilfrid & Presentation, Haywards Heath Remembrance Sunday 12.11.23

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

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

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

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

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

Grief for Christians is not without hope. Our faith is built on a revelation well founded in history - the life, teaching, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  Alexander Schmemann writes of this: ‘The only meaningful thing in life is what conquers death, and not “what” but “who” - Christ. There is undoubtedly only one joy: to know him and share him with each other’ (unquote). We gather every Sunday, the Lord’s day, as the Lord’s people, around the Lord’s table to celebrate that Jesus died and rose again. That celebration is linked to knowing and sharing Jesus and professing faith in the everlasting love of God. This takes the sting out of grief at the passing of those we love. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

St Richard, Haywards Heath All Saints’ Day 1st November 2023

We will see him as he is, and all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure. 

1 John 3.2-3

We shall see him says St John. The Christian hope set forth on the Feast of All Saints is no less than this.

We shall see him and this is a call to purify ourselves, just as he is pure.

Three thoughts spring out of the scriptures set for this evening. In the first reading we are reminded that heaven is something corporate, something we shall see. In the second reading we are reminded that heaven is the vision of God no less and that is exciting. The third Gospel reading is a call to purify ourselves, just as he is pure for the Saints are those who have been poor in spirit, pure in heart and so on.

We shall see him

The vision of God is too wonderful for me alone. This is the understanding we receive from the first reading from Revelation chapter 7 which speaks of a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands.

Some forms of Christianity are good at throwing a line to unbelievers and drawing them in. They go on to promote their spiritual development as a one to one hotline to Jesus. Today’s Feast presents the drawing power of Jesus not as a line but as a net. The communion of saints is a net that by example and prayer draws us together around the throne of God to worship him day and night within his temple. 

We shall see him

Our second reading from St John’s First Letter complements the first that reminded us heaven is something corporate. It reminds us that to be a Christian is to live God centred in hope of the heavenly vision of God.  Let it speak for itself: what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this; when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.

This is the one true and only blessed life Saint Augustine writes to Proba that we should contemplate the delightfulness of the Lord for ever, immortal and incorruptible in body and spirit…Whoever has this will have all that he wishes…There indeed is the spring of life, which we must now thirst for in prayer, so long as we live. To believe in heaven is to yearn for reunion with those we love but see no longer. It is a reunion of mortals after death with all the saints. Yet it is only so because God who made all and sees all for the sake of the sins of us all sent his Son to live and die and open up the kingdom of heaven to all believers. It is Christ’s resurrection that holds mortals beyond death. What other hope is there?

We will see him as he is, and all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure. 

The last scripture we heard this morning was the Beatitudes reading from the Sermon on the Mount. It is a reminder that the beatific vision comes to those who live the beatitudes – those words beatific and beatitudes link to the Latin root beatus which means blessed or holy one. 

The holy ones, saints, blessed ones are those who are poor in spirit, meek, merciful, pure in heart, and peacemakers who mourn for the lost and bear persecution for righteousness sake. All of the qualities Our Lord lists are in his own person, so to be a beatus, a saint, is to be Christ-like. 

Today is All Saints Day and the focus is on heaven. Tomorrow is All Souls Day and the focus there will be on the purification from sin we need to get to heaven in this world and the next. It says of heaven in the second to last chapter of the Bible that no unclean thing will enter there (Revelation 21.27). That is why we pray for those who have died with unrepented sin that they will be cleansed and fitted for the vision of God.

All Saints Feast is a call to purify ourselves, just as he is pure. We won’t have eyes to see God without purification. This is a painful truth. 

May this Feast of All Saints bring us comfort and discomfort.

We shall see him as he is – what a comforting thought!

And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure. How discomforting! 

There is work ahead for us all!

 

Advent 2 8am 6th December 2015

Christianity is well thought out. It’s well thought out because it’s from the mind of God no less! You can’t rubbish Christianity as a blind faith because it’s a reasonable faith. There are few faith traditions so rooted in unambiguous historical events.

Listen again to that very specific account that introduces the third chapter of St Luke’s gospel which is today’s gospel reading: In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip, ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness.

No wonder historians of all ages have applauded St Luke, whose gospel we’re now reading in Year C of the Sunday Lectionary, as being one of them. You can check his historical facts. We can consequently be 95% certain John the Baptist and Jesus Christ met in the River Jordan where the first baptised the second.

You can’t see God but at one point in history you could because God became one of us. John the Baptist was sent as the pointer to this. More than that, a pointer to the one who’d help everyone who wanted to know God to know God and share God’s life for ever.

To be a Christian is to share the baptism St John the Baptist came to speak of, the anointing in the Holy Spirit that makes the invisible God known as surely as the wind makes the air known.

A God we could see would actually be less wonderful than the God Christians believe in. We’d be able to contain him in our minds! Instead the Christian vision of God is one that expands continually from our limited dimensions to his unlimited ones. If you want a magnificent God the price you pay seems to be that of worshipping a God that’s invisible to mortal eyes.

How can I believe in a God I can't see? People ask us. I’m tempted to answer ‘you wouldn’t need to believe in someone if you could actually see them!’ Faith, as the letter to the Hebrews puts it, is conviction of things unseen (11:1).

The question ‘How can I believe in a God I can't see?’ is really the question ‘how can I find faith?’

A quick answer is ‘you should ask God for it, ask him to open your inner eyes to his all powerful yet invisible presence’.

I remember once my faith going right into the doldrums. It really burned low, so low I went back to the monastery at Mirfield where I trained as a priest and asked for help.

Maybe it’s not God who’s gone but your vision of him, the monks said. Pray for a vision of God more to his dimensions and less to your own they said. For three days I prayed a prayer rather like God, if you’re there, show yourself! He did – I survive to tell the tale – he spoke to me through a leaf on a tree.

I made you. He said. I love you. I want to fill you with my Spirit. That he did, though I’ve leaked since.

Asking God for a vision of himself more to his dimensions and less to your own seems always to bear fruit. Faith grows – it enlarges, especially if it is enriched by prayerful reading of the Bible and celebration of the sacraments. 

Christian mystics write of faith as a practical commitment.

In the medieval Cloud of Unknowing the anonymous mystical author describes faith as an ‘eager dart of longing love’ that reaches out to touch God and release his possibilities into our situation.

John the Baptist pointed to God so that we too could be drawn to reach out to God ourselves.

How can I believe in a God I can't see? You need to make a decision. That’s what faith is – an ongoing decision to go beyond and not against reason. As John Donne wrote Reason is our soul’s left hand, faith his right, by these we reach divinity.

Both faith and reason lift us to God and in Jesus God himself reaches down to us revealing himself to both our reason and our faith. In St Luke’s record of history of John the Baptist and Jesus Christ we should see a reasonable case for the Incarnation, the coming of God upon the earth.

Here, in the coming of Jesus that Advent centres upon, what we believe and what we see come together.

As St John the Evangelist writes No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known (John 1:18)

You can see him now with your mind and heart’s eye - in his word, in the breaking of bread, in our Christian fellowship.

St John the Baptist tells us so for his words echo on through history in our liturgy of the eucharist. John gives us the very words that speak of Christ’s presence:

Behold the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world.