St John the Evangelist, Burgess Hill Candlemas 30.1.22

We come to Church to worship and to be enlightened. Jesus came first to the Temple on this day with those two ends of self offering and edification.

His parents made an offering on his behalf and they heard Simeon's prophecy of their Son becoming 'a light to lighten the nations'.

Candlemas gives us an opportunity to pause and reflect about what we do when we come to this Temple Sunday by Sunday. It is a Temple before it is a preaching house, a place of teaching, yes, but primarily not a place of edification but a place of worship. 

In this Church the worship of the eucharist has been offered day by day with a few breaks since 1863. People in their thousands have joined here to offer the unbloody sacrifice initiated by Jesus Christ we call the eucharist. They've come 'to offer themselves, their souls and bodies as a living sacrifice' with, in and through Jesus Christ.

The West Window, subject of our appeal, has two smaller windows at the bottom designed to emphasise the eucharist in this context. One has the sacrifice of the Cross. The other has the priest at the altar pleading the same sacrifice on our behalf with the text ‘ye do show the Lord's death until he comes’. Praying as we do ‘that my sacrifice and yours may be acceptable to God the Father almighty’. Our response, especially true to this Feast, is ‘may the Lord accept the sacrifice at your hands to the praise and glory of his name, for our good and the good of all his holy church’. 

Today on Candlemas, Feast of his Presentation, on his first visit to the one earthly Temple of his day, Our Lord anticipated his eternal sacrifice. The turtle doves sacrificed on his behalf in that Temple gave way, with all animal sacrifices, to his once for all offering made on a repeat visit to Jerusalem in his 33rd year. They took then no doves but an innocent Lamb, and as they did so the prophecy about his mother Mary in today's Gospel was fulfilled. 'A  sword will pierce your heart'. In St Martin’s Brighton, a Church I know well, that very image of Our Lady is provided at the foot of the Cross, graphically in black and with a sword stuck into her heart.

There is deep continuity between the sacrifices of the Old Testament, the offering of Jesus the Lamb of God, the Eucharistic Sacrifice and our own sacrificial living as Christians. They all hang together. In a culture full of self-interest what we are about this morning is powerfully counter-cultural. Here, in union with Christ, we are offering our souls and bodies to be a living sacrifice.  Sacrifice is at heart about voluntary choice about how we direct our lives - it is about love before it is about death.  It is about joyous living just as sure as ‘God loves a cheerful giver’. It is not so much about forgoing what we desire but of binding our energies to what God desires. 

In this context it is an excellent practice, helping prepare for the eucharist, to start each day with what’s called the Morning Offering. The idea is to sit on your bed as soon as you get up and, whilst letting the blood reach your head, get into gear spiritually by praying something like, ‘Lord, I thank you for who you are and your love for me and all that is. I give myself to you. Take me and use me for your praise and service and the building up of the body of Christ. Come, Holy Spirit'. When you have made such a prayer at the start of the day you recognise spiritual needs and opportunities around you and the hand of God working in your life in the hours that follow. I know this from when I forget to pray it - my day turns rather useless! The Morning Offering is linked to Christ’s Offering and invitation to join in it at Mass where we pray, ‘May he make of us an eternal offering to you’.

We come to Church to worship and to be enlightened.

Part of that enlightenment, as Mary and Joseph found, is the bringing of understanding and hence more creative involvement with the dark times of our life.

We all live with these - bereavement, chronic illness or the necessity to live with unresolved situations where there may be conflict. With Mary and Joseph this morning we welcome holy Simeon's words with gratitude since they speak of peace coming, as it does again and again, through heavenly illumination.

Jesus Christ is the light who lightens all nations and all ages.

May his light shine on us and into our various life situations this morning as we come to worship 'offering ourselves, our souls and bodies as a living sacrifice' with in and through Jesus Christ.

Like Simeon we see in Jesus one who removes the fear of death and promises perpetual light to his family as they travel forward in his light to their fulfilment in the house of the Lord together and forever.

We come to Church to worship and to be enlightened. Our Lord came first to the Temple on this day with those two ends of self offering and edification.

I end with a beautiful prayer of John Donne, sixteenth century Dean of St Paul’s which captures that aspiration: 

Bring us, O Lord God, at our last awakening into the house and gate of heaven to enter into that gate and dwell in that house, where there shall be no darkness nor dazzling, but one equal light; no noise nor silence, but one equal music; no fears nor hopes, but one equal possession; no ends nor beginnings, but one equal eternity; in the habitations of thy glory and dominion, world without end. Amen.

St Richard, Haywards Heath Trinity 13 (21B) 26.8.18

Now I’ve more leisure I’ve more time for conversation around the place. Some time back I had one about spirituality with a businessman in the relaxation area at the Dolphin gym. His firm gave him a wellbeing allowance he used to go on a Buddhist meditation course. He was surprised to hear we did contemplation in the Church of England! Somehow he’d not come to see the Church as a spiritual body. I was thinking of him as I read today’s Gospel.

It is the spirit that gives life Our Lord says in the Gospel, the flesh has nothing to offer. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life. All we’re about at St Richard’s - the door left open day by day, the many services we hold, the friendships built within these walls - all this is barren without the Holy Spirit’s touch upon our membership!

Reading up to this last section of St John Chapter 6 in recent weeks we’ve heard again and again from Our Lord how we must eat his flesh to have eternal life. Now we’re told at the end of the passage that flesh is of no avail, not the Flesh of the Son of God clothed this morning in the form of bread, but our flesh. When they speak of Our Lord’s intolerable language its a reference both to welcoming this Eucharistic change - bread into flesh - and to welcoming the life-giving Spirit, the living presence of God in Jesus Christ. Echoing Joshua’s words we too will serve the Lord, for he is our God in the Old Testament reading Simon Peter shows the same decisiveness: Lord, who shall we go to? You have the message of eternal life, and we believe, we know that you are the Holy One of God.

How can our spirits welcome more of the Holy Spirit? This is the question for us this morning as we take on the decisiveness invited by today’s scripture.

As I hold my hand up to God as a prayer for the Spirit it's five digits remind me of a rule of life involving worship, prayer, study, service and reflection. Sunday Mass, daily prayer, regular bible study, service to others and confessing my sins are the means by which my spirit can welcome more of the Holy Spirit.

A quick thought on each heading.

First Sunday worship. One of the things Anne and I miss leaving Horsted Keynes for Haywards Heath is sitting by the fire. The way fires burn has something about it which challenges a major spiritual deception which is that we can live a healthy Christian life as long as we go to Church on occasion. Just as coals cool when separated from one another so Christians need one another and worship especially to keep being fired by the Holy Spirit. The Lord’s people gather on the Lord’s day in the Lord's house around the Lord's table. Each Sunday is a new Easter - and it can be a new Pentecost!

Second we welcome the Spirit of God in prayer. In prayer we affirm moment by moment what’s real. My life and my thinking is influenced all the time by material concerns which are natural to living with a body but in prayer I open myself to the primacy of the spiritual: It is the spirit that gives life.  Like God’s presence prayer is invisible, an activity of the soul, though as with God it can find a voice. Without that activity life turns soul-less in the sense it loses its place within the overarching compassion, truth and empowerment of the God who is ground of our being. This is why I’m excited about the Year of Prayer and our forthcoming Week of Guided Prayer.

I remember once in Horsted Keynes attending a Council meeting which many feared could turn ugly. The police had been called. After a few affirmative words to those attending I said I agreed we were in something of a hard place and in need of a miracle. I believed good would come out of our meeting if we listened to one another and assumed the best of one another. I announced I’d spend the meeting quietly praying through the Psalms with their different moods of joy and sorrow which I did for almost three hours. One of the leaders said afterwards he believed this action had turned the mood of things. For myself I felt my heart, carrying the people around me, caught up into and carried by the prayers God himself provides for us in Scripture through the Book of Psalms.

When I pray for specific things I am more surprised when nothing happens to change things than when there’s an obvious outcome as at the village meeting.  

Thirdly bible study. Prayerful reading of scripture is an indisputably powerful means of welcoming the Holy Spirit into our lives and through intercession into the lives of those in our circle. This is why the church provides us with a cycle of praying through the Psalms hour by hour and day by day. We’ll have a chance in the forthcoming Week of Guided Prayer to look at ways you can pray from scripture but I’ll rest content to give one example from my own experience when parish priest in Coventry. My mother was staying with us but I’d been rather busy and hadn’t found time to really be with her. One morning during a time of what’s called Ignatian prayer I was reading Luke 7 about the raising of the widow of Nain’s son.

As I came to the words he gave him to his mother I felt convicted of neglecting my widowed mother and came back from Church to spend time with her I’d otherwise not thought to have done. My spirit had welcomed the Holy Spirit as it leapt at me out of my Bible!

Fourthly to welcome the Holy Spirit we need to give to others of our own spirit in service. Whereas rules of worship, prayer, study and reflection are relatively simply organised a rule of service is more complicated. I can make time to attend Church on Sunday, pray daily, study and regularly examine myself but making time to serve my neighbour is so open ended as to be scary. One overarching rule is to see everyone you meet as God’s gift to you. That meeting, fleeting or ongoing, is given so we see Christ before us. Here’s one of the most exciting and challenging ways of welcoming the Holy Spirit, engaging in conversations such as the one I described as having earlier at the gym which impacted me as much as my business friend.

How can our spirits welcome more of the Holy Spirit? Lastly by reflection including self examination and confession. Thinking of the power of reflection, Albert Einstein was told off as a young man for wasting time though overall he made wondrous application of his life to science.

Why do people keep so busy they have no time to reflect?

Sometimes, I’m sure, because they can’t bear the pain of facing the truth about themselves, their situation or God. Yet - if only they knew - if only we sometimes knew - with all our failings God loves us through and through. If we follow Jesus our love for the God who so loves us finds expression in a rule of life in the power of the Holy Spirit so we worship on Sunday, pray every day,  study the Bible, serve our neighbour and reflect upon our lives confessing our sins.

Such is decided Christianity, the counter to superficial living, an opening up to the God of life who wants to anoint us with his Spirit. It is the spirit that gives life… The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life.

Lord, who shall we go to? You have the message of eternal life, and we believe, we know that you are the Holy One of God.

Trinity 10 (21st of Year) Therefore 24th August 2014

We have just heard 700 words of scripture but its one word I want to call attention to this morning at the start of the second reading in Romans 1 verse 12 and its ‘therefore’.

I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice.

In Greek this is a little word oun just three letters but it’s a great hinge so that the ethical teaching in Romans 1 to 15 has been called oun ethics. All the doctrine taught in Romans Chapters 1 to 11 brings ethical implications spelled out somewhat unsystematically in Romans 12 to 15 and the key or hinge conjunction or adverb is oun – therefore.

Christianity is something beautiful that holds together without seams doctrine, worship, ethics and prayer so that you can’t have one without the other. At St Giles School assemblies as in confirmation classes we teach the Creed, the seven sacraments, the Ten Commandments and the Lord ’s Prayer and we teach them as interconnected as they are.

In the last few months we’ve followed St Paul teaching in his letter to the Romans the new life from God Jesus brings. Now he goes on from Chapter 12 to spell out application – how the new life from God becomes a new life lived for God and verse 2 of our reading gives us a major principle: Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.

A great novelist was sitting down after Church to Sunday lunch with his mother and she asked about the sermon. ‘It said the obvious’ he replied. ‘But what did it say about applying the obvious’ his mother replied.

Here’s the rub for any preacher. Paul knew this because all of his letters, even this most theological letter to Rome, contain help to apply the truth revealed in Jesus Christ.

People need to be reminded more than they need to be instructed wrote Dr Johnson. One of the most difficult things to comprehend is how people can forget events and gifts on which their life and salvation depends.

I summarized the core teaching of Romans in my four part series last month as dynamite with two blasts concerning law and history. Romans challenges the part of us that seeks to earn good will legalistically through good actions and the other part of us that’s deep down lost hope for the future of the world.

The first eleven chapters of Romans says reaching 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 and tying in the very destiny of the cosmos with that of God’s children so that, 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.

Saint Paul, having taught this in Romans 1-11 moves on to describe its practical or ethical implications and how the doctrine of Christ has power to reset our life and our hope if we apply it. From next week we shall hear more of the practical outworking of faith as the Sunday Lectionary moves forward into Romans 12. 

Like this practical advice from verse 9 headed in my Bible ‘Marks of the True Christian’:  Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honour. Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. 

Paul’s teaching against legalism finds application in outdoing one another in showing honour. His teaching against pessimism about the state of the world is applied by the fortitude that Rejoices in hope, [is] patient in suffering [and] perseveres in prayer.

There is a link between what we believe of Christ and how we live our lives and this extends into how we worship and how we pray.

I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

Christianity is a seamless robe. It is very different to the patchwork of post-modern society which stitches a bit of this belief and that practice together, gives a nod to worship at Christmas and admires Buddhist meditation.

Our Christian faith is something very beautiful, a beautiful as the One who holds us together in his church that weaves together without seams doctrine, worship, ethics and prayer. If at times I as a priest get despondent about change in the Church it’s because so much of the propounded changes – like those of marriage discipline or holy orders – tear that seamless robe, or patch onto it things that are alien to it lessening its beauty. Marriage and holy orders are sacraments,  fountains of grace instituted of God, with age old disciplines. When w change those disciplines or doctrines even there’s a knock on effect that has implications for ethics, prayer and worship as well as the doctrine.

There is a link between what we believe and how we live our lives and this extends into how we worship and how we pray.  All of this is implied by those first two verses of our second reading this morning from Romans Chapter 12.

In the life of St Giles this is becoming more evident as the worship and prayer of the Christian community links more into its biblical and doctrinal moorings and into outgoing care for the community as evidenced for example by the village lunch. I remain convinced many more would profit from this event initiated by some of our members if more of our members who’re around on third Friday lunchtimes took trouble to identify and bring folk along to something that gives heart to Horsted Keynes.

We have a great brand as Christians but, individually as much as together, we need to value its seamless beauty and use it to cloth the needy God sends to us.

I end with what’s probably that simplest of prayers of application we call the choristers’ prayer:

Bless, O Lord, your servants who minister in your temple. Grant that what we sing with our lips we may believe in our hearts, and what we believe in our hearts we may show forth in our lives. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Trinity 13 2nd September 2012 8am

In Mark 7 Our Lord makes a stinging attack on lip service. He draws on Isaiah: This people honours me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me.

True worship is from the heart through the outward form. Impatience with outward form can be godly, but it can also be ungodly. It’s a godly motive to make worship accessible to outsiders. It’s ungodly to make worship bespoke.

Bespoke is all the range. Some of you may be wearing bespoke clothing which has been custom made to your own specification as opposed to being a ready to wear item. Bespoke is no longer just about tailored clothing. It’s about all sorts of things.

Worship though can’t really be bespoke! It’s rather the opposite. The Anglo Saxon means to give worth to something beyond you. Worship is, to quote Evelyn Underhill, the adoring acknowledgment of all that lies beyond us – the glory that fills heaven and earth. It’s very ‘unbespoke’ and hardly consumerist

The word adoration means from the Greek submission and from the Latin ad-oratio, literally, mouth to mouth, the kiss of love.

True worship is God-oriented and linked to the gathering together of prayerful hearts.

Accessibility is very important in worship of course. It’s not Christian to be an élite community. Yet, at the heart of Christian worship there is awe before God drawing us to submission and loving devotion. We don’t want our church to be élite and inaccessible but we do want our church to be awesome – awesome, not awful. There’s quite a fine divide here for young people I’m afraid.

Renewing worship means working for accessibility. This has always been the case. The move from Latin at the Reformation was one attempt. Alas making worship accessible is far more than making the words intelligible. Even the truths of the faith can be made as plain as can be and worshippers, this one included, fail to act on them. This people honours me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me.

The role of the sermon in worship is both to touch on what is awesome, open up some windows to the resurrection world we enter on the Lord ’s Day, and to serve access to scripture. The role of ceremonial around the altar at the consecration of the Eucharist is to herald and make accessible the Lord in our midst.

As we work to renew worship at St Giles we’re not going to find anything ready built other than what the Lord has provided in word and sacrament and his call for us to participate actively in it.

Just a suggestion. Free your eyes on occasion from your service booklet and news sheet. Don’t feel obliged to follow every word as if you were word checking a proof. Try closing your eyes or looking up at the east window. When the priest takes, blesses, shows and breaks the elements watch. Jesus didn’t say read this in remembrance of me – he said do this. The Eucharist isn’t something read out of a book. It’s a sacrificial action. As Christ was taken, broken and shared in his passion so is the bread – and so are you and I.

Here is part of a poem that expresses what I am saying:

I lift this bread and lift therewith the world, myself and Thee.
Hast Thou not said ‘I, lifted up, will draw the universe to me?’(Martindale)

Attendance at this service is about lifting ourselves and the world on our hearts with Christ to God. I lift this bread and lift therewith the world, myself and Thee.

As the bread is offered at the Eucharist see your life and the lives of all those on your heart as being placed on the altar. As the wine is mixed and offered see your sorrows and those of the world that are on your heart as being offered.

What happened 2000 years ago and what is happening in the lives of those who gather around the altar are joined together and lifted up to the Father through Christ, with Christ and in Christ.

Worship is about submission, and the adoring kiss of love. It is about our love for God and God’s for us and our love for one another in the body of Christ. Accessible worship is worship that helps a congregation see such a vibrant flow of love from their joined hearts through the externals of word and sacrament to God and back.

I lift this bread and lift therewith the world, myself and Thee.
Hast Thou not said ‘I, lifted up, will draw the universe to me?’

Coming to the Eucharist is a lot more than taking a piece of blessed bread and sipping consecrated wine. Sometimes the consumerist streak in all of us sees Holy Communion as the important thing – what we get out of the Eucharist.

No, it’s what we put in as well! Proper Sunday worship is about our whole life being taken up by Jesus Christ to be offered to the Father for transformation.

All of this is hidden in that phrase that flows all too lightly from our lips: We offer thee our souls and bodies as a living sacrifice – Amen, may that be so, more and more deeply in us and among us so that those around us, part of the universe that is ours, may be intrigued, drawn to the celestial flame of love which is his, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.