Who is this Jesus? As Holy Week moves to its climax this is our question heading for a five part sermon series.
Over these three days running up to Easter we’re looking at five key aspects of Jesus: his origin, teaching, death, resurrection, his church and his return.
We started out of sequence yesterday with the church as this linked to the Maundy Thursday supper table.
Earlier this afternoon we looked at the origins of Jesus, evident as historical record. Now we ponder Jesus – man of respect – before we come to offer him respect as we come to his Cross together.
In Holy Week the world stops to respect Jesus.
It’s not so much what he taught but how he taught that catches us.
We live in a society where people lack respect. They tolerate one another’s differences but often times they do so without sympathy.
Think of the sympathy of Jesus. He listened to the rich young man. He loved him, scripture says, pointed him to the truth - but out of respect let him go away again.
Jesus was and is a man of respect, a man of dialogue. Today Muslims and Hindus also honour the Founder of Christianity. His teaching attracts them, even if the greater gift of his sacrifice affronts them.
Think of Jesus teaching how God’s rain comes down on good and bad people alike and demonstrating that teaching by reaching out with love to the social outcasts of his day.
There has never been anyone lovelier, deeper or more sympathetic than Jesus Dostoyevsky wrote.
Mother Julian of Norwich describes Jesus in these words: Completely relaxed and courteous, He himself was the happiness and peace of his dear friends, his beautiful face radiating measureless love like a marvellous symphony.
Jesus sees us, like a friend, with loving respect. He sees us as better than we are and by the events of Holy Week he helps to make us so.
There is a perception, or rather distortion of Christ and Christianity that sets forth a moral high-handedness about Jesus.
This goes against his own generosity in his encounters with individuals. The woman caught in adultery was not stoned because Jesus came into the situation and rescued her from the consequence of her sin.
Jesus did not come to rub it in but to rub it off as someone else once said of him.
There is part of us, even we who have come to join the few at Good Friday devotions, that is apprehensive about close encounter with Jesus.
We should be reminded of this - Jesus is more concerned to give us what we need than what we deserve, let alone what we think we deserve!
All of this witness to the respect and warm humanity in Jesus does not subtract from the challenge of Jesus.
I read about Napoleon, wrote Carnegie-Simpson, and I am edified. I read about Jesus and I am profoundly disturbed.
In one of her letters the writer and playwright Dorothy Sayers says that to call Jesus 'Gentle-Jesus-meek-and-mild' is 'about as adequate as calling a man-eating tiger 'poor pussy'..
In Jesus we find the perfect balance of love and truth and power. His loving acceptance of sinners is coupled to a burning conviction of truth and holiness and a readiness to empower people with the Holy Spirit given after his resurrection.
That power is with us this afternoon if we will open ourselves up to it as we approach the timeless mystery of the Cross of Jesus.
We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you, because by your holy Cross you have redeemed the world.
Friday, 2 April 2010
Good Friday 2010 Jesus - history maker
Who is this Jesus? The one in whose honour today is set apart on the calendar of the nations. The one from whose coming to die we measure our years on that calendar.
In Holy Week Christians all over the world ponder Jesus.
We stand in a great succession. Men and women for 2000 years have pondered Jesus.(The name of Jesus) is not so much written as ploughed into the history of the world wrote Emerson.
All the armies that ever marched, all the navies that ever sailed, all the parliaments that ever sat, all the kings that ever reigned, put together, have not affected the life of man on this earth as much as this One Solitary Life.
Lecky the historian of rationalism wrote: Christ has exerted so deep an influence that it may be truly said that the simple record of three short years of active life has done more to regenerate and soften mankind than all the disquisitions of philosophers and all the exhortations of moralists.
The atheist Rousseau admitted it would have been a greater miracle to invent Jesus than for him to actually exist. Atheist historian H.G.Wells thought you couldn’t describe the progress of humanity honestly without giving Jesus first place.
Jesus is history maker though in our own day people discomfited by him have tried in vain to push him out of history disclaiming even his existence.
How do we counter these claims?
If people want to say Christianity’s made up they’ll be writing off a lot of historical evidence. The difficulty is that so much of that evidence is in Christian documents.
Not all of it. There are clear references to Jesus in first century writers.
Take Roman historian Tacitus. He writes that when Rome burned down in 64AD the Emperor Nero fastened the guilt …on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians…Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of…Pontius Pilate Tacitus confirms from his ancient history what Christians recite Sunday by Sunday in their creed.
The Bishop of Durham Tom Wright, a renowned scripture scholar says it would be easier, frankly, to believe that Tiberius Caesar, Jesus' contemporary, was a figment of the imagination than to believe that there never was such a person as Jesus. Trouble is you can see Tiberius’ face on a coin but you can’t see Jesus. That’s the way history goes! A Galilean carpenter wouldn’t in the normal run of things leave the same mark on history as the Emperor of Rome!
If someone says to me Christianity’s made up I’d point them patiently to the solid witness of the New Testament backed up by other first century writings.
At the heart of the New Testament is the story of Jesus who taught, healed, suffered and died in the name of his God. The astonishing part of this history is the record of his resurrection and the galvanising of his followers through the Holy Spirit.
You can’t consider Christ’s origins without facing this. If he is as believed the first born from the dead he’s got a double place in history. Jesus is in history and he’s above history as the beginning and end of all things.
Good Friday is God’s Friday because it’s the climax of the thirty three year life span of God in human flesh. We read in Saint John’s account of yesterday’s Last Supper discourse how the first disciples began to see, even before his death, how Jesus came directly from God (John 13.30b).
Holy Week ends as Christ’s origins are confirmed when God raises his son from death on Easter Day.
How people see Jesus makes all the difference in the world to them and to the world.
His story is history but it’s much more than that.
We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you, because by your holy Cross you have redeemed the world.
In Holy Week Christians all over the world ponder Jesus.
We stand in a great succession. Men and women for 2000 years have pondered Jesus.(The name of Jesus) is not so much written as ploughed into the history of the world wrote Emerson.
All the armies that ever marched, all the navies that ever sailed, all the parliaments that ever sat, all the kings that ever reigned, put together, have not affected the life of man on this earth as much as this One Solitary Life.
Lecky the historian of rationalism wrote: Christ has exerted so deep an influence that it may be truly said that the simple record of three short years of active life has done more to regenerate and soften mankind than all the disquisitions of philosophers and all the exhortations of moralists.
The atheist Rousseau admitted it would have been a greater miracle to invent Jesus than for him to actually exist. Atheist historian H.G.Wells thought you couldn’t describe the progress of humanity honestly without giving Jesus first place.
Jesus is history maker though in our own day people discomfited by him have tried in vain to push him out of history disclaiming even his existence.
How do we counter these claims?
If people want to say Christianity’s made up they’ll be writing off a lot of historical evidence. The difficulty is that so much of that evidence is in Christian documents.
Not all of it. There are clear references to Jesus in first century writers.
Take Roman historian Tacitus. He writes that when Rome burned down in 64AD the Emperor Nero fastened the guilt …on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians…Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of…Pontius Pilate Tacitus confirms from his ancient history what Christians recite Sunday by Sunday in their creed.
The Bishop of Durham Tom Wright, a renowned scripture scholar says it would be easier, frankly, to believe that Tiberius Caesar, Jesus' contemporary, was a figment of the imagination than to believe that there never was such a person as Jesus. Trouble is you can see Tiberius’ face on a coin but you can’t see Jesus. That’s the way history goes! A Galilean carpenter wouldn’t in the normal run of things leave the same mark on history as the Emperor of Rome!
If someone says to me Christianity’s made up I’d point them patiently to the solid witness of the New Testament backed up by other first century writings.
At the heart of the New Testament is the story of Jesus who taught, healed, suffered and died in the name of his God. The astonishing part of this history is the record of his resurrection and the galvanising of his followers through the Holy Spirit.
You can’t consider Christ’s origins without facing this. If he is as believed the first born from the dead he’s got a double place in history. Jesus is in history and he’s above history as the beginning and end of all things.
Good Friday is God’s Friday because it’s the climax of the thirty three year life span of God in human flesh. We read in Saint John’s account of yesterday’s Last Supper discourse how the first disciples began to see, even before his death, how Jesus came directly from God (John 13.30b).
Holy Week ends as Christ’s origins are confirmed when God raises his son from death on Easter Day.
How people see Jesus makes all the difference in the world to them and to the world.
His story is history but it’s much more than that.
We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you, because by your holy Cross you have redeemed the world.
Maundy Thursday 2010 Jesus - body builder
Who is this Jesus? As Holy Week moves to its climax with Maundy Thursday this is our question heading for a five part sermon series.
Christianity’s best asset is its Founder. In these days we seek to come close to him for as Dostoyevsky wrote ‘There has never been anyone lovelier, deeper or more sympathetic than Jesus’.
Over the next three days we’ll be looking at five key aspects of Jesus: his origin, teaching, death, resurrection, his church and his return. Because we’re starting today we’ll start out of sequence with the church.
If we’re to commend Jesus we can’t escape the inextricable link between him and the church he founded to be his earthly body.
Can you have Jesus without his church? Not in his fullness the bible says. To come close to Jesus you need scripture and you need the earthly body he came to build.
Yes, the church falls short of Jesus and can get in the way of Jesus but we can’t get around the fact that Jesus founded the church.
I will build my church Jesus said in Matthew 16 and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. In the 19th of our 39 Anglican Articles of Religion we read that ‘The visible Church of Christ is a congregation of faithful men in the which the pure Word of God is preached, and the Sacraments be duly ministered according to Christ’s ordinance..’
Sacraments, notably Baptism and the Eucharist, were commanded by Jesus, so it’s not true to Jesus to go without them and you won’t find them or preaching outside the Christian church! The creeds and dogmas of the church may seem complicated but they’re vital signposts that protect believers from straying off the well trodden path of Christian believing.
Who is this Jesus? The appreciation of Jesus is something people can do alone but best do together. Christianity centres on the person of Jesus. Like any person there is a mystery about Jesus. People are prone to manage that mystery by simplifying and reducing it. Sometimes this can end up in a false remake of Christianity that serves no one. This is where the corporate faith of the church is important in keeping people on track so their prayer, faith and action remain faithful to Jesus.
Today on Maundy Thursday we recall the principal action of Jesus that builds his body on earth. This is my body he said over bread at his Last Supper commanding us to continue that action until he returns.
Though we Christians are many we are one body because we all share in the one bread (1 Corinthians 10.17) says St Paul. Communion in bread and wine makes and keeps Christians one body, Christ’s body.
Jesus died to gather together the scattered children of God. (John 11.52). What happened in Holy Week is drawing humankind into one.
When people look at the church they don’t always see it as the body of Jesus. Yes, we’re a sinful body - but Jesus remains in our midst.
The story of the church is the unfolding of Holy Week as Jesus makes himself known to each generation through the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, the breaking of bread and prayer. (Acts 2.42)
To this day wherever the Christian faith is being taught, the sacraments are being celebrated and people are praying and serving in Jesus’ name the body of Jesus is being built up under the sign of the Cross.
Jesus Christ is inseparable now from the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church that has grown up through the centuries across the nations.
Tonight in age old ceremonies this church recalls the gift of the eucharist which is ours to make us more fully Christ’s.
At that first supper in the upper room there was a cleansing of feet. That ceremony is to be repeated now. None of us is worthy to sit at the Lord ’s Table. All are in need of cleansing before we take our place.
We’re Christ’s body called to be more fully what he’s made us. The outward cleansing of feet now reminds us of the inward cleansing Jesus offers through his blood that makes us one with him in the new covenant established in that blood on this most holy night. We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you, because by your holy Cross you have redeemed the world.
Christianity’s best asset is its Founder. In these days we seek to come close to him for as Dostoyevsky wrote ‘There has never been anyone lovelier, deeper or more sympathetic than Jesus’.
Over the next three days we’ll be looking at five key aspects of Jesus: his origin, teaching, death, resurrection, his church and his return. Because we’re starting today we’ll start out of sequence with the church.
If we’re to commend Jesus we can’t escape the inextricable link between him and the church he founded to be his earthly body.
Can you have Jesus without his church? Not in his fullness the bible says. To come close to Jesus you need scripture and you need the earthly body he came to build.
Yes, the church falls short of Jesus and can get in the way of Jesus but we can’t get around the fact that Jesus founded the church.
I will build my church Jesus said in Matthew 16 and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. In the 19th of our 39 Anglican Articles of Religion we read that ‘The visible Church of Christ is a congregation of faithful men in the which the pure Word of God is preached, and the Sacraments be duly ministered according to Christ’s ordinance..’
Sacraments, notably Baptism and the Eucharist, were commanded by Jesus, so it’s not true to Jesus to go without them and you won’t find them or preaching outside the Christian church! The creeds and dogmas of the church may seem complicated but they’re vital signposts that protect believers from straying off the well trodden path of Christian believing.
Who is this Jesus? The appreciation of Jesus is something people can do alone but best do together. Christianity centres on the person of Jesus. Like any person there is a mystery about Jesus. People are prone to manage that mystery by simplifying and reducing it. Sometimes this can end up in a false remake of Christianity that serves no one. This is where the corporate faith of the church is important in keeping people on track so their prayer, faith and action remain faithful to Jesus.
Today on Maundy Thursday we recall the principal action of Jesus that builds his body on earth. This is my body he said over bread at his Last Supper commanding us to continue that action until he returns.
Though we Christians are many we are one body because we all share in the one bread (1 Corinthians 10.17) says St Paul. Communion in bread and wine makes and keeps Christians one body, Christ’s body.
Jesus died to gather together the scattered children of God. (John 11.52). What happened in Holy Week is drawing humankind into one.
When people look at the church they don’t always see it as the body of Jesus. Yes, we’re a sinful body - but Jesus remains in our midst.
The story of the church is the unfolding of Holy Week as Jesus makes himself known to each generation through the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, the breaking of bread and prayer. (Acts 2.42)
To this day wherever the Christian faith is being taught, the sacraments are being celebrated and people are praying and serving in Jesus’ name the body of Jesus is being built up under the sign of the Cross.
Jesus Christ is inseparable now from the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church that has grown up through the centuries across the nations.
Tonight in age old ceremonies this church recalls the gift of the eucharist which is ours to make us more fully Christ’s.
At that first supper in the upper room there was a cleansing of feet. That ceremony is to be repeated now. None of us is worthy to sit at the Lord ’s Table. All are in need of cleansing before we take our place.
We’re Christ’s body called to be more fully what he’s made us. The outward cleansing of feet now reminds us of the inward cleansing Jesus offers through his blood that makes us one with him in the new covenant established in that blood on this most holy night. We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you, because by your holy Cross you have redeemed the world.
Monday, 29 March 2010
Palm Sunday 28th March 2010
I hear – I forget. I see – I remember. I do – I understand.
The remembering and understanding of God’s love has come to Christians all through the centuries through what they have seen and done in Holy Week.
The Christian faith handed down from generation to generation is more caught than taught. It’s caught from holy lives and it is caught from holy actions – the actions we are, for example, about to go through in Holy Week.
The Church knows people hear and then forget so she puts the love of God before us in action this week. Just as God’s love came to us practically in Jesus, so this week we do something practical.
We go to Jerusalem, to the Upper Room, to Gethsemane, to Calvary and to the Tomb.
Actions speak louder than words in the Christian religion. Actions teach God’s love.
The aim of Holy Week is that we may own more fully what the Lord has done for us in his great love and catch more of what He has in store for us as individuals and as churches.
The outward rites of the Faith are mighty to teach, but they need backing up by a time of quiet reflection this Week.
My advice, if asked how to make the most of Holy Week, is come to the Liturgy, especially on Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday. Come to the Liturgy, but also go to the Lord yourself in silence. With a Bible maybe. But in silence.
Listen. Listen and let the Lord speak to you personally of his great love for you and for all.
In reflecting on today’s liturgy I was drawn to the prophecy in the ninth chapter of Zechariah which it fulfils: Lo your King comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
This is the prophecy Christ fulfilled which we’re about to re-enact with palms and donkeys.
My eyes moved back a chapter in Zechariah from chapter 9 verse 9 to chapter 8 verse 23. There we read a prophecy that people would one day in the future come up to believers and say ‘Let us go with you, for we have heard it said that God is with you’.
My hope for Holy Week in Horsted Keynes is that the people of our parish may get more and more intrigued by God’s people here so they get drawn along, just as we hope a few will get drawn in to our procession this morning.
‘Let us go with you, for we have heard it said that God is with you’.May that prophecy come true among us as we live and express an ever more joyful faith in Christ as our Lord and Saviour.
The remembering and understanding of God’s love has come to Christians all through the centuries through what they have seen and done in Holy Week.
The Christian faith handed down from generation to generation is more caught than taught. It’s caught from holy lives and it is caught from holy actions – the actions we are, for example, about to go through in Holy Week.
The Church knows people hear and then forget so she puts the love of God before us in action this week. Just as God’s love came to us practically in Jesus, so this week we do something practical.
We go to Jerusalem, to the Upper Room, to Gethsemane, to Calvary and to the Tomb.
Actions speak louder than words in the Christian religion. Actions teach God’s love.
The aim of Holy Week is that we may own more fully what the Lord has done for us in his great love and catch more of what He has in store for us as individuals and as churches.
The outward rites of the Faith are mighty to teach, but they need backing up by a time of quiet reflection this Week.
My advice, if asked how to make the most of Holy Week, is come to the Liturgy, especially on Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday. Come to the Liturgy, but also go to the Lord yourself in silence. With a Bible maybe. But in silence.
Listen. Listen and let the Lord speak to you personally of his great love for you and for all.
In reflecting on today’s liturgy I was drawn to the prophecy in the ninth chapter of Zechariah which it fulfils: Lo your King comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
This is the prophecy Christ fulfilled which we’re about to re-enact with palms and donkeys.
My eyes moved back a chapter in Zechariah from chapter 9 verse 9 to chapter 8 verse 23. There we read a prophecy that people would one day in the future come up to believers and say ‘Let us go with you, for we have heard it said that God is with you’.
My hope for Holy Week in Horsted Keynes is that the people of our parish may get more and more intrigued by God’s people here so they get drawn along, just as we hope a few will get drawn in to our procession this morning.
‘Let us go with you, for we have heard it said that God is with you’.May that prophecy come true among us as we live and express an ever more joyful faith in Christ as our Lord and Saviour.
Sunday, 21 March 2010
Lent 5 Worship 21st March 2010
What is worship and how can we better worship?
The other week I went on retreat to Mirfield for the inside of a week.I’d the courage to leave my iPhone behind. Like Samantha Cameron my wife, Anne complains that her husband is always fiddling with his gadget.
These gadgets help you do stuff but they get a grip on you. It’s hardly appropriate to go away on a retreat at such cost and yet to stay in the world of electronic demands, texts, e mails and voice mail all of which help with church organisation.
Retreat’s a time for forgetting the work of the Lord to recall the Lord of the work. I did my best to be Mary and not Martha.
This morning’s Gospel has this writ large. Martha served, we’re told, whilst Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. Whilst Martha was concerned for the practical dining arrangements Mary was concerned for Jesus with an instinct that time was running out for her to attend to him, to worship him in fact. The anointing indicated, as Our Lord confirms at the end of the passage, the forthcoming day of his burial. This incident Saint John sets six days before the Passover which is why we read it in the week before Holy Week.
To worship is to give worth and the most worthy is God.
When we give space to one another, give our friends our ear, we’re honouring them. When we give this hour to Jesus on a Sunday we’re doing like Mary sister of Martha, we’re anointing Our Lord with the perfume of word, song, sacrament, sacrifice.
To worship is to give God his due and because God is invisible this can seem mighty strange in a materialistic world. It was strange to the materialistic Judas Iscariot who questioned the woman’s worship of her Lord saying ‘Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?’ ... Jesus said, ‘Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.’
The worship of God is what we call gratuitous. As the dictionary defines this means given, done, bestowed, or obtained without charge or payment; free; voluntary or being without apparent reason, cause, or justification.
When we worship we adore God for his sake and not our own. Adoration has two senses, from the Greek word, prostrating ourselves before him, from the Latin, a kiss – ad oratio – from the mouth - of love.
Christian worship is the creature’s adoration of its Creator with, in and through Jesus Christ.
Martha’s sister Mary lavished costly ointment on Jesus before his death. On the Cross Our Lord offered that anointed body as perfect praise to his Father in the Holy Spirit. Jesus, the letter to the Hebrews says, is become a priest, not on the basis of a legal requirement concerning bodily descent, but by the power of an indestructible life.
The events we are poised to commemorate in Holy Week climax in the establishing of Christian worship as a human being is made a priest by the power of an indestructible life in the Lord’s resurrection.
There was worship in heaven before God came to earth and his Son, Our Lord Jesus, came to earth to bring us into that worship.
The first letter of Peter writes of our being a royal priesthood and our worship as a priestly people, gathering round the ordained priest at the eucharist, is one with the worship Jesus addresses to his Father with the communion of saints which brings heavenly worship to earth.
As we say in the liturgy or form of worship therefore with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven we proclaim your great and glorious name ever more praising you and singing holy, holy, holy. In that part of the eucharist the chant used by the priest here in St Giles goes back beyond 2000 years to Jewish temple worship. When we worship in Church our forms, even our melodies are faithful to what is given through Christian history so that we reach upwards like dwarfs standing on giants’ shoulders.
Lift up your hearts – we lift them to the Lord.
Worship is uplift with, in and through Jesus Christ into whose self offering we’re drawn.
True worship like true adoration and contemplation, like true love, actually seeks no outcome save the honouring of the One loved, contemplated and worshipped. That oil Mary used could have been used to buy an outcome for the poor. No, Jesus, said, that would not suit. Mary’s extravagance, her wastefulness, was commended.
When I went on retreat I sat down to contemplate, as I do most days, and there was a struggle. I had no iPhone but I was still geared up to expect an outcome. The times I sit down to do something I expect useful consequences, don’t we all. I felt frustration that God was slow to speak until a monk reminded me that God is there from the start of my prayer and after my prayer. What matters is being there for him with love.
What is true of the contemplation of an individual is true of corporate worship. There was worship in heaven before we started this service and it will continue after we leave St Giles. The stones of this church seem to know this in fact.
When we give God time in contemplation, when we join in the hour of Jesus on a Sunday, our worship isn’t for us, it’s part of a whole enterprise beyond this world.
To worship is actually wasteful in human terms, today’s Gospel makes clear. Worship is part of the Sabbath wasting of time with God - and how human beings need the Sabbath. Also we need our daily Sabbaths, the time given, however short, to attending to God.
Holy Week can also be a kind of Sabbath if we make it so by entering as best we can the annual commemoration of the Lord’s suffering , death and resurrection from next Sunday.
Let’s rest in the image of worship that the story of Christ’s anointing sets before us as we prepare to offer the eucharist.
The other week I went on retreat to Mirfield for the inside of a week.I’d the courage to leave my iPhone behind. Like Samantha Cameron my wife, Anne complains that her husband is always fiddling with his gadget.
These gadgets help you do stuff but they get a grip on you. It’s hardly appropriate to go away on a retreat at such cost and yet to stay in the world of electronic demands, texts, e mails and voice mail all of which help with church organisation.
Retreat’s a time for forgetting the work of the Lord to recall the Lord of the work. I did my best to be Mary and not Martha.
This morning’s Gospel has this writ large. Martha served, we’re told, whilst Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. Whilst Martha was concerned for the practical dining arrangements Mary was concerned for Jesus with an instinct that time was running out for her to attend to him, to worship him in fact. The anointing indicated, as Our Lord confirms at the end of the passage, the forthcoming day of his burial. This incident Saint John sets six days before the Passover which is why we read it in the week before Holy Week.
To worship is to give worth and the most worthy is God.
When we give space to one another, give our friends our ear, we’re honouring them. When we give this hour to Jesus on a Sunday we’re doing like Mary sister of Martha, we’re anointing Our Lord with the perfume of word, song, sacrament, sacrifice.
To worship is to give God his due and because God is invisible this can seem mighty strange in a materialistic world. It was strange to the materialistic Judas Iscariot who questioned the woman’s worship of her Lord saying ‘Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?’ ... Jesus said, ‘Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.’
The worship of God is what we call gratuitous. As the dictionary defines this means given, done, bestowed, or obtained without charge or payment; free; voluntary or being without apparent reason, cause, or justification.
When we worship we adore God for his sake and not our own. Adoration has two senses, from the Greek word, prostrating ourselves before him, from the Latin, a kiss – ad oratio – from the mouth - of love.
Christian worship is the creature’s adoration of its Creator with, in and through Jesus Christ.
Martha’s sister Mary lavished costly ointment on Jesus before his death. On the Cross Our Lord offered that anointed body as perfect praise to his Father in the Holy Spirit. Jesus, the letter to the Hebrews says, is become a priest, not on the basis of a legal requirement concerning bodily descent, but by the power of an indestructible life.
The events we are poised to commemorate in Holy Week climax in the establishing of Christian worship as a human being is made a priest by the power of an indestructible life in the Lord’s resurrection.
There was worship in heaven before God came to earth and his Son, Our Lord Jesus, came to earth to bring us into that worship.
The first letter of Peter writes of our being a royal priesthood and our worship as a priestly people, gathering round the ordained priest at the eucharist, is one with the worship Jesus addresses to his Father with the communion of saints which brings heavenly worship to earth.
As we say in the liturgy or form of worship therefore with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven we proclaim your great and glorious name ever more praising you and singing holy, holy, holy. In that part of the eucharist the chant used by the priest here in St Giles goes back beyond 2000 years to Jewish temple worship. When we worship in Church our forms, even our melodies are faithful to what is given through Christian history so that we reach upwards like dwarfs standing on giants’ shoulders.
Lift up your hearts – we lift them to the Lord.
Worship is uplift with, in and through Jesus Christ into whose self offering we’re drawn.
True worship like true adoration and contemplation, like true love, actually seeks no outcome save the honouring of the One loved, contemplated and worshipped. That oil Mary used could have been used to buy an outcome for the poor. No, Jesus, said, that would not suit. Mary’s extravagance, her wastefulness, was commended.
When I went on retreat I sat down to contemplate, as I do most days, and there was a struggle. I had no iPhone but I was still geared up to expect an outcome. The times I sit down to do something I expect useful consequences, don’t we all. I felt frustration that God was slow to speak until a monk reminded me that God is there from the start of my prayer and after my prayer. What matters is being there for him with love.
What is true of the contemplation of an individual is true of corporate worship. There was worship in heaven before we started this service and it will continue after we leave St Giles. The stones of this church seem to know this in fact.
When we give God time in contemplation, when we join in the hour of Jesus on a Sunday, our worship isn’t for us, it’s part of a whole enterprise beyond this world.
To worship is actually wasteful in human terms, today’s Gospel makes clear. Worship is part of the Sabbath wasting of time with God - and how human beings need the Sabbath. Also we need our daily Sabbaths, the time given, however short, to attending to God.
Holy Week can also be a kind of Sabbath if we make it so by entering as best we can the annual commemoration of the Lord’s suffering , death and resurrection from next Sunday.
Let’s rest in the image of worship that the story of Christ’s anointing sets before us as we prepare to offer the eucharist.
Wednesday, 17 February 2010
Ash Wednesday 17th February 2010
What do I want to happen in Lent or through the keeping of Lent here at St. Giles in 2010?
More of God's wonderful possibilities to be seen in our lives and the life of the Church in Horsted Keynes!
Put it another way.
Lent is the annual renewal of our relationship with God made possible through the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ we commemorate in 40 days time.
Each baptised person is in a relationship with God. For many that relationship is distant, as distant as that of two people standing together in a queue for the bus.
God desires a greater intimacy than that. He desires to make himself known, to come right into our lives in fact. The receiving of Holy Communion by a baptised person is no less than a sharing in God’s personal and abundant life. We touch the life that is life indeed. He touches us – one to one - and as he touches us he releases his wonderful possibilities into our lives.
Lent’s a call to a deeper friendship with God, a deeper life of prayer, a greater release of his possibilities in our lives.
I want to ask you at the beginning of Lent a very intimate question:
Are there areas in your life, in your relationships, in your work, in your church allegiance, in your marriage...are there, or is there an area where you are stuck?
It may be a partner who has no spiritual vision. It may be a deep seated pessimism, "nothing can get me out of this situation". It may be a yearning to blossom spiritually that seems thwarted by all the pressures upon you.
As Lent begins maybe the Lord wants you to hear this from him: Yes, by your reckoning there’s no way forward. You’re in a fix. Now’s the time to forget your own reckoning and allow me to reckon for you. I want you to see a way forward as you pray to me and see as a result my limitless possibilities released. Be expectant upon me.
Lent starts with the word of St. Paul: this is the day of salvation.
A message of expectancy, of looking by faith beyond what seems naturally possible to the supernatural possibilities of Our Lord.
When did you last have an answer to prayer? When did you last see something provided in your life or in your family that had no natural explanation but linked to a heartfelt plea to God?
God is almighty God, as Lent reminds us in its daily collect. There’s no limitation on him or on the powers released through believers when they pray. Is anything too hard for the Lord? was the promise to Abraham in Genesis 18v14. It was repeated to Our Lady at the Annunciation: with God nothing will be impossible. Luke 1v37. Then Our Lord made a special point in Luke 18v27, what is impossible with men is possible with God.
And my God it is! A religion founded upon the resurrection of the dead is a religion that has no closed doors, no "impossibles". A God who can bring all of creation out of nothing and the living Christ from the tomb is in the business of the impossible!
I shall never forget the Zambian priest I once knew at college. His simple, expectant faith was such that he described to me how he had prayed for a man in his church who’d died and the man was raised up from his death bed. No boundaries for Fr. Manuel on the possibilities of God - and he was an Anglican!
Dare to believe! Be sold on being bold in faith! Expect great things from God! Attempt great things for God!
In a moment I shall invite you to come and receive the ashes of penitence upon your forehead. "Turn away from sin and be faithful to the gospel" are the words we’ll be using.
Let the ashes mark death to the sinful nature with its low expectations of life. Death to the dead ends, the sticking points in your life or in your relationships with God or neighbour. Speaking to us all as a Church, let the ashes speak death to a natural pessimism about our growing younger as a church.
Turn away from sin - and be faithful to the gospel.
Let the ashes speak death to the negatives in our sinful human reasoning and turn us to the great positive of the gospel. Let gospel thinking, gospel reasoning, gospel expectations flood us.
What is impossible to human thinking is possible with God.Is anything too hard for the Lord?
If we not only believe that but go on to pray persistently in that spirit we shall see mountains moved - in our lives and in our Church as God couples the powers of heaven to our helpless ness making the impossible things possible through our turning afresh to Him in these great 40 days of Lent.
More of God's wonderful possibilities to be seen in our lives and the life of the Church in Horsted Keynes!
Put it another way.
Lent is the annual renewal of our relationship with God made possible through the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ we commemorate in 40 days time.
Each baptised person is in a relationship with God. For many that relationship is distant, as distant as that of two people standing together in a queue for the bus.
God desires a greater intimacy than that. He desires to make himself known, to come right into our lives in fact. The receiving of Holy Communion by a baptised person is no less than a sharing in God’s personal and abundant life. We touch the life that is life indeed. He touches us – one to one - and as he touches us he releases his wonderful possibilities into our lives.
Lent’s a call to a deeper friendship with God, a deeper life of prayer, a greater release of his possibilities in our lives.
I want to ask you at the beginning of Lent a very intimate question:
Are there areas in your life, in your relationships, in your work, in your church allegiance, in your marriage...are there, or is there an area where you are stuck?
It may be a partner who has no spiritual vision. It may be a deep seated pessimism, "nothing can get me out of this situation". It may be a yearning to blossom spiritually that seems thwarted by all the pressures upon you.
As Lent begins maybe the Lord wants you to hear this from him: Yes, by your reckoning there’s no way forward. You’re in a fix. Now’s the time to forget your own reckoning and allow me to reckon for you. I want you to see a way forward as you pray to me and see as a result my limitless possibilities released. Be expectant upon me.
Lent starts with the word of St. Paul: this is the day of salvation.
A message of expectancy, of looking by faith beyond what seems naturally possible to the supernatural possibilities of Our Lord.
When did you last have an answer to prayer? When did you last see something provided in your life or in your family that had no natural explanation but linked to a heartfelt plea to God?
God is almighty God, as Lent reminds us in its daily collect. There’s no limitation on him or on the powers released through believers when they pray. Is anything too hard for the Lord? was the promise to Abraham in Genesis 18v14. It was repeated to Our Lady at the Annunciation: with God nothing will be impossible. Luke 1v37. Then Our Lord made a special point in Luke 18v27, what is impossible with men is possible with God.
And my God it is! A religion founded upon the resurrection of the dead is a religion that has no closed doors, no "impossibles". A God who can bring all of creation out of nothing and the living Christ from the tomb is in the business of the impossible!
I shall never forget the Zambian priest I once knew at college. His simple, expectant faith was such that he described to me how he had prayed for a man in his church who’d died and the man was raised up from his death bed. No boundaries for Fr. Manuel on the possibilities of God - and he was an Anglican!
Dare to believe! Be sold on being bold in faith! Expect great things from God! Attempt great things for God!
In a moment I shall invite you to come and receive the ashes of penitence upon your forehead. "Turn away from sin and be faithful to the gospel" are the words we’ll be using.
Let the ashes mark death to the sinful nature with its low expectations of life. Death to the dead ends, the sticking points in your life or in your relationships with God or neighbour. Speaking to us all as a Church, let the ashes speak death to a natural pessimism about our growing younger as a church.
Turn away from sin - and be faithful to the gospel.
Let the ashes speak death to the negatives in our sinful human reasoning and turn us to the great positive of the gospel. Let gospel thinking, gospel reasoning, gospel expectations flood us.
What is impossible to human thinking is possible with God.Is anything too hard for the Lord?
If we not only believe that but go on to pray persistently in that spirit we shall see mountains moved - in our lives and in our Church as God couples the powers of heaven to our helpless ness making the impossible things possible through our turning afresh to Him in these great 40 days of Lent.
Sunday, 14 February 2010
Sunday next before Lent 14th February 2010
It’s three days before the Lent challenge and it seems appropriate for the preacher to help inform any decisions we might be poised to make about our individual response to the forthcoming sacred season.
Each year Lent’s given us to remind us, as the Bible says to run with perseverance the race that is set before us looking to Jesus (Hebrews 12.2).
We’re given the Lent challenge, forty days of training, to help us make a difference to the world, the church and to our spiritual lives. I put it that way round to keep our sights on the big picture. The training we accomplish will bring the power and direction of God more to bear upon the world through you and me.
Just as a bicycle get its power and direction from the cyclist through its spokes to its wheels Christian believers travel empowered and directed by the Holy Spirit through the disciplines or spokes of the Christian life.
Lent is an opportunity to refresh our discipleship by fresh attention to our spiritual discipline. You don't get disciples without discipline.
Our sisters and brothers of the Muslim faith have provided us in their keeping of Ramadan with an example of discipleship we should ponder. If only a handful of Christians took Lent as seriously as they take Ramadan there would be a spiritual revival in our land!
The Lent challenge is there from Wednesday. Forty days to get into training.
Coming back to those spokes that bring power and direction to the wheels of a bike what are the spiritual spokes or disciplines you and I can attend to?
I'll give you three. Three spokes would be enough if they were broad spokes and I'm talking broad headings at this stage - prayer, study and action.
Spoke 1 - Prayer. I've just come back from Lanzarote where I was reminded that prayer is like sunbathing. You need to book your lounger, strip off and lounge.
Several people have told me how much they appreciate the silences in the Eucharist. Try a silence at home. You looking at God and God looking at you. Try stopping everything for 5 or 10 or 15 minutes a day from Wednesday. Book your space, strip off your preoccupations and lounge in God's presence.
I can't promise you it'll be like Lanzarote but it will make a difference to you and through you to the world.
Sunbathing can be a corporate activity. In Lent there's a 25 min extra Eucharist on Tuesday morning at 8am and Stations of the Cross on Saturdays at 6pm.
Spoke 2 - Study. One of the things that is really getting to many of us as Christians is the way Christian faith gets ridiculed and sidelined in the United Kingdom. We lose our confidence. Lent is an opportunity to build up that confidence by refreshing our engagement with the Bible and the faith of the Church: the creed, sacraments and commandments.
Every Tuesday at 8pm we'll be studying together through Lent using the Square Mile DVD course and you're welcome to come along.
Maybe a weekly study course on a Tuesday night is difficult for you. Pick up your Bible. Read a Gospel - Mark only takes 90 minutes for an average reader. Pick up a paper back copy of Mark from the back of Church for £1 to me.
Study the Catechism. There’s a 100 minute catechism on two CDs also on sale at the back. The Firmly I Believe CD set – 40 3min talks on the creed, sacraments, commandments and prayer with mood music backing. Can be played at home or in the car or put on your Ipod. That is my last but one series on London’s Premier Christian Radio. The CD sets at the back of Church have a special discount for St Giles - only £5 – again to me.
The last spoke - Action. We need to pray and to study but most of the difference we make to the world comes through unselfish Christian action. I hesitate to illustrate this but charity begins at home. Lent is a time to identify and address what and whom we're neglecting.
Lent 2010 brings with it a special challenge to corporate action here at St Giles through the stewardship renewal. Most of you have packs (show) with details of Christian action at St Giles which ranges from reading in Church to giving people lifts to Sainsbury's. Part of your Lenten rule could be preparing the best response you can to the stewardship challenge and the invitations provided there to join existing ministries at St Giles.
Prayer, study, action - alone or with the Church - these are disciplines we should ponder and refresh this Lent. These are spokes given to help God's power and direction flow more through us into a needy world.
God grant us all a happy and holy Lent! Jesus grant that fruits of his passion may grow in us! Come, Holy Spirit, and give us all fresh power and direction so the kingdom of this world may become the kingdom of our God and of his Christ!
Each year Lent’s given us to remind us, as the Bible says to run with perseverance the race that is set before us looking to Jesus (Hebrews 12.2).
We’re given the Lent challenge, forty days of training, to help us make a difference to the world, the church and to our spiritual lives. I put it that way round to keep our sights on the big picture. The training we accomplish will bring the power and direction of God more to bear upon the world through you and me.
Just as a bicycle get its power and direction from the cyclist through its spokes to its wheels Christian believers travel empowered and directed by the Holy Spirit through the disciplines or spokes of the Christian life.
Lent is an opportunity to refresh our discipleship by fresh attention to our spiritual discipline. You don't get disciples without discipline.
Our sisters and brothers of the Muslim faith have provided us in their keeping of Ramadan with an example of discipleship we should ponder. If only a handful of Christians took Lent as seriously as they take Ramadan there would be a spiritual revival in our land!
The Lent challenge is there from Wednesday. Forty days to get into training.
Coming back to those spokes that bring power and direction to the wheels of a bike what are the spiritual spokes or disciplines you and I can attend to?
I'll give you three. Three spokes would be enough if they were broad spokes and I'm talking broad headings at this stage - prayer, study and action.
Spoke 1 - Prayer. I've just come back from Lanzarote where I was reminded that prayer is like sunbathing. You need to book your lounger, strip off and lounge.
Several people have told me how much they appreciate the silences in the Eucharist. Try a silence at home. You looking at God and God looking at you. Try stopping everything for 5 or 10 or 15 minutes a day from Wednesday. Book your space, strip off your preoccupations and lounge in God's presence.
I can't promise you it'll be like Lanzarote but it will make a difference to you and through you to the world.
Sunbathing can be a corporate activity. In Lent there's a 25 min extra Eucharist on Tuesday morning at 8am and Stations of the Cross on Saturdays at 6pm.
Spoke 2 - Study. One of the things that is really getting to many of us as Christians is the way Christian faith gets ridiculed and sidelined in the United Kingdom. We lose our confidence. Lent is an opportunity to build up that confidence by refreshing our engagement with the Bible and the faith of the Church: the creed, sacraments and commandments.
Every Tuesday at 8pm we'll be studying together through Lent using the Square Mile DVD course and you're welcome to come along.
Maybe a weekly study course on a Tuesday night is difficult for you. Pick up your Bible. Read a Gospel - Mark only takes 90 minutes for an average reader. Pick up a paper back copy of Mark from the back of Church for £1 to me.
Study the Catechism. There’s a 100 minute catechism on two CDs also on sale at the back. The Firmly I Believe CD set – 40 3min talks on the creed, sacraments, commandments and prayer with mood music backing. Can be played at home or in the car or put on your Ipod. That is my last but one series on London’s Premier Christian Radio. The CD sets at the back of Church have a special discount for St Giles - only £5 – again to me.
The last spoke - Action. We need to pray and to study but most of the difference we make to the world comes through unselfish Christian action. I hesitate to illustrate this but charity begins at home. Lent is a time to identify and address what and whom we're neglecting.
Lent 2010 brings with it a special challenge to corporate action here at St Giles through the stewardship renewal. Most of you have packs (show) with details of Christian action at St Giles which ranges from reading in Church to giving people lifts to Sainsbury's. Part of your Lenten rule could be preparing the best response you can to the stewardship challenge and the invitations provided there to join existing ministries at St Giles.
Prayer, study, action - alone or with the Church - these are disciplines we should ponder and refresh this Lent. These are spokes given to help God's power and direction flow more through us into a needy world.
God grant us all a happy and holy Lent! Jesus grant that fruits of his passion may grow in us! Come, Holy Spirit, and give us all fresh power and direction so the kingdom of this world may become the kingdom of our God and of his Christ!
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