In the Eastern Orthodox Church they define the Great or Holy Week that ends tonight as the “spiritual spring which blossoms with the fruits of the Spirit - love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Gal. 5:22).
As we come before the Lord this evening our deep gratitude for his risen presence among us, with us and in us serves that spiritual blossoming.
A folk tale of the Belgian Congo tells of a clearing made in virgin jungle. A patch of ground was exposed to sunlight for the first time in centuries. Strange shoots appeared, strange plants, with flowers of indescribable beauty. No one had ever dreamed such exquisite plants could grow in that dark place.
Isn’t there some truth is this story for us? We allow our sins, negligences and bad habits to grow to the point where our soul becomes like a jungle.
How do we get light into that jungle to get the promised new growth and beauty?
Through sincere repentance. Like Mary Magdalene we are free to reach out to the Risen Lord and hear him call us afresh into intimacy with him. Allowing the touch of his forgiveness upon our hearts brings assurance that He will there and then remove the sins that hide from us the life-giving sun of His Spirit.
Mary Magdalene knew this already. She was so very appropriately the first witness of his resurrection as we just heard. She stood in that Easter Garden thinking they’d taken away her Lord and yet he was there.
Jesus was there in a hidden way, as he is here tonight, hidden again under the appearance of bread in the Blessed Sacrament and hidden among us in the hearts of his faithful people.
Mary Magdalene was first to see the Day of Resurrection, that spiritual spring which was going to open up the possibilities of God in all ages to all believers for them to blossom forth. She’d already seen the jungle of her life cleared by her Lord. Spiritual flowers of indescribable beauty grew where formerly there were but weeds. Now that growth became literally other worldly as Christ’s resurrection took her, as it takes us, beyond the forgiveness of sin and into the promise of immortality.
Holy Week and Easter are one of the Church’s means of helping us clear away the jungle of our life and achieve our greatest potential. This is granted as we come close afresh to the risen Lord Jesus in repentance and faith.
On Good Friday the children built us an Easter Garden outside church. Today we gather inside Church before the risen Lord to seek his blessing.
Jesus wants to see Easter Gardens grow up inside church in you and me. The fixture of the Easter Garden is a reminder of how the resurrection gains for the world a spiritual flowering. It is a flowering of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control through you and me.
The beautiful time of year is surely coming. Sussex is a beautiful place. What does Jesus most want though – he wants inner beauty! Having given us life he came this Week to bring us his life, immortal life that to flow in us as we come clean with him and trust the empowering Easter brings to repentant souls!
May the beauty of Jesus be seen in us as we open ourselves afresh to that empowerment on the Day of Resurrection!
Sunday, 4 April 2010
Easter Day 2010 Jesus - the hopeful one
An Easter cake with trick re-lighting candles is displayed. Children try unsuccessfully to blow out the candles.
Jesus is risen – there’s no conquering him – the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has never put it out!
We believe it, but we also want to believe it more from the heart and less from the head.
How can we get a better hold of the hope Easter offers and make it more our own?
Hands up if you were on the Horsted Keynes history tour Bob Sellens and I led on Monday with the School?
Do you remember we said Horsted Keynes was built around four elements? Earth, air, fire and water.
These primitive elements are a way into seeing how our community has grown up.
This church stands on ancient earth works as a site sheltered from the wind. The ironstone it stands on draws lightning fire from heaven down to a village built on springs of water.
On this earth mound the worship of the risen Lord Jesus replaced that of the pagans.
For 1000 years people have sheltered here from winds and gales through our building and the woods surrounding it.
Horsted Keynes and its vicinity lie on ironstone that draws lightning down from above. Saint Giles needs its advanced lightning conductor as much as The Crown!
Earth, air, fire, water. St Giles lies on top of a series of springs and that’s why streams of water flow out of our churchyard.
Earth, air, fire and water make up Horsted Keynes. The same elements serve the new creation Jesus brings at Easter.
When he came back from the dead he came out of the earth. The Jesus they buried in the earth was seen alive over the next six weeks by over 550 people on 11 different occasions.
The Jesus who rose from the earth changed the earth and made graves beds of hope. The Jesus who appeared to his disciples changed the air as he breathed the Spirit on them.
At Pentecost he cast new fire on them from above and released streams of living water in their hearts. Earth, air, fire and water are made new by what we’re celebrating this morning.
Christianity’s a new start. It’s a new creation that can run and grow in my life and yours making us beacons of hope.
In Easter services we use the elements of fire and water to proclaim this hope. We blessed a new fire last night from which the Paschal Candle still burns. We blessed the font from which we’re to be sprinkled shortly to remind us of the baptism that makes us Christian.
Easter’s about getting the out-of-this-world fire of the risen Lord Jesus to light our lives. It’s about getting the out-of-this-world springs of living water flowing out of our hearts.
We’re in church this Easter Sunday to get our hearts warmed. What we’re celebrating in the resurrection is truth to warm any one’s heart if they can but see it!
This is the day that the Lord has made says the Psalmist let us rejoice and be glad in it!
Our hope as Christians is built on this day of resurrection. Easter Sunday proves the Friday Jesus died was Good which means God’s, God’s who so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. (John 3.16)
God become man to break the grip of evil over those in his image and invest in their future so they could move from his image into his likeness as part of a new creation.
Good Friday is God’s Friday of hope for us. It seals his investment in our race. If today is God’s so is tomorrow, and tomorrow and tomorrow. This is Christian faith. This is the meaning of Easter.
Jesus is like a candle we can never blow out. His light shines in the darkness and the darkness has never overcome him.
Christian faith is under pressure in Britain today. That’s nothing new. G.K. Chesterton remarked that looking over the last two thousand years there’ve been seven times when Christianity seemed to be going to the dogs. Each time the dog died, be that ancient Rome, the barbarian invasion or eighteenth century rationalism.
We’re an Easter people destined to rise again and again with Jesus. Even the first letter of the Saviour’s name has a springing back about it. J is I pressed down to come back up again.
So we Christians are hopeful people. This morning is our waking up afresh to such hope.
That’s why we’ll soon be getting holy water thrown in our faces.
From Saint Giles on occasion water flows down Church Lane. This Easter morning, as you leave St Giles, you’ll be flowing out as living water to bring hope to the world. Jesus says to us through St John let the one who believes in me drink...out of the believers heart shall flow rivers of living water (7.38)
It’s as if we were called to be a spiritual version of the Gulf Stream. The Gulf Stream brings warmth to Britain as it winds its way north across the Atlantic through colder and colder water. However cold the water around it gets the Gulf Stream itself remains warm. It maintains its own warmth in the midst of water that gets bitterly cold.
This is a picture of we Christians in Horsted Keynes today. By receiving God’s word and drinking of his sacrament we’re made to overflow with God’s warm love.
Christ is risen! His great warmth is with us. It’s our hope as we brave and cheer the icy world around us. Because Christ is raised we get raised. We’re no longer affected by the climate of negativity – rather we create around us a new climate. We’re thermostats and no longer thermometers.
This Easter eucharist is thanksgiving for Christ the hope filled one who builds unquenchable faith in hearts that welcome him as Saviour. To have hope is to believe tomorrow also is God’s, and tomorrow, and tomorrow since Jesus Christ is ever the same.
Alleluia Christ is risen! He is risen indeed, alleluia!
Jesus is risen – there’s no conquering him – the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has never put it out!
We believe it, but we also want to believe it more from the heart and less from the head.
How can we get a better hold of the hope Easter offers and make it more our own?
Hands up if you were on the Horsted Keynes history tour Bob Sellens and I led on Monday with the School?
Do you remember we said Horsted Keynes was built around four elements? Earth, air, fire and water.
These primitive elements are a way into seeing how our community has grown up.
This church stands on ancient earth works as a site sheltered from the wind. The ironstone it stands on draws lightning fire from heaven down to a village built on springs of water.
On this earth mound the worship of the risen Lord Jesus replaced that of the pagans.
For 1000 years people have sheltered here from winds and gales through our building and the woods surrounding it.
Horsted Keynes and its vicinity lie on ironstone that draws lightning down from above. Saint Giles needs its advanced lightning conductor as much as The Crown!
Earth, air, fire, water. St Giles lies on top of a series of springs and that’s why streams of water flow out of our churchyard.
Earth, air, fire and water make up Horsted Keynes. The same elements serve the new creation Jesus brings at Easter.
When he came back from the dead he came out of the earth. The Jesus they buried in the earth was seen alive over the next six weeks by over 550 people on 11 different occasions.
The Jesus who rose from the earth changed the earth and made graves beds of hope. The Jesus who appeared to his disciples changed the air as he breathed the Spirit on them.
At Pentecost he cast new fire on them from above and released streams of living water in their hearts. Earth, air, fire and water are made new by what we’re celebrating this morning.
Christianity’s a new start. It’s a new creation that can run and grow in my life and yours making us beacons of hope.
In Easter services we use the elements of fire and water to proclaim this hope. We blessed a new fire last night from which the Paschal Candle still burns. We blessed the font from which we’re to be sprinkled shortly to remind us of the baptism that makes us Christian.
Easter’s about getting the out-of-this-world fire of the risen Lord Jesus to light our lives. It’s about getting the out-of-this-world springs of living water flowing out of our hearts.
We’re in church this Easter Sunday to get our hearts warmed. What we’re celebrating in the resurrection is truth to warm any one’s heart if they can but see it!
This is the day that the Lord has made says the Psalmist let us rejoice and be glad in it!
Our hope as Christians is built on this day of resurrection. Easter Sunday proves the Friday Jesus died was Good which means God’s, God’s who so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. (John 3.16)
God become man to break the grip of evil over those in his image and invest in their future so they could move from his image into his likeness as part of a new creation.
Good Friday is God’s Friday of hope for us. It seals his investment in our race. If today is God’s so is tomorrow, and tomorrow and tomorrow. This is Christian faith. This is the meaning of Easter.
Jesus is like a candle we can never blow out. His light shines in the darkness and the darkness has never overcome him.
Christian faith is under pressure in Britain today. That’s nothing new. G.K. Chesterton remarked that looking over the last two thousand years there’ve been seven times when Christianity seemed to be going to the dogs. Each time the dog died, be that ancient Rome, the barbarian invasion or eighteenth century rationalism.
We’re an Easter people destined to rise again and again with Jesus. Even the first letter of the Saviour’s name has a springing back about it. J is I pressed down to come back up again.
So we Christians are hopeful people. This morning is our waking up afresh to such hope.
That’s why we’ll soon be getting holy water thrown in our faces.
From Saint Giles on occasion water flows down Church Lane. This Easter morning, as you leave St Giles, you’ll be flowing out as living water to bring hope to the world. Jesus says to us through St John let the one who believes in me drink...out of the believers heart shall flow rivers of living water (7.38)
It’s as if we were called to be a spiritual version of the Gulf Stream. The Gulf Stream brings warmth to Britain as it winds its way north across the Atlantic through colder and colder water. However cold the water around it gets the Gulf Stream itself remains warm. It maintains its own warmth in the midst of water that gets bitterly cold.
This is a picture of we Christians in Horsted Keynes today. By receiving God’s word and drinking of his sacrament we’re made to overflow with God’s warm love.
Christ is risen! His great warmth is with us. It’s our hope as we brave and cheer the icy world around us. Because Christ is raised we get raised. We’re no longer affected by the climate of negativity – rather we create around us a new climate. We’re thermostats and no longer thermometers.
This Easter eucharist is thanksgiving for Christ the hope filled one who builds unquenchable faith in hearts that welcome him as Saviour. To have hope is to believe tomorrow also is God’s, and tomorrow, and tomorrow since Jesus Christ is ever the same.
Alleluia Christ is risen! He is risen indeed, alleluia!
Friday, 2 April 2010
Good Friday 2010 Jesus - man of respect
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.
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.
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.
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