We will see him as he is, and all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure. 1 John 3.2-3
We shall see him says St John. The Christian hope set forth on the Feast of All Saints is no less than this.
In placing the Blessed Sacrament before us at evensong the Church gives us a focus and a reminder of the vision of God.
As one of our Eucharistic hymns says; O Christ whom now beneath a veil we see. May what we thirst for soon our portion be. To gaze on thee unveiled and see thy face. The vision of thy glory and thy grace.
Tonight at Benediction we gaze on Jesus enthroned but under the veil of bread. One day we shall see him unveiled in heaven with all the saints.
We shall see him and this is a call to purify ourselves, just as he is pure.
Two thoughts.
We shall see him
The vision of God is too wonderful for me alone. This is the understanding we receive from the second reading which speaks of a great cloud of witnesses.
There’s a movement called inclusive church working for women and gays. I would not dare to criticise it, of course, but inclusion in Christianity is something much more profound and far reaching than liberal Anglicanism.
True inclusivity is this – the democracy of the dead! It’s the inclusion through the Risen Christ of witnesses from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages before the throne of God.
Some forms of Christianity are good at throwing a line to unbelievers and drawing them in. They go on to promote their spiritual development as a one to one hotline to Jesus. Today’s Feast presents the drawing power of Jesus not as a line but as a net. The communion of saints is a net that by example and prayer draws us together around the throne of God to worship him day and night within his temple.
We shall see him
My text from St John’s First Letter complements the Hebrews passage which reminded us heaven is something corporate. It reminds us that to be a Christian is to live for the vision of God centred in hope of the heavenly vision of God.
I remember vividly a scene in the play A Man for All Seasons in which Thomas More stands before his accusers. He swears to be truthful saying he believes any untruthfulness will lose him the beatific vision. It is the thought of seeing God face to face that sustains him, and indeed sustains many of us in our tribulations.
This is the one true and only blessed life Saint Augustine writes to Proba that we should contemplate the delightfulness of the Lord for ever, immortal and incorruptible in body and spirit…Whoever has this will have all that he wishes…There indeed is the spring of life, which we must now thirst for in prayer, so long as we live.
To believe in heaven is to yearn in that way for the delightfulness of the vision of God. Now, in the silence, as we gaze upon Jesus veiled in the Blessed Sacrament, we have a chance to anticipate this joy which we will one day see face to face with all the saints.
Thursday, 3 November 2011
Sunday, 23 October 2011
Baptism of Rhys Johnson & Christophe Matthews 23rd October 2011
I looked up on Wikipedia the Christian names we’re giving our two baptism candidates this morning.
Rhys, a Welsh name, means "fervour" or "passion".
Christophe, French version of Christopher, means “the one who bears Christ in his soul".
Hopeful names – may these boys grow indeed with spiritual fervour! May Our Lord be with them and in them through the rites we celebrate over them this morning.
This is certainly the desire of their parents Chris and Katie, Francis and Patricia. They want the best for their children and they know the best will take effort.
Just as these children visit their uncles, aunts and grandparents so they visit us here in St Giles. We’re like an extension of their extended family.
Christophe’s dad, Francis was confirmed last year. It’s one of my greatest encouragements to see people made Christians as babies own up to it their later years – and I’m praying for a good few in that category among us to take courage and become full church members.
The horse on the front of the service booklet is a reminder of Francis’ trade as a provider for Polo, the Sport of Kings. His vision is to make this most ancient of all games accessible, as it was in the beginning, to anyone who can ride a pony, so you won’t need to be royal, titled or a millionaire to play.
In Polo each player needs access to more than one pony, so tired mounts can be exchanged for fresh mounts between or even during chukkas. A player's "string" of polo ponies may number 2 or 3 in Low Goal matches (with ponies being rested for at least a chukka before reuse), 4 or more for Medium Goal matches (at least one per chukka), and even more for the highest levels of competition.
It’s a game where everyone plays their part and so, in turn, do the horses.
This is a lovely image of collaboration, a relay race of horses, that can illustrate the heart of Christianity.
We as Christ’s body are a team – a winning team, contrary to what you might hear!
We’re engaged in a battle to establish the love of God and neighbour on the earth, as Jesus explains in today’s Gospel reading - and we need one another.
You can’t be a Christian on your own, you need to be part of the team, and in that team we give way to one another on occasion for tasks that we’re not suited to.
In my forthcoming book, Meet Jesus one of the stories I tell on this theme comes from the time we were very isolated by the extreme cold weather early in 2010. Caroline Rich served as she does now with her husband, John, in the village ‘dial a lift’ scheme. Since they had a four-wheel drive vehicle they were able to help Lesley, who had cancer, obtain vital treatment at the local hospital.
Caroline told me about Lesley’s situation and I visited to offer her prayer which was gratefully received. We celebrated the sacrament of anointing for her in church and I became aware of how Lesley’s faith grew over the months. The acts of service of both Caroline and I were in partnership with Jesus but in different ways. Her service was being helpful. Mine was healing prayer. Both of us became channels for Jesus. Lesley’s faith, incidentally, has become an instrument of care for cancer sufferers internationally through her championing of the cyber knife treatment she received.
At their baptism Rhys and Christophe are entering the winning team of the Christian Church – but they need to be taught to play the game and be God’s instruments!
Here is a great responsibility for their parents, teaching their children to love God and neighbour- and they can only do their best. God requires nothing more than that. For us there is only the trying. The rest is not our business as T.S.Eliot wrote.
St Giles, particularly our Sunday Club leaders, will be with you in this endeavour, as, surely, will the children’s godparents and grandparents.
So will the Holy Spirit!
This morning we light a pilot light, so to speak – and we trust God to turn the gas on in due course.
The Holy Spirit who makes water and oil, bread and wine his instruments this morning wants to make us all, led by Chris and Katie, Francis and Patricia, his instruments of spiritual care for Rhys and Christophe.
Then, in turn, he wants these boys to grow up so aflame with the love of God and neighbour that they’re evident instruments of blessing to the world they are to inhabit over the coming century.
It’s team work, but we’ll all be playing in the best game in the world.
Christian life, with all its ups and downs, makes for a contest that’s even more challenging fun than you find on a Polo field!
Rhys, a Welsh name, means "fervour" or "passion".
Christophe, French version of Christopher, means “the one who bears Christ in his soul".
Hopeful names – may these boys grow indeed with spiritual fervour! May Our Lord be with them and in them through the rites we celebrate over them this morning.
This is certainly the desire of their parents Chris and Katie, Francis and Patricia. They want the best for their children and they know the best will take effort.
Just as these children visit their uncles, aunts and grandparents so they visit us here in St Giles. We’re like an extension of their extended family.
Christophe’s dad, Francis was confirmed last year. It’s one of my greatest encouragements to see people made Christians as babies own up to it their later years – and I’m praying for a good few in that category among us to take courage and become full church members.
The horse on the front of the service booklet is a reminder of Francis’ trade as a provider for Polo, the Sport of Kings. His vision is to make this most ancient of all games accessible, as it was in the beginning, to anyone who can ride a pony, so you won’t need to be royal, titled or a millionaire to play.
In Polo each player needs access to more than one pony, so tired mounts can be exchanged for fresh mounts between or even during chukkas. A player's "string" of polo ponies may number 2 or 3 in Low Goal matches (with ponies being rested for at least a chukka before reuse), 4 or more for Medium Goal matches (at least one per chukka), and even more for the highest levels of competition.
It’s a game where everyone plays their part and so, in turn, do the horses.
This is a lovely image of collaboration, a relay race of horses, that can illustrate the heart of Christianity.
We as Christ’s body are a team – a winning team, contrary to what you might hear!
We’re engaged in a battle to establish the love of God and neighbour on the earth, as Jesus explains in today’s Gospel reading - and we need one another.
You can’t be a Christian on your own, you need to be part of the team, and in that team we give way to one another on occasion for tasks that we’re not suited to.
In my forthcoming book, Meet Jesus one of the stories I tell on this theme comes from the time we were very isolated by the extreme cold weather early in 2010. Caroline Rich served as she does now with her husband, John, in the village ‘dial a lift’ scheme. Since they had a four-wheel drive vehicle they were able to help Lesley, who had cancer, obtain vital treatment at the local hospital.
Caroline told me about Lesley’s situation and I visited to offer her prayer which was gratefully received. We celebrated the sacrament of anointing for her in church and I became aware of how Lesley’s faith grew over the months. The acts of service of both Caroline and I were in partnership with Jesus but in different ways. Her service was being helpful. Mine was healing prayer. Both of us became channels for Jesus. Lesley’s faith, incidentally, has become an instrument of care for cancer sufferers internationally through her championing of the cyber knife treatment she received.
At their baptism Rhys and Christophe are entering the winning team of the Christian Church – but they need to be taught to play the game and be God’s instruments!
Here is a great responsibility for their parents, teaching their children to love God and neighbour- and they can only do their best. God requires nothing more than that. For us there is only the trying. The rest is not our business as T.S.Eliot wrote.
St Giles, particularly our Sunday Club leaders, will be with you in this endeavour, as, surely, will the children’s godparents and grandparents.
So will the Holy Spirit!
This morning we light a pilot light, so to speak – and we trust God to turn the gas on in due course.
The Holy Spirit who makes water and oil, bread and wine his instruments this morning wants to make us all, led by Chris and Katie, Francis and Patricia, his instruments of spiritual care for Rhys and Christophe.
Then, in turn, he wants these boys to grow up so aflame with the love of God and neighbour that they’re evident instruments of blessing to the world they are to inhabit over the coming century.
It’s team work, but we’ll all be playing in the best game in the world.
Christian life, with all its ups and downs, makes for a contest that’s even more challenging fun than you find on a Polo field!
Trinity 18 23rd October 2011 8am
Jesus said to him, "You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets " Matthew 22:37-40
The world is moving towards one point. The financial troubles that are bringing the world towards more of an economic union are connecting up the world. They are, strangely, ironically, part of a greater movement into unity. This movement is a gathering up of all things in Christ so that the love of God and neighbour flow perfectly together in the communion of saints made perfect.
This Holy Eucharist is an anticipation of that union – more than that, it is an instrument of advancing the love of God and neighbour within the cosmos. As often as we celebrate this sacred mystery we show the Lord’s death and the work of salvation is advanced towards the point where Jesus will be supreme and God will be everything to everyone.
If the trajectory of cosmic history looks like a cone with space and time spinning out from the Big Bang the trajectory of salvation history is an inverted cone bringing all things together in Christ. To the outer eye of science there is divergence as things move apart. To the inner and deeper eye of the Spirit there is convergence towards what someone called the Omega Point where Christ is the be all and end all.
There our gospel reading will be fulfilled by perfect love for God and neighbour within the community of saints. Self-love will have vanished – what a thought – we shall lose self-preoccupation and be caught up in the vision of God and the shared joy of the redeemed!
Meanwhile we have to take the Gospel reading to heart so that we lose something more of self-love and gain something more of the love of God and of our neighbour for that is God’s will for us, each one of us here in church on this 18th Sunday after Trinity 2011!
Each one of us I guess struggles with self-preoccupation. We can hardly avoid it as individuals who have the duty of looking after ourselves, feeding, clothing ourselves, entertaining ourselves and putting ourselves to work in different ways.
Our Lord Jesus came upon the earth to challenge this self-preoccupation. He says to us, each one of us in church this morning "You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind and … your neighbour as yourself".
Jesus commands this love of us and his is a gracious command – he gives us the grace to obey it – he gives us the Holy Spirit, not least as we receive his body and blood in this most holy sacrament.
To love God and neighbour energises us. The love of self drains us of energy.
How easily do you and I voice the sacrificial talk of the eucharist with but little deliberation. Every Eucharist calls forth not just our bread and wine and money but our souls and bodies as a living sacrifice in union with Jesus who is uniting all things with himself. Jesus desires the offering of love for God and neighbour from his people. He desires to unite that love with his own love that is drawing the whole universe to himself.
Sometimes the Eucharist is cheap grace. We grow blind to the sacrificial aspect of Christian worship in our over eagerness to grab easy grace when it’s convenient.
Jesus wants to take us out of ourselves and direct our concerns to God and neighbour which is why he has given us sacrificial worship.
We don’t come to church to be entertained but to be drawn into Christ’s Sacrifice which is drawing all things to the Father.
As the host and chalice are lifted up at the altar we look towards that final exaltation of Jesus over all the powers of sin, sickness, death, doubt and the devil, the Omega Point where God will be all in all. I when I am lifted up he says will draw all people to myself.
The natural concerns we share about low interest rates, the cost of living, our mortgage repayments and so on are to be elevated to a supernatural level by the Eucharist we share which builds our faith.
It is love for God who has given this ungrateful world so much and for our neighbours, who are as hard if not more hard hit by the economic crisis, that is to overcome selfish preoccupation let alone self pity at the way the world is dealing with us.
Lift up your hearts invites the priest. We lift them to the Lord.
Through the familiar action of taking, blessing, breaking and sharing an outward rite is accomplished which takes us right up into the heavenlies to be joined with the perfect love of God and humankind to be found for all eternity in Jesus Christ, true God and true man, present as eternal priest and saving victim at this altar under the sign of bread and wine.
Take your place with him now as we prepare to offer through him, with him and in him this most holy Eucharist for the praise and glory of his name, for our good and the good of all his church. Amen.
The world is moving towards one point. The financial troubles that are bringing the world towards more of an economic union are connecting up the world. They are, strangely, ironically, part of a greater movement into unity. This movement is a gathering up of all things in Christ so that the love of God and neighbour flow perfectly together in the communion of saints made perfect.
This Holy Eucharist is an anticipation of that union – more than that, it is an instrument of advancing the love of God and neighbour within the cosmos. As often as we celebrate this sacred mystery we show the Lord’s death and the work of salvation is advanced towards the point where Jesus will be supreme and God will be everything to everyone.
If the trajectory of cosmic history looks like a cone with space and time spinning out from the Big Bang the trajectory of salvation history is an inverted cone bringing all things together in Christ. To the outer eye of science there is divergence as things move apart. To the inner and deeper eye of the Spirit there is convergence towards what someone called the Omega Point where Christ is the be all and end all.
There our gospel reading will be fulfilled by perfect love for God and neighbour within the community of saints. Self-love will have vanished – what a thought – we shall lose self-preoccupation and be caught up in the vision of God and the shared joy of the redeemed!
Meanwhile we have to take the Gospel reading to heart so that we lose something more of self-love and gain something more of the love of God and of our neighbour for that is God’s will for us, each one of us here in church on this 18th Sunday after Trinity 2011!
Each one of us I guess struggles with self-preoccupation. We can hardly avoid it as individuals who have the duty of looking after ourselves, feeding, clothing ourselves, entertaining ourselves and putting ourselves to work in different ways.
Our Lord Jesus came upon the earth to challenge this self-preoccupation. He says to us, each one of us in church this morning "You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind and … your neighbour as yourself".
Jesus commands this love of us and his is a gracious command – he gives us the grace to obey it – he gives us the Holy Spirit, not least as we receive his body and blood in this most holy sacrament.
To love God and neighbour energises us. The love of self drains us of energy.
How easily do you and I voice the sacrificial talk of the eucharist with but little deliberation. Every Eucharist calls forth not just our bread and wine and money but our souls and bodies as a living sacrifice in union with Jesus who is uniting all things with himself. Jesus desires the offering of love for God and neighbour from his people. He desires to unite that love with his own love that is drawing the whole universe to himself.
Sometimes the Eucharist is cheap grace. We grow blind to the sacrificial aspect of Christian worship in our over eagerness to grab easy grace when it’s convenient.
Jesus wants to take us out of ourselves and direct our concerns to God and neighbour which is why he has given us sacrificial worship.
We don’t come to church to be entertained but to be drawn into Christ’s Sacrifice which is drawing all things to the Father.
As the host and chalice are lifted up at the altar we look towards that final exaltation of Jesus over all the powers of sin, sickness, death, doubt and the devil, the Omega Point where God will be all in all. I when I am lifted up he says will draw all people to myself.
The natural concerns we share about low interest rates, the cost of living, our mortgage repayments and so on are to be elevated to a supernatural level by the Eucharist we share which builds our faith.
It is love for God who has given this ungrateful world so much and for our neighbours, who are as hard if not more hard hit by the economic crisis, that is to overcome selfish preoccupation let alone self pity at the way the world is dealing with us.
Lift up your hearts invites the priest. We lift them to the Lord.
Through the familiar action of taking, blessing, breaking and sharing an outward rite is accomplished which takes us right up into the heavenlies to be joined with the perfect love of God and humankind to be found for all eternity in Jesus Christ, true God and true man, present as eternal priest and saving victim at this altar under the sign of bread and wine.
Take your place with him now as we prepare to offer through him, with him and in him this most holy Eucharist for the praise and glory of his name, for our good and the good of all his church. Amen.
Sunday, 16 October 2011
Trinity 17 16 October 2011
What’s good about being a Christian?
Share things that are valuable including significant answers to prayer in recent weeks
Christianity is good for the soul! The Gospel is good! This Church is a place of purpose in a confused world, a place of belonging in a lonely world.
If this good news is going to get around some more the church has got to grow and draw in the next generation.
Do you think we at St. Giles have something that the friends we care for are missing out on?
We need to believe this if our prayer and our invitations for them to join us are to be wholehearted.
How can we help the church grow?
Discussion
A question we do well to ask ourselves is how we would feel if our best friend came with us to Church? Would we feel embarrassed about what and who they encountered? If so, why should we feel so?
What wisdom is there so far as the revitalisation of faith and our need to work for church growth in today’s Gospel?
Behind the questions and answers lies a trap set for Our Lord which touches on the relation of the believing community to its surrounds.
In the story we see the Pharisees making common cause with the Herodians who supported paying tribute to Rome against the Zealots who didn’t, hoping to put Jesus in the wrong with one side or the other. They ask ‘Is it permissible to pay taxes to Caesar or not?’
Our Lord’s reply does not actually make a choice between the two parties. It accepts the reality of Caesar’s rule, without touching on the question of its validity. Give back to Caesar what belongs to Caesar – and to God what belongs to God.
Keep responding to God’s claim, Jesus says, whilst never forgetting the claim of the world around you.
To be effective in our mission as his Church we need an ever-deepening confidence in God allied to an ever-deepening humility before both God and neighbour.
We can’t escape those dual obligations – to God and to Caesar. It’s up to each individual and each religious community to balance these obligations. To ignore God denies us our distinctive of godliness. To ignore Caesar – read the human community to put it into today’s language – is to make our religion sectarian and destructive.
We live as Jesus did in a culturally diverse society. As such we can’t avoid speaking two languages. Our Christian Faith is the language of ‘identity’ – it makes us what we are as God’s people seeking godliness through word, sacrament and fellowship. Our shared citizenship demands we speak the language of our community.
If religious communities don’t engage with their wider communities and seek to speak their language they become sectarian.
To paraphrase Our Lord with a slant to St. Giles, we need to give society its just service, throwing ourselves as a Christian community into the fray of Horsted Keynes and its surrounds, whilst giving God his due by building up our confidence as a distinctively Christian community.
As your parish priest I need to encourage you to work on both aspects.
For St Giles to grow we need an eye to both God and the community. We need to firm up our confidence in God by getting ourselves deeper into our worship and schooled more in the Scriptures. However bad a name religion has got we cannot escape the call we have to be better and firmer Christians.
To be a Christian is to have confidence in God – and humility before him and before people.
A Christian who’s humble without confidence in God has no missionary potential.
A Christian who’s every confidence in God yet lacks humility before other people and their view of things is a danger to our cause!
In particular failure to be sensitive to the needs of our community and speak its language will show us up to be less than Christian in the sense of working for human and social flourishing.
Today’s Gospel makes clear the separate demands of God and man upon us as Christians but those demands flow together. Our Lord brought these conflicting demands together in his own body in his sacrificial death for us upon the Cross.
Through what he has done for us, which we recall at every eucharist, he builds our confidence in God and lends us his own humble love for people
In this Eucharist he is waiting to touch us in our heart of hearts, so we can touch others for him!
May the Sacrament we share refresh in us the purpose for living and the reason for dying given to us in our risen Lord. As God makes himself so near to us may he make himself near to the people of this community.
The Gospel is good! This Church is a place of purpose in a confused world, a place of belonging in a lonely world. May more belong here with us to Jesus so that God’s world may be enriched by the growth of his Church!
Share things that are valuable including significant answers to prayer in recent weeks
Christianity is good for the soul! The Gospel is good! This Church is a place of purpose in a confused world, a place of belonging in a lonely world.
If this good news is going to get around some more the church has got to grow and draw in the next generation.
Do you think we at St. Giles have something that the friends we care for are missing out on?
We need to believe this if our prayer and our invitations for them to join us are to be wholehearted.
How can we help the church grow?
Discussion
A question we do well to ask ourselves is how we would feel if our best friend came with us to Church? Would we feel embarrassed about what and who they encountered? If so, why should we feel so?
What wisdom is there so far as the revitalisation of faith and our need to work for church growth in today’s Gospel?
Behind the questions and answers lies a trap set for Our Lord which touches on the relation of the believing community to its surrounds.
In the story we see the Pharisees making common cause with the Herodians who supported paying tribute to Rome against the Zealots who didn’t, hoping to put Jesus in the wrong with one side or the other. They ask ‘Is it permissible to pay taxes to Caesar or not?’
Our Lord’s reply does not actually make a choice between the two parties. It accepts the reality of Caesar’s rule, without touching on the question of its validity. Give back to Caesar what belongs to Caesar – and to God what belongs to God.
Keep responding to God’s claim, Jesus says, whilst never forgetting the claim of the world around you.
To be effective in our mission as his Church we need an ever-deepening confidence in God allied to an ever-deepening humility before both God and neighbour.
We can’t escape those dual obligations – to God and to Caesar. It’s up to each individual and each religious community to balance these obligations. To ignore God denies us our distinctive of godliness. To ignore Caesar – read the human community to put it into today’s language – is to make our religion sectarian and destructive.
We live as Jesus did in a culturally diverse society. As such we can’t avoid speaking two languages. Our Christian Faith is the language of ‘identity’ – it makes us what we are as God’s people seeking godliness through word, sacrament and fellowship. Our shared citizenship demands we speak the language of our community.
If religious communities don’t engage with their wider communities and seek to speak their language they become sectarian.
To paraphrase Our Lord with a slant to St. Giles, we need to give society its just service, throwing ourselves as a Christian community into the fray of Horsted Keynes and its surrounds, whilst giving God his due by building up our confidence as a distinctively Christian community.
As your parish priest I need to encourage you to work on both aspects.
For St Giles to grow we need an eye to both God and the community. We need to firm up our confidence in God by getting ourselves deeper into our worship and schooled more in the Scriptures. However bad a name religion has got we cannot escape the call we have to be better and firmer Christians.
To be a Christian is to have confidence in God – and humility before him and before people.
A Christian who’s humble without confidence in God has no missionary potential.
A Christian who’s every confidence in God yet lacks humility before other people and their view of things is a danger to our cause!
In particular failure to be sensitive to the needs of our community and speak its language will show us up to be less than Christian in the sense of working for human and social flourishing.
Today’s Gospel makes clear the separate demands of God and man upon us as Christians but those demands flow together. Our Lord brought these conflicting demands together in his own body in his sacrificial death for us upon the Cross.
Through what he has done for us, which we recall at every eucharist, he builds our confidence in God and lends us his own humble love for people
In this Eucharist he is waiting to touch us in our heart of hearts, so we can touch others for him!
May the Sacrament we share refresh in us the purpose for living and the reason for dying given to us in our risen Lord. As God makes himself so near to us may he make himself near to the people of this community.
The Gospel is good! This Church is a place of purpose in a confused world, a place of belonging in a lonely world. May more belong here with us to Jesus so that God’s world may be enriched by the growth of his Church!
Thursday, 13 October 2011
Harvest Festival 9th October 2011 8am
Harvest Festival is an annual reminder as the eucharist is a weekly reminder of the profound truth of thanksgiving.
Our lives are not our own – and that’s an unfashionable truth in a self reliant age.
The Christian faith calls for inner eyes to be opened up to gratitude.
We come from God. We belong to God. We go to God.
This means, as creatures made and loved by God, that we believe in thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is a key mark of the Christian church which has as its first service the Eucharist or great thanksgiving over bread and wine for Jesus sake.
Christians have every reason to live with thanksgiving. In Jesus Christ they find belonging, purpose for life, empowerment, forgiveness, spiritual direction and so many blessings.
Archbishop Michael Ramsey made many a profound remark and one was that ‘thanksgiving is a soil in which pride doesn’t easily grow’.
Thanksgiving is a soil in which pride doesn’t easily grow – now there’s a deep thought!
To believe in thanksgiving is to believe that the centre of your life is outside of yourself.
This truth lies behind those words on divine providence that we just heard from Our Lord in the Gospel from St Luke Chapter 12: Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds! And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? If then you are not able to do so small a thing as that, why do you worry about the rest?
St. Paul expresses this truth of our belonging at the deepest level within the providence of God when he writes to the Colossians our life is hidden with Christ in God (Colossians 3v3b).
To live thankful for such a grace is to live in infectious joy so that grace, as it extends to more and more people, may increase thanksgiving to the glory of God quoting the apostle Paul again only from 2 Corinthians 4v15b.
Doesn’t thanksgiving undermine a right self-reliance? Surely God helps those who help themselves?
Yes and no. Yes we are subjects not puppets. God never undermines our free will. No because the whole wonder of Christian life is God’s readiness to be helper of the helpless. He’s eager to release his possibilities into so many of our situations. If you rely on self alone you’ll always be disappointed. Depression is self-reliance that has failed. Death is the utter loss of self life.
Christian faith, thankful living, reverses both of these scenarios.
It is a matter of immersing ourselves in the self-offering of Christ as we do week by week in the holy eucharist.
Blessed art Thou, Lord God of all creation, through thy goodness we have this bread and wine to offer...
These gifts are offered as an expression of gratitude, the sign of our lives being given up to God. The bread and wine’s transformation to Christ’s body and blood and our receiving of these is the instrument of our own ongoing transformation into thankful living.
We come from God. We belong to God. We go to God.
All things come of thee O Lord and of thine own do we give thee!
Our lives are not our own – and that’s an unfashionable truth in a self reliant age.
The Christian faith calls for inner eyes to be opened up to gratitude.
We come from God. We belong to God. We go to God.
This means, as creatures made and loved by God, that we believe in thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is a key mark of the Christian church which has as its first service the Eucharist or great thanksgiving over bread and wine for Jesus sake.
Christians have every reason to live with thanksgiving. In Jesus Christ they find belonging, purpose for life, empowerment, forgiveness, spiritual direction and so many blessings.
Archbishop Michael Ramsey made many a profound remark and one was that ‘thanksgiving is a soil in which pride doesn’t easily grow’.
Thanksgiving is a soil in which pride doesn’t easily grow – now there’s a deep thought!
To believe in thanksgiving is to believe that the centre of your life is outside of yourself.
This truth lies behind those words on divine providence that we just heard from Our Lord in the Gospel from St Luke Chapter 12: Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds! And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? If then you are not able to do so small a thing as that, why do you worry about the rest?
St. Paul expresses this truth of our belonging at the deepest level within the providence of God when he writes to the Colossians our life is hidden with Christ in God (Colossians 3v3b).
To live thankful for such a grace is to live in infectious joy so that grace, as it extends to more and more people, may increase thanksgiving to the glory of God quoting the apostle Paul again only from 2 Corinthians 4v15b.
Doesn’t thanksgiving undermine a right self-reliance? Surely God helps those who help themselves?
Yes and no. Yes we are subjects not puppets. God never undermines our free will. No because the whole wonder of Christian life is God’s readiness to be helper of the helpless. He’s eager to release his possibilities into so many of our situations. If you rely on self alone you’ll always be disappointed. Depression is self-reliance that has failed. Death is the utter loss of self life.
Christian faith, thankful living, reverses both of these scenarios.
It is a matter of immersing ourselves in the self-offering of Christ as we do week by week in the holy eucharist.
Blessed art Thou, Lord God of all creation, through thy goodness we have this bread and wine to offer...
These gifts are offered as an expression of gratitude, the sign of our lives being given up to God. The bread and wine’s transformation to Christ’s body and blood and our receiving of these is the instrument of our own ongoing transformation into thankful living.
We come from God. We belong to God. We go to God.
All things come of thee O Lord and of thine own do we give thee!
Sunday, 25 September 2011
Trinity 14 Repentance 25th September 2011
Repentance is at the heart of our religion and it’s at the heart of today’s scripture.
The parable of the two sons in Matthew 21 picks up on the Ezekiel passage in its highlighting of human responsibility. We are free at any time to turn from wrong to right dealing, the scripture says, and we will be judged according to the evident determination we show towards right. The wrong we have done will not be held against us if we repent or turn from it.
This doctrine of repentance is written through the Scriptures. In the New Testament it first appears on the lips of Saint John the Baptist. Then, when Our Lord begins his public ministry it is with the call to repentance (Matthew 3:1–2; Matthew 4:17). When he sends forth messengers to proclaim his gospel, he commands them to preach repentance (Luke 24:47; Mark 6:12).
After his death and resurrection we see, in the book of Acts how his apostles, led by Peter command repentance. In Acts 2.28 Peter says to the crowd who witnessed Pentecost: Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. Saint Isaac of Syria says, "This life has been given to you for repentance. Do not waste it on vain pursuits."
So what does it mean to repent or to live in repentance?
The meaning of the word is to turn. To turn to God. To turn away from ‘vain pursuits’.
The meaning of repentance is filled out by the form of baptismal vows we use in St Giles: I turn to Christ. I repent of my sins. I renounce evil.
Repentance is more than lip service.
A man had two sons; he went to the first and said, “Son, go and work in the vineyard today.” He answered, “I will not”; but later he changed his mind and went. The father went to the second and said the same; and he answered, “I go, sir”; but he did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father?’ They said, ‘The first.’ (Matthew 21.28-31)
To repent is to act so as to move your life forwards into the will of God.
Through our conscience and our awareness of the love of God in Jesus Christ we have an awareness of what’s required of us. More than that we mouth those requirements as we did earlier in the eucharist by making an outward confession of our sins.
Repentance though is more than thinking or saying what you need to do – it is doing it!
One great mystery of our existence is the freedom we have to know what’s right and aspire to it but to be given space to delay and delay and delay.
The Confessions of Saint Augustine of Hippo who lived in the fourth century are still in print as the first great autobiography. Augustine connected with the Church and gradually came to recognise he was living in a wrong relationship. Later he admits his prayer was ‘Lord, make me chaste – but not yet’. Isn’t that a prayer we’ve all prayed about something or other be it diet, gossip or judgmental attitude – ‘not yet, Lord’!
To repent is to submit. As human beings we aren’t puppets on strings, no. Neither though is our relationship with the Lord the give and take of pure unfettered cooperation. With your Maker you more than cooperate, such is his claim upon you, such is his aspiration for you to really make you the holy one he has in his mind’s eye when he thinks of you!
As Augustine found repentance is submission, the end of all argument with God. It is the realisation there and then of God and his gracious demand, in Paul’s words to Corinth, now is the day of salvation (2 Corinthians 6.2).
When we’re driving a car our turning of the wheel is a parable of the repentance, the turning, which heads our life to its proper destination. How often do we drivers end up having to turn back on our tracks? Or fall prey to deceitful information? I listen to my Sat Nav, most kind gift of a parishioner. It works nine times out of ten but there’ve been times when in my heart of heart I know I am going wrong. I have been forced to turn its advice to one side!
Back to St Isaac: "This life has been given to you for repentance. Do not waste it on vain pursuits."
This morning’s scripture is a wake up call to check where we’re heading in life. If we’re lacking a sense of the Holy Spirit’s working that may be because we’re heading wrong somehow. The remedy is plain – I have already given the three stages from Acts 2.28: Repent, so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Repent – decide you’ll turn from whatever it is. Secondly ask God that your sins may be forgiven. Thirdly welcome the Holy Spirit.
I turn to Christ. I repent of my sins. I renounce evil. The life of the baptised is a life lived in that ongoing principle so that if our spiritual life is in the doldrums it may be, in that becalming, there is message from God, as expressed in the first reading: Cast away from you all the transgressions that you have committed against me, and get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit! (Ezekiel 18)
There’s a lot at stake for us in today’s scripture. "This life has been given to you for repentance. Do not waste it on vain pursuits."
The parable of the two sons in Matthew 21 picks up on the Ezekiel passage in its highlighting of human responsibility. We are free at any time to turn from wrong to right dealing, the scripture says, and we will be judged according to the evident determination we show towards right. The wrong we have done will not be held against us if we repent or turn from it.
This doctrine of repentance is written through the Scriptures. In the New Testament it first appears on the lips of Saint John the Baptist. Then, when Our Lord begins his public ministry it is with the call to repentance (Matthew 3:1–2; Matthew 4:17). When he sends forth messengers to proclaim his gospel, he commands them to preach repentance (Luke 24:47; Mark 6:12).
After his death and resurrection we see, in the book of Acts how his apostles, led by Peter command repentance. In Acts 2.28 Peter says to the crowd who witnessed Pentecost: Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. Saint Isaac of Syria says, "This life has been given to you for repentance. Do not waste it on vain pursuits."
So what does it mean to repent or to live in repentance?
The meaning of the word is to turn. To turn to God. To turn away from ‘vain pursuits’.
The meaning of repentance is filled out by the form of baptismal vows we use in St Giles: I turn to Christ. I repent of my sins. I renounce evil.
Repentance is more than lip service.
A man had two sons; he went to the first and said, “Son, go and work in the vineyard today.” He answered, “I will not”; but later he changed his mind and went. The father went to the second and said the same; and he answered, “I go, sir”; but he did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father?’ They said, ‘The first.’ (Matthew 21.28-31)
To repent is to act so as to move your life forwards into the will of God.
Through our conscience and our awareness of the love of God in Jesus Christ we have an awareness of what’s required of us. More than that we mouth those requirements as we did earlier in the eucharist by making an outward confession of our sins.
Repentance though is more than thinking or saying what you need to do – it is doing it!
One great mystery of our existence is the freedom we have to know what’s right and aspire to it but to be given space to delay and delay and delay.
The Confessions of Saint Augustine of Hippo who lived in the fourth century are still in print as the first great autobiography. Augustine connected with the Church and gradually came to recognise he was living in a wrong relationship. Later he admits his prayer was ‘Lord, make me chaste – but not yet’. Isn’t that a prayer we’ve all prayed about something or other be it diet, gossip or judgmental attitude – ‘not yet, Lord’!
To repent is to submit. As human beings we aren’t puppets on strings, no. Neither though is our relationship with the Lord the give and take of pure unfettered cooperation. With your Maker you more than cooperate, such is his claim upon you, such is his aspiration for you to really make you the holy one he has in his mind’s eye when he thinks of you!
As Augustine found repentance is submission, the end of all argument with God. It is the realisation there and then of God and his gracious demand, in Paul’s words to Corinth, now is the day of salvation (2 Corinthians 6.2).
When we’re driving a car our turning of the wheel is a parable of the repentance, the turning, which heads our life to its proper destination. How often do we drivers end up having to turn back on our tracks? Or fall prey to deceitful information? I listen to my Sat Nav, most kind gift of a parishioner. It works nine times out of ten but there’ve been times when in my heart of heart I know I am going wrong. I have been forced to turn its advice to one side!
Back to St Isaac: "This life has been given to you for repentance. Do not waste it on vain pursuits."
This morning’s scripture is a wake up call to check where we’re heading in life. If we’re lacking a sense of the Holy Spirit’s working that may be because we’re heading wrong somehow. The remedy is plain – I have already given the three stages from Acts 2.28: Repent, so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Repent – decide you’ll turn from whatever it is. Secondly ask God that your sins may be forgiven. Thirdly welcome the Holy Spirit.
I turn to Christ. I repent of my sins. I renounce evil. The life of the baptised is a life lived in that ongoing principle so that if our spiritual life is in the doldrums it may be, in that becalming, there is message from God, as expressed in the first reading: Cast away from you all the transgressions that you have committed against me, and get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit! (Ezekiel 18)
There’s a lot at stake for us in today’s scripture. "This life has been given to you for repentance. Do not waste it on vain pursuits."
Sunday, 18 September 2011
Baptism of Zachary Francis & Alice Langman 18th September 2011
Self-sacrifice is what we’re all meant to be about.
We were made to lose ourselves.
This is why in the traditional baptism rites candidates were, and sometimes still are, immersed in a symbolic drowning.
We are so grateful for the lives of Zachary and Alice - their drowning would be a million miles from our thoughts this morning! Nevertheless all we are about this morning announces the desire they have their sinful human nature drowned to death. That they come to live lives not full of themselves but full of the unselfish Spirit of God.
We can trace our existence this morning in five stages: the creation of inert matter, the formation of the earth, the emergence of life, of consciousness and then, in human beings, self-consciousness.
Only self-conscious beings are capable of fulfilling what the universe is all about, the sixth moral and spiritual stage, which is self-sacrifice.
This action came to perfection, and so perfected the universe, on an April day around 30AD when God who had taken human form gave himself up to death for us and for our salvation.
Self-sacrifice, losing your life to universal gain, is not applauded uniquely in Christianity of course.
In the book Born in Tibet Chogyam Trungpa tells of a saintly man in north-east Tibet whose compassion was so great he opened his house at all times to the poor. When, as an old man, he knew he was about to die he gave this instruction: ‘When I die you must not move my body for a week; that is all I desire’.
Soon he did die; and his body, wrapped in old clothes, was carried into a small room. The bearers noted that although the old man had been tall his body had already appeared to have grown smaller. On the sixth day when the family peeped into the room they saw it had grown still smaller. On the eighth day when men came to bear the body to the cemetery they undid the coverings they found nothing inside save nails and hair.
When the family reported the event to the local lama he said that this had happened in the past and was a matter of saintly people ending up being absorbed into the Light.
There is a lot of wisdom in the east which can work to remind us of Christian basics. We were made not to be full of ourselves but to lose ourselves to God and other people.
Buddhist teachers of Western pupils complain ‘They are so full of opinions on everything; and so they can never know anything’. This is quite a judgement on the spiritual immaturity of a postmodern, post Christian society.
We reach for our newspapers every morning to fill ourselves with opinions in a society where we once reached out to God every morning. We have plenty of knowledge but so little wisdom we have to turn east to cultures relatively unaffected by the 24-7 information flow.
Our greatest prayer for Zachary and Alice this morning, and for us in their service, is for the capacity to know what’s important – God – and to be made holy as we grow into the divine nature - to live not full of ourselves but of Christ.
As we heard from St Paul in the first reading, a man in prison mind you, to me living is Christ, dying is gain.
We allow ourselves to be saddened over much by our worldly failings. How much sleep we lose over useless things – that promotion we missed, that deal we messed up, the ageing of our bodies, the growing infirmity of our minds.
None of these things are cause for ultimate sadness so much as our failure to live selfless lives.
As Léon Bloy wrote: there is only one sadness, the sadness of not being a saint.
For 30 million years God has prepared us with Alice and Zachary for this day since he made the earth, brought about living beings, conscious and then self-conscious beings.
What we are doing at these baptisms is to announce the final stage of life – to be able to give it away in thoughtful compassion and kindness.
In baptism we announce the principle of drowning to self. In the sacrament we also give and gain the way to accomplish it.
One only has been able to give of himself totally for others in the history of the world. He died in our place to live in our place.
Self-sacrifice is what we’re meant to be about. We were made to lose ourselves in love to Jesus so Jesus could live within us and make us ever more capable of this, and of holiness.
To me living is Christ, dying is gain
We were made to lose ourselves.
This is why in the traditional baptism rites candidates were, and sometimes still are, immersed in a symbolic drowning.
We are so grateful for the lives of Zachary and Alice - their drowning would be a million miles from our thoughts this morning! Nevertheless all we are about this morning announces the desire they have their sinful human nature drowned to death. That they come to live lives not full of themselves but full of the unselfish Spirit of God.
We can trace our existence this morning in five stages: the creation of inert matter, the formation of the earth, the emergence of life, of consciousness and then, in human beings, self-consciousness.
Only self-conscious beings are capable of fulfilling what the universe is all about, the sixth moral and spiritual stage, which is self-sacrifice.
This action came to perfection, and so perfected the universe, on an April day around 30AD when God who had taken human form gave himself up to death for us and for our salvation.
Self-sacrifice, losing your life to universal gain, is not applauded uniquely in Christianity of course.
In the book Born in Tibet Chogyam Trungpa tells of a saintly man in north-east Tibet whose compassion was so great he opened his house at all times to the poor. When, as an old man, he knew he was about to die he gave this instruction: ‘When I die you must not move my body for a week; that is all I desire’.
Soon he did die; and his body, wrapped in old clothes, was carried into a small room. The bearers noted that although the old man had been tall his body had already appeared to have grown smaller. On the sixth day when the family peeped into the room they saw it had grown still smaller. On the eighth day when men came to bear the body to the cemetery they undid the coverings they found nothing inside save nails and hair.
When the family reported the event to the local lama he said that this had happened in the past and was a matter of saintly people ending up being absorbed into the Light.
There is a lot of wisdom in the east which can work to remind us of Christian basics. We were made not to be full of ourselves but to lose ourselves to God and other people.
Buddhist teachers of Western pupils complain ‘They are so full of opinions on everything; and so they can never know anything’. This is quite a judgement on the spiritual immaturity of a postmodern, post Christian society.
We reach for our newspapers every morning to fill ourselves with opinions in a society where we once reached out to God every morning. We have plenty of knowledge but so little wisdom we have to turn east to cultures relatively unaffected by the 24-7 information flow.
Our greatest prayer for Zachary and Alice this morning, and for us in their service, is for the capacity to know what’s important – God – and to be made holy as we grow into the divine nature - to live not full of ourselves but of Christ.
As we heard from St Paul in the first reading, a man in prison mind you, to me living is Christ, dying is gain.
We allow ourselves to be saddened over much by our worldly failings. How much sleep we lose over useless things – that promotion we missed, that deal we messed up, the ageing of our bodies, the growing infirmity of our minds.
None of these things are cause for ultimate sadness so much as our failure to live selfless lives.
As Léon Bloy wrote: there is only one sadness, the sadness of not being a saint.
For 30 million years God has prepared us with Alice and Zachary for this day since he made the earth, brought about living beings, conscious and then self-conscious beings.
What we are doing at these baptisms is to announce the final stage of life – to be able to give it away in thoughtful compassion and kindness.
In baptism we announce the principle of drowning to self. In the sacrament we also give and gain the way to accomplish it.
One only has been able to give of himself totally for others in the history of the world. He died in our place to live in our place.
Self-sacrifice is what we’re meant to be about. We were made to lose ourselves in love to Jesus so Jesus could live within us and make us ever more capable of this, and of holiness.
To me living is Christ, dying is gain
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