He shall come again in glorious majesty to judge the living and the dead that we may rise to the life immortal
What difference does this Cinderella of Christian truth make to us.
I say Cinderella because the doctrine of the Second Coming must be about the most neglected of doctrines. It gets eclipsed by Christmas, which now covers Advent and beyond, and is tinged with such sentimentality that many preachers get scared off attending to the four last things: death, judgement, heaven and hell.
The first benefit of the doctrine of the Second Coming is it puts us in our place!
What you are before God - that is what you are and no more. The doctrine that He shall come again in glorious majesty to judge us warns us to avoid the error of valuing ourselves overmuch by what others say about us.
No one can take away or enhance who we are before God.
This is a very difficult truth to take on board and get into our hearts of hearts. The blame or praise of any other human being is of no matter compared to God's praise or blame. If what we find others think of us inflates or deflates us overmuch we’re not fully centred on the Lord.
Fear God and there’ll be no one or nothing else to fear!
The second benefit of the doctrine of the Second Coming is the reminder it gives that once we accept the love of Christ there will be no need to fear his judgement. As St Paul writes to the Romans,'There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus' (Romans 8.1).
The universe will be ended by Jesus Christ and he is the one who first came to reveal the Love that moves the sun and the stars in Dante's immortal phrase.
If all through our Christian lives we have been looking to Jesus his appearing 'in glorious majesty to judge the living and the dead' will be consummation not condemnation.
In Lent we read Bishop Tom Wright’s commentary on Matthew's Gospel. The former Bishop of Durham writes about the Second Coming in his book Simply Christian. There he encourages us to see the Lord’s return as less about our being snatched up into heaven than about the New Jerusalem coming down in which Jesus will reappear as King of Heaven.
Bishop Tom sees Jesus now as present, I quote, hidden behind that invisible veil that keeps heaven and earth apart, and which we pierce in those moments such as prayer, the sacraments, the reading of scripture and our work with the poor, where the veil seems particularly thin....one day that veil will be lifted; earth and heaven will be one; Jesus will be personally present, and every knee shall bow at his name; creation will be renewed; the dead will be raised; and God’s new world will at last be in place.
If the first benefit of the doctrine of Christ's Second Coming is to put us in our place and the second is to remind us that place is one of being loved, the third benefit is to open up a vision of the purpose of all things so as to spur us on.
This world isn't just here! It’s God's world made for God’s purpose! The kingdom of this world is to become the kingdom of our God and of Christ, his Son.
He shall come again in glorious majesty to judge the living and the dead that we may rise to the life immortal.
God’s a personal God who’s created a world where personal beings who bear his image stand not at the centre but, in Teilhard de Chardin's phrase, as the 'structural keystone’ of the universe.
Almighty God made the universe to put in the centre of it his Son, Jesus Christ.
The first Coming of Jesus was into the womb of a holy woman, the Blessed Virgin Mary, demonstrating that we human beings are no mere compartment of the animal kingdom but are capable of union with God.
His Second Coming will occur when human beings, drawn to Christ and his Church in the Spirit, have completed the divine plan 'to bring all things together in Christ'. (Ephesians 1.10)
Materialists, ecologists are inevitable pessimists when they look at how the world is going. Christians though see in world events a forward movement. As Christ waited for the holy woman to be his Mother he now awaits a holy people to be his Bride so that as heavenly Bridegroom he can one day embrace his church so that we may rise to the life immortal.
Christ awaits the purification of his church for this consummation just as he had to await a woman for his conception. The purification of the church is inseparably bound up with the evolution of the created world that moves forward in history engaging through Christian mission with the good news as it spreads from pole to pole, news of the salvation which is God's gift in his Son Jesus Christ.
I could go on - what riches there are behind the doctrine of the Second Coming - but we need to land this exalted vision here into some practicalities.
To summarise, it is a benefit and not a bane to know there is judgement. Many unbelievers may be unbelievers because they resent deep down the idea of a God who sees all they do and to whom they will one day have to give account. We should not resent it - and if we do we should repent of our pride!
In Advent season we provide a number of occasions for deepening repentance, our sense of need for God. Tonight we have a special evensong with conscience examination. The sacrament of confession is also available tonight, on Christmas Eve and by appointment.
Next Sunday after the 10am all age eucharist the ministry of prayer for healing will be available to individuals, something the PCC has agreed we provide after every all age eucharist. Such prayer for physical, emotional and spiritual needs can be very helpful. On Tuesdays in Advent we have an extra Eucharist at 10am and our Wednesday evening 630pm worship is going to include a time of silent reflection.
In these ways and in our own individual prayer and bible study we can engage with the wonder of Advent season as it speaks to us of the love and judgement of God in Christ and his purpose for the church and the world.
The Lord is concerned with our lives and with all we and his concern is one of pure love! As Christians we are in the words of St Gregory the Great one in him who is everywhere. That union in the Holy Spirit is to be manifested when the world reaches its consummation and God is all in all in perfect love with the saints.
It is a glorious truth that no one can take away or enhance who we are before God - the love he has for us is will be everlasting!
As we welcome that love in Holy Communion this morning let’s hold in our hearts those we know who know not the Lord Jesus praying they too will open their hearts to him and experience the love of the Lord!
Saturday, 26 November 2011
Thursday, 3 November 2011
All Souls Day 2011
How do we see death?
The right instinct for self-preservation would see it as our enemy. Much of our physical life and energy is taken up in looking after our bodies and protecting them from harm. There is, alas, little attention given in modern medicine to facing up to death on this account, since, at a natural level, when a patient dies it is seen as a defeat.
As we mature in spirit a new perspective opens up and we ponder death as the stranger it is. In that pondering there lies a quest for meaning, not least when those we love are taken from us. There is strangeness especially in sudden death or the death of a child. Death puts a strange, uncomfortable question to every one of us so that death has become in the 21st century as unspeakable as sex was in the 19th century.
Many stay with death as enemy or stranger. Some though, and here faith comes in, some go on to see death as a friend. If faith means anything, it has to see beyond death to an unseen God who sees all, loves all and desires nothing to be lost. When faith and death meet it is death not faith that is changed. In the words of John Donne Death, thou shalt die.
A Christian is a far sighted one. Someone adventurous. One whose confidence in the victory of Jesus over death spurs them on. One who presses through the false boundaries of unbelief, sin, apathy, fear, sickness and, last of all, death, towards the gift of God in Jesus Christ.
To be a Christian is to be opposed to nostalgia in the sense of wanting to stop the flow of time and change. Christian faith is a forward journey with an eternal perspective that welcomes the challenges and surprises of life with Spirit given creativity since Jesus Christ is ever new.
If you live your life not content with a boring sameness but with what is other than, or apart from, yourself, this fascination draws you forward day by day into the possibilities of God which exceed your imagining.
If you centre in love on what is other than yourself you get prepared to face what is the ultimate strange ‘other’ – I mean death. We come to see death as nothing more than the frame of our earthly life. A frame is the picture’s friend. It shows it off. Without the defining of our life’s duration in time the span of our life would stretch into an infinite void. Without being born and dying we would be ageless beings. No one would be older or younger than anyone or anyone’s parent or child – we would be no one at all!
Who I am in my inner self is what matters ultimately. This is a product not just of heredity and environment but of my own free choices - to love or not to love. By growing love in my life I make of myself, with the Lord’s help, a being stronger than death.
This is what the scriptures are speaking of when they say love never ends. As we heard in the 23rd Psalm if I should walk in the valley of darkness no evil would I fear. You are there with your crook and your staff; with these you give me comfort. To live with love takes us out of ourselves and into the forward movement of He who is love itself.
Hope is not deceptive, because the love of God has been poured into our hearts. (Romans 5.5) Or, as we heard in today’s Gospel, it is (the) Father’s will that whoever sees the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life.
To live a human life is a process of formation that reaches its end in death in a more profound sense than end-finish. All that we are is moulded in us through our life in time so that we can be taken into our end-fulfilment in eternity.
The best preparation for death is through the inner wisdom of faith that presses us forward to live in hope day by day and to give ourselves in love to God and neighbour.
Three things abide – faith, hope and love – and the greatest of them is love.
Love is the best preparation for death because it takes us out of ourselves and shapes our inner self so we see our physical death as no enemy or stranger but the last friend we encounter on earth.
Saint Francis expressed this neatly when he gave death honoured place in his great hymn of creation: And thou, most kind and gentle death, waiting to hush our latest breath! Thou leadest home the child of God, and Christ our Lord the way hath trod.
On All Souls Day the Church invites us to ponder death not as enemy or stranger but as our friend because of this future orientation we hold.
It reminds us that love is the key to facing death.
Beyond contemplating our own mortality and need of God today we are showing love for our own dear dead. To pray for departed loved ones is to enfold them in our love, as we did in their life time, knowing, through the risen Christ, that the love which animates our prayer is stronger than death.
The faithful departed have passed beyond the frame of death into eternal love. The destruction of death destroys everything about us that is destructible but it cannot destroy loving commitment to God and neighbour.
Death, thou shalt die. As we offer prayer for our loved ones at the eucharist on All Souls Day we do so confident, in the love of God, that purifies them and us, building our lives on the unshakeable foundation that is Jesus Christ.
The right instinct for self-preservation would see it as our enemy. Much of our physical life and energy is taken up in looking after our bodies and protecting them from harm. There is, alas, little attention given in modern medicine to facing up to death on this account, since, at a natural level, when a patient dies it is seen as a defeat.
As we mature in spirit a new perspective opens up and we ponder death as the stranger it is. In that pondering there lies a quest for meaning, not least when those we love are taken from us. There is strangeness especially in sudden death or the death of a child. Death puts a strange, uncomfortable question to every one of us so that death has become in the 21st century as unspeakable as sex was in the 19th century.
Many stay with death as enemy or stranger. Some though, and here faith comes in, some go on to see death as a friend. If faith means anything, it has to see beyond death to an unseen God who sees all, loves all and desires nothing to be lost. When faith and death meet it is death not faith that is changed. In the words of John Donne Death, thou shalt die.
A Christian is a far sighted one. Someone adventurous. One whose confidence in the victory of Jesus over death spurs them on. One who presses through the false boundaries of unbelief, sin, apathy, fear, sickness and, last of all, death, towards the gift of God in Jesus Christ.
To be a Christian is to be opposed to nostalgia in the sense of wanting to stop the flow of time and change. Christian faith is a forward journey with an eternal perspective that welcomes the challenges and surprises of life with Spirit given creativity since Jesus Christ is ever new.
If you live your life not content with a boring sameness but with what is other than, or apart from, yourself, this fascination draws you forward day by day into the possibilities of God which exceed your imagining.
If you centre in love on what is other than yourself you get prepared to face what is the ultimate strange ‘other’ – I mean death. We come to see death as nothing more than the frame of our earthly life. A frame is the picture’s friend. It shows it off. Without the defining of our life’s duration in time the span of our life would stretch into an infinite void. Without being born and dying we would be ageless beings. No one would be older or younger than anyone or anyone’s parent or child – we would be no one at all!
Who I am in my inner self is what matters ultimately. This is a product not just of heredity and environment but of my own free choices - to love or not to love. By growing love in my life I make of myself, with the Lord’s help, a being stronger than death.
This is what the scriptures are speaking of when they say love never ends. As we heard in the 23rd Psalm if I should walk in the valley of darkness no evil would I fear. You are there with your crook and your staff; with these you give me comfort. To live with love takes us out of ourselves and into the forward movement of He who is love itself.
Hope is not deceptive, because the love of God has been poured into our hearts. (Romans 5.5) Or, as we heard in today’s Gospel, it is (the) Father’s will that whoever sees the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life.
To live a human life is a process of formation that reaches its end in death in a more profound sense than end-finish. All that we are is moulded in us through our life in time so that we can be taken into our end-fulfilment in eternity.
The best preparation for death is through the inner wisdom of faith that presses us forward to live in hope day by day and to give ourselves in love to God and neighbour.
Three things abide – faith, hope and love – and the greatest of them is love.
Love is the best preparation for death because it takes us out of ourselves and shapes our inner self so we see our physical death as no enemy or stranger but the last friend we encounter on earth.
Saint Francis expressed this neatly when he gave death honoured place in his great hymn of creation: And thou, most kind and gentle death, waiting to hush our latest breath! Thou leadest home the child of God, and Christ our Lord the way hath trod.
On All Souls Day the Church invites us to ponder death not as enemy or stranger but as our friend because of this future orientation we hold.
It reminds us that love is the key to facing death.
Beyond contemplating our own mortality and need of God today we are showing love for our own dear dead. To pray for departed loved ones is to enfold them in our love, as we did in their life time, knowing, through the risen Christ, that the love which animates our prayer is stronger than death.
The faithful departed have passed beyond the frame of death into eternal love. The destruction of death destroys everything about us that is destructible but it cannot destroy loving commitment to God and neighbour.
Death, thou shalt die. As we offer prayer for our loved ones at the eucharist on All Souls Day we do so confident, in the love of God, that purifies them and us, building our lives on the unshakeable foundation that is Jesus Christ.
All Saints’ Festal evensong 30th October 2011
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.
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.
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!
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