Advent 2 8am 9th December 2012

Christianity is well thought out. It’s well thought out because it’s from the mind of God no less! You can’t rubbish Christianity as a blind faith because it’s a reasonable faith. There are few faith traditions so rooted in unambiguous historical events.

Listen again to that very specific account that introduces the third chapter of St Luke’s gospel which is today’s gospel reading: In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip, ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness.

No wonder historians of all ages have applauded St Luke, whose gospel we’re now reading in Year C of the Sunday Lectionary, as being one of them. You can check his historical facts. We can consequently be 95% certain John the Baptist and Jesus Christ met in the River Jordan where the first baptised the second.

You can’t see God but at one point in history you could because God became one of us. John the Baptist was sent as the pointer to this. More than that, a pointer to the one who’d help everyone who wanted to know God to know God and share God’s life for ever.

To be a Christian is to share the baptism St John the Baptist came to speak of, the anointing in the Holy Spirit that makes the invisible God known as surely as the wind makes the air known.

A God we could see would actually be less wonderful than the God Christians believe in. We’d be able to contain him in our minds! Instead the Christian vision of God is one that expands continually from our limited dimensions to his unlimited ones. If you want a magnificent God the price you pay seems to be that of worshipping a God that’s invisible to mortal eyes.

How can I believe in a God I can't see? People ask us. I’m tempted to answer ‘you wouldn’t need to believe in someone if you could actually see them!’ Faith, as the letter to the Hebrews puts it, is conviction of things unseen (11:1).

The question ‘How can I believe in a God I can't see?’ is really the question ‘how can I find faith?’

A quick answer is ‘you should ask God for it, ask him to open your inner eyes to his all powerful yet invisible presence’.

I remember once my faith going right into the doldrums. It really burned low, so low I went back to the monastery at Mirfield where I trained as a priest and asked for help.

Maybe it’s not God who’s gone but your vision of him, the monks said. Pray for a vision of God more to his dimensions and less to your own they said. For three days I prayed a prayer rather like God, if you’re there, show yourself! He did – I survive to tell the tale – he spoke to me through a leaf on a tree.

I made you. He said. I love you. I want to fill you with my Spirit. That he did, though I’ve leaked since.

Asking God for a vision of himself more to his dimensions and less to your own seems always to bear fruit. Faith grows – it enlarges, especially if it is enriched by prayerful reading of the Bible and celebration of the sacraments. 

Christian mystics write of faith as a practical commitment.

In the medieval Cloud of Unknowing the anonymous mystical author describes faith as an ‘eager dart of longing love’ that reaches out to touch God and release his possibilities into our situation.

John the Baptist pointed to God so that we too could be drawn to reach out to God ourselves.

How can I believe in a God I can't see? You need to make a decision. That’s what faith is – an ongoing decision to go beyond and not against reason. As John Donne wrote Reason is our soul’s left hand, faith his right, by these we reach divinity.

Both faith and reason lift us to God and in Jesus God himself reaches down to us revealing himself to both our reason and our faith. In St Luke’s record of history of John the Baptist and Jesus Christ we should see a reasonable case for the Incarnation, the coming of God upon the earth.

Here, in the coming of Jesus that Advent centres upon, what we believe and what we see come together.

As St John the Evangelist writes No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known (John 1:18)

You can see him now with your mind and heart’s eye - in his word, in the breaking of bread, in our Christian fellowship.

St John the Baptist tells us so for his words echo on through history in our liturgy of the eucharist. John gives us the very words that speak of Christ’s presence:

Behold the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world.

 

 

Advent 1 Growing in love 2nd December 2012

1 Thessalonians 3.12 May the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, just as we abound in love for you.

That’s Paul’s prayer reaching down through the ages and it would be mine and the PCC’s for St Giles.

As you can read in the Mission Action Plan head statement in the news sheet: St Giles Church has a mission to grow in faith, love and numbers.

We want to grow in faith towards God, in the expression of love to the world and to grow the numbers in Christian fellowship here at St Giles.

Last week we looked at action planned to build faith such as tonight’s healing service and the meditation session later on.

What action has the PCC got planned, or raised up, to help us grow in love in the months ahead?

If you look on the porch flow chart the PCC has identified various opportunities for action. These include the social aspect of the Martindale refurbishment in its involving people and groups that use it, embryonic plans for action that comes alongside the youth and better outreach towards the housebound and elderly.

May the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all.

Those fifteen of us who walked to the coast, or almost to the coast, for the Martindale refurbishment raised almost £2,500 with gift aid. We  raised something equally significant in the day we spent with one another. This for me meant discovery of a parishioner, or near parishioner, who knew the interior of Guyana as well as I. We’ve met since to have a drink which linked in with a dining commitment with discussion of ways the church and others can help build village life.

If I’m typical the things we’re doing because of the Martindale refurbishment are taking us out of the box, out of our individual boxes, into new involvements and sharing as a community.

The 6^th November youth meeting mentioned on the MAP was attended by St Giles members with a dozen young people and supporting adults. It looked at future provision for youth. By putting this involvement under love and not numbers the PCC are saying let’s serve our young people before we evangelise them though the two are inseparable.

This brings us to broader thinking.

A church fellowship does community ministry through the individuals in it, as well as through what the church organises. A lot of us in Church aren’t involved in the listed activities on the PCC plan to grow love: Priest and lay pastoral visiting, First Steps, Thursday coffee, Westall House visiting, monthly village lunch, FOHKC events, Serendipity concerts, churchyard working parties, Harvest lunch/supper, FSW

Of course we want more of us involved in our mission through such things, more citizens and less consumers so to speak. Receiving the sermon and the sacraments is central to our Christianity but only when the body turns food into action do we see God’s kingdom built up.

Our individual growth and exercise of love has far wider remit than involvement in church activities. Charity begins at home. It’s also the case that people in our congregation are making a difference in the world  hardly comparable to the difference St Giles members make through running the weekly toddler group or monthly village lunch.

It’s not either/or but both/and. The Christian good news is given to permeate homes, villages and work places as well as education, healthcare, politics, environmental thinking and so on.  No one in Church this morning should feel guilty they’re not involved, save for prayer back up, in St Giles projects, unless the Spirit prompts them so.

What matters is each of us doing our best to bring love into realms of individual obligation such as our marriage and parenting, family and work commitments with an eye to the church community’s plans, hence today’s reminder. The PCC are doing their job in gently setting our priorities as a Church and helping more people to own them. We hope that as we share, like today, there’ll be people here realising that they too could join what is a rotating body and be a church leader such as James and Jan, David or Rhoda, Chris and so on. We’ve a pressing need to form younger Christians to lead the transformational ministries we have here.

May the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, just as we abound in love for you.

Growth in love may impact homes and communities but it starts in the heart as my concluding story illustrates.  A young man walked to church for years through a group of homeless people in a London churchyard. He was given a gift of love, a sort of ‘prayer burden’ for them and started to pray for them in church. He put it eventually to his church that they might run an occasional lunch and there was consensus to do so. Later on the church advertised for helpers in the local paper and had 300 phone calls offering help. This refreshed the mission partnership between the church and the community engaging with the needs of street people. It also helped church growth.

Your kingdom come, your will be done is the aspiration at the heart of Advent and of our Mission Action Plan for St Giles to grow in faith, love and numbers. It needs to be an aspiration that wells from deep in our hearts, as we live more and more aware of the love that surrounds us and cares for all that is, simply because it is!

May God enfold us in that love through this eucharist making us increase and abound in love for one another and for all through the almighty power that reaches into our hearts in this sacrament. Amen.

Christ the King 25th November 2012

The purpose of the Church is not to accommodate the demands of secular society; its duty is to a higher power. Nor were those who opposed the measure the zealots or dinosaurs of caricature. The debate was anguished, compassionate and reasoned. Those who voted no knew that they were going against the grain of modernity, and the exhortation of their leaders. But they had scrutinised conscience and Scripture, and could not bring themselves to vote otherwise.

I’m not speaking for myself but reading you the leader many of you’ll have read in Thursday’s Daily Telegraph on General Synod’s rejection of the women bishops’ legislation.

The sentiment fits this feast of Christ the King. I repeat: The purpose of the Church is not to accommodate the demands of secular society; its duty is to a higher power.

The debate on women bishops came right down to our Parochial Church Council. All three views – for, against and undecided – are represented there. As one against relief the measure fell on Tuesday is tempered by sympathy for those I now know will be hurt by that, and regard for those who lament synod’s failure to protect deeply held beliefs, such as my own, through a rather ill thought out and mean-spirited provision.

Over the last year the Parochial Church Council has had a very full agenda. Our wardens James and Jan, secretary Rhoda, treasurer David Colville, Mark Berryman, Marion, Chris, David Lamb, Heidi and Lisa have worked hard with me month by month for us all. Without the PCC there’d have been no prayer ministry training, July vision day, Martindale refurbishment, electrical inspection, stewardship renewal or addressing of our budget deficit let alone the consideration of issues like women bishops required of us by the diocese.

The PCC works hard for us – and they might earn a round of applause!

Since July the PCC’s been looking at our thinking on the vision day and we’ve produced a new mission action plan. You can read it on the notice board and its one line header in the news sheet:  St Giles Church has a mission to grow in faith, love and numbers.

As the old church year ends today with a flourish to Christ our King we’re asking him to stir up grace for a coming year of growth which is why I’ll be speaking on the three aspects of the MAP over the next month, starting today with action to grow in faith.

Our putting mission on the MAP has the same three dimensions we rehearsed two years back – the ABC of attending to God, building Christian community and commending God’s love for the world.

Now the order is different. Before it was looking to God, the church, the world. Now it’s growing in faith towards God, growing in the expression of love to the world and growing the numbers of our Christian fellowship here at St Giles.

So! What action has the PCC got planned, or raised up, to help us grow in faith over the next church year that starts on Advent Sunday?

If you look on the porch flow chart we’ve got various opportunities for you to act. These include

Signing up, as a dozen folk so far have signed up to, the electronic discipleship resource on the church website to obtain bible study, meditation, self-examination and Christian literature resources. These you can follow on the hoof on your iPhone or Blackberry or whatever. We’d like you to sign up and receive a two monthly e news letter from St Giles which has electronic resources useful to the building of faith among church members. I have some parents working with me to identify and commend websites useful to building faith in our children. Do give that site a click, if that’s your gift, and tell me sites you’d like commending in the January edition of electronic discipleship.

Action listed on the MAP that help build our faith at St Giles include: Sunday and weekday Eucharists, Sunday Club and All-Age Eucharist with prayer listening ministry, Westall monthly Eucharists and evening prayer twice monthly, monthly Sunday evening services, Wednesday evening prayer, Thursday life and faith group, Friday School assembly, Saturday prayer group, ministry of healing first Wednesday of each month and confessions before great feasts

Near at hand is next Sunday afternoon’s healing service with Fr Keith McRae. Why not begin the new church year on Advent Sunday by asking for a new beginning spiritually? If your faith feels sickly, let alone your body or your mind, come and welcome prayer for wholeness of body, mind and spirit. This service of evening prayer, sermon and laying on of hands by priests and lay prayer ministers is action to serve  spiritual and other needs. There’ll also be a number of events that will serve to build faith as we take Advent out into 24 venues in the parish this year and I’d like to underline the three meditation sessions at Jamie Large’s, the Rectory and the Miles’ when people of any faith or none will be able to share a 25 minute meditation on one of three themes: breath, light and word.

On the growing faith MAP for January there’s Unbelievable? As you’ve seen in P&P with flying pigs, this is a module on the Apostles’ Creed running the first four Thursday evenings in January. It’ll also serve as first part of confirmation training, as well as being part of the Bishop’s Certificate course that’ll draw a few from outside the village. The PCC is commending this action geared to help people build Christian faith more as the Creed expresses it.

In all of these ways we can take action to grow in our faith which is a key part of our purpose here at St Giles.

My former bishop Richard Chartres, Bishop of London, once issued a clarion call to his growing diocese: are you consumers or citizens?

Are you in church to consume word and sacrament for spiritual solace or are you here to grow as responsible citizens of Christ’s kingdom?

I’d re-iterate that challenge on the Feast of Christ the King. I realise it’s both/and not either/or but preaching uses phrases to waken us up by their directness.

Are you here to build God’s kingdom, to work for world transformation through the spread of faith beyond these walls, or are you settled in something of a consumerist mentality whereby going to St Giles fits alongside going to Sainsbury’s or to the Theatre?

The PCC of St Giles are lead citizens working for the kingdom here. They head up and bless others in work for the school, the hall renovation, the churchyard, the Sunday Club and Toddler Plus, the optimising of our finances, fabric and churchyard with the Friends, the music, the welcoming ministry, the serving and so on. They’re lead citizens and there are people here we need to take a place on this continually refreshed body when PCC elections occur in April.

Your kingdom come, your will be done is the motto for Christ the King, and for St Giles, as we seek to grow in faith, love and numbers in service of the kingdom without walls not accommodated to the demands of secular society but with duty towards a higher power.

May that power, the power of Christ the King, with the Father and the  Spirit be made present among us at this eucharist. Amen

Remembrance Sunday 8am

It’s the intention that really matters.

Oh, yes, the road to hell is often paved with them, but the combination of good actions with good intentions is what the worship of God and the building of His Kingdom is all about.

This morning later on we will be standing before our Cenotaph with thousands of other congregations led by Her Majesty the Queen at Whitehall as we pay tribute to the war dead of this and every nation.

On Remembrance Sunday we recall the sacrifice of the few for the good of all.

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. It is a good and sweet thing to die for one’s country.

But is it? Reading the poetry of Wilfrid Owen might lead us to question such a sentiment.

Once again it is the intention that really matters, the heart’s intent.

 When we look at the names on a Cenotaph, under such an epitaph as I quoted, there are awkward considerations to be made. Many of those men and women, considerations of self-preservation apart, had no intention of laying down their lives for the cause of their country at all

At the same time, if we are talking about those who sacrifice in war time, there will be many whose names are not among the dead who had an intention to offer themselves for their country but whose sacrifice was incomplete.

But was it incomplete and non-sacrificial because they lived on?

In Balcombe their cenotaph recognizing what I’m saying lists all who served placing a cross besides those who died.

Sacrifice is about love before it is about death.

It is the intention that counts.

Here at the Holy Eucharist we commemorate a sacrifice which is a death and very much more. Here day by day we recall the intention, the willing obedience of Our Blessed Lord offered in the garden secretly and on the Cross on high.

Our Lord gave Himself by intention at the Last Supper Table and in Gethsemane to interpret and fill with the richest meaning His agony the next day upon the Cross.

For us who celebrate the Eucharist Sunday by Sunday it is also our intention that matters. It is not the whole of the matter, of course, for we also receive grace, but what we put into this worship, not least our desire to offer ourselves, our time, talents and treasure to the praise and service of God, is pivotal.

Among Mother Teresa’s most powerful sayings is one that surely gets to the heart of her many good works: it is not how much you do that matters but how much love you put into the action.

 For us the challenge of Remembrance Sunday is one of the purification of our intentions, the cleansing of the thoughts of our hearts.

As we offer this Eucharist of Requiem for the war dead is there a desire to consecrate your energies to God’s praise and service or are their  realms within you that lie unconsecrated, broken off from the wholeness of your discipleship, to be handed over to God?

Our prayer today is one of dedication. Here am I, Lord we are saying, with all my mixed motives.

Here am I with my energies and with so many possibilities before me for good or ill.

Here am I, Lord ready to do your will, ready to be generous with you in this Eucharist and with those you lead me to serve in the week ahead.

It is the intention that really matters – at the Eucharist, in War, in Life…

So pray my brothers and sisters brethren that this my sacrifice and yours may be acceptable to God the Almighty Father. Amen.

The Armour of God Ephesians 6.10-20 28th October 2012

We're baptising Maisie Rose, Ethan and Joshua by the devil's door.

Yes that Saxon door over there is where they said the devil flew north at baptisms. That's why everyone got buried on the south side of Church. Rectors apart - they get buried at the east end where I hope to join Giles Moore and my illustrious predecessors.

Sorry this is no funeral. It's baptism Sunday by the devil's door which reminds us, with today’s hymns and readings that Christians need arming for the fight.

That armour is the truth of Christian faith and its expression in the word of God.

This is what lies behind that reading Alison provided us from the sixth chapter of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians.

Have another look with me at that passage. It’s on p4 of the service booklet under the heading 'Putting on the armour of God'.

'Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power'. It starts. 'Put on the whole armour of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.'

Paul goes on to list the six items of armour underlined  that are also depicted on the front of our baptism service booklet.

I want to think a bit about each piece of armour, linking it to what we’re doing this morning for these young people, and drawing out its significance for their parents and godparents.

It's been really good to see their families represented regularly on a Sunday. It means something, joining the church. If and when we get Maisie Rose a brownie uniform we'll be sending her to Brownies. If Ethan and Joshua get Cub uniforms what a waste it’s would be if they never went to Cubs?

Joining the church is like joining any organisation, though we're more a family than an organisation. This morning it's not Brownie or Cub uniforms the children are getting but soldiers’ uniforms. We're arming them up for life and that won't mean much to them unless mum and dad are armed up as well.

So six bits of armour, six rituals to come in their baptism and six questions for dad, mum, godparents and all of us supporting Maisie Rose, Ethan and Joshua.

v4 The belt of truth - where do I belong? Belts hold our clothes together. The belt of truth is Christianity given to hold our lives together. We belong to Christ's Church because we believe God sent him to us and what we believe and where we belong affects how we behave. Those promises we'll be making to turn to Christ and to renounce evil as part of the coming ceremony are practical. Our children need to see we belong to Christ and live by God’s truth through our practical kindness if their baptism’s going to impact them.

v14 The breastplate of righteousness - Do I do right? No good asking our son or daughter to do what we won't do ourselves. Children grow expert at spotting hypocrisy. I know. I have three and I am something of a hypocrite. We all fall short. The origin of the armour of God mentioned in Ephesians 6 is to be found both in the armour worn by a Roman soldier on our front page and in the description of the divine armour in Isaiah 59.17f and Wisdom 5.17-20. As God arms himself as a warrior to defend his people so Christians join his battle to right all that's wrong. If we think life's not a battle like this we've been deceived and that really is the devil's only power over us - to persuade us either that the world doesn’t need putting right or that, if it does, it’s not our job. Evil triumphs when good people slumber! Our children will be anointed on the breast today with the oil of exorcism to strengthen them to fight with us for what is right.

v15 The shoes to proclaim the gospel of peace - Am I a blessing? I mean are you and I blessings - do we bring peace or discord to those we meet? In the newsletter we recommend the new electronic discipleship resources on our website. One of these is a guide to meditation. Only by finding peace within ourselves can we hope to carry it to others. Knowing the Lord's love deep in our hearts is a lifetime's struggle. We get to know ourselves to better love ourselves and forget ourselves. St Seraphim of Sarov writing a hundred years ago said 'Acquire the spirit of peace and a thousand souls around you shall be saved'. Meditation is worth it. The sending out at the end with the lighted candle is a sign of our mission to bring peace to the world.

v16 The shield of faith - Who is with me? On the front of the service booklet this is the biggest piece of armour. The Romans called it the 'scutum', a large quadrangular shield designed to catch and extinguish flaming arrows. No one in Church has lived their life up to now without feeling the assault of evil desires within or moral challenges from outside of ourselves. They can burn us if we don't know who is with us. Through faith and baptism Jesus is with us and there's nothing he and I together can't overcome. In the creed today we’ll affirm what God has done for us in Jesus. In renewing our baptism promises we lay hold afresh on what Jesus has done for us, and not only by the mouthing of words in a service. It's talk we need to walk so Maisie Rose, Ethan and Joshua have a practical lead in standing against wrongdoing.

v17 The helmet of salvation - Am I secure? To be saved is to know you’re secure through the great love God has for you in Jesus. When the great Reformation leader Martin Luther doubted this he would mutter Baptisatus sum...baptisatus sum...I am baptised...I am baptised. As we pour water on their heads and anoint their foreheads with blessed oil these children are given the invisible protecting helmet of salvation born by Luther and all the baptised. God grant them knowledge of this precious defence.

v17 The sword of the spirit which is the word of God - Do I act on my faith? To be a Christian is to have cutting power. We see this in Jesus, especially in the account of his temptation in the desert when again and again he countered the devil's taunts with quotes from scripture. Our families today will receive lights and children's Bibles at the end of the service as a reminder that the truth of Christ is given to be carried out from font and altar to the world. To read, mark, learn and inwardly digest the promises of God in the Bible is a way of consolidating our baptism to make it more fully our own. So is the ceremony of taking holy water in the porch and making the sign of the Cross on ourselves to renew our baptism as we leave Church in a determined fashion.

As we recall the armour we bear as Christians today may the Lord equip us to equip Maisie-Rose, Ethan and Joshua to make a difference in the world God has placed them in - and spur us all to take up the sword as Christian soldiers in combat with evil and injustice wherever we find it. Amen.

Trinity 20 What Jesus does for us 21 October 2012

What does Jesus do for us?

What does it mean for us as he says in today’s gospel that he came to give his life a ransom for many (Mark 10.45)?

There are three main Christian doctrines – the Trinity, the Incarnation and the Atonement. This morning the readings centre on this last doctrine, Atonement, how God and humanity are made one by what Jesus does for us.

How do we understand this making God one with us that Our Lord achieves?

More importantly how do we not only understand the doctrine but see it taking effect so that we know God not just only as our maker but as our saviour?

These are questions that spill out of all three scriptures this morning.

The Isaiah 53 passage was chosen to illuminate the text I read from Mark 10.45 at the end of today’s gospel. There Jesus makes a prediction of his coming Passion which pours cold water on the arrogance of James and John who thought their Lord was going to take worldly power and wanted part of his worldly glory. No, Our Lord says, my kingdom will be built from suffering service. The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many.  

Isaiah foresaw the lonely figure on Calvary who would bear the immense burden of sin separating human beings from their maker and how that sin bearing would cost the suffering servant his life like a lamb that is led to the slaughter. The passage hints at the tomb of Jesus given by the rich man, Joseph of Arimathea, verse 9, they made his grave with the wicked and his tomb with the rich. It concludes with a prophecy of the resurrection, verse 12. Let’s read it. Therefore I will allot him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he poured out himself to death, and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.

Jesus himself gave no explanation of how his death and rising again made atonement other than to point to this scripture. Only after his resurrection did his followers reflect more fully upon what Jesus did and does for us as Saviour.

So we can move on to the second reading by the anonymous author of the letter to the Hebrews. Here in this letter is the best source of teaching in scripture on the doctrine of the Atonement. This teaching centres on the priesthood of Christ by which Jesus takes what he did on Calvary and pleads it for all time in heaven. It’s this his pleading that we join to at the Eucharist.

Today’s small section of Hebrews is from chapter 5. We read: Every high priest chosen from among mortals is put in charge of things pertaining to God on their behalf, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sin.

Priests have a ministry of representing mortals to the immortal God and the immortal God to mortals. The passage goes on to outline how Christ was appointed high priest by God but with full sympathy for humanity. He is the Son of God become Son of Man. In this passage we see graphic evidence of Christ’s humanity. It’s a powerful account actually of the passion of Our Lord that begins with his tears in the Garden of Gethsemane. It provides one of the most moving evidences in the bible of how deeply Jesus engaged with our pain and sorrow.

Let’s read this account in verse 7: In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission.

What does Jesus do for us?

Jesus shows us a God who expects nothing from us he’s not prepared to go through. But he shows us much more. He shows us God’s love and holiness, our need of them both and how we can attain to both.

Our Lord brings us atonement. He makes a way for the God of love and holiness to be one with us in our dignity and frailty.

In giving himself he does so in costly love. He does so on account of the requirements of God’s holiness. He does so because only by the Cross and its pleading for ever in the heavenly sanctuary can women and men be won to glory.

When we look at the Cross we see four things.

We see the love of God fully displayed.

We see the holiness of God in his hatred of sin. The Cross shows what sin feels like to God.

We see our dignity because this act of atonement is given to rescue us for eternal glory.

We see our frailty. Where else do we see the terrible consequences of our sin?

The doctrine of the Atonement is an awesome mystery. We will never fully understand the doctrine but that won’t stop us seeing it take effect in our lives so that we know God not just as our maker but as our saviour.

How does it effect our lives?

The Cross is once and for all but Jesus lives as eternal high priest to plead its benefits.  Inasmuch as we repent of our sins and trust Jesus all that he has done for us comes into operation in our lives bringing forgiveness, healing, deliverance and freedom in the Spirit.

As verse 9 of the Hebrews Chapter 4 passage states Jesus has become the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him. What is salvation other than an eternal relationship with God sealed on his side by love and ours by the obedience of faith.

Yes all that Jesus does for us comes to us as we obey. Faith isn’t a feeling it’s obedience. It has its beginning in baptism, which is our great ‘yes’ to God and ‘no’ to self. It has its end in the vision of God face to face with the selfless adoration of all the saints.

The good news of Christianity is very simple.

God made us for friendship. Sin became a barrier to that friendship. God sent Jesus to lift away that barrier making us friends of God.

Things get between us and God so that we’re not at one. Sin, fear, sickness, bondage, anxiety, death and the devil get in the way. Jesus brings atonement – at one ment literally – because what he did in his coming, his suffering, death and resurrection has established the means to overcome these evils - if we use them. That means that the words we read today in Isaiah he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases come true when we trust his healing power. When we read he bore the sins of many that can become true in our experience when we seek his forgiveness and become one of the many who’re made one with God through Jesus.

Atonement isn’t just a doctrine it’s a way of life. It’s living one to one, heart to heart with God.

This is what Jesus does for us. 

Trinity 18 27th of Year Marriage 7th October 2012

Today’s readings centre on the sacrament of marriage.

How many sacraments are there?

The Church of England has seven sacraments of which two baptism and eucharist are given special status with the other five – marriage, ordination, confession, confirmation and anointing – named as lesser sacraments.

A sacrament is an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace. The outward sign of water is a sign of baptism’s grace of cleansing and renewal. The outward sign of bread and wine is the sign of Christ’s body and blood. The oil of anointing is the outward sign of God’s healing. The bishop’s or priest’s hands and voice are the outward sign in confession, confirmation and ordination.

What about marriage? What is the outward sign?

The ring? No. The sign of marriage is the vows by which husband and wife give themselves to one another before God.

What is the inward grace of marriage?

Life-long union. Someone reads Mark 10.7-10 But from the beginning of creation, “God made them male and female.” “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.’

Our Lord draws his teaching from our first reading, Genesis 1.21-24: So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, ‘This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one shall be called Woman, for out of Man this one was taken.’ Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.

The rib story is just that, a story, one that teaches truth, though - the truth that men and women share a common humanity and are designed to complement one another. Vive la difference!

That passage has been abused to argue for the subordination of women so that in Our Lord’s day the all male Rabbi’s would build arguments for divorce to please their fellow men which included ‘she can’t cook as I want’. In Mark Chapter 10 Our Lord challenges this maltreatment of women and the culture of easy divorce weighted towards men. He goes out of his way to uphold marriage as first conceived in Genesis over against the easy divorce of his day as we read in the Gospel v11-12 He said to them, ‘Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.’

Marriage according to Christ is indissoluble – it can’t be dissolved.

It’s a high bar we struggle to reach up to. Like the high bar set in last week’s Gospel when he says if your eye offends you pluck it out.

If the food’s no good the answer isn’t divorce. ‘Pluck your eye out rather than do so’ is the sense of Our Lord’s teaching against breaking a marriage. That teaching has been a source of encouragement to married couples for 20 centuries.

Or should I say discouragement? At times when people are lured by the flesh to look elsewhere they’ve been discouraged from following those lusts by obedience to the wisdom of Jesus.

We need the wisdom of Jesus as much today as ever. Figures published by the Office for National Statistics show divorce rates in England and Wales increased by 5% between 2009 and 2010, from 114,000 to 120,000.

High Court Judge Sir Paul Coleridge made headlines in May for describing marriage breakdown as one of the "most destructive scourges" in Britain. Sir Paul felt compelled to speak out because of the "unprecedented scale of the problem". He’s launched the Marriage Foundation charity to improve public understanding of the "nature, benefits and importance of marriage and how healthy married relationships provide the most stable environment in which to raise children". Interesting that today’s Gospel ends with just that concern, about the welfare of children, having made clear the importance of the faithfulness in marriage that’s so helpful to this.

How does the Church, how do we, today, make sense of Christ’s teaching against divorce?

Each denomination has a pastoral policy on second marriage that allows for what Jesus called hardness of heart in v5. Some marriage failures come, as some of you know, even where there is much soft hearted generosity.  Our Lord taught and showed us soft hearted, irrevocable love.   On Calvary he gave himself as God does, without thought of taking back his gift.

That’s God! Softhearted! Never takes himself back from anyone - only from sin.

We humans love but our love can be hard hearted. When we say ‘I love you’ it can mean ‘I love me and want you’! For all of that it’s the noblest act of a human being to say, as many of us in Church have said to someone, ‘I take you...to love and to cherish. Till death us do part...all that I am I give to you, and all that I have I share with you, within the love of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.’

The nature of the marriage vow, the outward sign of a sacrament, makes repeating it to someone else, within the life time of your spouse, difficult.  For most Churches it is impossible to do so. That’s the position at St Giles. In Christianity, in Christ, a vow of love is a vow of love.  It goes against the grain of Christianity, of Christ, to take love back again.

So what of those who've got no option but to do so?

Roman Catholics have to seek the annulment of their first marriage. If you’re Free Church you fall back on a less sacramental and more human view of marriage and start folk over again. As Anglicans we offer a compromise. Our Service of Prayer and Dedication after Civil Marriage has quite a take up, for the honest service it is, in publicly admitting past failure and seeking God’s blessing on a new start.

If remarriage after divorce seems the unforgiveable sin, which it isn’t, it’s because the Church, being held to Jesus’ teaching, has to protect the integrity of word and deed as best she can. In doing so we try not to make the best the enemy of the good. Our Lord set high standards but was forgiving to those who fell short of them.

Many of us will know second marriages where God is evidently at work and first marriages where he needs to get in more, so to speak. This is the human reality but it would become so much more inhuman without the wise standard Jesus sets us .

If the outward and visible sign of marriage is the making of life-long vows to each other the inward and spiritual grace is life-long union. When you marry in Church you receive a special anointing from God to help you keep your vows that’ll always be there for you if you seek it.

It is an excellent practice for married couples to seek that grace together from time to time which is why on Sunday 7^th July we’re inviting couples to renew their marriage vows together at this service.

The sayings of Jesus are unlike the sayings of say the Buddha. Jesus not only gave his teaching, he gave us his life to seal it. By his life, death and resurrection Jesus Christ is able to empower us not just to hear what he says but to do what he says and to do it cheerfully.

What God has joined together, let no one separate – this is the word of Jesus. There is no word of God without power.

Let’s believe it – however much is might cost!