Epiphany 5 Salt and light 9.2.14

When we look at the impact of St Giles Church on Horsted Keynes and its surrounds it amounts to far more than an ancient spire pointing to God. The real pointers to God are you and I and all members actively involved in family, work and neighbourhood.

'You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? ... You are the light of the world... let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven'. Matthew 5:13-16

Those words from the Sermon on the Mount capture a large part of what we are at St Giles. We aspire to be a church 'growing in faith, love and numbers' not just for our survival but for the sake of the quality of our life together in the village and its surrounds.

To dwell on salt, it may be currently an unfashionable commodity, but without it much of what we eat would be uninspiring. When we were on our self-catering holiday we bought some the first day having forgotten to bring some along. We got far more than we needed, so here it is coming out this morning as a sermon aid! (show Gran Canaria salt)

Those who live close to God, as Jesus intimates, have disproportionate impact on their surrounds and here I take a bit of a risk naming some village ventures that have been church initiated and are making a difference.

The idea for the village lunch came from St Giles. Through that vision 50 or so partake of a monthly event that brings the village together. The lift scheme is partly manned by church members. You may remember from the Premier Radio series how it was an important first step towards the Church for Lesley Whiting who was confirmed last year. Her husband John phoned me during a freeze up to ask for help to get to hospital for Lesley's ongoing cancer treatment.

That story shows how social engagement can have evidently evangelistic consequences - in any case we show the good news of God's love by living it as much as, if not more, than by speaking of it, though speaking of it we must do on occasion. This is where salt partners light (show bulb).

Another seasoning to village life is the effort taken by church members in the name of Family Support gathering clothing, toys, food and so on to serve families in need. In this way surplus goods are seasoned, to use the Gospel image. The little bit we do, like a little bit of seasoning salt, puts tasty meals on the table for many in Sussex driven to choose between food and fuel.

'You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored?' As on many occasions we wrestle with Our Lord's imagery. As a physical chemist I find it hard to imagine that most stable of compounds, sodium chloride, losing its taste other than in a high energy desalination plant! However I do see how Christians can lose their flavour and I'm sure it happens in my own life at times through lack of imaginative service.

Being salt and light is about instrumentality, about giving up our own ambitions, the desire to make our mark on others, in the name of collaborating with God and others to increase overall the quality of our common life.

Last week we celebrated our school and its right to praise the school governors, not least those from St Giles, for their voluntary input week by week, month by month, which seasons the life of our Primary School. Through that partnership of teaching staff and volunteers a real difference is made to the life of the children of this village and its surrounds.

The salt and light images are images of love in being outgoing and selective. We choose where we season or where we shine our light, 'this little light of mine'. The love of Christ in us has no ambition to serve itself but only to move beyond selfishness into service where Christ so desires.

That love within us has the power, Scripture says to overcome all things and it is such faith that helps us stand alongside struggling people and agencies pointing them to what's within their grasp.

Here I could remind us all how imaginative connected up thinking by a handful of individuals of Christian conviction, brought funding into play to renovate the Martindale and season it for better service. I would also here pay tribute once more to Derek Crowson at the Old Rectory for his generosity to the village and the church over many years. Where people are in a position to donate large sums of money the presence of community groups who know the ground and how its best to be cultivated often leads to transformative action.

To speak here of the need for toilet facilities at St Giles is not a distraction. It's evidently not a kingdom of God priority along the lines of Family Support Work or the Village lunch, packing of clothes for Mozambique or sending funds to Guyana - but it is exactly relevant to restocking the salt cellar (show) or renewing the light bulbs (show). For church growth you need nowadays, besides good preaching and reverent celebration of the sacraments, car parking, heating and toilets. I am encouraged by the interest of the Friends in finding us a lavatory!

Our Mission Action Plan seeks church growth 'in faith, love and numbers'. Today's Gospel addresses how we exercise faith to show and build love. By that I mean how we overcome selfishness so as to see things as others see them, sympathise and place our time, talents and resources their way. 'Give', Jesus says, 'and it will be given to you'.

We're thinking from our Gospel reading in Matthew Chapter 5 of church growth in faith and love, how we give out, but that in itself should grow us in numbers. Of course God doesn't think primarily in numbers but he does so sufficiently to maintain his work which is always one generation away from extinction.

Last year I invited each of us to pray for a period of time a blessing on one person 25 years younger than themselves. I believe those prayers have been answered among other things through our having eight or so confirmation candidates preparing for full church membership next month. Keep up those prayers, for without them, without new leadership emerging at St Giles, we'll see the Friends taking over the whole building in 25 years time!

Into the melting pot of these godly concerns, concerns for St Giles to maintain itself to give salt and light to Horsted Keynes, I would add a concern we find God's women or men to serve in forthcoming PCC vacancies. In particular one to stand alongside David Lamb in place of James Nicholson whose much appreciated term of office as Churchwarden will end in two months time.

What might God be saying to you this morning as you hear Jesus say 'be salt' or 'let your light shine before others'? Most of all he would speak to where your life is currently bound up in marriage, family and workplace so there you can shine and savour things. The community ministry of the Church is an add on to this, partnering what we do together to savour and light up the life of our community, but it may be his invitation to you at this time.

My advice is seek Him, seek what the Lord requires, seek God knowing family and work must come before church, but seek him mindful of the needs I have set forth which we have at St Giles in case you can add value to his work among us.

'Give and it will be given to you' - and God is no one's debtor!

Candlemas 2014

We come to Church to worship and to be enlightened.

Jesus came first to the Temple on this day with those two ends of self offering and edification.

His parents made an offering on his behalf and they heard Simeon's prophecy of their Son becoming 'a light to lighten the nations'.

Candlemas gives us an opportunity to pause and reflect about what we do when we come to this Temple Sunday by Sunday.

It is a Temple before it is a preaching house, a place of teaching, yes, but primarily not a place of edification but a place of worship.

On this site the worship of the eucharist has been offered for half the Christian era. People in their hundreds of thousands have ascended this hill to offer the unbloody sacrifice initiated by Jesus Christ we call the eucharist.

They've come Sunday by Sunday, as the Prayer Book says, 'to offer themselves, their souls and bodies as a living sacrifice' with, in and through Jesus Christ.

Today, his first visit to the one earthly Temple of his day, we recall that event as a prefiguring of Christ's eternal sacrifice. The turtle doves sacrificed on his behalf in that Temple gave way, with all animal sacrifices, to his once for all offering made on a repeat visit to Jerusalem in his 33rd year.

The priests and people then took no doves but an innocent Lamb, and as they did so the prophecy about his mother Mary in today's Gospel was fulfilled. 'A  sword will pierce your heart'.

I saw last week in Gran Canaria that very image of Our Lady at the foot of the Cross, graphically in black and with a sword stuck into her heart.

We come to Church to worship and to be enlightened.

Part of that enlightenment, as Mary and Joseph found, is the bringing of understanding and hence more creative involvement with the dark times of our life.

We all live with these - bereavement, chronic illness or the necessity to live with unresolved situations where there may be conflict. With Mary and Joseph this morning we welcome holy Simeon's words with gratitude since they speak of peace coming, as it does again and again, through heavenly illumination.

Jesus Christ is the light who lightens all nations  and all ages.

May his light shine on us and into our various life situations this morning as we come to worship 'offering ourselves, our souls and bodies as a living sacrifice' with in and through Jesus Christ to whom be glory now and for ever. Amen.

Epiphany 2 19th January 2014 8am

This gathering in the parish church is part of an eternal offering of worship stretching back to the foundation of the world and stretching forward to the consummation of all things.

Behold the Lamb of God we read in the Gospel. Our Lord is truly the lamb slain from the foundation of the world whose sacrifice on Calvary, as Revelation 13 verse 8 envisions, draws forth in heaven blessing and honour and glory and might forever and ever.

This morning we are touching reality - we are drawn to the event represented here that reveal a love touching every human concern upon the earth. At the beginning of a challenging year for so many places the world over there is no more powerful action we can take on behalf of humankind than to plead Christ’s Sacrifice, offering God what is his own…on behalf of all.

To the outward eye we are a small gathering of religious people doing their own thing upon their weekly holy day.

To the eye of faith we are Christians, caught up once more, on behalf of the whole creation, into the eternal sacrifice of Jesus Christ, through whom, and with whom and in whom in the unity of the Holy Spirit, we give glory to our Father in heaven.

Here, as on Calvary, we see his body and blood separated in death and then transformed by power from heaven. In every Eucharist we witness the separate consecration of Christ’s body and blood. We pause twice in the Eucharistic prayer to recall the sacrificial sundering of the Son of God - this is my body...this is my blood...of the new covenant, which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins

Some of us may remember the ‘Seeing Salvation’ Millennium exhibition at the National Gallery. One of the many images of Christ was this  (show) - ‘The Bound Lamb’ by Francisco de Zurbarin who lived in the 17th century.  It is an image that often appears on Nativity scenes, the Shepherds’ offering which anticipates Christ’s sacrifice. 

As Jeremy Paxman wrote then in the Church Times of this painting: ‘no image I know so perfectly captures the astonishing force of the Christian story’.

It was given greater force at the time as a symbol through the images of sheep and lambs slaughtered so uselessly in the foot and mouth epidemic. The image of the bound lamb is one of innocent suffering but, for Christians, never one of useless suffering.

There is a Church in Norway, I’m told, which has the image of a sheep sculpted half way up its tower. 

Only when people enter that Church and hear something of its history do they discover the full Christian significance of the sculpted sheep.

Years before the sculpture was erected some renovation work was occurring on the Church steeple in this rural community.  One day a workman slipped from the steeple to almost certain death.  At the same time by a remarkable twist of providence a flock of sheep was being driven past the Church. 

The steeplejack fell on a sheep and his fall was cushioned. The sheep died to save him - an awesome happening! The workers expressed their gratitude to God by adorning that Church tower with a sculpted sheep. It was welcomed as a powerful symbol of Christian Faith.

Jesus is the Lamb of God whose voluntary sacrifice takes away our sin.  Our Lord on Calvary takes the full impact of sin and death for us at the cost of his life.

Jesus died in my place so that he might live in my place.

Jesus died in my place to carry off the impact of evil upon me, particularly through the gift of the Eucharist.

Jesus lives in my place, cooperating with my will by his Spirit, as I welcome him again and again into my heart in this Sacrament!

This morning we make the memorial of the Offering of Jesus and enter into that Self-Offering!

It is through the sacrificial Lamb of God that we can make a perfect offering to the Father, our sinful bodies made clean by his body..our souls washed through his most precious blood.

How much God needs the offering of our lives for his work here in Horsted Keynes and its surrounds! 

Baptism of the Lord 12th January 2013

I’ve got my passport out - here it is - and we're getting the children to look at where I’ve been: Guyana, Lebanon, Brasil, Barbados, Turkey, Jordan, Egypt and so on and what an awful picture!

Did you know the earliest reference to a passport is in the Bible? It’s in the book of Nehemiah Chapter 2 and is from around about 450 B.C. Nehemiah, an official serving King Artaxerxes of ancient Persia, asked permission to travel to Judah. The King agreed and gave Nehemiah a letter "to the governors of the province beyond the river" requesting safe passage for him as he travelled through their lands.

Today's passports still carry such a letter of request. Inside the front cover is a letter issued in the name of Her Majesty the Queen. Like Nehemiah's letter, it also asks for safe passage and protection for the holder of the passport.

In the Middle Ages passports were letters saying which cities and city gates a person might travel through, pass porte is a French term which means, pass through the gate.

So what’s all this to do with the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord?

When God’s people passed from one country to another they went through the river. 

They passed through a river into the Promised Land, where they could start a new life as God s people. 

When John the Baptist came to tell people that Jesus was coming he took them to the river as well.  He baptised them because they were saying that they wanted to start again with God, and live his new life. 

Jesus came to give us new life.  If we have been baptised it is as if we have been given a passport, which allows us to pass from living for ourselves to living for God.

At his baptism Jesus was anointed by the Holy Spirit as Christ so that we might share in his anointing and be given a passport to abundant living!

We live as Christians with dual citizenship. We’re citizens of this world (UK passport) with all its privileges and we’re citizens of God’s kingdom through baptism with additional privileges, what I’ve just called ‘abundant living’.

I  asked folk last week to think about sharing this morning something of what they see as the privileges of living in God’s kingdom, the benefits of church membership, of being a Christian, of abundant life as I’ve called it. One of our members sent me this e mail in consequence:

I had simply never thought about it, so it’s been intriguing me! She says, then lists four items:

To receive Communion, which reminds me that I am loved by God.

To learn from other individual Christians, who give me a good example to follow.

To be part of a fellowship which has nothing necessarily to do with my social life, or my family, or my work, which connects me to the family of God and encourages me.

To know that we are stronger together than when we try to work alone.

Maybe that’s got you thinking yourself of the blessings that are yours!

A Christian is one very aware of their privileges in sharing the anointing of the Anointed One.  We can only live to the full if we welcome and own that anointing in the Holy Spirit which is our own through baptism.

Maybe the church in this land has not failed so much as shrunk back from its task and that we need to get back to basics. That is why we need what Jesus received and offered at his baptism – we need the Holy Spirit to come in power upon us.

Almost his last words to his first disciples at the hour of his ascension were a promise that takes up these first words about him at the start of his ministry: You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be my witnesses he said, as recorded in Acts 1.8

We hear regularly on the news of people from abroad seeking passports or the equivalent to Britain so they can live with greater abundance materially. That should make us proud to have British passports!

How proud are we of the spiritual abundance that is ours through our Christian faith and the passport of baptism?

How’s your enthusiasm for your Christianity and for sharing it? As one who shares in the Spirit’s anointing could today’s eucharist be for you a rekindling of passion through a fresh anointing in that Spirit on the Feast of Jesus’ own anointing?

So be it! God grant us a right pride in both our nationality and our Christianity!

Epiphany sermon on Hope 5th January 2014

I want to look with you this morning at hope.

Where there’s life there’s hope is a Latin proverb.

If it were not for hope the heart would break runs another proverb.

Hope is the struggle of the soul, breaking loose from what is perishable, and attaining her eternity wrote Herbert Melville.

God has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ wrote St Peter (1 Peter 1:3b)

Hope does not disappoint us because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us wrote St Paul (Romans 5:5)

I am a man of hope, not for human reasons nor from any narrow optimism, but because I believe the Holy Spirit is at work in the Church and the world, even where his name remains unheard wrote Joseph Suenens.

These last ten days I’ve been curled up with Robert Harris’ Pompeii which Anne and I obtained after our visit last year to the British Museum Pompeii exhibition.  In his No 1 bestseller Harris paints a brilliant word picture of ‘a luxurious world on the brink of destruction’ as days run through August 79AD in the Bay of Naples to the day Mount Vesuvius exploded. His book was excellent company through our power cuts and through my cold.

In 1938 excavations in Herculaneum, like Pompeii covered by lava, uncovered a small cross imbedded in a wall on the second floor of a tenement. This is among the earliest evidence for the spread of Christianity from Jerusalem to the centre of the Roman Empire.

In this tiny room the words I read from Peter and Paul, martyred 13 years before in nearby Rome, would console an early believer facing death by suffocation. Hope does not disappoint us because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us…. the God who has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

What is hope?

Wikipedia – the internet dictionary says it is the state which promotes the desire of positive outcomes related to events and circumstances in one's life or in the world at large. This state Wikipedia describes of desiring positive outcomes is less than the Christian vision about obtaining the ultimate good things of God. As Wikipedia itself narrates: Hope in the Holy Bible means a strong and confident expectation and it goes on to quote St Paul in Romans 8:24-25: For in hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope; for why does one also hope for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it.

According to the Holman Bible Dictionary, hope is a "trustful expectation, particularly with reference to the fulfilment of God's promises. Hope is the anticipation of a favourable outcome under God's guidance... the confidence that what God has done for us in the past guarantees our participation in what God will do in the future.

There are three key or theological virtues in Christianity, faith, hope and love and it’s the neglect of the centre one that’s got me to address hope this morning as a fundamental element of our Christianity.

Hope in Christianity is no shallow optimism. This Sunday marks our entry into 2014 and a year’s commemoration of the First World War which did more than anything else to shatter the Victorian optimism that stemmed from the industrial revolution and the progress it brought. The Great War was at the start of a century of wars that ended with the Cold War, a century which saw loss of Christian hope and rise of totalitarian ideologies and cynical indifference to religion.

This Epiphany Sunday is a reminder of how Christianity stands or falls on vision, and the communication of vision, vision of God allied to a hopeful vision of humanity, and how the last century in the western world has seen a failure in this communication. A century ago you would only just squeeze folk in to St Giles even with the Victorian extension. Today, need I say more? And yet there are some signs of the tide turning the way of Christian faith.

I wonder how many villagers got to thinking at Christmas about the real Christmas, due to the hardships we all shared ten days ago? When you’re cold and hungry it gets you thinking ‘what’s the point?’ and clearly a good number saw a point in climbing the hill to Church. How many I wonder put faith in God here, prayed to him with us in the harsh circumstances we all shared?

This is the day that the Lord has made says the Psalm writer. If faith says today is God’s hope says tomorrow is God’s – that is my simplest definition of hope: faith for the future that’s to be worked out in love, the greatest of the three, because faith and hope steel the nerves to forget self and deliver love today and tomorrow.

A year or two back at Epiphany some of us picked up the second verse of Isaiah Chapter 60 which you heard in our first reading this morning as having a very special resonance for St Giles: For darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples; but the Lord will arise upon you, and his glory will appear over you.

I wonder if that verse doesn’t still have enormous relevance as a word from him this 5^th January 2014? The loss of hope around us is a thick spiritual darkness. We believers, lit up this morning by the Epiphany star, are called to act and speak and be one with the Lord who rises upon us and whose glory appears over this village symbolised by the nightly illumination of our spire and its daily pointing up to him.

This eucharist brings us to kneel before Jesus Christ, not veiled in flesh, as he was to wise men, but as he is to us this morning, veiled in bread and wine in the Blessed Sacrament of his Body and Blood.

The Lord is here – his Spirit is with us - Hope does not disappoint us because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us…. the God who has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

For darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples; but the Lord will arise upon you, and his glory will appear over you.

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. Romans 15:13

Midnight Mass and 8am 25th December 2013

The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it. John 1:5

They say religion is a leap in the dark. I was on the train a week or two back and was disconcerted to hear two business men discussing family members who’d turned religious, lamenting it as something obscure and undesirable. Their whole attitude summarised that of the false enlightenment that surrounds us which sees religion as a leap into the dark.

In recent months the ‘enlightened’ attitudes of British secularism have obscured the age old institution of marriage, eroded the prohibition of suicide and opened the way towards three parent children.  The obscuring of our Christian moral foundation as a society is a direct consequence of pushing faith to the margins of public life.

Over the same period many of us have been digesting a new icon of faith within the world community in Pope Francis.  This man’s welcome engagement with the poorest people in the world and marginalised people in western society, such as refugees and gay people, has led many people not of his communion, including myself, to read his words.

Francis’ first encyclical was published in June and I recently reviewed it for Chichester Magazine and the Church of England magazine New Directions. What brilliance, I thought, as I read it, to counter perceptions of faith as a leap in the dark or obscurantism with a papal encyclical that shines with the light of faith!  

The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.

What is faith? Francis paints his picture in bright colours and I now quote his words. In the great cathedrals light comes down from heaven by passing through windows depicting the history of salvation. God’s light comes to us through the account of his self-revelation... In the love of God revealed in Jesus, faith perceives the foundation on which all reality and its final destiny lies… Faith knows that God has drawn close to us, that Christ has been given to us as a great gift which inwardly transforms us, dwells within us and thus bestows on us the light that illumines the origin and the end of life. 

I was struck by Francis’ image of faith as a realising of God’s self disclosure being like the way daylight lights up our stained glass representation of tonight’s story. If it were day you’d see the nativity scene here because light will have come from beyond this building.

At Midnight Mass we ask the light of the Holy Spirit to shine in our hearts to warm them to that manger scene, and what St Paul describes as the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. (2 Corinthians 4:6b)

To have faith is nothing obscure. It’s to hear God’s call, to see your life as part of his awesome reality and to touch the Lord in the sacraments. It is ‘to grasp reality’s deepest meaning and to see how much God loves this world and is constantly guiding it towards himself.’

Far from going into some obscure realm Christian faith’s about living our lives in this world with ever greater commitment and intensity. That commitment to the good of the world is a commitment to partnership with people of good will wherever they are, as the Christmas angel song reminds us – Glory to in the highest and on earth peace to people of good will.

God’s self disclosure – he is love, love of a Father for his Son in the Spirit – God’s self-disclosure given in Bethlehem by the Son taking flesh, announces love as the be all and end all of the universe.

God, who made all that is, loves all that is, just because it is – including you and me! This is heartening good news. It puts heart into those working in the name of that Love, alongside all of good will on this planet, to create wealth and distribute it justly, to feed the hungry, bring peace with justice to the troubled nations and hope for the future.

The light of faith born at Christmas isn’t so much about brightening church interiors like tonight (this morning) as about building hope for the future. Tonight’s feast marks God’s investment in humanity. The Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14)

Far from a leap in the dark the Christian religion is about coming into the light of Jesus Christ and bringing the world into it. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it. For twenty centuries the light of Jesus Christ has warmed and defrosted frozen hearts into extraordinary service. Ann Govas’ splendid book on our church windows recalls such service kindled within these very walls. Take that warm light which shone through St Giles school teacher Sidney Peek who gave his life as a missionary in what is now Malawi, dying at 21 of black water fever and recalled in St Stephen’s window. Or how the same light shone through Katherine Marshall and Lucy Foster who founded a home for sick and incurable children in Kilburn, recalled in the window of St Monica.

(This morning) Tomorrow at dawn God’s natural light (shone) will shine again through these windows - the nativity window and those of Sidney, Katherine and Lucy - to make the images come alive. (Does) Will his supernatural light find a welcome in this congregation here assembled, so we too can be caught up into building God’s future for the world? 

We don’t need to be lifted from obscurity into being the subject of a church window, but if we too are to lighten the world’s obscure darkness we do need knowledge of the Love that first dawned on Christmas day.

God bless you this night, and raise you out of darkness into the light of his self-disclosure which is Love, into the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

Advent 4 The Lord is Near – Receiving 22nd December 2013

We’re using the last programme of our Advent series ‘The Lord is near’ that’s been following the journey to Christmas in Horsted Keynes with the hundreds of thousands of listeners to Premier Christian Radio.

If Christmas is about welcoming Christ, Advent shows us the way. Four ways – it’s a call to repent, believe, ask, receive - and in our last programme we’re looking at receiving.

Christmas means Christ’s Mass so receiving Communion in bread and wine is at the heart of what’s otherwise become a commercial feast. Whereas 50 people make their Communion every week in St Giles there’ll be 150 on Christmas day and an overall attendance of 500 at services, a quarter of the population of the village. Hinting at what receiving Communion entails these words from John’s Gospel will be read at Midnight Mass: ‘to all who received Christ, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God’.

On the last Sunday before Christmas the Lady Chapel of St Giles is the focus. It’s got a window showing the Angel Gabriel’s visit to Mary which made her the first mortal to receive Christ.

Let’s hear part of a beautiful Advent carol telling the story of that visit.

Hymn: The Angel Gabriel from heaven came (Annunciation Carol)

Fr John:  In the last week of Advent the Virgin Mary’s placed centre stage as reminder of the Christian call to receive from God. How could Mary be God-bearer without receiving from God – and how can we carry out what God wants of us without our receiving from him?

There are various ways of receiving from God - Scripture, Holy Communion, Christian fellowship – of which, day by day, prayer is fundamental. The Bible tells us Mary ‘treasured God’s words and pondered them in her heart’ and that’s a lovely definition of contemplation.  Each day, either at home or in St Giles, I spend an hour of prayer which includes contemplation. One of the encouragements within my ministry of late has been to connect with people rediscovering the ancient wisdom of contemplation, to balance the activism around in the world and in the church.

‘What is this life, if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare?’

Jamie Large speaks about how he has found value in the discipline of contemplative stillness as an aid to centring and energising his life and how such contemplation can enrich our approach to the Christmas feast.

Fr John: Let’s listen now to St Paul’s heartfelt call for us to receive the indwelling of Christ:

Female voice from Premier staff.

A reading from the letter of St Paul to the Ephesians, Chapter 3  

I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Here end the reading.

Fr John: The last days of Advent are busy days for clergy as, besides planning Christmas services and the decorating of church they make themselves available to individuals seeking to make their Confession before the Christmas feast.

Mary Mitchell-Gogay describes what is involved in making a sacramental confession and how her own receiving of Christmas Communion is enriched by it year by year.

Fr John: The words of our last hymn are taken from the age old refrains used at evensong in the last week of Advent: O come, O come, Emmanuel

Song: O come, O come, Emmanuel

‘Rejoice in the Lord always;’ Paul says to the Philippians, ‘again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near.’ As Christmas approaches it brings joy to believers for ‘the Lord is near’ and ‘in his presence is the fullness of joy’. (Psalm 16:11)

That joy is built on repentance and faith. It comes as we turn from our woeful shortcomings to welcome afresh the embrace of Jesus as Lord and Saviour. It comes from asking him to come near to us and from receiving all he’s got to give us, not least in the Sacrament of his body and blood.

In this last week of Advent I’m asking God to give me a bigger vision of himself, more to his dimensions and less to mine. With Mary I want to magnify the Lord so he increases in my reckoning, and I decrease in that same reckoning! How else can I prepare to be a channel of his love towards all who’ll seek him in the worship I’ll lead in the next few days.

Repent, believe, ask, receive – this is the invitation of Jesus coming Saviour and Judge – cast out your sin, that I may enter in to be born in you afresh, so you may know my love that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God

Let’s end with the Advent prayer to the One who comes near to us as Lord and Saviour:

Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness and to put on the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which your Son Jesus Christ  came to us in great humility; that on the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.