Mothering Sunday 15th March 2015

From today’s second reading: God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.    Ephesians 2:4-6

That’s a wonderful three verses and by coincidence we’ve got another purple passage in the Gospel where the year of Mark has given way yet again to St John to be supplemented, and here’s the purple verse: God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. John 3:16

Both passages on this mid-Lent Sunday speak of God’s very great love for us and how it works for our eternal well being: Even when we were dead through our trespasses, God’s love made us alive together with Christ.

Everyone who believes in him and so welcomes that love does not perish but receives eternal life.

The essence of God’s plan for the cosmos is very simple – out of love he made us, out of love he redeems us from sin through the gift of his Son and out of love he’ll bring us to glory.

Out of love God provides us with grace in this world and glory in the next so that we can never lose out, which is what being saved’s all about

In order to be saved we need to welcome the God of love through belief in Jesus and receiving his Holy Spirit.

This we call receiving grace, God’s favour, and entering life in its fullness.

To be saved is to know there’s nothing in heaven or earth that can separate us from God’s love.

If we doubt that, if we doubt, for example thinking death has power to cast us into nothingness, we must look to the Cross.

This is where the first reading illuminates the last.

Moses we read there made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole; and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live. This extraordinary healing process described in the book of Numbers Chapter 21 is pointer to the extraordinary power of the Cross so that St John writes in the holy Gospel: just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

Love needs a body to act. The love of God which is for all time and every place had to come to one time and place, to Calvary around 30AD so that what was true in his heart could be seen by folk in every age and place.

The outstretched arms of Jesus upon the Cross are God’s embrace of us yesterday, today and for ever. The Son of Man is lifted up, that whoever believes in God’s love shown in this extraordinary sacrifice may have eternal life.

Love needs a body to act. In the sacraments divine love touches our bodies to reach afresh into our hearts. Christ who died for us reaches out to us this morning in the most holy Sacrament feeding us with his life, embracing us with his love in bread and wine. Let us open our hearts to receive his parental love this Mothering Sunday.

Lent 3 Study 8th March 2015

Lent's a time to get the main things the main things and we've set five things: prayer, worship, study, service and reflection.

This week's Five Loves course centre on study so it's natural to connect that intention with the scripture for this third Sunday of Lent.

We have the Ten Commandments in the Old Testament reading from Exodus and Our Lord's cleansing of the Temple in the passage from St John's Gospel Chapter 2

Reflecting on these two passages we find a reminder that study in Christian faith engages both mind and heart. 

To receive the word of God we need open hearts as well as open ears.

You can read the Ten Commandments or teach them, as we do to our children here, showing them the two tablets behind the arch. It’s important to read and memorise what’s right and wrong but more important to live right. If we read on in the book of Exodus we see the disobedience of the Israelites so that God says in Psalm 95 'for forty years I was wearied of these people and I said 'their hearts are astray, these people do not know my ways'. 

Today’s Gospel of the cleansing of the Temple is seen in the spiritual tradition as a pointer to the righting of wayward hearts as in this prayer familiar to some of you maybe as a Saturday night prayer of preparation for Holy Communion: Cleanse our consciences we beseech you, almighty God, that our Lord Jesus Christ, when he come to us in the most holy sacrament, may find in our hearts a dwelling place prepared for himself.

Our two readings, first and last this morning, can be seen as reminders that study of God’s word is a matter of applying mind and heart. If we’re not reading our Bibles devotionally we’re losing day by day spiritual nourishment and we’d best turn the tables on this by praying for the Holy Spirit to give us an appetite, a hunger for God’s word.

At her Coronation the Queen was presented with a Bible with these words: ‘Here is the most valuable thing this world affords’. Its value isn’t in itself but in its being ‘read, marked and inwardly digested’.

Christians believe the Bible can’t be mistaken as it presents the good news of Jesus to honest seekers of the truth.  As the Bible says of itself in 1 Timothy 3:15 ‘the sacred writings are able to instruct... for salvation through Jesus Christ’. This witness to God’s salvation is the principal function of the Bible as the truth teller it is.

Reading scripture brings us one to one with God in Jesus if both heart and mind are engaged. Many people’s initial encounter with the Bible are fruitless because they’re dealing with it without repentance and as less than it is - the word of God in human words. They – we – need ongoing cleansing of the temple of our hearts. We also gain from bible reading notes available online as well as from Bible Reading Fellowship, Scripture Union and so on. Like the Ethiopian court official whom St Philip helped to understand the Bible in Acts chapter 8, people very often need a human guide to get into scripture. We can also help one another read the Bible one to one, and as parish priest I’m always delighted to help in this.

Study for Christians – of the bible and the lives of the saints - stands alongside prayer and action in forming us up to be more fully what we’re meant to be. Former US President Theodore Roosevelt claimed that ‘a thorough knowledge of the Bible is worth more than a college education’. Moving from the fourth, third and second-best courses in our lives to the best forward course links to studying not just how we see ourselves but what others including God have to say about us and taking that into our hearts.

How do you see your sins? Pale gas – pride, anger, lust, envy, gluttony, avarice, sloth – weaknesses that ruin the world around you including your friendship with God and neighbour?

The sins we mourn in Lent are weaknesses indulged, but, let me put it in another more positive yet dreadful way. Sin is not just weakness but the misuse of strength. Money and power are strengths employed both to hurt and to heal. Think of the damage caused by the misuse of strength in the Middle East, money markets or the internet?

When you stand before God for judgement will the use of your strengths be weighed, as hurtful or helpful to the world? The great value of the Christian faith is its challenge to seek God’s guidance in weighing up your gifts and applying them in the best way, which is to God’s praise and the service of others.

You and I have been gifted with time and talents to build God’s future.

This is the day that the Lord has made says the Psalm writer. So is tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.

May God take and use the gifts that abound in this worship gathering and employ them in a manner not fourth-best, or third-best or second-best but in the way he knows best – and may you and I find and keep on that way as we study scripture and the lives of the saints.

We’re approaching the Lord ’s Table and as we do so we recall that image in the Gospel of the cleansing of the temple applied to our hearts.

If the heart is a well the tongue, for example, is a bucket that draws from that well. Words of affirmation and encouragement are drawn out of a clean well. Words that are dismissive of others come out of the well of an unclean heart.

Conversely, thinking of receiving Jesus in Word and Sacrament into ourselves, that flow deep inside can only be welcomed through holy attentiveness and expectancy upon the Lord.

It is in purity of heart that we become Biblically literate. No amount of reading God’s words in the Bible of whatever translation can lead to application of those words and the transformation of our lives without inner cleansing from the Holy Spirit to dispose us rightly to Scripture.

It is the cleansing of the thoughts of our hearts by the same Spirit that leads us to the eucharist in its fullness as a sacrifice of praise, the offering of our souls and bodies in union with Jesus as a living sacrifice.

It is by the conscious putting aside of pride, anger, lust, envy, gluttony, avarice and sloth that we make space for the gift of the body, soul and divinity of Jesus in the sacrament of his body and blood.

You don’t put honey into a vinegar jar.

Cleanse our consciences, therefore, almighty God, that our Lord Jesus Christ, when he come to us in the most holy sacrament, may find in our hearts a dwelling place prepared for himself.

Lent 1 22nd February 2015

Noah epic awash in flood of controversy for green agenda and taking liberties with Bible was a headline last Easter. Hollywood studio adds "artistic licence" warning for "the least biblical biblical film ever made" starring Russell Crowe as Noah.

Anne and I saw it. Great effects, especially the semi- angelic beings represented by six-armed rock-creatures who build the ark and fight off Cain’s descendants. It had little about it of the counter-cultural faith of Noah. Typically there’s a ban against the film in Muslim countries since Noah is a Koranic prophet and they don’t like faith being mocked. Russell Crowe even failed to get an audience with the Pope. He did get a picture with an uncomfortable looking Archbishop of Canterbury.

Noah’s appearance this morning is, more positively, the beginning of our spiritual preparation for Easter. He appears in both the Genesis 9 account and in the second lesson from 1 Peter 3 which is a baptism sermon from the early years of Christian faith.  It’s a sermon that quotes a hymn going back to the very earliest days. This hymn of faith can be reconstructed by joining up the first and last sentences of the second reading: Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit… [skipping to the end] has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers made subject to him.

That Christ died and rose is our good news. He died and rose so we can die and rise. In baptism we see our salvation is the gist of today’s readings. Remember you died to sin. Remember you’re raised with Christ. Seek God’s power, as he did in today’s Gospel, to overcome evil and temptation. As is written at the end of the Gospel in Mark 1:15 the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.

Keep that in mind as we go back to examine today’s scripture more carefully, starting with the Genesis passage. Bible scholars have identified four sources known as the Jahwist, Elohist, Priestly, and Deuteronomist sources for the first five books of the Old Testament. A final editor which might have been Moses drew on these different traditions in assembling Genesis through to Deuteronomy. Today’s passage comes from the Priestly author’s account of God’s covenant through the flood and its aftermath. His account differs from the others. Whilst they stick to one basic covenant between God and Israel he or she recalls a number of different covenants and they’re not just made with Israel. The story of the flood and God raising up Noah and the ark of salvation heralds, for the first time in the Old Testament, a universal covenant between God and humanity.

Through Noah God says he’ll never again allow the world’s destruction and he signs his promise physically with a rainbow. The refraction of light was only understood quite recently so this awesome, God-given sign was to the Priestly writer of the 6^th century BC the explanation of an awesome phenomenon. It was two thousand years later that 13^th century Roger Bacon gave some sort of natural explanation and, 500 years after that, Isaac Newton demonstrated the refraction of white light through a prism into the colours of the rainbow.

When we see a rainbow, whether we’re 6^th century near easterners or 21^st century Sussex folk, we are awed. ’Come and see’, we cry to our peers. God’s word in Genesis resonates with that instinct – see this sign and think what he must be like who is its ultimate author, and know his desire for the good for the world. No God here like that of comedian Stephen Fry “utterly evil, capricious and monstrous”.

Here’s beauty, the beauty of a God who knows what he’s about and who he’s about in his love for all that he made including you and me.

It’s time to move on to the second reading which speaks of how God in Christ suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring [us] to God. To bring Stephen Fry and all of us to himself. This hymn is quoted by the author of 1 Peter who leaps away from it to speak of a proclamation to the spirits in prison, who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight people, were saved through water.  In the movie we saw the semi- angelic beings represented by six-armed rock-creatures as God’s instruments fighting off the wicked desperate to get into Noah’s ark. The author of 1 Peter is building from the flood an image of being saved through water which parallels the flood with the waters of baptism and Noah’s eight people with the immensity of the Church. Some medieval fonts were built like Noah’s ark with the church, the baptized, seen as ark of salvation.

In the early days of my priestly ministry I spent time on occasion dissuading superstitious folk, usually grandmas, from baptizing children for fear they ‘wouldn’t get on without it’. Whilst I’ve seen evidence galore of the power of the sacrament of baptism that power saves, as Peter makes clear, not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience. I remain troubled by the hordes who gather round our font never to be seen again. Not much conscience there methinks!

The Church like Noah’s ark is a place of salvation, but, as with a life raft, you’ve got to lay hands on it, you’ve got to cling to Christ in word and sacrament and not just rely on the odd ceremony. Saint Augustine taught the whole purpose of earthly life is to restore to health the eye of the heart whereby God may be seen. So many baptized people don’t know God, don’t see him, because they’ve never learned to seek and own the healing that’s been given them potentially at their baptism.

Lent is our preparation for the Easter festival and the renewal of our baptism vows. Last year we made that very physical by writing letters to God and burning them in the flame of the Easter Candle. This year we’ll do it in our own way but you’ll still be asked to say I turn to Christ, I repent of my sins, I renounce evil. Further reflection on Noah may help you. Do I see myself as in need of escape from the world, the flesh and the devil? How much do I value church membership? Do I see and know God? Is the blindness in the eye of my heart being seen to?

Our Gospel reading moves us on from Noah at the flood to Jesus at his baptism when we read in Mark 1:10 he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. That anointing, and the sense he gained of being God’s beloved Son, empowered him. So in Lent we take his words to our heart of hearts, the very last words of those set to be read on this first Sunday of Lent: The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.

Like Noah we need the bad news and the good news. We need reminding we’re sinners worthy of destruction. We need to know afresh that’s not God’s will for us or for anyone whatever Stephen Fry imagines. Christ died and rose to show us God’s great love and that we too can die and rise. In baptism we see the shape of our salvation.

Remember you died to sin - and live that way!

Remember you’re raised with Christ – seek his empowerment!

The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.

Candlemas & Education Sunday 1st February 2015

Today we combine the Feast of the Presention with Education Sunday.

As Mary and Joseph presented their Child to God so we present the 130 children of our School to him and seek a blessing on our stewardship.

It is occasion to reflect upon the work of education.

The Gospel of the Presentation ends with the statement in Luke 2.40 that the child Jesus grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him.

Education is linked to growth in mind, body and spirit.

Our children probably get less of a balance here than they did in past generations. Time given for physical exercise and Christian formation is lost to mental training and with some good effect. We have reason to be proud of our school with its record for academic excellence.

Today's full liturgy involves the procession of candles during the singing of the canticle Nunc Dimittis in today's Gospel which speaks of the Light to lighten the Gentiles.

Education is similarly about illumination. My alma mater, Oxford University, has as its motto Dominus illuminatio mea. Words from the 27th Psalm The Lord is my light.

In Christianity the pursuit of truth is seen as inseparable from Truth's quest of us so that as we seek truth the pathway finds illumination.

Our own growth with Our Lord in wisdom is a lifelong process that will end with the Beatific Vision 'the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ' (2 Corinthians).

The children in our school have unprecedented access to human knowledge through the great library of the Internet. One of the ongoing works at our school is to develop the IT department with this in mind.

We seek increased wisdom for our children and increased knowledge can be of service. Indeed education requires a solid acquirement of knowledge.  The wise prioritising of such knowledge is at the heart of a good education. Some say the Internet is causing a loss of basic wisdom and that is probably true of some users even if for others it provides access to education unknown in past ages.

As we present the work of our school to the Lord at this morning's eucharist we might for discernment that builds wisdom out of knowledge. Recognising that education is of mind, body and spirit we would seek for our children the best challenges to stretch them in all three areas  - mental, physical and spiritual.

For ourselves too this morning we could reflect on our own ongoing formation and the things we allow to influence our thinking and to serve our physical and spiritual well being.

What use is a daily paper or news feed? What use do I put it to? How often do I reflect upon it or pray about it?

What books, radio series, TV programmes or web resources might build wisdom? For us, unlike children in school, there is choice, but to be educated we need to be decided about the issues we pursue that will touch body, mind and spirit for good. Unlike children we have no class to interact with educationally unless again we choose to interact with others.

This morning we celebrate the Lord's Presentation in the Temple. The liturgy of the day encourages us to present our whole life - body, mind and spirit - in union with him seeking in exchange divine illumination.

The holy eucharist is such an offering. In it Jesus continues to be offered in the Temple of his Church and we, our needs and those of our School, with Him.

In it this morning may we find something of Simeon's 'light to lighten the Gentiles', 'the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ' (2 Corinthians).

Epiphany 2 God's surpises 18th January 2015

Tell God your plans and you're in for a surprise!

Again and again in my life I work, as the conscientious guy I try to be, to set up the best future for myself, for my family and for my church - but we have a God of surprises!

We have a God who as Paul teaches in Romans 8 works all things for good for those who love him and he works it both through our planning and through the surprises he gives us.

We are God’s Church and must keep open to God's surprises.

The call of Samuel in our first reading was a surprise to him. The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread. We're told. Yet At that time Eli, whose eyesight had begun to grow dim so that he could not see, was lying down in his room; the lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the Lord, where the ark of God was. Then the Lord called, ‘Samuel! Samuel!’ and he said, ‘Here I am!’ and ran to Eli, and said, ‘Here I am, for you called me.’

After two rebuttals we heard how Eli perceived that the Lord was calling the boy.

Samuel – and Eli – have a surprise of the Spirit which they need to come to terms with. In consequence of Samuel recognising God’s call Israel gets a new start that leads through Samuel to Saul, David and the Kings.

As we move through the first month of a new year many of us are looking for one sort of fresh start or other. Could we do better than seek refreshing of our relationship with God? To seek the newness imparted us again and again from the permanent newness of Jesus who's the same yesterday, today and forever?

For our second reading we had a passage from the Revelation of Saint John the Divine. I've actually been to Patmos, the Island we’re told where John’s vision came to him when he was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day. I attended the Orthodox Liturgy on the Island and when you read the passage of the priestly elders falling down before the sacrificial Lamb you could imagine John dreaming at the eucharist which is so structured – led by elders we gather round the altar as Christ’s sacrifice is represented and we behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

The book of Revelation is a mighty surprise of the Spirit to any who read it with devotion. We had a particularly upbeat section of it read out today.

Upbeat and upwards pointing, just like our spire which invites our village to look to God in worship and prayer.

Worship may be outwardly the same here Sunday by Sunday but, as in the passage, we find here the eternal newness of Jesus. We join round the altar of God as if lifted into paradise 'with all the company of heaven'. This morning I cannot but think of Lesley Whiting and my mother-in-law Doris Scott being one with us in this anticipated feast of heaven we call the holy eucharist.

Back to surprises - our Gospel reading has Philip very much surprised by Jesus. Such a surprise! So much taken up was Philip, we read, that he went and got Nathanael, Saint Bartholomew, who, initially sceptical of Jesus was won over by the surprising knowledge Jesus had of his being under the fig tree Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel! He says in homage to Jesus who presents him with this astounding promise that extends to all believers: I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.

Now that will be a surprise for us on the last day, or on the day of our death, as it was for those first disciples when they saw their friend and Lord ascending into heaven at the end of his earthly ministry

So what can we draw for ourselves from today’s readings?

That God is a living and therefore surprising God. 

We can’t tie him down in human categories since we are to him as dust to the heavens above. Indeed in God’s house whether you’re the greatest saint or worst sinner puts you either top or bottom of the carpet so to speak.

In that respect what’s most surprising is God’s actual interest in us humans in the first place. How he takes trouble to call Samuel, John the Divine, Philip, Nathanael – and, yes, you and I - for we too are called and to be equipped for his purposes?

C.S.Lewis wrote a book ‘Surprised by Joy’ to describe the confounding of his dismal atheism by a surprising encounter with the living God.

Sometimes it can be the same for us.

We go through phases of practical atheism when God doesn’t seem to count much in our lives only to be woken up like Samuel by a voice from above spoken through our circumstances as were the people touched in last week’s anointing. 

Here I am, for you called me, we find ourselves saying in obedience to God’s surprising intervention.

If you want to make God laugh, just tell him your plans. The point is we need an openness to his possibilities that’s bred in humility. 

At the end of the day we’re not ultimately in control of our lives - God is. 

God must many a time be amused at the presumption of humanity in the plans we make since we can’t possibly comprehend the variables as we look forward in life as he does.

Plan we must, as this New Year gets underway, but let our plans leave us open to welcoming the surprises of the Holy Spirit.

Archbishop Robert Leighton, Saint of Horsted Keynes

Believe, and you shall love, believe much, and you shall love much. Robert Leighton

Saint Giles has a saint in the Churchyard. It has a Prime Minister too – Harold Macmillan – but Archbishop Robert Leighton buried there 1684 and commemorated 26^th June in the church calendar has first place. Leighton’s tomb and wall plaque have been cleaned by J Gumbrill through the generous donation of church members to mark a year of celebration close to the 400^th anniversary of his birth.

Called affectionately “The little bishop” Leighton devoted the last decade of his life to praying, preaching and visiting the poor and sick of Horsted Keynes having spent forty years carrying the torch of peaceable Christian faith during tumultuous times which saw both the loss and restoration of kings and bishops.   

Believe, and you shall love, he wrote. Believe much, and you shall love much. Robert Leighton’s deep rooting in Christ gave him love to help deal with church divisions in the Scotland of his day where he served as Presbyterian minister and afterwards as Anglican Bishop in Dunblane, where his library is still used, and Archbishop of Glasgow, before retiring to live with his sister in Horsted Keynes.

Seek Jesus, fear not, you will certainly find him Leighton wrote and in him all things. He described Christian life as ‘angelic’ spent between ascending in prayer to fetch blessings from above and descending to scatter them amongst those in need of help and consolation below. To Leighton prayer looks to God as the most faithful and powerful friend, the richest and most loving father.

Our spiritual New Year resolutions at St Giles will include Leighton and we’ll be looking with him at the 5 essentials of Christian life:  prayer, worship, study, service and reflection.

Epiphany 4.1.15 Incense

The wise men knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure-chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Matthew 2:11 As the wise men offered worship at his birth, so Christians have for centuries burned incense in worship. 

What is Incense?  Incense is made from various aromatic resins and gums taken from trees and other plants. When burned it gives off scented smoke. In church it is normally burned in a censer or thurible. Because it is difficult to burn on its own, it is burned along with charcoal.

Why use incense in worship?  At the heart of worship in the Temple at Jerusalem was sacrifice. The sacrificial offering was usually a living thing such as a lamb or bird, but the fruits of the earth were also offered, including incense. In the Temple there was even an altar specially set aside for the burning of incense. With the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in A.D. 70 the sacrificial worship of the Old Testament came to an end. The necessity for much of it had already been brought to an end, several years before, by the all-sufficient sacrifice of Christ on the Cross.

Why did incense continue in Christian worship? Our human need to offer thanksgiving and sacrifice to God remains. In our daily lives, Christians have the opportunity to give the best of themselves back to God in the service of each other. St Paul reminds us that we are like incense.  We Christians are to be a sweet smelling  savour as we live surrendered like incense to God.  (2 Corinthians 2:15)

O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness …with gold of obedience and incense of lowliness, kneel and adore. As incense makes for a special atmosphere in Church the surrendered lives of Christians are to have something very special about them, drawing the curiosity and heart searching of those who share our life. Incense is of course a symbol of rising prayer.

One of the elements of good liturgy is the use of colour and movement provided by the use of colourful vestments, processions and the like. Singing and chanting which stimulates the sense of hearing. The use of incense enables even fuller participation in the liturgy by stimulating the sense of smell. It also provides colour, movement and sound as the thurible is swung and its chain 'chinks' and 'tinkles'.

Another aspect of Christian worship is honouring God’s royal presence. Macmillan horse smells. Used in processions before dignitaries. Compostela. In the Eucharist the use of incense draws attention to the royal presence of Christ among his people.  "Incense owns a Deity nigh", The Bible is censed to honour Christ in his word.  The Sacrament receives signal honour as his Body and Blood.  The congregation are greeted with incense to honour Christ among them.

In the Book of Revelation the burning of incense appears to be an important part of the worship of heaven. In ch.5 v.8 we read of "golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the Saints".

This whole book is symbolic, and was never intended to be taken as literally accurate. Many commentators, though believe that the writer of the book was strongly influenced by the worship, or liturgy, of his own church. When we burn incense we remind ourselves that our prayers, like the incense, ascend to the throne of God and mingle with the prayers of the Saints in heaven

Which Churches use incense? Most of Christianity use, or have used, incense in worship. All the Eastern Orthodox Churches burn incense at most of their services, or liturgies. In the 'west' the Roman Catholic Church burns incense at many of its services. The Church of England used incense throughout its history, until the mid 1600's, when it fell into disuse generally. From that time, though, it continued to be used in worship in isolated churches such as York Minster, and since the mid 19th century its use has spread and increased. In the Queen’s Chapel of the Savoy gold, incense and myrrh are offered on the Feast of Epiphany.  The incense is taken to be burnt in Church.  There is quite a waiting list I’m told.

Where’s the spiritual challenge here? At Epiphany we talk about the manifestation of Christ to the nations which is symbolized by the visit of wise men from afar. The manifestation of Christ in our own age we call evangelism, spreading the good news which is a matter of handing on the fact of God’s love shown in the historical Jesus. It is also a matter of manifesting Christ  personally, which is through our person, through the manner of our living. We are called not just to speak about Christ to the world but to be Christ in the world by our prayer and care and all that we are. 

As the incense grains have been consumed on the charcoal we’re meant to see our lives lost to God and neighbor in the sweet smelling savour of costly service.

Lord, as the wise men offered you incense, help us to make of our lives a fragrant offering to You. We ask this in the holy name of Jesus. Amen.