Ascension, Haywards Heath 3rd June 2018

Let’s have another look at our first reading which you can find in the second letter of St Paul to the Corinthians Chapter 4 verses 5 to 12. It starts with an awesome description in verses 5 and 6 of what it is to be Christian.

We do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’ sake. For it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness’, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

Paul writes out of hardship with humility coupled to abundant confidence. As the light of Christ first shone upon him on the Damascus Road it still shines only not just upon him as he seeks the Lord but through him, the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. A wonderful phrase! Behind its poetry is a recognition of the miracle of our new birth in Jesus Christ. The God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness’ at creation, who gave us life at our conception and birth has shone in our hearts in Jesus Christ to grant us his life. It’s a light that shines forth from us and from this light house community of the Ascension.

God who brought us to life brought us into being with ability to open our hearts to him and receive his life. You and I are welcoming that life, that love afresh this morning in Holy Communion! Oh that more hearts in Haywards Heath would open to God in whom we find reason and purpose for life, the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

Let’s read on in v7:

But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us.

Does this verse need commentary? To be a Christian is to have both confidence and humility. Confidence in God and humility before him. I have a little clay lamp with a light that can burn within it which reminds me of how this flesh which is clay destined as ashes to be part of the earth gets lit up, lit up by the light of Christ. It’s very often when I’m feeling most frail that God shows his extraordinary power in me and through me. My self-sufficiency all too often undermines my Christianity. I don’t want to practise God’s presence hour by hour though I try! The Jesus Prayer is a great help - do you know it - Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner. It’s a prayer from the church catholic, from the faith of the church through the ages, with evangelical simplicity and it brings charismatic empowerment. It describes the treasure - Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of God and how it's placed in me as the fragile clay jar that I am. Have mercy on me a sinner. I need the treasure. - or confidence in Jesus - but without humility, without knowing my need of him its brilliance won’t be shown in my life, that light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Search your soul this morning - am I confident in God? Am I humble with that confidence? Well if you’re not - and few are fully - God has a way of humbling us. Let’s read the rest of the passage, verses 8 to 12.

We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies. For while we live, we are always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you.

These awesome words are written by Paul from the crucible of Christian work. They hand on how Christians get formed by the humiliation of suffering and the grace of resurrection always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies.  As Christians we travel to God like anyone else through suffering and joy but with the difference of thankfulness for the joy and assurance of God’s love in the suffering. Our Lord who’s the Way has trodden that way before us and expects nothing of us he’s not been through himself which is one message of Holy Week.

As Christians we don’t expect to be dragged backwards to God at our death but to be more and more at ease with the forward movement of life - even if it brings increased frailty, loss of mobility and the need to depend on others. The passion of Our Lord takes the strain as we give our pain to him. As a priest I’ve been particularly privileged to come close to holy people regular at the Eucharist who’ve voiced to me the power of this service as we struggle with disability, offering it up to be part of Christ’s Sacrifice as we seek Our Lord in this Most Holy Sacrament of his suffering, death and resurrection.

For while we live, we are always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you. Paul speaks of how his humiliations help bring him into spiritual resurrection.

My faith journey took a downturn some years back which was a humiliation especially being a priest. God seemed a long way off. I went to talk to a Mirfield monk. ‘Maybe God’s not gone but your vision of him’ was the advice. ‘Seek the Holy Spirit for a vision more to God’s dimensions and less to your own’. I did seek and I did experience the renewing power of the Holy Spirit which was something of a resurrection of faith. When I came back from Mirfield to the parish I was alive again with some sort of charismatic empowerment that’s never fully left me. The light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

You and I, each one of us are on a journey with Our Lord who is himself the way.  On that journey keeping close to him in his passion and resurrection sweetens our sorrow and deepens our joy, as does the fellowship we have with one another in God’s holy Church. It’s my privilege now to be on your journey as a community in this special time,  a time of challenge and also a time of blessing.

Keep your confidence in God coupled to humility. Seek the Holy Spirit for a vision of God more to his dimensions and less to your own current vision. Be heartened for the ongoing journey of faith which will one day, as it has for many we love but see no longer, vanish into sight. Then, when every tear is wiped away we shall see God as he is. We shall become like him and praise him for all eternity.

O Christ whom now beneath the veil - of bread and wine - we see, may what we thirst for soon our portion be, to gaze on thee unveiled and see thy face, the vision of thy glory and thy grace.

Grant us, Lord, a share in the passion and resurrection of your Only Begotten Son so that we may merit to behold you for all eternity.

Trinity Sunday at Ascension, Haywards Heath 27th May 2018

Today we celebrate the revelation of God as an eternal fellowship of love, three persons equal in majesty, undivided in splendour, yet one God.

The doctrine of the most holy and undivided Trinity is challenging, relevant, intriguing and essential – four headings to steer our delving this morning into foundational truth and life.

Firstly it’s a challenge. Reason takes you so far in Christianity. We could never have invented God in three persons, it’s revealed truth. Then you have the question of weighing other revelations – Islam and Hinduism besides the Judaism from which the Trinitarian revelation came.

Preachers go on leave this Sunday for fear of a seemingly cold, calculated, mathematical doctrine. Three in one and one in three. Why three? Why not one, says Islam, why not more says Hinduism, why not none says the atheist mocking our feeble attempts to get our mind round God three in one.

There’s the challenge set before us in Trinitarian faith but that challenge is based upon historical events. These clearly reveal the nature of God in the coming of Jesus, whose death and resurrection we’ve been following up to Ascension Day, and the coming of the Spirit on Pentecost day. It’s a challenge that might lead you to the church library or the internet so you can better answer for your faith to those who believe in one God, no God or many gods as opposed to one God in three persons.

Secondly the doctrine of the Trinity is utterly relevant. How good it was to see the countercultural coverage on marriage last weekend since marriage as a union of life-giving love points us, because human beings are in the image of God, to God who is himself a union of life-giving love. Keeping true to ourselves as human beings, and true to the life-giving nature of marriage is keeping true to God no less, God as he has revealed himself to us.  God as love within himself. How could God be so without the distinction of persons within him?

Challenging, relevant – thirdly the doctrine of God should be intriguing. The eternal fellowship of love that is God draws us in to himself. What after all is the Church for other than to serve God’s purpose to bring as many souls on earth as possible into fellowship with him?

The doctrine of the Trinity is revealed first of all in Our Lord’s coming into a human family with Mary and Joseph, into village life in Nazareth, then into the missionary partnership of the disciples. That divine society continues after his resurrection and the gift of the Spirit as one, holy catholic and apostolic church which is God’s never-ending family!

How intriguing God is, and we are. If you want evidence for God look in the mirror and read Psalm 8 You have made (us) little lower than the angels and crown (us) with glory and honour. More than that, a human being in isolation isn’t a true human for, in John Donne’s words, no man is an island. What’s intriguing about God as divine society mirrors what we find intriguing about ourselves, namely our desire for society and friendship. This desire will be fully satisfied only in the communion of saints who can be thought of as standing near God as a corona or crown around the sun.

Challenging, relevant, intriguing – lastly the Trinitarian doctrine of God is essential.

It is essential because Christianity is a religion of salvation and that salvation stands or falls on the divinity of Jesus Christ. We read Jesus words in the Gospel all that belongs to the Father is mine…the Spirit will take from what is mine and make it known to you (John 16:15) Does my eternal destiny depend on my own good works, lacking as they are, or on a relationship freely offered me by God in his Son?

In Jesus do we really meet with God himself? That, as they say, is the twenty four thousand dollar question hidden behind keeping a feast day for the Blessed Trinity.This doctrine might sound cold and mathematical but it follows a logic of love, love beyond all measure, extravagant, unconditional love for God so loved the world that he gave his only Son Jesus Christ so that all who believe in him should not perish but have everlasting life. (John 3:16)

To believe this is to believe God isn’t One but One God in three persons.

It’s challenging to so believe – God is God and has revealed himself this way and not another way.

It’s relevant - the way we see God affects the way we see ourselves and steers us from unworthy pursuits.

It’s intriguing because the loving fellowship of God in three persons chimes in with our sociable nature and draws it to joyful completion in the communion of saints

It’s essential doctrine because without it the divinity of Christ falls, the word of God is emptied of power and the sacraments become empty ritual as God’s coming to us in Jesus and the Spirit is denied.

May all I have shared enrich the eucharist we now offer through, with and in Jesus Christ, to whom, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, be all might, majesty, dominion and power now and for evermore. Amen.

Pentecost at St Bartholomew, Brighton 20 May 2018

The Church of England - is there a Church like it?

The English love it and imagine they made it!

It's Archbishop ranks with Pope and Patriarchs.

Puritans and gay activists find cover under its wings.

Feminists and Romanists contend within it.

Christian atheists love its liturgy.

Evangelicals use it to fish for souls.

Charismatics dance down its aisles.

Few churches worldwide get the headlines the Church of England gets - even if they embarrass and shame us!

It calls itself 'the ancient church of this land, catholic and reformed', not Roman Catholic or Protestant but a middle way true to the faith of the church through the ages.

Is there a church like it, welcoming honest seekers after truth and the Truth that seeks us in Jesus? Liturgical beauty, community care and  thoughtful engagement with a fast changing world?

Long live the Church of England!

I wrote this ode for Horsted Keynes parish magazine years back and it's a good opener for today’s celebration of the church’s birthday.

Yes, the Church of England’s birthday is Pentecost and not 1534 when King Henry VIII declared himself its Supreme Governor. As ‘the ancient church of this land’ we trace back to Whit Sunday. We’re part of the ‘one, holy, catholic and apostolic church’ even if some things you read in the Church Times might lead you to believe otherwise - that the C of E starts and ends in England! Most of my ministry I’ve contended with those who make our Church less than she is as part of the Church of God in England. On many issues I’ve found myself fighting against what I call ‘the conservative tendency in Anglicanism’ - the tendency to conserve our position in society which has led us more and more distant from our major partners worldwide, the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches.

The good news of Jesus Christ wasn’t started here - it came to Britain from overseas so that Augustine’s arrival from Rome in 597 and not 1534 is the biggest date for us after the bigger event recorded in today’s first reading which dates from 33 years after the birth of Christ. 

The dynamic of the love, truth and power of God’s Spirit flows down to us through 20 centuries bearing fruit in individuals, communities and nations more ready to conform themselves to Christ than conform Christ and his church’s teachings to themselves!
When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth Our Lord promises in the Gospel. We heard in the Acts reading how that promise was fulfilled. Later on the priest will lead our exultation on this great feast that according to God’s most true promise the Holy Spirit came down as at this time from heaven with a sudden great sound, as it had been a mighty wind, in the likeness of fiery tongues, lighting upon the Apostles, to teach them and to lead them to all truth; giving them both the gift of divers languages, and also boldness with fervent zeal, constantly to preach the Gospel unto all nations: whereby we have been brought out of darkness and error into the clear light and true knowledge of God, and of his Son Jesus Christ.

Some years back a great preacher captured the essence of the work of the Holy Spirit in two paragraphs. Here are words from Greek Orthodox Archbishop Athenagoras.

Without the Holy Spirit:
God is far away,


Christ stays in the past,


the Gospel is a dead letter,


the Church is simply an organisation,                                                                                         authority is a matter of domination,                                                                                    mission is a matter of propaganda,                                                                                                    the liturgy no more than an evocation,                                                                                       Christian living a slave morality.

But in the Holy Spirit:


the risen Christ is there,


the Gospel is the power of life,


the Church shows forth the life of the Trinity,                                                                          authority is a liberating service,


mission is a Pentecost,


the liturgy is both memorial and anticipation,                                                                                 human action is deified.

‘Without the Holy Spirit the Gospel is a dead letter, the Church is simply an organisation,
But in the Holy Spirit the risen Christ is there, the Gospel is the power of life..’ Patriarch Athenagoras’ comment warns how the Gospel and the Church reduce to words, images and structures without the breath of the Lord and Lifegiver.

So it is in our lives as Christians unless we beware. I know a priest who has over his desk, ‘I am a human being, not a human ‘doing". All we do as Christians flows from what we are - this is the powerful reminder of the Feast of Pentecost. For God has made us what we are in Baptism and Confirmation by the Gift of his Spirit. He renews that Gift of his own Life week by week in the Bread of Life and the Cup of Salvation. This is the great Mystery of our Faith, that God is real and personal and present, so real and personal and present to us and in us that Scripture says that as human beings we ‘live and move and have our being’ in him. 

But do we? Do we really recognise in this coming Holy Communion the claim of Christ upon us that should make him central to our life? Open your hearts to the Spirit of God who this day first came upon the Church. 

I close with the Pentecost prayer of another Patriarch, this time of the Western rather than the Eastern Church, Pope John XXIII: ‘Holy Spirit renew your wonders in this our day. Give us a new Pentecost!’ 

Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful people and kindle in them the fire of Your Love. May Your Life overflow here at St Bartholomew’s so that people will be intrigued, drawn to you by our worship, our words about you, our deeds of service and our love for one another and for Brighton!









Ascension Sunday at St Richard Haywards Heath 13 May 2018

The liturgical year is one of our greatest teachers.

We believe as Christians that God made and loves all that is including each and everyone of us sitting in Church this morning.

God loves us so much he sent his Son down to be born as one of us – which is Christmas.

God loves us so much he allowed Jesus to suffer what human beings suffer, to live and die as one of us yet without sin – which is Lent

God loves us so much he wants us to know death isn’t the end of us in his sight – which is Easter

God loves us so much he brought Jesus up to heaven and sent the Holy Spirit down into any heart that will welcome him – which is Pentecost.

That’s Christianity in four lines – Christmas, Lent, Easter and Pentecost.

On Ascension Feast in Eastertide we recall how God loves  each and everyone of us and those gone before us on earth no less than ourselves.

The great Easter Candle stands before us today as a sign to each and everyone of the truth that Jesus and Jesus alone towers over death.

The incense burned before God rising upwards today is also a liturgical teacher suited to this week of prayer before Pentecost for which we’ll be joined on Tuesday by Bishop Richard.

The age old symbolism of incense is that of rising prayer.

The incense grains are an expensive source of fragrance.

On Ascension Feast we celebrate how the fragrance of Jesus spreads through space and time only through his passion, death and resurrection. Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. (John 12:24)

The costly incense grains, formed over centuries in the extraordinary sap of Arabian trees, die on the charcoal to rise yielding pleasant fragrance which scripture associates with the world beyond this world. In the vision of St John the Divine, Revelation 8 verse 4 he tells us the smoke of [the] incense, with the prayers of the saints, rose before God from the hand of an [the] angel.

On Ascension Feast we celebrate the completion of Christ’s earthly work and its being taken up to heaven. This is well expressed in the fourth verse of George Bourne’s ascension hymn, Lord, enthroned in heavenly splendour where we read these rich words:

Paschal Lamb, thine off’ring finished

once for all when thou wast slain,

in its fullness undiminished

shall for evermore remain.

Alleluia, alleluia,

Cleansing souls from ev’ry stain

In the Feasts of Christ spread across the liturgical year we read, mark and inwardly digest truths that are ‘once for all’ and yet evermore inspire and cleanse our souls. Christ, as Bourne’s hymn concludes, is risen, ascended, glorified so that we can be raised from the works of the flesh, ascend in prayer and anticipate the glory that is to be ours.

The Chinese writer Watchman Nee wrote a short commentary on the letter to the Ephesians entitled Sit, Walk, Stand to remind Christians that as Christ is ascended and seated at God’s right hand, so are we. We are to keep seated with Christ above sin, to keep walking in the Spirit and keep standing fast against the devil.

The incense we use at worship is symbol of rising prayer, of costly sacrifice, and lastly of our living in the court of heaven seated with its Monarch. God raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, we read in Ephesians and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

As Christ is risen, ascended, glorified so are we, which is why St Nicodemus could write man is the macrocosm and the whole universe is the microcosm. Because we bear God’s image we stand over and above the universe, a truth confirmed by the ascension of Christ which raises and sets humanity in the highest place of all.

For, as Paul says to the Corinthians we are the incense of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing. (2 Corinthians 2:15). Our prayer is to be one with the ascended Christ, our lives united with his sacrifice in the eucharist and the fragrance in our worship is to be mirrored in the fragrance of lives lived to the praise and service of God!

In this service we take, we bless, we break, we share bread and wine and show forth God’s very great love for us and for all that is – especially recalling how Jesus was taken by God the Father on Good Friday and his body was broken on the Cross to show God’s love for us, love shared with the whole world ever since by the pouring out of the Holy Spirit.

At the eucharist we also see our lives taken by God. When we put the bread on the plate and the wine in the cup we think of ourselves placed there before God, our congregation, our town, our county, our nation, our world, its joys and sorrows, its strengths and all being placed on the altar of God which is the eucharist table to ascend to him.

In the eucharist we take, bless, break and share bread and wine

In the eucharist we see Jesus taken, blessed, broken and shared.

In the eucharist our lives also ascend to God and are made a blessing to others.  

So let’s offer ourselves in union with the ascended Christ this morning so that all that we are may be consecrated afresh to God’s praise and service with, in and through Jesus our high priest!

Blessed, praised and hallowed be our Lord Jesus Christ upon his throne in glory, in the most holy sacrament of the altar and in the hearts of all his faithful people now and ever and to the ages of ages. Amen.

SS Philip & James, New Bentley, Doncaster Patronal Festival 3 May 2018

It’s good to be home - I was born in Doncaster - and I’m grateful to be back in the place and at the altar where my priestly ministry took birth 40 years ago. As a Society priest its a privilege to concelebrate with Bishop Glyn in Sheffield Diocese, alongside my friend Fr Dickinson who’s given 10 times more love and care to you than I did over two and a half years - congratulations, Father, on your 25th here! 10 times more work and its been twice the work with Arksey as well. You and I are Facebook friends but there’s nothing to beat a real time and place meet up - what better time or place than the Festival of St Philip & St James in New Bentley!

We come from God, we belong to God, we go to God.

We just asked the prayers of SS Philip & James for our faith journey, that we be given a share in the passion and resurrection of Jesus Christ so we can go to God and behold him for ever. In the second reading we heard how James saw Jesus risen from the dead and our Gospel included Philip’s stated desire to see God. By describing himself as ‘The Way’ Our Lord reminds us of the direction we can find in life that leads to the vision of God.

We come from God, we belong to God, we go to God.

As Christians we don’t expect to be dragged backwards to God at our death but to be more and more at ease with the forward movement of life - even if it brings increased frailty, loss of mobility and the need to depend on others. The passion of Our Lord takes the strain as we give our pain to him. I keep Gladys Protheroe in my prayers, regular at daily Mass in my day. How much I learned from her, from her patient struggle with disability, offering it up as she sought Our Lord in the Most Holy Sacrament. 

Fr Pannell and I - he sends his blessing - we live very much apart nowadays with me near his native Brighton and he much more a northerner than I. When I served here with Father within the Company of Mission Priests the most awesome event was that day in November 1978 when our housekeeper Eunice Mitchell came to the door at 7 o’clock to tell me there’d been an accident at the pit and Jim hadn’t come home. I can’t forget her walking that next Sunday in the Blessed Sacrament procession for Christ the King, a widow, Jim killed in the paddy train crash, singing angels saints and nations sing praise be Jesus Christ our King. Or their little Stewart to whom Arthur Scargill sent a miner’s lamp as reminder of his dad’s death, part of the price of coal. On our way to God pains are sweetened as we keep close to Christ in his passion and resurrection. Grant us … a share in the passion and resurrection of your Only Begotten Son that we may merit to behold you for eternity.

We come from God, we belong to God, we go to God.

As Christians we travel to God like anyone else through suffering and joy but with the difference of thankfulness for the joy and assurance of God’s love in the suffering. Our Lord who’s the Way has trodden that way before us and expects nothing of us he’s not been through himself which is the message of Holy Week.

Looking back Fr Pannell was more the humorist than I - we’d some good times at the Clergy House then in Daw Wood - and each of us needed cheering up at times. I remember the night I got chased after youth club by wild teenage girls who sprayed me with hairspray! Then in winter when we walked in our cloaks to Church Father got cross when they shouted Robin at him. Being the taller I was always bat man! 

When we look back on our faith journey we see suffering and resurrection. Keeping a good sense of humour’s one secret of spiritual resurrection. Two weeks ago I took the funeral in Brighton of Margaret Blewitt, mother of my best friend at Giggleswick School, who was a dentist in Rotherham. One of our confirmation candidates at SS Philip & James was a lovely girl with her pathological fear of dentists clear from the look of her. Fr Pannell and I persuaded Audrey Cull to come with us to visit Margaret. Margaret with her kindness and forcefulness saw to her there and then. Audrey’s faith took a real upturn with her new teeth - she was a new lady - its hard to believe in God unless you believe in yourself.

My faith journey took a downturn my second year at New Bentley. God seemed a long way off. I went to talk to a Mirfield monk. ‘Maybe God’s not gone but your vision of him’ was the advice. ‘Seek the Holy Spirit for a vision more to God’s dimensions and less to your own’. I did seek and I did experience the renewing power of the Holy Spirit which was something of a resurrection of faith. When I came back from Mirfield to the parish I remember Bernard Shaw was touched in the same way - how sorry I am to learn of Anne’s passing - and I remember how it concerned and confused then Churchwarden Doug Clark. 

Doug and Peggy, rest their souls, were kindness itself to Fr Pannell and I, just as their daughter Ann and husband John are being to me tonight, taking me in for Bed & Breakfast! Ann’s dad always said those not attending Mass would do so readily if only they realised what they were missing - I know Ann’s taken a leaf out of dad and mum’s books and is like me a daily Mass goer. 

SS Philip & James were very tolerant of my fancy vocabulary after 10 years of Chemistry and Theology at University and brought me gently down to earth!  

Doug would forgive me telling this story against him. Doug helped me move to Moorends where my new found zeal made me an evangelist for the Catholic Faith. He helped me carpet a Vicarage bedroom to be an Oratory - fancy word for a little chapel. He was heard saying to someone: ‘you should have seen the devil of a job we had getting that carpet into Father’s orifice’!! I still have an Oratory in our little house in Haywards Heath and precious memories of Doug who first set me up with one.

We come from God, we belong to God, we go to God.

You and I, each one of us are on that journey with Our Lord who is himself the way.    On that journey keeping close to him in his passion and resurrection sweetens our sorrow and deepens our joy, as does the fellowship we have with one another in God’s holy Church. I’ve been blessed over the last 40 years to keep up with and receive such encouragement from Brian and Sue Dutton, who again have always been kindness itself to me, Charlie Brough, rest his soul, his daughters and others from here.

You too have been blessed in the faithful care of your priests and, in the difficulties we all share in the Church of England’s ongoing crisis, of Bishops like Bishop Glyn. I’m so grateful to Fr Dickinson for ongoing news of church members - he has a real heart for you - and once again thank and blame him for letting me loose tonight in my old haunt!  

May what I’ve shared hearten us for the ongoing journey of faith which will one day, as it has for many we love but see no longer, vanish into sight. Then, in a prayer I’ve said so many times at the altar in the old translation: when every tear is wiped away we shall see God as he is. We shall become like him and praise him for all eternity. Grant us, Lord, a share in the passion and resurrection of your Only Begotten Son so that we may indeed merit to behold you for all eternity.

Easter 3(B) St Bartholomew, Brighton 15.4.18

Christ is risen from the dead! He has crushed death by his death and bestowed life upon those who lay in the tomb!

Words from the Orthodox Easter service. Since I last stood here at the Easter Vigil I’ve celebrated Easter again in Greece with fireworks and all!

We can’t get enough of Easter. It’s the Queen of the Church’s year. The Paschal Candle standing proud in the sanctuary, alleluias galore and an especially joyful repertory from the choir over these great 40 days - for we read in Acts 1:3 how after Christ’s suffering he presented himself alive to his disciples by many convincing proofs, appearing to them during forty days speaking about the kingdom of God.

As some of you know I spent Lent preparing 40 pointers to Christ’s resurrection to release in Easter Season via a daily blog on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, address on the back of the readings sheet. https://40resurrectionpointers.blogspot.co.uk/

People get intrigued into church as much as they get persuaded by good fellowship, intelligent preaching and sound liturgy - and there’s nothing more intriguing than resurrection - and social media is one way to intrigue people on this, especially as I’ve attempted using 40 or so paintings of the risen Lord each with a 100 word caption setting forth evidence for the truth of Easter.  As former Lord Chief Justice of the United Kingdom, Lord Darling, observed about Christ's Resurrection: In its favour there exists such overwhelming evidence, positive and negative, factual and circumstantial, that no intelligent jury in the world could fail to bring in a verdict that the Resurrection story is true.

Let’s go back to the readings for this third Sunday of Eastertide. First the passage from Acts 3. It follows on from the apostles’ healing of a lame man who went leaping and bounding into the Temple. How intriguing that must have been! Something worth following – someone worth following!  Let’s read what’s actually v16 on our sheet: we are witnesses… faith in the name of Jesus hath made this man strong, whom you see and know; yea, the faith which is is by him hath given him this perfect soundness in the presence of all of you.

When God is at work people get drawn in - and God’s at work here at St Bart’s! People are talking of him being with them, sometimes through their trials, as they live with health or relationship or employment challenges, other times as they go leaping and bounding forward into a new future.

It’s always heartening to me as a priest to hear of resurrection occurring, of the risen Christ coming to bear on the lives of parishioners, very often uplifting them and carrying them through suffering and humiliation into God’s best future.

Moving on to today’s Gospel reading from St Luke’s Gospel Chapter 24.  Our Lord provides here an an intriguing demonstration of the physicality of the resurrection, showing his wounded yet glorified hands and feet and eating a piece of broiled fish.

Those who were at the Easter Vigil two weeks ago will recall that when we blessed the Pascal Candle we placed four nails in its side to represent the crucifixion. As we read in today’s Gospel Thus is written, and thus it beloved the Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day: and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. The point Our Lord makes is the same point St Peter makes in the first reading: it is written, that the Christ is to suffer.

The atheist writer Albert Camus once debated the resurrection with French Dominicans. He complained that the resurrection was an unreal and unsatisfactory happy ending. They answered by pointing to this text. God came to share our suffering which served to expiate the sin of the world. No suffering we have to endure is now strange to God. As one of Wesley’s hymns puts it: Those dear tokens of his passion still his dazzling body bears. Cause of endless exultation to his ransomed worshippers. With what rapture gaze we on those glorious scars.

Thus is written, and thus it beloved the Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day: and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name.

This morning the risen Christ invites us once more to repent, to turn to him for forgiveness, so that his light may shine in us and through us.

St Barts as a light house? Maybe, if you and I become lighthouses, little candles lit from the Easter Candle? Lit with this faith – that the most meaningful thing in life is what conquers death.

In Jesus Christ we gain not ideas, doctrines, rules but Life - and where that life is to be found – as I believe it is here at St Bart’s – people who possess it will intrigue and infect others who’ve yet to find it!

The source of false religion is the inability to rejoice, or rather, the refusal of joy, whereas joy is absolutely essential because it is without any doubt the fruit of God’s presence. So wrote Orthodox priest Alexander Schmemann.  

So then - let our focus this Sunday in Easter season be on rejoicing for eucharist and Christian life itself means no less than thanks and praise.

Christ is risen! ‘In his, in God’s presence is the fullness of joy and at his right hand there are pleasures for evermore’ says the Psalmist.

Alleluia Christ is risen! He is risen indeed, alleluia!

Easter vigil at St Bartholomew, Brighton 31st March 2018

Joy isn’t a component of Christianity it’s the key!

How can you believe in God without sensing joy?

Tonight we see God writ large, God to the dimensions of God and not to ours, showing his grandeur as taking human form he breaks through death and reveals eternal life to us and for us.

On the third day he rose again in accordance with the scriptures.

We gain joy as we gain God and that’s in the present moment. This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.  Psalm 118:24

What the resurrection effects is twofold. It delivers us from the prison of our mental constructs of past and future.

To know Christ is risen is to know God’s unalterable newness, the same yesterday, today and tomorrow – to know it and live in it is joy. This is eternal life, to know God and Jesus Christ whom he has sent. John 17:3

In the knowledge of what God in Christ has done we gain two benefits.

First we’re freed by forgiving both wrongs we’ve suffered from others and by welcoming forgiveness for the wrongs we ourselves have done.

Second we’re freed of fear for the future. Tomorrow also is God’s and his love is stronger than the worst power we’ll ever encounter including death. You will be with me always, he says, nothing can separate us, enter my joy, as the Psalmist writes: You show me the path of life. In your presence there is fullness of joy; in your right hand are pleasures forevermore. Psalm 16:11

Absence of joy links to self-sufficiency and pride, imprisonment in past regrets, future anxiety - all of which cut us off from the living God.

Tonight we affirm God for who he is, and his opening to our intuition of death’s diminishment.

The only meaningful thing in life is what conquers death, not what but who, Jesus Christ, true God and true Man.

Since April 33AD, or maybe 27AD with a six year slippage, humanity has the full picture of God in his grandeur and humans in their immense potential as those in his image destined for the glorious liberty of the children of God (Romans 8:21).

The hope of this glory is further cause of our joy.

Our intellects balk at death and wrestle with its reality 20 centuries on from Easter.  There’s no knockdown argument for the resurrection but many pointers to its truth. I commend my 40 pointers to Christ’s Resurrection blog.

We are joyful in spirit tonight knowing deep down God is God and he always will be God and we’ve got friendship with him that’ll never end.

Joy isn’t just a component of Christianity it’s the key. We can’t believe in God as he truly is without sensing joy and tonight we see him as he really is, God writ large, God to the dimensions of God, showing his grandeur, taking human form, breaking through death, revealing eternal life to us and for us.

This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.  May the unalterable newness of Jesus be our joy today, tomorrow, to the last syllable of recorded time, and beyond that to eternal ages! Alleluia!