Rusper & Cuckfield (15th of Year) Luke 10.25-37 14th July 2019

It’s hard to love.

This morning (evening)’s readings set out the vision, task and equipment for love found in Jesus Christ. 

The first reading sets out something of the vision, the Good Samaritan reading the task and the second reading how you get equipped for the task of love.

Let’s start with the vision of love in Moses’s farewell discourse in Deuteronomy 30:9-14 set for our first reading. It refers to obeying the Lord your God by observing his commandments and decrees that are written in [the] book of the law but goes on to announce a new facet of such visionary obedience. Like Jeremiah, who prophesied near the time of the writer up of Moses’s discourse, we’re told of law beyond the Ten Commandments written on stone. The law of love is something that seeks to be written on the heart. The word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe. This thought or vision of love, last line of today’s Old Testament reading, is pointer to the enactment of love set forth in today’s Gospel. 

There are few bible passages as familiar as Luke 10:25-37. In the story of the Good Samaritan we need to know that touching a corpse led to ritual defilement so that the priest and Levite were doing right by the ritual law. The Samaritan who wasn’t a Jew followed a higher law, that of love. His action illustrates love as a task. It’s not just benevolence let alone tolerance but doing concrete acts for people in concrete need. Our Lord turns the lawyer’s question who is my neighbour? back on him by the question which of these three was a neighbour, or in another translation, proved neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers? 

Loving your neighbour in Jesus’s book doesn’t mean loving some but not loving others. It means loving all, good and bad. This teaching was acted out when Jesus died outside the walls of Jerusalem. The Christian vision of love links to a God of love who acts concretely to serve and save outsiders so that Jesus Christ’s last conversation was with the thieves crucified with him outside Jerusalem. To the generous one he said words we all hope to hear on our deathbed. Today you will be with me in paradise. Luke 23:43

I must leave you to work out in your own situation the relevance of today’s scripture to the xenophobia evident in our nation through the Brexit debate. Can there ever be outsiders so far as God’s concerned? Can we trust a nationalism that falls short of the deep British sense of fair play and inclusion, itself built from 1500 years of Christianity? On the issue of Islamophobia I can’t understand how people can deride people of Muslim belief without whose courteous service the NHS in Sussex would collapse. 

We want a society that doesn’t just tolerate difference but which respects those who’re different. As Christians we’re also nowadays among those who’re different. We are also losing respect in society. Once or twice I’ve had to say to someone ‘Whilst I respect your views, I am intolerant of your intolerance of my views’. [Badges from Ian Hislop’s I Dissent exhibition 2018-9]

Building respect is costly in time and trouble. It refuses to pass by on the other side, especially when it comes to the disadvantaged. The Samaritan exemplifies this in the concrete tasks he took on. When he saw him, he was moved with pity. Then, from the heart’s motivation, followed these concrete tasks. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, “Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.”  

The vision, the task, and thirdly the equipment for love. The first reading set out the vision, the Good Samaritan Gospel reading shows us the task now we look at the second reading which touches on how we get equipped for the task of love.

Paul writes to the Christians in Colossae of his prayer that they be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding   to lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as they bear fruit in every good work and… grow in the knowledge of God. He adds May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and… be prepared to endure everything with patience. (Colossians 1:9-11). The vision of love leads us into the task of love, that is, good works, that require the strength that comes from God’s glorious power that serve endurance.  

We come to Church to join the angels, as the Glory to God and Holy, holy, holy chants affirm, in looking forward to the certainty of heaven. Our Sunday celebrations lift us up beyond the changes and chances of life, the hardships we bear in love, to the certain, all embracing love of God that will be ours in heaven with the angels and saints. In so doing the Eucharists we celebrate bathe us in heavenly love.

We come to Church primarily to worship God but through word and sacrament, prayer and fellowship we are also edified, built up, equipped. Church is a temple more than a place of edification but it is both. When we hear the word, offer ourselves in Christ’s Sacrifice and receive his body and blood we are better equipped to love. The Holy Spirit comes again and again in prayer and worship. 

Through reading the Bible day by day we’re further strengthened because there’s no word of God without power. To experience such empowerment we need to know our Bibles, to be familiar with the promises of God, bringing these to bear in the situations we face day by day. That last sentence of our second reading is awesome if you can see it addressed to you personally and put it in the singular. He has rescued me from the power of darkness and transferred me into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom I have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. The darkness that descends upon us periodically in life loses its power for one confident they can never be taken out of Christ’s kingdom and love. Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil for you are with me; your rod and staff they comfort me. Psalm 23:4

It’s hard to love – in our own strength. It’s hard to persevere through tribulations small or great. The readings today set out the vision, task and equipment for love found in Jesus Christ. They awaken us to God’s vision of what it is to love, far more than the Ten Commandments inscribed on church walls, a vision to be written on our hearts. The Gospel reminds us of the task of love and how respect triumphs over tolerance in Christianity. Lastly we’re reminded how the commandment to love brings with it love’s supply in abundance through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.

St Richard, Haywards Heath 14C 7 July 2019

The harvest is rich but the labourers are few, so ask the Lord of the harvest to send labourers to his harvest Luke 10:2

The French have a military saying ‘reculer pour mieux sauter’ – retreat, coil up, draw back in order to better jump forwards.

Each Sunday St. Richard’s has work ahead, Gospel work, and she needs our labour – so we need to prepare, to get ready.

The Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them out ahead of him in pairs..

There’s work ahead. We need to prepare, ‘reculer’, to draw back somewhat into ourselves, to retreat before attempting an advance for God in our community

Two thoughts first on ‘reculer’, on retreat – and they are about seeking deeper humility and confidence in God.

Then two thoughts on ‘sauter’, on jumping forwards – the need to work at prayer and invitation as joint scissor blades that will cut a way ahead for us.

First then thoughts about how we might need to ‘coil up’ in readiness for effective outreach. St Francis de Sales taught two essential virtues for Christians which we are always in need of deepening.  They are humility and confidence in God.

1. Humility

To go into ourselves, ‘reculer’ must be about deepening our humility as individuals and as a Church.

Don’t you feel humbled at the very idea of mission?  Who are we to commend Almighty God to folk at a time when religion to many people is more source of evil than good?

Who are we to tell Haywards Heath it needs Our Lord?

Good thinking – our greatest resource for mission as Christians must be humility, a sense of our own inadequacy.

The more we’re aware of God’s mercy to us in all humility, the more we’re able to reflect it towards others – and the more affinity we have with our fellow human beings.

Just as our flesh literally weighs us down there’s a gravitational field of self-centredness that makes human life without God the burden it is. When we discover mercy we discover our nothingness and our less than nothingness through sin.

It is precisely in owning that nothingness in the virtue of humility that we grow wings that lift us away from self towards God and neighbour.

Freed more and more from taking ourselves so seriously we take flight. Here supremely at Mass, week by week, is a school of humility. We’re humbled by an ever-fuller vision of God in his magnificence and mercy – and we indeed take flight.

2. Confidence in God

A second virtue for us to work on is confidence.

By confidence I mean confidence in God and not self-confidence. To ‘coil up’ and gain energy as Christians preparing to spring forwards we need to renew a different sort of confidence – confidence in God.

God, Almighty God, is far worthier of our trust than we will ever believe on this earth.

Through the new bible study group, through our forthcoming pilgrimage, through our own reading about the faith or through conversations with one another including our priests we build confidence in Our Lord, his promises and his possibilities so as to be in a better position to bring in the new Church members we hope to see in St. Richard’s.

We need confidence in God coupled to humility – it is this combination that resources us for outreach. Our admission we’re nothing before God saves us from being presumptuous in witnessing to others. Our confidence that God desires to be everything to us and to everyone balances this and helps put spring in our steps as we commend Christian Faith.

Lastly two thoughts on ‘sauter’, on jumping forwards – the need to work at prayer and invitation.

3.  Prayer

These two things - prayer and invitation are like two powerful blades in a scissor action lying ahead for St. Richard’s as we work for yet more effective outreach.

As Hallesly wrote: ‘It is by prayer that we couple the powers of heaven to our helplessness ...the powers which can awaken those who sleep in sin and raise the dead, the power which can capture strongholds and make the impossible possible’.

Thousands around us are living and dying without Christ and we want them to discover a purpose for living and a reason for dying - the very purpose and reason we have as Christians here at St. Richard’s. As today’s Gospel implies we’re called to act - you are called to act.

I am asking you each day to pray for the growth of the Church mentioning particular individuals known to you upon whom you desire God’s richest blessing.

It may be a matter of praying the Our Father slowly, ‘Thy Kingdom come in Haywards Heath, in Sussex, in the life of my friends, or of taking up afresh the parish monthly intention sheet, or of saying a prayer of our own like, ‘Lord Jesus draw him to Yourself with a special intention for particular friends.

We have an ongoing Mission -  and you and I are on its executive Committee - we are to act - by the prayer we offer day by day and by the invitations we give out to our friends for special events, especially social events at Church like last night.

4.  Invitation

Invitations for people to join in some of our events requires forethought.  The idea of inviting folk must be around as we make new friends or as we relate to our existing friends and family members. We need a whole attitude of ‘invitation’, to make ourselves, or let the Holy Spirit make us more and more a living ‘invitation’ to meet with Our Lord and his Church

Both our prayer and our invitation require a right attitude, one of wholeheartedness.

So we move back from ‘sauter’ to ‘reculer’, from planning our advance to planning the right sort of preparation.

Do you think it is the will of Our Lord for his Church to grow? Today’s Gospel says yes, it is!

Do you think we at St. Richard’s have something the friends we are called to pray for are missing out on?

We need to believe this if our prayer and our invitations are to be wholehearted.

Let me put it the other way around. How will you feel when the friend or neighbour you are going to pray for comes with you to Church? Will you feel embarrassed? If so, why should you feel so?

Is the celebration of your own faith helpful to your human and social flourishing? How good is the gospel to you - good enough to be worth sharing? Or is your faith something private, something weird and wonderful, special for Sundays but nothing you would dare to trouble your friends and neighbours with?

May the Lord touch us this morning as we welcome Him in the Blessed Sacrament - touch us in our heart of hearts, so we can touch others for him! God refresh in us the purpose for living and the reason for dying given to us in our Risen Lord. As God is so near to us may he make himself near to all whom we entrust to him in the weeks ahead. The Gospel is good! This Church is a place of purpose in a confused world, a place of belonging in a lonely world. May more belong here with us to Jesus!

Giggleswick School OG Day 29.6.19 Isaiah 40:21-31

Life is full of goodbyes and that’s no bad thing.

We’ve just said goodbye to the Upper Sixth who’ve finished exams and left Giggleswick. Goodbye’s been said also to Year 11 already on Summer break after GCSEs and there’ll be more goodbyes next week when term ends.

The influx of OG’s today, including myself, who’ve been saying hello and goodbye to one another for years, demonstrates the truth of my proposal - goodbyes aren’t the end of the world, though sometimes they feel like it.

The etymology of goodbye is a help as well - it’s a shortened form of ‘God be with you’. We’re none of us apart from God the fount of life and love so when we say goodbye we stay with one another in a bigger context.

In 1966 (3) I said goodbye to Blewitt, Haygarth, Miller and Ormerod. We went our separate ways to pathology, teaching, finance and, in my case, research into Teflon then the Church - I’m known as the non-stick Vicar! Those men - we were all men then alas - those men stayed on my heart and we keep in touch. Our lives are intertwined - I’m godfather to some of their children - since that day half a century back when we struggled up Chapel Hill for leavers’ service.

As we leave Chapel today my prayer for you is that Chapel - especially the Dome - will stay in your mind and heart as a symbol of that truth of goodbye - God be with you. As we heard Isaiah reflecting just now: Have you not known? …. It is he who sits above the circle of the earth… who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to live in… Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted… but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.

Giggleswick School is proud owner of William Morrison’s God symbol bequest in which we gather this morning under the angels in Thomas Jackson’s octagonal dome. The combination of squares and circles in a dome symbolise union of earth and heaven. In ancient understanding the skies were a dome. Domed tents were associated with earthly rulers representing God who sits above the circle of the earth… stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to live in.  Under Chapel dome this morning there’s connection with one another beyond that of pupils, teachers and OGs. Though we periodically say goodbye to one another we remain on one another’s hearts and our prayer for one another seals that union.

A priest associated with a dome more famous even than Giggleswick’s said No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less. As an aside I find it fascinating that post Reformation Dean of St Paul’s John Donne saw human solidarity crossing the English Channel seeing our land as one with Europe. If and when we say goodbye to membership of the European Union may that sentiment continue. More than that, as Morrison built Chapel to point us east, may our mother Church of England keep solidarity with the holy, catholic church east of Dover. In both Brexits, Reformation and current, we shouldn’t see goodbye as a bad thing.

No man is an island Donne wrote. All of us connect, women and men, through the centuries and across the world. That connection is built from God as fount of life and love whether we acknowledge it or not. Those who do capture the further truth stated by Isaiah: Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted… but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.

The Chapel Dome has a symbolism rather lost in a materialistic culture, lost as much as the deep meaning hidden in our saying ‘goodbye’ to one another. Last month we were in Venice attending worship in its 5 domed Cathedral when naturally I got thinking about this morning’s worship. Like Francis Jackson the architect of San Marco brought east west in designing Venice’s Basilica. As Latin chant echoed in the main Dome there we sensed God with us, just as today’s Anglican chant rising into this Dome lifts our hearts. Those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.

Life is full of goodbyes and that’s no bad thing.

It’s no bad thing to pray God be with you. Next month rather than looking forward from Venice to being in Chapel I’ll be looking back from our home in Haywards Heath at the experience of OG Day. As I do so Blewitt, Haygarth, Miller, Ormerod and all of you will be on my heart as I continue to pray God be with you for you all. I dare to hope you too look back and pray for me and for us all.

As we reflect back day by day on those we’ve said hello and goodbye to we get  reminded they’re on our hearts and that those on our hearts are on the heart of God in whom we live and move and have our being.

Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted… but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles. Goodbye for now - God be with you!

St Barnabas, Hove Corpus Christi 23 June 2019

I want to do some thinking with you this morning about the meaning and power of the eucharist. Since this is at the heart of our life together as Christians, it's good to consider what we receive and what we put into Sunday worship on the great Feast dedicated precisely to such reflection.

The Eucharist is the Hour of Jesus. We come as the Lord's people to the Lord's house on the Lord's day around the Lord's table - to be impressed by Jesus! Just like when you miss your morning prayers the day gets jumbled, when for trivial reasons we miss this Hour, the Sunday Hour of Holy Mass, we find some disarray in our week. It’s as if the attention we give for an hour to eternity brings eternity to bear on our use of time. The urgent things give way to the important!

Nowadays the Church’s Holy Days of Obligation on weekdays run to six: Epiphany, Ascension Day, SS Peter & Paul, the Assumption, All Saints and Christmas Day. Few devout Christians though would omit New Year’s Day, Ash Wednesday and Holy Week as days to find during the week the Hour of Jesus - or maybe a half hour Mass! Some like myself come day by day. When people ask me about such devotion I explain I see the Eucharist as Jesus' embrace. When we were children we received tender loving care from our parents. As a mother consoling a hurting child the Lord embraces in this rite our hurts, as well as joys, along with those of the whole world.

The Eucharist is also the place that builds the Communion which is the church.

It is Christ's Sacrifice and ours, the memorial of his once for all redemption.

It is Christ's Presence at the table of his word and the altar of the sacrament.

The Eucharist is lastly a great Promise, the pledge of glory.

These four headings Communion - Sacrifice - Presence - Promise are  stated poetically in the refrain for Corpus Christi on the pew sheet. Let’s start by looking at and reading the refrain together and see what thinking emerges. Have a look through the antiphon. It was written by St Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century from a scripture base and possesses noble simplicity.

You might recognise the four themes of Communion - Sacrifice - Presence - Promise

Let me read it: O Sacred feast in which we partake of Christ, his sufferings are remembered, our minds are filled with his grace, and we receive a pledge of the glory that is to be ours.

Let’s look more closely at four phrases in this antiphon addressing the four headings I mention:

O Sacred feast in which we partake of Christ… The Eucharist is firstly the place that builds the Communion which is the church. We are made one not by having the same feelings but by sharing one bread in penitence, not trusting in our own righteousness but in God's manifold and great mercies. Christians share the same doctrine - or should do! We share a good variety of spiritual experience but, against certain forms of Evangelicalism and Pentecostalism, there is no subjective experience held in common within mainstream Christianity save sharing the one bread. As the Apostle Paul says in the chapter before today’s set reading from 1 Corinthians 11, we who are many are one body, for we all partake  of the one bread. (1 Corinthians 10:17) As today’s prayer over the gifts expresses it, this unity is a gift both expressed and effected at the celebration of Mass. We come united to be made more united in our sense of need for God’s grace which is itself the secret of a church that’s together. God deepen our sense of need for him, especially in the inevitably troubled seas of a pastoral vacancy! I speak as retired priest covering one 3 years old at St Bart’s - God spare you that!

His sufferings are remembered… The Eucharist is Christ's Sacrifice and ours. It is the memorial of his once for all redemption. As we heard in the second reading Until the Lord comes… every time you eat this bread and drink this cup you are proclaiming his death. (1 Corinthians 11.26). We stand at the Cross.

Obedient to Jesus we take, bless, break and share. It is our grand invitation to enter into the movement of his self-offering. I’m grateful to holy priests and people who over the course of my life have lifted the veil covering the sacred mysteries for me by their teaching and example. They’ve helped me see beyond this brief action with scripture, bread and wine the power of Christ’s Sacrificial Prayer to which my intentions are joined day by day I’ve gained confidence in a transformative dynamic summarised in Our Lord’s promise that ‘I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself’ (John 12:32). All people, but also all things as St Paul writes of all things being ultimately put ‘in subjection under Christ, so that God may be all in all’ (1 Corinthians 15:28). Such ultimately is the power of the eucharist expressed in a verse of George Bourne’s Communion hymn: Paschal Lamb thine offering finished once for all when thou wast slain in its fullness undiminished shall forever more remain cleansing souls from every stain.

Our minds are filled with his grace… The Eucharist is Christ's Presence at the table of his word and the altar of the sacrament. How else can people come close to Jesus in this world other than through word and sacrament? My flesh is food indeed Jesus says to us. We come here for the empowerment Holy Communion effects just as in the days of his flesh the hungry were fed by Our Lord in the Gospel from Luke Chapter 9. We note a parallel with the Lord’s action at the eucharist as we read how Jesus raised his eyes to heaven, and said the blessing over bread, breaking and handing them to the disciples. To this day priests, Jesus’ men, imitate that action lifting their eyes upwards before they say the Lord’s words at this sacred meal, This is my Body...this is my Blood offered for you to the Father, given to you in Communion. It’s good Anglican practice to bow or bend the knee as we come into Church or leave Church, or as we approach or leave the Altar, practice honouring the Real Presence of Christ. Outside the eucharist, it’s believed Christ is present, truly present, under the veil of the Tabernacle or Aumbry where a light burns perpetually before the safe where the Sacrament is reserved, for Communion of the housebound or for our corporate devotion as in Benediction. To honour that perpetual presence, by bowing or bending the knee when coming and going, doesn’t deny that presence elsewhere through prayer, the reading of Scripture, in Christian Fellowship, in the beauty of nature, in holy people and so on.

We receive a pledge of the glory that is to be ours… The Eucharist is a great Promise, the pledge of glory, like the cinema advertisement, a preview of forthcoming attractions. Last month I was privileged as Priest Associate of the Holy House at Walsingham to be present with up to a thousand at a day when Mary’s effigy was brought to stand on the coronation pavement before the high altar of Westminster Abbey in a great day of devotion. You could see these words behind the statue, inscribed over the high altar, from Revelation Chapter 11 verse 15: ‘the kingdoms of this world are become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ’. I found this deeply moving. It made for a day not just aspirational but touching on the reality of the Eucharist there and then as hundreds did business with God bringing the nation on their hearts. The coronation eucharist sets earthly kings and queens to be servants of the advance of Christ’s kingdom which is both present and to come. The use of material objects at the eucharist reminds us that God is transforming the whole universe building up the new creation in which indeed the kingdom of this world becomes the kingdom of our God and of his Christ. At Mass the priest invites us to Communion with the words ‘blessed are those called to the supper of the Lamb’ and this phrase has a double resonance - the Supper is here and it's to come, a preview of the forthcoming attraction of the banquet of heaven. As today’s postcommunion prayer expresses it: may we delight for all eternity in that share in your divine life, which is foreshadowed in the present age by our reception of your precious body and blood.

To summarise this is the hour of Jesus, the communion of the church, Christ’s sacrifice, presence and promise.

O Sacred feast in which we partake of Christ, his sufferings are remembered, our minds are filled with his grace, and we receive a pledge of the glory that is to be ours.

St Bartholomew, Brighton Trinity Sunday 16th June 2019

Theology – the science of God – is vital because the God you attend to will change you. Attend to a wishy washy God and you’ll go wishy washy. Attend to a moral policeman and you’ll get censorious. To an indulgent God and you’ll enjoy yourself at the expense of others. Worship God as the genie in your lamp and he’ll never change you. Worship God as a distant Father figure and you’ll project bad life experience and make it ultimate.

Attend to the Trinity and you’ll become a child of God and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven.

The Christian religion calls us to attend to a God who’s revealed in holy scripture and affirmed by the catholic creeds and the church’s liturgy. Today’s collect affirms that the confession of a true faith is to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity and in the power of the divine majesty to worship the Unity.

What does this mean? That God’s shown us through Jesus he’s Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Trinity Sunday’s slotted in at the end of six months when readings in church have followed the life of Our Lord up to his death and resurrection and the sending of the Spirit at Pentecost.

This Sunday we sum up Christianity as we affirm God to be three persons in one God. Why? Because that’s what he says he is. We’d never work this out for ourselves. It’s revealed from the action of God in history.

There are various illustrations. Take the water one - ice, water and steam are one substance with three forms – or take the love one - If God is love how could he be love before the world was made other than by being love within himself?

Or take that of a trellis supporting a vine. The word trellis means ‘woven with three threads’. God who is three is like a trellis supporting a fruitful vine, the church of Jesus Christ we’re part of. Unlike the trellis supporting a vine, the Trinity’s a living trellis. Without his life giving support the vine that’s the church would be a fruitless enterprise.

How you see God - theology - is vital because the God you attend to will change you.

In the eucharist we draw life from the living and true God through Christ who lives and reigns with the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit. It’s the way things are. God’s a fact - Father, Son and Spirit - though people have a million ideas about him. If people turn their backs on the Trinity they regress into muddled ideas of God which take you nowhere.

Not only ideas, spiritual experiences alleged to be of God mislead if they’re not seen in the light of the grace of Our Lord, the love of God the Father and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes people say to me ‘I feel God’s presence daily and don’t need your dogmas’. C.S.Lewis had a good answer to such a person: ‘I quite agreed with that man… he had probably had a real experience of God... and when he turned from that experience to the Christian creeds… he… was turning from something real to something less real… if a man has once looked at the Atlantic from the beach, and then goes and looks at a map of the Atlantic, he will also be turning from something real to something less real: turning from real waves to a bit of coloured paper. But here comes the point. The map is… only coloured paper, but… it's based on what… thousands of people have found out by sailing the real Atlantic...it has behind it masses of experience just as real as the one you could have from the beach; only, while yours would be a single isolated glimpse, the map fits all those different experiences together. In the second place, if you want to go anywhere, the map is absolutely necessary. As long as you’re content with walks on the beach, your own glimpses are far more fun than looking at a map. But the map is going to be more use than walks on the beach if you want to get to America’.

The doctrine of the Trinity is a God-given map to the world opened up by the resurrection, a world you can’t reach by your own insight or efforts but, as the Gospel says, through the Spirit of truth who leads you into all truth. (John 16:13) As we heard in the passage from Romans we have hope of sharing the glory of God through faith that brings us the peace of Christ and God’s love [being] poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit. (Romans 5:1,2,5). This is the wherewithal, the map if you like, to get to glory.

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

Attending to God is our calling from all eternity. We were each of us made to see the King, the Lord of hosts, in his beauty. We began as babies attending very much to ourselves and end, or should end, by attending to God. What changes isn’t self love so much as the self that we love. As our lives expand in relationships into maturity we see that our self interest is one with that of the whole human community and of God three in one who made and makes it. This is how the Trinity saves us.

So to God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, be ascribed as is most justly due all might majesty dominion and power, now and for ever and to the ages of ages. Amen.