Give and it shall be given unto you.
Besides football we’ve been thinking a lot about the economy this week.
You could see our gospel reading as topical in its call for generosity – topical or countercultural!
Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal, it shall be measured to you again.
Give - in this word and action lies success in life although it flies in many ways against the spirit of the world.
We could think of our home economy and how it is best served by Christian principles but I will choose something more basic to many households.
Think of the meaning of marriage. In it we give ourselves. We take, yes. People don’t get married unless they got something out of one another, so to speak, but unless there is giving there is little blessing.
Giving of time one to another, giving of patience, giving the benefit of the doubt, giving care to one another.
This is not a natural action. It is so far, but when our human capacity to give seems exhausted, be it in marriage or in other realms, we need our Christianity which is the open line to heaven Jesus gives us.
Christianity is about grace, about help from above. Blessed are those who have discovered that grace and help as a reality to aid daily living and loving!
In Jesus, God's unbounded love is given to all who will welcome his Holy Spirit. We receive from his Spirit to give more than we can humanly give to others.
In the sacrament of marriage couples receive a special anointing in that Spirit. In this, the sacrament of the altar we receive the same Spirit.
With that gift, in Holy Communion or marriage, comes the call to love as the Lord loves you, to give as the Lord has given to you.
Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal, it shall be measured to you again.
Our lives, our marriages, our churches, to be most fruitful need to be open to God, who is able, by his spirit, to melt our meanheartedness and make us ever more generous.
Through this Holy Communion Jesus gives himself to us under the veil of bread and wine.
Let us respond to his word to us this morning by a resolve to be generous and make space for others and for him in our hearts. Amen.
Sunday, 27 June 2010
Sunday, 13 June 2010
Baptismal eucharist 13th June 2010
If you had to argue with someone for the existence of God you could try a number of lines.
You could say that physics accepts the universe had a beginning 14 thousand million years ago in the Big Bang. The idea of someone who gave it that beginning makes more sense therefore than it did 50 years ago when there was a steady state theory that gave the universe no beginning.
A second argument for God is from the ordered nature of the universe and the fine tuning it seems to have which has allowed life and consciousness. As Einstein said once, ‘The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.’ Does matter really come before mind or is it the other way round? We’re given minds not only to explore the world we inhabit but to understand the Mind that put us here.
A third argument for God is to ask people to think about themselves. You and I are evidence for God. There’s something about us and our ability to shelve our own interests for others that points beyond the animal kingdom. When we show love we’re showing something beyond this world, what has been called the image of God in us.
Today we baptise Rupert Harris. The birth of a baby always gets people thinking about God and love. In Rupert’s case he brings joy as the least of a family of six with mum and dad, John and Caroline, brothers Alexander, Cameron and sister Anushka. The children were telling me the other day how much happiness Rupert’s birth has brought them. They think that having him has built even more love in their family.
We’re thinking about love this morning. The collect for the 2nd Sunday after Trinity spoke of ‘that most excellent gift of love... without which whoever lives is counted dead before God’. The epistle reminded us ‘love bears all things and...never ends’. In the second Gospel reading we had that mysterious saying of Jesus about the sinful woman, ‘her many sins have been forgiven – for she loved much’.
I read the other day a story of how a mentally impaired youngster was in the chemist’s. Seated on the floor he began to play with some bottles he’d taken from the shelves. The chemist ordered him to stop and then scolded him with an even sharper tone. Just then the boy’s sister came up, put her arms around him and whispered something in his ear. Right away, he put the bottles back in place. ‘You see,’ his sister explained to the chemist, ‘he doesn’t understand when you talk to him like that. I just love it into him.’
People respond negatively to being scolded and harassed. Those six words, ‘I just love it into him’ are another clue to God and indeed to life.
Perhaps the greatest distortion of Christianity in our age is that it’s a scolding, harassing creed that targets those who fall short. It’s actually the very opposite of that false perception. We hold to a Saviour who wants the best fro us and gives us that best by loving it into us and not forcing it in.
‘Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way’.
‘Jesus is patient; Jesus is kind; Jesus is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. Jesus does not insist on his own way’.
The great thing about the Christianity into which we baptise Rupert this morning is this – there is Someone over us who is love. God treats us as better than we are so we get inspiration to do the same. Look how Jesus dealt with the sinful woman in the gospel. Her love for him came out of his love for her, his readiness to treat her not as the sinner she was but as the beloved daughter of God she was called to be.
So it is with us. We are sinners but love covers a multitude of sins.
A former inmate of a Nazi concentration camp was visiting a friend who had shared the ordeal with him. ‘Have you forgiven the Nazis?’ he asked his friend. ‘Yes.’. ‘Well I haven’t. I’m still consumed with hatred for them.’ ‘In that case’ said the friend gently, ‘they still have you in prison’.
Our enemies are not so much those who hate us but those whom we hate. Once we refuse to treat people as better than they are we fall short of Jesus Christ who actually died for people who were pretty worthless and I am thinking about myself primarily.
‘Without love – which means forgiveness many a time - whoever lives is counted dead before God’.
God has blessed the Harris family with love in Rupert’s birth. May he continue to bless them as their family is linked once more to God’s family at his baptism.
May God’s love be poured afresh into our hearts through this eucharist for the world is thirsty for love.
There is nothing we can do to make God love us more. There is nothing we can do to make God love us less – that is the riddle of Jesus Christ.
We want to turn to him now, repent of our sins and renounce evil
You could say that physics accepts the universe had a beginning 14 thousand million years ago in the Big Bang. The idea of someone who gave it that beginning makes more sense therefore than it did 50 years ago when there was a steady state theory that gave the universe no beginning.
A second argument for God is from the ordered nature of the universe and the fine tuning it seems to have which has allowed life and consciousness. As Einstein said once, ‘The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.’ Does matter really come before mind or is it the other way round? We’re given minds not only to explore the world we inhabit but to understand the Mind that put us here.
A third argument for God is to ask people to think about themselves. You and I are evidence for God. There’s something about us and our ability to shelve our own interests for others that points beyond the animal kingdom. When we show love we’re showing something beyond this world, what has been called the image of God in us.
Today we baptise Rupert Harris. The birth of a baby always gets people thinking about God and love. In Rupert’s case he brings joy as the least of a family of six with mum and dad, John and Caroline, brothers Alexander, Cameron and sister Anushka. The children were telling me the other day how much happiness Rupert’s birth has brought them. They think that having him has built even more love in their family.
We’re thinking about love this morning. The collect for the 2nd Sunday after Trinity spoke of ‘that most excellent gift of love... without which whoever lives is counted dead before God’. The epistle reminded us ‘love bears all things and...never ends’. In the second Gospel reading we had that mysterious saying of Jesus about the sinful woman, ‘her many sins have been forgiven – for she loved much’.
I read the other day a story of how a mentally impaired youngster was in the chemist’s. Seated on the floor he began to play with some bottles he’d taken from the shelves. The chemist ordered him to stop and then scolded him with an even sharper tone. Just then the boy’s sister came up, put her arms around him and whispered something in his ear. Right away, he put the bottles back in place. ‘You see,’ his sister explained to the chemist, ‘he doesn’t understand when you talk to him like that. I just love it into him.’
People respond negatively to being scolded and harassed. Those six words, ‘I just love it into him’ are another clue to God and indeed to life.
Perhaps the greatest distortion of Christianity in our age is that it’s a scolding, harassing creed that targets those who fall short. It’s actually the very opposite of that false perception. We hold to a Saviour who wants the best fro us and gives us that best by loving it into us and not forcing it in.
‘Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way’.
‘Jesus is patient; Jesus is kind; Jesus is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. Jesus does not insist on his own way’.
The great thing about the Christianity into which we baptise Rupert this morning is this – there is Someone over us who is love. God treats us as better than we are so we get inspiration to do the same. Look how Jesus dealt with the sinful woman in the gospel. Her love for him came out of his love for her, his readiness to treat her not as the sinner she was but as the beloved daughter of God she was called to be.
So it is with us. We are sinners but love covers a multitude of sins.
A former inmate of a Nazi concentration camp was visiting a friend who had shared the ordeal with him. ‘Have you forgiven the Nazis?’ he asked his friend. ‘Yes.’. ‘Well I haven’t. I’m still consumed with hatred for them.’ ‘In that case’ said the friend gently, ‘they still have you in prison’.
Our enemies are not so much those who hate us but those whom we hate. Once we refuse to treat people as better than they are we fall short of Jesus Christ who actually died for people who were pretty worthless and I am thinking about myself primarily.
‘Without love – which means forgiveness many a time - whoever lives is counted dead before God’.
God has blessed the Harris family with love in Rupert’s birth. May he continue to bless them as their family is linked once more to God’s family at his baptism.
May God’s love be poured afresh into our hearts through this eucharist for the world is thirsty for love.
There is nothing we can do to make God love us more. There is nothing we can do to make God love us less – that is the riddle of Jesus Christ.
We want to turn to him now, repent of our sins and renounce evil
Sunday, 6 June 2010
Trinity 1 in Corpus Christi-tide 6th June 2010
I want to do some interactive thinking this morning about the meaning and power of the eucharist. Since this is at the heart of our life together as Christians it makes sense once in a while to consider what we receive and what we put into Sunday worship.
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!
The Eucharist is Jesus' embrace - like a mother consoling a hurting child...
It is the place that builds the COMMUNION which is the church.
The Eucharist is Christ's SACRIFICE and ours. It is the memorial of his once for all redemption.
The Eucharist is Christ's PRESENCE at the table of his word and the altar of the sacrament.
The Eucharist is a great PROMISE, the pledge of glory, like the cinema advertisement, a preview of forthcoming attractions.
I’ve got those four headings for us to look at and hopefully to engage your thinking aloud including any questions you might have:
COMMUNION - SACRIFICE - PRESENCE - PROMISE
We could go for these one by one but since they 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 has a noble simplicity.
You might recognise the four themes of COMMUNION - SACRIFICE - PRESENCE – PROMISE
Have a think about the phrase that most speaks to you. Or of what’s missing from your understanding of the eucharist?
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 under the four headings I spoke of.
O Sacred feast in which we partake of Christ...
The Eucharist is the place that builds the COMMUNION which is the church.
What makes us one?
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.
We become what we are - the body of Christ - more fully.
We are made one with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven.
O Sacred feast in which we partake of Christ...His sufferings are remembered...
The Eucharist is Christ's SACRIFICE and ours. It is the memorial of his once for all redemption.
When you eat this bread and drink this cup you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. (1 Corinthians 11.26).
We stand at the Cross.
How do you understand the link between what Jesus did for us on Calvary and what you’re doing every Sunday at this service?
We recall Jesus - to use a law court analogy, not just as a witness recalls what he saw but in the sense of the recalling of the witness.
We see the gift of Jesus to the Father and to us.
Taking, blessing, breaking, sharing. This is our grand invitation to enter into the movement of his self-offering.
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.
The eucharist has a strong intercessory aspect: coming before the Lord with people on our hearts.
Let's share any experience of the eucharist as a privileged place of prayer.
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 do you see Christ’s presence in the eucharist?
How else can people come close to Jesus in this world other than through word and sacrament?
The Eucharist is a place of empowerment. People who recive Holy Communion receive power.
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.
The use of material objects reminds us that God is transforming the whole universe.
What difference do you think what we do here makes to the world?
The Eucharist serves the building up of a new creation in which the kingdom of this world becomes the kingdom of our God and of his Christ.(Revelation 11.15)
To summarise the Eucharist is: THE HOUR OF JESUS - COMMUNION - SACRIFICE - PRESENCE -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.
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!
The Eucharist is Jesus' embrace - like a mother consoling a hurting child...
It is the place that builds the COMMUNION which is the church.
The Eucharist is Christ's SACRIFICE and ours. It is the memorial of his once for all redemption.
The Eucharist is Christ's PRESENCE at the table of his word and the altar of the sacrament.
The Eucharist is a great PROMISE, the pledge of glory, like the cinema advertisement, a preview of forthcoming attractions.
I’ve got those four headings for us to look at and hopefully to engage your thinking aloud including any questions you might have:
COMMUNION - SACRIFICE - PRESENCE - PROMISE
We could go for these one by one but since they 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 has a noble simplicity.
You might recognise the four themes of COMMUNION - SACRIFICE - PRESENCE – PROMISE
Have a think about the phrase that most speaks to you. Or of what’s missing from your understanding of the eucharist?
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 under the four headings I spoke of.
O Sacred feast in which we partake of Christ...
The Eucharist is the place that builds the COMMUNION which is the church.
What makes us one?
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.
We become what we are - the body of Christ - more fully.
We are made one with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven.
O Sacred feast in which we partake of Christ...His sufferings are remembered...
The Eucharist is Christ's SACRIFICE and ours. It is the memorial of his once for all redemption.
When you eat this bread and drink this cup you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. (1 Corinthians 11.26).
We stand at the Cross.
How do you understand the link between what Jesus did for us on Calvary and what you’re doing every Sunday at this service?
We recall Jesus - to use a law court analogy, not just as a witness recalls what he saw but in the sense of the recalling of the witness.
We see the gift of Jesus to the Father and to us.
Taking, blessing, breaking, sharing. This is our grand invitation to enter into the movement of his self-offering.
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.
The eucharist has a strong intercessory aspect: coming before the Lord with people on our hearts.
Let's share any experience of the eucharist as a privileged place of prayer.
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 do you see Christ’s presence in the eucharist?
How else can people come close to Jesus in this world other than through word and sacrament?
The Eucharist is a place of empowerment. People who recive Holy Communion receive power.
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.
The use of material objects reminds us that God is transforming the whole universe.
What difference do you think what we do here makes to the world?
The Eucharist serves the building up of a new creation in which the kingdom of this world becomes the kingdom of our God and of his Christ.(Revelation 11.15)
To summarise the Eucharist is: THE HOUR OF JESUS - COMMUNION - SACRIFICE - PRESENCE -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.
Sunday, 23 May 2010
Pentecost Sunday 23rd May 2010
Introduction
Welcome to the triumphant end of Easter season when we celebrate the descent of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost also called Whitsunday.
We’ve just sung about becoming the place wherein the Holy Spirit makes his dwelling.
How can we understand this?
I’ve got an illustration.
Each one of us human beings is like a coffee pot.
We’re filled with so much goodness, love and patience to give out to others.
We give out and out and out - until we get empty. Then we find the difference between Christians and others.
What do you think that difference is?
Believers have found there's a lid on our coffee pot and a God willing to refill us, through it, with love, power and praise exactly when we’re empty and needy.
The 'lid' is faith and what gets poured in by the Spirit's power is 'grace'.
Our sin is linked to our self sufficiency, to our attempts to live in our own strength without the help of the Holy Spirit.
Let’s read through the confession before we say it together and ask God’s forgiveness.
Homily
So what were the signs when the Holy Spirit first came down?
Rush of wind, tongues of fire, sense of filling, speaking in other languages.
Remember the coffee pot getting filled, opening up for a refill of love and empowerment when the going gets tough in life? It had been tough for the first disciples, but they prayed for the Spirit and the Spirit came.
We believe he comes in every act of Christian prayer but especially at the eucharist where he speaks through the bible and makes bread and wine our heavenly food.
The first Pentecost must have been quite a wild occasion, all that wind and fire and speaking in tongues. Elsewhere in the bible the Holy Spirit speaks more quietly. He is also a still, small voice.
In 1985 a Canon John Dorman I hardly knew wrote to me with to share how the Holy Spirit had laid on him to write from Guyana to ask me to consider running a theological college for Amerindian priests. It was a job for two single priests and married priests were not under consideration.
The problem was that though I was then in the Company of Mission Priests who take annual promises to stay single I had been praying about marriage! So it was with some reluctance that I came to see John Dorman’s letter as the voice of the Holy Spirit.
How could you see the hinterland of Guyana deprived of the sacraments because I wouldn’t leave my comfort zone! I needed to go. I went and as I went, in God’s loving kindness, I met Anne. She was at the USPG College of Ascension where Fr Allan Buik and I went to train before going to Guyana.
Though Anne was going to Argentina to serve in the diocesan office both the Bishop of Argentina and the then Bishop of Guyana agreed to our marriage which was celebrated on Pentecost Sunday 1988.
It was a great Pentecost Day. The whole village came to the celebration which began with the slaughter of a cow at dawn and cost me a bag of rice, sugar and flour! A Hindu business man I played squash with provided a plane to fly in our parents. The Holy Spirit was there working to smooth the logistics of marriage in the jungle!
I’m telling you all this because I know the Holy Spirit is the soul of the Church. He is all powerful. He also writes straight through crooked lines as Anne and I have discovered.
You know that our charitable giving is for our new Guyana link this Sunday and next – we use the orange envelopes for this. This is why I want to underline Pentecost as a Sunday which sets our eyes on the mission field. The fact that the Bishop of Guyana is visiting us in six weeks time is also relevant. We want to give him our collection personally. You can read about the new bishop and the mission of the church in Guyana by taking away a free copy of El Dorado from the back of church
Meanwhile the Holy Spirit is also filling lives around us here in Horsted Keynes. I wish more of us could have been here last Sunday night with Fr Martin when two teams ministered prayer and anointing to a group of folk who seemed to gain a real lift!
God is at work here – here and now. Let’s stand to acclaim him as we welcome the holy gospel.
Welcome to the triumphant end of Easter season when we celebrate the descent of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost also called Whitsunday.
We’ve just sung about becoming the place wherein the Holy Spirit makes his dwelling.
How can we understand this?
I’ve got an illustration.
Each one of us human beings is like a coffee pot.
We’re filled with so much goodness, love and patience to give out to others.
We give out and out and out - until we get empty. Then we find the difference between Christians and others.
What do you think that difference is?
Believers have found there's a lid on our coffee pot and a God willing to refill us, through it, with love, power and praise exactly when we’re empty and needy.
The 'lid' is faith and what gets poured in by the Spirit's power is 'grace'.
Our sin is linked to our self sufficiency, to our attempts to live in our own strength without the help of the Holy Spirit.
Let’s read through the confession before we say it together and ask God’s forgiveness.
Homily
So what were the signs when the Holy Spirit first came down?
Rush of wind, tongues of fire, sense of filling, speaking in other languages.
Remember the coffee pot getting filled, opening up for a refill of love and empowerment when the going gets tough in life? It had been tough for the first disciples, but they prayed for the Spirit and the Spirit came.
We believe he comes in every act of Christian prayer but especially at the eucharist where he speaks through the bible and makes bread and wine our heavenly food.
The first Pentecost must have been quite a wild occasion, all that wind and fire and speaking in tongues. Elsewhere in the bible the Holy Spirit speaks more quietly. He is also a still, small voice.
In 1985 a Canon John Dorman I hardly knew wrote to me with to share how the Holy Spirit had laid on him to write from Guyana to ask me to consider running a theological college for Amerindian priests. It was a job for two single priests and married priests were not under consideration.
The problem was that though I was then in the Company of Mission Priests who take annual promises to stay single I had been praying about marriage! So it was with some reluctance that I came to see John Dorman’s letter as the voice of the Holy Spirit.
How could you see the hinterland of Guyana deprived of the sacraments because I wouldn’t leave my comfort zone! I needed to go. I went and as I went, in God’s loving kindness, I met Anne. She was at the USPG College of Ascension where Fr Allan Buik and I went to train before going to Guyana.
Though Anne was going to Argentina to serve in the diocesan office both the Bishop of Argentina and the then Bishop of Guyana agreed to our marriage which was celebrated on Pentecost Sunday 1988.
It was a great Pentecost Day. The whole village came to the celebration which began with the slaughter of a cow at dawn and cost me a bag of rice, sugar and flour! A Hindu business man I played squash with provided a plane to fly in our parents. The Holy Spirit was there working to smooth the logistics of marriage in the jungle!
I’m telling you all this because I know the Holy Spirit is the soul of the Church. He is all powerful. He also writes straight through crooked lines as Anne and I have discovered.
You know that our charitable giving is for our new Guyana link this Sunday and next – we use the orange envelopes for this. This is why I want to underline Pentecost as a Sunday which sets our eyes on the mission field. The fact that the Bishop of Guyana is visiting us in six weeks time is also relevant. We want to give him our collection personally. You can read about the new bishop and the mission of the church in Guyana by taking away a free copy of El Dorado from the back of church
Meanwhile the Holy Spirit is also filling lives around us here in Horsted Keynes. I wish more of us could have been here last Sunday night with Fr Martin when two teams ministered prayer and anointing to a group of folk who seemed to gain a real lift!
God is at work here – here and now. Let’s stand to acclaim him as we welcome the holy gospel.
Sunday, 16 May 2010
Easter 7 The road to salvation Sunday 16 May 2010
It’s been a momentous week in British politics.
David Cameron and Nick Clegg deserve our prayers as they lead a new coalition in the national interest.
They are building a way out of the deficit and we will all pay the price. Last week I was privileged to travel to Bavaria on behalf of the Diocese and gather with 40 participants from 16 nations across Europe to study Biblical ethics. As I learned we had a new government during the week my new Romanian friend Peter learned his wages had been cut by 25% and his mother’s pension by 15% by government order in Romania. I was impressed by his humility in the face of such a financial blow.
From David and Nick to Paul and Luke in our first reading. You may remember that St Luke is author of the Acts and he travelled with St Paul. Hence today’s passage begins One day, as we were going to the place of prayer. It goes on say we met a slave-girl who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners a great deal of money by fortune-telling. While she followed Paul and us, she would cry out, ‘These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.' She kept doing this for many days. But Paul, very much annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, ‘I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.‘ And it came out that very hour.
‘These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.' That’s the phrase from that leapt out at me as I was reflecting on the scripture fresh from my Bavarian study leave with the new coalition in mind.
In Acts 16:17 we read how the psychic slave girl embarrasses Paul and Luke by shouting out: ‘These men are working for the Most High God. They’re laying out the road of salvation for you.’
What a great image! - ‘laying out the road of salvation’. It sounds like laying out the red carpet!
Just as in the days of his flesh it was the evil spirits who seemed to know the truth of Jesus more than his human hearers so with the first believers. The devil knows a trick or two they rightly say.
As the days of Eastertide move to a close, we’re reminded today of the ongoing consequences of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ for the world. Jesus has opened up, laid out a road of salvation.
It’s the road that leads up to St Giles or to all we stand for, a road that goes up and down to a place of joyful freedom. I noticed that in my absence Church Road, though still up and down, has been smoothed out at the top. No holes left to trip our members!
Anyway we stand on a road to salvation, Church Road! Ups and downs, holes, yet a place for people going somewhere. St Giles isn’t really a cul de sac, did you know?
So what does it mean to be saved?
Last week I was sharing with men and women from all over Europe one in their admission of the truth of scripture and the Christian creeds. With me they were engaged in paving the road to salvation for people living in places as far apart as Iceland and Ukraine, England and Finland. To be saved, I think we all agreed, is to be drawn to God through Jesus and come onto the road of salvation destined for the Trinity.
As Paul writes to another of his companions, Timothy This is right and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God and one mediator between God and humankind, Christ Jesus, himself human, who gave himself as a ransom for all. (1 Timothy 2.3-6)
If God desires salvation for all he still requires our consent if we’re to move forward onto that road.
What is that road? Five thoughts.
It is a road into belonging. Our Lord prays his Father in today’s Gospel I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.
Salvation is a pathway into belonging to Jesus and his Father through their go-between, the Holy Spirit who seals our union in baptism, confirmation and eucharist. The road of salvation is a path through which isolated people can find belonging with us in the holy, catholic Church that can be renamed God’s never-ending family.
It is secondly a road into truth. To be saved is nothing less than to come to the knowledge of the truth. The wonderful, inclusive truth that is ours in Jesus our Saviour! At our conference in Josefstal, Bavaria we looked at the truth of scripture. A Lutheran professor, Karl Foitzik, gave us a helpful analogy. Biblical truth is communicated more in analogue than digital form. You know how precisely digital radios operate compared to the fuzziness of analogue sets. Expecting the bible to provide precise, literal truth, he said, was problematic. In our discussions we recognized the church as interpreter of scripture and our need to set issues such as homosexuality in a fuller context than literal prohibitions. The truth at stake in sexual ethics links to an age old understanding of the truth of marriage and sexual intercourse as the union of life-giving love by male and female. If the road to salvation is open to both homosexual and heterosexual it is arguable whether there can be a third state of life besides marriage and celibacy.
Back to the road. Salvation’s a road to belonging, truth and thirdly a way of compassion. Christianity got famous over love. ‘See how these Christians love one another’ they said at first. May people say it of us today!
Humanity and compassion are strongly linked and most often seen hand in hand where there is suffering. I find Buddhist teaching on spiritual detachment helpful. I do not find the image of the Buddha helpful. There is something that doesn’t resonate in a religious symbol of smiling contentment. For us this is the symbol – point to the Crucifix – and it is one with suffering humanity in every age. The salvation Christ offers is one that’s lit up the bed of suffering, the inner turmoil and psychological anguish of billions through the ages. The God shown us in Christ’s a God of compassion, which means literally one who suffers with you. Who indeed expects nothing of us that he’s not prepared to go through himself as he did on Calvary. Our altar stands by Calvary, our worship is Eucharistic, giving thanks for the Cross and determined to stay on the royal road of the Cross, the red carpet of salvation, til resurrection day of which every Sunday is anticipation.
What’s distinctive about Christian salvation is its capacity to go not against but beyond the grain of human nature into what seem to be impossible realms through empowerment by the grace of the Spirit.
So salvation is fourthly a road to empowerment. When the heart of God touches our heart it lifts the stones that lie over the springs of renewing grace. As we heard in today’s second reading from the book of Revelation chapter 22 verse 17: The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come.’ And let everyone who hears say, ‘Come.’ And let everyone who is thirsty come. Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift.The Spirit of God refreshes and empowers those on the Christian road. He can also break up the stoniness in our hearts like a heavenly microwave. The work of salvation takes us on a road the world so needs today, a road that builds mercy in the soul! The heart of God makes what is impossible for us possible through the possibilities of God – which makes it, lastly, is a road to holiness.
As we studied the bible for 8 days in Germany we recognized how its interpretation is not just about rational understanding. The best interpreters are the saints, the holy men and women who speak to us still from the faith of the church through the ages.
When we read the bible it’s got authority over us. If we’re submitted to the bible as God’s Word it will be his instrument. This doesn’t necessarily mean a literal understanding but a critical loyalty served by knowledge of the creed, engagement in Christian worship and obedience to God’s commandments.
Holiness is a quality of life that lights up the road of salvation to all who stand around enticing them to step on to it. Such holiness derives from trust in God’s promises in the bible as well as in God’s Spirit who comes upon us in prayer and worship.
We started with David and Nick laying out a road for economic recovery and moved to Paul and Luke.
Their road, our road is also a road for Britain today but it is more than that. It is the way we are charged with commending as Christians, a way into the heart of God no less and everlasting salvation.
It’s a laying out the red carpet towards belonging and truth, compassion, empowerment and holiness.
Thousands 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.
May the eucharist we celebrate make us better servants of sisters and brothers lost in life! May this morning’s worship hour lend us courage to lay out the red carpet for them by our words and deeds and by what God is making us in Christ. Amen.
David Cameron and Nick Clegg deserve our prayers as they lead a new coalition in the national interest.
They are building a way out of the deficit and we will all pay the price. Last week I was privileged to travel to Bavaria on behalf of the Diocese and gather with 40 participants from 16 nations across Europe to study Biblical ethics. As I learned we had a new government during the week my new Romanian friend Peter learned his wages had been cut by 25% and his mother’s pension by 15% by government order in Romania. I was impressed by his humility in the face of such a financial blow.
From David and Nick to Paul and Luke in our first reading. You may remember that St Luke is author of the Acts and he travelled with St Paul. Hence today’s passage begins One day, as we were going to the place of prayer. It goes on say we met a slave-girl who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners a great deal of money by fortune-telling. While she followed Paul and us, she would cry out, ‘These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.' She kept doing this for many days. But Paul, very much annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, ‘I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.‘ And it came out that very hour.
‘These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.' That’s the phrase from that leapt out at me as I was reflecting on the scripture fresh from my Bavarian study leave with the new coalition in mind.
In Acts 16:17 we read how the psychic slave girl embarrasses Paul and Luke by shouting out: ‘These men are working for the Most High God. They’re laying out the road of salvation for you.’
What a great image! - ‘laying out the road of salvation’. It sounds like laying out the red carpet!
Just as in the days of his flesh it was the evil spirits who seemed to know the truth of Jesus more than his human hearers so with the first believers. The devil knows a trick or two they rightly say.
As the days of Eastertide move to a close, we’re reminded today of the ongoing consequences of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ for the world. Jesus has opened up, laid out a road of salvation.
It’s the road that leads up to St Giles or to all we stand for, a road that goes up and down to a place of joyful freedom. I noticed that in my absence Church Road, though still up and down, has been smoothed out at the top. No holes left to trip our members!
Anyway we stand on a road to salvation, Church Road! Ups and downs, holes, yet a place for people going somewhere. St Giles isn’t really a cul de sac, did you know?
So what does it mean to be saved?
Last week I was sharing with men and women from all over Europe one in their admission of the truth of scripture and the Christian creeds. With me they were engaged in paving the road to salvation for people living in places as far apart as Iceland and Ukraine, England and Finland. To be saved, I think we all agreed, is to be drawn to God through Jesus and come onto the road of salvation destined for the Trinity.
As Paul writes to another of his companions, Timothy This is right and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God and one mediator between God and humankind, Christ Jesus, himself human, who gave himself as a ransom for all. (1 Timothy 2.3-6)
If God desires salvation for all he still requires our consent if we’re to move forward onto that road.
What is that road? Five thoughts.
It is a road into belonging. Our Lord prays his Father in today’s Gospel I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.
Salvation is a pathway into belonging to Jesus and his Father through their go-between, the Holy Spirit who seals our union in baptism, confirmation and eucharist. The road of salvation is a path through which isolated people can find belonging with us in the holy, catholic Church that can be renamed God’s never-ending family.
It is secondly a road into truth. To be saved is nothing less than to come to the knowledge of the truth. The wonderful, inclusive truth that is ours in Jesus our Saviour! At our conference in Josefstal, Bavaria we looked at the truth of scripture. A Lutheran professor, Karl Foitzik, gave us a helpful analogy. Biblical truth is communicated more in analogue than digital form. You know how precisely digital radios operate compared to the fuzziness of analogue sets. Expecting the bible to provide precise, literal truth, he said, was problematic. In our discussions we recognized the church as interpreter of scripture and our need to set issues such as homosexuality in a fuller context than literal prohibitions. The truth at stake in sexual ethics links to an age old understanding of the truth of marriage and sexual intercourse as the union of life-giving love by male and female. If the road to salvation is open to both homosexual and heterosexual it is arguable whether there can be a third state of life besides marriage and celibacy.
Back to the road. Salvation’s a road to belonging, truth and thirdly a way of compassion. Christianity got famous over love. ‘See how these Christians love one another’ they said at first. May people say it of us today!
Humanity and compassion are strongly linked and most often seen hand in hand where there is suffering. I find Buddhist teaching on spiritual detachment helpful. I do not find the image of the Buddha helpful. There is something that doesn’t resonate in a religious symbol of smiling contentment. For us this is the symbol – point to the Crucifix – and it is one with suffering humanity in every age. The salvation Christ offers is one that’s lit up the bed of suffering, the inner turmoil and psychological anguish of billions through the ages. The God shown us in Christ’s a God of compassion, which means literally one who suffers with you. Who indeed expects nothing of us that he’s not prepared to go through himself as he did on Calvary. Our altar stands by Calvary, our worship is Eucharistic, giving thanks for the Cross and determined to stay on the royal road of the Cross, the red carpet of salvation, til resurrection day of which every Sunday is anticipation.
What’s distinctive about Christian salvation is its capacity to go not against but beyond the grain of human nature into what seem to be impossible realms through empowerment by the grace of the Spirit.
So salvation is fourthly a road to empowerment. When the heart of God touches our heart it lifts the stones that lie over the springs of renewing grace. As we heard in today’s second reading from the book of Revelation chapter 22 verse 17: The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come.’ And let everyone who hears say, ‘Come.’ And let everyone who is thirsty come. Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift.The Spirit of God refreshes and empowers those on the Christian road. He can also break up the stoniness in our hearts like a heavenly microwave. The work of salvation takes us on a road the world so needs today, a road that builds mercy in the soul! The heart of God makes what is impossible for us possible through the possibilities of God – which makes it, lastly, is a road to holiness.
As we studied the bible for 8 days in Germany we recognized how its interpretation is not just about rational understanding. The best interpreters are the saints, the holy men and women who speak to us still from the faith of the church through the ages.
When we read the bible it’s got authority over us. If we’re submitted to the bible as God’s Word it will be his instrument. This doesn’t necessarily mean a literal understanding but a critical loyalty served by knowledge of the creed, engagement in Christian worship and obedience to God’s commandments.
Holiness is a quality of life that lights up the road of salvation to all who stand around enticing them to step on to it. Such holiness derives from trust in God’s promises in the bible as well as in God’s Spirit who comes upon us in prayer and worship.
We started with David and Nick laying out a road for economic recovery and moved to Paul and Luke.
Their road, our road is also a road for Britain today but it is more than that. It is the way we are charged with commending as Christians, a way into the heart of God no less and everlasting salvation.
It’s a laying out the red carpet towards belonging and truth, compassion, empowerment and holiness.
Thousands 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.
May the eucharist we celebrate make us better servants of sisters and brothers lost in life! May this morning’s worship hour lend us courage to lay out the red carpet for them by our words and deeds and by what God is making us in Christ. Amen.
Sunday, 2 May 2010
Easter 5 Election 2nd May 2010
We stand at an important junction in national life so let’s take guidance from the word of God as we prepare to play our part in the events of the coming week.
Today’s scripture was in place before Gordon Brown set 6th May. What do the lectionary readings for the fifth Sunday of Easter have to say to us?
The first reading from Acts has a hidden warning against putting our historic party allegiances too high on our agenda as we prepare to vote. Peter, a devout Jew, is taken to task in Acts 11 for associating with another party, the ‘uncircumcised’. The Jewish believers had picked up on how the Holy Spirit had fallen on Cornelius’ household as described in the previous chapter of Acts. Peter defends himself by describing a wondrous vision in which three times he’s pressed by God to eat what he saw as unclean food. The vision connected with a word from God that came to the centurion Cornelius. It seems Cornelius’ household was simultaneously prepared by God to welcome Peter’s visit and with it the good news of Jesus and empowerment in the Holy Spirit.
This passage shows God as utterly non-tribal. The God and Father of Jesus isn’t God of the Jews alone but God of the whole world. He’s God of St Giles and The Green Man to put it Horsted Keynes terms. The Holy Spirit is in principle just as available in the village as in church. Sometimes, as in the blessing of The Crown, there’s been opportunity to demonstrate that.
The Christian vision of God’s inclusivity is a challenge to the politics that defends an elite. It is refreshing to have our main political parties speaking so inclusively today. On paper none support second class citizenship in terms of race, sex, or sexual orientation. Nor an economic underclass – in principle! All main parties have strategies to foster both the creation and just distribution of wealth. All would subscribe to Britain’s global role in redressing past colonial exploitation but with different emphases. Policies on immigration make interesting reading! Some political groups are fuelling a base sort of nationalism hiding racist agendas under the national flag. The election campaign has a lot to teach us about a degree of demoralisation through pockets of poverty in our nation. When people are demoralised they’ll very readily turn to false saviours. This is what happened in Germany between the World Wars.
30 years ago I was priest in a mining village in Doncaster. It disturbs me to see the neglect of the former coal fields and how it has bred civic unrest there. Social ills have now led to an investigation of the Mayor and Council in Doncaster. Civic life depends on good citizenship. We get the leaders we deserve. It’s also true we can never dream up a political system that escapes the flaw of having to be delivered by sinful human beings. As T.S.Eliot wrote we dream of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good. Eliot may have been referring to Stalinist Russia but we might apply it to the demise of the western economy – Goldman Sachs – allied to naive, foolhardy or maybe wicked politics.
What’s the root of such political corruption? The real challenge in our society has been described as the transformation of consumers into citizens. People resist the call to public service through a self interest unconcerned about the common good beyond making sure they have the consumables they want and the neighbourhood watch functions in case others want to take these from them. The lack of readiness among people to take responsibility for civic life and the common good is quite alarming. Many of us live in the mini world of our household and the mega world of Facebook, Twitter and MSN leaving out the midi world of the local community.
Thursday’s election is a call for us to take responsibility afresh for our village, county and nation as the citizens we are.
Let’s move on to the second reading from the book of Revelation chapter 21. John the visionary speaks there of a new earth and heaven and a new Jerusalem. These new things are to be found already in the church on earth inasmuch as the resurrection of Jesus thrills through her life. That’s why we read Revelation in Eastertide. God does indeed dwell with men and women through Jesus veiled in word and sacrament. We’ve got his life in the Christian community. This life is a foretaste, a preview of forthcoming attractions, where mourning and crying and pain will be no more. Oh yes there’s mourning and crying and pain in the life of the Christian church as much as outside it - but it’s mourning, crying and pain sweetened by the Lord we know who’s with us. Jesus has drawn the sting of death and suffering for all who turn to him.
The vision of St John, the vision of the Christian scripture, is a now and then vision. What is then to be in a transformed universe is now present – this is the gospel.
I always take heart when I receive Holy Communion at the coronation altar in Westminster Abbey. Above it there’s a quotation from Revelation Chapter 11 verse 15: The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ.
When we think about who should serve us in Westminster or in the local council the vision thing’s as important as their personal integrity. One of the frequently heard complaints about this election campaign is the lack of vision for the transformation of society. And yet the electorate has been made suspicious of visionaries after the failure of both state socialism and laissez faire capitalism evidenced in their foul consequences.
What does it mean to seek that the kingdom of the world becomes the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ?
Certainly the Christian vision is a robust vision of inclusion. As I have written in the P&P and this week’s news sheet, as we vote we have a responsibility to think about the common good in our community, nation and world. We have a duty to ensure the each and every person has the opportunity to reach his or her full potential. If society is to change should it not benefit those who are hardest pressed?
The kingdom of God is nothing less than his reign. That’s not just for the new heaven and earth but for now. God reigns now where folk will let him in. I am praying that among our new MPs we might have a Wilberforce or two or three! It says in Proverbs 29 verse 18 that where there’s no vision the people perish. Away from God’s reign there’s mourning and crying and pain without consolation. Those who promote a vision of God help keep us faithful to enduring values that pave the way to a heavenly Jerusalem.
Lastly let’s see what we can glean from today’s Gospel from St John chapter 13.
A new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you. John 13.34
Love makes the world and the church go round. Last week we heard the diocesan missioner say to us that he thought the best sort of evangelism was a community that intrigued people with the love of Jesus.The vision thing centres in Christianity on loving God and your neighbour as yourself. It’s resourced by God’s love poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit as St Paul writes in Romans 5 verse 5.
As I have loved you – as God loves us – we’re to love one another. This is the Christian call and when it’s applied it brings transformation.
Wise politicians know their need of the voluntary sector. Communities can’t be built and neither can citizens be formed without people who’re prepared to put themselves out for others.
What’s the answer to the abortion rate? To family breakdown? To care for the elderly? To those who wish to legalise mercy killing?
The answer doesn’t lie so much in policies as in a spiritual revival bringing a fresh outpouring of love. A new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you.
Just to take one of my list, isn’t the problem of people wishing they were dead and not suffering linked not just to low pain tolerances but also to the lack of compassion around in our families? If people know they’re loved they can brave pain. You can cope with no end of hardship if you know you are loved.
Values come from vision and we need vision in our society. May Thursday bring some visionaries into public office, some of Christian conviction with a yearning for the new heaven and the new earth where righteousness dwells.
May the kingdom of this world advance a little towards becoming the kingdom of our God and of his Christ through this eucharist, through our prayer, through our voting on Thursday and through a new wave of the Holy Spirit pouring his love upon our village, county, nation and world. Amen.
Today’s scripture was in place before Gordon Brown set 6th May. What do the lectionary readings for the fifth Sunday of Easter have to say to us?
The first reading from Acts has a hidden warning against putting our historic party allegiances too high on our agenda as we prepare to vote. Peter, a devout Jew, is taken to task in Acts 11 for associating with another party, the ‘uncircumcised’. The Jewish believers had picked up on how the Holy Spirit had fallen on Cornelius’ household as described in the previous chapter of Acts. Peter defends himself by describing a wondrous vision in which three times he’s pressed by God to eat what he saw as unclean food. The vision connected with a word from God that came to the centurion Cornelius. It seems Cornelius’ household was simultaneously prepared by God to welcome Peter’s visit and with it the good news of Jesus and empowerment in the Holy Spirit.
This passage shows God as utterly non-tribal. The God and Father of Jesus isn’t God of the Jews alone but God of the whole world. He’s God of St Giles and The Green Man to put it Horsted Keynes terms. The Holy Spirit is in principle just as available in the village as in church. Sometimes, as in the blessing of The Crown, there’s been opportunity to demonstrate that.
The Christian vision of God’s inclusivity is a challenge to the politics that defends an elite. It is refreshing to have our main political parties speaking so inclusively today. On paper none support second class citizenship in terms of race, sex, or sexual orientation. Nor an economic underclass – in principle! All main parties have strategies to foster both the creation and just distribution of wealth. All would subscribe to Britain’s global role in redressing past colonial exploitation but with different emphases. Policies on immigration make interesting reading! Some political groups are fuelling a base sort of nationalism hiding racist agendas under the national flag. The election campaign has a lot to teach us about a degree of demoralisation through pockets of poverty in our nation. When people are demoralised they’ll very readily turn to false saviours. This is what happened in Germany between the World Wars.
30 years ago I was priest in a mining village in Doncaster. It disturbs me to see the neglect of the former coal fields and how it has bred civic unrest there. Social ills have now led to an investigation of the Mayor and Council in Doncaster. Civic life depends on good citizenship. We get the leaders we deserve. It’s also true we can never dream up a political system that escapes the flaw of having to be delivered by sinful human beings. As T.S.Eliot wrote we dream of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good. Eliot may have been referring to Stalinist Russia but we might apply it to the demise of the western economy – Goldman Sachs – allied to naive, foolhardy or maybe wicked politics.
What’s the root of such political corruption? The real challenge in our society has been described as the transformation of consumers into citizens. People resist the call to public service through a self interest unconcerned about the common good beyond making sure they have the consumables they want and the neighbourhood watch functions in case others want to take these from them. The lack of readiness among people to take responsibility for civic life and the common good is quite alarming. Many of us live in the mini world of our household and the mega world of Facebook, Twitter and MSN leaving out the midi world of the local community.
Thursday’s election is a call for us to take responsibility afresh for our village, county and nation as the citizens we are.
Let’s move on to the second reading from the book of Revelation chapter 21. John the visionary speaks there of a new earth and heaven and a new Jerusalem. These new things are to be found already in the church on earth inasmuch as the resurrection of Jesus thrills through her life. That’s why we read Revelation in Eastertide. God does indeed dwell with men and women through Jesus veiled in word and sacrament. We’ve got his life in the Christian community. This life is a foretaste, a preview of forthcoming attractions, where mourning and crying and pain will be no more. Oh yes there’s mourning and crying and pain in the life of the Christian church as much as outside it - but it’s mourning, crying and pain sweetened by the Lord we know who’s with us. Jesus has drawn the sting of death and suffering for all who turn to him.
The vision of St John, the vision of the Christian scripture, is a now and then vision. What is then to be in a transformed universe is now present – this is the gospel.
I always take heart when I receive Holy Communion at the coronation altar in Westminster Abbey. Above it there’s a quotation from Revelation Chapter 11 verse 15: The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ.
When we think about who should serve us in Westminster or in the local council the vision thing’s as important as their personal integrity. One of the frequently heard complaints about this election campaign is the lack of vision for the transformation of society. And yet the electorate has been made suspicious of visionaries after the failure of both state socialism and laissez faire capitalism evidenced in their foul consequences.
What does it mean to seek that the kingdom of the world becomes the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ?
Certainly the Christian vision is a robust vision of inclusion. As I have written in the P&P and this week’s news sheet, as we vote we have a responsibility to think about the common good in our community, nation and world. We have a duty to ensure the each and every person has the opportunity to reach his or her full potential. If society is to change should it not benefit those who are hardest pressed?
The kingdom of God is nothing less than his reign. That’s not just for the new heaven and earth but for now. God reigns now where folk will let him in. I am praying that among our new MPs we might have a Wilberforce or two or three! It says in Proverbs 29 verse 18 that where there’s no vision the people perish. Away from God’s reign there’s mourning and crying and pain without consolation. Those who promote a vision of God help keep us faithful to enduring values that pave the way to a heavenly Jerusalem.
Lastly let’s see what we can glean from today’s Gospel from St John chapter 13.
A new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you. John 13.34
Love makes the world and the church go round. Last week we heard the diocesan missioner say to us that he thought the best sort of evangelism was a community that intrigued people with the love of Jesus.The vision thing centres in Christianity on loving God and your neighbour as yourself. It’s resourced by God’s love poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit as St Paul writes in Romans 5 verse 5.
As I have loved you – as God loves us – we’re to love one another. This is the Christian call and when it’s applied it brings transformation.
Wise politicians know their need of the voluntary sector. Communities can’t be built and neither can citizens be formed without people who’re prepared to put themselves out for others.
What’s the answer to the abortion rate? To family breakdown? To care for the elderly? To those who wish to legalise mercy killing?
The answer doesn’t lie so much in policies as in a spiritual revival bringing a fresh outpouring of love. A new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you.
Just to take one of my list, isn’t the problem of people wishing they were dead and not suffering linked not just to low pain tolerances but also to the lack of compassion around in our families? If people know they’re loved they can brave pain. You can cope with no end of hardship if you know you are loved.
Values come from vision and we need vision in our society. May Thursday bring some visionaries into public office, some of Christian conviction with a yearning for the new heaven and the new earth where righteousness dwells.
May the kingdom of this world advance a little towards becoming the kingdom of our God and of his Christ through this eucharist, through our prayer, through our voting on Thursday and through a new wave of the Holy Spirit pouring his love upon our village, county, nation and world. Amen.
Sunday, 11 April 2010
Easter 2 'Who is this Jesus?' 11th April 2010
I want this morning to summarise the ‘Who is this Jesus?’ Holy Week course building on the words of the healed doubter in today’s Gospel from John 20 verse 28: Thomas answered Jesus, ‘My Lord and my God!’
We’ve been engaging with the question Christ himself addressed to Peter: 'Who do you say I am?'
The Scriptures provide at least eleven different names for Jesus which directly or indirectly affirm his divinity – God, as in Thomas’ response (John 20.28), Son of God, as in Peter's response, Only Begotten Son (cf Mark 12:6), the First and the Last (Rev 1:17), Alpha and Omega (Rev 1:8), The Holy One (Acts 3:14), The Lord (Acts 4:33…), Lord of All (Acts 10:36), The Lord of Glory (1 Cor 2:8), God with us (Matt 1:23), Our Great God (Titus 2:13), God Blessed Forever (Rom 9:5).
Some of these titles are used of Jesus again and again.
In his book 'What the Bible teaches' R.A.Torrey shows how the Scriptures affirm these propositions:
Jesus Christ is all-powerful, all-knowing and all-present. He is from all eternity, always the same, in the form of God.
In Christ dwells all the fullness of the Godhead in a bodily way.
Jesus is linked to our creation, preservation, the forgiveness of sin, the raising of the dead, judgement and the bestowal of eternal life.
Jesus Christ is a person to be worshipped by angels and mortals, even as God the Father is worshipped.
When we pick up the New Testament we can’t avoid the centrality of Jesus Christ and the repeated claim of his divinity which echoes on from that first affirmation of St. Peter.
'Who do you say I am?' asked Jesus in Matthew 16:15. 'Simon Peter answered, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God".Yet Jesus went on to say how it could be that people, starting with Simon Peter, could be given an aptitude to see his divinity:
Verse 17 goes on: 'Jesus replied, "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven.'
The Scriptures are essential to our seeing of Jesus but they’re inseparable from prayer, the Holy Spirit and the experience of his Church, which Christ goes on to elaborate.
'Who do you say Jesus is?' When someone reaches a firm answer, the conviction of his divinity they do so by a special grace, the scriptures say.
The Bible gives us the words, the pieces in the great puzzle of Jesus - what an awesome puzzle it is!
The pieces are to be fitted together around a living Person who is before us this morning if what the Spirit has said to the Church for 2000 years is true.
You may protest. Surely the knowledge that Jesus is 'Son of the living God' is something that can be reasonably proved as well as something to be received by grace through faith?
Fr. Prat of the Society of Jesus defines faith with this in mind: 'Faith is the amen of the intelligence and the will to divine revelation.'
It’s absolutely true. We can hear about Jesus, we can even believe notionally - in our heads - that he is God incarnate - but it may make no difference to our lives.
I believe Mongolia is in-between Russian and China but that belief makes very little difference to my life. I have prayed once or twice for Mongolia but I have never been there and have no friends from there.
Yet I believe also in the resurrection of the dead. I have not experienced that either, but it has come real to me through One whom I trust, who has himself experienced resurrection and who has promised me a share as well when I die!
It is the Jesus we are talking of who has promised me this!
'Christ is as great as your faith makes him' said the evangelist D.L.Moody.
The question of Jesus 'who do you say that I am?' has in fact a billion answers.
When we talk of a person, as we talk of Jesus, if we believe him to be alive, who he is to us has as many answers as Jesus has friends let alone seekers or people who barely know his name!
Someone was on the tube and overheard a teacher with a group of children who were asked about the founder of Christianity and heard them all draw a blank!
Someone also overheard a girl in Jewellers asking for a Cross, but for one, to use her words, 'without the little man on'!
My own personal testimony about Jesus is very much that of someone who was given all the facts of Jesus at School and welcomed a day when the pieces came together around the living Lord.
For years I have prayed for people who are nominal Christians formed in a Christian society, that they will allow the Holy Spirit to put the pieces of the jigsaw together - all those biblical truths I mentioned earlier.
Now I pray that people will be drawn by the Spirit to get the facts, the pieces of the greatest and most wonderful puzzle in the world, so that they can fit them together.
Who do you say Jesus is? Very often the only copy of the gospels people see are Christians - they get to the Scriptures only after Jesus has drawn them through Christians.
There may be ignorance of Jesus around but there are also images of him around that we need to shatter sometimes for people to do real business with the Lord.
Like Jesus 'meek and mild', the effeminate image on holy cards. Our Lord is meek, but he is also the strong Shepherd of souls, the leader and pioneer of our faith.
Or take Jesus 'Superstar', the 'coolest' guy of all. Well there is no one like Jesus, but his uniqueness lies more in his call to suffer for us and with us than to shine above us as hero.
Some Christians give the impression that Jesus is like a sort of 'heavenly security blanket' there to help us escape facing up to reality and almost an escape from the responsibilities of life.
One could go on but undoubtedly the distinctive feature of Christianity is the claim to divinity of Jesus Christ and its implications for all who encounter this distinctive.
Anyone investigating Jesus Christ through encounter with the Christian Church, her Gospels, Creeds and Councils cannot escape the question of his divinity and all that implies.
Who do you say Jesus is? There can be a moment when the full implications burst upon us.
The missionary Roland Allen in his book 'The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church' describes the force of the testimony of a new believer, something that may well echo in many of our hearts as we listen to the description:
'He speaks from the heart because he is too eager to be able to refrain from speaking. His subject has gripped him. He speaks of what he knows, and knows by experience. The truth which he imparts is his own truth. He knows its force. He is speaking almost as much to relieve his own mind as to convert his hearer, and yet he is as eager to convert his hearer as to relieve his own mind; for his mind can only be relieved by sharing his new truth, and his truth is not shared until another has received it. This his hearer realises. Inevitably he is moved by it.'
For those of us who accept Jesus as Son of God there remains a continual call to answer the same question 'Who do you say that I am?' as part of the call to intimacy with God that Jesus brings us.
Few writers in past years have shed as much light on the issues facing Christianity as did Thomas Merton who lived as a Trappist monk and died in the late 1960s. It was on a rare visit to the town near his monastery when the truth he had previously accepted of Jesus took on a new dimension, what he called a 'second conversion' to humankind.
As he walked briefly in the crowd he felt deep in his Spirit what he called 'the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate'.
Merton spoke of his Christianity beginning 'with the realisation of the presence of God in this present life, in the world and in myself, and that my task as Christian is to live in full and vital awareness of this 'ground of my being and of the world's being.' p320.
To live in Christ is to share immortal being in the Spirit. To Thomas Merton a dwelling upon and a facing up to death are essential as a means of deepening one's being into Christ and His victory.
It is the octave day of Easter and we come back to another Thomas – St Thomas who addressed Christ saying My Lord and my God.
Our basic optimism as Christians is rooted in the belief that in Jesus, God, has come earth, lived, died and rose….ed for the survival of the Church as guilty of an implicit denial of Christ's victory.
Yet it is that phrase 'I am a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate' that struck me in bringing up Thomas Merton.
By accepting the divinity of Christ we are granted purpose for life and reason for death. As Christians Eastertide is fro us the renewal of enduring joy at the coming of Jesus, which is the springboard of lasting hope for the human condition.
'Who do you say that I am' 'You are the Christ, the Son of the living God'.
What greater source of joy can there be for a human being than the knowledge of the salvation and dignity granted to us all by the coming of Jesus?
The birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus have put this planet, and one race within it, on the map of the universe opening up to us the possibility of endless life and communion with God the Blessed Trinity!
Yet for both our minds and hearts to say 'Amen' to Jesus we need to take his yoke - which means bending ourselves down before him.
For Jesus to take a deeper grasp of our lives we must come ever closer to him ourselves by acts of faith and love.
Let us close with the words of a hymn by Charles Wesley:
Jesus, confirm my heart's desire
To work and speak and think for thee;
Still let me guard the holy fire,
And still stir up thy gift in me.
Ready for all thy perfect will,
My acts of faith and love repeat,
Till death thy endless mercies seal,
And make my sacrifice complete.
We’ve been engaging with the question Christ himself addressed to Peter: 'Who do you say I am?'
The Scriptures provide at least eleven different names for Jesus which directly or indirectly affirm his divinity – God, as in Thomas’ response (John 20.28), Son of God, as in Peter's response, Only Begotten Son (cf Mark 12:6), the First and the Last (Rev 1:17), Alpha and Omega (Rev 1:8), The Holy One (Acts 3:14), The Lord (Acts 4:33…), Lord of All (Acts 10:36), The Lord of Glory (1 Cor 2:8), God with us (Matt 1:23), Our Great God (Titus 2:13), God Blessed Forever (Rom 9:5).
Some of these titles are used of Jesus again and again.
In his book 'What the Bible teaches' R.A.Torrey shows how the Scriptures affirm these propositions:
Jesus Christ is all-powerful, all-knowing and all-present. He is from all eternity, always the same, in the form of God.
In Christ dwells all the fullness of the Godhead in a bodily way.
Jesus is linked to our creation, preservation, the forgiveness of sin, the raising of the dead, judgement and the bestowal of eternal life.
Jesus Christ is a person to be worshipped by angels and mortals, even as God the Father is worshipped.
When we pick up the New Testament we can’t avoid the centrality of Jesus Christ and the repeated claim of his divinity which echoes on from that first affirmation of St. Peter.
'Who do you say I am?' asked Jesus in Matthew 16:15. 'Simon Peter answered, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God".Yet Jesus went on to say how it could be that people, starting with Simon Peter, could be given an aptitude to see his divinity:
Verse 17 goes on: 'Jesus replied, "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven.'
The Scriptures are essential to our seeing of Jesus but they’re inseparable from prayer, the Holy Spirit and the experience of his Church, which Christ goes on to elaborate.
'Who do you say Jesus is?' When someone reaches a firm answer, the conviction of his divinity they do so by a special grace, the scriptures say.
The Bible gives us the words, the pieces in the great puzzle of Jesus - what an awesome puzzle it is!
The pieces are to be fitted together around a living Person who is before us this morning if what the Spirit has said to the Church for 2000 years is true.
You may protest. Surely the knowledge that Jesus is 'Son of the living God' is something that can be reasonably proved as well as something to be received by grace through faith?
Fr. Prat of the Society of Jesus defines faith with this in mind: 'Faith is the amen of the intelligence and the will to divine revelation.'
It’s absolutely true. We can hear about Jesus, we can even believe notionally - in our heads - that he is God incarnate - but it may make no difference to our lives.
I believe Mongolia is in-between Russian and China but that belief makes very little difference to my life. I have prayed once or twice for Mongolia but I have never been there and have no friends from there.
Yet I believe also in the resurrection of the dead. I have not experienced that either, but it has come real to me through One whom I trust, who has himself experienced resurrection and who has promised me a share as well when I die!
It is the Jesus we are talking of who has promised me this!
'Christ is as great as your faith makes him' said the evangelist D.L.Moody.
The question of Jesus 'who do you say that I am?' has in fact a billion answers.
When we talk of a person, as we talk of Jesus, if we believe him to be alive, who he is to us has as many answers as Jesus has friends let alone seekers or people who barely know his name!
Someone was on the tube and overheard a teacher with a group of children who were asked about the founder of Christianity and heard them all draw a blank!
Someone also overheard a girl in Jewellers asking for a Cross, but for one, to use her words, 'without the little man on'!
My own personal testimony about Jesus is very much that of someone who was given all the facts of Jesus at School and welcomed a day when the pieces came together around the living Lord.
For years I have prayed for people who are nominal Christians formed in a Christian society, that they will allow the Holy Spirit to put the pieces of the jigsaw together - all those biblical truths I mentioned earlier.
Now I pray that people will be drawn by the Spirit to get the facts, the pieces of the greatest and most wonderful puzzle in the world, so that they can fit them together.
Who do you say Jesus is? Very often the only copy of the gospels people see are Christians - they get to the Scriptures only after Jesus has drawn them through Christians.
There may be ignorance of Jesus around but there are also images of him around that we need to shatter sometimes for people to do real business with the Lord.
Like Jesus 'meek and mild', the effeminate image on holy cards. Our Lord is meek, but he is also the strong Shepherd of souls, the leader and pioneer of our faith.
Or take Jesus 'Superstar', the 'coolest' guy of all. Well there is no one like Jesus, but his uniqueness lies more in his call to suffer for us and with us than to shine above us as hero.
Some Christians give the impression that Jesus is like a sort of 'heavenly security blanket' there to help us escape facing up to reality and almost an escape from the responsibilities of life.
One could go on but undoubtedly the distinctive feature of Christianity is the claim to divinity of Jesus Christ and its implications for all who encounter this distinctive.
Anyone investigating Jesus Christ through encounter with the Christian Church, her Gospels, Creeds and Councils cannot escape the question of his divinity and all that implies.
Who do you say Jesus is? There can be a moment when the full implications burst upon us.
The missionary Roland Allen in his book 'The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church' describes the force of the testimony of a new believer, something that may well echo in many of our hearts as we listen to the description:
'He speaks from the heart because he is too eager to be able to refrain from speaking. His subject has gripped him. He speaks of what he knows, and knows by experience. The truth which he imparts is his own truth. He knows its force. He is speaking almost as much to relieve his own mind as to convert his hearer, and yet he is as eager to convert his hearer as to relieve his own mind; for his mind can only be relieved by sharing his new truth, and his truth is not shared until another has received it. This his hearer realises. Inevitably he is moved by it.'
For those of us who accept Jesus as Son of God there remains a continual call to answer the same question 'Who do you say that I am?' as part of the call to intimacy with God that Jesus brings us.
Few writers in past years have shed as much light on the issues facing Christianity as did Thomas Merton who lived as a Trappist monk and died in the late 1960s. It was on a rare visit to the town near his monastery when the truth he had previously accepted of Jesus took on a new dimension, what he called a 'second conversion' to humankind.
As he walked briefly in the crowd he felt deep in his Spirit what he called 'the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate'.
Merton spoke of his Christianity beginning 'with the realisation of the presence of God in this present life, in the world and in myself, and that my task as Christian is to live in full and vital awareness of this 'ground of my being and of the world's being.' p320.
To live in Christ is to share immortal being in the Spirit. To Thomas Merton a dwelling upon and a facing up to death are essential as a means of deepening one's being into Christ and His victory.
It is the octave day of Easter and we come back to another Thomas – St Thomas who addressed Christ saying My Lord and my God.
Our basic optimism as Christians is rooted in the belief that in Jesus, God, has come earth, lived, died and rose….ed for the survival of the Church as guilty of an implicit denial of Christ's victory.
Yet it is that phrase 'I am a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate' that struck me in bringing up Thomas Merton.
By accepting the divinity of Christ we are granted purpose for life and reason for death. As Christians Eastertide is fro us the renewal of enduring joy at the coming of Jesus, which is the springboard of lasting hope for the human condition.
'Who do you say that I am' 'You are the Christ, the Son of the living God'.
What greater source of joy can there be for a human being than the knowledge of the salvation and dignity granted to us all by the coming of Jesus?
The birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus have put this planet, and one race within it, on the map of the universe opening up to us the possibility of endless life and communion with God the Blessed Trinity!
Yet for both our minds and hearts to say 'Amen' to Jesus we need to take his yoke - which means bending ourselves down before him.
For Jesus to take a deeper grasp of our lives we must come ever closer to him ourselves by acts of faith and love.
Let us close with the words of a hymn by Charles Wesley:
Jesus, confirm my heart's desire
To work and speak and think for thee;
Still let me guard the holy fire,
And still stir up thy gift in me.
Ready for all thy perfect will,
My acts of faith and love repeat,
Till death thy endless mercies seal,
And make my sacrifice complete.
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