Trinity 8 (17th of Year B) 29th July 2012

The Olympics are here and the whole world is coming to London.

They’re coming either by plane or London’s going to them by satellite.

International travel has its moments as many of us will know.

Pity the Japanese tourist who took the train to Heathrow for a flight to Reading.  She asked in broken English for Turkey and they put her on the night train to Torquay. The police found her wandering along the sea front of Torquay in the early morning looking for the Church of Santa Sophia on the Bosphorus. She thought she’d gone through the Channel Tunnel to Turkey!

We should never minimise the implications of miscommunication. Just one mistaken word for this lady took her dramatically off course.

How about communicating what we stand for as Christians?

I think the two main things we need to get across are these: God is good and the Church is OK.

Let’s take God’s goodness first.

Deep down people want to believe there’s a good God. It’s when they encounter horrid things and horrid people that faith crumbles. To use my story as an analogy, they get misled from Christianity and head for Torquay not Turkey – apologies to the West Country!

I have regular conversations with people in the village who question God’s goodness in the face of evil. They run, say on the Oregon cinema shootings, ‘what a waste of life – how can God allow it?’

No full answer can be given but, given chance, I would say I saw God’s goodness in the young man who gave himself for his girl friend by throwing himself over her to die in a hail of bullets.

If you condemn the Creator for the wickedness in the world you’re mainly condemning him for granting human beings the freedom to make their own choices.

70% of all website ‘hits’ worldwide are to pornographic sites. Would you use that as an excuse to condemn the internet when it hosts so many valuable social networks?

When it generates so much creativity through the sharing of ideas?

You have to take the rough with the smooth and that’s a truth that goes right into the heart of God. The Cross of Jesus shows what wickedness does to God (1 Peter 2:24). Can you look at the Cross and say he doesn’t care about it? In Christian faith we have a God who suffers along with us, and comforts us in our weakness. God uses our suffering, as he did even in that Oregon cinema, to help us support one another in the face of evil.

As Christians we’ll always struggle to communicate to non-believers that God is good. We can argue as I’ve just done but our arguments are often undermined by our lifestyle. Our living a good life counts most in getting God’s goodness over to others. We need ‘to walk the talk’. For that we need God’s help, which is one reason we’re here on a Sunday.

God is good and the Church is OK. Do you believe it? Unless you do you’ll never be an evangelist.

There’s a widespread perception that Christians are hypocrites.

A hypocrite is someone who pretends. I don’t pretend Jesus has the truth or is the truth – I know it - but I try also not to pretend I fall short of him.

It’s hard!

If someone says they believe in Jesus, but his followers are hypocrites, they’re partly right. They’ll need advising that if they follow Jesus they too will get called hypocrites. It goes with the calling.

Jesus gives us a vision. We try to live up to it - and we fail.

Where would we be though without the vision Jesus gives? We’d be heading for Torquay not Turkey! We’d have a wrong aim in life.

Having his standards is like having your alarm clock set half an hour ahead to make sure you’re never late!

Jesus taught things that would keep us on our toes, pressing forwards towards his perfect standard.

Forgive your brother or sister from your heart he says (Matthew 18:35). Everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart (Matthew 6:28). Do not worry about your life (Matthew 6:25).

I regularly confess I fall short. Jesus teaches we should confess. Every church service includes confessing our failings.  Jesus never said his followers would live up to him, but he did say they should strive to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect (Matthew 5:48).

In the Bible we read how people who cheated other people came to Jesus and were forgiven - people who’d stolen - who’d sold their bodies for sex – all came to Jesus and were welcomed.

Ephesians Chapter 2 verse 4 says God is rich in mercy. If someone tells me they believe in Jesus but Christians are hypocrites I’ll tell them how the mercy of God covers my sins.

I’ll tell them of the God and Father of Jesus who loves sinners and gives them not what they most deserve but what they most need.

If the church falls short of Jesus it’s also true that Christians need the church.

When people complain about the non-Ok-ness of the Church I ask them how I can better get close to Jesus than through the church?

Where else can I hear God’s word expounded? Or encounter the Lord by praying with other believers? Or welcome the promised Holy Spirit?

Where but in the fellowship of the Christian church can I receive the spiritual food of the precious body and blood of Jesus in Holy Communion?

A great evangelist had a fireside chat with a young man who insisted you could believe in Jesus without going to church.

Having reminded him that faith in Jesus grows up in a community, the evangelist reached down for the fire tongs and took hold of a brightly burning coal.

As he held it aloft the two men saw it change from red to orange to black. The young man was in church the next Sunday!

Even if there is hypocrisy in the church Jesus is there also, among his people, waiting to warm their souls.

That’s the best answer we can give. It’s Jesus’ own answer. Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them (Matthew 18:20)

Here we are - gathered before a good God in a church that’s being made OK by him through what he is to give us this morning in word and sacrament.

Trinity 6 Sunday 15th July 2012

It’s the preacher’s default to distil the three readings into one truth and spell that truth out to mind, heart and will.

This week for a change I’m going to resist that and take the readings one by one in their own right.

On this 15th Ordinary Sunday and sixth Sunday after Trinity we have:

Amos 7.7-15 which gives insight into the necessary tension between where a religious body is and where it should be moving to.

Ephesians 1.3-14 which is the earliest eucharistic prayer listing with thanksgiving the great blessings of Christian faith.

Mark 6.14-29 which describes how St John the Baptist lost his head.

So let’s start with Amos. Scripture calls him a prophet but he himself denies it if you look at the end of the first reading. I am no prophet, nor a prophet’s son; but I am a herdsman, and a dresser of sycamore trees, and the Lord took me from following the flock, and the Lord said to me, “Go, prophesy to my people Israel.”

In scripture prophets and priests are linked respectively to challenging and maintaining the status quo. In our passage Amaziah, the priest of Bethel is a sort of Dean of Westminster Abbey of his day as an appointee of the King of Israel. Even the band of prophets were King’s men in those days. This is why Amos says he’s no prophet’s son. Though a herdsman, and a dresser of sycamore trees, God took him saying “Go, prophesy to my people Israel.”

Last Sunday our status quo as a religious community was challenged as we reflected together. Was Fr Keith an Amos like figure? Whatever – but I felt there was something of a shaking out of complacency as God, set a plumb line or marker against us.

We were reminded that we need more church members and all of us need to take more responsibility for bringing them in.

I would go further: sheep produce sheep, not shepherds. If 8th July raises more fervour for each one to reach one that will prove its worth for the inspiring half day it was.

Then we heard how we as a church are ‘fundamentally uncool’ to young people. That’s unsettling! More so our priest isn’t so cool – positively discomforting!

If the Holy Spirit is the Comforter he’s also the dis-comforter. As he used Amos, he’ll use some of the thoughts received last Sunday to get us all on our toes, priest and people. Please pray for Thursday’s PCC as we shape up our strategy from Sunday’s input.

The Ephesians passage counts God’s blessings, as we also had reason to do last Sunday. If you weren’t there - I announced a grant of £50,000 towards enlarging and upgrading the Martindale kitchen, converting the toilet by the main entrance into a disabled WC and forming a large window in the north wall of the main hall. This grant from the Verity Waterlow Trust has been augmented by a £10,000 gift from Derek Crowson leaving us £10,000 short of the £70,000 we need for the work. Last Sunday another £1,000 was pledged towards this work, set for mid-November, and further donations are welcome to bridge the funding gap of £9,000.

When people are generous with God they’re giving back in gratitude for all God gives to them. Just look through that second reading...It speaks of our adoption as God’s children, our redemption through Christ’s blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, ...the obtain(ing of) an inheritance...and the seal of the... Holy Spirit.

God who’s given us his dear Son Jesus Christ has given us all things in him. The money to be invested in the Martindale furthers God’s plan in Horsted Keynes that’s part of his plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.

One of the challenges set forth last Sunday was to build relationships between the church and the village, especially through the Martindale, so all that we know to be precious, the things Paul lists in the reading, may be made evident to those around us.

Through the various enterprises in the Martindale church members and non-church members engage. Through our prayers, and its refurbishment, we look to them engaging with St Giles more fruitfully for the good of young and old in Horsted Keynes.

I said earlier that Ephesians 1.3-14 is one of the earliest eucharistic prayers – eucharistic meaning thanksgiving. The passage lists God’s mighty work among us in Jesus Christ. Our facilitator spoke of critical mass and the mass as critical. Of St Giles need to build a critical mass eg of youth for outreach and also to see the mass or eucharist as critical since it has in it the wherewithal to help us do what God wants us to do.

The more thankful we are, the more we live Ephesians 1 and the eucharist, the less inhibited we’ll be by pride and foolish self reliance as a Christian community. Self reliance is the major obstacle to hearts opening and being enthused by Jesus Christ who calls us as a church into greater dependence upon him.

In the Gospel account from Mark 6 of John’s beheading I was tempted to see my own fate as uncool leader of an uncool church! When the Bishop of Guyana was with us last week he’d wisdom about engaging youth. Yes John the Baptist got beheaded for his forthrightness but he also won respect from his hearers for it, and a place in the church calendar. People, young people especially, as Bishop Moss reminded us, feel they can engage with folk who’ve a definite and not a shifting world view. It’s the people prepared at times to tell us it as it is that are end up being most formative in our lives.

I visited an atheist recently who dragged me over the coals for an hour but for all of that I sensed he was in serious pursuit of the truth that I am about, despite the time he gave me. So with King Herod and St John the Baptist. When Herod heard John, he was greatly perplexed; and yet he liked to listen to him.

Truth speaks to power. Christianity is true. There is a God who both made us and loves us. As we witness to that, something inside of people is stirred, even if, as Fr Keith reminded us last Sunday, surveys show that it takes seven such stirrings before folk start coming to church.

For 1000 years the Christian community here at St Giles has been a generation away from extinction. The truth of what we stand for is a counter to the powerful apathy and unbelief around us. We shouldn’t lose heart but take courage to be forthright at time about the truth we share - even if it costs. You won’t lose your head in Horsted Keynes!

If there is a theme through today it is prophetic in that way. Amos and John the Baptist encourage us to speak the truth God lays on our hearts with courage and prudence. Paul in our second reading calls us to fresh awareness of all God has given us in Christ which will energise our faith.

In seeking a critical Mass for growth here we shall indeed do well to see the Mass as critical. Let’s then be open now in a quiet moment to what God is giving us this morning in the table of the word and the altar of communion so we can gratefully seize upon his leading.

Vision day sermon by the Rector Sunday 8th July 2012

This morning’s eucharist extends to include our vision day and so this sermon will have a ‘state of the church’ feel.

In today’s Old Testament reading we heard how Israel united around David as King. This contrasts with St Mark’s account of the controversy that surrounded and still surrounds the Son of David, Jesus Christ.

Where did this man get all this? They say. Is not this the carpenter?

Who is this Jesus? remains the question central to the church’s vision and mission. Is this person what the creed says he is - God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God - or is he not?

Belief in the divinity of Christ is as heavily eroded in Horsted Keynes as in any part of our post-Christian society. I say this on the basis of a good number of conversations with locals. The historic divisions of Christianity between Catholic, Evangelical and Liberal shrink before this greater division.

Is Jesus the Son of God or is he not? We believe he is. How do we best live and act to as to intrigue people about Jesus so they see in him the God who made them and loves them? How can St Giles Church better help our village believe in God Father, Son and Holy Spirit? That’s going to be the biggest question for St Giles Church in any generation - being true to what and who we’re founded for.

As a small community within a small community we feel the rub of the words said about Jesus in today’s Gospel: ‘prophets are not without honour, except in their home town’. Villagers see us and they also see through us. It’s hard to do evangelism in a ‘knocking on doors’ form in a village. We ‘just’ need to get ourselves to be more intriguing Christians. I say ‘just’ – in Guyana we have a frustrating phrase people use when asked to do something which is ‘just now’. It can mean anything from a minute to a month! Becoming an intriguing Christian community is a Guyanese ‘just now’ business. It’s not a ‘fast food’ process but ‘slow cooking’ as we open ourselves to scripture, sacrament and the disciplines of prayer and spiritual direction.

I’ve got great expectations of today in that God is with us and we must expect great things of him - but I can’t see any short cut to the call we each of us have to immerse ourselves more fully in the Holy Spirit through renewed discipleship. We can’t be disciples without discipline.

The three headings of our current Mission Action Plan appeal to such wholeheartedness.  Our MAP is about perceived needs and serving them in an ongoing way.

Within the big vision we share as a church – God’s glory and the salvation of the world – we have a focus: renewing our worship, engaging with youth and families and enhancing our buildings.

Three years on how are we delivering on these and what are the areas of need some of us might supply as the Lord leads them?

First renewing worship.  Later on we want more of your wisdom. On the Looking Forward programme card we listed some achievements like the lay involvement in prayer ministry for individuals now offered after the monthly all age eucharist. This involved 10 people in training with Acorn Christian foundation. Then our monthly St Giles night has been largely concerned to provide a spiritual focus. You can be sure of that on Tuesday when we go Caribbean at the Rectory with the Bishop of Guyana!  The card mentions the extra midweek eucharists. Quite often we get into double figures now.

Where are there openings to serve? We need another Sacristan to work with Colin and Lisa. Are there musicians keen to form an occasional band? Are there singers keen to join an occasional adult choir? Are there church members ready to share about how their faith relates to their life and work? A number of our members missing on Sunday due to work and family pressures gain spiritual nourishment in London Churches or elsewhere. Renewing worship is about refreshing our spiritual lives and we all gain from those ready to share how they do it, as Simon Witheridge shared earlier in the year. Renewing the prayerfulness of those who worship comes before changing service formats important as they are.

Our second mission action priority has been to engage with youth and families. Later on we want your wisdom on more helpful action. On the card we mention how Sunday Club continues apace thanks to Anne, Chris, Helen, Val and helpers. The monthly Junior Choir is at a turning point now Laura has stepped down.  Liaison with the school is close thanks to Marion and both the governors and school assembly teams. I’m sure there is potential for mission unrealised in our Church School and some of you will have ideas on this. First Steps builds links with young families thanks to the team led by Chris who’s also involved in recovering the village youth club provision.

How can we better engage with youth and families? I suggest we all pray harder about this as so many pressures are against us. There’s talk of a family friendly happening after the monthly all age eucharist. Filling in for Laura may be as simple as this. Katie, Chris and parents could lead if someone volunteered to accompany choir on the piano for half an hour on Monday’s at 6pm. There must be a good few who play the piano in Church this morning. The next Choir is on St Giles Festival on 9^th September.

Our third mission action priority has been to enhance buildings for better witness.

Over the last three years we’ve seen a lot of work on church primarily the refurbishment of the sacristy and vestry areas, the stabilising of the spire and introduction of glazed doors as well as the new high altar kneeler. The porch is now more of a welcoming statement. Friends of Horsted Keynes Church have formed up, a great lift to us all at St Giles. A lot of work has gone into agreeing the best site for a church toilet and we are in conversation with individuals whose generosity may help to move paper plans into a process of consultation and delivery but we’re talking hundreds of thousands. Such building plans put a sharp perspective on our finances and the failure to pay our parish share in full. The answer to this lies in church growth -  getting more folk coming to Church - for which this day might be an inspiration. Meanwhile David and the finance team are working on a five year finance plan that will be affected by next month’s five yearly inspection of Church.

The second prong of the enhancing of buildings for better use concerning the Martindale has no such red or amber light but a green one. I can announce exceedingly good news - a grant of £50,000 towards enlarging and upgrading the kitchen, converting the toilet by the main entrance into a disabled WC and forming a large window in the north wall of the main hall.  This comes from the Verity Waterlow Trust set up from the endowment of a lady at Westall House who left her estate to benefit the elderly in Horsted Keynes and Forest Row.  The grant comes conditional on our funding the additional cost of the works. David Jenkins has drawn up plans and obtained five quotations, the lowest of which is approx £70,000 including a contingency sum.  Mr Crowson has put his name down for £10,000 of the outstanding sum of £20,000 required.  The PCC has acted in faith to underwrite the remaining £10,000 towards the refurbishment so that the work can proceed in the autumn. We are seeking funding from villagers as well as applying to trusts outside the parish sympathetic to the Martindale’s service of the community. You can see the plans today and we would welcome donations to bridge the funding gap of £10,000.

I hope what I’ve shared is both encouraging and challenging. God in Christ is at work among us answering our prayers and challenging us to deeper discipleship. In some ways St Giles stands distinctive, over against the community, in proclaiming Jesus Christ as Unique Son of God and Saviour. In other ways we stand alongside the village favoured by much good will, as in the Martindale refurbishment.  There is work to do, nevertheless, and we want all aboard on this progressing work.

Trinity 4 1st July 2012

I want us to get into the gospel reading this morning. We stood with attention to hear it read because the church bids us hear the words and acts of Jesus as if he were present to speak and act today. It’s that sort of understanding I want to hold you to as we sit and read it again together in four sections.

Verses 21-24 When Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered round him; and he was by the lake. 22Then one of the leaders of the synagogue named Jairus came and, when he saw him, fell at his feet 23and begged him repeatedly, ‘My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live.’ 24So he went with him. And a large crowd followed him and pressed in on him.

Some background information. By Mark Chapter 5 we see Jesus  getting well into his public ministry which is continually opposed by the Jewish leaders. Jairus was a Jewish leader and came from a group in Capernaum opposed to what Jesus was teaching about God being God of all and not just God of the Jews.

Why did Jairus approach Jesus? He was in deep trouble and must have sensed behind the arguments people had with Jesus something about this man that could help. Very often I find people who don’t want the church’s preaching are more than happy to receive the church’s prayer. Jairus came also out of love for his daughter. People want the best for their children.

How did Jesus respond? He made himself immediately available. I was at a priests’ meeting two weeks ago when we were reminded that availability is part of sacrifice and at the heart of the ministerial priesthood. Jesus didn’t put Jairus on his to do list he went with him right away.

Let’s read on v35-37. As we do so I should note the Gosepl passage selected skips over v25-34, the account of the healing of the woman with an issue of blood who touches his cloak on the way to Jairus’ house which explains the first phrase While he was still speaking:

35 While he was still speaking, some people came from the leader’s house to say, ‘Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?’ 36But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the leader of the synagogue, ‘Do not fear, only believe.’ 37He allowed no one to follow him except Peter, James, and John, the brother of James.

His friends came to break the sad news to Jairus. ‘Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?’ It was only natural to stop Jesus coming. All was over. But was it? In dealing with Jesus we’re dealing with God in human form and the possibilities of God exceed human imagination. As we heard in the first reading God did not make death, and he does not delight in the death of the living (rather he) created us for incorruption, and made us in the image of his own eternity. Christ’s resurrection revealed his divinity. It helps us look death in the face. Here in the raising of Jairus’ daughter we see the trailer if you like to the great drama to come.

Do not fear, only believe. Put faith in the One who is stronger than the evil you fear. To put faith in God – in Jesus – is to recognise your humble place and to invite the greatness of God to touch our situation. Two men looked through prison bars. One saw mud and one saw stars. The woman or man of faith has an eye trained above and not too down to earth. These words of Jesus are an encouragement as we approach our vision day next Sunday knowing something of our needs as a Church – a new choir leader is needed for example. Where will they come from? Do not fear, only believe.

37He allowed no one to follow him except Peter, James, and John, the brother of James. Perhaps these three were privileged because their faith in Jesus was that bit firmer than the rest.

Let’s read v38-40 38When they came to the house of the leader of the synagogue, he saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. 39When he had entered, he said to them, ‘Why do you make a commotion and weep? The child is not dead but sleeping.’ 40And they laughed at him. Then he put them all outside, and took the child’s father and mother and those who were with him, and went in where the child was.

Mark’s Gospel is the earliest and simplest of the four. Sometimes you can see the raw account he gives tidied up in Matthew and Luke who largely copy Mark. What an emotional roller coaster you see in these verses as the people turn from weeping and wailing loudly so that they laughed at Jesus. When we lose someone we love it can feel as if our whole being is torn apart emotions and all. Jesus himself knew this. We know he wept once at the death of (his) a friend (Lazarus).

(Any one know who Jesus once wept for? The shortest verse in the Bible - John 11v35 - Lazarus.)

The child is not dead but sleeping. In those words Jesus tells us the full picture of death. Death is a sleep from which there will be an awakening for judgement. This is why we have St Giles cemetery which means, from the Greek, St Giles ‘sleeping place’. It is this understanding that lies behind church and school rules that honour and preserve the peace of the cemetery.

Let’s read the last section verses 41-43 41He took her by the hand and said to her, ‘Talitha cum’, which means, ‘Little girl, get up!’ 42And immediately the girl got up and began to walk about (she was twelve years of age). At this they were overcome with amazement. 43He strictly ordered them that no one should know this, and told them to give her something to eat.

In v40 we read how Jesus put them all outside before he worked his miracle. Those who making so much noise and who lacked faith were a hindrance to what he was about.

Notice the determination of Jesus. When we bring God into a situation he helps settle and determine things.

‘Talitha cum’, which means, ‘Little girl, get up!’ Here rarely, because the Gospels were written in Greek, we’re given the actual words spoken by Jesus in Aramaic. In those days little girls weren’t thought of as highly as they are today. It was an extraordinary thing for Jesus to leave the crowd to visit a young girl and speak in love to her as he did. Jesus Christ, though for his own reasons he excluded women from his apostles, did more to raise the profile and dignity of women than any other major religious leader in history.

So we have the miracle, a great wonder as Jairus’ daughter is resuscitated. And a lovely last touch, reminding us that God is never unconcerned about our lesser matters, he told them to give her something to eat.

So we meet with Jesus this morning knowing not only will he give us himself as food in the eucharist but that he is concerned to give us this day our daily bread.

We meet with Jesus who would make himself as available to you and I by his Spirit as he made himself available to Jairus in the days of his flesh.

We come to Jesus without fear but with belief, to put faith in One who is stronger than all the evils we fear. We come to Church this morning to put faith in God and to invite his love and his greatness to touch our situation and to lift us as he lifted Jairus’ daughter.

Birth of St John the Baptist June 24th 2012

Get you up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good tidings; lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings, lift it up, do not fear; say to the cities of Judah, ‘Here is your God!’

In today’s Old Testament passage we have a strengthening word and talk of a herald.

When John the Baptist was miraculously born, as the Gospel narrates, his birth was talked about throughout the entire hill country of Judea. He came to be seen as that herald, a voice crying out: In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.


The passage from Acts puts John to the centre of salvation history, which is why his Feast is one of a select few to eclipse the Sunday of the Year. Paul’s speech in Acts 13 talks about God’s choice of Israel and how God has brought to Israel a Saviour, Jesus, as he promised; before his coming John had already proclaimed a baptism of repentance to all the people of Israel. And as John was finishing his work, he said, “What do you suppose that I am? I am not he. No, but one is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of the sandals on his feet.


St John the Baptist, next to the Blessed Virgin Mary, is of all mortals most blessed. He beheld the Lamb of God and got others to see the same. His words are with us, enshrined in the liturgy. Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.


The collect or special prayer for today speaks of God’s providence behind John’s birth and his witness to Christ adding lead us to repent according to his preaching and, after his example, constantly to speak the truth, boldly to rebuke vice, and patiently to suffer for the truth's sake.


As I read these phrases I recalled last week’s thoughtful and challenging sermon by Cavan Wood with those three points about a dedicated Christian life – obedience, care for the vulnerable and readiness to suffer. I also recalled the current national debate about same-sex marriage and it is that which I want to speak to as part of this morning’s address.

Speaking the truth is costly as John the Baptist discovered when he crossed King Herod. We keep the lesser Feast of John’s beheading by Herod on 29th August!

I hope what I share this morning won’t lead to Father John’s beheading!

Sexual ethics is a minefield for any preacher.

Christians believe sexual intercourse between husband and wife to be a sign of faithfulness and self-giving that mirrors Christ’s love. Sex is about life-giving love. It is about the irrevocable gift of self. Procreation, the associated gift of children, flows ideally from such life-giving love.

Our sexuality is given to joyfully unite husband and wife and generate new life. Just as glue-sniffing distorts the good use of glue, promiscuous sexual activity is a misuse of this great gift for bonding and creating human beings.

Like all God’s gifts sex can be misused. Our Lord spoke to this when he taught that if we look at someone lustfully we’ve already committed adultery. That’s a levelling teaching if ever there was one!

So what about same-sex marriage?

First we should lament uncaring comments about homosexuals made seemingly in the name of Christianity during the current national debate. It’s bad enough to be in a minority without being kicked by those who profess a loving God.

The good news of God’s love is for all people, gay or straight. That truth is basic, so that my main concern as a priest is about orientation towards God rather than sexual orientation.

When people privilege me in seeking spiritual direction – how they can come closer to God – I counsel marriage or celibacy as biblical ideals and warn against cohabitation since, lacking Christian authority, it may quench the Holy Spirit.

At the same time I recognize so much of moral decision making isn’t black or white but the choice between shades of grey. I sympathise as one who shares the confidences of folk struggling towards the ideal. Many of those who so struggle are opposed to dropping the ideal.

In the last fifty years the prevalence of contraception means the so-called ‘unitive’ and ‘procreative’ aspects of sexual intercourse are largely separated so most sex is unitive. It seems unjust in this respect to challenge homosexual sex. It too isn’t procreative but it does unite people, even if it falls short of the two Christian ideals.

Like many I accept the positive value of civil partnerships in providing just protection for same-sex faithful unions before the law.

What I and the Church as a whole can’t accept – and like St John the Baptist I must ‘speak the truth’ – is redefining marriage, changing a sacrament, so as to make a minority group more comfortable. There is far more at stake than gay rights in changing a sacrament.

A same-sex marriage would indeed have two of the three essentials of marriage – permanence and fidelity – but the third, offspring, would be artificial. I recently met a lesbian couple having twins by intervention of a male friend. I assured them of my prayers for their children’s welfare and they assured me they’d be looking for male role models for them to compensate their female parenting.

Many of you may have similar acquaintances. The Christian and widely held view of marriage as between a man and a woman is being challenged across the western world by such developments. The official Church of England response to the government plans to legalise same-sex marriage defends the inherited understanding of marriage and opposes the new idea that men and women are simply interchangeable individuals.

The Church of England as ‘the ancient church of this land, catholic and reformed’ seems to have set its face against reform of the sacrament of marriage to suit homosexuals, holding rather to catholic and universal practice. That is my own position, as with the sacrament of holy orders, that the Church of England lacks authority to change a sacrament unilaterally without the consent of the universal church i.e. Roman Catholic and Orthodox as well as Reformed. Others disagree – not all Anglicans see marriage and ordination as sacraments – and they view Anglicans as Spirit-led pioneers. Time will tell who was on the right side of these church debates.

The atheist gay columnist Matthew Parris who is opposed to same-sex marriage gives me encouragement. He recognizes the basic family-orientation of marriage and the damage that could be done to this by encouraging a solely ‘unitive’ understanding.

The debate will continue. The disestablishment of the Church of England might be a consequence if Church and State end up with different definitions of marriage.

Last Sunday Cavan identified three aspects of a dedicated Christian life – obedience, care for the vulnerable and readiness to suffer. We have the same reminder in today’s Saint who points us to constantly speak the truth, boldly rebuke vice, and patiently suffer for the truth's sake.

Affirming the truth of marriage certainly involves us today in patiently suffering for the truth's sake. In the Same-sex marriage debate our tone is so important though. Rebuking the vice of promiscuity, heterosexual and homosexual has its place, but the vice of homophobia also needs rebuking as part of our care for the vulnerable.

Christianity’s a way of life and it’s one way. There are other ways and we need to have the deepest respect for those who chose other options. Sometimes the most powerful truth we can share is that of our failure to live up to what we see as true and our sense that God accepts us just the same. As we shall say shortly in response to John the Baptist’s words of invitation, ‘Behold the Lamb of God’: Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed.

Corpus Christi June 10th 2012

Do this in remembrance of me!

"Was ever command so obeyed?

For century after century, spreading slowly to every continent and country and among every race on earth, this action has been done, in every conceivable human circumstance, for every conceivable human need from infancy and before it to extreme old age and after it, from the pinnacles of earthly greatness to the refuge of fugitives in the caves and dens of the earth"
.

Do this in remembrance of me!

"Men have found no better thing to do for kings at their crowning and for criminals going to the scaffold; for armies in triumph or for a bride and bridegroom in a little country church; for the proclamation of a dogma or for a good crop of wheat; for the wisdom of the Parliament of a mighty nation or for a sick old woman afraid to die; for a schoolboy sitting an examination or for Columbus setting out to discover America; for the famine of whole provinces or for the soul of a dead lover; in thankfulness that my father did not die of pneumonia; for a village headman much tempted to return to fetishes because the yams had failed; because the Turk was at the gate of Vienna;

Do this in remembrance of me!

"..for the repentance of Margaret; for the settlement of a strike; for a son for a barren woman; for Captain so-and-so, wounded and a prisoner of war; while the lions roared in the nearby amphitheatre; on the beach at Dunkirk; while the hiss of scythes in the thick June grass came faintly through the windows of the Church;

Was ever another command so obeyed as this?

"Tremulously, by an old monk on the fiftieth anniversary of his vows; furtively, by an exiled bishop who had hewn timber all day in a (Russian) prison camp; gorgeously, for the canonisation of (a Saint) - one could fill many pages with the reasons why men have done this, and not tell the hundredth part of them. And best of all, week by week and month by month, on a hundred thousand successive Sundays, faithfully, unfailingly, across all the parishes of Christendom, the pastors have done this just to make the holy common people of God".

Do this in remembrance of me!

Was ever another command so obeyed as this?

In these immortal words the Anglican monk, Dom Gregory Dix celebrates the awe and wonder of the Holy Eucharist we thank God for this day.

It is primarily an action, "do this"..and it has been done for 2000 years at a million altars. This is a day for standing still and taking stock of this great wonder we celebrate week by week, day by day in St. Giles lest we presume upon the grace we celebrate and receive.

As Dix puts it in his book The Shape of the Liturgy still used in Anglican Theological Colleges "the eucharistic action (is) inextricably woven into the public history of the Western world...the eucharist (has the) power of laying hold of human life, of grasping it...in the particular concrete realities of it..laying hold of them and translating them into something beyond time".

I find great depths in the words of Dom Gregory Dix. Forgive me for reading them at such length. They seemed to me to do as much as any preacher could to set the scene on the Feast of Corpus Christi.

Our Lord Jesus ordained the sacrament of the Eucharist in order that we might be able to join on earth in the pleading of His eternal sacrifice before the face of God the Father.

Then, secondly, that He might feed our souls with His sacred Body and Blood and unite us into One Body, the Church, the Body of Christ, Corpus Christi.

I wonder how many of us would remember or believe or continue to hold fresh in our memories from Confirmation training those facts - I mean: Our Lord giving us the eucharist first to allow us to plead His Memorial Sacrifice and offer our lives with Him to be consecrated lives and then second, second, note, to give us heavenly Food and make us One Bread, One Body?

Or do we rather tend to make our default  the second purpose of the Eucharist? Do we come to Church like we go to Sainsbury’s to get "tanked up" with goodies, so to speak, and to meet our friends?

That should come second. We come first to offer the eucharist - to plead Christ's Sacrifice for the needs of the living and the dead, for others as well as for ourselves.

That long list from Dom Gregory Dix reminded me how all through my life the Eucharist has been a powerful means of sanctifying the lives I minister to, of taking, blessing, breaking sometimes a situation brought on my heart or the people's hearts to the Altar for Christ to carry in Sacrifice to His Father.

As I just quoted from Dix "the eucharist (has the ) power of laying hold of human life, of grasping it...in the particular concrete realities of it..laying hold of them and translating them into something beyond time".

"Laying hold...and translating into something beyond time".

When the Eucharist has been offered for a particular intention there is a profound guarantee that it is "over to the Lord" from there. I felt this recently with Stephen & Victoria Fretten marking their marriage at the parish eucharist, with Alice Batsford last month as we celebrated a eucharist for the dying at the Hospice or as we celebrated that eucharist around Daphne Seidler’s coffin in the Lady Chapel. Last weekend’s Coronation re-enactment included Boy Bishop play acting the Archbishop giving bread and wine to the Queen and Duke at the Coronation eucharist. All are examples of the making holy of life at this service.

Each Eucharist, majestic or simple, pleads Calvary.  Pleads, note, not repeats. Christ died once for all. His death cannot be repeated but his Sacrifice abides for ever. It is that sacrifice he renews before us as he blesses bread and wine through the priest.

"This is my Body...this is my Blood" offered for you to the Father, given to you in Communion. It is a good practice to bow or bend the knee as we come into Church or leave Church, or as we approach or leave the Altar – for there is a special Eucharistic presence. Outside the eucharist, Christ is present, truly present, under the veil of the Aumbry. Even when the altar lights are blown out the light by the Aumbry burns on where the Sacrament is reserved for Communion of the housebound or for our corporate devotion as in the Benediction or blessing given from the consecrated Host at times during evensong. On Monday we were reminded of this symbol of God’s perpetual presence with his people in Horsted Keynes when the Jubilee Beacon was lit from the everlasting Aumbry light.

Incidentally to honour that perpetual presence by bowing or bending the knee when coming and going from before the Aumbry does not deny that presence elsewhere through the reading of Scripture, in Christian Fellowship, in the beauty of nature, in holy people and so on.

Yet mindful of Christ's Presence let us never forget its vital link to the first purpose of every Eucharist, which is action, sacrificial action. The Eucharist is about giving, giving to God. Jesus the Son gives himself in loving Sacrifice. We are to give our lives, our souls and bodies, our needs, our joys, our sorrows, our hopes, our fears, in union with his perfect Offering. Lives so given are lives consecrated, lives transformed by the Gift of the consecrated elements, "The Body of Christ", "Amen", "The Blood of Christ", "Amen".

Through Him, with Him and in Him, then, let us give glory to God the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit this Corpus Christi Day, confident that God will accept our self offering and as ever give us more than we can ask or imagine in this most Holy Sacrament.

Queen’s Diamond Jubilee 8am 3rd June 2012

Well today’s a special day and we’ve got a special visitor.

After all the prayers we’ve said in this Church for the Queen over 60 years we’ve got her exact likeness before us as part of today’s celebration.

Over 60 years Queen Elizabeth is said to have been seen by more people than any other person in the history of the world.

It’s because she’s lived long – God save her – and that over her reign the world’s mass media has mushroomed.

The image of the Queen has gone all round the world.

But what lies behind it?

From a Christian vantage point it’s the coronation or crowning ceremony which for her happened on Tuesday 2nd June 1953 in Westminster Abbey

On this her diamond Jubilee weekend we’re mindful of that occasion just short of 60 years ago when Elizabeth received a special blessing in the Holy Spirit through being anointed with holy oil at a Christian eucharist.

On her coronation morning a gold ornamental flask, the Ampulla, was filled with aromatic oil and placed on the high altar of Westminster Abbey. The eagle shaped Ampulla (show) and its accompanying gold spoon had been brought with the rest of the Crown Jewels from safekeeping in the Tower of London.

During the Coronation eucharist the Archbishop of Canterbury blessed the oil and placed it in the form of a cross on the Queen’s hands, chest and head saying Be thy head anointed with holy oil: as kings, priests, and prophets were anointed. And as Solomon was anointed king by Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet, so be thou anointed, blessed, and consecrated Queen over the peoples.

The British monarchy is a Christian ministry of service and leadership that starts at the eucharist. It builds on the anointing of Old Testament rulers that signalled their function as people set apart for the protection and service of God’s people.

We’ve answered what makes the Queen the Queen, now another question:

What makes a Christian a Christian?

The clue – the answer - was given us last week at Pentecost.

It’s to be anointed with the Holy Spirit.

God sent his Son Jesus Christ to earth to die for us, to be raised and to pour out God’s Holy Spirit so that the whole world could one day share in his anointing.
Jesus is called Christ, which means the One anointed by the Spirit, and Jesus Christ was anointed so we could share in the Holy Spirit that he has.

A Christian is someone who shares in the anointing of the Anointed One.

In being anointed and crowned the Queen was set apart by God among other things to protect the poor and bring justice to the oppressed at home or abroad. The Queen’s anointing and coronation prepared her for national service in a great succession of Christian and Jewish leaders. Old Testament Kings were crowned after their anointing with a simple gold band. British monarchs have had some of the most splendid crowns in the world.

This week the children of our School made crowns for themselves. This has a message for us this morning. If God is our King and we are his children that makes us princes and princesses in God’s royal court. When you were baptised you were given a great dignity. The Bible says Christians are a kingly people, a royal priesthood.
Just as the Queen will for her whole life be our anointed ruler so we who’ve been anointed in baptism walk tall – we’re God’s children, king’s children.

The Crown marks out the monarch but in a profound sense every Christian is marked out by God’s love. A saintly thirteenth century King of France wrote: I think more of the place where I was baptised than of the Cathedral where I was crowned, for the dignity of a child of God which was bestowed upon me at baptism is greater than that of a ruler of a kingdom. The latter I shall lose at death, the other shall be my passport to everlasting glory.

A good thought to end on. Meanwhile - God save the Queen!