SS Peter & Paul & Guyana visit debrief 29th June 2014

The double commemoration of Peter and Paul represents two streams in church life, institutional and charismatic. As we heard in the holy Gospel Christ made Peter the ‘rock’ man of the institutional Church - you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church (Matthew 16:18). The papacy survives to this day and Anglicans look to its renewal for a primacy over the institutional Church. It is encouraging to see the good chemistry between our Archbishop and Pope Francis (show Tablet)

The Church of Rome, historically the leading authority in Christianity, has a double foundation as the graves of both Peter and Paul are in that city. Our second reading reminds us of the charismatic- evangelical stream of the church Paul speaks for with great passion. The Lord stood by me and gave me strength, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed he writes to his assistant Timothy (2 Timothy 4:17). Though Rome and the Reformation are put as opposites the foundation of the Roman Church has both Catholic and Evangelical patrons in SS Peter & Paul whose joint martyrdom we celebrate today. An evangelical papacy such as that of Pope Francis is an exciting recovery that has an effect upon the whole of Christendom.

I want to use that underlining of the institutional-charismatic or catholic-evangelical to frame a debrief of my visit to Guyana earlier this month and to point us forward as a church here at St Giles with our Mission Action Plan to grow in faith, love and numbers.

It was my sixth visit to Guyana following my term as theological college Principal 1987-1990 at Yupukari, where Anne and I were married, three return visits for Sabbaticals in1995, 2000 and 2007 and my last visit with Anne in 2010 just after Bishop Cornell's appointment. The visit three weeks ago included the honour of being formally installed as a Canon in St George's Cathedral following my appointment as the Bishop's UK Commissary last year.

Over the fortnight I was in Guyana I was able to visit the new Duke-Edwards Anglican School and present an illustrated greeting folder prepared by our own Beech Class to the children there, who presented me in return with folders of their work (at the back of Church) to help build links with our school. It was a pleasure to see the computer room stocked with machines and its assigned dedication to St Giles.

My visit was timed to coincide with the Synod of the Diocese which draws in once a year the interior clergy and lay leaders. Guyana is just above the equator and mainly jungle. Communications and travel is costly and difficult so we always make the most of the annual Diocesan Synod. I was able to attend part of the pre-Synod clergy and treasurers’ conference and two training days post-Synod for the new deacons. My first weekend I celebrated Mass on the east coast. My second weekend took me on a six hour jet boat journey over rapids up the Mazuruni to Issano to stay with Fr Allan Alfred and his people. I also said Mass at the Transfiguration Church in Georgetown where I stayed in the Rectory with a new privilege since last time - an air conditioned bedroom!

High point of the visit was the Pentecost Mass with Bishop Cornell that in word and song, dance and solemnity captured the institutional – charismatic tension of today’s feast. We had a successor of the apostles in his Cathedral, the largest wooden cathedral in the world, along with 500 folk much set alight and literally moving with the Holy Spirit. There was a blend of expectancy upon God to act with a caution to patient discernment in the life of church and nation: 'God desires to lead us but he will only do so when he is ready and on his terms...’ the Bishop said ‘it's time for us to tidy up our spiritual lives so we can walk in holiness and righteousness, saying yes to him and no to the devil'.

During Synod Mass I was installed as Canon. I had a second privilege in giving Holy Communion to the Prime Minister, Sam Hinds who is an Anglican. With me he heard the Bishop warn how forgetfulness of God was at the root of moral decay in Guyana. It was good to see some form of partnership between political leaders and the torch bearers of religious vision. Bishop Moss is a real torch bearer! At one point on my visit I heard him use an analogy from his love for Bluebell Railway of himself as an engine driver: When you hear the horn get on board because I'm out to move forward, not looking back as there's so much to do.

Synod meetings continued in a Georgetown hotel Monday to Wednesday at which I presented arguments for and against the ordination of women using a modification of the Rochester Report we used in Cuckfield deanery synod two years ago. Bishop Cornell plans to build from my presentation beyond the group sessions on it at synod by encouraging each Archdeaconry to reflect on female ordination before a vote next year. 

Once again I was aware of the institutional-charismatic creative tension here Guyana is seeking to resolve with reference to the three-legged stool which Anglicanism is built on: scripture, tradition and reason. The lack of Catholic consent for women bishops and priests tells significantly in the Diocese of Guyana, as it does for many of us in the Church of England, even if others see the Holy Spirit moving the whole church that way in the long term.

After Synod I sped by Jet Boat to Issano up the Essequibo River and then, over sometimes perilous rapids, up the Mazaruni to the hub of the mining industry in the heart of the rain forest. Formerly a peaceable Amerindian settlement the gold rush has taken all peace from Issano with loud music day and night from its bars and brothels where miners find solace. I trained the priest there, Fr Alan Alfred and baptised two of his ten children. It was a pleasure to catch up with everyone and sling my hammock in his home. I went down the road to send greetings to Anne via the wifi at - Di Di's bar – probably a brothel - and a rival to our Anglican music making at St Martin's Church which still stands well 40 years on, though the priest's house at its east end is dilapidated. 45 people came to Trinity Sunday Mattins and Mass after which there was a well taken up call to confession and prayer for the Holy Spirit. There are some 20 confirmation candidates awaiting the Bishop's visit. Well schooled in the Alleluia native Christian tradition of the middle Mazaruni Fr Allan incorporates their songs within the Anglican liturgy, as in a special incantation by a female member over men called to the altar that morning for a Father's Day blessing. (Play chant) Following reminders at Synod about care of buildings I appealed for help in restoring the priest's house, for more cohabiting couples to welcome marriage and for vocations to the sacred priesthood.

Talking to people in the village I became aware of how most village dogs had been recently eaten by a tiger from the forest, as well as how many villagers had lost tomatoes and maize from their farms following raids by local monkeys. Over my visit Fr Allan took me on a tour to Mararbusi waterfall and we went round a typical gold mine. I praised God for Immodium, the priest's Godsend, effective counter to what the locals call 'loose belly'!

On my return to Georgetown I led training for three new deacons on parish management, sermon preparation and organising structured bible studies at Diocesan Office. I was able to pick up with life on the coastal strip where most Guyanese live. Things always seem to be looking up visit by visit with individuals more and more part of the connected generation with mobile phones all over as well as wifi. I manage a Facebook group for Guyana Diocesan Association involving over 100 including many young people in Guyana who made themselves known to me directly over my visit – do join up! Over my visit I conducted the Last Rites for a lady I have known for 28 years in the presence of her son and with her daughter on speaker phone from New York. Guyanese are stretched, at times painfully, right across the world. It is this diaspora, caused by the historic difficulties of living in the developing nation of Guyana, that GDA cares for and builds from.

Since our last visit in 2010 I saw there’d been significant progress in the Diocese, which our funding through GDA has impacted, progress both in the development of structures and in the drawing in of personnel that make for new buoyancy in the Diocese. The momentum of this has not been too affected by the Bishop's recent indisposition from which, God be praised, he is slowly but surely recovering. Unfortunately for St Giles a decision has been made to shorten his UK tour which takes out his visit advertised in P&P for 8th-9th July.

My visits to coastal parishes gave me a sense of a vital membership and of how derelict buildings are being restored. The Cathedral restoration - I met with the new Dean Fr Andy Carto - is advancing well with the east end completed and somehow symbolising the spiritual renewal that is abroad in the Diocese as a whole.

The joint celebration of SS Peter and Paul represents two streams in church life, institutional and charismatic. In Guyana I saw how the apostolic teaching ministry of Bishop Cornell and the institutional development of the Diocese, with its new structures of accountability for property and finance, are being balanced by a revitalising of the laity, not least the youth. As I left I was aware of plans for the annual camp involving 400 young people and all the churches I visited had a good number of young people attending and serving at the altar.

Though Bishop Cornell is returning to Guyana early there is still a chance for you to meet with him if you want to join Anne and I in travelling to St John the Divine, Kennington on Saturday week 5^th July to be with him for the Guyana Diocesan Association Festival. We also have opportunity to give to Guyana Diocesan Association through the two monthly charitable collection on 27^th July. Do take and return an orange envelope from the back of Church to serve this.

The two streams in church life, institutional and charismatic were evident to me in Guyana and they’re evident here at St Giles. We’re an institution ten times older than the Diocese of Guyana with an ordered structure – bishop, priest, PCC and so on – that complements the charismatic-evangelical elements of vitalisation flowing from the spiritual formation of each and everyone of our members. We have a Mission Action Plan as you know – or should know – to grow in faith, love and numbers. Last week at 10 o’clock we saw a number of baptism families back among us through the work of a group that invited them and prepared an imaginative all age eucharist. Next on that plan is Back to Church Sunday 13^th July about which we’ll hear more later. St Giles, like the papacy and the Diocese of Guyana, is a structure always in need of revitalisation.

Praise God with St Peter this morning for order and structure in God’s Church! Praise God with St Paul for the revitalising that comes generation by generation in answer to prayer and mission action!

Peter and Paul pray for us, for the Diocese of Guyana that Bishop Cornell be upheld with his people and for St Giles Church, Horsted Keynes, its priest, PCC and buildings as well as its spiritual revitalisation and evangelistic outreach!

May those living without a sense of purpose or belonging come to find with us, in Horsted Keynes or Guyana, the purpose and belonging to be found in Jesus Christ to whom with the Father and the Holy Spirit be glory now and for ever. Amen.

Baptism of Edward Barblett, Annabel & Jack Speakman 18th May 2014

Our two scripture readings set for this morning's Eastertide eucharist are about building and travelling which are metaphors of both Christianity and of life in general.

‘Let yourselves be built into a spiritual house’ says St Peter to those new in faith in what was probably like this morning a sermon at a baptismal eucharist.

‘In my Father’s house are many dwelling-places – [literally staging posts]’ Jesus says in the Gospel of St John Chapter 14. ‘I go and prepare a place for you...I am the way, and the truth and the life’.

We need in life both a sense of belonging and purpose. These come for Edward and the twins from mum and dad but, most importantly, from where mum and dad place themselves and from the journey they're on.

For the record Claire and David are literally placed very accessibly in Rose Cottage on the Green. Sandy and Lisa are down at Medhurst farm which is more of a hidden treasure. I need to watch my way in and out of the main road!

Both sets of parents see themselves as part of that vast family extending in space across the world and in time down 20 centuries which is God's forever family, the 'one, holy, catholic and apostolic church'.

Talking of crossing the world we welcome visitors from Australia to support the Bartletts and Claire’s dad from New York. What an eventful year Claire and David have had with a move from London coupled to discovering she was pregnant then discovering there’d be twins! Claire speaks of Annabelle and Jack as a double blessing as she, with David enjoys the privilege and task of parenthood. For Lisa and Sandy there is a also deep gratitude for the gift of Edward for whom they’ve been waiting many years.

Both sets of parents are enjoying a new sense of belonging in our village which this morning extends into the church family here at St Giles. ‘Let yourselves be built into a spiritual house’ says St Peter. It is our prayer that they will find here a house of prayer that will kindle a sense of spiritual belonging which goes beyond the material order of things.

Three of the four parents are very involved in one material – oil! David as a ship broker is involved in moving oil. Sandy is company director of an oil company and Lisa finance director for a firm specialising in oil and gas. Claire’s work is in policy at the Department of Education.

Our readings speak of belonging and they speak of purpose. The Christian religion is supremely purposeful, it speaks of the universal purpose of all things and the best way of ordering them. It is as concerned with corporate finance and the best use of oil as it is with families, with encouraging the best use of our strengths in the workplace as well as the charity that begins and ends at home.

As I welcome relatives of the baptism candidates from the Roman Catholic tradition I am mindful of a key agency of that Church across the world, namely the Society of St Vincent de Paul which does a noble work among disadvantaged people. Its founder, the early 19^th century French scholar and journalist Frederick Ozanam had a passion both to engage with ideas dismissive of the Church and to help lead a fuller consecration of Christians in service. In his writings on how Christian civilisation transformed the barbarians he countered Edward Gibbons’ claim that the Church has done more to enslave than to elevate the human mind. Rather like Karl Marx Ozanam saw that understanding the world was no less important than changing it to where it should be, and the foundation of the caring agency SVP, the Society of St Vincent de Paul is his legacy. This is my favourite quote from Frederick Ozanam:  ‘The question which divides men today is whether Society will be merely an immense exploitation for the benefit of the strongest or a consecration of everyone for the service of all’.

The sense of belonging and purpose we’re baptising Edward, Annabelle and Jack into this morning is allied with that vision which I know, from talking to them, that their parents own, a sense of life lent not possessed, lent ideally for work in God’s praise and service. Without that sense of service families, churches, nations and corporates fall short through exploitation. ‘From each according to his ability to each according to their need’ is another aspiration from a French source popularised by Marx which draws, as Ozanam does, on the sharing of goods that occurred in the early Church, and on and off ever since in Christian circles. I think of the gifts that arrive in the porch for Chichester Diocesan Family Support Work.

Today St Giles stands with Sandy and Lisa, David and Claire as they commit their children to the purposeful belonging which is Christianity. Their own gifts are already being employed to make a difference across the world and today will see a reconsecration of their strengths as they commit themselves to God on behalf of their children.

For these children we can have little idea of the work that lies ahead for them in 20 years time. At last week’s School Governors we were looking carefully at the New Curriculum from September this year. It has computer programming from the start of school life, something my son is doing at university!

At the start of my own scientific career Oxford University had one computer which was a whole house on the Banbury Road programmed by uniquely qualified technicians. I remember the wonder of getting it to print President Kennedy and Diana Dors out of noughts and crosses! Or getting a print out of the weather forecast! Now those unique computer programmers in a designated computer house have given way to every child a computer programmer and everyone a computer carrier (show iPhone)

Times change but values don’t inasmuch as they’re anchored in the age old truth of the God who loves us and calls us to his praise and service. At the heart of the baptism service is an affirmation of this truth which has such an impact on we who’ve woken up to it. Claire, David, Lisa and Sandy are here with their children out of gratitude to a loving God who’s privileged them to be parents. Our service affirms God’s love in Jesus Christ to be the way, the truth and the life. It affirms the best start in life for Annabelle, Jack and Edward. Even the prohibitions their parents will have to serve on them will be coloured by this sense of surrounding love. When scripture says ‘you shall not covet or steal or bear false witness’ its emphasis is on you rather than not.  

Because you are loved and precious to me…whatever: that phone doesn’t go under your pillow when you’re 12! Because you are loved you belong with people who worship: Sunday Club is fun because church is fun. Because you are loved by God he has given you ethical boundaries so that your relationships will be flourishing and not destroying. Etc, etc

Today is a new day in so many senses – new every morning is the love our waking and uprising prove – a new day opening up new possibilities in new lives and renewed possibilities in we more seasoned operators. Come, Holy Spirit, bless these children and all of us who stand by them!  

Easter 3 4th May 2014

Over my Easter break I enjoyed reading Shirley du Boulay's 'The Silent Melody', a personal memoir of spiritual formation stretching back to the 1960s. It served for me as aide memoire so I found something of a reflection of my own soul's journey in its mirror.

The last half century has seen the decline of Christianity in our land, a greater sense of the other faiths it stands alongside and many new movements expressing interest in spirituality.

Through her production of religious programmes for the BBC Shirley du Boulay chronicled much of this, notably in her encounter with the Beatles when they met Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Her book recalls her struggle to be a Roman Catholic and her commitment to inter faith engagement which has had major impact on her spiritual development.

I valued her story despite its conclusion - she is no longer a church member! I was blessed by much of the insight she provides in a well written book which has insight from her previous biographies of among others Dame Cicely Saunders and Desmond Tutu.

Shirley du Boulay starts her book dismissing what she calls 'Anglican vague broadmindedness' but she ends with something very much broader! She struggles with the variety of faiths, their evident spiritual fruitfulness and how that challenges obedience to any one of them.

What I found most interesting were her quotations from Gregory of Nazianzen, Thomas Traherne and others on the ultimate unknowability of God and how spiritual seekers can be united in such, I use invented commas, 'faith'.

The Christian tradition does acknowledge unknowability in God but it holds this in tension with his knowability in Jesus Christ through his Church. Her book blessed and humbled me, but saddened me in the erosion of Christian commitment it documents, and what I would call her very 'subjective' approach to God.

This is my lead in to the beautiful Gospel reading about the risen Lord's appearance to Cleopas and his companion on the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus. If ever there was a passage that affirmed the 'objectivity' of the presence of God in Christ it's this one from the pen of St Luke, Chapter 24 verses 13 to 35.

While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. This was to change - their subjective reflections on Easter weekend were to be enriched, augmented and challenged by discovering the objective presence of the Lord right there before them.

Luke's vivid narrative reflects the pattern of Christian worship both early and late so that the Lord Jesus is encountered objectively in two ways - the explaining of scripture and the breaking of bread.

What we are about this morning, what Shirley du Boulay sadly absents herself from nowadays, is engaging through preaching and sacrament with something or someone outside of ourselves who first appeared in this fashion to Cleopas and his companion on Easter Sunday.

Beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures Luke records. When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognised him; and he vanished from their sight. They said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?”...and, Luke concludes '(They told the eleven) how the Lord Jesus had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.

Any relationship we have has a subjective and objective side apart of course from the rather ambiguous relationship we have with ourselves.

Through friendship and marriage others become our intimates, standing away from us yet near to us, so our subjective thoughts of them are balanced by their objective presence and communication to us. In the Christian religion talk of that balance of subjective and objective can still be used, even though God is no object we can see, handle or contain. As Shirley du Boulay affirms in her book God is beyond our being as 'the ground of our being'.

When God sent his Son Jesus Christ he was showing us his love objectively, that is outside of ourselves. Christ died, rose and passed into the sacraments so we encounter God from Easter on through the physical order primarily in the words of Scripture we hear and read and in the breaking of the eucharistic bread as well as in personal prayer and Christian fellowship.

Our relationship with God in Jesus Christ is a personal relationship with both a subjective and an objective side. God is 'in' me but God also stands 'away from' me, over against me, guiding me, loving me, chiding me.

What disturbs me about so much so-called New Age spirituality, in which Shirley has been immersed, is its reduction of the transcendent God to being like 'the genie in my lamp'. There is a loss of vision and a reduction or even domestication of God.

Some of my most telling encounters with God have been more like those of Cleopas, encounters coming from outside of myself from scripture, eucharist or in one case the leaves on a tree, that have woken me up to get going once more to serve God's way, which is a way beyond me taking me out of myself.

When we come to Church to worship we're reminded by the faith of those around us what we believe is part of something bigger. In hearing the sermon we see the words of the Bible striking us, exciting a fuller vision of God. In participating in the offering, blessing and consuming of bread and wine we meet God at a visceral level.

The road to Emmaus is my road, your road, week by week, as it was Cleopas' road that first Easter. It's a road where our subjective sense of God is built up healthily, as in any relationship, by encounter with God the awesome Friend who walks beside us.

This relationship, as our service reminds us, isn't just one-to-one. It is knowing the love of Christ, as Paul explains to the Ephesians, having the power to comprehend, with all the saints (with the whole church) ... the breadth and length and height and depth of his love that surpasses knowledge and fills us with all the fullness of God.

May Our Lord bless us as week by week he speaks to us through his word and comes to be our Food in the eucharist!

May our subjective perception of God expand and deepen through encounter with his objective presence we find here, where two or three are gathered together in his name, to whom with the Father and the Holy Spirit be all glory and honour henceforth and for evermore. Amen.

Annual parochial church meeting eucharist 27th April 2014

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,

Those words from 1 Peter capture the solidity of faith that’s built on the sure foundation of the risen Lord Jesus Christ. That new birth which is ours in baptism and confirmation leads us in the apostle’s words into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who are being protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

Heady words – and a good tonic for APCM Sunday when the parish priest uses his sermon as a status check. As I read them I thought both of the joy of Easter and of the joy of admitting eleven new members to Holy Communion over the last year, a major encouragement to the life of the Christian community here at St Giles and very much an answer to specific prayer.

The testimonies they give to faith have been an encouragement to one and all, not least Lesley Whiting’s on Premier Radio following her July confirmation and those offered on Easter Sunday by those confirmed last month. Their Christian formation in creed, sacraments, commandments and prayer is having a ripple effect on us all and beyond these walls in the village. The lunch James Nicholson organized for the recently confirmed on Palm Sunday was a great welcome to them. It was also typical of James’ thoughtful leadership as Churchwarden which has been a great encouragement to me and to many over the last 5 years.

Another sign of resurrection faith that’s evident me is “5 o’clock at the Martindale” that’s brought together Christians across denominations over the last seven months in more participative worship and teaching, building on last year’s achievement in renovating the Martindale. Besides “5 o’clock” we have seen the Martindale well used for days of reflection and, at a more prosaic level, bookings are well up so there’s been good return on the investment of funds we made in our Church Centre.

In this [we] rejoice, even if now for a little while [we] have had to suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of [our ]faith - being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire - may be found to result in praise and glory and honour when Jesus Christ is revealed.

When the apostle speaks of resurrection faith he does so in the context of hardship. For us that is focused on the struggle it remains to engage children and families with St Giles’s despite having 130 children at the school. We’re grateful for all the ways we engage with our School, not least the Friday assemblies led by St Giles’ lay leaders, school’s involvement in the October Prayer exploration and the two pupils confirmed recently. At the same time I continually entrust to God our difficulty in gaining commitment to Sunday worship. It’s also true of the baptism families that regularly pass through our doors, and it isn’t a problem unique to St Giles.  Nor does it reflect on all the energy Chris Wheatley and the team put into Sunday Club, First Steps and so on. People, young people especially, are missing spiritual vision capital S, by which I mean the sort of all consuming vision which has brought many of us in St Giles this morning to give our all to the service of God.

Faith – [is] more precious than gold [and will] result in praise and glory and honour when Jesus Christ is revealed.

Looking to that revelation, that cause which will outlast us all, is what St Giles is about if it’s about anything – not a social club or building appreciation club but part of God’s never-ending family we know as the ‘one, holy, catholic and apostolic church’.  Over the last year several individuals have had to suffer various trials some of which have taken them away from us but not from the Church overall. We sent off Stephen & Dawn Hitchen with their children to Jordan and John and Hilary Thraves to the West Country. Bob Pelling’s final illness and passing has been a great loss to the church and the village and most of all to Jean. I think of other individuals whose difficult journeys we accompany in prayer and care represented on our sick list as well as the pastoral ministry exercised towards bereaved families that is facilitated by having a resident parish priest. Another trial is financial, again one we’ve been surrounding with prayer, linked to our current incapacity to raise the share the diocese expects from a community with a full time priest.

In April’s P&P I addressed the state of St Giles in these words which seem worth repeating from the pulpit as they quickly  us where we’re at as a Church:

60 folk gather on an average Sunday, 10 at 8am and 50 at 10am including on average 8 children. These figures have been constant over my 5 years as Rector so we’re drawing in new members sufficient to balance loss through illness, death or moves away from the village. Our Mission aim is ‘to be a church growing in faith, love and numbers’.

The leadership of the parish priest is allied to that of the Churchwardens ..and another 8 members of the Parochial Church Council who coordinate the life and work of St Giles. PCC oversees four energetic groups serving Churchyard, Fabric, Finance and the Martindale and it liaises with School Governors, Five o’clock service, Friends of Horsted Keynes Church, Deanery Synod and our Parish Safeguarding Co-ordinator Kath Brooke-Webb and Webmaster David Ollington.

In recent months PCC agenda included planning and reflection afterwards on outreach services, dealing with carpet beetle in Church, sharing our faith, the new memorial path for cremated remains, renewing Prayerline, funding the work of the Church, inviting church members to write a Letter to God at Easter and working towards a church toilet – St Giles Church has an interesting and varied agenda.

We are your Church, I am your Rector and we welcome your support!

As a community-oriented Church we must beware any tendency to become a fortress over against the world around us even if some of recent changes in society push us that way.  Increasingly Christians in the UK are having to learn to speak two languages, that of their faith and that of their allegiance to the common life of Britain. Faith - being more precious than gold is tested by fire and one test is that of rendering to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s to quote our Lord and Saviour in Mark 12.17.

As a Church we seek to give God what is due to God in the sacrificial worship of the eucharist. Part of that offering, some would say a part that is eloquent of the level of our allegiance, is the money put on the collection plate or transferred monthly by banker’s order to St Giles.  Along with the financial  gifts we make are those voluntary gifts of time and talents pledged in service we see exercised in the many and varied ministries here at St Giles. For these on everyone’s behalf, and on behalf of God, I say thank you this morning as we invite new commitments to service as in the PCC and other elections.

We are a community Church but we’re first of all the Church of Jesus Christ who rose from the dead welcoming him in word and sacrament, prayer and Christian fellowship. The last sentence of our first reading says it all in its invitation to keep that faith pure and untarnished by materialism.

Although you have not seen [Christ], you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

Such is the gift that best animates us here at St Giles, the gift from beyond this world that our spire invites us towards. The gift of Jesus Christ with whom we engage as we open ourselves to the meaning and power of both the scriptures and the eucharist. Here within these walls week by week is found a purpose for living and a reason for dying through an unquenchable hope stretching down from the miracle of Easter.

 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,

Easter all age eucharist 20th April 2014

The workmen in Lindfield let me take a Road closed sign that had been run over, possibly by an angry motorist, which was destined for a skip in any case!

For 13 weeks we’ve driven to Haywards Heath via Ardingly or Walstead  instead of Lindfield. Renewing the water main in Lindfield has made life that much harder in Horsted Keynes. We’ve had to take a long road, or, if by Walstead, a bumpy potholed road without edges at times, to get to the station.

Some of our commuters have lost an extra half an hour a day for 13 working weeks which I make 32.5 hours or well over a day of their life. Now the road is open alleluia! Traffic lights, yes, from Tuesday but it’s open – the way to Haywards Heath is no longer closed.

It’s Easter Day and there’s another road been opened.

We have little roads in our cemetery to carry the remains of people who’ve died to their graves. The children have just been running there.

Those paths – one more is due – lead to graves but on this day the Man who’d been carried down the path to his grave on Good Friday was there alive in the cemetery.

Remember what they said in the reading we just heard: They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.

The Road death closed was now open!

It isn’t my job to explain how it happened but to point upwards, as those first witnesses did, to the One who did it, who mastered death for us, opening the then closed way to glory.

The Bible passages we read today point to an historical event, probably in April 27AD – the time keeping lost 6 years somewhere –  an event that is held by a third of the earth’s population today to reveal a love extravagant enough to make death pale away into nothingness.

When Jesus Christ suffered and died God was in him. There was a sort of divine judo at play. Death flew at God and ended up upside down and out at the count.

For, as we shall hear in a moment, when Peter came to Jesus’ grave he saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself.

God had been at work, for Christians a God who’s big enough to work his way through death.

God is still at work, not least here in Horsted Keynes.

One of the great joys we’ve had at St Giles recently is seeing eight of the regular church attenders now receiving Holy Communion with us.

All eight were confirmed by Bishop Mark last month and on Sunday we’d a lovely lunch to welcome them organised by our outgoing Churchwarden James Nicholson with other church members. It was a great occasion.

I’ve invited one or two of them to share something of how they came to make this move and how God’s been at work in their lives.

Nick, Raychell and Karoline share about how God’s been at work in their lives of late.

God’s at work – he’s still at work opening up the dead ends we encounter in life.

Many of have taken time these last weeks of Lent to write these letters to God to be shortly consigned to him via a flame from the Easter Candle. I don’t know about yours but mine’s things for which I want resurrection in my life and that of St Giles.

You’ve still got a minute or two, maybe after communion to write a sentence or two inside the envelope to join the other letters as a sign of offering. Why not give him some of the seeming dead ends you’re facing?

Resurrection, Easter, is about breaking through dead ends, of which driving again via Lindfield to the station is a significant reminder.

It’s a parable of life, for few of us avoid times when ‘you have to drive through Ardingly to Haywards Heath’. Times when we must take a long road on account of unemployment, cancer treatment or bereavement are our making or un-making.

The Christian faith commends that long road in life as Jesus hands us suffering and death to be the way to grow into his resurrection stature. Positive resignation to the will of God redeems every circumstance because it brings with it the Holy Spirit’s anointing.

At Easter that ‘Road ahead closed’ sign left the road to Lindfield just as we begin to celebrate the rising of God’s Son who has taken the same sign away from the hour of our death.

To continue the analogy, we of faith press on in our journey to God taking courage from him to bear its twists and turns, bumps and potholes believing the pains of life will one day be lost in the praise we sing.  Alleluia!

Easter Sunday vigil and dawn eucharist sermon

Yes to celebration, yes to sorrow, yes to today, yes to tomorrow.

Easter gives us what the world would give its bottom dollar for - I mean hope.

This is the day that the Lord has made so that tomorrow also is God's.

Even if today is the day of your death there will be a tomorrow for yesterday, today, tomorrow Jesus is the same. All must change but Jesus will never change!

Talking of giving your bottom dollar last week I visited an art exhibition in St Marylebone Church on the theme of Stations of the Cross. I talked to an artist who’d made a giant cross suspended horizontally above the nave covered in one dollar bills.

Another cross he’d painted was on a large canvas surrounded by images of hypocrisy. Another life size Cross among the fourteen Stations I saw in a side Chapel was carried by a human skeleton I assumed to be plastic!

In different ways only art can accomplish creative men and women captured the weight of hopelessness in our culture.

The dollars festooning the large cross represented the uselessness of putting hope in amassing money.

The hypocrisy surrounding the cross in the large canvas represented the uselessness in putting your ultimate hope in leaders be they of state or church.

The skeleton carrying the cross alarmed me with its graphic reminder of how death mocks any hope that you put in this world only for, as far as you and I are concerned, in a matter of a few years death will carry us forward.

Forward to where? That is the million dollar question - worth your bottom dollar to have answered - and this anniversary day is about an answer!

300 years of critical biblical scholarship hasn't disproved what Jesus Christ revealed to us at Easter concerning what is forward and ahead of earthly life.

Yes to celebration, yes to sorrow, yes to today, yes to tomorrow.

Years ago Timothy Lynch was given a dishonorable discharge from the Army for an incident he would have just as soon forget forever.

He walked away from it deeply hoping that he’d never run into the men from his platoon for the rest of his life.

There was one soldier though he couldn’t run away from, his father.

His father came from a generation that held military service in the highest of esteem and had excelled as a soldier, a no nonsense man, strong on discipline but not so communicative with love. The thought of having to tell his father that he’d failed in the service filled him with dread.

After some years Timothy took the cautionary step of sending a telegram to his father explaining his dishonourable discharge, rather than tell him face to face. He got back a three line telegram. It said:

I will stand by you no matter what happens.
I will be there tomorrow.
Remember who you are.

Those three simple sentences brought reconciliation and hope to Timothy and they sum up in essence the message of Easter.

The women who met the risen Lord Jesus carried the same to his disciples.

I will stand by you no matter what happens.
I will be there tomorrow.
Remember who you are.

Despite their compromise and weakness, God promised he'd be with them and us no matter what.

Like the first disciples who denied, betrayed and forsook  Christ we can reject God but, like Timothy's good father, God won’t reject us.

Despite the very real tragedy and evil that surround us in the world, God promises the triumph of hope in the glorious resurrection of his Son Jesus Christ.

We can despair but God won’t stop infusing hope in the darkness.

Despite the fact we will die, life is to triumph over death.

God’s immortal life filling the world since Easter shines through the universe to brighten every tomorrow lifting our anxieties.

Yes to celebration, yes to sorrow, yes to today, yes to tomorrow.

On Easter Sunday a profound miracle began. Fearful, anxious men and women with low self-esteem and no hope, were made confident, empowered, courageous and daring.

God gave them the gift of the Spirit and said to them, you’ve already got everything you need, here is my blessing, now go and heal the world.

Are you with them?

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

Palm Sunday I’ll say Yes, Lord 13th April 2014

I’ll say yes to celebration, yes to sorrow, yes to today, yes to tomorrow.

It’s the third heading – yes to today – that I want to major on as part of our preparation for Easter when I hope a good few of us will be moved to write a letter of self offering to God for consumption in the flame of the Easter Candle, symbol of our Risen Lord.

On the suggested framework we've got four headings linked to giving God things we’re grateful for, sorry for, needful of and concerned about. Today’s third theme is about identifying our exact needs for today to give to God.

Give us this day our daily bread we pray. In this last week of Lent we have an opportunity to seek just what those words might mean for you and I in this third week of April 2014.

This is the day that the Lord has made writes the Psalmist (Psalm 118.24). Today is the day of salvation writes Paul (2 Corinthians 6.2).

Just for today, what does it matter, O Lord, if the future is dark? wrote St Therese of Lisieux. To pray now for tomorrow – I am not able. Keep my heart only for today, give me your protection today, grant me your light – just for today.

Our Lord promised us daily bread, bread for today. When God gave bread from heaven to the Israelites in the desert it went off at the end of each day as he was intent his people should seek him day by day. O that today you would listen to his voice: harden not your hearts wrote the Psalmist picking up on this Exodus story (Psalm 95.7-8a)

That reading of the Passion is for today. It’s set annually for Palm Sunday, the only Sunday in the year the Passion of Christ is read, designed to catch those who can’t make Good Friday, but it’s a word from God for this hour, this day.

The Son of God loved me and gave himself for me, as Paul puts it to the Galatians in Chapter 2.20b

God’s love is here for me today, at this mid morning hour on the 13^th April 2014 and I am called to welcome the good news of it.

If we endeavour to live with that love in the present moment we see a number of things getting sorted out in our lives.

What’s important gets underlined from among all that’s pressing upon us. Our wants are sifted through so that we establish our needs.

Under the heading Yes to celebration we thought how we live  as eucharistic people giving God thanks for all he’s given us.  Last week as Passiontide began we considered our need to say Yes to sorrow in the sense of owning up to our sin and seeking the remedy Christ provides for all upon the Cross.

Lord I thank you, Lord I’m sorry – and now our third prayer: Lord I am needful.

In these days of Holy Week we have a privileged time to look at our lives in the light of that Love, which over and around us lies, that finds its focus in the story we just heard from St Matthew’s Gospel.

Thomas Merton described this focussing as like that of the sun shining through a magnifying glass. Just as a magnifying glass concentrates the rays of the sun into a little burning knot of heat that can set things on fire, so the passion of Christ concentrates the ray of God's light and fire to such a point that it sets fire to the human spirit .

The Son of God loved me and gave himself for me.

In the light of his love we see ourselves most clearly - our wants are purified so what we need is made most clear to us - and among our greatest needs is to enter the vulnerability of God in the passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

I end with a story about finding that, and in it, finding our needs, from a passage called Wounded Healers in Elizabeth Basset’s Anthology Beyond the Blue Mountain.

I met him on the train, and before long, I felt I knew him. I felt I could trust him. He was in education: ‘Learning for Life’, he called it.

I said I was interested in education too, so he invited me to come with him to where he taught and learned. It was off the main road, near the fire station.  It didn’t look like a school. You walked in the door of a second-hand shop, and going through the back, you came into a big room, with a lot of people in it.

We stood and looked around.

In the corner was an old man with a white stick. Beside him sat a girl reading him a newspaper. ‘Nice to see young folk helping the blind’, I said. ‘Oh’, he replied, ‘he’s actually teaching her how to see.’

Across the floor in the direction of the toilets came a wheelchair. A palsied boy of eighteen sat in it and a boy of the same age pushed it. ‘It’s great when friends help each other’, I said. ‘Yes, it is…’ he replied. ‘The boy in the chair is teaching the other how to walk.’

An old woman lay in a bed at the bottom of the room. She was covered with open sores. A woman much her junior was bathing her and dressing her wounds. ‘Is she a nurse?’ I asked. ‘Yes’, he replied. ‘The older woman is a nurse. She’s teaching the other how to care.’

Seated round a table were a group of young couples. A doctor in a white coat was talking to them about childbirth. He spoke slowly and used sign language with his hands. ‘I think it is only fair that deaf people should know about these things’, I said. ‘But they do know about these things’, my friend replied. ‘They are teaching the doctor how to listen.’

And then I saw a woman on a respirator breathing slowly. These were her last breaths. And around her were her friends soothing her brow, holding her hands. ‘It’s not good to die alone’, I said. ‘That’s right’, he replied. ‘But she is not dying alone. She is teaching the others how to live.’

Confused and not knowing what to say I suggested we sat down.

After a while, I felt I could speak. ‘Seeing all this’, I said, ‘I want to pray. I want to thank God that I have all my faculties. I now realise how much I can do to help.’

Before I could say more, he looked me straight in the face and said: ‘I don’t want to upset your devotional life – but I hope you will also pray to know your own need, and not to be afraid to be touched by the needy’.