Trinity Sunday 31st May 2015

With God-talk we need less to know what we’re talking about than to know who it is we’re talking about!

I pray that in what I share I can be a window into the God I love and serve and into his words just read to us at this eucharist.

The words were about holiness and love for Isaiah said one seraph called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.” and John said God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.

If we believers are to be windows to God it’s through holiness and love that show we don’t just know what we’re talking about we know who we’re talking about, for when we know God personally he shows through.

One of my heroes is South American, not Guyanese though but Brazilian. He’s an icon of holiness and love called Helder Camera whose cause for canonization as a Saint has been opened this month by Pope Francis. As a bishop he spent his life in the service of the poor, abandoning his palace and giving away Church property to provide land for the homeless. When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint, he used to say. When I ask why the poor have no food they call me a communist.

He was, as you can tell from that comment, a controversial Churchman, a pioneer of the social gospel in our day, taking the church out of its buildings and sacristies to be alongside hurt and need in the community.

Yet when Helder Camera tells the tale of his life it’s the mystical rather than the practical which takes precedence. He writes of how encounters with the Holy Spirit kept changing him and how a very big change occurred near the start of his ministry through the visit of a French friend. The two toured Rio’s shanty towns and Gerlier his friend suggested Helder’s talents would be far more use in the service of the poor than anything else.  Camera writes of that transformative conversation:  And so the grace of the Lord came to me through Gerlier’s presence.  Not just through the words he spoke: behind his words was the presence of a whole life, a whole conviction.  I was moved by the grace of the Lord… thrown to the ground like Saul on the road to Damascus.

I thought of this graphic description when I followed our first reading on how Isaiah’s encounter with holiness had practical effect. The seraph [who had cried of God’s holiness] touched my mouth with [a live coal] and said: “Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.” Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I; send me!”

I wonder if today you recall the impact of God’s holiness upon you in your recent life experience? Whether the Lord is inviting from you that sort of painful cleansing as his springboard into a new realm of service?

I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I; send me!”

Once or twice in my life that’s happened to me. It happened when I was an undergraduate at Oxford studying Chemistry and stumbled across a Church with holy worship and a holy priest which so impacted my life that I accepted a call to priesthood. Or again when a letter from a priest called John Dorman came rather as a surprise of the Spirit inviting me to consider training Amerindian priests in the interior of Guyana. Or again when I encountered the spiritual force of the lady who in the end became my wife through whom once again my life moved forward in a new and more fruitful direction.

God is holy and loving. He is different to us and yet he is the same. It is his sameness we encounter in the love spoken of by St John. God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.  Whilst his holy difference from us wakes us up and shakes us out of complacency his love is unconditional and affirmative.

To use a bathing  analogy,  one quality, his  love, is like a hot bath. The other, his holiness is like a cold shower bracing us for fresh action.

On this feast of the Holy Trinity we celebrate both qualities of God, holiness and love, difference and sameness, and for ourselves the call to confidence in him and humility before him.

Confidence in God, knowing God’s love, is the basic treasure, which undergirds all we are as godly folk. It’s among the most urgent needs of Church members today. Those drawn into his service are moved to do so by finding such confidence, the confidence that the following of God’s call will bring about God’s provision so you have to follow it, at whatever cost.

I wonder if you’re sensing such a call, such an invitation at this time from the Holy Spirit? Don’t neglect it! Follow it!

If confidence in God is the one pole of godliness humility before God and people is the other pole, as 2 Corinthians makes plain when it talks of believers having ‘treasure in earthen vessels’.

How can we be effective instruments of a holy God without humility, readiness to attend to God in unfashionable lower places, witnesses to the humility of Christ present hidden away especially in the hurting and needful?  This is the underpinning of all Christians are about as the servant hearted folk we are, gifted with healing ministry from the Lord earthed in that under rated most humble ministry of listening. The holy, loving triune God wants to work in us and through us. We need both humility and confidence in him to be such instruments. As Christians hoping to witness and point to a God who answers prayer we need to know what we are talking about - we need to know who we’re talking about and pointing others to. I believe it’s as we listen to God faithfully in prayer that we’re best skilled up to listen to him speaking in our needy sister or brother.

We can only point authentically to him if we ourselves are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory… coming from the Lord, who is the Spirit to come back to 2 Corinthians (3:18).  Such transformation comes from contemplation of God as the holy friend he is and there’s no ‘quick fix’ about it.

Getting more of God in our life requires dedication and determination, even if it will end up being a grace given from above. But this much is clear, our apostolate, our sense of being ‘sent’ as Christians, will be utterly ineffective unless it comes as an overflow from what is growing within us.

What are we doing, then, I ask you, to cultivate the interior life?  We welcome God Sunday by Sunday in word and sacrament.  How are we savouring that gift in prayer day by day?  In our discipline of bible reading, study, self examination and service to those in need?

Where people are meeting deep down with God in Jesus Christ and he is taking hold of them, all that they say and do will be permeated with him. Think back on people whose lives have touched your life and shaken you out of complacency and apathy, the holy people who’ve influenced you for good and for God.

Is there a greater force or influence than that of holiness?

The devil is very keen to distract those of us who work hard for God from the prior work of spiritual renewal.  There is so much to do – so much human need out there - that we want to sail out there and serve it without giving the attention we need to give to the interior life.

Let Mother Teresa have the last say. It’s not how much we do that matters but how much love we put into what we do.

Come, Holy Spirit,  through this eucharist and show us our need of the love and holiness which is yours alone so that together we transmit it to others.

Pentecost Sunday 24th May 2015

When God is personally present, a living Spirit, nothing between us and him, our faces shine with the brightness of his face, our lives gradually become brighter and more beautiful as God enters our lives and we become like him.    2 Corinthians 3:15-18 paraphrased in The Message

As we keep the second greatest Feast of Christianity we have this morning a theme of light.

At the mid-morning eucharist the community choir will be singing This little light of mine and the Pentecost event in the epistle will be dramatised.

Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them… all of them were filled with the Holy Spirit.  Acts 2.3-4

 ‘This little light of mine I’m gonna let it shine’. When the Holy Spirit came on the first believers it lit them up. Jesus himself spoke a lot about light and gave us this invitation in his Sermon on the Mount. Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.   Matthew 5:14-16

I wonder what you make of that? What does it mean for you to let your light shine before others? What sort of good works?

 Today, Pentecost Sunday 2015, is such an important day I’ve got a message from all three Bishops engaging with those questions and a present from them at the end of the service.

Play 3 min video clip with Cathedral chorister, Alexander Dance, Bishop Martin, Bishop Richard, Jules Middleton of the Point Church, Bishop Mark and church member Mary Wardell

I want to invite you to think a bit more about what you just heard as I give you a brief reminder.

After the introduction from chorister Alexander Bishop Martin spoke of Pentecost as the day when the Holy Spirit empowered the church for sharing the good news of Jesus Christ.

Bishop Richard then compared Chichester Diocese’s 20-30,000 church members to Hove Albion spectators rather than players. He suggested we pray day by day ‘Lord please use me today to share something of your love with someone who doesn’t know it’ and mentioned how vital it is we re-engage with the wonder of the Gospel story.

Jules then described her Church seeking to be a transforming presence meeting people where they’re at rather than expecting them to cross a church threshold.

Bishop Mark spoke of servant ministry commending care for the homeless and folk with debt problems.

Mary Wardell lastly picked up on the Prayer of St Richard to know, love and follow Jesus and said without the foundation of prayer anything we attempt for God as Christians is like walking up Mount Everest without the right boots.

Bishop Richard and Mary Wardell mentioned respectively how vital it is we re-engage with the wonder of the Gospel story and that we pray more.

To be woken up to the wonder of God in your life you need to pray and through prayer you also receive more of God in your life.  It’s an extraordinary circle and it’s no circle of delusion.

I remember once feeling God was a long way away and saying to him ‘God if you’re there show yourself’.

I happened to be walking in the garden and I felt a leaf on a tree speak to me: ‘I made you. I love you. I want to fill you with my Spirit’ That was when I first experienced the Holy Spirit in power and it helped me to pray more easily and love other people more.

When you’re thirsty for God and tell him so he gives you his Holy Spirit.

Before Pentecost Mary and the apostles kept a nine day prayer vigil to express their thirst for God which we’ve just imitated and then, we read, Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them… all of them were filled with the Holy Spirit. 

To be filled you need to be empty.

Holy Spirit Sunday is a challenge to all of our self-sufficiency. It’s a reminder that to be filled by the Spirit we need the resolve to empty ourselves in service.

Pentecost is something very personal. It’s something that can happen in our lives if we let it.

It’s about illumination, as we heard in that paraphrase of the 2 Corinthians passage on the back of the eucharist booklet

When God is personally present, a living Spirit, nothing between us and him, our faces shine with the brightness of his face, our lives gradually become brighter and more beautiful as God enters our lives and we become like him.    2 Corinthians 3:15-18 paraphrased in The Message

‘This little light of mine I’m gonna let it shine’.

Come down, O love divine, seek thou this soul of mine,
and visit it with thine own ardour glowing.
O Comforter, draw near, within my heart appear,
and kindle it, thy holy flame bestowing.

Rogation Sunday 8am 10th May 2015

Can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? Jesus says in the Rogation Sunday Gospel from the Sermon on the Mount.

He goes on to commend the contemplation of nature as reminder of God’s reality and presence. Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. If God so clothes the grass of the field… will he not much more clothe you - you of little faith? 

Religion including Christianity is an awakening to the presence of God supremely manifested in the world around us, which is a sacrament, an outward sign of his invisible presence. The revelation of God in Christ enables another adjective here, we wake up as Christians to God’s invisible loving presence through knowing for sure our creator loves us and gave himself for us in Jesus Christ.

Experiencing the presence of God in nature or natural contemplation is the bottom line of faith which is conviction of things unseen. The beauty of nature at this season in the northern hemisphere helps us be more aware of this and it is possibly no coincidence that the week before Ascension in the month of May is kept as what we call Rogationtide which means ‘asking-tide’ from the Latin rogare, ‘to ask’.

We think this Christian observance of Rogation was taken over from Graeco-Roman religion, where an annual procession invoked divine favour to protect crops against mildew. The tradition grew of using processional litanies, often around the parish boundaries, for the blessing of the land. These processions concluded with the eucharist and that is what we’ll be doing later this morning, sprinkling the fields.

The priest poet George Herbert interpreted the procession as a means of asking for God’s blessing on the land, of preserving boundaries, of encouraging fellowship between neighbours with the reconciling of differences, and of charitable giving to the poor. The tradition of ‘beating the bounds’ has been preserved in some places and, as this morning, use of the Litany within worship with prayers for the countryside supplemented by those for the world of work.

In praying for the countryside we are putting faith in God’s providential care for it and for us. Can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. If God so clothes the grass of the field… will he not much more clothe you - you of little faith? 

Our Lord’s teaching on how faith seeing God in creation counters the human weakness of anxiety is more fully expressed in Paul’s letter to the Philippians 4:6-7: Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God which surpasses all understanding,will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

In today’s litany we have put faith above fear as we have let our requests be made known to God entrusting all that is to his good providence. At St Giles this year we have an invitation from our PCC to continue in this mode from Thursday with Premier Christian Radio listeners and Chichester Diocese through our Prayer Novena, nine days of prayer between Ascension and Pentecost 14th to 23rd May inviting God’s Holy Spirit to renew and work among our relationships and wider community. There are day by day biddings assigned for the elderly, men, the marginalised, young people, women, those suffering from mental health issues, singles, leaders and children and there’s a Premier Radio daily bible study and guide available.

May our prayer and contemplation of the presence of God in nature build our faith and cause the Holy Spirit to awaken others to the truth and beauty of the Almighty God revealed in Jesus Christ. 

Easter 5 Election 3rd May 2015

We stand at an important junction in national life so let’s take guidance from the word of God as we prepare to play our part in the events of the coming week.

Today’s scripture was in place before they set Election Day five years ago for 7^th May. What do the lectionary readings have to say to us?

The first reading from Acts has significance for a nation that’s had Christianity in its fabric as long as any other. A court official of Candace, queen of Ethiopia is on a journey that takes him onto another one at the hand of St Philip. Through the operation of the Holy Spirit he enters the journey of faith and is first to take the good news of God’s love revealed in Jesus Christ to Africa where it can still be found today.

How Queen Candace’s Chancellor of the Exchequer fared on his return to Ethiopia we’re not told but he’s a timely reminder of how much the good of any nation rests on the goodness of its rulers and whether they have the Holy Spirit. In my election leader in May’s parish magazine I quote T.S. Eliot who wrote of the futility of dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good. Politics stands or falls on personnel as much as policy. I went on to salute stalwart village Councillors standing down this month, Rory Clarke after 45 years and Jim Brimfield after 25 years, whose contributions we have greatly valued. On Thursday we have opportunity to elect new councillors, some of the candidates being church members entering the fray with  determination to serve the good of our village. We want the best folk to serve, those who know the ground and, hopefully, those gifted with a strong moral compass who’ll be their own men and women.

All I can tell you to do from the pulpit is vote! How you vote is a matter of conscience, but informed conscience of course and sermons are meant to be about the education of conscience, which is why I outlined in the magazine three vital moral considerations at this time, starting with the need to counter discrimination against ‘second class citizens’ of the UK and the world especially those who live in hunger.

Our second reading touches on this with its reminder that practical action to serve our neighbour, not least the million Britons now having to queue at food banks, is proof of faith in a loving God. Please read with me the last two sentences of the second lesson this morning from the first letter of St John Chapter 4 verses 20 and 21:  Those who say, ‘I love God’, and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.

This morning we’ll be singing at the offertory G.K.Chesterton’s hymn O God of earth and altar, number 481 in our hymnbook with its lovely Vaughan Williams harmonisation. Gilbert Chesterton was one of the brightest Christian minds of the last century. I like this story about him. When a newspaper asked several writers to answer the question “What is wrong with the world?” Chesterton answered: Dear Sirs, I am.  Sincerely yours, G. K. Chesterton

That underlines the point made earlier about right government coming best from right people, or people as right as they can be given the sinfulness of the human condition. The moments in the election campaign that have had most impact on me have been those rare ones where there’s been humility exhibited, something very difficult with the power and pride of 24-7 mass media.

Chesterton’s 1906 hymn starts with the sentiment of human frailty:

O God of earth and altar, bow down and hear our cry, our earthly rulers falter, our people drift and die; the walls of gold entomb us, the swords of scorn divide, take not thy thunder from us, but take away our pride.

His reference to entombing walls of gold link to my mind with the second moral consideration I voiced in the magazine on how our national debt entombs us souring relations between generations and how it’s important to vote in a government with a sound strategy for decreasing it. Chesterton’s hymn reference to entombing walls of gold also voices the materialism of our age, much heightened I guess a century on from his, so that day by day we’re suffering a bribe campaign vis a vis where our bank balances might head after Thursday.

The major challenge in our society has been described as the transformation of consumers into citizens. People resist the call to public service through a self interest unconcerned about the common good beyond making sure they have the consumables they want and the neighbourhood watch functions in case others want to take these from them. The lack of readiness among people to take responsibility for civic life and the common good is alarming. So many of us live in the mini world of our household and the mega world of social media Facebook, Twitter etc leaving out the midi world of the local community including the parish church . We salute those prepared to be candidates for election to Horsted Keynes parish council. As retiring chairman Jim Brimfield writes in the magazine: The new council will have the difficult task of completing the Neighbourhood Plan. I wish them well. This matter can be divisive. I very much hope that any differences which arise, will be overcome by calm discussion and compromise, so that no long term ill feelings will result.

There is a lot at stake locally, nationally and internationally from our visits to the Village Hall on Thursday! Those visits and votes are our taking responsibility for our village, county and nation as the citizens we are.

Let’s move on to the last reading from the holy Gospel, St John Chapter 15. It is an agricultural image of connectedness. I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine-grower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit

I can’t resist using it to illustrate my third moral consideration for you this Sunday before the election which is the Green agenda, namely looking to voting in a government with evident determination to address the crisis impacting the world through abuse of the environment.  Climate change is linked to human abuse of the environment. It’s good we have grapes now growing in our parish but further south there are deserts growing, unfriendly to human habitation, which will do nothing to arrest the northward flow of migrants. Tackling those migrants is a vast, complicated issue for any government balancing our capacity to be hospitable against the capacity of each national infrastructure.

Linking the environmental issue to Our Lord’s teaching on Christian solidarity is poetic licence though. The right explanation of the gospel is elsewhere of course in its call to intimate union with Jesus Christ.  Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches.  John 15:4-5a

In this eucharist we take the fruit of the vine and the work of human hands to become our spiritual food and drink. Though many we’re made one by that Food as we abide in Christ and he in us. Together we stand like branches coming forth from Jesus Christ the true vine and our aspirations for the world at election-tide can’t be separated from that vision for unity. Our scripture readings this morning remind us of how the Holy Spirit can raise world leaders, build justice for the poor, create wealth and a better stewardship of the environment. To find the Holy Spirit, as a rule, though, we need to find Jesus, and to find Jesus and to dwell in him we need his body and blood, his word and the fellowship of his Church which is the vanguard of God’s kingdom.

May the kingdom of this world advance a little towards becoming the kingdom of God through this eucharist, through our prayer, through our voting on Thursday and through a new wave of the Holy Spirit pouring his love upon our village, county, nation and world. Amen.

Easter 4 Good Shepherd Sunday John 10.16 26th April 2015

Chairman’s address at the Annual Meeting

It’s a great gift to have our annual church meeting on Good Shepherd Sunday with its great pastoral and missionary impetus.

I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. Jesus says in John 10.16. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.

The wellspring of mission is God’s heart for the world – these I must bring – and our catching that heart so we work with him so there will be one flock, one shepherd.

As your parish priest I’m Jesus’ under shepherd for us and my invitation on his behalf is to ponder the heart of Jesus and make it your own, to ponder prayerfully those in your acquaintance who are in the words of the Prayer Book ordination service Christ’s sheep dispersed abroad…his children who are in the midst of this naughty world. WE are, in the words of the Prayer Book to seek that they may be saved through Christ forever.

These I must bring… Jesus has his heart on the lost of Horsted Keynes and its surrounds and he wants that heart to be more and more in us individually and as a Christian community. The lost who’re aching from employment, health, security or relationship issues. Those lost without space to be what they’re meant to be on account of pressures upon them of work or family or disability or poverty even. We are to be Jesus for them as he is in them seeking us as in the least of his brothers and sisters.

Our mission, our vision, is God given and that’s our greatest strength and why all we do is nothing worth unless it’s undergirded by prayer.

Last year we made a special Novena or nine day prayer focus in the run up to Harvest and we’re invited by the PCC to make a similar nine day focus next month in the run up to Pentecost.

Yesterday at Diocesan Synod the Bishops set forth a Diocesan Vision for Growth which the new PCC will be helping us engage with as a congregation later in the year. Some resources will be available to help build on our existing Mission Action Plan which is for St Giles to grow in faith, love and numbers

What can be said about these three elements of growth?

As I report as APCM Chairman on our life together over the last year and help set sights on the forthcoming challenges not least in the context of the Diocesan challenge I want to look backward and forward with reference to John 10.16 These I must bring and how that ‘bringing’ to Jesus is being effected so far as faith, love and numbers go.

First the Good Shepherd calls us as a congregation to grow in faith both ourselves and through sharing the saving gift of faith among his children who are in the midst of this naughty world seeking that they may be saved through Christ forever.

With the parish priest the PCC has shaped and monitored mission action to promote the spread and deepening of faith over the last year. There’s been special teaching and engagement with priest poet George Herbert through James Nicholson, the Jesus Prayer through my book and the Advent Premier series and on Robert Leighton in Lent through my partnership with Ann Govas. In October we held a not so successful stewardship renewal. Looking ahead we seek growth of faith expressed in better ownership of proportionate giving to God's work among worshippers, one of the stated challenges on our PCC report. We are also set for the teaching and pastoral gift and training task of a parish deacon as David Howland cones among us from his ordination on 27th June. With Sarah, Oliver and Charlotte he is to be kept in our prayers.

The Good Shepherd’s call secondly to build love in Christ's flock and beyond has been mirrored in the celebration of baptisms, marriages and funerals over the last year as well as in various pastoral ventures. Our church centre the Martindale has new financial buoyancy, allied to its energetic committee, and its use in new ways, and by new groups, like the weekly singing group. The pastoral work of St Giles operates through her School where church members work with me as governors and as teachers of the faith through hosting Friday assemblies. The school were involved in Prayer Spaces and we are talking with the teaching staff about developing Christian meditation in the service of our children. Looking to pastoral challenges ahead there’s a continuous need to raise up volunteers to man things: sacristans, Churchwardens, webmasters, church secretaries and so on. We’d benefit from an improving the communication of such needs so as to engage those appropriately gifted, willing and available to serve into the most necessary realms of ministry under God at St Giles.

I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold, these I must bring in Jesus says. The third prong of our MAP mirrors his desire for growth in numbers at St Giles. Over the last year we held a Back to Church Sunday and broadcast well a number of special services so church has been packed on a good number of occasions. A small team has worked assiduously to host the last Sunday of the month '5 O'clock Service' drawing together committed Christians from across denominations into a word based format with, as at St Giles, occasional surprise visitors. In the summer the new PCC will be heading up plans obedient to the Diocesan Vision for Growth launched yesterday. This requests a parish audit and identification of one thing we feel right to major on in 2016 in service of our better knowing, loving and following Jesus. This one thing has to be notified to the Archdeacon by the end of this year. We anticipate a facilitated congregational meeting probably around  harvest in October. Meanwhile we’ll be keeping the Prayer Novena before Pentecost inviting God’s Holy Spirit to bless us with growth.

Over the last year numbers of folk have come in, on to our Roll or as new communicants - one confirmed and three or four in training. Numbers have also moved heavenwards or to Ardingly, Cheshire, Haywards Heath or wherever. The Lord gives, the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Job 1:21

Blessed indeed be Jesus our Good Shepherd whose heart beats in our midst in the Blessed Sacrament of his body and blood, the wellspring of our mission, the Jesus who is forming up a Eucharistic people in Horsted Keynes, a people thankful to God, an Easter people whose song is 'Alleluia'.

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

Canon John Twisleton          Rector of St Giles, Horsted Keynes

Easter 3 19th April 2015

As I looked through today’s scripture, thrilling as it does with the resurrection, I was thinking about next Sunday’s annual church meeting and our aspirations for church growth.

Don’t we need to be more of a community of the resurrection, I thought, an Easter People?

When you come as I hope you will come next Sunday to own your church and elect its lay officers I hope that in the reports you’ll receive you’ll catch more than a glimmer of the resurrection.

People get intrigued into church more than they get persuaded by good fellowship, intelligent preaching and sound liturgy – and there’s nothing more intriguing than what is seen to conquer death.

Let’s look back into the eucharist booklet and have another look at the readings. First that passage from Acts 3. It follows on from the healing of a lame man who went leaping and bounding into the Temple. How intriguing that must have been! Something worth following – someone worth following!  Let’s read v16 together when you find it: To this we are witnesses...by faith in the name of Jesus, his name itself has made this man strong, whom you see and know; and the faith that is through Jesus has given him this perfect health in the presence of all of you.

When God is at work people get drawn in and God is at work here at St Giles! People are talking of him being with them, not least through their trials, as they live with health or relationship or employment challenges. It’s always heartening to me as parish priest to hear of resurrection occurring, of the risen Christ coming to bear on the lives of parishioners very often through the bearing of suffering or humiliation.

Then the second reading from 1 John 3. I always find the first letter of John a real tonic and often pick it up and read it when my faith flags. Nothing to beat God’s word for promise and encouragement – would that we were all more immersed in it! Let’s read v2: Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.

What a promise! Our longing for the Lord is pivotal in attaining what’s promised. Beryl’s memorial eucharist yesterday recalled her desire for God all through her life expressed in steadfast attendance at the eucharist. In the word and bread and wine of the eucharist we behold Christ veiled – we could not face him if he wasn’t – but then, on that day of universal resurrection when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.

As a church we need to build more of the eager longing for the Lord 1 John 3 speaks of, a longing that is infectious and that leads beyond this world. How blessed we are as a church to have members who long for the word and the sacrament and for Christ in one another. How much we’ve got to learn from one another spiritually! May Jesus intrigue us through one another!

Let’s end by looking at today’s third reading from St Luke’s Gospel Chapter 24 in which Our Lord emphasises the physicality of the resurrection, showing his wounded yet glorified hands and feet and eating a piece of broiled fish. On the first those who were at the Easter Vigil will recall that when we blessed the Pascal Candle we placed four nails in its side to represent the physical crucifixion.  

Why is this? Well let’s read together verses 46-47. 46 and he said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, 47 and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.

The point Our Lord makes is the same point St Peter makes in the first reading: it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer.

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

It is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name.

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

St Giles as a light house? Maybe, if you and I become lighthouses, little candles lit from the Easter Candle? Lit with this faith – that the only meaningful thing in life is what conquers death, and not what but who!

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

‘The source of false religion is the inability to rejoice, or rather, the refusal of joy, whereas joy is absolutely essential because it is without any doubt the fruit of God’s presence.’ So writes Alexander Schmemann.  So then - our focus this Sunday in Easter season is on rejoicing for eucharist and Christian life itself means no less than thanks and praise. Christ is risen! ‘In his, in God’s presence is the fullness of joy and at his right hand there are pleasures for evermore’ says the Psalmist. Alleluia 

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed, alleluia!

Easter 2 (B) 12 April 2015

Last week I attended Easter Mass in a suburb of Dieppe, a joyous occasion with drinks after showing Easter week retains its religious significance among the French.

Highlight was a conversation with Martin a young man just setting out on a three month walk to Santiago de Compostela. Having given up his job in IT he is set for the priesthood. His joy was part of the joy that overflowed from the Mass led by his mentor Père Geoffroy, the Curé of Dieppe, a remarkable priest I also met and to whom I suggested a visit to Saint Giles.

What impacted me in that brief encounter with the French Church was - I ticked this box myself - a priest enjoying Christianity pointing people at Mass to the joy of faith, and, secondly seeds of faith sprouting into vocation and counter-cultural self-sacrifice.

Martin the mid 20s computer guy shared how the last two years have meant his turning tables on how the world sees poverty, celibacy and obedience. What he shared built on impressions I gained in conversation from 15 young people we hosted here in Holy Week and with my own sons that I want to build from this morning.

I tend to see the young as nothing like poor, chaste and obedient but they - some of them - are rejecting the counsel that money, sex and power are all it’s about and, unless you get loads you'll be a loser.

These conversations came back to me as I read that first lesson from Acts which I'd like us to read again as a mighty reminder of the counter-cultural consequences of the resurrection of Jesus: 

The whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common. With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold. They laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.

What a counter to worldly ways of thinking be they 1st or 21st century! 

I think of how first of all the passage counters the fashion of individualism by which each of us does our own thing as something of a default, often with the ready permission of family members - like my trip across the ocean to France which Anne blessed. 

To think of individuals and families so impacted by the truth this world is to be lived in the light of future resurrection they became of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions! Young Martin is losing all to have the church for his family. I of course do live in a church house - but I have my own down the road for later. 

Just landing the thought of sharing life as Christians one lovely feature of St Giles like Sacré Couer is the capacity to share our life together after l'heure de Jesu. As in Dieppe the priest here says a one hour Mass but stays for two hours. 

Back to that passage. It has countercultural obedience as well as poverty. As many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold. They laid it at the apostles’ feet and it was distributed to each as any had need. 

Martin has wrestled with what it means to surrender your life to those over you in the Lord. He is part of an authoritative local church, under a charismatic pastor but he himself is under no illusions. Christianity is ideally authoritative but practically it's a matter of putting yourself under authority. He won't always have a charismatic over him but he is set to obey whoever will be over him for the next 40 years.

It made me think of 14 Bishops of different hues I've had over my years, three of Bradford, one of Oxford who selected me for training, two of Sheffield, two of Guyana, one of Coventry, two of London and three of Chichester including Bishop Eric who appointed me to the diocese. 

To live as a Christian, let alone as a priest, is to live submissive to the risen Christ and, in bible based ecclesiology, obedient to those over you in the Lord so that, though at times I balk at it, I, we, remain happy to lay our tithe at the apostles’ feet i.e. that of the Bishop and Diocese of Chichester who have oversight of Saint Gilles. 

When I ask you to accept my authority it's that the Bishop shares with me and it's in the context both of Christian obedience and of my own and indeed the Bishop's fallibility. The apostolic office calls forth obedience but, as I was sharing the other week, the office bearing person is as much in need of mercy as the next Christian.

These sorts of question were probably little in the minds of the believers described in Acts 4 whose whole lives had been turned upside down by what God did to death through Jesus as we read in the passage. With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all.
The Easter season is an opportunity to refresh ourselves as Easter Christians. As such we are or we should be determined to face up to death and other inescapable things in life with an ongoing challenge of the things that deceive us both internal and external. As I listened to Martin I recalled recent conversations with my sons about mortality following their grandmother's death which illustrate one such deceit, namely the one that we'll never die, or that our life in this world should be our only concern.

We have many world views in play and it is the loud voice of so-called relativism that we can believe what we choose. We must answer though for what we choose to believe and a materialistic world view has no answer to a holy God. 

John Henry Newman who's now made Saint in France and England said To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often. He also said  Fear not your life shall come to an end, but rather that it shall never have a beginning. Meeting, sharing with young people recently who have seen that spiritual beginning. I have been heartened by openness to the only creed which both addresses mortality directly and puts humanity right. As Newman again said - I read him on my break - The name of Jesus can raise the dead and transfigure and beautify the living. 

So may this Easter Octave Day eucharist be imbued with great power, grace and freedom as we exalt in the resurrection of Our Lord who transfigures and beautifies us as part of his counter cultural joyous purpose for the world, for France, for the United Kingdom, mid Sussex and Horsted Keynes Saint Giles!