Easter 3 Finding God 10th April 2016

How do you find God?

Someone I met in the gym found God when he prayed to get free of addiction to cannabis.  He prayed. Something happened and, so the lad told me, he now sees the world in rosier colours with goodness, truth and beauty shining all over the place.  God is only a prayer away.

The scripture passage from the book of Revelation in which John the seer sees the risen Christ and gets messages. He got his vision in Patmos on the Lord’s Day. I was once on Patmos Island at an open air Greek Orthodox eucharist and it  gave me a clue to his vision. There were elders round the altar that morning, the priests. The bread and wine on it stood for the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ, slain for us. The hundreds present singing beautiful chant gave a sense of surrounding angels. I think, and several Bible scholars agree, that John the seer had his vision right there at Sunday eucharist in Patmos.

How do you find God?

You can find him in prayer, through the Bible and at the eucharist. Here’s the sting, if you like. You find God through the Church. Without the Church, God, to use David Cameron’s image, is like receiving Classic FM in the Cotswolds. The Church helps you tune in to God. John the seer was Church. He said his prayers, knew his bible and came to the eucharist. I’m sure he served others and confessed his sins, two other ways God comes close to us.

How do we find God?

In the last scripture reading from John’s Gospel illustrated on the eucharist booklet cover we’re told Jesus showed himself again to his disciples after his resurrection. Not only did he show them himself as God’s Son, he showed them the best place to fish. Cast the net to the right side of the boat, and you will find some. So they cast it, and now they were not able to haul it in because there were so many fish.

Finding God is costly – we have to turn away from self – but it’s always profitable.  I think of the lad I met in the gym who prayed when he was in a bad state and saw his prayer answered. God answers prayer, of that I’m utterly convinced, even if some of his answers perplex me.

As the American writer Tim Keller says in answer to Richard Dawkins: If you have a God great and transcendent enough to be mad at because he hasn't stopped evil and suffering in the world, … you have… a God great and transcendent enough to have good reasons for allowing it to continue that you can’t know... you can’t have it both ways. I like Keller  we had a book club on his classic ‘The reason for God’ a couple of years back. In it he asks, incisively, whether the civil rights movement across the world could have emerged from secular belief in the goodness of human nature, rather than the Christian conviction about the sinfulness of human hearts we've already voiced at the start of the eucharist.

How do we find God?

Through the Church, for nowhere else can you engage with preaching and sacraments which bring Christ alive in our hearts. Oh yes there’s sin in the Church, in you and I – but there’s Christ as well and Jesus Christ gives us access to God as the way, the truth and the life.

Through prayer, scripture, eucharist, repentance, service and reflection God in Christ comes close. The children of our school - now regularly reflect. Christian meditation started in January. At the start of every afternoon session the children take time to be still and meditate. We will have opportunity to do the same next weekend which will have a contemplative feel to it with the Quiet Day in the Martindale and the 10am Contemplative eucharist with Dan Wolpert.

How do we find God?  

You can’t beat being still. So let’s do just that, for we read his invitation in Psalm 46v10 Be still and know that I am God.   Let’s do that.

Octave Sunday of Divine Mercy 3rd April 2016

On this Divine Mercy Sunday in the Diocesan and global Year of Mercy we’re reminded Easter’s more deeds than words.

Easter’s an event. It’s a mercy mission from God believers become part of that’s changing the world.

The mercy of God is a torrent that has burst its banks wrote St John Vianney. It carries off our hearts in its wake.

Brendan Woodhouse is a volunteer with the United Society supported Lighthouse Refugee Relief which provides care for refugees arriving on the Greek island of Lesvos. He recalls how he helped to save the life of a baby after a boat carrying refugees capsized at night in freezing water about 30 metres from the shore.

He writes: ‘people were hysterical, screaming, sobbing and frightened. On sound in particular I will never forget: the screams of a mother who had lost her baby. ‘While everyone else was facing he shore shouting for help, she was facing out to sea. She shouted at me and pointed out to sea. About 15 metres away I could see a little black dot, bobbing up and down in the water.

‘I swam as fast as I could, knowing I was putting my life in danger as I’m not the greatest of swimmers. Eventually I reached it: a five-month-old baby girl, wrapped in a blanket, face down in the water, with no lifejacket. I grabbed her and look at her face. Her eyes were rolled back. She was not breathing. She was as white as can be, but I knew she stood a chance.

‘I swam backstroke, facing the stars, with the little baby on my chest. I kicked a fast as I could. With my left arm I paddled, and with my right arm I pressed up and down on her chest, ‘I swam past people screaming for help. I swam with everything I had and more. I prayed to God, begging for her life.

Eventually I reached down with my feet and touched rock. I balanced as best I could and gave her five rescue breaths. After the second breath, she sicked up water from her lungs and started to cry. It was the most beautiful sound in the world because I knew I had breathed life back into her’.

Brendan reached the shore where other volunteers took over. The baby’s condition was stabilised. Then she was reunited with her mother and rushed to hospital, where she made a full recovery. Henry Hartley, of Lighthouse Refugee Relief, said: ‘The funding we have received from United Society is directly responsible for saving lives’.

You helped save that baby and others. You did so by your gifts to United Society, formerly USPG, in our orange envelopes from January to March that the PCC doubled before sending it to this mercy mission.

That graphic human story reminds us how the resurrection of Christ is like dynamite. It has wide and enormous impact for it’s an ongoing explosion of love, joy and peace which counters all that’s wrong in the world. It’s about life, life after death of course, but life before death as well.

The year of mercy is a reminder of this. In the year’s mercy logo, which we’ve blown up this week, you see the risen Lord Jesus taking the lost on his shoulders, just as Brendan Woodhouse took and carried that baby. Jesus carries us, in our weakness, to the home of the Father. I have been very aware of this mercy ministry these last weeks as I’ve been his instrument in helping carry dying brothers and sisters.

Our Lord’s mercy mission is the conquest of death. It’s also collaborative conquest of death-dealing hunger, injustice and disease afflicting those in the prime of life. Jesus invites us to carry others in God’s mercy mission of redemption.

In the image on the eucharist booklet, the eyes of Jesus merge with the eyes of our fallen nature. Christ sees with the eyes of Adam and Adam can now see with the eyes of Christ. Easter is about the gift of those eyes in a new nature, a new capability to see possibilities beyond mortal imagination.

Moving from the troubled shores of a Greek island to a peaceful Sussex village you might wonder where God’s mercy mission is here - hope you do! I hope you give yourself each day, as I do, to be used as best you can to his praise and service.

In Lent a dozen of us met in the Martindale to look at the Acts of the Apostles with an eye to serving the needs of the community: Acts for Action. The PCC looked at some of the points raised there at its meeting on Thursday. In particular we thought about using P&P to celebrate month by month the different organisations, some 40 in number, that impact our life together as a village, and to give thanks for them also in Church on occasion.

Loneliness was something that came up, as did parenting. Engaging both these areas is a mercy mission, incredibly important, incredibly difficult. Difficult to allay and to help, save a life orientation of service that’s what we as Easter people are committed to.

The village empties of workers and their children each morning. At this holiday season it empties for a week or so. As you go round visiting homes as I do, you find in the day, away from weekends and out of holiday season, a sprinkling of home based workers, young mums, elderly and housebound. The bus stop’s a big feature, elderly folk getting out, getting away, meeting others there and beyond in Haywards Heath.

How do you help the lonely or those struggling as parents? Being there, whilst not getting in the way, is our mercy mission. Inviting folk to Thursday coffee, or the third Friday village lunch. If you can, going on the coffee or chef rota. Both ventures are a mercy mission. You might have read Faith in Sussex – do pick up a copy of this month’s Diocesan magazine. There our village lunch is styled a mercy project, providing as it does a place of belonging for all through a high quality £4 a head lunch at which all are welcome. Bishop Martin is coming to it on 16^th September.

St Giles does a lot to help parents across Sussex through collections and food gifts towards Diocesan Family Support Work. My wife Anne has just retired from promoting FSW in deaneries and has exceptionally written a report in this month’s P&P. Veronica Griffiths is still the representative for St Giles, linking us with that work and has appealed repeatedly for someone to take over.

Easter’s deeds more than words. It’s an event, a mercy mission from God believers are part of that’s changing the world primarily through little acts, like that of Brendan with the baby, like what, less dramatically, you’ve got planned ahead this week, or the spaces and times you leave unplanned for surprises of the Holy Spirit.

The mercy of God is a torrent that has burst its banks. It carries off our hearts in its wake.

In our day to day, hour to hour living we are carried by Our Lord, and with him carry others, as we discern, being his instruments. There is an ocean of need around. Our prayer and merciful action looks a drop in that ocean – but it matters! It will matter more, impact more, if we see ourselves as we really are, caught into the torrent of mercy that flows from the cross, bursting banks and carrying our hearts in its wake.

Easter vigil and 8am eucharist 27th March 2016

Joy isn’t just a component of Christianity it’s the key.

How can you believe in God without sensing joy?

Today/tonight we see God writ large, God to the dimensions of God and not to ours, showing his grandeur as taking human form he breaks through death and reveals eternal life to us and for us.

On the third day he rose again in accordance with the scriptures.

We gain joy as we gain God and that’s in the present moment. This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.  Psalm 118:24

What the resurrection effects is twofold. It delivers us from the prison of our mental constructs of past and future.

To know Christ is risen is to know God’s unalterable newness, the same yesterday, today and tomorrow – to know it and live in it is joy.

This is eternal life, to know God and Jesus Christ whom he has sent. John 17:3

In that knowledge of what God in Christ has done for us we gain two benefits.

First we’re freed by forgiving both wrongs we've suffered from others and by welcoming forgiveness for the wrongs we ourselves have done.

Second we’re relieved of fear for the future. Tomorrow also is God’s and his love is stronger than the worst power we’ll ever encounter – and that includes death.

You will be with me always, he says, nothing can separate us, enter my joy, as the Psalmist writes: You show me the path of life. In your presence there is fullness of joy; in your right hand are pleasures forevermore. Psalm 16:11

Absence of joy links to self-sufficiency and pride, imprisonment in past regrets, future anxiety all of which cut us off from the living God.

Today/tonight we affirm God for who he is, and his opening to our intuition of death’s diminishment.

The only meaningful thing in life is what conquers death, not what but who, Jesus Christ, true God and true Man.

Since April 33AD, or maybe 27AD with a six year slippage, humanity has the full picture of God in his grandeur and humans in their immense potential as those in his image destined for the glorious liberty of the children of God (Romans 8:21).

The hope of this glory is cause of our joy.

Our intellects balk at death and wrestle with its reality 20 centuries on from Easter. How has the world changed, we ask, with the reality of evil this week in Brussels and the genocide committed by Radovan Karadzic?

There are no rational knockdown arguments here but when your heart is touched by the risen Christ its enough.

We are joyful in spirit today/tonight and always as Christians for we know deep down God is God and he always will be God and we have fellowship with him that’ll never end.

Joy isn’t just a component of Christianity it’s the key.

We can’t believe in God as he truly is without sensing joy and today/tonight we see him as he really is, God writ large, God to the dimensions of God, showing his grandeur, taking human form, breaking through death and revealing eternal life to us and for us.

This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.  

May the unalterable newness of Jesus be our joy today, tomorrow, to the last syllable of recorded time, and beyond that to eternal ages! Alleluia!

Palm Sunday 2016 20th March 2016

3 readings in Church linked to God's promise, gift and task.

Isaiah promises the gift, Luke tells of it and Philippians speaks of its implications.

Time frame 800BC, 30-50AD so back 2800 years to...

1 THE PROMISE. Isaiah 50:6  'I gave my back to those who struck me,  and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I did not hide my face from insult and spitting. The Lord God helps me;  therefore I have not been disgraced'.

For 800 years the identity of this speaker, the mysterious so-called servant of God, who 'listens to God as those who are taught' and promises to bear suffering for all, was hidden. It's a real one-off Old Testament passage looking to a Saviour figure that still puzzles the Jews.

I've just seen in a new Bishop of Guyana. Last Sunday I was in our Cathedral, the largest wooden building in the world, twice. At 630am to offer the Cathedral Mass and 4pm for Evensong which saw Bishop Charles Davidson enthroned as 8th Bishop of Guyana. He gave a sermon based on another Old Testament passage from Exodus 18:17 in which Jethro advises Moses he'll work himself to death unless he appoints collaborators to serve God's people. In doing so he paid tribute to our late friend Bishop Cornell Moss.

The bit of his sermon that struck and challenged me wasn't scriptural but this quote 'blessed are the flexible because they're not bent out of shape easily' (repeat). Message for the Diocese, I thought, for me, for St Giles I thought. In this passage from Isaiah we see a prophecy of one to be pulled from pillar to post whilst going with the flow, bent but not out of shape. We Christians are J shaped for a J can be seen as an I pressed down to spring up again.

What's pressing on you this morning? You'd hardly be human or self-aware without a sense of bearing pressure! Are you like Isaiah's mystery sufferer listening to God in this? Is your ear attuned? Your spirit teachable so what you're going through will work out well?

Let's move on 800 years from the promise to the gift.

2 THE GIFT Luke 23:1-49. 'The chief priest and scribes stood by,   vehemently accusing Jesus. Even Herod with his soldiers treated him with contempt and mocked him, and sent him back to Pilate... Then Jesus, crying in a loud voice, said, "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit’. Having said this, he breathed his last. When the centurion saw what had  taken place he praised God.

Luke speaks of the arrival of the promise - the gift of the promised Saviour awaited 800 years and from the foundation of the earth.

Human history follows the course of creation then fall then redemption then glorification.

God made us for friendship (demonstration) - sin came in as a barrier - by his dying and rising Jesus broke the barrier - making us friends of God. 

In the Cathedral last Sunday Bishop Charles invited us to dedicate ourselves not to him but to Jesus who died for our sins, rose from the dead and gives us the Holy Spirit to help us become the best we can be. 

Pointing to Jesus, whose forgiveness for his torturers is stated in verse 34 of today's Gospel, he engaged with the temptation to criticise. There's a no such thing as constructive criticism he warned. What, not even Donald Trump I thought? No, the question he put was when someone says or does something wrong do you first want to voice it, or do you first want to pray for them? 'Bless her, Jesus!' 'Save him, Jesus!' I know I'm on a learning curve here - how about you? The church brings us liturgically, through the lectionary, to the foot of the Cross today and Friday. It's very level ground.

 Remember the story of two men watching someone go to the scaffold. One says to the other 'There but for the grace of God go I'. We're on level ground today faced within the awesome gift of Jesus. My self righteousness or lack of it compared to yours puts me on the top of bottom of the carpet, no higher or lower.

The promise from Isaiah, the gift from Luke and now let's move 30 years or so from the Gospel account to Paul's letter from prison, Philippians 2:5

3 THE TASK  'Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself'

We are J shaped people seeking to be capable of his humility, something we prayed for in the Holy Week Collect where we asked God 'in your tender love towards the human race you sent your Son our Saviour Jesus Christ to take upon him our flesh and to suffer death upon the cross: grant that we may follow the example of his patience and humility, and also be made partakers of his resurrection'

Paul in Philippians, and all through his writings, speaks of Jesus' death and resurrection as the source of spiritual renewal. We heard these words from Philippians 3:10-11 last week in Church: 'I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead'. That's our aspiration as we follow this week, the seven days that changed the world. Dying to selfish ambition, rising to enter the possibilities of the Holy Spirit.

When I sat down with Bishop Charles and fixed up his UK visit in July I said if just 10% of what he'd set before us in his enthronement address came true it would be fantastic. He reminded me of the core challenge he stands under, and would have us all stand under, namely 'Jesus expects us to do our best and better'. This agreement to do our best for the Lord is here this morning. It's much before us as we contemplate his death for us. Because of that death and its sequel we are becoming Christians by the power of the Holy Spirit.

As we experience Christ's love in worship, prayer, study, service and reflection we come to know him more clearly, love him more dearly and follow him more nearly day by day.

Worship - extra opportunities this week when we've effectively got 3 extra Sunday's with Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday.

Prayer - which we can be much more flexible about, popping into church alone if we've time, looking round the Stations of the Cross which will be removed as the altars are stripped on Thursday night.

Study - 'read your bible, pray every day' was a chorus I sang in Guyana. Read the end of a Gospel, take away your service booklet and use it day by day to think of the promise, gift and task of Jesus in Isaiah 50, Luke 23 and Philippians 2

Service - in Holy Week we recognise especially our individual need of mercy. This sensitises us to others in their need and to engaging with our neighbour, not forgetting the best gift they could ever find, which we have in Jesus Christ, nor possibilities to invite friends to the powerful services next weekend.

Reflection - we love God with our heart in worship, soul in prayer, mind in study, our neighbour in service and last but not least ourselves in reflection which is a theme of this afternoon's healing service. Holy Week's a time to examine ourselves. There are confession times this afternoon at 4pm and Good Friday 3pmand you're welcome to arrange times for counsel or confession with the clergy convenient to yourself. 

We've heard the promise of Jesus in Isaiah. We've welcome the gift of Jesus in the Gospel to be sealed in Holy Communion. We're now primed afresh for the task of loving God and making him loved.

'Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself'

Mothering Sunday 8am 6th March 2016

It is a strange paradox that this year’s Gospel for Mothering Sunday is that of the Father’s love.

It’s not deliberate, just that we’re in the year of Luke and no Lucan passage is more Lent suited than that of the Prodigal Son! The fact Lent 4 is Mothering Sunday is secondary so far as the Lectionary goes. It’s a universal Lectionary and many countries don’t keep Mother’s Day today.

In the story of the Prodigal Son we have a beautiful demonstration of what Lent is all about – the healing joy of repentance.

At its centre is the welcome home of the prodigal. I love the King James Bible version of this story with its rich cadences:

But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him. 21 And the son said unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son. 22 But the father said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet: 23 And bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry: 24 For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found. And they began to be merry. Luke 15.23-27

What wonderful words! They serve as no other words to give us invitation to seek God as our Father.

That paragraph provides the heart of the story involving three characters each of which we may find ourselves identifying with.

First the openness of the prodigal - how ready am I to admit my mistakes? As Christians we believe we are sinners in need of grace. What is so surprising about a sinner sinning? 

Yet many of us are slow to seek forgiveness from God or neighbour.

Our slowness links to the judgmentalism around typified by the elder brother in the parable whose attitude is far from forgiving!

Lent is a time to challenge that judgmental ‘elder brother’ within each one of us. It’s a time to challenge the habitual sins that get on top of us. C.S.Lewis once wrote a caution about despairing over our habitual sins:

I know all about the despair of overcoming chronic temptation.  It is not serious, provided self-offended petulance, annoyance at breaking records, impatience, etc. don't get the upper hand. No amount of falls will really undo us if we keep on picking ourselves up each time.  We shall of course be very muddy and tattered children by the time we reach home.  But the bathrooms are all ready, the towels put out, and the clean clothes in the airing cupboard.  The only fatal thing is to lose one's temper and give it up.  It is when we notice the dirt that God is most present in us: it is the very sign of His presence.  Daily Readings p122-3

The main figure in the Parable is the loving Father who represents God. Jesus teaches God is always helpfully present to us in his holiness and ready to show us the dirt and dysfunction in our lives.  He makes himself present in practical love to remedy our situation - the bathrooms are all ready, the towels put out, and the clean clothes in the airing cupboard.

Our Lord cleanses us of sin and guilt by practical demonstrations geared to our humanity. That’s particularly true of the sacrament of reconciliation also known as sacramental confession in which we play the part of the prodigal in a re-enactment of Luke 15. There is great freedom to be attained through celebrating this sacrament so misunderstood in Anglican circles. We have set times for this sacrament in St Giles nearer Easter or you can make an appointment.

The father may represent God but he is also an example of the love a parent, father or mother, is called to show his or her children. Lack of affirmation by parents, lack of generous reconciliation in family life, is the root of much domestic misery.

In Henri Nouwen’s The Return of the Prodigal Son the author speaks of his being inspired by Rembrandt’s famous painting of that title. The gnarled yet welcoming hands of the Father in Rembrandt’s picture symbolise God’s hands stretched out for us upon the Cross.  They challenge us to pay the price ourselves for a more affirming attitude to those falling short around us.

The great inspiration of this book is the Christian call to a ministry of affirmation.

Be compassionate as your Father is compassionate as Jesus said elsewhere.

As we come to the altar this morning on behalf of ourselves or those on our hearts we come as the prodigal son knowing our need of forgiveness. We come repenting of the ‘elder brother’ in us and all that critical spirit that subtracts from the joy God wants in our hearts. We come finally for grace to be like our Father, capable of love for sinners.

The readiness to treat others as better than they are is simple imitation of God’s readiness to treat us as far better than we are. We can ask the Holy Spirit to build that affirming capacity within us so that having received laying on of hands this afternoon we may be better equipped to embrace others as instruments of the divine mercy.

The bathrooms are all ready, the towels put out, and the clean clothes in the airing cupboard.

Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet: And bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry: For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found. 

Lent 2 Sacrifice 21 February 2016

Jesus said to his disciples: ‘This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many’. Mark 14:24

In this Eucharist we are being caught up into the eternal sacrifice of Christ and its profound challenge to our self-interest.

This gathering in the parish Church is part of an eternal gathering stretching back to Abraham and beyond and stretching forward to the consummation of all things.

This morning we are touching reality - we are drawn to the events represented here which institute God’s covenant with us, and we are drawn into a love which touches every human concern upon the earth.

To the outward eye we are a small gathering of religious people doing their own thing upon their weekly holy day. To the eye of faith we are Christians, caught up once more, on behalf of the whole creation, into the eternal sacrifice of Jesus Christ, through whom,and with whom and in whom in the unity of the Holy Spirit, we give glory to our Father in heaven.

The Old Testament reading from Genesis describes an awesome encounter between Abraham and the Lord.  In this holy eucharist we too should be in awe as we approach the same Lord in the Eucharistic sacrifice. This is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, happy are those who are called to his supper.

One role of a preacher is to awaken, sensitise and draw God’s people afresh into this great mystery of the Christian religion which centres on the Lamb of God our Saviour truly present in the sacrifice and sacrament of the altar. If we fully realised what was going on in this rite our amazement would soon infect others to join in the most significant happening on any day in Horsted Keynes!

Jesus St John says is the lamb slain from the foundation of the world. The sacrifice once offered on Calvary and made present at this altar is rooted in the history of God’s people and the eternal covenant.

Genesis Chapter 15 describes the institution of that covenant with Abraham by the shedding of blood, an agreement between man and God pledging loyalty even unto death.  In the ancient world, when a covenant was ‘cut’ with the slaughter of lambs its breaking could be punishable by death. It also symbolised a death to independent living and the coming alive of a relationship or covenant.

In the covenant God made with Abraham there was a special sign.  The sacrificed animals were consumed by a supernatural intervention interpreted as an anticipation of the new covenant.  As the animal sacrifice was consumed by fire from heaven, so Jesus is to see his body and blood separated in death and then transformed by power from heaven in the glory of the resurrection.

So it is that in the Eucharist we witness the separate consecration of Christ’s body and blood. We pause devotionally on two occasions to recall the sacrificial sundering of the Lamb of God - this is my body...this is my blood...of the new covenant, which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins

Some of us possibly visited the ‘Seeing Salvation’ exhibition at the turn of the Millennium 16 years ago at the National Gallery. One of the many images of Christ was this  (show) - ‘The Bound Lamb’ by Francisco de Zurbarin who lived in the 17th century.  It is an image that often appears on Nativity scenes, the Shepherds’ offering which anticipates Christ’s sacrifice. 

As Jeremy Paxman wrote in the Church Times of this painting: ‘no image I know so perfectly captures the astonishing force of the Christian story’.

The sacrificial imagery in today’s Old Testament links to this symbol of Christ as Lamb of God so familiar to us from the liturgy of the Eucharist - familiar and yet often rather empty of meaning to many of us until we examine the Old Testament roots as we are doing this morning. 

How often we hear those words ‘Lamb of God’? How much we need to ‘inhabit the words’ of our prayer and liturgy and not be empty ritualists!

There is a Church in Norway, I’m told, which has the image of a sheep sculpted half way up its tower.  Only when people enter that Church and hear something of its history do they discover the full Christian significance of the sculpted sheep.

Years before the sculpture was erected some renovation work was occurring on the Church steeple in this rural community.  One day a workman slipped from the steeple to almost certain death.  At the same time by a remarkable twist of providence a flock of sheep was being driven past the Church. 

The steeplejack fell on a sheep and his fall was cushioned. The sheep died to save him - an awesome happening! The workers expressed their gratitude to God by adorning that Church tower with a sculpted sheep.

Jesus is the Lamb of God whose voluntary sacrifice takes away our sin.  Our Lord on Calvary takes the full impact of sin and death for us at the cost of his life.

Our Lord has soaked up all the evil that would defeat me and offered me life to the full - life that cancels sin with forgiveness, sickness with healing, bondage with deliverance and even doubt with the gift of faith through the mighty Redemption he has won. 

All of this is powerfully present to me in every celebration of the Eucharist.

I cannot understand it but I will accept it. I cannot understand the way electricity works but that does not stop me switching on the lights. I take both on authority and it works to do so.

Jesus died in my place so that he might live in my place. Jesus died in my place to carry off the impact of evil upon me, through the gift of the Eucharist. Jesus lives in my place, cooperating with my will by his Spirit, as I welcome him again and again into my heart in this Sacrament!

This morning we make the memorial of the Offering of Jesus and enter into that Self-Offering! It is through the sacrificial Lamb of God that we can make a perfect offering to the Father, our sinful bodies made clean by his body..our souls washed through his most precious blood.

There is a deep continuity between the sacrifice of Abraham, the offering of Jesus the Lamb of God, the Eucharistic Sacrifice and our own sacrificial living as Christians.  They all hang together. In a culture so full of self-interest what we are about this morning is powerfully counter-cultural. Here, in union with Christ, we are offering our souls and bodies to be a living sacrifice

No wonder the eucharist has been described as ‘a meeting of rebels in a mammon-oriented society’. Sacrifice goes against the grain of our contemporary culture in many ways, especially voluntary sacrifice.  People can make sacrifice when absolutely necessary - but to choose to give your life away Sunday by Sunday - well that’s heavily counter-cultural!

Faithful attendance and active participation in the eucharist is our great reminder day by day of God’s call for us to direct our energies more and more away from the service of self and more and more towards his service.  This self-offering is, in the words of the Eucharistic Prayer both ‘right’ and also ‘a good and joyful thing’.

Sacrifice is at heart about this voluntary choice about how we direct our lives - it is about love before it is about death.  It is about ‘joyous living’ just as sure as ‘God loves a cheerful giver’. It is not so much about forgoing what we desire but of binding our energies to what God desires. 

Here in this Eucharist week by week we’re drawn into such a school of sacrifice, into a love which touches every human concern upon the earth. We are caught up again and again into the loving sacrifice of Christ and its profound challenge to our self-interest. In offering our lives once again this morning we’re entrusting them afresh into the hands of God, renewing our covenant with him, so as to be employed to his praise and service in every situation we shall face in the coming week. In the name of the Father…

Lent 1 14th February 2016

In Lent we are called to discover afresh the power of Christ’s Cross.

This is why we started Lent with the signing of the cross on our foreheads and why the symbols of glory and resurrection are backstage for the next six weeks, so that the Cross shines forth.

Last month I was in Tenerife walking in the mountains.

I visited the small town of Santiago del Teide perched on the lower slopes of Mount Teide which towers almost 4000 metres above sea level, the highest point above sea level of any island in the Atlantic Ocean, and third highest volcano on any volcanic island in the world.

The volcano last erupted in 1909. When it did so the inhabitants of Santiago del Teide were faced with the prospect of their town’s obliteration.

It’s a deeply Christian place, Tenerife. When they saw the volcano erupt the villagers didn’t hesitate to act.

They took the cross from the altar and went up the hill to meet the lava. The flow stopped where they met and each year since there’s been a thanksgiving procession.

I walked to the place where the lava stopped and said a prayer by the Cross there and before the original cross that’s in the beautiful church there.

The people saw burning lava halt before the Cross and the victory of their Christian faith.

In my own experience the Cross is as sure a weapon against no less fiery assaults against my spirit.

To believe in the Cross is to believe in the risen Lord Jesus Christ who stands behind it and beside each one of us. His power in us, by his Spirit, is greater than the power of any enemy, however powerful.

For the next six weeks Christians are paying special attention to the Cross of our Saviour and how it engages with our personal struggle against sin.

You may struggle with lack of faith in yourself – the Cross says God loves you, turn from such disbelief.

You may struggle with lack of faith in other people – the Cross says God loves them as well as you and much more, so forgive those who upset you or who seem to be against you.

You may struggle with lack of faith in God – the Cross tells you God loves you enough to die for you.

Jesus said God loves us so much he numbers every hair on our head.

In Wednesday’s rite of ashing those who received the ashes of last year’s Palm branches on their foreheads heard the words Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. Turn away from sin and be faithful to Christ. These words can be paraphrased, as I did with the school children, as ‘God loves you. Turn from sin’.

‘God forbid that we should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ’ Saint Paul once wrote (Galatians 6:14) and he goes on to invite us to let the Cross bring God's grace into our lives.

In Lent we seek more than usual such grace for the empowerment of our loves, grace that comes from the foot of the Cross.

Let’s turn there now as we think in a quiet moment of the immense love shown to us by the God and Father of Jesus in sending his Son to die for us and pouring the Holy Spirit into our hearts to bring assurance of that love.