St Richard, Haywards Heath 6th of Year (C) 17.2.19

How can we be the Church better?

Both Fr Chris and I started our priesthood in Sheffield Diocese and I recall from my days a diocesan theme of that name which was very successful: Being the church better. It was a challenge to do no more but to put more into what we were doing.

As a somewhat repentant former mission adviser I’m aware of how diocesan initiatives can sap energy by putting extra burdens on busy priests and people. That being said I rejoice in our diocesan year of vocation because our calling or vocation flows straight from what we are in Christ so it is timely to open God’s word with that in mind.

How can we be the Church better and better fulfil our Christian calling?

We’re human beings not human doings. Even if, like me, a lot of what you do is pottering around as a retiree you can still forget to ‘take time to stand and stare’ as the saying goes. Jeremiah and the Psalmist draw an analogy between the life of faith and trees sinking roots into subterranean water. When I was a Curate in Doncaster I woke up one summer morning to find a crack right across my bedroom wall. Four thirsty plane trees in the garden had drunk the water under the Clergy House in a drought such that the House came to subside! Such is the power behind a tree - or four trees.

How much more power there is in a trustful life! Happy the one who has placed his trust in the Lord… yielding fruit in due season… all they do shall prosper. Being the church better is about putting roots into the word of God, savouring for example this week’s readings from Jeremiah 17 and the first Psalm day by day, being reminded whenever you pass a tree - and we are much more blessed with trees to remind us in Chichester Diocese than we were in Sheffield Diocese!

We’re two weeks or so from Lent. Not all of us can make extra groups or services though I hope to and hope you will also try to, when you can. Being the church better for many of us might be less about coming to extra things as putting extra heart into our Sunday celebration of the eucharist. Being a regular Mass attender I wrote an article about this in February's New Directions. It's a reminder to myself and the readership of the awesome reality of Mass. Here’s a bit from that article:

‘It is the perception of the eucharist as the God-given transformative action it is that draws me day by day into its orbit.  As often as we celebrate the eucharist we advance the work of salvation through no simple transaction but a showing of Christ crucified which helps bring the world into what he wants it to be. So many times I have been able to look back days or weeks later at the fulfilment of intentions I have taken to the eucharist even concerning world crises.

Day by day we have an invitation to participate in a blessing and distribution of bread and wine that impacts the cosmos through the eucharistic sacrifice of Jesus who died in our place and comes here and now, there and then, to be in our place and that of the whole world before our Father. His institution of the eucharist calls forth obedience - ‘do this in remembrance of me’ - but more profoundly obedient self-offering in his own for our salvation and that of the whole world. ‘See, God, I have come to do your will, O God’ (Hebrews 10:7)’.

How can we be the Church better?

Talk to your priests or fellow church members about the meaning and power of the eucharist. Get a book to read or some guidance on what terms to Google so you can get more rooted in the faith of the church through the ages.

After last autumn’s week of guided prayer there was quite a ripple of God talk around at St Richard’s. When we as individuals deepen our prayer the joy of that ripples out compensating less joyous demands of church life like seeing to the challenge of the electrics. Rewiring will make for a better and safer church, yes, but need I say a membership more lit up with the light of the Lord will best serve the Beacon aspiration Fr Chris sets before us.

In the second reading we’re challenged to a fuller sense of the Church as God’s never-ending family. Saying farewell to Tony and Frank is reminder of those words we just heard from St Paul: ‘If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied… Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died’. As we prepare through Lent for Easter what better preparation than aim to share with our circle how in the last resort there are only two alternatives: either to have God, and in Him everything, or to have nothing but yourself. The hope of heaven needs strengthening in us if we’re to be effective witnesses in such a materialistic culture. We don’t need to do extra things to strengthen that hope, just pray for the Holy Spirit to guide us to books and individuals that thrill with such hope.

How can we be the Church better?

The Gospel has the Beatitudes abbreviated from nine in Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount to four here in Luke’s sermon on the plain with four woes all with something of a sociological take compared to Matthew who has Our Lord declaring the ‘poor in spirit’ blessed rather than the ‘poor’.

You could read and compare the two versions in your own time to help you take the Beatitudes more to heart, especially Matthew’s call to poverty of spirit, purity of heart, hunger for righteousness and so on. When we read Christ’s Beatitudes they’re a tall order but to be the church better we need to spiritually ‘stand up straight with our shoulders back’. As Jordan Peterson summarises their challenge: ‘Start to stop doing what you know to be wrong. Start stopping today. Don’t waste time questioning how you know what you’re doing is wrong, if you are certain that it is’.

To be the church better we need individually to take the shock-treatment of the Holy Spirit without running away. Sinking our roots more in the promises of Scripture may we prosper like healthy trees people look up to. Rewired in spirit through using our imagination more about the way we pray may we discover afresh the meaning and power of the eucharist. I end with a description of the anticipation of heaven we are thankfully about this morning from the Orthodox priest Alexander Schmemann:

‘When man stands before the throne of God, when he has fulfilled all that God has given him to fulfil, when all sins are forgiven, all joy restored, then there is nothing else for him to do but give thanks. Eucharist (thanksgiving) is the state of perfect man. Eucharist is the life of paradise. Eucharist is the only full and real response of man to God's creation, redemption and gift of heaven. But this perfect man who stands before God is Christ. In him alone all that God has given man was fulfilled and brought back to heaven. He alone is the perfect eucharistic being. He is the eucharist of the world. In and through this eucharist the whole creation becomes what it always was to be and yet failed to be.’

Behold the Lamb of God this morning - the risen Lord coming to be present in bread and wine - blessed are those called to his supper both here and in the age to come!

Holy Trinity, Lower Beeding 5th of Year (C) 10 February 2019

I wonder if you’ve had the experience of coming to the end of your tether with something. Standing back for a time the mental and emotional fog clears and you see a clear way forward.

As a strategic thinker - I used to be diocesan mission and renewal adviser - I’m used to planning for church growth but I know from my own experience as a parish priest that you can actually try too hard on that front. Sometimes it's when we stand back from schemes, admit our inadequacy to fix the numbers crisis and look to God that, again, the fog lifts and people flow in.

God protect you all the same from any diocesan stand back concerning your pastoral vacancy! Even if it keeps priests like me in a job! I’ve been covering vacancies at the Ascension in Haywards Heath, Balcombe and St Bartholomew, Brighton. The first two are filled, thank God. My old parish of Horsted Keynes is also getting a priest two years after I left. Yes, we need a parish priest here as soon as possible - but even with a priest you won’t lose a materialistic culture indifferent to the things of the Spirit such that folk trickle into Church nowadays.

We need strategies but we also need serendipity, alias the surprises of the Holy Spirit. This is true for us as individuals and as a Christian community. Its precisely when we stop ourselves pursuing what’s proving useless that we become open to receiving what the Spirit has to bring. All we do is nothing worth unless God blesses the deed.

Such thinking flows from and now back into our scripture readings for the fifth Sunday after Epiphany where we read of how Isaiah, Paul and Peter are brought to their knees and get up changed to help change the world around them. As we get on our knees this morning let’s invite such transformation for ourselves, for the impenetrable situations we live in, for Holy Trinity, Lower Beeding, for Sussex and the world. So here goes - a little engagement with the word of God.

Isaiah in our first reading is brought to his knees in the year of King Uzziah’s death by a vision of the Lord surrounded by angels crying holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. His glory fills the whole earth. It's the verse placed at the heart of every eucharist, a verse aweing us to think how different God is from us. It awed Isaiah. I am lost he says. Put in his place he is made open to serve God in a new way. Here I am he says to God. Send me. It's almost a contradiction, isn’t it? When God shows us we’re nothing in the same breath he shows us he needs us!

Then in the second reading the apostle Paul, recalling the factual basis of Christian faith, confesses putting himself last of all the resurrection witnesses. God had to throw him off a horse on the Damascus Road to demolish his pride. The Lord reinvents proud Saul as humble Paul confident no longer in himself but in God who raises the dead. I am the least of the apostles; in fact since I persecuted the Church of God, I hardly deserve the name apostle; but by God’s grace that is what I am, and the grace that he gave me has not been fruitless. I wonder whether you’ve ever had a dressing down from God in your life? A time when your faithfulness was shown to have cracks in it? When you lost it loving or believing God or neighbour? Such times, brought down by circumstances, discovering your inadequacy from God with fresh discovery of his own love and adequacy for your life. As Paul writes later in Corinthians: ‘our sufficiency is of God’ (2 Corinthians 3:5). What a delusion self-sufficiency is? Think of your funeral - where will you be at that?

Today’s Gospel shows Our Lord tackling Simon Peter’s self sufficiency. ‘Put out into deep water and pay out your nets for a catch’. ‘Master,’ Simon replied ‘we worked hard all night long and caught nothing, but if you say so, I will pay out the nets’. And when they had done this they netted such a huge number of fish that their nets began to tear… when Simon Peter saw this he fell at the knees of Jesus saying ‘Leave me, Lord; I am a sinful man’. Interestingly St Luke changes Simon’s name to Simon Peter here, as Saul got changed to Paul, recalling Christ’s renaming him as ‘the rock man’ elsewhere in the Gospels. Only as Peter professes his nothingness before God is he made aware of God’s acceptance of that yoked to God’s love for him and his need for him. Jesus said to Simon, ‘Do not be afraid; from now on it is men you will catch’.

We are gathered, brothers and sisters, to encounter the same God who made Isaiah, Paul and Peter aware of their nothingness. With Isaiah we cry I am one of unclean lips. With Paul we profess it’s by God’s grace I am a Christian. With Peter we say, as we already said in this Eucharist, Lord, I am a sinner. All three were privileged with a vision of God that both put them in their place and affirmed them. This can be for us if we can see beyond this Sunday hour the awesome yet accessible God revealed in Jesus Christ.

So awesome he brings us to our knees! So accessible he takes us and uses us as his instruments of service in this place.

The Lord show us afresh both our lamentable insufficiency and his glorious sufficiency!

Lord, I am not worthy to receive you but only say the word and I shall be healed!

St Bartholomew, Brighton Candlemas 3.2.19

Lord, now you let your servant go in peace: your word has been fulfilled. My own eyes have seen the salvation which you have prepared in the sight of every people; a light to reveal you to the nations and the glory of your people Israel. Luke 2.29-32

The Nunc Dimittis or Song of Simeon is a Gospel Canticle used daily at Evensong or Compline, at funerals and each year at Candlemas in the Gospel and again at the blessing of candles.

It breathes fulfilment, peace and joy. Inspired by the Spirit the elderly Simeon comes to the Temple, takes the infant Jesus in his arms and joyfully breaks into the canticle which signals fulfilment of God’s redemptive plan and the peace and joy of salvation.

The Church puts it on our lips at the evening of each day to remind us darkness is no darkness to the Lord who is Light of the world, who fulfils believers, lending us peace after the day’s strife and anticipates unending joy beyond death’s night.

A few thoughts on such good news - the Christian good news of fulfilment, peace and joy.

The elderly Simeon was righteous and devout, looking forward to the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit rested on him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord's Messiah. The same Spirit brought him to the Temple coincident with the Holy Family and used Simeon to announce the arrival of fulfilment, peace and joy in the person of Our Lord.

Like many I haven’t got a particular moment of fulfilment, of seeing salvation. It’s been a process in which faith has lit up my life and made increasing sense of it. Last month on a stormy sea journey to Dieppe at one point on our crossing of the Channel the sun broke through the storm clouds. Light streamed on the turbulent sea reflected forwards in a scene of extraordinary beauty. You couldn’t look at the sun but you could feast on a remarkable display of light reflected from the moving waters. Their threatening look was changed into a scene of immense beauty. The traumas of my personal life - I’d just been bereaved of a friend - were put into a new perspective. Like Simeon approaching death I felt, like the sunlight on the stormy sea, the light of faith transfiguring life’s dark circumstances showing me God in the midst of them.

Lord, now you let your servant go in peace: your word has been fulfilled. My own eyes have seen the salvation which you have prepared in the sight of every people; a light to reveal you to the nations and the glory of your people Israel.

Christianity fulfils us because God’s word is true to life. Then, as Simeon proclaims, we live in peace. The good news of Christ settles our rough waves as the stabilisers on that ferry settled the impact of the storm on the passengers.

Like me you may be travelling through a storm in your life. Put faith in Jesus Christ as your stabiliser and keep fellowship with others in the ferry which is his Church. You’ll one day reach harbour and be part of the rejoicing felt after a stormy voyage! Simeon’s Nunc Dimittis breathes the peace of God passing human understanding as the old man sees salvation in the young child, a sight that fulfils and settles him as he looks with gratitude to his own end. St Seraphim spoke of this peace in these telling words: ‘find peace in your soul and thousands round you will find salvation’.

Lord, now you let your servant go in peace: your word has been fulfilled. My own eyes have seen the salvation which you have prepared in the sight of every people; a light to reveal you to the nations and the glory of your people Israel.

Fulfilment, peace - then joy! Our good news first announced by Simeon, Zechariah and Our Lady in their canticles at Christ’s infancy thrill with joy. The Nunc Dimittis, Benedictus and Magnificat express the church’s joy in our daily offices and all are rooted in joyous encounters. As Simeon’s face lit up at the sight of the Christ Child so this morning’s liturgy lights our faces both outwardly through our candles and inwardly through the Holy Spirit. To meet up with a friend is cheering. Our eyes light up! So it is as Christians meet the Lord in his word, in prayer, in the breaking of bread and in fellowship with one another. My own eyes have seen your salvation and there’s joy in that, joy that by joy’s very nature can’t be contained in Israel - I mean the church - but has to flow out from us to our circle and, indeed, to the nations.

Simeon’s smile and those of the Holy Family reach down to us this morning through 80 generations brightening our lives on the Feast of the Presentation. As we present ourselves with Christ to the Father in his Sacrifice at this Mass may the joy of the Lord be our strength, joy triumphing over the hardships we bear bringing peace and fulfilment.

Lord, now you let your servant go in peace: your word has been fulfilled. My own eyes have seen the salvation which you have prepared in the sight of every people; a light to reveal you to the nations and the glory of your people Israel.

St Mary, Balcombe Epiphany 3 27th January 2019

Last time I was with you, two weeks ago, we were keeping the Feast of the Baptism of Jesus as the Christ, the Anointed One, the One on whom the Spirit rests – that is the meaning of ‘Christ’.

Jesus was born to live in obscurity for 30 years.  Then in his 30th year he goes for baptism. The heavens open, the Spirit descends. Jesus, conceived and born of the Spirit is filled with the Spirit. Then, as we read in the opening of today’s Gospel from Luke Chapter 4 verse 14 to 21 filled with the power of the Spirit Jesus returned to Galilee, and a report of him spread through all the surrounding country.

Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, the Anointed One.  He says this of himself later in our Gospel passage as he stands up in the Synagogue at Capernaum, reads Isaiah 61v1-2, the great Old Testament proclamation of the coming Messiah, and adds: Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. 4:21

Our Lord applies Isaiah’s prophecy to himself.  Yet his anointing as Christ and Messiah is not just for him - it is to be shared with us.  

Jesus is anointed by the Holy Spirit as Christ so that we might share in his anointing!

A Christian is one who shares in the anointing of the Anointed One.  Indeed we can only do what Christians do if we welcome and own that anointing in the Holy Spirit which is ours through baptism and here’s what we’re called to do: The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour.(4:18-19)

In the Greek there’s no definite article before the word ptochos - poor, which means it refers to a quality of life rather than particular poor persons.  Jesus will be good news to those who’re otherwise powerless to enrich themselves.

If we ask the question who are the poor, the powerless in mid-Sussex today we should find part of the answer at least within ourselves. What, for example, is it that stops us saying ‘sorry’ to people when we need to? Isn’t there something of self-importance within? Too important to say sorry? There’s no good news of grace on offer for those who are rich to self. Eugene Peterson translates blessed are the poor in Matthew 5 as You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule.

As you come before the Lord this morning might it be that any pain you’re feeling inside is the pain of wounded pride and challenged self-sufficiency? Rejoice! With less of you there could be more of God in your life!

He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners ...Our Lord continues to release the oppressed.

Some years back when we were living in Wood Green our drains began to overflow.  We had to send for Dyno-Rod who sent a camera on a tube down the sewer. They gave us a 20 minute DVD of our drains. It was a fascinating 20 minutes, especially the rat that appeared half way through!

The cameras showed what human eyes couldn’t see, that the neighbour’s tree roots had blocked our drains.  They needed cutting out and the drain needed a resin soaked felt lining.

Inside each one of us there are bonds that oppress us and restrict our health and life and God sees these far more surely than a Dyno-Rod camera.  He’s able to show us just where we’re held captive and then help us enter new freedom.

He has sent me to proclaim... recovery of sight for the blind Our Lord continues.

When it comes to applying this to ourselves maybe it’s the opening of ‘inner eyes’ that has the Lord’s invitation. If you don’t know where you’re bound up spiritually you can always ask to see.

How’s your enthusiasm for the work of mission? Do you truly see yourself as one sharing the anointing of the Anointed One? Or would you admit your deficit and seek a rekindling of passion, a fresh anointing in the Holy Spirit as you approach the Communion rail this morning?

Sometimes we receive an anointing from above or beyond ourselves.  Other times – and I think this is very important – it is a matter of experiencing unblocking of the streams within. In the story of Lourdes key figure is the peasant girl, Bernadette, a shepherdess who in 1854 received a number of visions, allegedly of the Blessed Virgin Mary. In one of these visions the Lady asked her to dig up some earth so a spring could be uncovered, a spring that flows to this day, a healing stream visited by millions every year.

How important discernment is! What healing streams can flow from one little insight!

We have a partnership in mission here at Balcombe, an enthusiastic partnership of priest and people to be with Fr Keith’s arrival next month. The word ‘enthusiasm’ means literally ‘in God’. It comes from an ever-fresh welcoming of the anointing of the Anointed One, a readiness to be shown where the flow of his grace is getting blocked within us.

As Our Lord says in John’s Gospel:  Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink.  As the scripture has said, ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.’  Now he said this about the Spirit, which believers in him were to receive  John 7:37-9.

How the church needs to take that invitation to heart! How better can we generate new enthusiasm for God’s work than heart-searching in the days approaching the licensing for things that weigh down and block the Spirit in our lives and in our Christian community?

As we do so – and let Jesus lift the sludge over us – we’ll recover a sense of God’s goodness and become more effectively his instruments, Gospel people – good news people!.

He sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed

This is our task – our task together, priests and people. Is there any organisation with unemployment like the church? How do we get our many unemployed gifts released?  We need fresh ‘anointing from the Anointed One’ to effect a new spirit of collaboration. As church growth expert Eddie Gibbs writes: The task of the ordained ministry is not simply to minister to the congregation but to create and direct a ministering congregation through the detection, development and deployment of God-given resources. With Fr Keith’s arrival may spiritual unemployment take a dive in the parish! Through collaborative ministry!

The last phrase Our Lord uses in his address at Nazareth refers to ‘the Lord’s favour’. He has sent me to proclaim ... the year of the Lord's favour

The growth of the church is growth in faith, love and numbers.  It’s growth in ‘the Lord’s favour’.

How can we find favour with God as Jesus did?   In such favour lies our lasting peace and wholeness - how do we find it?

The letter to the Hebrews gives this answer: Without faith it is impossible to please God, for whoever would approach him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. Hebrews 11:6

To find favour, to please God, we need faith, we need to believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.

Our mission should advance not in a forced or artificial way but in a trusting and natural way, a way that trusts in the Lord’s favour and empowering.

As we approach Our Lord at this eucharist let us put trust in him and take him at his word.

He gives us no task without the grace to accomplish it. Listen once again to what Jesus is saying to each one of us individually this morning

The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me - let me share my anointing with you!

He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor - empty yourself so I can fill you!

He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners… to release the oppressed - show me the bonds that bind you and let me loosen them.   

He has sent me to proclaim ... recovery of sight for the blind - see and welcome my possibilities which exceed your imagining - and you will find my favour!

St Mary, Balcombe  Baptism of the Lord  13.1.19

John the Baptist said, ‘I have baptised you with water;… but he will baptise you with the Holy Spirit Luke 3:16

Why do we need the Holy Spirit?

To pray, to love, to serve, to evangelise, to be obedient, to forgive, to heal…

Without the Holy Spirit:

God is far away,

Christ stays in the past,

the Gospel is a dead letter,

the Church is simply an organisation,

authority is a matter of domination,

mission is a matter of propaganda,

the liturgy no more than an evocation,

Christian living a slave morality.

But in the Holy Spirit:

the risen Christ is there,

the Gospel is the power of life,

the Church shows forth the life of the Trinity,

authority is a liberating service,

mission is a Pentecost,

the liturgy is both memorial and anticipation,

human action is deified.

(Words for Pentecost Sunday from the Greek Orthodox Archbishop Athenagoras)

As baptised, confirmed - and some of us - ordained Christians we possess the Holy Spirit!

We possess the Spirit - but does he possess us? That is the key to a spiritual vitality!

As Our Lord says in St John Chapter 7:37-39 If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.

Our renewal in the Holy Spirit is about the releasing of the life of the Spirit within us.

The late Dom Ian Petit of Ampleforth wrote these words in his book You Will Receive Power: Baptism and Confirmation confer a supernatural gift, but ignorance or lack of understanding of the gift, can block its full effect. In other words, while the sacrament is valid and has been given, the effect has been blocked. When the block is removed then the full effect floods in...(a) baptism in the Holy Spirit… an opportunity for awakening in (people) their sacraments of initiation..

The New Year begins with a liturgical reminder about our ongoing need for this unblocking and awakening to the power of the Holy Spirit who visits us at every Eucharist.

The Feast of the Baptism of the Lord is the grand reminder that Christians are people who have woken up to Jesus and to the Gift of the Holy Spirit, to the living God - nothing less. An awakening to the Spirit, a releasing of the Spirit, an unblocking of his flow – this is the invitation and challenge of today’s Feast!  

There is one baptism for the forgiveness of sins and it confers the Holy Spirit. A gift though is given that needs to be received. For Christians to seek the renewing power of the Spirit – as we do as we receive Holy Communion every Sunday - is a matter of seeking to be more fully what we are in Christ and nothing more or less than that! We want to be a people that live knowing their need of grace!

The Spirit is waiting to confirm to us the same words that were spoken to Our Lord at his baptism: You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.

Christians share in the anointing of the Anointed One – Jesus is the Christ or Anointed One so he can share his anointing with us and speak into our hearts those words of adoption: You are my son, my daughter; with you I am well pleased.

There’s a great tale from C.S. Lewis' about a doubting Bishop. Lewis once imagined an additional scene at the Marriage at Cana - a sceptical bishop sitting further down the table from Our Lord and Our Lady. There are the guests with the water turned into wine. As everyone enjoys the new wine of the Kingdom Feast the doubting bishop is holding up his glass and scrutinising, "How can this be? How can water become wine? How can the philosophical difficulties about an interventionist God be overcome? Is this some sort of conjuring trick?" All the while the rest of them at table are drinking up the Spirit in whatever sense you like!

There are many who make an 11th Commandment Thou shalt not commit thyself!  Such folk – and they are around in the Church today – miss out on Christian basics, on the empowering promised in today’s feast.

I have baptised you with water; but he will baptise you with the Holy Spirit. This baptism or gift of the Holy Spirit is an ongoing reality for those who will commit themselves. The Gift is not so much a once for all thing or commodity but rather something dynamic and ongoing.

Baptism in the Holy Spirit is a process in which the relationship that opens up at Baptism involves an ongoing flow of love, praise and power leading into ongoing consecration in the Truth.

It is worth recalling that though Our Lord himself was conceived by the Holy Spirit he waited 30 years for his Baptism in Jordan. So it can be – as it was for me and can be for you- that though I had received the Spirit through Infant Baptism, Confirmation and Ordination the first deep experience came many years later – and through, of all things, a crisis of faith – and a recommitment!

In a faith crisis years back I went on a retreat and prayed God if you’re there show yourself, give me a vision of yourself more to your dimensions and less to mine – and he did – but it needs refreshing!

Another way to look at it is like this: if the Christian life is like a rose bush there are great spurts of growth from time to time that push out new branches with new flowers. One such branch  and its some branch in its fruitfulness – is, if you like, a new opening up to the Spirit. Yet just like the life of the rose bush before and after such a new spurt of growth we have the same inner life.

We possess the Spirit - but does he possess us? That is the question we are being asked on this feast of the Lord’s Baptism. There is a commitment issue here we need to address.  As we come to receive Jesus in Holy Communion are we really committed and open to his empowering? Are we ready to hear and to believe those wonderful words: You are my son, my daughter; with you I am well pleased.

In the silence that follows you have a chance to act in faith upon those wonderful words and place fresh trust in our heavenly Father preparing for an especially solemn and transformative Act of Communion this morning.

Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful people as they look to you with expectation on this day of anointing with power!

St Bartholomew, Brighton Epiphany Family Mass 6.1.18

As I reflected on today’s Feast two words came to my mind – spiritual journey.

Firstly the spiritual journey of humankind as we enter together a perilous New Year with all the tumult of Brexit. As I drove down this morning from Haywards Heath I thought of the spiritual journeys of Sussex folk. How blest we are that our life’s journey has brought us to such a beautiful county and city!

Then, secondly, there is the spiritual journey of the wise men to Our Lord and their offering at journey’s end. Linked to this is the Church’s spiritual journey through her Seasons. We travel through Advent and Christmas into Epiphany and the green of ordinary time. Our journey continues with the purple of Lent and Holy Week, the white of Easter and Ascension, the red frontals of Pentecost and then back to green. We do well to familiarise ourselves with the liturgical seasons which are given to serve life’s spiritual journey.

This brought me to the final thought of another much simpler spiritual journey.

It is of but a few inches - fifteen inches…

The story goes that there was once a rabbi in Cracow, Isaac son of Yekel, who dreamed one night that there was a great treasure under the bridge at Prague.

He set off at once for Prague, but when he got there found that there was a heavy guard on the bridge. The rabbi had no choice but to explain his dream to one of the guards.

When the guard heard the story he burst into uncontrollable laughter. ‘How crazy can you get? Suppose everyone went off after their dreams? Why I once dreamed that there was a treasure hidden in a house in Cracow. It was in the house of a man called Isaac, son of Yekel but do you think I was going off to Cracow because of that dream? In any case, half of Cracow is called Isaac, son of Yekel.’

So the Rabbi Isaac returned to Cracow.

The rabbi had treasure at home. He did not need to go to Prague.

So it is with the spiritual journey. If we want spiritual riches we are more likely to find them by opening our eyes to what we have already than by journeying the world over.

The truth of Christmas is about God coming down to our level to dwell in human hearts.

If people want to journey to God today they need move inches and not miles.

Fifteen inches, to be precise, down from the head to the heart. That is where we find God.

Our restless minds distract us, move us away from the treasure to be found in the stillness of the heart.

When the mind can be stilled, and lowered, into the heart - there is salvation.

The Kingdom of Christ is within us.

Sometimes this discovery is made through pain.

I remember once hearing a Theology lecturer, Tom Smail, speak about the way his relationship with Our Lord had most deepened through what he described as God’s shock treatment.

Tom was almost bald.  I remember the joke he told at his own expense. I’m bald he said because the Lord keeps bashing me on the head to lower my religion from my head down into my heart!

It could be you feel the Lord is having a go at you this morning. If you are in pain where is that silver lining? Don’t waste your sorrow - God is surely there somewhere in it if you will but listen for him!

Sometimes painful experience helps make us more fully what we’re meant to be.

This is the essence of the spiritual journey, a journey with Jesus and to Jesus but also by its nature a journey into greater self-possession.

As New Year begins how do we at St. Bartholomew’s move forwards effectively in our spiritual journey?

We have every reason to do so – we want our new priest when he is appointed to be caught up into a dynamic, forward moving parish and not faced with an uphill struggle!

I suppose I have answered my question with the story of Rabbi Isaac.

The spiritual journey we’re called to is primarily the 15 inches one down from head to heart.

Accomplishing that journey within means taking time day by day to reflect, to sit or kneel in God’s presence and indeed our own presence. There we find hunger and longing, hurt and inadequacy, pride and fearfulness. None of these melt away on the spiritual journey but they can be owned and offered to the Lord who meets us just as we are.

The journey within takes courage. There is so much that would keep us on the surface, not least the multitude of recreational options available to us, the manifold activities we can choose to fill up our lives!

The inner journey takes courage and it takes time, time to be.

Was it Pascal who said that most of mankind’s problems derive from our inability to sit still in a room?

Just maybe 15 minutes a day - 5 minutes with the Scriptures, 5 minutes in quiet worship and 5 minutes in intercession, prayer for others, including our parish - what a difference if we made that the flavour of our spiritual journey in the coming year!

‘Jesus loves us as we are’ it is said. As we own that love day by day we own ourselves, our souls and bodies and make them more and more fully a living sacrifice to be united with his perfect Offering in the Mass.

Speaking of this sort of spiritual journey T.S.Eliot wrote these great lines: And the end of all our exploring – will be to arrive where we started – and to know the place for the first time.

Wise men still journey to Jesus but they do not move anywhere.

Whatever we do in 2019 as individuals or as a Church may we be the Church better by being Christians better so that the depths of Christ may resonate from our prayers and our worship and our lives here at St Bartholomew’s!  

Be still and know that I am God!