St John, Burgess Hill & St Richard, Haywards Heath St Teresa Benedicta 9 August 2023

 Introduction

We offer this Mass for the Jewish People and for peace in the Holy Land. It is said that the future of the world belongs to the intercessors and connectors. Today’s Saint Teresa Benedicta, formerly Edith Stein, helped change the world through prayer and empathy. She is a patron Saint of Europe on account of her connections with Germany and the Netherlands, her roots in Jewish faith, her life as a contemplative nun and her tragic death in the gas chamber. Her dust remains with millions of her coreligionists around Auschwitz which must be Europe’s darkest place in current memory. She offered her death as an intercession to God for her Jewish people to connect as she did with Jesus Christ our Saviour. 

St Teresa wrote words that might challenge us as we begin Mass calling to mind our shortfalls in love:  ‘If ‘God is within us and if God is love, it cannot be otherwise than that we love our brothers and sisters. Therefore our love of human beings is the measure of our love of God. For the Christian, there is no such thing as a stranger. At any time it is our neighbour who stands before us, the one who needs us the most’

Sermon

‘I will bethroth you with integrity and justice, with tenderness and love… and you will come to know the Lord’ (Hosea 2:21-22) we heard promised in the Old Testament reading anticipating the love of God revealed in the Cross of Jesus and documented in the New Testament. Today’s Saint first became familiar with this passage from Hosea as a child in a practising Jewish family in Germany. 

Edith Stein, now honoured as St Teresa Benedicta, born in 1891, went on to lose her faith when she was 14 and had a distinguished career as a philosopher. Reading the autobiography of Saint Teresa of Ávila during her philosophical studies helped her engage with the tenderness and love of God prophesied by Hosea revealed upon the Cross. She was baptised in 1922 continuing to teach at a Dominican girls’ school and study Catholic philosophy. 

She became a lecturer but was thrown out of her post in 1933 as a result of the Nazi régime’s anti-Semitic legislation. In 1938 she was professed as a Carmelite nun in Cologne and took prophetically the name Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. Her order moved her to the Netherlands to keep her safe from the growing Nazi threat. While a Carmelite she wrote an important philosophical book linking to the understanding of empathy and also wrote on St John of the Cross.

On 20 July 1942 the Dutch Bishops’ Conference had a statement read in all churches condemning Nazi racism. In retaliation the authorities ordered the arrest of all Jewish converts to Christianity. Edith Stein was taken to Auschwitz and killed in the gas chamber on 9 August 1942. Pope John Paul II canonised her in 1998 as a ‘martyr for love’ and she has been made co-patron of Europe along with St Benedict, St Bridget, St Catherine of Siena and SS Cyril & Methodius.

In her philosophical work ‘On the Problem of Empathy’, Stein argued that the way we encounter humans is not the same as the way we encounter other things in the world, and this difference is no add on but something basic to being human. Our basic empathy helps us know that someone is fearful, ashamed or happy. We just know. We can also, uniquely, adopt the perspective of the other. We can, in a way which we are unable to do as fully with non-human encounters, care. Stein’s word for what we encounter in the other is their “spirit”, a  term that is problematic for philosophers on account of its religious connotations. In relation to her own pilgrimage from Judaism through atheism to Christianity her study of empathy is a document of her spiritual awakening which led her to give her life by intention for the Jewish people with, in and through Jesus Christ. In the face of the anti-Semitism that took her to death she told her Prioress before heading to Auschwitz: ‘Human action cannot help us, but only the sufferings of Christ. My aspiration is to share them’.

As we celebrate St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross we seek to emulate her love for God and empathy with humankind which took her, and will sometimes take us, to bear suffering cheerfully and creatively to bring light to those around us living in darkness and the shadow of death.

St John the Evangelist, Burgess Hill Transfiguration of Our Lord 6 August 2023

God has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 4:6b)

The radiance of Jesus lightens the mind, warms the heart and energises the will.

Just as dynamite contains within itself potential energy that can be released to give light, heat and a surge of momentum so it is with Jesus Our Lord.

The Feast of the Transfiguration provides first disclosure of that radiant energy central to Christianity which is at the heart of its forward momentum flowing from ‘the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ’.  

Christianity goes forward today by radiant energy as we come again and again before Jesus in word and sacrament and in the hearts of his faithful to see our minds, hearts and wills irradiated.

As Fr. Bull, one of the great Mirfield Fathers put it, the glad tidings of Christianity are in what Jesus Christ did for men and in the abiding energy of that work.

We gather at the eucharist this morning to be caught up afresh into the radiant energy of Jesus which shines from today’s scripture with an invitation to seek a fresh illumination from the truth that is in Jesus (Ephesians 4:21), a fresh warming of our hearts by his Sacred Heart and a fresh energising for active service from the working of his great power (Ephesians 1:19b).

All of this will flow from the radiance of Jesus, what the Apostle calls the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. 

As dynamite is ignited to release its potential energy into light, heat and momentum so our faith ignites the radiance of Jesus to light up our lives and through us light up a world so desperately in need of that irradiation.

I want to suggest that this ignition process has three dimensions – intellectual, devotional and practical. 

There is an intellectual challenge to lay hold afresh on Christian basics so we better answer for our faith. I wonder when you last read a book about the Christian Faith.  Or even the Bible itself? If someone asked you why you thought Christianity was true would you be able to argue for the truth of the resurrection? 

Just a few questions to get us thinking about what’s called apologetics - not apologising but working at thinking through our faith so as to be able to give a better ‘apologia’ or reasonable defence for believing as Christians. I have brought a few copies of my own book itself entitled Elucidations - light on Christian controversies. (Show) It costs just a fiver if any of you fancy summer reading about  topics ranging from self-love to unanswered prayer, Mary to anti-Semitism, suffering to same-sex unions, charismatic experience to the ordination of women, hell to ecology and why we should trust the Church.

The radiance of Jesus lightens the mind. It also warms the heart to an overflow of love.

A radiant Christian is more than someone buzzing with ideas about Christ. There’s something out of this world streaming through them. To gain the radiance of Jesus we need to be exposed to his radiant love. Christian friends, holy priests, all of them help – but nothing can replace our own individual business with God. Welcoming the radiance of Jesus into our hearts is a life-long struggle because of our fallen nature. We need a regular time of prayer, a discipline of self-examination and confession, a resolve to intercede for others, to give a proportion of our income to God’s work and so on. You may have a chance in these summer days - or with greater opportunism the odd rainy day - to review and renew your Christian rule of life, maybe even plan a retreat. Anne and I are discovering Worth Abbey’s monthly Quiet Fridays. Ask one of our clergy if you want advice on planning a Retreat or Quiet Day. 

The radiance of Jesus lightens the mind, warms the heart and then, lastly, it energises the will.

Where would our study and prayer be if it never led us into action, to be part of what Fr. Bull called the abiding energy of the once-for-all work of Jesus Christ?  We are here at the eucharist to gain that energy. 

To go back to the physics analogy, just as the potential energy in an explosive is released to give light, heat and a surge of momentum so all Jesus attained through his life, death and resurrection is given to be celebrated and released so as to give power and direction to our lives. Send us out in the power of your Spirit to live and work to your praise and glory we pray.

How have we acted to transform our environment to be more as Christ would want it since last we met at the altar? How have we acted in recent weeks to change the world around us for Christ? Inasmuch as the radiant energy of Jesus is in us, we find ourselves raiding the kingdom of fear with love, encouraging those who are down, forgiving those who come against us harshly and providing for those in need from our own resources. This energy carries our lives forward to work for the kingdom of this world (to) become the kingdom of our God and of his Christ (Rev 11:15). 

For such energising of will, warming of heart and illumination of mind we lift our hearts to the Father at this Transfiguration Mass seeking our own transfiguration through the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

 

St Wilfrid & St Richard, Haywards Heath Diving for Pearls Matthew 13:46 2.8.23

I am grateful to our former diocesan spirituality adviser, Fr Andrew Mayes, for drawing my attention in his book ‘Diving for Pearls’ to the 7th century Saint Isaac of Syria’s commentary on the second half of today’s Gospel. Fr Mayes’ book draws on Isaac’s maritime, nautical and underwater imagery yoked to Our Lord’s parable in today’s Gospel: ‘the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it’ (Matthew 13:45). 

The merchant becomes a diver to St Isaac who presents the spiritual life as less ascent to God and more descent into his ‘everlasting arms’ to quote Deuteronomy 33:27. Mayes writes: ‘Ascent encourages us to think in terms of hierarchy. The goal is achieving success, spiritual attainment. It also seems to emphasize the place of human effort in the spiritual quest and downplay the role of the divine. The model of descent, rather, leads us towards surrendering, sinking into God, letting go, unlearning…This contrasts with ideas of ascendency and advancement - mastery, conquest of mountains, and yes, prideful achievement. The idea of elevation of the soul sounds like superiority. We notice a contrast between gritted determination and exertion required in climbing the mountain of prayer and a gentle sinking into the ocean of grace, as Isaac commends. Will we desire to sink or strive? Cling on or let go?’

The pearl of great price is to be placed into our possession in a moment as the body of Christ is placed into our hands and we express our appreciation outwardly in one word. Simply saying ‘Amen’ to that gift is an understatement. ‘So be it’ is, yes, a sinking into the ocean of God’s grace. It’s taking a plunge to seek the depth of God’s mercy. A favourite hymn of mine is ‘There’s a wideness in God’s mercy like the wideness of the sea’ written by Fr Frederick Faber which has the lines ‘we make his love too narrow by false limits of our own and we magnify his strictness with a zeal he will not own’.

Our Lord’s parables are amazing vehicles of the love and truth of God which speak afresh to generation after generation. ‘The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it’. Our spiritual determination links, or, under God, opens us to an anointing in God’s Spirit. As we read in John 7v37: ‘The scripture has said, "Out of the believer's heart shall flow rivers of living water'.

Our prayer, contemplation, study of scripture and the saints and our growth in grace is like an oyster generating, or opening us up to, the gift of the pearl which is Christ within us, the Lord we welcome in Holy Communion. As Isaac wrote 1300 years ago of the pearl of Jesus Christ forming within us: 

‘Let us consider as oysters the prayers upon which the intellect alights, the contemplative insights, divine knowledge, wisdom, joy in spirit… The primary pearl is Jesus Christ himself – a deeper appreciation of him’.

Once again I will read the last sentence of today’s Gospel and invite you to own it more fully as the invitation it is to spiritual zeal:

Prayers

‘The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it’.

Let us ask the Lord who invites us to open our hearts more to him in praise and more to others in service to grant us the anointing of his Holy Spirit as we bring to God the needs of the church and the world:

Holy Father it is said you look less on what we have been or are than on what we would be. We would be more fully your sons and daughters and we ask your cleansing and healing for this to come to pass. Lord, hear us.

Your invitation to Holy Communion requires our ‘Amen’ or ‘So be it’, a sinking into the ocean of God’s grace, a plunge to seek the pearl of God’s mercy. May our hearts be expanded by this gift to the wideness of your mercy so we are made a grace and a blessing to all in our acquaintance. Lord, hear us.

 

 

St Mary, Balcombe Trinity 8 (17A) Hidden Treasure 30.6.23

 

The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. Matthew 13.44

One Sunday in January 1927 this passage from Matthew 13 was the subject of a sermon by a predecessor of mine as Rector of Horsted Keynes, The Revd Frank Stenton-Eardley. It was an exceptionally profitable sermon. One of the congregation from nearby Broadhurst Manor went home, dug in a field there and unearthed a hoard of sixty-four gold nobles. This gold, deposited 500 years before, is now in the British Museum.

How profitable will this sermon be? Indeed how profitable is any sermon? Did you know you can engage with the sermon not only by grabbing the preacher over coffee but also by going on his blog? I was at the Eucharist on Friday and before the service I was putting £5 in the online donor box when I bumped into the celebrant, who is a friend. ‘I’m putting in a fiver’ I said ‘It’d better be a good sermon’. Fr Vlad promised me my money back! It was a good sermon.

There is no word of God without power. The preacher’s role is to read and study it and read and study his people and their context and make connections in a 10-15 minute talk that will help such an engagement with Our Lord that it will echo on in their lives in the coming week.

The guy who found the treasure remembered the preacher’s sermon when his spade clinked the treasure. What does today’s preacher suggest you might find memorable about the same Scripture?

I don’t know enough about the circumstances of the finding of the sixty-four gold nobles to say whether the finder gained, though I guess he did, or was it the then owner of the Manor? 

What I think you and I can gain a century on is the reminder to renew our spiritual alertness and determination. These are the clue to an ongoing welcome of treasure that’ll never be shipped off from us to the British Museum!

The two parables of the treasure and the pearl remind Christians of the need to put supreme value on building our longing for God and his kingdom.

It is not what you are or have been that God looks at with his merciful eyes but what you would be wrote the mystic author of that Medieval classic, The Cloud of Unknowing.

What would you be? Where’s your heart set? 

In our first reading from the book of Kings we heard of Solomon’s being approached by God in a dream with a similar question: Ask what I should give you. He answers with a prayer for wisdom and is praised accordingly. God said to him, ‘Because you have asked this, and have not asked for yourself long life or riches, or for the life of your enemies, but have asked for yourself understanding to discern what is right, I now do according to your word. Indeed I give you a wise and discerning mind; no one like you has been before you and no one like you shall arise after you. 

God wants aspirations towards him to be of supreme value to us and we can’t attain these without alertness and determination, two virtues that come out of the parables of the treasure and the pearl in our gospel reading from the end of Matthew Chapter 13. Like the Broadhurst Manor labourer, if we live our lives attending to every moment we don’t have to go far to find God and his riches. The purpose of scripture, of sermons and bible study, is to school us to be alert to the possibilities of God breaking into our situation, as the clink of the spade on the gold alerted the farm worker schooled by the Sunday sermon preached from the pulpit.

Speaking personally I always find the number of God-incidences in a day linked to the fervour or length of my morning prayer. The more something of God’s eternal wisdom has touched my heart the more alert I am to the need to give ear to the person I meet on the street, phone or e mail.  Treasured encounters come to me inasmuch as my heart is set to evaluate everyone I meet as if they were Christ, to see my diary as containing what’s ultimately important as well as what’s merely pressing upon me.

The treasure parable of God’s kingdom is a reminder to recognize the treasure that’s already there in our lives and the joy its discovery brings. Over the summer we’ve got great opportunities to rediscover the joy of family and friends as the demands of work lift from many of us. 

If this parable is a reminder to be alert to God’s moments the parable of the merchant is a reminder to be spiritually determined. The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it. Jesus emphasises in this parable how being his follower takes you on a determined spiritual search. The cost of this will be eclipsed by the outcome but there is a cost.

To be better disciples of Jesus we need opportunities to discipline ourselves so our personal agendas give way more and more to his. This cannot occur, Jesus cannot reach into our lives, without prayer, scripture and the eucharist. 

It is not what you are or have been or are that God looks at with his merciful eyes but what you would be. Saint Seraphim, a great Russian spiritual teacher, was asked what was the secret that lay behind people who appear to have more of the Holy Spirit than others. Just their determination was his reply.

May the Lord build that determination for him as well as the day by day, hour by hour alertness to the treasure we don’t need to go on holiday to find since it lies buried and awaiting us in Balcombe.

St Bartholomew, Brighton Trinity 5 (Wk 14) 9.7.23

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

When we hear the readings read on Sunday we examine what we’ve heard. In St Bartholomew’s we then look up, as you’re doing now, an awesome 15 feet to the preacher for understanding. Today’s Gospel invites us to look up a lot further, beyond Edmund Scott’s 45 foot baldacchino or 135 foot ceiling of allegedly the tallest parish church in Europe, to imagine how God sees the revelation we’re seeking.

‘Jesus exclaimed, “I bless you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for hiding these things from the learned and clever and revealing them to mere children. Yes, Father, for that is what it pleased you to do’ Matthew 11:25.

Our Blessed Lord rejoices at the start of this passage which helps him convey a wonderful truth about God above and beyond us. This is the joy he shares with his Father in revealing himself to those who seek him. If you are here in St Bartholomew’s to seek God this morning be assured God is seeking you and more than seeking you - God delights in this very moment at our attention towards him! God the Son continually, moment by moment, chooses to reveal his eternal Father in the Holy Spirit. God’s joy is ours at a revelation, an opening of the inner eye of faith, so that today’s words of Zechariah in the first reading, used months back on Palm Sunday, have a special resonance with the Gospel: ‘The Lord says this: Rejoice heart and soul, daughter of Zion! Shout with gladness, daughter of Jerusalem! See now, your king comes to you’ Zechariah 9:9.

God comes to us this morning and this truth is more powerful than the simpler truth we have come to Mass in St Bartholomew’s. Of course there are many times we come to Church, look up to God, hear the Bible read and join in the Eucharist without feeling a thing. Today’s Gospel gives us a fresh perspective in its reminder of how worship begins and ends beyond us in the life of the Trinity and the communion of saints. God’s joy at our attention to God this morning and openness to what God might reveal to us is a given. By pondering Our Lord’s announcing that truth in today’s Gospel we can be infected with joy as our second reading suggests. ‘If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, then he who raised Jesus from the dead will give life to your own mortal bodies through his Spirit living in you’ Romans 8:11.

Sometimes we need grace to see things the other way round - as God says he sees things - in the words of scripture. Yes it's the case that we Christians are one with the rest of a large part of our society in seeking the truth but unlike the rest we know the Truth is continually seeking us and revealing himself less to the learned and clever and more to the humble who believe. Like many we are appalled at how the war against Ukraine shows truth being lost particularly in the Russian media. George Orwell in his novel 1984, published in 1949, portrayed the world we now see in which a government declares war is peace, freedom is slavery and ignorance is strength. When it comes to the state of the world the abandonment of truth telling is tragic but it doesn’t negate the work of the Holy Spirit who is always bringing truth to bear and working especially through those humble before God to establish justice, love and peace. As believers we have the privilege of seeing things the other way round, so to speak, as God would have us see things.

If that’s so for politics, seeing things from the God-perspective scripture encourages can also help our prayer as the great 16th century Saint Teresa of Avila taught. She was, it should be said first, a very down to earth lady. When her horse threw her in the mud she famously shook her fist at heaven and said, ‘God, if that's how you treat your friends, it's not surprising you have so few’. The same Teresa taught people to pray in this way. ‘Imagine’, she said, ‘that you see Jesus standing before you. He is looking at you lovingly and humbly. Prayer comes as you notice he is looking at you lovingly and humbly’. This insight is one with today’s Gospel which celebrates God’s joy at revealing himself to all who persist in coming before God in prayer and worship. Not only, says Teresa, does God look upon us with love, he looks upon us humbly. That means he thinks of himself as less than us! 

‘Jesus exclaimed, “I bless you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for hiding these things from the learned and clever and revealing them to mere children. Yes, Father, for that is what it pleased you to do’ Matthew 11:25

God is pleased to reveal God-self and that is basic Christianity working itself out in prayer and politics. As we come forward for Holy Communion this morning let us come with an expectation that God’s life and joy will be deepened within us for ‘if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, then he who raised Jesus from the dead will give life to your own mortal bodies through his Spirit living in you’ Romans 8:11. So be it.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

St John the Evangelist, Burgess Hill Trinity 4 (Wk 13) Eucharistic Sacrifice 2.7.23

Sunday by Sunday 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 by ourselves into his own Offering for our salvation and that of the whole world.

When I participate in the eucharist it is like getting on a celestial lift. Though its a brief journey timewise, a few minutes when it comes to specifically pleading Christ’s Sacrifice, I am aware that people and needs already on my heart get lifted to God with powerful consequences. With our patron Saint John I see the lifting of Christ in bread and wine drawing the cosmos to him ‘the bread of God which (also) comes down from heaven and gives life to the world (John 6:33). With Saint Paul I am lifted with Christ through separate consecration and display of bread and wine imagining a showing, a piercing through the Church walls, of divine love to irradiate our suffering world. Our striking west windows expand on Paul’s teaching in 1 Corinthians 11 verse 26, one with a picture of the Crucifixion and the other of the priest at the altar enfolded by the second half of that verse ‘Ye do show the Lord’s death until He comes’. Those who built St John’s were intent it should be less a preaching house and more a temple of God so that what we do this morning is the movement to heaven of Christ’s self offering into which we are drawn, ‘our souls and bodies as a living sacrifice’.

The Old Testament reading today from Genesis 22 is profound and difficult. It is the one used on Good Friday to illuminate the offering of the Son of God upon the Cross. Abraham’s offering of his son, Isaac mirrors God the Father’s sacrifice. It is a difficult passage to read mindful as we are of contemporary abuse and even killing of children by parents and quasi-mentors. The story of how in obedience to God Abraham takes his beloved son and prepares to sacrifice him is graphic. An angel calls back his hand with the knife as it prepares to descend on little Isaac. A ram caught by its horns in a thicket is revealed to replace Isaac as a sacrifice to God. On Good Friday this scripture of a father prepared to offer his son but spared doing so is a pointer to One who actually does so. The profound action of that Day is put into a sentence by Paul two chapters on from today’s second reading: ‘God did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us’ (Romans 8:32).

For that reason we show the Lord’s death day by day at the altar, as our church windows illustrate. Unlike Abraham God did not withhold his Son for us. Rather, through God's Offering of Christ there is made as the Articles of Religion describe ‘once for all, perfect redemption, propitiation, and satisfaction, for all the sins of the whole world’ (Article 31). God who created the world and human beings in his image, seeing the havoc caused by humans through misuse of free will, provided the remedy once for all. Though that havoc continues it is countered day by day as people come to the Cross for forgiveness, healing and to offer themselves in love to God’s praise and service. This is picked up in our second reading from Romans Chapter 6 where Saint Paul reminds his readers that since they have welcomed the living Christ who has freed them from the power of sin they should live accordingly. Like us, those Roman Christians needed reminding that through Christ’s sacrifice the power of sin had been potentially countered in our lives but our own grateful sacrifice is needed to release the potential of that saving gift. ‘Just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to greater and greater iniquity, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness for sanctification… now you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sanctification. The end is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord’ (Romans 6:19, 22-23).

At every Eucharist in St John’s we plead Christ’s Sacrifice on Calvary made present among us in Bread and Wine and join to it the sacrifice of ourselves. ‘Pray, my brothers and sisters’ the priest invites ‘that this, my sacrifice and yours, may be acceptable to God, the almighty Father’. ‘May the Lord accept this sacrifice at your hands’ we respond ‘for the praise and glory of his name, for our good, and the good of all his holy Church’. We go on later in the service to offer ‘our souls and bodies as a living sacrifice’. 

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday today and always, across the timespan of creation, the glorious redemption effected upon the Cross displayed in the resurrection, moving on through our own engagement and that of billions, towards the end of history ‘when he will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead’ and make God everything to everyone who accepts his love. To effect today’s Gospel, which presents believers as Christ’s instruments, we need an eye to the once for all Sacrifice of Christ, its renewal in the Eucharist and our own response in self offering. ‘Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me… and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple - truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward’ (Matthew 10:40, 42) 

Though you’ve been listening to me, I hope, and maybe feel encouraged, St John’s, as our windows warn, is built not as a preaching house but, with its heavenward-pointing spire, as a temple for the worship of God in Burgess Hill. Going to the Eucharist can sometimes be reduced to the spiritual equivalent of going to Waitrose. Whilst I hope you’ll be encouraged by your attendance this morning, it's not what you feel that matters but how real the worship of God has been to you over this hour.  In our church window - do look at it afterwards - the priest faces east to lead the people Godwards. A Waitrose type consumerist approach to the sacred mysteries is suggested by recent liturgical changes - Mass in the round - as well as the obligation to listen and reflect upon the homily or keep quiet after Communion. These helpful elements are geared more to serve our own needs than to what is historically central to the eucharist - the worship of God through pleading the Sacrifice of Christ for the suffering and triumph of the cosmos into which our own renewed self-offering Sunday by Sunday has a key part.

Seeing such profundity beyond the brief action of this hour with scripture and bread and wine has been for me a gift from teaching received and engagement with holy priests and people. Over the course of my life they have lifted for me the veil covering the sacred mysteries, not least my own mother Elsie, who, as my son John is now, was a regular attender at our Wednesday Eucharist. In recognising the power of Christ’s Sacrificial Prayer to which my intentions are joined day by day I have gained confidence in a transformative dynamic summarised in Our Lord’s promise that ‘I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself’ (John 12:32). All people, but also all things as St Paul writes of all things being ultimately put ‘in subjection under Christ, so that God may be all in all’ (1 Corinthians 15:28). Such ultimately is the power of the eucharist which draws us up to God and out into service of what the Gospel calls ‘the little ones’ of Burgess Hill.

‘May the Lord accept the sacrifice which is yours and mine for the praise and glory of his name, for our good, and the good of all his holy Church’.

St Mary Balcombe Trinity 2 (11th of Year A) 18.6.23

 

One scheme of preaching is to hold the bible in one hand (show) and the newspaper (show) in the other and see how they come together. 

I followed this scheme on Wednesday after Alison sent me our scripture readings and, as I did, I noted first a verse from each of today’s three readings touching on the unconditional love of God. 

Here they are: ‘I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself’. Exodus 19:4b

‘God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us’. Romans 5:8

‘Jesus had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless’. Matthew 9:36a.

Inspired by these texts I picked up The Times and this passage leaped out at me under the pictures of two fine looking young people, Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar (show): 

‘The residents of Ilkeston Road, a built-up and busy student area of Nottingham, were used to the raucous night-time sounds of drunken revellers and police sirens. But the scream that cut through the heavy summer air in the early hours yesterday was clearly more sinister. Two university students, set upon and stabbed as they returned to their digs after a night out, were the first victims of a 90-minute rampage that resulted in a third killing elsewhere, three more people injured in a vehicle ramming attack, and a city in shock.

‘Ilkeston Road was relatively quiet at 4am when there was a “blood-curdling” scream and the two young victims, who attended the University of Nottingham, were seen tussling with a black man dressed in dark clothing and wearing a hood. Barnaby Webber, 19, a cricketer who previously attended Taunton School, was stabbed multiple times before he died in the street. His female companion, named locally as Grace O’Malley-Kumar, also 19, screamed “help” before staggering to a nearby house and collapsed at the front door. They had been returning from an end of term party and were just a few minutes walk from their homes’.

The tragic loss of two lovely young people of immense potential vexed my spirit. I found myself praying for Barnaby and Grace and another older victim, Ian Coates, with prayer fuelled by the scripture passages for Trinity 2 that had just impacted me, part of the three passages we have just heard in St Mary’s as preparation for pleading Christ’s Sacrifice at the parish eucharist. 

‘That blood curdling scream, Lord, echoes in my heart’ I prayed. ‘That loud cry you made upon the Cross out of fear and pain, may it avail for Barnaby and Grace, ‘My God, my God, why have you deserted me?’ You prove your love for us in dying for us. Jesus have compassion on them and their families and Nottingham and all impacted by this news report for we feel harassed and helpless in the face of this event. You, Lord, are mightier than the eagles so bear their souls as on eagles’ wings to bring them to yourself. Amen’.

That prayer flowed out of my immersion in both scripture and Wednesday’s news and it is a privilege to pray it with you. Maybe it will inspire your own prayer in the challenging situations you meet day by day not least through news media. Scripture, because it has a particular authority as 'the Word of God' is a particularly 'graced' servant of prayer. The very existence of Scripture is evidence of dialogue between human beings and God. To pray with Scripture can be, quite simply, an entering into that conversation, as demonstrated in the Book of Psalms. 

As Our Lord voiced the dereliction he felt upon the Cross using the opening verse of Psalm 22 so we can use bible passages we identify with to lead us into dialogue with God, engaging him with our circumstances and the circumstances of others, be they uplifting and joyous or sorrowful and challenging such as those of Barnaby, Grace and Ian recorded in Wednesday’s paper.

We all benefit when we’re told we are loved and the Scriptures act as a wonderful reminder of God's love for us as we find especially in today’s readings.

St. Teresa of Avila taught people to pray in this way. "Imagine", she said, "that you see Jesus standing before you. He is looking at you lovingly and humbly. Prayer comes as you notice he is looking at you lovingly and humbly". The circumstances on the front of Wednesday’s paper seemed to me initially a long way from that loving gaze of God until they took me to the horrendous killing of his Son and that scream on Mount Calvary which is one with that of Barney, Grace and the cries of so many down the ages. ‘That loud cry you made upon the Cross out of fear and pain, Lord, may it avail for Barnaby and Grace, ‘My God, my God, why have you deserted me?’

Peter Abelard, controversial 11th century theologian, is the subject of a brilliant novel by Helen Waddell. One scene from her book has the theologian living in disgrace in a forest with his young friend Thibault. Abelard and Thibault hear a terrible cry in the woods.  At first they think it is a child in agony, but they discover this terrible cry comes from a rabbit caught in a cruel trap. I quote from the book: ‘Thibault held the teeth of the trap apart, and Abelard gathered up the little creature in his hands. It lay for a moment breathing quickly, then in some blind recognition of the kindness that had met it at the last, the small head thrust and nestled against his arm, and it died. It was that last confiding thrust that broke Abelard’s heart. He looked down at the little bedraggled body, his mouth shaking.’  ‘Thibault,’ he said, ‘do you think there is a God at all?  Whatever has come to me, I earned it. But what did this one do?’ Thibault nodded. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘Only - I think God is in it too.’ Abelard looked up sharply. ‘In it?   Do you mean that it makes Him suffer, the way it does us?’ Again Thibault nodded. ‘Thibault, do you mean Calvary?’ Thibault shook his head.  ‘That was only a piece of it – the piece that we saw – in time. Like that.’  He pointed to a fallen tree beside them, sawn through the middle. ‘That dark ring there, it goes up and down the whole length of the tree. But you only see it where it is cut across. That is what Christ’s life was;  the bit of God that we saw.’ ‘Then, Thibault,’ said Abelard slowly, ‘you think that all this,’ he looked down at the little quiet body in his arms, ‘all the pain of the world, was Christ’s cross?’ ‘God’s cross,’ said Thibault.  ‘And it goes on.’

‘I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself… God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us… Jesus had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless’ we read in today’s scripture pointing back to the cry of the Saviour on the Cross. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and always. With us he hears the death cries we hear or read of. ‘This is my body which is given for you… this is my blood which is shed for you’. As we take broken Bread and Wine from crushed grapes we take with them the invitation to be alongside the agonies of those in our circle and reported to us in the newspapers. 

Let us take the preacher’s lesson holding the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other, putting faith in a God whose love exceeds all we can imagine, whose ears are never deafened to human anguish and who expects nothing of us that he has not been prepared to endure himself.