In John 18:38 Pontius Pilate asks (in the Vulgate) ‘quid est veritas‘ (what is truth) and does not stay around for an answer. The answer can be stated as an anagram of the question: ‘est vir qui adest‘ (it is the man who is here). He is the Way, the Truth and the Life. May our Lenten Journey lead us to contemplate the mystery of God’s saving love on the Cross, and may we take up our crosses and follow Him.
Homily for Lent II – Listen to Him
Divinity is so profound that it can be grasped only by the extremes of simplicity and wisdom. There is something in common between the wise and the simple, and that is humility
Fulton J. Sheen, The Eternal Galilean, 21–22
In this morning’s first reading we hear the account of the covenant between God and Abraham: an agreement between the human and the divine in which a promise is made and a relationship is strengthened. The promise is fulfilled in the land of Israel and the offspring of Abraham. It shows us something of what God is and God does – God is faithful, generous, and loving towards us his children, he keeps his promises.
As men and women it is all too easy to get caught up in questions of national identity, I for one am more than guilty of this, especially during the Six Nations Rugby Championship. We all then need to be reminded of S. Paul’s words in our second reading: ‘Our citizenship is in heaven’. It’s where we really belong, and where we gain our true identity. It is where we can have hope that he will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body – we can dare to hope to share in the fullness of the divine life of love for all eternity. It’s something which should affect our lives here and now. Just like the Christians of Philippi addressed by S. Paul, we too need to ‘stand firm thus in the Lord’: we need to stand firm against the ways of the world, against those who would re-fashion the church after the ways of the world, for we are to be in the world, but not of it – for our citizenship is in heaven, this is where we belong, and what really matters.
If we turn to this morning’s Gospel we hear an account of the Transfiguration of Our Lord. In it we catch a glimpse of the glory of God, we see things as they really are, and for a moment Jesus’ divinity shines forth. He appears talking with Moses and Elijah, he ‘spoke of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem’. In appearing with Moses and Elijah we see Jesus as the fulfilment of the Law and the Prophets. Just before going up the mountain Jesus has spoken to the disciples, telling them that he will suffer, be rejected, be killed, and raised from the dead. He tells his disciples that if they wish to follow him they have to deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow him. This then is what Lent is all about: denying ourselves and taking up our cross and following Christ. We are to prepare ourselves to follow our Lord and Saviour by imitating him and losing our life for his sake. We pray and we fast to follow his footsteps, to turn away from the things of this world and to remind ourselves that our citizenship is in heaven.
The glory of God, prefigured by the shining white appearance of Jesus in the Transfiguration points to the moment when the world will see the glory of God displayed most fully upon the Cross, where naked and bloody, scourged, despised, and rejected, Christ is crucified as a blasphemer, an enemy of the people. God will enter into a new covenant with his people, cut in his own flesh, with a sacrifice of himself, for our sins and those of the whole world. This is the fullness of glory and the love of God for humanity. It turns our understanding of glory, and power, and kingship, on their head.
We too can say like Peter that ‘it is good that we are here’. We come to be fed by God and with God, with word and sacrament, where the sacrifice of Calvary is made present so that we, the people of God, may be fed with his body and blood. We, here, this morning, can behold something of the glory of God in the Mass where Christ gives himself for the life of the world. This is the manna in the wilderness, the bread for the journey of the people of God in the desert of repentance.
At the moment of Transfiguration a voice comes from a cloud saying ‘This is my Son, my Chosen One; listen to him!’ God tells us to listen to Jesus, so that we may be like him. We are to take up our Cross, and in that to learn humility, our need for and reliance upon God and God alone, to glimpse his love and glory on the Cross and to fashion our lives after him, and live out our faith in the world, so that it may believe and give glory to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just, all might, majesty, glory dominion and power, now and forever
Homily for the First Sunday of Lent
When St Antony was praying in his cell, a voice spoke to him, saying ‘Antony, you have not yet come to the measure of the tanner who is in Alexandria.’ When he heard this, the old man arose and took his stick and hurried to the city. When he had found the tanner …. he said to him, ‘Tell me about your work, for today I have left the desert and come here to see you.’
He replied, ‘I am not aware that I have done anything good. When I get up in the morning, before I sit down to work, I say that the whole of the city, small and great, will go into the Kingdom of God because of their good deeds while I will go into eternal punishment because of my evil deeds. Every evening I repeat the same words and believe them in my heart.’
When St Antony heard this he said, ‘My son, you sit in your own house and work well, and you have the peace of the Kingdom of God; but I spend all my time in solitude with no distractions, and I have not come near to the measure of such words.’
It is a very human failure, for far too often we make things far too complicated when all we need to do is to keep things simple. In the story from the Desert Fathers, which we have just heard, St Antony, the founder of monasticism, a great and a holy man, is put to shame by a man who spends his days treating animal skins. The key to it all is the tanner’s humility, his complete absence of pride, and his complete and utter trust in God – his reliance upon him alone.
In this morning’s Gospel we see Our Lord going into the desert for forty days. He goes to be alone with God, to pray and to fast, to prepare himself for the public ministry of the Proclamation of the Good News, the Gospel.
As he comes out of this he is tempted by the devil: he faces temptation just like every human being, but unlike us, he resists. The devil tempts him to turn stones into bread. It is understandable – he is hungry, but it is a temptation to be relevant, which the church seems to have given into completely: unless we what we are and what we do and say is relevant to people, they will ignore us.
There is the temptation to have power, symbolised by worshipping the devil. It leads to the misuse of power. The church stands condemned for the mistakes of the past, but in recognising this there is the possibility of a more humble church in the future – reliant upon God and not on the exercise of power.
There is the temptation to put God to the test – to be spectacular and self-seeking. Whenever we say ‘look at me’ we’re not saying ‘look at God’.
Jesus resists these temptations because he is humble, because he has faith, and because he trusts in God. It certainly isn’t easy, but it is possible. It’s far easier when we do this together, as a community, which is why Lent matters for all of us. It’s a chance to become more obedient, and through that obedience to discover true freedom in God. It’s an obedience which is made manifest on the Cross – in laying down his life Jesus can give new life to the whole world. He isn’t spectacular – he dies like a common criminal. He has no power, he does not try to be relevant, he is loving and obedient and that is good enough.
It was enough for him, and it should be for us. As Christians we have Scripture and the teaching of the Church, filled with his Spirit, to guide us. We can use this time of prayer and fasting to deepen our faith, our trust, our understanding, and our obedience, to become more like Jesus, fed by his word and sacraments – to become more humble, more loving, living lives of service of God and each other, so that the world may believe and give glory to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just, all might, majesty, glory dominion and power, now and forever
Homily for Ash Wednesday Mt 6:1-6, 16-18 ‘Rend your Hearts and not your Garments’
Today the Church celebrates Ash Wednesday, ‘the beginning of her Lenten journey towards Easter. The entire Christian community is invited to live this period of forty days as a pilgrimage of repentance, conversion and renewal. In the Bible, the number forty is rich in symbolism. It recalls Israel’s journey in the desert: a time of expectation, purification and closeness to the Lord, but also a time of temptation and testing. It also evokes Jesus’ own sojourn in the desert at the beginning of his public ministry, a time of profound closeness to the Father in prayer, but also of confrontation with the mystery of evil. The Church’s Lenten discipline is meant to help deepen our life of faith and our imitation of Christ in his paschal mystery. In these forty days may we draw nearer to the Lord by meditating on his word and example, and conquer the desert of our spiritual aridity, selfishness and materialism. For the whole Church may this Lent be a time of grace in which God leads us, in union with the crucified and risen Lord, through the experience of the desert to the joy and hope brought by Easter.’[1]
Fasting, repentance, prayer, and the imposition of ashes were not unknown to Jews; that is why we as Christians carry on the tradition. The advice given by the prophet Joel in today’s first reading is both wise and salutary as we enter the desert of Lent. It reminds us that, first and foremost, we are to recognise our own brokenness, our own sinfulness, our own turning away from a God of Love and Mercy. While we may recognise this, any outward sign is not good enough. There is nothing that we can do in a solely exterior fashion – ripping our clothes, placing ashes upon our foreheads, which will, in itself, make a blind bit of difference. What matters, where it really counts, is on the inside. To rend one’s heart, is to lay ourselves open, to make ourselves vulnerable, and in this openness and vulnerability, to let God do his work.
It would be all too easy when faced with today’s Gospel to argue that outward displays of fasting, piety, and penitence, are criticised, that they do notmatter. But this is not what Jesus is getting at. What he criticises are deeds which are done to comply with the letter but not the spirit of the law. This mechanised approach to piety, a clinging to the external nature of religion, without any concern for its inward spiritual aspect, is where the fault lies. When things are done for show, when our piety is paraded as performance, so that the world may see how good and religious we are, then we are nothing but an empty shell, a whitened sepulchre. The reward which such people receive is likewise an empty one.
Instead, Jesus upholds the standard practice of Jewish cult, but what matters is that what is done outwardly is completely in accordance with our interior life, it is an outward manifestation of our relationship with God and with one another. So Lent is to be a time when we as Christians are to seek to be reconciled, to be in full communion with God and his church. Our outward acts of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving need to be done in tandem with, rather than instead of, paying attention to our interior life: otherwise our efforts are doomed to failure. The God whom we worship is one of infinite love and mercy, which will be demonstrated most fully and perfectly on Good Friday, when we see what that love means, when for our sake God made him who was without sin into sin, so that we in him might become the goodness of God. Or as St Isaac puts it ‘as a handful of sand thrown into the ocean, so are the sins of all flesh as compared with the mind of God.’ As dreadful as we might be, as utterly undeserving of the father’s love, nonetheless, as the parable of the prodigal son shows us, there are no lengths to which God will not go. The love and mercy which flows from Jesus’ stricken side upon the cross at Calvary are still being poured out over the world, and will continue to be so until all is reconciled in him. In his commission of Peter after his resurrection, Jesus entrusts to his church the power to forgive sins, to reconcile us to one another and to God. This reconciliation is manifested by our restoration to communion with God and his Church.
It is not the most comfortable or pleasant thing to see ourselves as we really are. To stand naked in front of a full length mirror is for most of us, I suspect, not the most pleasant experience. And yet, such a self-examination is as nothing when compared with us baring our heart and soul. It is not a pleasant task, but given that God will judge us in love and mercy, having taken away our sins upon the cross, despite our apprehension we have nothing to fear. All that awaits us is the embrace of a loving father. No matter how many times we fail, how many times we would run away or reject his love, his arms, like those of his son upon the cross, remain open to embrace the world, to heal the wounds of sin and division.
If there are any of you determined to live a more Christian life, there is one resolution you need to make which is, out of all proportion, more important than the rest. Resolve to pray, to receive the sacraments, to shun besetting sins, to do good works – all excellent resolutions; but more important than any of these is the resolution to repent. The more resolutions you make, the more you will break. But it does not matter how many you break so long as you are resolute not to put off repentance when you break them, but to give yourself up to the mercy which will not despise a broken and a contrite heart. Converted or unconverted, it remains true of you that in you, that is, in your natural being, there dwells no good thing. Saints are not people who store goodness in themselves, they are just a people who do not delay to repent, and whose repentances are honourable.[2]
So then, may this Lent be for us all a time of repentance, a time for us to turn away from all which separates us from God and neighbour, a time for reconciliation, for healing and growth, that the faith which we profess may grow in our souls and be shown forth in our lives to give Glory to God the Father, to whom with God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, be ascribed as is most right and just all might, majesty, glory, dominion, and power, now and forever
[1]H.H. Pope Bendict XVI Catechesis at the General Audience 22.ii.12: http://www.news.va/en/news/pope-conquering-our-spiritual-desert
[2]Farrer (1976) The Brink of Mystery (ed. C. Conti), 17, quoted in Harries, R. (ed.) (1987) The One Genius: Readings through the year with Austin Farrer, London: SPCK, 60.
Homily for Shrove Tuesday : Mark 7:1-13
Even when the will is perverse – even when a creature is enthralled and captivated by one great sinful adhesion, which makes one’s days a flight from God towards lust or power – even then some few good and commendable acts contradict one’s general attitude. These isolated acts of virtue are like a clean handle on a dirty bucket; with them, God can lift a soul to his peace.
Fulton J Sheen Lift Up Your Heart
In this evening’s first reading we see God’s Creation in its perfection and its peace: ‘God saw that it was good’. Here we find all that is needed for human flourishing through staying close to Him and listening to what he says to us and doing it. We see the traditional notions of marriage and family as ordained by God, for our good, and with which we meddle at our peril, and that of the whole of society in general. We see the need for rest – it’s something ordained by God, and which the modern world with its 24/7 always on mindset seeks to erode. It’s something against which we need to fight, because it is wrong and it’s not good for us. We need to rest, to have time off, to spend it in rest and relaxation with our nearest and dearest, it helps give our lives value and worth and first and foremost it is holy, it is set apart for rest and refreshment by God – we cannot simply disregard this divine command because it’s inconvenient in the modern world. It shows us that when the world and the Church are in conflict it is the Church which truly values humanity and affords them proper dignity and respect, rather than seeing them as a commodity which is to be exploited.
As someone who is part of the religious establishment I must admit that I always get more than a bit concerned when I am faced with Our Lord confronting the Pharisees. It is, I would suggest, a good and a healthy thing simply because it reminds me that I am never to ask the people of God to do something which I do not. It forces me to examine who and what I am, and what I say and think and do, which is never a bad thing.
The Pharisees approach Jesus to point out that his disciples have not been following the letter of the law, and eating with unclean hands. They are, as ever, keen to point out minor outward transgressions, and are themselves unable to see the bigger spiritual picture. Our Lord is right to say to them:
“Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written,
“‘This people honours me with their lips,
but their heart is far from me;
in vain do they worship me,
teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’
You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.” Mk 7:6-8
Outward conformity then just will not do; we cannot simply go through the motions and expect everything to be alright in the end. We need to honour God with our lips and with our hearts, so that what we think, what we say, and what we do are all in accord with each other: otherwise we are hypocrites and no better than the Pharisees.
They saw the law as salvific: if you do the right thing, everything will be fine. Their mechanistic approach to religion is cold, dead and empty, and through the words of Jesus we know that it is not pleasing to God. We cannot and should not fall into the same trap as them.
We are here tonight to take time to begin our preparations for Lent, to prepare to enter into the desert of repentance, like our Lord spending forty days in the desert before starting his public ministry. We are to give our souls and lives a spiritual spring-clean. We prepare to celebrate Our Lord’s Passion, Death and Resurrection just like those preparing for Baptism did and still do: in prayer, with fasting, with self-denial, and through the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation. We prepare by examining our lives and our consciences to confess our sins to God, so that he can heal and restore us. It may sound scary, but take it from me, as someone who does it regularly, it really isn’t: it’s wonderful, it’s a chance to lay down your burden and feel the embrace of a loving Father around one of his prodigal children. It’s why today is called Shrove Tuesday – people were shriven – they confessed their sins as they prepared to enter this solemn time. They faced up to the fact that they were sinners in need of God’s love and mercy, who needed to be healed and restored by him, it wasn’t something they could just do on their own. It is not easy to recognise that we are work in progress, and that we need God to be at work in us; but this is exactly what Jesus came to show us. He came to heal and restore us, to forgive us our sins, suffering and dying for us – weak, foolish sinful humanity that we are. He came to restore the image of God in us, to take us back to the perfection of Creation, to turn us from the disobedience of Adam and Eve to the obedience shown by his mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the obedience which her Son lives out even to his death on the Cross for our sake, and beyond.
So let us prepare to worship him in spirit and in truth, not just with our lips, but with hearts, minds, and souls and lives cleansed, healed, and restored by the one perfect sacrifice for sin, who gives himself, in his word, in his Body and Blood, in the Sacraments, and the teaching of the Church, his body, filled with his Spirit, so that we may have live in all its fullness and give glory to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just, all might, majesty, glory dominion and power, now and forever
Homily for the Fifth Sunday of Year C
We always make the fatal mistake of thinking that it is what we do that matters, when really what matters is what we let God do to us
Fulton J Sheen Seven Words of Jesus and Mary
I have to admit that the one thing I cannot stand watching is a horror movie. I probably have an over-active imagination, or get too drawn into the action, and certainly don’t like feeling scared. As humans we aren’t keen on being afraid: we feel powerless, we’re not in control.
In this morning’s first reading the prophet Isaiah has an experience of God’s presence in the Temple in Jerusalem. He does not describe his emotional state, other than what he says speaks of human unworthiness in the divine presence. When he is confronted by the majesty of God, the singing of angels, the smoke of incense, all he can say is ‘Woe is me. For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips’ Isaiah is aware of human sinfulness and the gulf between himself and God. Yet his guilt is taken away, and his sin atoned for – the prophet who will tell of the Messiah, who will save humanity, is prepared for this by God, he is set apart. When God asks ‘Whom shall I send, who will go for me?’ Isaiah can respond ‘Here I am, send me’ It’s quite a journey in a few verses.
Likewise St Paul, ‘the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle because [he] persecuted the church of God’ is living proof of the redemptive power of God’s love at work in the world. He preaches Christ crucified and resurrected, to show us that Christ died for us, and that we can have new life in him. God can (and does) take and use surprising people to show us that we are loved.
In the Gospel, Jesus begins by using a fisherman’s boat, so that the large crowd at the lakeside can see and hear him. When he has finished teaching he tells Simon Peter to ‘Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch’. Peter cannot see the point – they’ve not caught anything in the entire night, he’s tired, he doesn’t see the point. And yet he is obedient, he does what Jesus asks him – and they catch so many fish that their boats almost sink under the weight of them, a catch which points forward to another miraculous catch of fish after Jesus’ resurrection (in Jn 21:1–11), it is a sign of the Church, a miraculous number of people given new life in Christ.
Peter’s response is telling: he falls at Jesus’ knees and says ‘Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord’ it is an authentic human response to the presence and generosity of God – he recognises his own unworthiness and his reliance upon God. Peter is not worthy of his calling, but because he knows he isn’t that’s where God can be at work. The next thing Jesus says to him is ‘Do not be afraid’ – in Christ we do not need to be afraid of anything, if we trust in him, and let his love be at work in us.
Once they reach the land the disciples leave everything and follow him, they display metanoia: they change their heart, their mind and their life – the response of a sinner to the love of God. It can be all too easy to see such passages as we have this morning as solely of interest to those of a calling to the priesthood. That’s understandable, but it’s also deeply wrong. It applies to each and every one of us, here, and all over the world. As Christians we are all to kneel in the place of Peter, to recognise our reliance upon and trust in God, and be prepared to be ‘fishers of men’. The calling of the disciples is the calling of the entire baptised people of God: a calling not to be afraid, but to respond to the God who loves us and saves us, a calling to live out in our lives by word and deed the saving truths of God, so that the world may believe. So that it may believe and give glory to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just, all might, majesty, glory dominion and power, now and forever
Homily for the 4th Sunday of Year C – Being prophetic
Many people nowadays want God, but on their own terms, not on his. They insist that their wishes shall determine the kind of religion that is true, rather than letting God reveal his truth to them. So their dissatisfaction continues and grows. But God finds us lovable, even in our rebellion against him.
Fulton J. Sheen Lift up your heart
Throughout the Scriptures we see that the calling, life and witness of the prophet is a difficult and a costly one. In this morning’s first reading we see Jeremiah being called to proclaim the word of the Lord. He is set apart for this task, he is made holy, and God says ‘I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations’ – in order to do what a prophet does, he has to be what a prophet is, function follows and flows from ontology, what he is, is prior, it is done to him, so that God may work through him.
It is a difficult and a costly task, and a prophet has to be prepared for rejection: ‘they will fight against you, but they shall not prevail against you, for I am with you, declares the Lord, to deliver you.’ It is far too easy especially in the current climate for the Church to be downhearted, when we are assailed by secular power, but we have to be like Jeremiah, and trust in God safe in the knowledge that that the one who called is faithful and will not disappoint us. We can trust in God, we can have faith and hope in him, so that we can speak the truth in love.
The People of Jesus’ home town cannot see what’s going on, they simply see what they want to see, they see a mouthy jumped-up carpenter’s son who has the temerity to challenge their preconceptions and their lack of faith, who tells is like it is, the uncomfortable truth, which they do not want to hear, but which they needto hear.
Currently we are being told that our understanding of Holy Order and Marriage need to be changed to conform to the ways of the world; it can only be a matter of time before legislation allowing assisted suicide to be made legal will be considered, so that we no longer have to value life either at its beginning, or its end, that the vulnerable and inconvenient can be disposed of by medical means, cast off, in private and away from prying eyes. Against the vision of a secular state which does not truly value life from its conception to a natural death, which does not value marriage as the lifelong and indivisible union of a man and a woman for their mutual benefit and that of society, and for the procreation and education of children, which seeks to tell the church what it should do and how and why it should do it, we have to offer an alternative.
It may not be popular to stand up and proclaim the ultimate and absolute Truth found in Scripture and the tradition of the Church, guided by the Holy Spirit, but that is what the Church is called to do. It may not be easy, people are not willing to listen, but prefer to mock and to jeer, to remain safe and secure in their liberal secular prejudices, looking down their noses at poor deluded fools who stand up for a truth which they see as only one out of a myriad possible options in this post-modern world. It is easier to persecute the church under the fig leaf of upholding equality and diversity, of protecting religion while undermining it, unless it conforms to the secular viewpoint.
We believe in saying that certain actions are right and others are wrong, they will harm your soul, and affect your relationship with God and each other, that life is precious and must be valued, and we do this because we are loved by a God who lived among us, who died for us, to heal our wounds, who rose again, to give us the hope of glory. He knew rejection, throughout his earthly life, but he was not afraid to speak the truth in love, regardless of the cost. It’s generous; it’s extravagant, in a way which people just cannot understand – entering into glory by being executed like a common criminal, for the love of us, of you and me – to give us new life in him. He is the Truth, the Way and the Life.
He knew that in the end the power of God’s love was greater than that of the world, the flesh and the devil – all these were beaten on a hill outside Jerusalem. So confident in his victory, in his strength and his truth, let us continue to proclaim it in word and deed so that the world may believe and give glory to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just, all might, majesty, glory dominion and power, now and forever
Homily for Sexagesima (BCP ) The Parable of the Sower
Faith lights up all the faculties of a person, as light inside reveals the pattern of a stained-glass window. For faith is far more than the passive acquiescence to a proof; it is a dynamic thing accompanied by an intense desire for the possession of God as author and finisher of our life
Fulton J. Sheen Lift up your Heart
Christianity has, of late, not looked terribly good in the eyes of the world and the media. If we were to believe what is said of us, it would appear that we are obsessed by matters of gender and sex: the ordination of women, clergy in civil partnerships and the proposed redefinition of marriage to include same-sex couples. In the eyes of the world we are wrong, we are completely out of touch, and we need to conform ourselves and the Church to the ways of the world. We cannot, I would suggest, allow this to happen; we need instead to stand up and be counted, proclaiming a truth rooted in Scripture and the Tradition of the Church even if it means that we appear foolish in the eyes of the world: for our faith is foolishness and a stumbling block, but the foolishness of God is wiser than men.
In this morning’s Gospel we have St Luke’s account of the parable of the Sower and its explanation – Jesus is showing us what the Church and the Proclamation of the Gospel look like in practice. He uses an agricultural image which is as clear to us today as it was two thousand years ago. It’s designed to be transparent, it isn’t complicated, but it does not necessarily make for terribly easy reading. The sower casts out a great deal of seed, and not all of it even lands on soil. Even when it does it necessarily lead to much – the plants bolt and die or are choked by weeds. Only a few seeds grow up into healthy plants, which produce a wonderful harvest, even an hundredfold.
There are people, who are initially very enthusiastic about the Christian Faith, but who quickly lose interest; others find themselves distracted by the cares of the world, by their riches, and the enticements of pleasure. This reminds us of the salutary fact that living the Christian life is not easy: things get in the way, we get distracted, it is a huge struggle and if we were just left to our own devices then we, generally speaking, are not terribly good at resisting. So what do we do? We need to rely upon God as our help and strength, and also to support each other as we grow together in a community of faith and love, helping each other, through God’s grace, to resist the ways of sin and the world.
Only a few plants produce a great deal of seed – the Church grew from a small but committed community of faith gathered around Our Lord and the Twelve Apostles. Instead of hearts hardened by superficialities or worldly preoccupations, they display hearts which are open, open to the God who loves them, to the God who heals them, and to the God who saves them, who shed his blood on the Cross for their sake and ours, to take away their sin. They are people who trust God, and who live lives which proclaim God’s saving truth regardless of the cost to themselves, gladly laying down their lives to serve the truth which sets them free. They then reap a harvest of billions of souls saved over the past two thousand years; and we are called to be like them, to live lives like theirs, to trust like them, to be fearless in our proclamation of the Gospel, supporting each other in our lives and in spreading the Good News of Jesus Christ in word and in deed, so that the world may believe and give glory to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just, all might, majesty, glory dominion and power, now and forever
Septuagesima Evensong
There must always be a relationship between the gift and the recipient – there is no point in giving anyone a treasure he cannot use. A father would not give a boy with no talent for music a Stradivarius violin. Neither will God give to egocentrics those gifts and powers and energies that they never propose to put to work in the transformation of their lives and souls.
Fulton J. Sheen Lift Up Your Heart
The Liturgical Calendar can be something of pain. Thanks to the rather early date of Easter this year, while Christmas and Epiphany are very much still in our minds, and we have yet to celebrate Candlemas, the Feast of the Purification of Our Lady or the Presentation of Our Lord in the Temple, today we celebrate Septuagesima, or the fact that it is seventy days until Easter, or to put it another way, it is three weeks until we begin Lent, the period of fasting and repentance, akin to Our Lord’s forty days in the desert at the start of the proclamation of the Good News.
It’s never to early to start to begin thinking about Lent, about fasting, prayer, repentance and good works which should characterise the whole of our lives, but especially as we prepare to celebrate Our Lord’s Passion and Resurrection. It is good then that in these weeks leading up to Lent that things assume something of a more penitential character. The simple fact is that all of us as Christians could do better, and we must keep trying so to do, and most importantly that we do this together – encouraging each other, and picking each other up when we fall.
It is heartening to remind ourselves of this fact when have only just finished the week of prayer for Christian Unity, and on World Holocaust Memorial Day. Humanity is learning that never again should genocide on such a massive scale take place, and that the wounded and divided nature of the Body of Christ, the Church, is not a good thing. In the seventeenth chapter of John’s Gospel, we see Our Lord praying in Gethsemane that ‘they may all be one as I and the Father are one’. There is to be a unity of will and purpose in the Church, to spread the Good News so that all may believe. The wounds of the last thousand years can no longer disfigure the Bride of Christ, and we have to do all that we can so that in the words of a well-known hymn:
For all thy Church, O Lord, we intercede;
make thou our sad divisions soon to cease;
draw us the nearer each to each, we plead,
by drawing all to thee, O Prince of Peace;
thus may we all one Bread, one Body be,
through this blest Sacrament of unity.
We are not there yet, and sometimes it can seem as far off as ever, especially when developments are considered which would have the effect of putting off the growing together in love which is Our Lord’s will. It’s sad because generally speaking the Church is quite good at doing what Jesus tells us to do, yet here in the matter of unity we seem happy to disregard Our Lord’s commands as though we know better. It is a manifestation of the sin of pride, that primal sin which causes humanity’s fall, of thinking that we know better than God what is good for us. After thousands of years we still do exactly the same thing – we are still in need of God’s love and mercy, his healing and reconciliation.
But as Christians we are called to live lives filled with joy which comes from God, and lives characterised by faith, hope, and love. We have to trust the God who made us, and who redeemed us, and let our hearts be filled with his love, and his forgiveness, so that we can grow together and not apart. It’s God’s will after all and it will be done. It may not be in my lifetime, or that of anyone listening to or reading this, but it will come about, despite any efforts to stop it.
Personally speaking I find that certainty quite encouraging and quite comforting – that things will be alright in the end, and that despite humanity’s best efforts to make a mess of things, through God all things are possible. So in the meanwhile, what are we to do? We are to pray, to encourage one another, and to be joyful in the Lord who giveth us the victory in Our Lord Jesus Christ. We are to be sorry for our sins, confessing them, and repenting – turning away from the ways of sin and the world to those of God, and living our new life together in him, fed by his Word and Sacraments, strong in the faith which come to us from the Apostles, eschewing all heresy and schism, in humble trust of the God who loves us and saves us, so that every tongue may confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to glory of God the Father, to whom with the Son, and the Holy Spirit, be ascribed as is most right and just, all might, majesty, glory, dominion, and power, now and forever.
Homily for the 3rd Sunday of Year C ‘The Joy of the Lord is your strength’
Every person is a precious mystery. An individual cannot be weighed by public opinion; he cannot be measured by his conditionings; he belongs to no-one but himself, and no creature in all the world can penetrate his mystery except the God who made him. The dignity of every person is beyond our reckoning.Fulton J. Sheen Lift Up Your Heart
January is a time for dieting, for turning away from the excess of Christmas, and so at one level when we hear in this morning’s Old Testament reading ‘Eat the fat and drink sweet wine’ we could be quite concerned. But we are also told to ‘send portions to anyone who has nothing ready’ – to feast then in the Kingdom of God involves everyone eating. In a world where we produce enough food for all to eat and not go hungry, it is good that there is a campaign to put an end to Global Hunger, as this is what the Kingdom of God looks like in action.
In St Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians we see what it means to be the Church, the Body of Christ, through our common baptism. We may be different, but we all need one another, and are dependent on one another, a place of unity in, through and with Christ. Looking back on this two thousand later we can see the wounds which mar the Body of Christ and also how they can be healed.
In the Gospels we have seen Our Lord baptised to show the world how to turn away from sin and how to be reconciled with God, we have seen the Kingdom of God come among us in the Wedding at Cana. It is a place of joy, which we cannot understand, like the steward – the best wine has been kept for now, the new wine of the Kingdom, better than we have ever tasted, beyond our expectations and our efforts. We have seen in Our Lady’s word to the servants, ‘Do whatever He tells you’ that obedience is the key to new life in Christ.
In this morning’s Gospel we Jesus ‘full of the power of the Spirit’ teaching people, showing them the way, and being glorified by them – they give to God what is due. When he comes to his home town and is given the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, he proclaims ‘good news to the poor’ ‘liberty to captives’ ‘new sight to the blind’ ‘freedom for the oppressed’ and ‘the year of the Lord’s favour’. As He will say in the Sermon on the Mount ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of God’. The good news of the Gospel is for those who know their need of God, their spiritual poverty. Those who are slaves to sin can find true freedom in Christ; it allows us to see the world with new eyes, where everyone is our brother and sister, where we can be one in Christ.
‘Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing’ we, here, today, have heard this among us, we have come to be fed with Word and Sacrament, to be fed by Christ, with Christ, to have new life in Him, and to share that new life with others, a new life and a freedom which the world cannot give. So let us be fed to have new life in him, to live that life and share it with others, for the joy of the Lord is our strength.
As Christians we are to live lives of joy and love in Christ, and through him, rejoicing in our new life in baptism, in the saving sacrifice of the Cross, in the hope of the Empty Tomb, in our unity in the Body of Christ, so that all creation may resound with the praise of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just, all might, majesty, glory, dominion, and power, now and forever.
A thought for the day from Fulton J. Sheen
“The world may disagree with the Church, but the world knows very definitely with what it is disagreeing. In the future as in the past, the Church will be intolerant about the sanctity of marriage, for what God has joined together no man shall put asunder; she will be intolerant about her creed, and be ready to die for it, for she fears not those who kill the body, but rather those who have the power to cast body and soul into hell.”
The Baptism of the Lord
Though time is too precious to waste, it must never be thought that what was lost is irretrievable. Once the Divine is introduced, then comes the opportunity to make up for losses. God is the God of the second chance …. Being ‘born again’ means that all that went before is not held against us.
Fulton J. Sheen Peace of Soul
The Baptism of Our Lord in the River Jordan by John the Baptist, which we celebrate today, can leave us asking a question: if we are baptised to be born again by water and the Spirit, for our sins to be washed away, and to become part of the Body of Christ, the Church, why is Our Lord, who is without sin, being baptised. He does not need to be, but in being baptised shows us that God is not constrained by necessity. Christ does not need to be baptised, as we do, but does so to show us the way to new life in him.
In Christ’s Baptism we see a God who walks with us, who is not a cold, remote figure; but who, for love of us, comes among us, and is one with us, and who shows us the way to his Father. Christ’s Baptism is an act of obedience to God the Father, an act of humility and of healing and restoration – the work of God in Christ, done for our sake. What began at the Annunciation, and was brought about at the Incarnation, and made manifest to the whole world at the Epiphany, is deepened: the world is invited to share in the saving love of God through baptism.
At the beginning of his public ministry, Jesus shows humanity the way to the Father, through himself. The world sees the generous love of God, which heals and restores us, from the darkness of the dungeon of sin and evil, to the light and life of the Kingdom of God. As our baptism is a sharing in the death and resurrection of Jesus, so his baptism points to the Cross, where streams of blood and water flow to cleanse and heal the world. We see the love of the Father, the power of the Spirit, and the obedience of Son, and all for us, who are so weak and foolish, and who need God’s love and healing, and forgiveness.
We need this, the whole world needs it, but is too proud to turn to a God of love, for fear of judgement, knowing that they deserve to be cut off forever, and yet it is exactly such people, such lost sheep that Our Lord comes to seek, whom he enfolds in his loving arms on the Cross, whom he washes in the waters of baptism, so that all may be a part of him, regardless of whom or what they are, and what they have done. Salvation is the free gift of God and open to all who turn to him.
In our suspicious modern world that gift is spurned and mocked, by those who feel that they can no longer trust the church, or denounce it is as hypocritical, an oppressor of one group or another. To which we can only reply with open doors, open arms, and open hearts – the church may be full of sinners and hypocrites and there’s always room for a few more! God in Christ is nothing if not generous, and so the Church, his body is called to the same generosity of spirit. With the open invitation comes a call to repentance, to a fundamental change of mind, which sees us turn away from sin to God.
Here is where I suspect it gets difficult for humanity, we know that sin is wrong, but we enjoy it, we can soothe our conscience with the fiction that something is not a sin: that it doesn’t hurt or harm us, we can even twist the Gospel to our own ends. But these will not do, because in them we say that we know better than God – the sin of pride, that primal sin which separates humanity from God. This was the problem Christ comes to fix, to heal and restore our nature, through his grace, to feed us with Word and Sacrament that we might share in the life and love of God.
We need to take to heart the words of advice written by St Paul to Titus and the Church in Crete: given that ‘the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people’ (Titus 2:11) the Church has to respond to that grace, that free gift of a loving God, by living in a certain way, the Church is there to train us to renounce, to turn our back on ‘ungodliness and worldly passions’ – using our lives and our bodies which fall short of what is expected of us. Notice the word ‘train’: it’s a process, very few people indeed can run a marathon without training; we need help and practice to turn our lives around together, as a community of faith. It takes time, and hard work and love, but it is something which we can do together – people will fail, but can be picked up, and helped to continue, that’s what healing and repentance are all about. It’s about saying ‘we can be better, we can do better together’ if we truly let the love of God into our hearts and turn away from the past and look forward to a future of hope and glory in Christ. So then, let us live out our faith and our baptism together, turning from sin to new life in Christ, and encourage others so to do, so that all creation may resound with the praise of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just, all might, majesty, glory, dominion, and power, now and forever.
The Epiphany of the Lord: Come let us worship
What Christ did in his own human nature in Galilee, he is doing today … in every city and hamlet of the world where souls are vivified by his Spirit. He is still being born in other Bethlehems of the world, still coming into his own and his own receiving him not, still instructing the learned doctors of the law and answering their questions, still labouring at a carpenter’s bench, still ‘[going] about doing good’ (see Acts 10:34–43), still preaching, governing, sanctifying, climbing other Calvaries, and entering into the glory of his Father.
Fulton J. Sheen In the Fullness of Time
The Manifestation of Our Lord to the Gentiles, which the church celebrates today, is a deepening of the splendour of the Incarnation. With the arrival of the Wise Men from the East, the World is told that God is with us. Gentiles are made co-heirs, ‘members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel’.
The promise is made through the words of the prophet Isaiah in this morning’s first reading. The light which is shown by the star which the Wise Men follow is the Light of the World, the true light. Kings and the nations come to its brightness, they come to worship God made man; they come to pay their homage to the Saviour born among them. They come with camels and bringing gold and frankincense to worship their king and their God. They come to a stable in Bethlehem, to kneel before a manger where animals feed, and not to a royal palace, not to a throne. This is what true kingship is, true love, that of God and not of humanity.
Herod is afraid, he fears for his own position; he worries about power, and commits infanticide to make sure of it. This very human response should stand as a warning to those who wish to follow the ways of the world. Herod clings to power; God becomes a vulnerable baby, dependant on others. Herod can only bring death; Christ comes to bring life and life in all its fullness. Herod says he wants to worship, but it is the Wise Men who kneel before God incarnate and worship Him. They offer gold to honour a king, frankincense to worship God, and myrrh which speaks of His death. At the moment when Christ is made manifest to the world we are to look to the Cross, where the love of God will be shown must fully, and to the tomb in which his body will be laid, which will be empty.
Likewise as we celebrate the Epiphany we also look forward to Our Lord’s Baptism in the River Jordan and his first miracle at the Wedding at Cana. He who is without sin shows humanity how to be freed from sin and to have new life in Him. In turning water into wine we see that the kingdom of God is a place of generous love, a place of joy, and of life in all its fullness.
So let us be filled with joy and love, may we live lives of joy, and love, and service of God and one another, which proclaim in word and deed the love of God to the world, that it may believe: so that all creation may resound with the praise of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just, all might, majesty, glory, dominion, and power, now and forever.
What it’s all about…
The nature, gender, and function of priests are apparently all up for discussion these days. I suspect people know where I stand and why. I do not wish to comment; all I can offer is the following prayer (taken from a Holy Card). I can only ask you to pray it.
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O Jesus, Eternal High Priest, bless abundantly those whom you have called to share Thy Priesthood. You have chosen them apart to continue your work on earth. Daily they offer Holy Mass, they administer the sacraments, they preach, and in all their work they unite us to you. Grant that their conduct may be a pattern of holy living so that hereafter, giving a good account of the stewardship committed to them, they may obtain the reward of everlasting bliss. Amen
The Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God
‘Those who dislike any devotion to Mary are those who deny His Divinity or who find fault with Our Lord because of what He says.’
These words of the Venerable and Most Reverend Fulton J. Sheen remind us of an important truth when we consider the Blessed Virgin Mary: she is always pointing to God – it’s all about God and not about Mary. But, I hear you cry, we have come here to celebrate the Solemn Feast of Mary, Mother of God, surely it’s all got to be about her? Well I am sorry to disappoint you, but it isn’t.
People who dislike Marian devotion, because it’s ‘a bit too ‘igh for ‘em’ or ‘it detracts from Jesus’, have got things wrong, and generally they err with how they understand one or all of the three Persons of the Trinity. For the last 1,582 years the Church has referred to Our Lady as the Mother of God, not the Mother of Christ, the Mother of Jesus, or some poor Jewish girl raped by a Roman soldier. The Mother of God, the Theotokosor God-bearer is her title which we celebrate today. The words we use matter. It matters that Mary bears in her womb the Word of God Incarnate, True God and True Man, for our salvation.
We celebrate the wonderful truth that God shows his love for us in being born, in being a vulnerable child who needs a mother’s love and tender care. Mary is obedient and says ‘Yes’ to God – she is the model Christian, Mother of God and Mother of the Church, who as she stands at the foot of the Cross becomes our Mother too.
At the Wedding in Cana she tells the servants ‘Do whatever he tells you’ she urges people to be obedient, to be close to God. She lives a life of faith: treasuring things and ‘pondering them in her heart’ so that we can be adopted children of God, and share in her Son’s gift of new life to the world. We honour her, because she points us to her Son. We rejoice that her obedience brings about the possibility of salvation in her Son. We love her because we love her Son, our God and Lord, Jesus Christ. If we honour him, how can we not honour she who bore him in her womb for our sake? If we believe that He is the Incarnate Word eternally begotten of the Father, and that they are con-substantial and co-eternal, true God and true man in two natures without confusion, change, division or separation, it surely follows that His Mother is the Mother of God. We rejoice that in her, the New Eve, the Ark of the new Covenant, the Tabernacle of the Most High, the possibility of new life in her Son has come about.
So, today, let us pause to ponder the love of God shown to us in Mary, let us be fed by word and sacrament, the Body of Christ, which became incarnate in the womb of the Virgin Mary, let us treasure him, and let us respond by loving and trusting God, by living lives of service, of God and of one another, and proclaiming the Good News in Jesus Christ, so that all creation may resound with the praise of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just, all might, majesty, glory, dominion, and power, now and forever.
Homily for the Holy Family (Year C)
‘Sanctification does not depend on our geography or on our work or circumstances. Some people imagine that if they were in another place, or married to a different spouse, or had a different job, or had more money, they could do God’s work so much better. The truth is that it makes no difference where they are; it all depends on whether what they are doing is God’s will and done for love of him’
Fulton J. Sheen Lift up your Heart
Christmas is a time for families, is a phrase with which I am sure we are all familiar. It comes as something of a shock to see that in a recent survey only 68% of British children live with both parents at the age of 14, with a quarter of children living in single-parent families. This is something about which we should be concerned for the simple reason that families matter, especially where the Church is concerned. It is not surprising that the Church sees the family as the domestic church, where parents and children should pray together and the Christian Faith should be taught – it should be a place where faith, hope, and love may abound.
In our broken and fallen world we recognise that our human efforts may fall short of all that is expected of us, and as Christians we are not to judge others, as ours is to be a community of love, and forgiveness, and mutual support. We must nonetheless strive to do all that we can to see that something ordained by God – the lifelong union of a man and a woman for the procreation and education of children – given for human flourishing, is something that can be cherished, supported, strengthened and lived out, as a witness to the world, so that it may believe.
In this morning’s Gospel we see the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph – the example for Christian families of what to be and how to live. Mary & Joseph show love and concern for their absent child, they search for him. Jesus’ response may seem troubling at first; it doesn’t look like the response of a dutiful child. It does, however, point out the important truth that our first duty as children is not towards our parents, but to God – to love him and serve him. But as Our Lord ‘went down with them and came to Nazareth and was submissive to them’ he shows that he is obedient both to God andhis parents – his obedience show us how to live a Christian life after his example. His mother ‘treasured up all these things in her heart’ as she comes to see and understand what is going on – the family grows in love towards God and each other and becomes a place of human flourishing and an example to the world of how to live the life of faith. Mary and Joseph find Jesus after three days – a period of time which looks forward to His Death and Resurrection – even here and now as a young man, his life points towards its goal: the Cross and the Empty Tomb which gives life to all creation in Him, through Him and with Him.
God gives us life in Christ so that we may live it and may flourish, where we can truly be what God wants us to be, and so that strengthened by Word and Sacraments we may become what he is. In the First Letter of John we see our relationship with God in terms of a family – the Father loves us and we are His children, not just called such, but through the new birth of our baptism this is what we are. The world does not recognise this, just as it did not recognise our Lord, or indeed follow him. The world may just want to see us in worldly terms or have us conform to worldly values, but we cannot allow this to happen – we are called to conform the world to the will of God, to show it how it may truly flourish and find its true meaning and value. The world will no doubt hate us for doing this, but this should not dissuade us from trying, and indeed succeeding, as we are one in Christ, who has overcome the world.
So let us live lives of faith, hope, and love, after the example of the Holy Family, and aided by their prayers, so that the world might believe and all creation resound with the praise of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, the consubstantial and co-eternal Trinity, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just, all might, majesty, glory, dominion, and power, now and forever.
Homily for Christmas Jn 1:1-14 ‘And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us’
Christ’s coming into the world was not like that of a sightseer to a strange city, but rather like that of an artist visiting his own studio or an author paging the books he himself has written, for in becoming incarnate, the divine Word was tabernacling himself in his own creation.
Fulton J. Sheen In the Fullness of Time
It is a strange time to be a Christian. We live in a world where scepticism abounds, where trust is in short supply, and where the yearly celebration of Our Lord and Saviour’s Nativity has become an excuse for consumerist excess. In the midst of all the madness and froth of our modern existence, I’d like to take a few minutes to explore the profound mystery which we celebrate tonight.
In a stable attached to an inn, in a backwater town in the far corner of the Roman Empire, a woman gives birth to a son. It is a birth which has been foretold by the prophets: salvation will come from Bethlehem, the town of David, and from the line of David. Unlike the first David, who sends a man (Uriah the Hittite, the husband of Bathsheba) to die, so that he may sin, the second David will gladly die to save all humanity from its sins, even those who kill him. The ruler and shepherd of Israel will reign in glory hanging from a tree like a common criminal. The first people to come and worship him are shepherds, ritually impure men, outcasts from Jewish society. It is a life that begins and ends on the margins, among those whom the world despises and casts aside. This doesn’t look much like how the world understands glory, indeed it doesn’t look much like how the world understands God, and that is, I suspect, the point. If we try and understand what we are celebrating in purely worldly terms then we will go horribly wrong.
As he ponders the mystery of Our Lord’s Incarnation, St John begins at the beginning, taking us back to the beginning of Creation so that we may discern the loving purposes of God, in the midst and messiness of human history. It ends with the last of the prophets, John the Baptist, the forerunner who even in his mother’s womb leaps for joy to announce the coming of the Saviour of the World. He bears witness in his life that all might believe: he sets us the example of how to live a Christian life – we are in all things and at all times to bear witness to Christ, the Saviour of the World. It may cost us dear – imprisonment, torture and even death, but throughout the entire world and for all of the last two thousand years Christians have done just this, to bear witness to the truth regardless of the cost, so that the WORLD may believe. The world knew him not, and still fails to know him, to recognise him, but their failure does not mean that we should lessen our efforts; rather we should proclaim the saving truth of God’s love all the more and live lives which embody that truth and make it real and visible to the world, which make it credible, trustworthy, and attractive.
To those who received him he gave power to become children of God – through faith we enter into a relationship with the God who creates, who redeems and who loves. It isn’t about giving our assent to philosophical propositions – the salvation of humanity is not about logic, but love.
And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father) full of grace and truth. The Word becomes flesh – God becomes a human being in the womb of a virgin, ‘the invasion of time by eternity’. God tabernacles among us and the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, becomes the Ark of the New Covenant for the New Israel, the People of God.
‘God does not give us explanations; we do not comprehend the world, and we are not going to. It is and it remains for us a confused mystery of bright and dark. God does not give us explanations; he gives up a Son. Such is the spirit of the angel’s message to the shepherds: “Peace upon earth, good will to men … and this shall be the sign unto you: ye shall find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, and lying in a manger.” A Son is better than an explanation. The explanation of our death leaves us no less dead than we were; but a Son gives us a life, in which to live.’ [Austin Farrer Said or Sung pp. 27, 28]
God gives us a life to live – with Him and each other, a relationship through which we may grow, fed by His Word and Sacraments, so that His grace may perfect our nature and that we may live that divine life of love poured out on the world in His Son and the Holy Spirit, so that the world might believe and all creation resound with the praise of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, the consubstantial and coeternal Trinity, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just, all might, majesty, glory, dominion, and power, now and forever.
Homily for Advent IV Year C : ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!
‘God does not love us because we are loveable of and by ourselves, but because he has put his own love into us. He does not even wait for us to love; his own love perfects us. Letting it do this with no resistance, no holding back for fear of what our egotism must give up, is the one way to the peace that the world can neither give nor take away’
Fulton J. Sheen Lift up your Heart
The prophet Micah, after the destruction of Samaria, looks back to David of the tribe of Ephraim, to look forward to the saviour who will save Israel, who will be a true shepherd to his flock, who will bring Peace. Whereas the first David sinned by sending a man to die, Uriah the Hittite, the husband of Bathsheba, the second of David will go to his death willingly to save from their sins even those who kill him. Prophecy is fulfilled, humanity is restored, and the peace of God’s kingdom can be brought about. His coming forth is from old from ancient days. Our salvation is the fulfilment of prophesy and the outworking of God’s love.
In the letter to the Hebrews we see the prophecy of Psalm 40:6-8 fulfilled in Christ. The sacrifices of the old covenant are replaced in the new covenant with the sacrifice of God for humanity: sacrifice is fulfilled and completed, once and for all. It is this sacrifice, which the church, through its priests of the new covenant pleads and re-presents: the eternal offering of a sinless victim, to free humanity of its sins, to restore our relationship with God and one another. It is an act of perfect obedience: the body prepared by God for Christ will do his will and will sanctify humanity, heal us and restore us.
In this morning’s Gospel Mary does not tell Elizabeth that she is pregnant. But by the power of the Holy Spirit John the Baptist, the forerunner, the last of the prophets announces the coming of the saviour by leaping of the joy in his mother’s womb. It’s important, there’s no time to waste: Mary arose and went with haste. Time is of the essence, not for the frantic fulfilment of consumerism: last-minute presents, or enough food to satisfy even the most gluttonous, no, we have to prepare our hearts, our minds, and our lives, so that Christ may be born again in us, so that we may live his life and proclaim his truth to the world.
Through the prompting of her son and the gift of the Holy Spirit, Elizabeth can cry ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!’ She recognises that Mary’s obedience, her humble ‘Yes’ to God undoes the sinfulness of Eve. That she who knew no sin might give birth to Him who would save us and all humanity from our sin. It is through the love and obedience of Mary that God’s love and obedience in Christ can be shown to the world, demonstrated in absolute perfection, when for love of us he opens his arms to embrace the world with the healing love of God. He will be the good Shepherd, laying down his life for his flock that we may dwell secure. We prepare to celebrate Christmas because it points us to the Cross and beyond, in showing us once and for all that God loves us.
Safe in the knowledge that God loves us, that he feeds us with word and sacrament, that he heals us, let us love God and love one another, truly, deeply, with all our lives. Let us prepare the greatest gift we can, ourselves: that Christ may truly be born in us, that as the Sanctified People of God, we may live that goodness, that holiness, that charity, which reflects the bountiful goodness of God who gives himself to be born and to die and rise again that we might truly live and have life in all its fullness, sharing the joy and the love of God with everyone we meet. As he will come to be our judge let us live His life proclaim his saving love and truth to a world hungry for meaning and love and thereby honour God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, the consubstantial and co-eternal Trinity, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just, all might, majesty, glory, dominion, and power, now and forever.
Homily for Advent III Year C: And the crowds asked him ‘What then shall we do?’
It is easy to find the truth; it is hard to face it, and harder still to follow it …. The only people who ever arrive at a knowledge of God are those who, when the door is opened, accept that truth and shoulder the responsibilities it brings. It requires more courage than brains to learn to know God: God is the most obvious fact of human experience, accepting him is one of the most arduous Fulton J. Sheen Lift up your Heart
John the Baptist has been preaching a baptism of repentance, a turning away from sin towards the arms of a loving God. He has been stark and uncompromising and the people to whom he has been preaching find themselves in an awkward situation. Some 2000 years later we find ourselves asking very much the same question, ‘What then shall we do?’ The world, the state, the church all seem to be in a mess. The peace which the Messiah came to bring it seems as elusive as ever, whereas the human capacity to create misery in the most dreadful ways makes us realise that we still have some considerable distance to travel. One possible answer is the need for repentance: to change our hearts and minds and to follow Christ.
Our readings this morning speak of the kingdom of God, the God who is in our midst, a mighty one who will save us; he will rejoice over us with gladness; he will quieten us by his love. In all our sadness and sin, we look forward to our yearly remembrance of our Lord’s incarnation. We prepare our hearts, our minds, and our lives, to go to Bethlehem, to see God come into the world naked, vulnerable, and homeless. We prepare to meet him as he will come again, as our saviour and our judge, daunting though this may be, in the knowledge and trust that he saves us, that by his wounds on the cross we are healed.
We are to rejoice, strange though it might seem, just like the people of Israel in captivity, since the Lord God is our strength and our song and has become our salvation. We draw living water, the water of baptism, which saves us. In the midst of our sorrow we are to place all I hope and trust in God who loves us, and who saves us.
We are to rejoice, because as S. Paul reminds the Galatians joy is a fruit of the spirit. As the people who have received the spirit in the sacrament of baptism, of confirmation, or indeed of holy order, our joy in the Lord should set our hearts on fire, with love for him and each other; we shouldn’t worry about anything, but instead we should trust in God: the God whose peace surpasses all understanding.
We are to share this joy with others, to share the good news of Jesus Christ to all people, and not just in our words but our deeds. If we share what we have, if we are generous, if we work for justice and are clothed with humility, showing our joy in mutual love, God’s kingdom will be advanced. We, here, now, know that Jesus will come and will judge us by the standard of love which he set for us to follow. Let us trust God and share that trust in prayer, that his will may be done, and that he may quieten us with his love.
The world around us is full of pain and anguish, and the only way for it to be healed is in Christ, who was bruised for our transgressions and wounded for our iniquities. He still bears those wounds as the wounds of love. As he flung out his arms on the cross, so he longs to embrace the world and fill it with his peace and love. He will not force us; he is no tyrant in the sky. It is the world which must turn to him in love and in trust, and turn away from sin. Our task is always only all things to be joyful in the Lord, and to live out our faith to help the world turn to him.
It isn’t an easy thing to do, and after 2000 years of trying we may seem as far away as when John proclaimed the coming of God’s kingdom . We can just give up, or we can try, and keep trying, no matter how many times we fail, secure in the knowledge that God loves us and forgives us, and that we are to do the same to each other. That in this and all things we may give glory to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just, all might, majesty, glory, dominion, and power, now and forever.
Perfect love casts out fear
Many people nowadays want God, but on their terms, not his. They insist that their wishes to determine the kind of religion that is true, rather than letting God revealed his truth to them. So their dissatisfaction continues and grows. But God finds us lovable, even in our rebellion against him.
God does not love us because we are lovable of and by ourselves, but because he has put his own life into us. He does not even wait for us to love; his own love affects us. Letting it to do this, with no resistance, no holding back for fear of what our egotism must give up, it’s the one way to the peace of the world can neither give nor take away.
The Ven. Abp Fulton J. Sheen Lift up your heart, taken from Advent Meditations with Fulton J. Sheen, Liguori Publications: Liguori MO, 2007
Let Christ be formed in you
As God was physically formed in Mary, so he wills to be spiritually formed in you. If you knew he was seeing through your eyes, you would see everyone as a child of God. If you knew that he worked through your hands, they would bless all the day through …. If you knew that he wants to use your mind, your will, your fingers, and your heart, how differently you would be. If half the world did this there would be no war!
The Ven. Abp Fulton J. Sheen How to find Christmas Peace, taken from Advent Meditations with Fulton J. Sheen, Liuori Publications: Liguori MO, 2007
Homily for the Second Sunday of Advent (Year C)
‘Peace through integrity, and honour through devotedness’
The prophets proclaim the message of hope to Israel, in the midst of exile, when times look dark, they are to wrap the cloak of integrity around themselves, and put the crown of the glory of God upon their heads. It is the message of trust, trust in God alone as the source of our hope, the only rock on which to build a life of faith.
As the people of God we are to trust in him and to live lives which prepare for the second coming of our Lord and saviour Jesus Christ, our saviour and our judge. To be a Christian, then, is to live a life where our love for each other and for God increases day by day as Paul puts it. We are to grow in virtue by being virtuous.
In this morning’s gospel we see the last of the prophets, John the Baptist, the son of Elizabeth and Zechariah, as he prepares the way for the Lord. He proclaims a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. In our baptism we promise to turn away from sin, the world, and the devil; we turn away from what the world thinks and does, because our baptism makes us pure and blameless, following the Commandments of God, and shown to us in the life of Jesus Christ.
The church, then, must be a voice crying in the wilderness. What we proclaim may well be at odds with what the world thinks we should say and do, but we are not called to be worldly, to conform ourselves to the ways of the world. We live in a fallen world, which is not utterly depraved, but the church exists to conform the world to the will of God. To say to the world, come and have life in all its fullness, turn away from selfishness and sin, to have life in all its fullness in Jesus Christ.
The world may not listen to us when we proclaim this; it may well choose to ignore us, to persecute us. We have to be prepared to do this regardless of the cost. We must bear witness to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, and their saving work even if it means shedding blood of losing our lives, because it says to the world: we trust in something greater than you, we know the truth and it has set us free, free to love God and to serve him, and to invite others to do the same, to be baptised, to turn away from the world, and be fed by word and sacrament, built up into a community of love, offering the world a radical alternative, and holding fast to the truths which the church holds dear, since they are given us by God.
It’s a big, a daunting task, which if it were up to us individually, we would have no chance of achieving. But it is something which we do together, as the body of Christ, and relying upon God alone: it is his gospel, his church, and his strength in which we will accomplish this. Too often we trust in ourselves and fail, we need to trust in God and ask him to bring about the proclamation of the Gospel through us. We need to be like John the Baptist, preparing the way for the Lord who will come again as our Saviour and our Judge.
This is what we await in Advent, the coming of Our Lord as a baby in Bethlehem and his second coming as Our Judge, bearing in his glorious body the wounds of love, borne for us and our salvation. So let us prepare to meet him and live lives which proclaim his saving love and truth to a world hungry for meaning and love and thereby honour God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, the consubstantial and coeternal Trinity, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just all might, majesty, glory, dominion and power, now and forever.
Homily for the Immaculate Conception
‘Those who dislike any devotion to Mary are those who deny His Divinity or who find fault with Our Lord because of what He says.’
These words of the Venerable and Most Reverend Fulton J. Sheen remind us of an important truth when we consider the Blessed Virgin Mary: she is always pointing to God – it’s all about God and not about Mary. But, I hear you cry, we have come here to celebrate the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, surely it’s all got to be about her? Well I am sorry to disappoint you, but it isn’t.
We are not here today to celebrate a doctrine, or a philosophical concept, because that is not what the church does. We celebrate a person, and through her, God. Mary, the spotless vessel, through whose loving obedience our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ became incarnate and was born, for the salvation of all humanity, is marked out for a life of perfect love and obedience. She becomes the first Christian, the tabernacle, the Ark of the new covenant, the new Eve, Mother of God and Mother of the Church.
In her response to the angel’s message Mary becomes totally open to God, totally vulnerable and totally reliant upon him alone. In her openness and her vulnerability there is the space in which God can be at work. In Adam and Eve we see how sin can separate us from God. In Mary we see how God begins to put that right. From the moment of her Conception she lives the life of the baptised: filled with sanctifying grace, united with God, because of what her Son will do. She is the model of what humanity can be, she gives us hope as Christians, and points us to her Son, Our Lord and Saviour, whose coming as our Judge and as a baby in Bethlehem we prepare for in this season of Advent.
Mary trusts in God, she says ‘yes’, and is filled with love, a gift which must be shared. She offers the church the perfect example of how to live a Christian life, in joyful hope and obedience: at the Marriage in Cana she says to the servants ‘Do whatever he tells you’. She stands at the foot of the Cross and watches her Son die to reconcile God and humanity. But in her joy and her sorrow she is truly free, to love and serve God. She is freed to show us, as Christians, how to live our lives loving and serving God and one another, and to show us the wonderful work of her Son who frees all humanity, who saves them, and who loves them.
So, today, let us pause to ponder the love of God shown to us in Mary, let us be fed by word and sacrament, the Body of Christ, which became incarnate in the womb of the Virgin Mary, let us treasure him, and let us respond by loving and trusting God, by living lives of service, of God and of one another, and proclaiming the Good News in Jesus Christ, so that all creation may resound with the praise of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just, all might, majesty, glory, dominion, and power, now and forever.
Consecration to Jesus through Mary
A prayer written by Fr Jean Jacques Olier, S.S. (1608-1657)
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O Jesu vivens in Maria
Veni et vive in famulis tuis, In spiritu sanctitatis tuae, In plenitudine virtutis tuae, In perfectione viarum tuarum, In veritate virtutum tuarum, In communione mysteriorum tuorum; Dominare omni adversae potestati, In Spiritu tuo ad gloriam Patris. |
O Jesus, living in Mary,
come and live in thy servants, in the spirit of thy holiness, in the fullness of thy might, in the truth of thy virtues, in the perfection of thy ways, in the communion of thy mysteries. Subdue every hostile power in thy spirit, for the glory of the Father.
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Slapping Heretics
The world and the church have a picture of St Nicholas, it is a safe picture, he is a kindly man, a Bishop with a big white beard, who gives presents to children and does lots of lovely things. That’s all well and good, and there is much that can be said about the gentleness and generosity of the man, and how that points us to Christ. But recently I have found myself pondering another aspect of this great Saint. At the first ecumenical Council of Nicaea in ad325, Nicholas, Bishop of Myra slaps Arius for denying the coeternal and consubstantial nature of the second person of the Trinity, Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Nicholas got angry and his fellow bishops and the Emperor Constantine didn’t exactly approve of the pugilist prelate.
If it were to happen today I could imagine the media outcry, Twitter would be flooded with #bishopgate and #TeamArius posts. No doubt some eminent theologian would state that it’s perfectly alright to say that ‘there was a time when he was not’ and that Adoptionist or Subordinationist positions are all equally valid points of view and that one Christology is as good as another, that this was Arius’ truth and it needs to be affirmed, that we need to feel his pain and resist the patriarchal oppression of an authority figure like Nicholas and so on.
Nicholas slaps Arius because orthodoxy really matters, what we believe about God and the Church really matters. The Word of God, who was with his Father in eternity, before all time, and matter, and space, becomes incarnate in the womb of the virgin, for the salvation and redemption of all humanity: true God and true man, consubstantial and coeternal. It may be easier to deny this, it may make more sense, or be consistent with a philosophical position, but it will not do. As St Ambrose put it: non in dialectica complacuit Deo salvum facere populum suum (it was not the will of God to save his people through dialectic) [De Fide 1:5, §42]. The Incarnation is a scandal and a mystery which defies human understanding and intellect, reason and philosophy it is something to be experienced, to be tasted and felt.
This is what we await in Advent, the coming of Our Lord as a baby in Bethlehem and his second coming as Our Judge, bearing in his glorious body the wounds of love, borne for us and our salvation. So let us live lives which proclaim his saving love and truth to a world hungry for meaning and love and thereby honour God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, the consubstantial and coeternal Trinity, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just all might, majesty, glory, dominion and power, now and forever.
A thought for the day
‘We tend to manage life more than just live it. We are all overstimulated and drowning in options. We are trained to be managers, to organize life, to make things happen. This is what built our culture. It is not all bad, but if you transfer that to the spiritual life, it is pure heresy. It is wrong it doesn’t work. It is not gospel.’
from Richard Rohr, Preparing for Christmas – Daily Meditations for Advent, Cincinatti, 2008, p. 31
If only bishops and others could realize this is what they try to do to the church
Homily for the First Sunday of Advent
‘Not in strife and envying: but put on the Lord Jesus Christ’
I don’t know if you’re anything like me, but at any time of year and especially now with the dark mornings, I can be somewhat reluctant to leave my bed. It’s nice, it’s warm, and it’s comfortable. So when I hear the words ‘now it is high time to awake out of sleep’ I want to reach for the snooze button. It is sad to say that for many people their spiritual lives can be a bit like this: it’s a bit too much effort, can we really be bothered? But this is what we need to do: Advent is after all a season of preparation, of turning away from the world and sin, and preparing to meet the Son of God, who is born in Bethlehem and who will come to be our judge. We may not be able to recognise the signs, we may not know when it is going to happen, but as we have celebrated the Universal Kingship of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, we know that he will come again in glory to judge both the living and the dead. He fulfils prophesies but also proclaims the kingdom in word and deed and overthrows the tables in the temple. This doesn’t mean that the Cathedral Gift Shop is an abomination, but rather that the Church needs to be vigilant. When a house of prayer becomes a den of thieves the interests of the world have taken over; when the Church is conformed to the ways of the world, when it seeks the world’s approval or bows to its will, it sells the Gospel short and for that it too will be judged and found wanting.
The only solution is to be found in Christ. It is he whom the church must put on, his is the standard by which we will be judged. Note also that love is the fulfilling of the law. The law is not abolished in Christ, but rather it is fulfilled, its meaning is deepened. It is through the framework of the Law and the Prophets that we can hope to understand who and what Christ is and what he does. It is our frame of reference; truth is revealed in and as the Word of God. So we are called to ‘cast off the works of darkness and to put on the armour of light’ we are to turn away from sin, from the ways of the world and walk in the way of him who is the Light of the World. We are to watch and pray, and to live lives which proclaim the truth of God’s saving love in Christ. We are to treat our lives on this earth as a preparation for the life to come, not because we can earn salvation through our works, but because in living Christ-like lives we conform ourselves to the will of God, we show the world how we love and serve God, our lives have true meaning, and we truly flourish as human beings.
So let us lose our lives in order that we may truly find them in Christ, let us live out our baptism when we are clothed with Christ. Let us be fed with him, in Word and Sacrament, turning away from our sins, and looking to him to heal us and restore us, to prepare us to be with him forever, contemplating the vision of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just, all might, majesty, glory, dominion, and power, now and forever.
Christ the King: John 18: 33-37
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IF I were to ask you the question, what does a king look like, you may well reply that he wears a crown of gold, and a cloak of red or purple velvet. He looks impressive and dignified; everything about him makes you go ‘Wow!’ It’s quite understandable – it’s how we expect a king to look, it’s what we’ve grown up to expect: whenever we see pictures of kings they look like this.
In this morning’s gospel we are given an entirely different picture of kingship. Our Lord will soon receive the outward trappings and will be hailed as a King. And in the mockery people will not realise that the joke is really on them. Christ is truly a King, but not in a way that the world can easily understand. His kingdom is not of this world; the way of God is not to use threats, mockery, or violence. Instead, Christ becomes incarnate, becomes a human being, to bear witness to the truth. He who is the way, the truth, and the life, comes that we might know the truth and that the truth might set us free. As those who follow him, we as Christians are to be free, to stand against this world and its power, to show it another way: where weakness can triumph in the face of anger, where love can overcome bitterness. The world around us cannot understand this, it could not at the time of our Lord’s passion, and it cannot even today. It needs to experience it before it can begin to understand it. Christ shows the world his reign of glory by being nailed to a cross and now exalted in glory and coming to be our judge he bears in his body the wounds of nail and spear, the wounds of love, wounds which heal and reconcile humanity.
In his dealings with Pilate, Christ foreshadows the church and its dealings with secular power. Just as Pilate could not wait for an answer, so the world around us can only treat the church with impatience and contempt: neither then nor now can we hope to be understood, we are instead to be threatened to capitulate to a secular power – for the Romans and their power, read the whim of politicians and the tyranny of so-called ‘equality legislation’. As the body of Christ, we exist to love and to serve God and one another, and call the world to repent and to believe and to be healed by God. We have bishops to be our Chief shepherds, as successors of the apostles, those called and set apart by Christ to be shepherds and not hirelings, laying down their lives like Christ and for Christ, and not solely to sit in the High Court of Parliament. We then may advise the state, for its own good, but primarily so that the church may continue to preach the gospel and make disciples of this nation and every nation. The world may not understand us, it may not listen to us, or like whom we are and what we do or do not do on, but we cannot allow ourselves to be conformed to the world and its ways. In loving and serving God we call the world to conform itself to his will.
Only then can we bring about that radical transformation envisaged in the Gospels: living as a community of love and not fear. It is through living it out in our lives and as the church that we can show the world a better way of being, a way which acknowledges Jesus Christ as King of all the universe, where his way of love washes away our sins with his blood, reconciles us to God and each other, and forgiving others as we ourselves are forgiven. Where the world wants blame we have to live out the love and forgiveness, which we ourselves have received from God in Christ Jesus. This then can truly be a kingdom and not of this world.
So as we prepare to enter the season of Advent, where we will prepare ourselves to greet the King of the Universe born in a stable in Bethlehem, let us acknowledge Christ as our King, whose Sacred Heart burns with love for us, whose wounds still pour out that love upon the world, and let us live as people loved, healed, restored and forgiven, that the world may believe and all creation acknowledge God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just, all might, majesty, glory, dominion, and power, now and forever.
A thought for the day
from Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude p. 13-14
No amount of technological progress will cure the hatred that eats away the vitals of materialistic society like a spiritual cancer. The only cure is, and must always be, spiritual. There is not much use talking to men about God and love if they are not able to listen. The ears with which we hear the message of the Gospel are hidden in our hearts, and these ears do not hear anything unless they are favoured with a certain interior solitude and silence.
In other words, since faith is a matter of freedom and self-determination – the free receiving of a freely given gift of grace -we cannot assent to a spiritual message as long as our minds and hearts are enslaved by automatism We will always remain so enslaved as long as we we are submerged in a mass of other automatons, without individuality and without our rightful integrity as persons.
What is said here about solitude is not just a recipe for hermits. It has a bearing on the whole future of us and our world: and especially, of course, on the future of our religion.
More Thomas Merton
There is no true spiritual life outside the love of Christ. We have a spiritual life only because we are loved by him. The spiritual life consists in receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit and his charity, because the Sacred Heart of Jesus has willed in his love that we should live by his Spirit – the same spirit who proceeds from the Word and from the Father, and who is Jesus’ love for the Father.
If we know how great is the love of Jesus for us we will never be afraid to go to him in all our poverty, all our weakness, all are spiritual wretchedness and infirmity. Indeed, when we understand the true nature of his love for us, we will prefer to come to him poor and helpless. We will never be ashamed of our distress. Distress is to our advantage when we have nothing to seek but mercy. We can be glad of our helplessness when we really believe that his power is made perfect in our infirmity.
The surest sign that we have received a spiritual understanding of God’s love for us is the appreciation of our poverty in the light of his infinite mercy.
We must love our own poverty is Jesus loves it. It is so valuable to him that he died on the cross to present our poverty to his Father, and endow us with the riches of his own infinite mercy. We must love the poverty of others as Jesus loves it. We must see them with the eyes of his own compassion. We, it cannot have true compassion on others unless we are willing to accept a pity and receive forgiveness for our own sins. We do not really know how to forgive until we know what it is to be forgiven. Therefore we should be glad that we can be forgiven by our brothers. It is after forgivingness of one another that makes the love of Jesus for us manifest in our lives, for in forgiving one another we act towards one another as he has acted towards us.
from Thoughts in Solitude pp. 37–8
A thought for the day, and the coming week
“The desert is the home of despair. And despair, now, is everywhere. Let us not think that our interior solitude consists in the acceptance of defeat. We cannot escape anything by consenting tacitly to be defeated. Despair is an abyss without bottom. Do not think to close it by consenting to it and trying to forget you have consented.
This, then, is our desert: to live facing despair, but not to consent. To trample it down under hope in the Cross. To wage war against despair unceasingly. That war is our wilderness. If we wage it courageously, we will find Christ at our side. If we cannot face it, we will never find Him.”
from Thomas Merton Thoughts in Solitude, Burns & Oates, Tunbridge Wells, 3rd ed. (1997) 22-23
Sermon for Trinity XXII: Mt 18:21–35
St Isaac the Syrian, the 7th century Bishop of Nineveh and monk wrote: ‘as a handful of sand thrown into the ocean, so are the sins of all flesh as compared with the mind of God’ and ‘just as a strongly-flowing fountain is not blocked up by a handful of earth, so the compassion of the Creator is not overcome by the wickedness of his creatures.’ Now, it is salutary to be reminded on a regular basis of the infinite nature of God’s love and mercy. I suspect that if the truth be told, many of us, and I count myself among this number, struggle with this fact. We do so because we struggle to believe that we can be forgiven: our awareness of our frail and sinful nature means that we cannot see how God can love such a thing. Yet, God’s love and forgiveness is not something which we can earn. Herein lies the fault of Pelagius (among others): that humanity can somehow earn its way into heaven. It doesn’t work like that; what God offers us in Christ is something far more radical, far stranger: love and forgiveness to heal our wounds, to restore us, to do that which we cannot.
In answer to Simon Peter’s question at the start of this morning’s Gospel, Jesus offers a vision of a community of love and forgiveness. The number 77 echoes the establishment of the Jubilee in Leviticus: what is promised in the law becomes real in the person and teaching of Jesus, the Messiah, who gives true liberty to the people of God, the new Israel. It anticipates and gives a concrete example of Our Lord’s summary of the Law: cf. Mt 22:40 ‘on these two hang all the law & the prophets’. In finding the lost sheep and bringing them back, the community is restored.
So we have a vision of God’s love and forgiveness and how this can heal the wounds of our human nature. In the parable which Jesus tells in the Gospel this morning we both how God forgives and loves us and how we as Christians, people loved and forgiven by God are to act towards each other: by showing to others what God shows us. It is why, when Jesus teaches us how to pray, we are told to ask ‘forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us’. We are, as Christians, to be a community which displays, and which embodies what God is and does for us.
We are not to hold a grudge; we are instead to live out in our lives what God in Christ does for us. The Cross thus becomes a demonstration of God’s love and healing for the world. We meet today to be fed by word and sacrament; to feed on God’s love, to allow God’s love to transform and transfigure our human nature, and by living it out in our lives, to offer the world something radically different: a vision of humanity both loved and loving, forgiven and forgiving.
It is both difficult and challenging, and it makes great demands on us. We can only live as God intends us to by embarking upon this costly and counter-cultural way of life, in a relationship with God and each other. It is truly difficult and yet deceptively easy, we have to do it, and we have to do it together, to become a community of love, to offer the world an alternative to the ways of selfishness and anger.
We are called to do nothing less than to change the world, by whom and what we are, by loving and forgiving, as we are loved and forgiven. So let us live out this love and forgiveness in our lives, continuing the transformation of ourselves and of the world, through love lived out in our lives, so that we and all creation may give glory to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just, all might, majesty, glory, dominion, and power, now and forever.
Homily for the 30th Sunday of Year B: Jer 31:7-9; Heb 5:1-6; Mk 10:46-52
Life is dreadful, you’ve seen the city and the country you love ravaged by war, the people you know and love taken prisoner to a foreign land. All seems lost, but in the midst of this the prophet Jeremiah in this morning’s first reading is filled with hope, that God will save and comfort his people. It may seem strange that the prophet can give such a joyous message in such an awful situation, but his trust is in a God who can heal our wounds and restore us. In the Letter to the Hebrews we see as Jesus Christ is without sin he is able to make a perfect offering of himself, upon the Cross, to restore and heal humanity.
In last week’s Gospel we saw how Jesus knew this of himself, saving humanity through his death and resurrection, healing our wounds, giving us the hope of eternal life in him, and living a life of service, fulfilling the prophesy of Jeremiah.
In this morning’s gospel we have a blind beggar, Bartimaeus. When he hears that Jesus is coming he cries out ‘Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me’. He cannot see but he knows his need of God. Jesus does not turn him away, he does not ignore him; instead he asks him ‘what do you want me to do for you?’ Bartimaeus’ faith makes him well, it saves him, and allows his to follow Jesus and walk along the right path.
We all long to be on the path that leads to God, a God who saves us, who loves us, who heals and restores us. As it says in John’s Gospel ‘I am the light of the world, whoever follows me will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life.’ If we walk with the eyes of faith we will be on a straight path, to the one who heals and restores humanity.
All the world needs to cry ‘Jesus, son of God have mercy on me’. We need to know our need of God, we need to be healed and restored by him, like Bartimaeus. The world needs this to be fully alive in God, to turn away from sin and the ways of the world: living for others rather than ourselves, loving God and our neighbour. We should remember what Jesus said earlier in Mark’s Gospel (Mk 2:17) ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.’ Christ came on our behalf, to bind up our wounds.
The sin which mars God’s image in us, which separates us from God, which stops us from being what we can be, is borne by Jesus on the Cross. He binds our wounds by bearing the mark of nails, he heals us with the stream of his blood which flows on Calvary. By his stripes we are healed. We are healed by him so that we may see clearly and travel along the path of faith, a straight path on which we should not stumble, journeying with our wounded healer, to live out our faith in our lives as those healed and called by Christ and made part of his body, the church, healed by his sacraments, fed by his word and his Body and Blood, to be strengthened on our journey of faith, it is why we are here today, to be fed by him and with him, that our wounds may be healed.
We are all of us sinners in need of the love and mercy of him who bled for us on Calvary and who rose again for us, that we might share new life in him. Let us be fed by him, restored and healed by him, to have life in all its fullness. For we follow the one who heals us not out of blind obedience or fear but through joy, the joy of being free and truly alive in Christ. So let us live that life and give glory to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just, all might, majesty, glory dominion, and power, now and forever.
Homily for the 29th Sunday of Year B: Isa 53:10-11; Heb 4:14-16; Mk 10:35-45
There has been a great deal in the press about the next Archbishop of Canterbury. We’ve had rumours, leaks from the Crown Nominations Committee, a great deal of detail on the various odds offered by bookmakers, as though this where the church’s equivalent of the Grand National. Will he be a ‘liberal catholic’ or a ‘liberal evangelical’? To be honest with you, the only thing that I care about is that he looks and feels like Christ, an authentic Christian. This morning’s gospel reminds us that Christian leadership is not about lording it over people, but being like Christ. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a bishop, a priest, a deacon, or simply a baptised Christian; we all have to live up to the same standard: Jesus Christ.
It is a big ask, I grant you, we will all of us fall short, fail to hit the mark, but we are to try, and keep trying, and we can have confidence ‘since we have a great High Priest who has passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God’. The author of the letter to the Hebrews encourages to do this, and to hold fast to our confession: we can be sure about both WHO Jesus is, and WHAT he does. He is truly God and man, tempted but without sin, He loves us and makes peace by the blood of the Cross. The Cross is at the centre of all this, through the mystery of the Atonement we can ‘have confidence to draw near to the throne of grace and receive help in time of need’. It is a mystery, not something to be explained, but something both to be experienced and lived out. It is a mystery prefigured in the prophets, especially Isaiah. In Acts when Philip meets the Ethiopian eunuch he is reading this passage and he cannot understand it, or what it means, so Philip tells him about Jesus, and how Isaiah’s prophesy is fulfilled in the person and work of Jesus, and he is baptised.
But in worldly terms Jesus looks like a failure: he is deserted, denied, and dies the death of a common criminal. But we are NOT to judge by the standards of this world: ‘it shall not be so among you’. We are not being counter-cultural to be rebellious, to swim against the tide; instead we are being faithful to Christ, we are holding fast to our confession, because it is TRUE, because it comes from him who is the WAY, who is the TRUTH, and the LIFE, Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
In the verses which precede this morning’s Gospel, Our Lord has foretold his suffering and death for the third time in Mark’s account. He knows the cost, he knows what will happen: ‘to give his life as a ransom for many’. He does it willingly, gladly, for love of us, a love made manifest in his birth, life and death, made manifest in the grace and mercy of God who creates and redeems the world, and who comes among us not as a king but as a servant. This changes us, and changes the world, it turns it around, and it asks us to do the same.
In the person of James and John we see what it is to be a Christian, to live a Christian life: it is to be conformed to Christ. It is to be open to the possibility of suffering and to accept it. In worldly terms it looks like a failure, but in bearing witness to our faith we show how that we too are able to drink the cup. We are able to become an example which people want to imitate and follow because we point them to Christ, the restorer of all relationships, the healer of the world, who offers life in all its fullness. It is the most terrific news. People may not want to hear it but they need to. They prefer to ‘lord it over’ others and to go after the false gods of worldly power, money, and success: things which are empty, things which are of no value or worth compared to the love of God in Christ Jesus, the greatest free gift to humanity.
In this all human existence, all life, all death, and all suffering find both meaning and value. This truth is unsettling, it is deeply uncomfortable, and yet it is deeply liberating. In living out the truth in our lives we live a service which is perfect freedom. In conforming ourselves to Christ we find meaning and identity. So let us lay down our lives that we may live fully and give glory to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just, all might, majesty, glory dominion, and power, now and forever.
The Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity – Evensong: Exod 18:13–26, Mt 7:1–14 ‘which one of you, if his son asks him for bread will give him a stone?’
From the Sayings of the Desert Fathers: A brother asked Abba Poemen ‘If I see my brother sin, is it right to say nothing about it?’ The old man replied, ‘Whenever we cover our brother’s sin, God will cover ours; whenever we tell people about our brother’s guilt, God will do the same about ours.’
They said of Abba Macarius that he became as it is written a god upon earth, because just as God protects the world, so abba Macarius would cover the faults that he saw as though he did not see them, and those which he heard as though he did not hear them.
The early monks and nuns who lived in the Egyptian desert managed to get to the heart of not judging others, or of thinking that you or I are somehow a better person. The gentleness which they show when dealing with the faults of others is quite staggering. It is a truly difficult thing to do: not to judge others, but to treat everyone with love, forgiving them as we hope to be forgiven ourselves for the manifold sins which we commit on a daily basis. But to live out God’s love and forgiveness in your life is exactly what Jesus calls us to do. It is the narrow gate, and the way is HARD, and those who find it are few, but we should not let the difficult of living the Christian life authentically put us off trying to do it in the first place, or indeed persevering with it when times are hard.
It is hard, I struggle with it and fail often, but I know that as a Christian I am part of a community who can and indeed will forgive me, and so I can keep trying and failing, and trying some more. It is this through this process of trying, failing and trying again, that we as a community of Christians, as the Body of Christ, His Church, can help each other to progress in the Christian life, and in our individual vocations. We will all fail, but if we love and forgive each other, then we can live out God’s love in the world. We will have to live with upset and disappointment on a daily basis, but if we are rooted in the wellspring of divine love, fed with living water, then we can flourish.
What is more, in living out God’s love in our lives, we have an authenticity, an attractiveness which is captivating, which satisfies the deep spiritual hunger and thirst out there in the world, amongst those who have begun to see that the ways of the world are futile, empty and vain. We can offer a glimpse of the kingdom of God enfleshed in our own lives, and we can know that we are doing God’s will, that we are living as God intends to. We will be doing for others what we wish they would do for us. We have discovered the pearl of great price, the treasure hidden in a field, and are freely sharing it with others, so that they may do the same.
We need to have the confidence to do this, a confidence which comes from God and not from mankind. It isn’t easy, especially when the wider church appears to be giving us stones when we as Catholic Anglicans have asked for bread. But we must judge them, no we are to love them, as there is no sin which God cannot forgive, even heresy, or opening the episcopate to women. We need to let go of the bitterness, of the pain which we feel, in the sure and certain knowledge that it is as nothing compared to the pain experienced by our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, as he hung upon the cross, wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities. For in loving all as Christ loves us, and sharing that love with others, there is nothing which the world or even the Church of England can do to us. We have our treasure, which we keep in the clay jars of our weak, feeble and sinful lives. But our joy and our hope as Christians is in something more, something greater. If the Church is the body of Christ, wounded, and ill-treated, then we know that we await a glory, a bliss which surpasses all that we know or can hope to understand.
So, let us live out God’s love and forgiveness in our lives, filled with joyful hope as we await the coming of God’s kingdom, and in the knowledge that it is very near, it is among us, so that the world may believe and give glory to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just, all might, majesty, glory dominion, and power, now and forever.
The Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity Gal 6:11, Mt 6:24 ‘But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ’
Abba Poemen said ‘There is no greater love than that a man lays down his life for his neighbour. When you hear someone complaining and you struggle with yourself and do not answer him back with complaints; when you are hurt and bear it patiently, not looking for revenge; then you are laying down your life for your neighbour.’
The Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ is a wonderful thing for the simple reason that it turns the world around. In the Cross we see the values of the world turned on their head. What looks like a shameful defeat and a failure, to be executed like a common criminal, naked, vulnerable, mocked, abused, and tortured, is the true victory.
It is a victory which the powers of this world cannot understand. To many people it still seems strange, that we as Christians should celebrate torture and failure; and yet we do, because we know that the Cross is not the end, that it leads to the new life of Easter. It is a cross which brings both peace and mercy. It demonstrates them in the clearest possible terms: ‘Father forgive them, for they know not what they do’ ‘Today you shall be with me in paradise’. This is what the love of God looks and feels like. It gives us the true gifts of God’s peace and God’s mercy. They cannot be bought with money, or power, or privilege, or status, with fine clothes, or fine words, or indeed anything of this world. They cannot be bought at all; they are pure gift, freely given, and of no worth in the eyes of the world but of infinite value.
So then, we have a choice. What will you choose? Christ, or the ways of the world? Whom will you serve? We can have a comfortable life; we can fill our barns full and build bigger ones, or we can be crucified with Christ. It may not appear quite as tempting an offer. People prefer the easy life, and the devil can tempt you to go after the ways of the world. Many do, but ultimately what they go after is vain, empty, without substance. Instead, we follow our Lord’s footsteps which will lead to the Cross in any number of different ways. But we are to do this gladly, to embrace it, and live it out joyfully. This is why our Lord summarises his teaching with advice ‘But seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.’ What Christ offers is TRUE life, TRUE abundance, not material satisfaction, or the absence of pain. So then let us choose to serve him who gave his life for us. Let us live out our faith in our lives. So that everything that we say, or think, or do, every last thing, will proclaim to the world the truth of Christ’s victory and his love. It’s up to us, you see, to keep proclaiming the Gospel in thought, and word, and deed, so that the world may believe and give glory to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just, all might, majesty, glory dominion, and power, now and forever.
Sermon for Trinity XIV Evensong
‘They asked abba Macarius “How should we pray?” And the old man replied, “There is no need to speak much in prayer; often stretch out your hands and say, ‘Lord, as you will and as you know, have mercy on me.’ But if there is war in your soul, add, ‘Help me!’ and because he knows what we need, he shows mercy on us”’
Prayer can be an easy and a difficult thing. The great temptation with it, just as with the writing of sermons is to use too many words. Many people get it wrong and ‘heap up empty phrases’ as though the more we say to God, the more likely he is to listen to us, and no doubt if we pester him for long enough then it’s bound to work in the end. The first monks in the Egyptian desert preferred to say little, or to use short phrases ‘O Lord open thou my lips, and my mouth shall show forth thy praise’ ‘O God make speed to save me, O Lord make haste to help me’. God knows what we want or need before we ask – it is the quality rather than the quantity of our prayer which matters.
The prayer which Jesus teaches us in this evening’s second lesson is a model of concision. In fifty six words of Greek (or 49 words of Latin), Jesus covers all that needs to be said in prayer. But the reason why we as Christians say it every day is not just because Jesus told us to pray this way, or that it sums up our prayers, but that as well as showing us how to pray it shows us how to live out our faith in our lives. Our lives and our prayer are not distinct; there are not separate boxes, for each affects the other. We are to go to God with the world on our hearts and to the world with God in our hearts. This is how we live out our faith in our lives, not to be seen by people, so that they can say ‘Oh look, there’s someone religious’ but so that our faith in a God who loves us, who heals and restores us, who feeds us in word and sacrament, may be something which attracts others to ‘come and see’.
Likewise, our fasting, our abstaining from meat on Fridays, is not done for show, to show how religious we are, or done with a miserable face, but to hold our souls and bodies in check, to help us to remember that while we may have plenty, there are those who will go hungry and die for lack of proper food and clean water. The more we do such things, the more we deepen our faith, and our relationship with the God who loves us.
As people forgiven and loved by God, we are to show this love and forgiveness to each other and to the world, in a way makes our faith both authentic and attractive that the world may believe and may give Glory to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just, all might, majesty, glory dominion, and power, now and forever.
Homily for the Twenty-third Sunday of Year B
‘When blessed Antony was praying in his cell, a voice spoke to him, saying, “Antony, you have not yet come to the measure of the tanner who is in Alexandria.” When he heard this, the old man got up and took his stick and hurried into the city. When he had found the tanner … he said to him “Tell me about your work, for today I have left the desert and come here to see you.”
He replied, “I am not aware that I have done anything good. When I get up in the morning, before I sit down to work, I say that the whole of this city, small and great will go into the Kingdom of God because of their good deeds, while I alone will go into eternal punishment because of my evil deeds. Every evening I repeat the same words and believe them in my heart.”
When blessed Antony heard this he said “My son, you sit in your own house and work well, and you have the peace of the Kingdom of God; but I spend all my time in solitude with no distractions, and I have not come near the measure of such words”
When Our Lord begins the Sermon on the Mount, he starts by saying ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of God’ To be poor in spirit is not to have a false idea of who and what you are, and it is to know your need for and dependence upon God, and God alone. That is how we are to live. In this morning’s Old Testament reading we see Isaiah prophesying about the Kingdom of God: it speaks of joy, refreshment and new life in God, it’s what the Kingdom of God looks and feels like.
This is why Jesus performs miracles, not to show off his power, but to show God’s healing love for people who know their need of God. The miracles are prophetic acts which announce God’s Kingdom among us. This morning’s second reading from the Letter of St James shows us how to live our lives as Christians in an authentic manner. Just as St Antony was not afraid to see a greater example of faith than his own lived out in the world, by a man who tanned animal hides in urine all day long, hard, demanding and smelly work; so we should not make the distinctions of which the world is so fond. If we live our lives without judging others, we can be as free as the deaf mute healed by Jesus. The ways of the world will not bind and constrain us.
To return to the desert for an example ‘A brother in Scetis committed a fault. A council was called to which abba Moses was invited, but refused to go to it. Then the priest sent someone to him saying “Come for everyone is waiting for you”. So he got up and went. He took a leaking jug with him filled with water and carried it with him. The others came to meet him and said, “What is this, father?” The old man said to them “My sins run out behind me, and I do not see them, and today I am coming to judge the errors of another.” When they heard that, they said no more to the brother but forgave him’
This morning’s Gospel shows us God’s love and God’s healing. As those loved and healed by him we need to live out the reality of our faith in our lives, showing the love and forgiveness to others which God shows to us. So that all of our lives may give Glory to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just, all might, majesty, glory dominion, and power, now and forever.
Trinity XII Evensong – Ex 4:27–5:1, Heb 13:16–21
It is good that this evening’s the second lesson begins where last week’s ended. The author of the letter to the Hebrews is still giving advice on how to live together as a Christian community. To put it simply we are not to neglect doing good. We are then to use each and every opportunity which we have to do good: to do the right thing regardless of the costs, or the consequences. We are to share what we have, because as Christians we are to be loving and generous people who live out our faith in our lives, who cannot fail to help those in need.
With such love and generosity comes obedience. The leaders are not specified in the letter as priests or bishops, however they ‘watch over your souls’. These then are people who exercise of pastoral care of the people of God, which is a great responsibility. Next comes the main point, they are ‘those who will have to give an account’. I suspect that you are familiar with the parable of the talents (Mt 25:14–30) . Well, those of us ordained priests and bishops are told at our ordination are consecration but we will have to answer to God on the day of judgement for our care of his flock. It is perhaps the singularly most terrifying thing which anyone says to me in life. It scared me then, over a year ago just as it does today. The fact that I will have to answer for my stewardship of God’s people fills me with terror. As stewards go, I’m a pretty poor one, a miserable sinner, in need of God’s love and mercy, who is absolutely not up to the task I have been given. I can but trust in God’s grace, his love at his mercy and cry ‘Lord, have mercy upon me a sinner’. Given the current state of the church in England I can only hope that priests and bishops reading these words this evening will be similarly moved. St John Chrysostom once wrote that ‘the way to hell is paved with the skulls of bishops’, and I can only hope and pray that they will listen to the advice of the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews and not find themselves wailing and gnashing their teeth, having been found wanting in their stewardship of Christ’s flock.
The care of Christ’s flock is a solemn undertaking which I hope and pray is pondered long and hard before decisions are taken in the forthcoming months which have the potential to disfigure the body of Christ in this land. One can I suspect feel rather like Moses standing before Pharaoh simply asking ‘Let my people go that they may worship me in the wilderness’. To be in the wilderness is to be in a place upon which the world places no value whatsoever. To be in the wilderness is to be with God and to be opposed to the ways of the world, the ways of Pharaoh, and the ways of his power. To be in the wilderness is to wander, but also to be with God knowing that as Christians then is our true home, that the politics of the Gen Synod are as nothing compared to being with God, fed by his word and his sacraments, with true shepherds and not hirelings to lead us so that we may do God’s will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight that we may serve God the Father, God the son, and God the holy ghost to whom be ascribed as is most right and just, all might, majesty, glory, dominion, and power, now and for ever
Homily for the 19th Sunday of Year B (Jn 6:41–51) ‘Bread for the life of the world’ 12.viii.12
I have something of a confession to make. I was somewhat troubled when I first read this morning’s Gospel. I find it all too easy to moan about all sorts of things. The Church of England is often a target, but one amongst many. It’s something which Our Lord tells us not to do, and so I pray that through God’s grace I may live a life which more closely imitates Jesus, and follows His commands. It reminds me of a passage in the sermons of St Augustine, Bishop of Hippo and Doctor of the Church: ‘“You all say, ‘The times are troubled, the times are hard, the times are wretched.’ Live good lives and you will change the times. By living good lives you will change the times and have nothing to grumble about.”’ (Sermo 311.8) It reminds us that the work of the Gospel is at one level up to us, the Body of Christ, His Church.
In the Old Testament reading we see the prophet Elijah being fed, we see God providing food which gives strength, strength for the journey. It prefigures the Eucharist, the reason why we are here today, to be fed by God. We can have the strength for our journey of faith, and the hope of eternal life.
In the letter to the Ephesians we see that as children of God, loved by God, we are to imitate him, after the pattern of Christ, who offered himself, who was a sacrifice who has restored our relationship with God. It is this sacrifice, the sacrifice of Calvary, which has restored our relationship with God, which will be re=presented, made present here today, that you can touch and taste, that you can know how much God loves you; that you can be strengthened and given the hope of eternal life in Christ.
In this morning’s Gospel we see Jews complaining, ‘how can he be from Heaven, from God, we know his Mum and Dad’. It is a difficult thing to understand, especially before Jesus suffers and dies, and rises again. It can be hard to understand who and what Jesus is. The Jews see him in purely human terms, they cannot see beyond this, the Messiah whom they long for is in their midst and they fail to recognise him. The notion of consuming human flesh and blood is so abhorrent to Jews that it would represent something sinful and polluting. Jesus’ answer is simple and challenging: stop complaining. We are to accept, we are not to moan, to complain, but instead to trust him who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
Jesus is the Bread of Life, the true nourishment of our souls. It is through him that we can have life as Christians. He came down from heaven and became incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary. He was born as a human being, and in him our human flesh has been raised to eternal life, to glory with God. Jesus speaks of the Eucharist, the sacrament of his body and blood as providing us with eternal life, of opening the way to heaven. So we come to be fed by God, to be fed with God, to have a pledge and foretaste of the joy of heaven, of eternal life with God, to experience true love in the source of love – the Triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
We can have such a hope because Jesus gives himself, to suffer and die, and rose again, for love of us. It is this life of love and sacrifice which we are to imitate. Jesus gives himself to us for the life of the world – it is through being fed by him that the world can truly live. It is in experiencing God’s self-giving love that the world can find true meaning. Life in Christ is what true life means. Fed by him, strengthened by him, to imitate him and live out lives of self-giving love.
We are fed with Christ’s body and blood not only as a foretaste of heaven, of eternal life and joy with God, but so that we may be strengthened for the journey – strengthened to live lives of faith, to live lives of self-giving love, so that the world may believe. In Christ, fed by him, and following his example, our lives have their true meaning when we live like him, nourished by his Body and Blood. This is how we live out our faith in our lives, so that we can be an example of Christian love and faith which attracts people and give glory to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just, all might, majesty, glory dominion, and power, now and forever.
Trinity IX Evensong: Hebrews 11:17–31
The Letter to the Hebrews was written to help and to encourage a group of Christians probably resident in Italy, and in all likelihood in Rome, who were wavering , who were losing heart, and who were about to turn away from Christianity back to Judaism. The author has spent much of the letter focussing on the unique nature of Jesus Christ, who as high priest and sacrificial offering has atoned for our sins in a way that the ceremonies of Yom Kippur cannot.
To encourage his audience further, the author sets about giving an account of heroes of faith in the history of the people of Israel. And it is from this section where faith itself and those who are outstanding examples of faith are praised that this evening’s second lesson is taken.
Abraham shows his faith in God by offering all to God. He does not cling on to his own son, Isaac, but willingly offers him. This sacrifice, where God provides a ram, looks forward to Jesus, who is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world. God will not hold back, but gives his own son, for love of those he made, to restore their relationship with him. By faith, Moses leads the people of Israel through the Red Sea on dry land. He looks forward to that great Passover when Christ will pass over from death to new life, breaking down the gates of hell, and offering a promised land of new life with God, of eternal life with him.
This is our faith, this is the faith of the Church, and we should hold fast to it. It is why St Paul can single out faith, hope, and love as the three theological virtues. They should mark us out as Christians that we can have faith in God, and in his saving works, which have given us the hope of eternal life in him.
Thus, it is the vocation of a Christian to hold fast to this faith, not to fall into error, and to live out this faith in our lives. In living out our faith we bear witness to it, and to the saving works of God. We bear witness to what God has done for all humanity, and by our example we draw others to follow our example and to follow Christ, to commit their lives to him, and to walk in his way. Thus we share the light of Christ with others and help them to walk in his light and to share that light, so that the world may believe and give glory to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just, all might, majesty, glory dominion, and power, now and forever.
Trinity VIII Evensong – Hebrews 8
The Letter to the Hebrews was written to help and to encourage a group of Christians who had lost their way, who were losing heart, and who were about to fall away from the faith. It is a work full of help and encouragement, which speaks to us, in the Church of England, today. It encourages us, it allows us to say with Job that we know that our Redeemer lives, and that we can believe and trust in him, and in what he has done for us.
The problem is one of sin, where we as humans disobey God’s law, when we do things which separate us from Him. The purpose of sacrifice then is to make amends, to restore our relationship with God. It is a relationship rooted by means of a covenant, a covenant between God and humanity, which defines our relationship.
The first covenant is given on Mt Sinai, to Moses, with the giving of the Law, the Ten Commandments. It is a covenant from which the people of Israel, God’s chosen people have fallen away. The new covenant is likewise given outside the camp, upon the hill of Calvary, where Jesus Christ as both priest and victim offers himself upon the altar of the Cross. This new covenant restores the relationship between God and humanity. It shows us in the clearest possible terms how much God loves us – that God pays the debt which we cannot. He restores us, and makes it possible for us to love God and one another. Unlike the blood of bulls and goats which must be offered again and again, here we have a full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice for the sins of the whole world, for the sins of all time.
The Church, as the Body of Christ, continues this one perfect sacrifice by re-presenting it, by making it present at the altar, so that we may participate in the joy and worship of heaven. We can be strengthened by it, strengthened to live lives of self-giving love, after the example of Christ who gave himself for love of us. We are freed by it, to lose our lives in the service of God and one another. This then is how the church is to live, how it is to reflect the glory of heaven which was shown on earth when Christ died for us.
We are to love God and one another. Not just the people it is easy to love, but everyone, even and especially those it is difficult to love, our enemies. We are to love and serve one another so that OUR lives may mirror that of Christ. We can do this because Christ loved us first, because he gave himself, because he gave himself for us, because he has restored our relationship with God and each other, because there is a new covenant which is far superior to the earlier one.
Thus, the Church can truly change the World, by living lives of selfless love, by offering the world an alternative to the ways of sin and selfishness, nourished by the word of God, strengthened by the sacrament of His Body and Blood, to live out God’s love in our lives.
This is the message of the Gospel; good news for everyone, made possible by Christ, by his Incarnation, by his life, by his death and resurrection. It’s the greatest news of human history, so let us live it with joy, and give glory to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just, all might, majesty, glory dominion, and power, now and forever.
Homily for 18th Sunday of Yr B (Jn 6:24–35)
Well, wonderful things have been happening in and around London, Team GB have been defying expectations, but something far more wonderful will happen here this morning. Instead of a world which says it’s what you achieve that’s important, we are told by God that it’s what you believethat really matters. It sounds strange, many people will think that I am mad for saying it, but Olympic glory will fade, others will be faster and stronger. What we are to strive for is a glory which is more than gold or silver: the glory of heaven, the joy of eternal life in God, and of believing in him, and doing his work in the world.
In this morning’s Gospel, we see people who have been fed in the miraculous feeding, the feeding of the five thousand, following Jesus around. Perhaps they’re hoping for another free lunch? They haven’t seen the signs; they haven’t understood what’s going on. Jesus feeds people not as a combination of magic trick and mass catering, but as a sign of God’s generous love. That God loves us, you and me, all of us, so much, that he longs to feed us with himself, that he gives himself to be tortured and die on the Cross for us, to show us that he loves us.
Jesus wants us to believe in him, to trust in him, to be fed by him, with him, the Word of god made flesh, to be fed by word and sacrament, to be strengthened to run our race, and to live out that faith in the world around us. Jesus is the true bread come down from heaven which satisfies our spiritual hunger in a way which the world: success, money, possessions, what we have and what we do, cannot. He is the living water which satisfies the thirst of our souls. If we believe in Him, and in Him alone, we will never be thirsty. He gives us not what we want, but what we need: a love, a true love which gives meaning to human love, and to all of human existence. If we trust in God, and live our lives according to his will, loving God and each other, with faith in him alone, we can be victorious, and win a prize far greater than a medal of gold or silver, we can win a reward which lasts far longer than human praise or glory: the crown of eternal life and the glory of heaven. So let us be fed by him, with him, nourished by word and sacrament, let us believe in him, let us love Him and one another, and live lives which proclaim his life, his truth and his victory to the world around us: a victory which allows us to win a greater prize, a greater glory than that of the Olympics – true life, true glory, and true joy with him forever in Heaven, who is the Way, the Truth and the Life.
29.vii.12 Homily for the 17th Sunday of Yr B (Jn 6:1-15)
As you were getting up this morning, to get ready to come to church, you probably went into your bathroom to wash your face and brush your teeth and turned on the tap marked ‘C’, and all was well. But if you went on holiday to Italy and you wanted to have a drink, wash your face or brush your teeth, you may well stand by a sink and turn on the tap marked ‘C’ and you would get a nasty shock. It stands for Caldo the Italian word for Hot. What you needed to do was to turn on the tap marked ‘F’ for Fredo or Cold.
This mistake is easily made, especially since we are so used to seeing the letter ‘C’ on cold taps back home. It shows us the problem of misreading the signs. In today’s Gospel we have several examples of people misreading signs. First, we have the Apostle Philip. He is asked by Jesus where they can buy bread for the crowd to eat. He replies that 200 denarii would only buy them a mouthful each. Six months wages just for a mouthful! So Philip says that there is no way that the people can be fed. He cannot believe that such a thing could be possible.
The Apostle Andrew begins a bit better. He shows Jesus a boy with two fish and five barley loaves, the bread of the poor. But he cannot see the point and asks ‘what is that between so many?’ The disciples then cannot read the signs and give the wrong answers to Jesus’ questions.
The people are also a bit of a mixed bag. They have followed Jesus as they are impressed by his miraculous healing of the sick. Once they have been fed, they recognise the sign as a declaration of Jesus’ identity, but they misinterpret it. They are about to take him by force and make him king. But this is not what Jesus’ kingship is about, he isn’t a political ruler; his kingship is not of this world. All three groups then have expectations which are met, but not necessarily in the way they were expecting. Our God is a God of Surprises.
The context of the Gospel story is important. It was just before the Passover, the festival commemorating Israel’s journey from slavery in Egypt, across the Red Sea towards the Promised Land. It is a festival of Hope and Freedom, of Liberation, of a God who will feed them with manna from heaven.
It is also the same time that Jesus will celebrate the Last Supper with his disciples, instituting the Eucharist, which Christians have faithfully celebrated ever since and the reason why WE are heretoday. The blessing, breaking and sharing of bread is a serious matter then, and not just an excuse for a conjuring trick.
The fact that it is a serious matter explains why Jesus will devote so much time and effort to teaching the people about this in the Gospel passages we will read over the next few weeks. It matters because it is how we encounter Jesus and are fed by him.
In the Gospel, it is Jesus who takes the initiative. He recognises that people are hungry, and that they need to be fed. He is a good shepherd who looks after his flock. He takes the basic foodstuff, bread, to show us how God works with simple things. These may be, like the barley loaves, poor, the kind that the world despises and looks down its nose at, but for God, nothing or indeed nobody is scorned or cast aside. Ours then is a God who takes what is available and uses it. Jesus takes what he is given and thanks God for it, in recognition that all we have, our lives and all of creation is a gift, for which we should thank God.
It is through prayer and blessing that bread can be broken and distributed and provide sustenance, on a scale and in a way that defies our expectation and understanding. Not only are the people fed but as a sign of the superabundance of God’s love and mercy, but there is more left over at the end than there was to begin with. Thus, in giving thanks to God and sharing his love, the kingdom of God of which the bread is a sign, which grows, which is shared, and which satisfies people’s deepest needs. The more you share it, the more there is.
Jesus takes, blesses, breaks and distributes bread to demonstrate what the Kingdom of God and the message of the Gospel is. This looks forward to the Institution of the Eucharist, just before Passover. It points to the great Passover, where the world is freed from the slavery of sin, washed in the Red Sea that flows from Calvary, and given the Law of love of God and neighbour.
This miraculous feeding by the shore of the Sea of Galilee will happen heretoday, when we, the people of God, united in love and faith offer ourselves and like the little boy, give the bread that we have, so that it may be taken, blessed, broken and given that we may be partakers in the mystical supper of the Kingdom of God. We eat the Body of Christ not as ordinary food – that it may become what we are – but that WE may become what HE is. THIS is our bread for the journey of faith. THIS is the sign and token of God’s love. THIS is the means by which we too may enjoy forever the closer presence of God.
So then, as the five thousand received and were satisfied, let us prepare to eat that same bread, the body of Christ, which satisfies our every need and fills us with a foretaste of the Kingdom of Godthe Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just, all might, majesty, glory dominion, and power, now and forever.
16th Sunday of Year B – 22.vii.12 – Jer 23:1–6, Eph 2:13–18, Mk 6:30–34 ‘He took pity on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd’
Living as we do here, out in the countryside, surrounded by fields, I suspect that the imagery in this morning’s readings is not completely lost on us. We are used to sheep and the shepherds who look after them. The care and devotion which a Shepherd should devote to his flock is a sign of God’s love and care for us, and to those of us who have been given pastoral responsibility in the church it serves as a reminder of who and what we are supposed to be: its cost, and the responsibility we share for the care of Christ’s flock, the burden and the joy.
In this morning’s first reading, we see what happens when it goes wrong. The Kings of Israel are not true shepherds as they exercise power which destroys and drives away the sheep. They don’t care for the well-being of the people, who have scattered, gone wandering off, as the mood takes them. It’s all gone horribly wrong; and yet God, the true shepherd of our souls, does not leave his people comfortless. He promises to give them a good Shepherd, and through the words of the prophet Jeremiah points towards his son, the good Shepherd, who will lay down his life for his sheep.
In St Paul’s letter to the Ephesians we see the work of the good Shepherd and its fruits. He gives us life through his death. Through him the flock is united, that which divides, that which keeps us apart has been overcome by Jesus, he restores our relationship to one another and to God the Father, by laying down his life, by giving himself for us upon the cross and here in the Eucharist, where we the people of God are fed by God, are fed with God, to be built up into a holy nation, to become more like him, to have a hope of heaven, and of eternal peace and joy with him. In conquering the world and sin, Christ shows us that there is nothing God cannot do or will not do for love of us. All divisions, all human sinfulness can be reconciled through Him who was sinless, who gave himself to be tortured and killed that we might be free and live forever.
In this morning’s Gospel we see a picture of what good shepherds are like. Jesus and the apostles have been teaching the people, it’s a wonderful thing but it does take its toll. The disciples tell Jesus that it’s time to have a rest, to spend some time alone, in prayer and refreshment. The people are so many; their needs are so great that the apostles have not had time to even eat. It is a recognisable picture, and it shows us how great was the people’s need for God, for God’s teaching, for his love and reconciliation. Jesus does not send them away he takes pity on them because they are like sheep without a Shepherd, and he, the good Shepherd, will lay down his life for his sheep. His people are hungry so they will be fed by God, with God. God offers himself as food for his people and continues to do so: he will feed us here today, feed us with his body and blood, with his word, so that we may be fed, may be nourished, may be strengthened to live our lives, that we may live lives which follow him, that we may have the peace which passes all understanding. It’s a wonderful gift, which comes at a tremendous cost, which shows us how loving and generous God is towards us His people. Our response should be gratitude that we are fed in this way, that we have been reconciled to God through him. We should live lives fashioned after his example, lives which show his love and his truth to the world, lives which proclaim his victory, lives which will attract people to come inside the sheep-fold, to have new life in Jesus, to be with Jesus, to be fed by him, to be fed with him.
It’s a difficult thing to do, to live this life, to follow His example but with God’s help, and by helping each other to do it together, we can, and thereby give glory to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just, all might, majesty, glory dominion, and power, now and forever.
Trinity VI Evensong 15.vii.12 Rom 15:1–29 May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abide in hope
It may seem strange or even contradictory to begin by being so happy, so upbeat, when all around us the world is in a mess: recession, unemployment, a growing gap between the richest and poorest in society, civil war in Syria, the possibility of an Olympic shambles, and to top it all the Church of England seems more and more to be trying to turn its back upon the faith and order of two millennia of the Christian Church. What was within our lifetimes seen as simple mainstream teaching is now seen as dangerously out of touch, repressive, regressive, reactionary, oppressive and downright wrong. Instead, we have replaced the Gospel with the Spirit of the Age, and where the Episcopal Church in America has led, we appear to be following. Yesterday saw the 179th anniversary of John Keble’s Assize Sermon which gave birth to the Oxford Movement its words still ring true, and I commend it to you in the strongest possible terms: it isn’t very long, but it contains truths which the world and the church need to hear.
In the twelfth chapter of the Letter to the Romans, Paul says to the church in Rome – do not be conformed to the world, do not fashion yourselves after it, but be conformed rather to Christ. It is simple advice, which some two thousand years later humanity still seems reluctant to heed. But this does not cause me anger; rather I am all the more concerned to preach the Gospel. As Christians we may have hope, because our hope is in Christ, who became incarnate for our sake, who offers the world a radically different alternative, a totally new way of living, and totally unlike that of the world. He suffered and died and rose again for our sake, that we may have true joy and hope, which can never be rubbed out by all the heresies which may beset his body, the Church.
As Christians we are to bear with the failings of the weak, and to build them up in truth and love. We are not to bear grudges, we are not to concern ourselves with power, for in our weakness is our strength. We are to welcome all as Jesus Christ has welcomed us, for the glory of God. This is truly radical, and totally unlike the ways of the world. It is costly, it is demanding, it is truly life-changing and it is truly wonderful. And to be honest there are plenty of people about doing just that, living out their faith in their lives. We can be happy, but not complacent, because it is a wonderful thing and it should encourage us to do more, to live more fully in Christ – to pray harder, fortified by the Sacraments, filled with joy and an example for others to emulate.
Like Paul I have spoken to you boldly, by way of reminder, because of the grace given to me by God to be a minister of Christ Jesus in the priestly service of the Gospel of God. It is amongst other things a prophetic calling, to save others from stumbling, to pick them up when they do, to bind their wounds, and show them the right path. It is a joyous task doing the work of God, building up God’s people in love and defending truth against error, but above all to give glory to God.
It’s a big ask, it isn’t for the faint-hearted, and it allows us to see why the message of the Gospel has been ignored or subverted, it’s the sort of message which has caused the death of many in the church. Be we should not be afraid, or scared, or worried, because by living as our Lord requires us people are attracted to the Christian Faith and way of life, it represents a freedom from the conformity of the world around them, a radical true freedom, of love and of the spirit.
But giving glory to God is all that any of us can hope to do. If we build up one another in love then we can be truly radical and transform this world, and conform it to the will of God, so that every tongue may confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the Glory of God the Father. In two thousand years we have not yet managed it, but that does not mean that we should simply give up, or conform ourselves to the ways of the world. No, we should be encouraged to strive all the more that the whole world may re-echo the praise of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just, all might, majesty, glory dominion, and power, now and forever.
Trinity VI 15.vii.12 Mt 5:20-26 Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven
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It may not surprise you to learn that the Church is absolutely not a place in which to do politics. Politics is the art of the possible, where compromise lets you get something close to what you would originally have liked, with as many people on board as possible. Whereas what we see in this morning’s Gospel is something different, Our Lord would seem to be asking the impossible; he presents us with a totally uncompromising picture of what it means to live a Christian life, or in Matthew’s terms, to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. There is no compromise here, and what is required looks completely beyond us – that is, I would suggest, the entire point – it isn’t about what we as human beings can do on our own, but what God can do through us.
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Lest we get too disheartened by the rigorous demands of following Jesus, we should remember that what we are dealing with is something of a commentary upon the Beatitudes: Our Lord has called his disciples and explained how he offers a new way to live. He has used a series of contrasts: ‘You have heard it said that … but I say to you …’ He offers the world an alternative community, based on love, and shown most fully in the example, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
It is his life and death which reconciles us both to God and to one another. To be a Christian is to be part of a community of love, of reconciliation, of freedom from the constraints of a society which says we should act politically, and compromise. In our repentance, our metanoia, our change of mind, we have turned away from sin, anger, adultery, divorce, and become a community of love and forgiveness. We offer the world something different from its own version of law, of justice, and of fairness – we offer something radically different, something which can truly turn the world around.
That is why we should put away our anger with each other before we approach the altar, lest we eat and drink condemnation upon ourselves. If we follow the ways of the world we shall be in danger of hell fire, of turning our back on God, of being cut off from the salvation and reconciliation which Christ brings. What we are undertaking as the body of Christ is nothing less than the radical transformation of human society, without the political compromise which the world would expect or indeed desire.
It’s a big ask, it isn’t for the faint-hearted, and it allows us to see why the message of the Gospel has been ignored or subverted, it’s the sort of message which has caused the death of many in the church. Be we should not be afraid, or scared, or worried, because by living as our Lord requires us people are attracted to the Christian Faith and way of life, it represents a freedom from the conformity of the world around them, a radical true freedom, of love and of the spirit. So then let us live this life that world may believe and give glory to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just, all might, majesty, glory dominion, and power, now and forever.
Trinity V Evensong 8.vii.12 Sermon : 1Kings 18:17–39; Jn 15:1–16
IN this evening’s first lesson, the prophet Elijah turns to the people of Israel, who are dividing their loyalties between the LordGod and Baal, he asks them ‘How long will you go on limping with two opinions?’ They are to follow the Lordtheir God, or to turn away from him and follow Baal. There is no possibility of compromise, it is a simple choice. Elijah is not particularly bothered that he is the only prophet of God left, while against him stand the prophets of Baal and Asherah, the divine couple of the Levant. It doesn’t matter that Elijah is in a minority, that the people of Israel are hedging their bets, that Ahab and Jezebel are hostile towards him. He trusts in God, and that is enough. Truth, it would seem, is not decided by a majority vote. Elijah does not simply go along with the ways of the world; he does not bow to pressure from authority, he does not turn away, he remains faithful, he trusts in God, and Elijah the Tishbite receives his reward.
In this evening’s second Lesson, Our Lord gives us a vision of how the church is to be: how we are to remain in Him. Jesus is the true vine, we are the branches, tended by God the Father, the vine-dresser. We are to be united with him, in our prayer, in our study of His word, in our reception of the Sacraments: fed by him, with him, so that we may become what he is. And in this we will bear fruit: in loving God, and being loved by Him, we will share that love with others and our lives will be transformed, for God’s glory and through God’s grace. This is a process rather than an event, it is like the growth of a vine, and its flowering, and bearing fruit. So the Church is to be drawn ever deeper into the mystery of God’s love.
Jesus commands us to love one another as He has loved us. He has shown this in washing his disciples’ feet, he will show it when He suffers and dies for the sake of all humanity, and we are fed by Him and with Him in Holy Communion. We are to live lives of self-giving, sacrificial love, in service of one another. We lay down our lives for God’s glory to find life in all its fullness, and to live in the expectation of everlasting life. It is a lot to ask, and yet we are to do it gladly, for the sake of Him who died for us. Our relationship to one another and to God is to be profoundly different from that found in the first lesson: we are friends. When Jesus speaks to His disciples, he tells them that they are chosen by Him, and appointed by Him, to go and bear fruit that should abide. We see that now, here, nearly two thousand years later – rooted in Christ, close to Him, abiding in Him, the church is to continue to bear fruit through staying close to Him, obeying his commandments, studying the Bible, being fed and nurtured by the sacraments.
When the world tells us that we should approve of a redefinition of marriage to include homosexuals, that we should have female bishops, so that the church may reflect the ways of the world, we should perhaps read on to verses 18 and 19, just after our second lesson ended, to see that for two thousand years those in power and authority have hated the Christian faith for all it stands for, they have sought to undermine it, to destroy it, to infiltrate it, and fashion it after their own designs: like the prophets of Baal and Asherah, like Ahad and Jezebel, to turn it away from the truth, to wrestle it from its apostolic foundations. We should turn away from the devices and desires of the world and remember that the Church exists to give glory to God and to conform the world to His will.
It is a difficult and a dangerous calling, we are to lay down our lives in God’s service that the world may believe and trust in the God who loves us, who died and rose again for us. As the disciples hear that they are to lay down their lives, one of them is about to betray Him, another to deny Him, and yet they are loved, this is what forgiveness means – a love which transforms lives, which takes Peter and makes him turn from scared denier into a fearless leader of the Apostolic band. It isn’t about political games or power, the obsessions of many within the modern-day church, but of fashioning our lives after the One who loves us, that the world may believe – that the good news of Jesus Christ may spread, that all may believe and trust in Him, and in Him alone.
Many people would rather have a lie-in on a Sunday morning than fulfil their baptism by coming to be fed at God’s altar. They would rather visit a temple of Mammon, to make themselves feel better through retail therapy than seek the love and forgiveness of God. Any excuse rather than find the greatest free gift that has ever been given. So we, the body of Christ must try in all that we are, all that we say, all that we do, to embody this self-giving love, to fashion our lives after Him who loved us, to welcome people to the family of faith. If we abide in Jesus, if we stay close to him, and reject the ways of the world we will bear fruit and thereby give glory to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just, all might, majesty, glory dominion, and power, now and forever.
14th Sunday of Year B – Mark 6:1-6
WHO do you say that I am? This is a question which Jesus asks his disciples, and it is a question which we and the rest of the world need to answer.
In this morning’s Gospel we have a difficult picture set before us. Our Lord goes back to his home town. He teaches in the synagogue, and people who have known him all his life are amazed when they hear him. He is wise; he works miracles, but can only be understood by those who hear him in terms of the life they have seen him lead. The people of Nazareth know Jesus according to the flesh; but their very familiarity with him is a hindrance to knowing him truly, for it makes it all the more hard for them to see through the veil of his ordinariness. It is a case in point of the familiar saying ‘Familiarity breeds contempt’.
What then does Jesus look like without faith then? Human, just a man like you or me? But what then do we make of the miracles, the teaching, and the healing? How does he rise from the dead? It doesn’t make sense, it doesn’t add up, unless Jesus is simply not just a human being, but also the Second Person of the Trinity, the Word of God Incarnate.
Either Jesus was a mad fool, or he was what he said he was. What we believe, our faith, matters. That is why we will recite the words of the Creed in a few minutes, simply because it matters. It isn’t enough to think that Jesus was a nice bloke who did nice things, healed people, and told them to love one another. He did what he did, and said what he said because he was God, a God who became incarnate, became flesh and dwelt among us, a God who who loves us, who died for us and rose again, and feeds us with himself, so that we might become what he is, so that humanity might become divine.
It’s a serious matter, it relates to the salvation of all humanity. The world may say that Jesus was just a human being, and nothing more. But on this, and indeed on many other matters, we have to say that the world is wrong, and that the church should not follow it. It is difficult, but to be prophetic means to speak the truth to power. And so, to a world which sees itself as liberal, as rooted in the values of the Enlightenment, we, as the church, have to say no. We have to believe and trust in a God who lived among us, who saves us. We are to conform the world to the will of God, rather than conform God’s church to the will of the world. We are to express our faith in the God who loves us, who feeds us and who saves us. We are to confess this with our lips, but also live it in our lives. It’s a difficult thing to do, but with God’s help, and by helping each other to do it together, we can, and thereby give glory to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just, all might, majesty, glory dominion, and power, now and forever.
Sermon for the Second Sunday of Easter Evensong, And their words seemed to them as idle tales, and they believed them not. Lk 24:11
In this evening’s first reading we hear Isaiah prophesying ‘Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust: for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead.’ There is a hope that this life is not all that there is, that there is something beyond, something greater. It is a basic human desire to believe that this life is not all that there is. And we believe it at an innate level, so powerful is our need so to do.
And yet, in Christ’s rising from the dead we know that death is not the end, that our hope, our destiny, our final destination is to be with God, to behold the Glory of God for ever, to be surrounded with his Love. Such a gift is free, and offered to all, young or old, rich or poor, through faith and baptism, for such is the grace of God, the reckless generosity that embraces a world with Love, that shows it its hands and side so that they may see what Love looks like. These are the lengths to which God goes to reconcile the world to himself: to heal our wounds, to be our peace and our joy.
It is strange that much of the world when faced with the story of the Resurrection would reply something along the lines of ‘And their words seemed to them as idle tales, and they believed them not.’ A former Bishop of Edinburgh, Richard Hollaway has even written that Christ did not actually rise from the dead, but such was the love his disciples had for him that he lived on in their hearts. This is clearly utter rubbish. The disciple go from being scared and stuck in an upper room to missionaries, evangelists, spreading the Good News around the world, regardless of the cost, even of sacrificing their own lives to bear witness to the fact that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, that he diedfor our sins, and that he rose again, on this day for us, that God lovesus and tells us to love Him and to love one another. It is a simple and effective message which people still want to hear, even if others do not.
We should, I suspect, be a little careful about all the talk of persecution in this country: Christianity is not about what jewellery you wear, but what you believe and how you live your life. What is perhaps far more worrying is that more and more (due to the efforts of a liberal-controlled media) we as Christians are portrayed as odd, as extreme, as obsessed by gender, sex and sexuality, an irrelevance to the modern world. Your religion, they say, is a private matter – please do not bother us with it, we’ll come to church as and when we feel like it, possibly Christmas and Easter if you’re lucky, but as for believing anything, well we’re far too grown up for your fairy-story nonsense.
This may be something of a caricature, but it is a true one, and one which applies to the majority of the inhabitants of this village, of this county, of this country and indeed the Western world. It saddens me that such a mindset should have become prevalent of late, and that when we, as Christians, try to do something about it, we are told that we are all hypocrites, that we do not practise what we preach. There is some truth in this – we are sinners, but the heart of our faith and the Gospel is forgiveness – no matter how many times we mess things up, we are forgiven. It is this reckless generosity of spirit which people find hard – to believe that they too can be forgiven, by a loving God, and by their fellow Christians. That we can, despite our manifold shortcomings we can be a people of love, and forgiveness, and reconciliation. That God’s Grace will in the end not abolish our nature, but perfect it, that being fed by Christ, with Christ: so that we too may become what He is. That faced with the sad emptiness of the world, and its selfishness, its greed, we can be filled with joy, and life, and hope. That like the first apostles we too can spread the Gospel: that the world may believe.
It’s a tall order, perhaps, but one which God promises us. That is what the reality of the Resurrection is all about, it’s either nothing, in which case we are the most pitiable of deluded fools – idiots who are more to be pitied than blamed, or it is the single most important thing in the world. It should affect all of us, every part of our life, every minute of every day, all that we do, all that we say, all that we are. This may not fit in with a reserved English mentality, we think we’re supposed to be polite and not force our views on others. But this simply will not do. We are, after all, dealing with people’s souls, their eternal salvation, it’s a serious matter. And what we offer people is entirely free, can change their lives for the better, and make life worth living.
So let us be filled with the joy of the Resurrection this Easter, let us share that joy with others, may it fill our lives and those of whom we meet with the joy and love of God, who has triumphed and who offers us all new life in Him, that all that we do, all that we are, all that we say or think may give glory to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just, all might, majesty, dominion and power, now and forever.
Novus Motus Oxoniensis 