The St Anselm, Hayes Sermon Podcast: Recent Episodes
St. Anselm, Hayes
Keep up to date with the latest sermons from St. Anselm's in Hayes Town, London. Scripture and the word of God brought directly to your audio device. Deepen your faith, deepen your love and learn more about how Jesus works in your life.
In the name of the Father, and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. Our Gospel this morning speaks of a mother’s unwavering faith in her meeting with Jesus. It has important lessons to teach us – as all encounters with Jesus do – a lesson about persistence, about humility, and about the amazing power of our own faith. We start with Jesus withdrawing to Tyre and Sidon. Jesus has just fed the five thousand, healed the sick
The Transformational Power of the Transfiguration Matthew 17:1-9 Good morning everyone. Today, we celebrate the feast of The Transfiguration. The moment that Jesus ascends the mountain, and his very physical presence is changed in front of his disciples. The moment God speaks to Jesus disciples and tells them exactly who He is. It is both a profoundly symbolic event AND a miracle so awesome that it reverberates through history to us and calls on US to be transfigured. Let’s first
Matthew 13:1-23 [automatically transcribed] There are many ways that you can help pull rocks out of the soil. Which one is God calling you to? In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Please sit. Now, I dare say everybody in church today has heard the parable of the Sower. It’s one of those wonderful parables that we teach in Sunday school because it’s so easy to teach, there are such good
Jeremiah 20:10-13, Psalm 68(69):8-10,14,17,33-35, Romans 5:12-15, Matthew 10:26-33 We have a message to proclaim as Christians and we must do it with all our hearts no matter the things that come our way as stumbling blocks We have a message to proclaim as Christians and we must do it with all our hearts no matter the things that come our way as stumbling blocks, we must stay focused and present the message as it has been handed over to us.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Sheep are amazing creatures. Now, I’m sure as a Welshman, you would expect me to say that the Welsh and sheep have a long affinity with one another; and to play up to that stereotype I used to look after sheep. When I was 13 and 14, I used to go andwork in the spring on my cousin’s farm on the Hafod on the side of the mountain. And I couldn’t go very much in the spring because I was in school, so I never really got to see the lambs. But by the time the summer holidays had come around and I was more available, then I had a certain job with the lambs that involved elastic bands and the poor lambs having bits taken off them.
But I knew sheep and I got to spend a lot of time with them. And by the end of the summer holidays, I would smell of sheep. It was very clear what I’d spent my summers doing. And by the end of the summer, the sheep knew me. They knew because I smelt of them when I walked into the barn that they were fine.
They knew the sound of my voice, they knew the way that I walked. So when I first started in that farm at the start of the summer, they would skit away from me. They would try to be as far away from me as possible. They would run away. But by the end of the summer, because they knew, although I was messing around with elastic bands and bits that were dangling off them, they knew that they were going to get food.
And me being a big old softie, they also knew they were going to get lots of cuddles. So by the end of the summer, they knew me very well and they would run and greet me.
Now, Jesus uses the image of a shepherd and of sheep a lot and he uses it because it is written through scripture large, the scripture that Jesus knew in the Old Testament, as we call it, you hear the image of the shepherd and of sheep so often. And part of the reason for that is because Judea and Galilee, in the area where Jesus was preaching, teaching and living, sheep were ideal animals. And often you would have mixed herds of sheep and of goats.
And indeed, pastor is the Latin word for shepherd. Our roots go all the way back to those shepherds on the sides of those mountains. Now, in the Holy Land, when you are a shepherd and when you’re looking after sheep, unlike in the west, you’re looking after the sheep for their wool, not for their meat. And so you get to know the sheep over a very long period of time. I’m sure you’ll remember when I last preached on this part of John and the shepherd, I told you that the crook, the crook that the shepherd carries isn’t a weapon, and whilst it is there to rescue sheep and pull them in line, it is predominantly there for the shepherd to lean on, to rest on when he stood in the field, when he first comes into a flock, so that the sheep can come up to him and learn what he smells like and learn who he is. And that can take three or four days.
So being a shepherd in the Holy Land is no easy task. It’s very different to the way that we understand looking Easter sheep. If you’re a shepherd in the Middle East and it’s still the same today, life is very, very hard.
There’s no time off, there’s no rest, there are no walls or fences. During the day, the sheep are constantly wandering off, because as much as I love sheep, I do have to say they can be incredibly stupid animals and will happily drop themselves over the edge of a cliff or get their heads stuck in something. He’s also there to make sure that the sheep do not get attacked, attacked by wolves and attacked by robbers. So the shepherd in the Middle East is a job that never gives up. It is a job of protection, it is a job of care and it is a job of love.
And so it’s not something that you take up lightly as a job. You cannot be a shepherd in the Middle East unless you do it to 100% of your ability, because unless you give it everything that you are, you are going to lose sheep. They are going to walk off the edge of a cliff, they are going to get themselves stuck in a ravine, or a wolf will come and devour the flock. And so the shepherd is committed. All of who he is is invested in that role of being a shepherd.
But doesn’t just do it on his own. He’s got certain tools. He’s got the crook for leaning on and he’s also got it there for protection and for rescue. Importantly, he never used a crook to beat off animals. He had a proper little cludgel for doing that.
That’s not what the crook was for. But as well as being something to rest on and to guide the sheep, the crook was also used in the evenings. So in the evening in the Middle East, you bring your flock together and when you’re out in the mountains, you put them into a sheepfold. That’s often just an area with a low stone wall that will keep out the wolves. And there is a sheep gate, and through the gate the sheep go into the sheepfold and the shepherd will sleep in that entrance.
This is what Jesus is talking about in this gospel. And when he was preaching that to the people around him, people understood exactly what he meant. Ah, Jesus is in the gate, he is protecting the flock. People would have understand that as they get to the sheepfold in the evening, the shepherd takes his crook and he puts it across the entrance into the sheepfold to slow the sheep down. So that one sheep goes in at a time and it goes under the crook and it allows the shepherd to check that the sheep is healthy and is safe and hasn’t caught any injuries in the day.
So Jesus is checking us as we come in to the sheepfold, as we pass through that gate under his crook to be checked. And then the shepherd will sleep in the gateway protecting his flock. And let me tell you, nothing gets past that shepherd. And the sheep know. They learn that they are safe and they can hear the sounds of their shepherd.
They can hear his breathing. And just like those sheep knew that it was me coming into the barn, they knew who it was at the gate, we too see that in Jesus. Over time, we get to learn how Jesus acts in our lives and we should pay attention to how he acts in our lives, so that we too can take that comfort of being safe in the sheepfold. But we, just like the sheep in the sheepfold in the Middle East, are difficult to look after.
Let me tell you a story about Moses. It’s one of my favourite stories and I tend to tell it to young men when I’m preaching in schools. And it is the legend of Moses when he was a shepherd, when he went off after the burning bush and he was looking after the sheep in the wilderness away from home. And the legend goes that he was looking after the sheep and one of the kids ran away. And Moses was really irritated by this kid that had run away.
He was quite upset and angry about it and he went chasing after it. For goodness sake, haven’t I got enough to be doing without chasing after this stupid goat? And when he catches up with a goat, when he catches up with this kid, it’s at the water drinking. And Moses says, Ah, you ran away because you were thirsty. And he picks the kid up and he carries the kid back to the flock.
That is how Jesus is with us as a good shepherd. We might do something wrong, but Jesus can see why we’ve walked down that path and he will pick us up and bring us back to the flock. It speaks to the character of a person, how we react when we discover those things. One of the ways that we see it in the gospel and we hear that notion of a shepherd knows his flock and the flock knows him.
So another little example of how those things work together in the Middle East. If the weather comes in and it’s raining and the shepherds will all head into a cave and you might have three or four different flocks in that cave all mixed up together. Now, here in the west, if that were to happen, we’d have to take each sheep out, look at its ID number, get the bit of paper and go, oh, that’s Mr. Jones. Look at the next sheep and go, look at the number and go, oh, that’s Mr. Evans.
And then look at the next one and go through all of the farmers and separate them out like that. But in the Middle East, the shepherds can just stand outside the cave and call their sheep. And the sheep know them so well that they will come running to their shepherd.
Shepherd and flock together, trusting each other, knowing each other over a long period of time. It is a relationship that takes time to develop. Jesus knows us, and he has known us since we were knitted together in our mother’s womb. We must trust him. We must come into his fold for protection and know that he will carry us when we run off.
Now, that’s not just Jesus who has that responsibility, but all of us have that responsibility. All of us are shepherds to our own flocks. It is very easy to abrogate, to get rid of our responsibility as a shepherd and say, ah, Jesus is our shepherd. I give everything to Jesus. Brilliant.
It’s a good start. Or to say, Father Matthew is my shepherd. I don’t have to worry about telling people about Jesus or Father Josiah is my shepherd. I do not need to worry about caring for people. That is the shepherd’s job.
But that is not true and that is not what Jesus teaches us. We are all shepherds to our own flocks, our families, our friends, people that we see at the bus stop regularly, we are shepherds to those people. And through imitating Jesus, through being the shepherd, and hopefully through imitating Father Josiah and I as shepherds, hopefully we are providing you the example of how to be a shepherd to your own flocks. And then it is up to you to bring your flock into the sheepfold here at St. Anslem’s, we are the sheepfold here in church together on a Sunday, we have come through the door and we are protected and cared for and are fed, and we will receive what we need to be sent out into the world.
People enter this sheetfold under the crook of Jesus. When we enter, he cheques us to make sure that we are okay, that we haven’t picked up any injuries that week, and we can come to Him for healing our flock. I am very happy to say here at St. Anselm is growing as we bring more and more people into Jesus care and protection.
More people in Hayes know the love and protection of Jesus in this sheephold because each and one of us cares for our own small flock and then brings that flock into the safety of this place. And the more that that flock grows, the more people we bring to Jesus, the stronger we are and the better able we are to defeat attackers the stronger the flock, the stronger each and every one of us is, the better able we are to reject evil in the world. The bigger we are and the stronger we are, the more people we are able to bring into the sheep fault. Jesus is the good shepherd and so are you.
Bring your sheep here, find the lost kid and carry them into the sheepfold where they may know the love and care of God. Amen.
Luke 24:13-35, 1 Peter 1:17-21
How did he bring those men back to hope? Through Scripture and through the breaking of the bread.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Please sit.
Our Gospel today is a story of abandoned and rediscovered hope. And it is a parable that works for all of us in our daily lives if we are willing to hear what it says to us. The disciples who are leaving Jerusalem have lost hope. They’ve seen the things that Jesus has done, they’ve heard his teaching. But when he died on the cross, they abandoned all hope.
Christians are a people of hope, of faith. And we hold Jesus Christ close to us. And when we abandon that hope, all we find is darkness. But rejoice because we are not kept in darkness. Because Jesus is always walking with us, just as he was walking with those two men who had abandoned their hope, abandoned their faith.
And in that abandonment of hope, and in that abandonment of faith, they could not see Jesus. That’s true in our lives. When we abandon our hope, when we abandon our faith, when we turn away from looking for Jesus, working in our lives, we can’t see Him, but he is there with us. So how do we see Jesus in our daily life? How do we break away from that pattern of darkness?
How do we pull ourselves out of that place and see Jesus stood next to us? That steadfastness of God that Peter talks about in our second reading, Jesus tells us exactly how to do it. How did he bring those men back to hope? Through Scripture and through the breaking of the bread. This is why I extol you at all times to read Scripture, because this is how you keep the enemy away and your eyes focused on Jesus.
This is why I encourage you to come to church as much as you can. Because in the breaking of the bread, we see Jesus most readily. Scripture and sacraments, one of our founding principles of our community here. A love of sharing in scripture and sacraments. And it is in that simple truth that we discover in Eastertide that today we get to welcome four new pilgrims on that journey.
Saied, Fatemeh, Robbie and Sangeetka. You get to walk with Jesus just as those new disciples did. And through your reading of Scripture, through coming and receiving Jesus Christ in the sacrament, your eyes will be opened and you will discover that most powerful of things – hope in Jesus Christ, hope in God, and a steadfast love that will support you all your days.
And the awesome thing for the rest of us who see you baptised this morning is that we are reminded of that steadfastness, we are reminded of that love. And we are called to come back to Scripture, we are called to come back to church, we are called to receive that gift of Jesus Christ afresh every single time we have a baptism.
And so Fatemeh, Saied, Robbie and Sangeetka I’m going to ask you to come with me to the font and we shall baptise you in the powerful name of Jesus Christ .
Matthew 5:38-48
Showing that love in the darkest places, showing Jesus love, despite everything the world throws at you, is the single greatest act of evangelism there is. You are called to this not just this week, not just when we are reminded of it in scripture, but every single day of your life.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. amen.
Please take a seat. Well, after last week’s 20 minutes, I promise you I won’t go on for 20 minutes this morning. And actually, this week’s gospel is fairly straightforward to understand.
And when I was speaking about this week’s sermon with Edmund and Catherine in the car, edmund just went, well, why don’t you just say what it says, “be kind” and leave it at that.
And there’s a big temptation for me to just stand here and say the name of the Father and the Son of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Be kind, Amen, and off we go. But I feel like I wouldn’t be earning my stipend if I did that. But that is essentially what’s going on in the Gospel.
We have Jesus once again quoting the law. The law which, as we learned from last week, Jesus bases an awful lot of his teaching on condemns and fulfils in equal amounts. If you’re not following what I’m saying, go to the website and listen to last week’s sermon. Make yourself a cup of tea first.
But he’s talking about the law.
An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Now, in today’s culture, that can seem quite cruel. It is about equity, it’s about justice. In Jesus time, however, it was about ensuring that justice was fair.
Not even in Jesus time. We still see it today, where the punishment for a crime can far exceed sense and natural justice, as we would see it. If you steal something, you’ll have your hands cut off, the punishment is extreme.
The law that Jesus is talking about here is about saying that justice should be comparable with what the person has done wrong. So you shouldn’t kill somebody because they’ve committed adultery, which was the punishment at the time.
So this law was about mercy. And so Jesus is referencing that mercy and he’s saying, listen, you know this teaching. You know that this is about mercy. So that’s the way he’s connecting with people.
You’ve heard about this, but I say this, “offer the wicked man no resistance. On the contrary, if anyone hits you on the right cheek, offer him the other as well”.
So what Jesus is doing is he’s taking the idea of justice for wrongdoing. And just as he was earlier on in Matthew with the beatitudes, turning things around and encouraging us to think about it in a different way. Now, it’s easy to think of justice and how to deal with people doing things that are wrong when you are the person who is giving out that justice.
So when you’re saying, well, you’ve done this wrong, therefore it’s an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, it’s rather harder to do that when you are the victim of something. And so Jesus, once again turning things on its head, says, look at it from the perspective of the person that the bad thing is being done to. How do you want to react to that now? Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. There is the teaching that Jesus has just referenced that’s what would be the right thing in the Jewish law of the time, the oral law of the scribes and the pharisees.
But Jesus says, no! That’s not the way to respond. The way to respond is to offer mercy even as the victim mercy always. When somebody does something wrong to you, when somebody hurts you, then embrace that. Embrace it as a moment to demonstrate God’s love in the world or your love of following me. An eye for an eye in a tooth or a tooth doesn’t go far enough.
It’s not merciful enough. God’s mercy goes far beyond what you might consider to be fair, far beyond. And so he gives those examples. “If a man takes you to law and would have your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. If anyone orders you to go 1 mile, go 2 miles with him. Give to anyone who asks and if anyone wants to borrow, do not turn them away”. He asks us to act in mercy from a place of hurt and pain.
I think it is the single hardest thing that Jesus asks us to do. It’s not simply about forgiving your enemies, which I’ve spoken about as being a very difficult thing to do. And I think the nearer the enemy is to you, the harder it is to forgive. But you can work on that over time. Jesus is telling us to react in the moment of anger and hurt, and upset with almost superhuman, divine mercy.
You have to override those basic instincts of anger which we talked about last week as being the heart of evil. You have to override those instincts of revenge. You have to override those passions that pour out of you, that come from a dark place and in their place pour in love to an almost impossible to understand degree.
Once again, Jesus is setting the bar for the way that we behave in the world incredibly high. So we have to give it a go. We have to give it a go. What’s the worst that could happen? You don’t get there. But you will have given mercy in that situation. You will have given love in that situation.
Then Jesus goes on to explain why that’s important. And he compares the way that people react in the world is as fair and reasonable. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, fair punishment for a crime, treating people equitably.
He demonstrates that. He says, well, everybody does that. Being a Christian, you have to go further. I mean, everybody tries to act in a reasonable way. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.
Everybody tries to do that. Even the tax collectors do that. To be a christian, you have to go further. A lot further. Not a bit, a lot further.
It’s very easy to talk about Jesus love in the world and generosity in the world when he is creating gallons and gallons of wine overflowing generosity at a party. It’s very easy to see Jesus love in the world that is generous and overflowing. But Jesus calls us to that same generosity, that same overflowing love, in even the most difficult situations.
Now, last week, there was the ultimate example of that, as far as I have ever seen it, and that was the 21 martyrs on the beach in Libya not that long ago when ISIS took those 20 young Christians. And one man who wasn’t a Christian, who but turned to Christ at the example of his brothers on that beach and carried out the most awful atrocity. Those men went to God with Jesus on their lips, with no hatred on their lips for the men who were doing the evil thing to them, but with nothing but prayer and love on their lips for these dreadful, dreadful men. And the thing that they were doing, the evil that they were perpetrating. So Jesus challenge to us is to live our life in this way.
And so when you find yourself in a situation where you are angry and you want to react in anger, if you can’t immediately call this gospel to mind, then call those 21 young men to mind on that beach. Because if they can do it in those circumstances, in the midst of that much evil, you can do it. You can utter Jesus name in love in the darkest places in the world. And why does Jesus call us to this? Because it is training for heaven.
Because that is what it is like when we are with our Father, when we are able to reach for that love so easily. It is also because it is how people see Christians behaving in the world. And it is through those examples of love, even in the darkest places in the world, that people will come to recognise who Jesus is, like that one man on the beach with the 20 other Christians.
Showing that love in the darkest places, showing Jesus love, despite everything the world throws at you, is the single greatest act of evangelism there is. You are called to this not just this week, not just when we are reminded of it in scripture, but every single day of your life.
Pray for the strength to do it. Pray that you can find the boundless love of God, that you may pour it out in the world. amen.
Matthew 5:17-37, Ecclesiasticus 15:16-21
We continue reading through the Sermon on the Mount. We have had the beatitudes where Jesus turns all conventional worldly thinking on its head; last week we heard that we are called to be the salt of the earth – the conducting mineral that allows God’s work to be carried to every corner of the globe – and this week we hear the astonishing claim that Jesus comes not to abolish the Law, but to complete it.
It’s an astonishing because Jesus (to our minds) continually breaks The Law – he did not observe handwashing, he healed sick people on the Sabbath and so on… he was such a Law-breaker that he was crucified for it.
So in order to understand what Jesus is saying here and why it is quite so astonishing we need to consider what Jesus (and later St. Paul) meant when they talked about The Law.
There are four different ways that Jews referred to The Law.
1 – The Ten Commandments.
2 – The first five books of the Bible – literally The Pentateuch
3 – ‘The Law and the Prophets’ – the whole of scripture (what we call the Old Testament)
4 – The oral – or the scribal law.
In Jesus time, and indeed whenever Jesus refers to the Law he is referencing the final understanding – the oral and scribal law. This was the law that Jesus so utterly condemned time and time again. But why?
Well let’s start with the other definitions. We start with the Ten Commandments. They are not rules and regulations, they are simple, easy to understand principles from which people must find their own rules to live their own lives based – soaked if you like – in God’s Word.
But, as time went on the Jewish people found these great principles to be insufficient to lead their lives – yes the commandment tells me not to commit adultery… but what does that ACTUALLY mean?
They therefore set about codifying each of the principles and commandments God gave us into rules and regulations that all must follow. It was the job of the scribes to reduce these great commandments into a rule for every possible situation in life.
Let me give you an example.
Let’s take the commandment that the Sabbath day should be kept Holy.
The scribes set about defining exactly what that meant… to keep something Holy they said then there must be no work… but what is work? Well, we can figure that out too can’t we.
All sorts of things were legally considered work, but let’s take one – to carry a burden… ah, but then we need to define burden (you can already see the rabbit hole we are going down!)
So the scribes set about defining burden:
‘food equal in weight to a dried fig, enough wine for mixing in a goblet, milk enough for one swallow, honey enough to put upon a wound, oil enough to anoint a small member, water enough to moisten an eye-salve, paper enough to write a custom-house notice upon, ink enough to write two letters of the alphabet, reed enough to make a pen..’
…and so it went on and on and on and on…
The scribes were the men who worked out these rules and regulations and the Pharisees were the men who were separated and worked hard to keep all of these rules and regulations.
For many generations these rules and regulations were kept as an oral law – it was handed down in the memory of the scribes but in the middle of the third century AD the first summary was made and codified. That initial summary was over 800 pages long. As time went by these rules and regulations were written down in full and commentaries to explain them were produced. These commentaries run to over 60 printed volumes.
To the jews of Jesus time The Law meant the keeping of thousands of legalistic rules and regulations, they understood the keeping of these rules and regulations as their means of salvation – of eternal life.
This is The Law to which Jesus was speaking about, this is the Law that both Jesus and St. Paul condemned time and time again.
So then, what was Jesus saying?
He is telling us that he has comes to fulfil the Law – that is to say he comes to help us live our lives in the real meaning of the Law as God gave it to us – to help us to engage with those great principles, the central of which was to seek God’s will and dedicate our lives to understanding and obeying it.
The scribes and the pharisees were on the right track, seeking out God’s will and seeking to obey it, but they were wrong in attempting to bend the great principles God has given us to a host of man-made rules and regulations.
So let’s start with the greatest of those principles – the heart of The Law – the ten commandments.
Their whole effect can be summed up by the words respect and reverence.
Reverence for God and respect for our fellow human beings.
Reverence for God’s day, for the name of God. Respect for parents, respect for the truth and for another person’s good name, respect for yourself so that wrong desires will never overcome us… these are the basic principles in the ten commandments. Without this understanding there can be no engagement with The Law.
That reverence and respect is lived out – not in the following of man-made rules and regulations but in love.
Not in prohibitions, but in the instruction to love one another as God loves us.
The reverence and respect that are the basis of the ten commandments can never pass away, pass in and out of fashion, pass in and out of secular understanding – but are an eternal part of our relationship with God and to one another.
So then, does that mean that we can eject the past? Can we throw away vast swathes of the Old Testament as unimportant? As irrelevant?
Well, the simple answer is no!
What Jesus is saying in this scripture is that there is a continuation between the past and present.
The present grows out of the past and to ignore that is to – to use an overused phrase – throw the baby out with the bathwater!
The Law had to come before The Gospel because we had to understand the difference between right and wrong. We had to understand what it meant to respond to the commands of God. Our duty is not to disregard the past – and our mistakes in it – but to use the past as a foundation on which we build our future.
We build our future on the foundation of the hard work of others in the past who have built our present.
Jesus uses the past, The Law, the scribes and the pharisees to teach us about how we can live in the future – and so to disregard all that Jesus builds his teaching on is to undermine our own foundation – to build our house on sand, so to speak.
So then, we have the past – we’re exploring Jesus present – and we are attempting to understand what it means in our future.
We can then set aside all these silly rules and regulations and somehow just feel our way into doing what is right? Sounds easy doesn’t it.
We should all just bumble along together doing what we feel is lovely and nice and good.
Well… you’ll not be surprised to hear me say – no! That is not what Jesus is telling us.
Jesus warns us that being a Christian is not easy. Just because he is setting aside these silly rules and regulations does not mean that we can just go out and do whatever it is we want to do with no regard to his teaching, no regard to scripture and no regard to the great principles we have received from God in the commandments.
In fact Jesus tells us that the righteousness of the Christian – of those that follow him – must EXCEEDE that of the scribes and pharisees.
In zeal we must stand alongside them – understanding that it Jesus we follow and not the rules of man.
The scribes and the pharisees set about a life dedicated to satisfying the Law.
We as Christians are called to dedicate our lives to satisfying the Love in which God calls us to live in and with each other – based, founded, and built upon the commandments and scripture.
The scribes and pharisees can in theory fulfil the demands of the Law – in fact they dedicated each day to doing just that and were successful.
We, must fulfil the greater and endless demand of living out God’s love in the world – a task that is never ending.
How then do we engage with scripture, the great principles of the ten commandments and the Gospel to live out our lives in Love?
Jesus sets the standard high.
Very high.
In fact it is a greater burden to live by the demands of God’s love than it is to live by the demands of the Law. In many ways, as strict as the rules and regulations of the scribes and pharisees are – they actually enable you to find ways AROUND God’s love. They give you an excuse the by-pass the difficult and hard things we must all face if we are to follow Jesus.
Jesus tells us that it is not just the person who commits murder – or adultery and so on – who is guilty – but the person who was angry with another person is also guilty. The person who looks at someone with unclean desire is guilty…
He commands us to cut out our eye lest we fall into these dreadful sins.
Jesus is teaching us that the great principles of following God are not simply principles of the flesh – of how we behave and act in public – but what happens in our hearts and in our minds – because it is there that the great battle between evil and God’s love is won or lost.
It may be that we have never hit someone, that we have never committed adultery and so on – but we have certainly entertained the thought of doing so – and it’s in those thoughts that evil gets hold of us.
How many of us have given in to the desire in our minds to consider hitting someone? How many of us have given in to the desire in our minds to rubbish someone’s good name? To bring them down a peg or two? How many of us have cradled and enjoyed the thought of what we may do to someone we hate? How many of us have thought bad things about people we do not like?
I would suggest all of us have.
And those thoughts will ultimately lead to action. We are betrayed by those thoughts in the world. By the way we ignore someone, or the way we don’t take action to help someone we don’t like – those thoughts are the seeds of evil in the world and we must destroy them!
The battle between good and evil starts in our minds.
This is what Jesus is teaching us. This is the fundamental truth of how we live our lives as Christians.
That our lived-out faith – the lived-out Love of God in the world – starts in the battles of the mind.
When you find yourself thinking of someone in a bad way – kill that thought.
When you find yourself thinking of someone in an unkind way – kill that thought.
When you find yourself thinking of someone in a lustful way – kill that thought.
We are constantly pulled in different directions. We have an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other, and each time we give into the devil in our minds the angel shrinks.
BUT we have the power to eject the devil from our thinking – by giving in to the angel.
When we think of someone in a bad way, we move our thought to how Jesus is using them in the world and see them in His love.
When we think of someone in an unkind way, we move our thought to how God loves them and see them in that light.
When we think of someone in a lustful way, we move our thought to the child that God cradles in his arm and love them in that way.
This is a constant and never-ending battle. It is far harder than following a set of rules. It is far harder than following the whims of the world around us – because it will mean standing up for what is right in Gods eyes. It will mean setting the world aside for God’s love – and that is never popular.
But you have the tools to do this. In baptism you received the power of the Holy Spirit.
‘If you wish you can keep the commandments, to behave faithfully is within your power. He has set fire and water before you put out your hand to whichever you prefer. Man has life and death before him, whichever a man likes better will be given him’.
We chose in this life the path towards eternal salvation or eternal damnation, and the battle starts in our minds.
So start training. Start feeding the angel and denying the devil.
You will fail. We will all fail. We will give in to temptation in our minds and those thoughts will lead to bad actions. But, you do not fight this battle alone.
You do it on the shoulders of those who have gone before you. Who have learnt how to fight this fight. You do it in the friendly embrace of those you come to church with. You do it in the power of the sacraments you receive from Christ in this place, you do it knowing that when you fall there are people to pick you up.
So leave here today with a new call to live a life as Jesus commands. A life of love lived out in the world, a life of love fought for in your minds, a life filled with the power of God so abundantly, so strongly that it shines forth in all your outward actions.
Amen
‘Follow me and love one another’
(James Bond theme music) I love James Bond movies. And one of the things I love about them most is the car chases. Film by film they seem to get more and more extreme, whether it’s cars that end up driving down steps, or motorbikes riding along rooftops. It’s all about the people behind following the person in front.
Jesus says to the fishermen, “Follow me.” And he says it to us too. We follow the person in front. We follow Jesus, who has gone before us. The one who loves us, the one who cares for us, the one who forgives us, restores us and offers us new hope and new life.
I’ve got a younger sister, Katherine – about two years younger than me. At one mealtime when we were children, we were at the table with our mum and dad. And Katherine decides to copy me. So when I picked up my fork, she picked up her fork. When I had a drink, she had a drink too. And when I shuffled in my chair. What did she do? (Shuffled in her chair)
I got really fed up with this, and mum and dad hadn’t spotted it. So I decided to sit very quietly and still, and then suddenly (wave my arms and head, and make a funny sound) – Katherine just didn’t know what to do.
And as for mum and dad, they had no idea and asked sternly exactly what was I up to. Fortunately, when I explained they saw the funny side of it.
Katherine was copying me, she was following what I was doing. She was imitating me.
Jesus says, “Follow me.” Copy me, do what I do. Love others as I have loved you. Care for others as I care for you. Forgive others as I forgive you. Offer others hope, just as I do to you.
Jesus says, “Follow me.” That was what the fishermen were asked to do. To follow Jesus. And only then did Jesus give them an inkling of what they would be doing. As well as saying “Follow me”, he says he wants their help to fish for or to catch people – to share God’s love with others.
But before they could do that, they literally followed Jesus around Nazareth and Lake Galilee. They listened to what he had to say, they watched what he did. They asked questions and they made mistakes. But they were following Jesus, discovering what he was doing, saying and behaving – becoming more like him. And on the night before Jesus died, he said, “Love another, just as I have loved you.” Be like me.
Desmond Tutu said these words, “I am because you are.” I am because of what I have seen and witnessed of others. If I have been loved, I can learn what it means to love others. If I have been shown justice, then I know what it means to be fair to others. If I have been treated with respect and compassion, then that is how I will be with other people.
“I am, because you are.”
But John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, said, “The Gospel of Christ knows no religion but social; no holiness but social holiness.”
People often misquote this to stress the importance of social action, of mission and service – caring for the sick, the hungry and the homeless care, mission. But it is actually about community. About being together.
So it is not just “I am, because you are.” It is “I am, because we are.”
What we do, what we say, how we conduct ourselves, and how we care for each other has an effect on all of us. Together in this congregation and church, together (in this Week of Prayer for Christian Unity) as Christians in different churches and denominations, together as a community.
But we don’t do this by ourselves. Let’s face it, we can’t do it by ourselves. The Gospels show that the disciples couldn’t do it by themselves. They needed Jesus and they needed the Holy Spirit – living in them and working through them.
As we are all just the same. We need Jesus, and we need the Holy Spirit living in us and working through us.
Then not only will each of us follow, but we can support each other as we follow together, and we can invite others to follow too. Through activities in the church, through activities across the churches.
Because we can’t and don’t do it by ourselves. We do it with the help and support of each other. And most importantly with the help and support of God.
The one who said, “Follow me” and I will lead and guide you. “Follow me” – learn from me, and become more like me. “Love, care, cherish one another, just as I love you.”
(In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.)
St Anselm’s, 22 January 2023
Matthew 3:13-17
This is my son, my beloved, in whom I am well pleased
Words of God at Jesus’ Baptism
Its wonderful to be here with you this morning and thank you to Fr Matthew for the invitation. In todays gospel reading, the story has just made a huge jump. Without warning, we have moved from stories about Jesus birth to stories about his adult life. Chronologically, it feels a very strange thing to do. There’s not even one of those signs that you see in films and books ’30 years later’. The jump just happens. But if we see the gospel of Matthew in terms of its themes, what it is telling us about who Jesus is and what that means to us, this makes total sense. The birth stories of Jesus all work together to tell us different things about who Jesus is, that he is the son of God, that he came for Jews and Gentiles alike, that he was born into a human family so that we may know him and love him. The stage is set. And now, Matthew’s gospel moves us on to the beginning of Jesus’ adult ministry and also, poignantly, to the beginning of the end of the ministry of John the Baptist.
Matthew’s gospel is the only one where we have some conversation between Jesus and John at Jesus Baptism and what is said is very interesting and revealing. John is really not sure about Baptising Jesus and we can understand why this might feel wrong to him. Baptism is about repentance and being made clean, and Jesus doesn’t need that. John wants Jesus to Baptise John rather than John Baptise Jesus. But Jesus knows that the purpose of his Baptism is different. This is the handing on of the baton from John to Jesus. This is a new Baptism. It marks a new age.
Even though it is only Matthew who records the conversation between John and Jesus, all the gospels are clear that the Baptism of Jesus marks a turning point. This is the moment where Jesus steps out onto the public stage. He submits himself to his calling and God publicly names him as his son and his beloved.
In being born in a stable in Bethlehem to a poor couple, attended by shepherds, Jesus begins his life as one who identifies with the human condition. In his Baptism he reaffirms that message. He comes alongside us, in our sinfulness and failings and walks with us in all that it means to be human. In Jesus’ Baptism, he sets himself on the road to the cross, identifying himself with our sin in the closest possible way. He shares our reality so that we can share his.
One of the things that we can most helpfully do as human beings is come alongside eachother in empathy and love. I was thinking about that the other day when my son Jack who is 15 was talking about the problems relating to doing GCSEs. There are just so many subjects, he said, and it is very difficult to give proper attention to any of them because of all the others. It threatens to be overwhelming. I have strong memories of that feeling from doing my own GCSEs and for particular personality types its very hard to concentrate on one thing at once, especially when there is a lot to do. I have no idea how much help I was, but I was able to use my own experience of that feeling that boarders on panic of having too many things to do and to think about to help him think about a revision timetable to enable him to focus on the subjects one at a time. Whatever we are doing, whether it is raising children, helping a neighbour or a friend, interacting with other members of the congregation, we use our ability to identify with what others are going through. And one of the most powerful ways to help another person is often just to listen, to come alongside, and to feel with so that we know we are not alone. In his Baptism, Jesus comes alongside us, feels with us, and sets himself to walking along the road alongside us.
Because of the way that Baptism has developed in the church today, the Baptism that Jesus experienced was closer to what we now call confirmation. Infant Baptism is very helpful theologically because it makes it clear that Baptism is something that God does, a gift through grace. A baby is Baptised before she or he has done anything or not done anything to earn it. It is clear that it is a gift. Confirmation is rather different. It is a conscious act of accepting that grace and a commitment to walk in the path of faith. If the story of Jesus conception and birth are a story about what God did, Jesus’ Baptism is the story of Jesus’ response. It is a clear acceptance by Jesus of the task he has been give and his identity as God’s son.
And as Jesus sets out on the journey of his ministry, he is assured of God’s love ‘this is my son, my beloved, in whom I am well pleased’. This is of course a message to all those present at the Baptism, and it is also a message to Jesus. He is beginning this journey of his adult ministry knowing that he is loved by God. In all that he will be asked to give, he is offered the sure foundation of God’s love and his own sonship. It reminds me of something written on a card given to me when one of our children was born. ‘two things we must give our children, roots and wings’. I don’t know where it comes from but I found it very helpful. Children and all of us need to have a sense of where we come from, a foundation of love in which to feel safe, and in that security, in that firm foundation, we can grow and develop into the people we are called to be.
And so today as we celebrate Jesus Baptism by John, we give thanks for the gift of Baptism, that each of us is loved and accepted by God before we have had a chance to do anything to deserve it. We also give thanks to God for the gift of his son, to live and walk amongst us in all that it is to be human so that we may know him and love him too.
Amen
Numbers 6:22-27, Psalm 66, Galatians 4:4-7, Luke 2:16-21
Today is the 1st day of the week, 1st Sunday of the Week, 1st day of the Month, and indeed the 1st day of the year. Today marks a new beginning and we are starting this new beginning with God. It is a special day, and it is very important for all of us especially with the coming of our saviour Jesus Christ to make all things new. We are also celebrating Mary; the Holy Mother of God and it also marks a new stage in the life of Mary because she has given birth to Jesus Christ who is the son of God in no other place than a stable. We cannot fathom what is going on in the mind of Mary as she thinks of all that the angel of the Lord had said to her about this baby of hers.
As we have now entered the new year, we will also be thinking of what God has instal for us, our own expectations and or anticipations. What our new year resolutions are, how we are going to achieve our goals for the year, all that we have prayed for, the miracle and healing we have been waiting for. The previous year had its own sad moments especially with the call to eternity of our Queen HM Elizabeth II, the Ukraine war which has led to the loss of many innocent lives and the economic problems we are all facing, the disappointment, the pain, and the suffering. My beloved in Christ this is a new beginning, and a new page has been opened for us by Jesus Christ Himself and epistle from Galatians 4:4a says
“But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son…”
God has sent His Son to us to receive salvation so that we will no more be subjects of the law but be redeemed in order to become adopted sons and daughters of the Lord. Through this adoption we receive the spirit of Jesus Christ into our hearts. This spirit emboldens us so that we will be able to see God as our father and call him as such. This boldness is what should empower us to face the new year with hope and assurance that all will be well. It is very simple just believe and avail yourself to God.
A slave remains a slave until he is bought, and this is exactly what Jesus has done for us so that we will be free. The Virgin Mary availed herself to the words proclaimed to her by the messenger of God and it came to pass, she did not doubt.
As we begin the new year we must try and put the past behind us and look forward to the wonderful things that God has prepared for us. Let us forgive all those who have offended us and be at peace with ourselves. The Spirit of God is still at work in the assembly, and we must not be doubters so that we can experience Him fully.
We pray that this year will be a year of blessings where the Lord will bless us and keep us, his face will shine on us and be gracious unto us, may He uncover His face to us and bring us peace. AMEN
Matthew 11:2-11
And so today, on Gaudette Sunday, we rejoice. We lift our eyes from the darkening time around Advent. We lift our eyes to the coming of Jesus Christ in that manger on Christmas morning, holding on to that central truth that central knowledge that he is always with us.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Please sit.
Today, my friends, is Gaudete. Sunday gaudette is Latin for rejoice. It is a moment during Advent when we relax a little where the deep shade of purple that we wear at Mass relaxes a little bit into the rose that you see Father Josiah wearing today. I think it suits him beautifully, doesn’t it? It’s not pink, it is rose. It’s an important differentiation.
Advent is a period as we walk towards Christ coming, being made man in the crib, being born in that stable, is a time when if you’ve been following Father Josiah’s writings in the pew sheet, we should examine our scripture, we should examine our prayer life, we should examine our relationship with God. It is a period of penance. It is a time where we reflect, where we fast, where we consider our own lives in the pattern of Christ. But today we take the foot off the accelerator a little bit, we relax slightly and we lift our heads from scripture and from prayer, and we look into the world to see what Jesus is doing around us.
It is a moment to remember that Jesus works in the world around us. And that’s really what’s going on in this conversation between the followers of Jesus and the followers of John in our Gospel.
We start off in this 11th chapter of Matthew. John in his prison. Well, let’s deal with that first. Why is John in prison? John was in prison because Herod, who of course was the ruler of Galilee, that place in Israel, Pilate, of course, down in Jerusalem, and they didn’t like one another, but they found common ground in condemning Jesus at Easter. But that’s a whole other story.
Herod, that Herod was not happy with John, and the reason he wasn’t happy with him was because Herod had gone back to Rome. And while he was in Rome, he had seen his brother’s wife and he thought that she was a bit of all right and he thought that he was going to have her.
And so he did. He took her back to Galilee with him. He pinched his brother’s wife and he married his sister in law. That is not a good thing. And John called him out for it.
John said, this is not right, you are not doing the right thing here. And of course, John was a prophet. And prophets do two things. They are heralds of God’s message and they speak truth to power. Now we see that when Jesus is asking the people, who did you go out into the wilderness to see?
Was it a courtier? A courtier, of course. Somebody to be found in palaces, who flatters kings, who flatters the rulers. No, you went to see a prophet. A prophet, somebody who speaks truth to power.
That’s exactly what John did. And of course it got him in awful trouble, in fact ultimately into fatal trouble. So John and his disciples find themselves in a pretty dark place. John is a child of the desert. He grew up in the wide open spaces of the desert and now he finds himself confined to a dark cell, quite literally from the light into the darkness.
And it is in these moments that I think we probably question our faith and we can probably understand John in this moment better than we can at any other. I am sure that every single one of you has faced darkness in your life and you have called out to God and said where are you? But it is in those moments of darkness, in those moments of pain and of hurt that perhaps we can come closer to understanding God in the world. John sends his disciples to go to Jesus to ask him are you the one who we are waiting for or have we got to wait for somebody else?
It’s impatient. Now I can see John in his cell and his followers, his disciples saying to John, this is dreadful, this is, you know, we are people of God. You are doing God’s work and here you are in a cell in darkness. It is not going the way that you want it to go. And I can see John thinking, you know what, these people are never going to understand what this is about unless I send them to Jesus so that they can see for themselves what is going on. John doesn’t send them to Jesus because he has lost his faith or because he doesn’t see what Jesus is doing in the world. He sends them so that they can see for themselves what Jesus is doing. That’s the important word in this week’s gospel, what Jesus is doing in the world. Go back and tell John what you hear and see. The blind see again. The lame walk lepers are cleansed. The dead hear and the dead are raised to life. And the good news is proclaimed to the poor. Happy is the man who does not lose faith in me.
Jesus is telling John’s disciples that when our faith is in its darkest place, the thing to do is to lift your head and look at his work in the world, look and see what is going on around you and there will always be a reason to shut your vision down to just the bad things. And our society encourages us to do that.
How often do we turn on the news? How often do we open a newspaper? How often do we doom scroll through Twitter and just focus on the bad things? Jesus is saying to John’s disciples look up and see what is happening.
I’ve had a very personal experience of that in the last week. Last Friday, my cat Abby died. She’s been with me for 14 years. When I moved to Australia and I found myself completely on my own and very lonely and upset, she wandered into my garden in Melbourne, this little stray, not even six months old. We did our best to find who she belonged to, but she didn’t belong to anybody. And so I always say that she rescued me.
She brought me back to life and I brought her back from Australia with me and she’s been with us ever since. She died last Friday. And I cried hugely and all I could see was the loss of this support that I’d had in my life.
And then on Thursday, my dog Sophie died.
She’s been with me for 15 years. And for the next 24 hours, all I could see was the lack of them in my life. I could see darkness and I couldn’t see hope around me at all. And I shared this news on Twitter because lots of people who know me know how important my animals are to me. And person after person after person after person reached out to me to say that they loved me, that they understood my pain and was there anything that they could do in that moment of pain and darkness that I’ve experienced this week.
I looked up and there was God’s love in the world, shown through the miracle of love in one another. And that’s how God operates in the world. That’s how Jesus operates. That is a difference between John and Jesus.
John did not proclaim the Good News. He proclaimed death and destruction. He proclaimed the ending of all things if we did not repent. But he pointed to the coming of Jesus. And Jesus came not to end things, but to heal things.
He came to love us back into a good relationship with God. That love is most clearly shown through other people in the world.
But here’s the thing. If you don’t look for that love, if you don’t ask for that love, if you’re not open to that love, working in your life and seeing it in other people, even when you are in pain, then you shut the door to it.
One of the hardest things that we are called to do by Jesus is open our hearts when we are in pain.
In Advent, we often don’t have Jesus in the crib we put Him in on Christmas Eve just before he is born. I don’t like that. And so Jesus is always in the nativity scene, wherever I am, because we are never without Him. There is never a place so dark that his love is not there with us. There is never a situation so bad that his hand is not in ours.
There is never a moment where we call on his love that he doesn’t answer.
And so today, on Gaudette Sunday, we rejoice. We lift our eyes from the darkening time around Advent. We lift our eyes to the coming of Jesus Christ in that manger on Christmas morning, holding on to that central truth that central knowledge that he is always with us.
Rejoice, my brothers and sisters, for Jesus Christ loves you and he will take you home. Amen.
Isaiah 2:1-5, Psalm 121, Romans 13:11-14, Matthew 24:37-44 “So, you also must be ready, because the son of man will come at an hour when you do not expect” . Matthew 24:44 Preparation is very important in every sphere of human endeavour and when we prepare very well the possibility of achieving results is very high. Everybody given a particular task expects to get the job done and done well so preparation will certainly be on the shopping list. Carole Spiers, a
Colossians 1:12-20, Luke 23:35-43 We are called to pray that one day we will, in our suffering and in our giving away of ourselves and in our following of the saints and of denying ourselves, we will find ourselves beside Jesus, with Him saying to us very simply, “today you will be with me in paradise”. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Please sit. Today is the last day in
Malachi 3:19-20, 2 Thessalonians 3:7-12, Luke 21:5-19 The Old Testament reading today is very short, precise and quite scary especially verse 19 For the day is coming, blazing like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble, And the day that is coming will set them on fire, leaving them neither root nor branch, says the Lord of hosts. MALACHI 3:19 Indeed, Malachi is just a messenger of God delivering a message of God to the people of
Luke 16:19-31 This is a stark warning. It is dark and difficult to read, but we read it in the light of Jesus Christ. And therefore we have hope and we have an opportunity to change and be better. That is what we are called to do in this wonderful family of God. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Please sit. There are various names for today’s gospel. It’s most
Amos (8:4-7), 1 Timothy. (2:1-8), John. (14:1-6) And I promise you that in those final moments, you will be brought into his embrace, his infinite love and his mercy. In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Please sit. I think all of us have responded to the death of Her Majesty in different ways, and it stirred up all sorts of different emotions. We’ve been open all week, from nine in
John. 6.35-40 I pray that we are able to consider our own hearts, to look for our own defiant nature, to allow God to strip it away and to enter into that fullness of life, not on our own, but with one another and with Her Majesty the Queen. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Please sit. Jesus said, I am the bread of life. Is Jesus talking about bread?
Luke 14:25-33 In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Please sit. A hard gospel, a hard thing to hear. If any man comes me without hating his father, mother, wife, children, brothers, sisters, yes, even his own life too, he cannot be my disciple. Luke 14:26 How do we start to make sense of these very hard words from Jesus? Well, as I always say to you, when you hit a
Luke 14:1,7-14 …then the martyrs and the saints will make you ever so humble. And in doing so, each and every day you will combat that sin of pride. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Please do take a seat. In today’s gospel, the hard truth that Jesus speaks is a lesson in humility. Don’t put yourself to the front. You don’t know who else will come and you may
Isaiah 66:18-21, Hebrews 12:5-7,11-13, Luke 13:22-30 …the way we live our lives is training for Heaven. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Please sit. There is a reprimand in today’s Gospel, and it is this do not take the things that Jesus taught you lightly. Don’t sit lightly to them. Don’t take them as a gentle suggestion, but take the things that Jesus taught you and live by them. The
Luke 1:39-56 I ask you to look to her to remind you of our shared and common purpose; to love the Lord our God with all our hearts, all our minds, all our souls and all our body. To love one another as he loved us and just as she did, to proclaim the greatness of our Lord. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. I’ve preached many times about Mary as
Luke 10:25-37 And that, my brothers and sisters, is the way that we get to heaven. That, my brothers and sisters, is how we bring people with us into heaven. That, my brothers and sisters, is how we lift each other up when times are dark. That, my brothers and sisters, is how we demonstrate the perfect love that Jesus has for us In the name the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Please sit.
Luke 9:11-17 That’s the task that is at your feet. You, the disciples of Jesus Christ, are called to go out into the world nourished by the body and Blood of Jesus Christ that you may bring others to his glorious name in his love. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen. Please sit. Now the last time I preached on this particular miracle here we were reading about the feeding
John 16:12-15 In the name of the Father of the Son and of the Holy Spirit – Amen. Today, as I’m sure you’re all aware is Trinity Sunday. It’s a day we call to mind the Holy Trinity and what that means to us today. Trinity Sunday is an annual reminder of the simple command to live within the love and commandments of the father, son and holy spirit – and Jesus tells us how we discern how to do
Acts 2:1-11, Romans 8:8-17, John 14:15-16,23-26 Pray that we continue to grow, that we continue to bring people to Jesus in baptism, that we continue to turn people from evil in the world, that we continue to offer a home of hope, love and faith for all. It’s odd I think to see that in the first sentence of our reading from Acts ‘when Pentecost day came around’. I always remember being confused when I read it and heard it
John 14:23-29 And this is how we can live in perfect love with one another and bring others into it. With the help of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit teaches us all of the things that we need to know until the end of days. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Please sit. Today’s Gospel and this Sunday, in fact, marks a transition. It is the transition of the
John 13:31-33,34-35 Love is how we should exist as a community of Christians in this place and in the world. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Please sit down. Last week we talked about the bond of love that exists between in God the Father and God the Son. And we explored how that bond of love is the bond of love that Jesus has for us and how Jesus
John 10:27-30 We must not be lazy in our faith. We must strive each and every day towards a perfect love in one another, sharing that perfect love that exists between God the Father, God the Son, you and me and every Christian on the face of the planet now and has ever been. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Please sit. I always find it funny that Jesus talks
John 21:1-14 …and I ask us now to think about how we can bring that net to the shore, how we can bring those people who are coming to know Jesus to Jesus at the shore, that they may know him more fully, that they may sit and listen to what he has to say to them, that they may eat with him and share their life with him. In the name of the Father and of the Son and
John 20:19-23 He comes amongst them to Commission in the midst of hurt and pain and difficulty and division. Jesus comes with a plan. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Please sit. I think it’s very easy for us to picture where the disciples were on this Sunday, in this moment when everything had gone wrong. Even though they had travelled all that time with Jesus, they still didn’t understand
Luke 19:28-40 How are you defining your relationship with Jesus? Are you telling Jesus what he ought to be? Or are you open to Jesus talking to you. And telling you what you ought to be? The name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Wow, what a shift. Just a few moments ago, we were walking through this door, smiling, crying hosannahs! And here, just a few moments later, we hear the final
The previous sessions of this Lent Course have focused on both the physical and mental habits that, when developed, can become helpful as we embark on our journey of faith, but in isolation, the gestures we make, the pilgrimages we make or the thoughts of gratitude we cultivate are little more than self help – they must be rooted in daily prayer and daily scripture – and that is exactly what we are focusing on this week. Let’s begin by
John 8:1-11 Jesus is on our side in our sin and in our mistakes and with Jesus on our side with our family here in Church, we can do it. We can pick up this challenge that Jesus places on all of our shoulders. And in doing so, we can spend eternity with him in heaven. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Please sit. Once again in our gospel we
In our first and second sessions we worked through holy habits that you can broadly consider to be physical actions that prompt a mental and spiritual re-action. There is an element of being able to fake it until you make it! By carrying out these actions you prompt and prod yourself towards God. The physical action of crossing yourself, of genuflecting, of walking… pushes you to think on God. Of course, we understand that these physical actions can sometimes have
Luke 15:1-3,11-32 In this parable Jesus gives a vivid picture of God and what God is like. God is truly kinder than any of us. He does not lose hope or give up when we stray from him. He is always on the lookout for those who have a change of heart and want to return. Watching recent images on TV of people fleeing from war torn Ukraine led me to reflect perhaps more deeply than ever upon what it
When I say the word pilgrimage, I wonder what is the first thing that comes to your mind? Perhaps the image of an arduous journey along a dusty road through winding countryside, or the literary pursuits – such as Bunyan’s Pilgrims Progress or Geoffrey Chaucers Canterbury Tales which follows a rag tag band of misfits on their way to the Shrine of Thomas Becket in Canterbury. So what is this all about and why are they considered a holy habit
Luke 13:1-9 And so reflect this lent on your individual sin. Be mindful of the suffering that you may be bringing to others and take this chance that Jesus is offering you yet again to fix it. Spend Lent digging around your roots and adding manure grow and produce Holy fruit. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Please sit. There are two very interesting elements in today’s gospel, and it’s
When I was considering what kind of course to run this Lent – the first I’ve run in parish since becoming a Priest In Charge in my own parish – and the first to be run since the pandemic I was struggling to find a way forward.
The temptation when starting from scratch is to reach for the very new, or for the very old. What does my parish need? Would it be good to do a deep dive into one of the Gospels – or perhaps all of them? Would a thorough understanding of the geography of Mark help people engage with the story of Jesus as told in that Gospel better?
Ah, I know… I’ll do a course centred on the Eucharist – the mass – you can’t go wrong with a lent course that focuses on the model of a Christian life as expressed in the liturgy and the sheer beauty of the eucharist.
We could start with a talk on greeting – how we welcome people into church. Then onto a talk about confession, mercy & forgiveness, then onto the importance of scripture in our journey towards Christ before a long, deep and serious exploration of community prayer – all that before we even get to the liturgy of the eucharist.
The theologian and liturgist in me was excited.
But then, one afternoon as I sat in church watching people come in to pray – or more accurately – as I was fiddling with the wifi system attempting to figure out why the automatic iPhone controlled bell wasn’t working…. I watched a parishioner come in and head to the statue of our lady to light a candle.
As she got halfway down the church she stopped herself with such alacrity I thought she was going to fall over. She huffed at herself, turned on her heal and walked back to the door where she genuflected and crossed herself with water from the newly refreshed holy water stoup.
It had only been put back after the pandemic ban a week earlier and she’d forgotten it was there – she was on physical and mental auto-pilot and it was only as her mind turned to lighting that candle that her heart reminded her she’d missed something.
Even after two years of not carrying out this action her body, her heart – if not her mind – reached back in time and yanked some sort of physical memory. She’d missed something. Something wasn’t right. I suspect her body stopped before her mind even had chance to process what it was that was wrong.
I watched as she walked more slowly now, a difference in her stride as she approached the statue, took out a candle – lit it and said her prayers. Then she left, she hadn’t seen me up a ladder fiddling with cables – but from that hight God had shown me something very interesting indeed.
Something quite normal. Something that happens multiple times a day at St. Anselm, something so small and insignificant that it could be easily overlooked.
Walking past the church and seeing the door open and deciding to come in is a holy habit. The crossing of yourself at the door to church with holy water is a holy habit. Genuflecting as you enter to the blessed sacrament is a holy habit. Walking more slowly, more deliberately to the statue of Our Lady and inclining your head as you pass the altar is a holy habit. Choosing a candle to light, placing it in the stand, saying a prayer is a holy habit.
Each one of these actions have been learnt over time. They’ve been handed on through explicit instruction and through community or peer show and tell. Each one of these actions does something to us physically, it does something to our hearts, it does something to our minds – and as St. Paul teaches us – these things have to work together, or at the very least we should be aware of how they work together – to nod us in the direction of, and urge us into a deeper relationship with Jesus.
So then – thanks to this faithful lady I had the spark of an idea for a Lent course. What do these tiny things do to point us to Jesus? Why are they important? And perhaps most interestingly at this moment in time – what changed during the pandemic.
I know that for some the last thing we want to think about is the pandemic. As we emerge – or what feels like emergence – from the restrictions in our communities each one of us is being forced to examine how we interact as an individual, as a family and as part of a local community.
All of the little things we used to do without thinking – muscle memory perhaps – have been torn from us. We couldn’t cross ourselves with holy water when we entered church – although for many months I’m sure our hands reached out for the stoup only to find it dry or missing; and because we couldn’t cross ourselves we gradually stopped genuflecting or bowing. Because we stopped genuflecting as we entered church we stopped bowing as we crossed the altar and without these physical actions we stomped across church at the same speed with which we had arrived… as my wife calls it – London walking speed – which is at least 2mph faster than anywhere else in the country.
And so we find ourselves at the foot of Our Lady slightly out of breath, unprepared physically or mentally and we grab at the candle box, whack a candle in the stand and light it – muttering a prayer at the same speed with which we walked in. We turn on our heels and we leave as quickly as we arrived.
This physical behaviour is not wrong, there’s no judgment being made – but I find it fascinating to have watched this lady shift her physical behaviour in response to such a small thing – the refilling of the holy water stoup and what a big impact that tiny thing had on the rest of her visit to pray.
That small prompt left me 40ft up on a ladder pondering the changes in my own life of prayer – and more importantly – in my life in general.
As we were approaching Lent – a perfect time to re-examine ones life in general, and with particular focus on our relationship with Jesus – what was I not doing, what was I doing well? What old practices had fallen by the wayside (and may be a good thing!) and what new practices were producing holy fruit?
Then, up that ladder, a great idea came to me… here was the Lent course I’d been looking for!
And so here we are on a xx night in March exploring together holy habits.
The aim of the course over four sessions is to prompt us all to consider – deliberately and prayerfully – not just in these sessions – but over the whole of Lent – those things that we do, those things that perhaps we used to do, those things that we’ve seen others do – that prompt us and prod us into a right relationship with Christ.
What do I mean by right relationship? I mean relating to Jesus in our everyday life in all that we do. I mean aligning, or at least understanding, the connection between our physical actions, our hearts and our minds and how those connections can be deliberately used to point us to Jesus when we need Him most, or when we’re most distant from him and when the world pulls at our attention most.
The course attempts to identify those things that are small and instant – like crossing yourself at the church door – as well as those things that are big and take time – like Pilgrimage – which Fr. Sam will be talking to you about next week. It also attempts to help you think about feelings – things like gratitude – and how the deliberate calling on those kinds of thoughts can impact your physicality, your heart and even those around you.
It’s not a course that is meant to be exhaustive, but rather a prod – like a holy habit – that causes you to consider, to think to pray about and be deliberate about the way you live in the world and your moment-to-moment relationship with Jesus.
So, let’s start where I began – with the lady walking into church… in fact, let’s go further back than that and think about the church building full stop. What I’m talking about here – although focused on a building – is about our day to day life outside church – but the focus of the building here will allow us to talk through some of the actions and then in the discussion perhaps we can extrapolate those out into the rest of the world.
In many parts of the world it is quite normal when you pass a church, or some other sign of Christian life – even a hearse driving down the road – you will cross yourself. Now for a man who grew up first of all as a Methodist, before discovering the Baptist Chapel had a better ping pong table and moved there – crossing yourself is a very alien concept. Why do we do this in these moments? What is, or what should be, prompting that action.
Let’s think about that action – we touch our forehead, our stomach, and our heart. There’s physical symbolism there – but also words that pour from our mouths – or at least should do – Father, Son and Holy Spirt. Our minds, our bodies and our hearts – including our mouths are brought together in the action of and remembrance of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
When I say remembrance, I’m not using that word theologically or liturgically, but practically. The physical movement of our hands and our mouths and where our hand goes draws us into the thought of God in the trinity. The action itself can become so practiced and used that we cease to consider what it is we are doing or why we are doing it. But it is – at its heart – a blessing.
Historically the very earliest Christians were known to cross themselves – although not quite in this way. Those of you from a more catholic tradition will recognise an earlier form of this crossing – we still use it in the liturgy – it’s the moment when we read the gospel and we make the mark of a small cross on our foreheads, our mouths and our chests.
It started with just the sign of the cross on the forehead and the earliest recording of that was by Tertullian in about 200 AD – he wrote:
“In all our travels and movements, in all our coming in and going out, in putting on our shoes, at the bath, at the table, in lighting our candles, in lying down, in sitting down, whatever employment occupies us, we mark our forehead with the sign of the cross”.
By about 500 AD this had become what we recognise at the gospel, and over time it became one large cross – probably out of ease – one simple large cross that covers our body – but still importantly touches those places of mind, mouth and heart.
Interestingly over time the cause and the action have become reversed. The early Christians would cross themselves in order to bless themselves for the task at hand – the work in front of them – asking God to be in it and to bless it.
But now, the crossing is prompted by an action that prods us to think of God. We cross ourselves when we walk past a church or enter one reminding ourselves that we are a child of God – father son and holy spirit.
Some hang over of that self-blessing exists today when we see people cross themselves before a difficult act or in a moment of danger or worry – it is a cry to God for protection. Indeed the action of making a cross is the final act of the Priest in the Eucharist before you are sent out to proclaim the gospel.
So, we have an action that is both a blessing and a protection on oneself, but also a way to offer the things in front of us to the protection and love of God in the trinity.
It is why, when you start to look, you find the action of crossing yourself at the heart of so many Rules of Life. Indeed, the Rule that I live by asks me to cross myself when I wake and just as I fall asleep – an action of self-blessing and of prayer, asking God to care for me as I sleep and asking God to be in and part of my day as I wake.
It is, if you like, the simplest Rule of Life there is and one you can take away and do quietly yourself. In fact, if you don’t do this – try it over Lent and see where it takes you.
During the lockdown this was an action that I noticed I had stopped doing. And given my inability – all our inability – to be out and about and for those external prompts to cross myself – I found that small action each morning and evening to be a deeply personal and moving moment with God.
A gentle way to start the day and peaceful way to end it. Over time that has developed to an action that I continually preach on as the simplest Rule of Life:
Saying the Our Father after you cross yourself when your feet touch the ground when you get out of bed in the morning; and saying it as your feet leave the floor and you cross yourself when you go to sleep.
I’ve taken that a step further and recognising that I need an external prompt – I’ve placed a crucifix in my bedroom where I see it as soon as I wake – and it’s the last thing I see before I sleep.
So, we have a bodily action that is a least a 1000 years old, that Christians have been using since the very earliest days of the church to call on God, to bless themselves, to bless the work in front of them, and to encourage them to remember that God is in all things. Recognising that that action sometimes needs an external prompt and sometimes the action is itself a prompt.
This examination of this simplest of bodily gestures has helped me recognise where God is in my day and how I can call on Him – Father, Son & Holy Spirt – at moments in my day where I should point myself very squarely at Him.
If we take that back to our lady coming into church – before she enters church – she walks up the street and her hand comes up before she’s even thought of it and there she is – level with the church and crossing herself. This leads to a conscious thought that she should offer a prayer – the church door is open and in she goes. A physical prod that has pulled her closer to God in prayer and in action.
Now she enters the church not in a rush, but already in a state of prayer and already in a state of blessing – and that’s the crux of most bodily actions within the liturgy and our broader life – they are designed to slow us down, to pull us closer to God, to ask for his blessing in what we are doing, to be mindful of Him and Jesus teaching and how we can best deploy that in the world.
Our lady then has come through the doors of church and her hand reaches for the holy water. Another opportunity to cross herself, and this time with water that has been blessed for this purpose.
The purpose of course is to remind us of our baptism. To be reminded that our sins have been forgiven, that we come to God sinners and are washed clean in our baptism. That we fall before him in our sinfulness and seek his forgiveness, trusting in his infinite mercy and love. And all of that happens in that tiny short moment that we cross ourselves at the church door with that holy water. We are once again a child of God, tiny in his arms, cared for and carried with infinite grace.
This serves as another moment to slow us down. It shreds the armour of the world that we bring with us so that we are naked before God. We are week and we are humbled before him. The action of crossing ourselves with Holy Water does not make us strong, but makes us weak and vulnerable.
And now… now perhaps we are ready to come before God. We are ready to step into church proper and to walk to where we will pray.
As we walk – more solemnly now – we spy the tabernacle, and we drop to our knees. It is the only appropriate action. We’ve been made humble in our baptism, weak before God – and so – as we see His home here in the church – Jesus made flesh in the tabernacle – we bow… we genuflect. We recognise his kingship – not as overlord or dictator – but a king of love.
And of course this is where this action comes from. It’s an action more appropriate in a King or Queens palace than in a church. In fact – it’s a very modern physical action – and starts to appear in the liturgy around the 16th Century.
An interesting historical aside here is the use of which knee. Because this action was essentially pinched from the secular world it is distinguished for use in the holy space of a church by choosing a different knee.
In the palace one would genuflect to a King or Queen by dropping to your left knee. But in church and to God we drop to our right knee.
You see that play out when Priests drop to their knees for a blessing from their bishop – dropping not to their right knee – as they do to God – but to their left – as they do as an act of respect to a man.
But, the action has a similar practical impact as crossing yourself outside the church, then inside with the Holy Water… it slows you down and physically demands that you think about what it is you are doing.
Three moments as you come to pray in church that have prompted you to slow down, to think, to prepare yourself.
So now we have arrived at the statue of Our Lady. Calm, focused on God, Father Son & Holy Spirit and as we reach for a candle and our prayers assemble themselves in our mind we are more open to hearing the words of God in our hearts. We are more open, that God may examine us more clearly. We are in a right relationship with God as we prepare to pray.
We light our candle, we say our prayer, we stand still for a few moments and let the peace of God wash over us. We turn, slowly walk – bow as we pass the altar and out into the world once again.
The whole experience teaches us that these small, rather insignificant actions can both prompt and be prompted – that they then in turn prompt us to face God with a more deliberate mind, with a more deliberate heart and with more deliberate words. Being more open, more ready to receive and see the work of God around us not just in church but vitally throughout our whole day.
Luke 9:28-36
Well, here is a little prayer to tag onto the end of the Our Father as you get to the end and you say Amen call out to heaven and say,
Lord keep me always awake to you.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
So as our Lenten journey continues and we hear our gospel each Sunday, we continue to hear about these great moments in Jesus life. This what you might call these hinge moments, these moments upon which Jesus life hang and move. What’s just happened in Luke’s gospel just a few verses ago is that he’s asked the disciples who they think he is. And Peter has answered, he got the answer right. The disciples are finally starting to understand who precisely Jesus is now knowing the road that he is on, knowing the path that lies before him as he travels to Jerusalem, knowing that his disciples finally understand who he is.
After three years on the road with him, he now goes to his father. He climbs the mountain and he meets with Moses and Elijah. Moses representing the Law, Elijah, the prophets, Guardians of the earthly faith of the Israelites. And they have a conversation about what lies ahead, about what Jesus will ultimately experience on that cross.
Jesus speaks with Moses, he speaks with Elijah and he speaks with God. Lord, is this still what you want me to do? Is this the path that you have laid out before me? And so a voice is heard coming from the clouds. This is my son, my beloved Affirmation.
This is the right path. This must happen. There is no getting away from it. This is what must now happen. And so, once again, once again in the gospel, we see Jesus submitting to his father, not deciding to go off on his own, but submitting to God his father.
And so I say again this week, if Jesus submits to God his father, then we have no excuse. When we face those hinge moments in our life, when we face big decisions, we must do as Jesus did, we must travel to the mountain, come to Church. We must consult with the Law, with scripture, and with the prophets, our teachers and pastors. And ultimately, we must ask God, Is this the path that you have put me on? Regardless of how difficult it is, I don’t say that the clouds are going to open at that point, and God is going to reveal his answer to you in a booming voice. You’d probably have a heart attack if he did. But listen, listen to what God is saying. Ensure that you are on the right path.
So knowing this, he walks on. And Jesus continues to offer us a model of what some people would call an examined life.
Socrates said that an unexamined life is not worth living. Jesus offers us a model of an examined life. And that’s what Lent is about. It’s about examining our lives. And we’ve had this right the way through our preparation for Lent and now into our second Sunday.
And so we are given in this gospel some warnings and some examples of how to live an examined life. It’s opened up in that second part. They were heavy with sleep, but they stayed awake. Lent helps us to understand how we stay awake, and it also warns us about those things that make us heavy with sleep. Not physical sleep, but sleep of the mind sleep of our attitude to everyday life.
I’m sure that in this second week of Lent, some of us have already let our promises waver a little. I have. I’ve fallen down this week. I said that I was going to do some things for Lent, and this week when I was in Rome, a couple of those things fell by the wayside. And so now I pick myself up here and make my confession with you, my brothers and sisters.
And I set myself on the right path again, because once again, I was being drawn into sleep. We have to ensure that we keep awake in our praying, in our fasting, in our giving.
But this gospel is not just a warning, but it tells us what happens if we manage to stay awake.
It’s very hard in sermons, I know, but it’s worth it. Lent. The whole season of Lent teaches us how to stay awake because when our minds are asleep, we can miss so much. We must examine what keeps our minds asleep and awake for Jesus.
What are the things that cause our minds to be asleep?
Prejudice. We have ideas that are so set that we cannot see the glory of the work of the Holy Spirit around us. We dismiss it instantly. Prejudice keeps our minds asleep and blinds to the work of God around us.
Lethargy – I don’t really care, actually, you know what? Thinking about a new thing or thinking about an old thing that is difficult is hard. Coming to Church for the Lent course on Thursday after mass or joining online on Thursday evenings is hard. It requires you to physically get up and come somewhere. It requires you to sit and to think and to be open and to examine your face.
But lethargy drains the energy so that you simply can’t be bothered. Lethargy is the pull of the enemy, and we must push back against it.
The final thing that keeps us asleep. This is a beautiful phrase, love of ease. My father would be slightly less diplomatic, and he would call it Laziness – love of ease.
We all like to sit quietly, doing the things that we know how to do, that we don’t have to think about.
If we don’t get out there, if we don’t physically or mentally engage with the world around us, then we are being lazy in the work that God has put before us. When I hear confession, one of the confessions I hear least, but I often think I need to hear most is that of Laziness and Lethargy.
But fortunately, Lent offers us a chance to combat these things because we are or should be as eager as Peter to engage with Jesus on that mountain top. Open your eyes, open your mind and your heart, and you will see the gifts that God gives us that we only see when we are awake.
Lent gives us some ways of waking up, and this is going to sound odd, but one of the ways we are woken up in Lent is through sorrow, the sorrow of the cross, of losing Jesus on Good Friday, the sorrow and lament of knowing what stands before him.
And when you think about it, you can recognize it, because I suspect all of us have faced the loss of a loved one at some point. And in that grief and in that sorrow, you are plucked out of the everyday world and you get to see it anew. And so in Lent, walk with Jesus as he walks to the cross, in that sorrow, in that pain, and find a new perspective, a new way of relating with and spending time with Jesus.
The second tool we are given during Lent to stay awake is that of love. We talked about love a few weeks ago, didn’t we?
The three kinds of love love Eros, sexual desire, love between a man and a wife, the love that exists between brothers, and the love that exists in community. But love is hard and love is difficult and love hurts, and so we often shut ourselves off to it. And so during Lent, I ask you to open your hearts to love in whichever way that plays out for you. I found my calling from God finally, because of the love I experienced for Edmund when I held him in my arms when he was born. It was that love that broke open my heart to the work of God in my life.
Love opens doors in our lives that we didn’t even know were they. They keep us awake to the work of God in the world around us.
And finally, the thing that Lent gives us to stay awake is a sense of need. That’s what the giving part of Lent is about. It’s about identifying those problems that seem utterly insurmountable and impossible. And instead of just disregarding them, engaging with them, we can take the war in Ukraine as an example. No single one of us can attempt to even engage with what is going on.
What can we do to bring peace? But every single one of us can pray to God and do the small thing that is in front of us. Even if this is difficult, even if you don’t think it’s going to achieve anything, it could be give to the DEC so that there is money getting into Ukraine to support those most in need. It could be tomorrow signing up with a home office to take a Ukrainian refugee into your home.
It could be committing to praying for the people of Ukraine every single day when you wake up and you do each one of those small things in this huge thing that you cannot fix on your own and you are kept awake by a desire to do God’s work in the world.
We have to be awake to the work of God in the world around us to set aside the sin of laziness, the sin of lethargy, the sin of not caring. And we have to get up off our very comfortable rear ends and do something, find a new perspective, be awake to what God is calling you to do this week and so I give you a prayer.
You know that I encourage you to pray every day when you wake up in the morning, when your feet touch the ground, when you wake up, what do I ask you to do?
Pray the our Father when you go to bed at night and your little feet come off the floor and you go into bed, what do I ask you to do? Pray the our Father.
Well, here is a little prayer to tag onto the end of the Our Father as you get to the end and you say Amen call out to heaven and say,
Lord keep me always awake to you.
Amen.
Romans 10:8-13, Luke 4:1-13
…healed and restored by Scripture and by Sacrament and by fellowship with your fellow Christians and examine where you are being tempted and tell the devil to do one because he’s not welcome in your life.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, please sit.
Our second reading today talks once again about our hearts to our lips and our lips to our hearts. Hearts. And so we continue in the same vein as we have in the last few weeks, considering what a right relationship with God in our hearts and our souls look and how the relationship between our hearts and our souls and our outward actions our lips. Connect. Today, Jesus is tested as he decides to start his Ministry. And that’s a really important point in picking up this piece of scripture this week.
Just before this piece of scripture, we have the genealogy of Jesus Christ, which comes immediately after, in Luke, his baptism. And the genealogy starts with ‘as Jesus started his Ministry’. So the first thing that happens when Jesus decides to start his Ministry is that he is tempted by the devil. It’s a major milestone in his life. And so he is taken out into the desert, into the wilderness.
And when we say desert, it immediately conjures up in our mind a picture, doesn’t it? Sand and barren. I don’t know about you, but to me it’s the Sahara Desert with dunes going into the distance. But actually, if we look at the wilderness that Jesus went into, the place, it’s called Jeshimmon. It’s an area of about 35 miles by 15 miles and it sits between the central plain in Judea and the Dead Sea.
It’s Rocky, it’s incredibly inhospitable. There are high cliffs, big drops, and the heat is so much that it will Cook the insides of you. It is not a good place to be. And of course we are reading this in Lent because we are considering what our own wildernesses are.
I’m sure our Lent are not quite the same wilderness as the rocks and the stones and the inhospitable heat as the desert that Jesus was called into. But we really must consider what our own wilderness, what our own desert is. Not as an actual desert, but Lent should be hard. Lent should be difficult.
Yes, it’s a time of spiritual refreshment and that refreshment comes after the cross on Good Friday. The refreshment comes after the cross on Good Friday. It comes on Easter Sunday. That’s an important thing to remember, to consider the harshness of our Lent. And is it hard enough?
But once we’re in the desert, once we’re in the wilderness, then we have some temptations of Jesus by the devil. And that has some parallels for us. So let’s take them apart. Let’s look at how Jesus was tempted. The first thing to remember is that Jesus was not tempted as we are tempted because we are not Jesus.
The devil isn’t going to stand in front of us and say, turn these rocks into food because we can’t. But Jesus did. That’s the insidious nature of evil. When the devil stands in front of us and tempts us. He tempts us with something he knows that we can do, and he knows that we want to do.
And so we can’t disconnect the temptation of Jesus and say, well, you know, I can’t turn bread, I can’t turn stone into bread. The point is that the devil will tempt you with the things that you can do that is unique to each and every one of us. So let’s look at Jesus temptations.
The first stones into bread.You and I can’t do that. Jesus can. The devil knows it, and he’s testing him with something that he can do.
Actual bread, actual food, and what that means for his Ministry. What the devil is saying to Jesus is that you can bribe people. Your power is so awesome. Your power is so amazing that you can provide people at the start of your Ministry, remember that at the start of your Ministry, you can use your power that God has given you to bribe people.
You can give them things so that they will follow you. This is easy for you. And there is the first temptation, the temptation to find an easy way to do something.
Jesus sees the folly in this because bribing people to follow you is not really inviting people to follow you, is it? And so where does Jesus turn for his defense against the devil? He turns to Scripture. No one will ever find life in material things. The devil tempts him.
He gives him an easy way out. And Jesus resists using Scripture.
The second temptation. This time, this time, the devil offers Jesus the world and everything in it. If he worships him, if he worships evil, he’s offering Jesus an easy way to win people.
Yet again, a compromise. The devil already has people at his beck and call. He already has people in his grip. And what he’s saying to Jesus is, if you compromise with me, then I will give you these people. Jesus sees the trap in this temptation.
And once again to defend against the devil where does he turn? To scripture! And he says to the devil ‘God is God, right is right and wrong is wrong. There can be no compromise in the war on evil’.
The third temptation, a sensational show in the heart of Jerusalem. Fall from the parapet and the Angels will save you. They will sweep in and stop you from being hurt. What a show that would be. People will come flocking to see you.
No, Jesus replies, and once again replies with, you know the answer now, Scripture! ‘You must not make senseless experiments with the power of God’.
In each temptation, Jesus even Jesus, submits to God and submits to Scripture. And he uses scripture as a defense against evil.
If you take nothing else from today’s sermon, if you take nothing else from the start of Lent, take that when you are tempted, when the devil comes at you, open your Bible and defend yourself with scripture, just as Jesus did in that moment of temptation.
All right, let’s look at how those temptations can affect us here as individuals, but also as a Church, as a group of people who are going out into Hayes to bring people to know Jesus.
So we need to think in those two different ways.
The first temptation, we could bribe people to come to know Jesus. No, no. Our life as Christians is not to do good things, to change the world. It is to make new people of Christ who, because they follow Jesus, do good things that bring heaven to Earth.
Do you see the difference in those two things? If we run the food bank because we want people to come to Church, we’ve got it wrong. But if because we love Jesus and Jesus loves us, we are compelled to run the food bank, that’s a sign of a healthy Christian community. It must always be that way round. That is how people discover the love of Jesus, because otherwise people will discover the love of running the food bank.
People will discover the love of doing flowers, but they won’t discover the love of Jesus. That has to come first.
The second temptation – compromising with evil. We as Christians are not people of grey. We don’t operate in the Gray.
We operate, as C. S. Lewis said in the black and white. We are not called to go, ‘mmmm maybe that is okay’.
We are called to say this is right and this is wrong. The constant temptation is to compromise with the world in order to get more people through the door. And it is a big temptation, isn’t it? The temptation is to compromise with the world and to compromise with evil because we want people to like us as individuals. But any compromise with evil will ultimately fail.
Why? Because God is God, right is right and wrong ir wrong.
The third temptation sensation a show – perhaps the biggest temptation for me because I love a show. Sensation. It causes a big splash, and it does work. If you cause a sensation, it does work, but it only works for a short time.
It is a transparent faith. It is a transparent journey. It provides amusement in a world that is driven by sensation. But our faith our faith as Christians is slow. Our faith as Christians is small.
Our faith as Christians is putting one in front of the other, doing the good thing after the good thing. And when we stumble, picking each other up so that we can once again take those small steps, our faith exists deep in our heart and our souls. And that small, tiny faith is sufficient to shine through so strongly that it will bring other people to Jesus.
So then Lent, we have to think about where we are being tempted as a Church, as a community and as individuals. What is the Devil’s unique temptation for each and every one of us.
Is it money? Is it desire? Is it power?
Are we being bribed by the world? Is it through compromise? Making those small compromises that I talked about last week? Is it through sensation? Is it waiting to see the next big exciting thing?
Only you can answer that and that’s what Lent is for. To consider what that may be and defend against it. Do as Jesus did, turn to Scripture, submit to God and start your Ministry anew walking as Jesus did from that point onwards towards the cross. Walk towards the cross with Jesus knowing your temptation, turning your back on it with Scripture in your heart and mind because you know what comes next – the glorious Resurrection on Easter Sunday.
Brothers and sisters go home this week renewed, healed, restored by coming together here this Sunday renewed, healed and restored by Scripture and by Sacrament and by fellowship with your fellow Christians and examine where you are being tempted and tell the devil to do one because he’s not welcome in your life.
Amen.
Matthew 6:1-6,16-18
My brothers and sisters, I pray that you have a good lent a lent refocused on Jesus Christ. A lent refocused on what good you can do in the world. A lent refocused on a new new life of prayer.
The name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
the Gospel for Ash Wednesday gives us the model of a good Lent, a good Lent being giving alms, a good Lent being praying to God your Father, and a good Lent being fasting. And in each of these three sections of the gospel, we’re told exactly how to do that.
And it carries on reading from our reading on Sunday, we were talking about the goodness in our hearts. We were talking about the fact that the good works, good actions, good deeds. A good Christian life comes from within your heart, within your soul. And if you’re not in the right place with God, then your outward actions will not be great either. And so Lent is an opportunity to reset your relationship with God, to reset your life within the bounds of the Christian life that Jesus calls to.
And we are given these three ways of doing it. First of all, to give alms during lent. We should think very carefully about those causes, those people, those situations where our money, meager as it may be, could make a difference. So supporting the food bank here at the Church, supporting people in Ukraine with the various charity appeals that are going on, there are lots of ways that your money can make a difference in the world. That’s the outpouring of good that is in your heart.
But don’t do it to make yourself look good or to make yourself feel good. That’s not the point. You’re not giving money to look good in front of your peers. If you’re shouting about how much money you give to charity, then you’re not doing it for the right reasons. And the reason Jesus pulls that apart is because it shows a disconnect between the actions and the heart.
And of course, that’s what the word hypocrite means. It doesn’t mean in its modern sense we have today where you say one thing and do another. But what it means is that the connection between your heart and your soul and the action isn’t there. What do I mean by that? Well, I mean that if you’re doing something good and it is obviously good, giving money to charity is a good thing, but you’re only doing it in order to look good, then you’re not doing it in order to serve God.
And that’s what hypocrite means. So I do it for the wrong reasons.
The second part of the gospel tells us how to pray, and in lent, we have an opportunity to examine our prayer lives. We’ll be exploring that in the Lent course as part of Holy habits. What is your daily prayer life like? In 40 something days is just about the right amount of time to form a new habit.
So look again at your prayer life in Lent. Are you praying? Are you praying at all? Are you praying every day? How are you praying?
Examine it spend time in prayer every single day. The thing that I always recommend is that if you find it difficult to pray during the day, then when you wake in the morning and your feet touch the floor, say the Our Father. When you go to bed at night and your feet leave the floor, say the Our Father, start there and everything else will quietly go on. It’s not about coming to Church more often and being seen here. It’s not about being publicly more pious.
It is about developing your personal relationship with God through prayer.
And then finally fasting. This is the thing that, of course, gets dropped most frequently. And in fact, it seems now that there is a – let’s call it a fashion – that instead of fasting you take something up. So instead of giving something up, I’m going to take something new up. I’m going to learn something new.
I’m going to spend some extra time in devotions. And I’m afraid to say I think that falls into the trap that Jesus warned us about in prayer. It’s about being publicly pious. The idea of fasting is that you deny yourself something so that you may understand in some small idea the suffering that Jesus went through for you. You deny yourself quietly and subtly so that your mind is concentrated each time you feel hunger or you go to do something and you correct yourself and that’s what the action of fasting is really about.
It’s a way of helping you correct any bad habits that you have developed through greed, gluttony. And I appreciate that it is me stood here telling you that.
So fast. Give something up for lent that you may be focused on Jesus Christ when you physically react to that fasting.
Pray not, ostentatiously, not piously in public, but quietly in your room at home.
Give alms, not to feel good, but because it is the outward action of a good and Holy relationship with God.
My brothers and sisters, I pray that you have a good lent a lent refocused on Jesus Christ. A lent refocused on what good you can do in the world. A lent refocused on a new new life of prayer.
Amen.
Ecclesiasticus 27:5-8, 1 Corinthians 15:54-58, Luke 6:39-45
So on Tuesday, I urge you, please come, be shriven of your sin. Come and kneel in front of Jesus Christ, make your confession. Clean your heart and your soul so that your actions and your words may be those of God.
The name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Please sit.
All of our readings today point us in much the same direction as our readings last week. They talk about our character, and they call us to interrogate our character as we prepare for Lent.
The readings are drawing a connection between our hearts and our actions.
What better definition of character is there? But that our actions match with what is in our hearts. And Jesus is telling us that that is indeed what happens. We act out of the goodness in our heart, or we act out of the badness that is in our heart. If our hearts are filled with good things, then we will act in good ways.
But if our hearts are full of bad things, then we will act in wrong ways. There is an element here, I think of Jesus telling us, and certainly St. Paul telling us that we can talk ourselves into sin. We can talk ourselves. We can behave our way into deeper and more terrible sin.
In fact, it’s a well known phenomenon, and it’s called limit creep. Who’s heard of limit creep? Nobody, I am sure. But this is from my research and development days. And it used to be thought that it was just one of those things that happened that you had to keep an eye on.
But actually, limit creep can lead to deadly consequences. And this is why the Challenger space shuttle crashed. This is why the Challenger space shuttle blew up. It’s called limit creep. There was a part on that space shuttle that had a safe operating range between this temperature and this temperature and in pre flight checks they would look at the temperature reading and they would say, yeah, it’s within the limit. We can go. And then one launch, everything was okay, except that it was one degree off the safety margin. The engineers looked at it and they went, no, we think that’s probably all right. We think that one degree off will be fine.
And so the space shuttle launched and everything was fine. And then the next time they launched, it was two degrees out. But everybody said, well, actually, it was here last time. So one degree more, that’s fine. We can go.
And the space shuttle launched. And that happened four or five times. Now, all of a sudden, you have a safety margin that has gone from here in very small stages right the way to here. And all of a sudden, the space shuttle is operating nearly ten degrees out of its safety margin. But because it’s happened in small chunks, because it’s happened in tiny, incremental steps, nobody’s noticed.
But if you open the book and look at the safety thing, it’ll tell you you should never launch ten degrees out of the safety margin. But those small steps, those small creeping forward out of the safety margin resulted in that ship exploding with a dreadful loss of all on board.
Now, sin is exactly the same as the safety margins in the book of that space shuttle. The Bible is our manual. The Bible tells us where our safety margins are.
When you come to Church and you hear preaching, do you hear where it is safe to operate? You can operate between here and here. This is a good place to be. Here is the teaching of Jesus Christ between here and here. But then one day you move a little bit out of that margin, don’t you?
You do one little thing and you go, Actually, it was fine. Nothing’s really changed. It’s all fine. And then the next day you said a little bit more, and then the next day, a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more. And before you know it, you are operating way outside of the safety margin of Christ’s teaching.
And the consequences for your eternal soul are just as damaging as the consequences of that awful disaster.
And so this week, we are called to look at our safety margin. We are called to examine our life and pick up the instructional manual, to pick up scripture and to go, actually, am I still operating inside Christian teaching, or have I started to move beyond it? I’ll give you an example of one of the easiest ways we start to fall into sin, and it’s gossip.
Gossip is that little sliver of sin that infects us all. When we sit down and have a coffee with our friends and we start talking about so-and-so and what they’re doing, and we start judging what they are doing, we say, can you believe that they went and did that? Well, I’ve heard. Have you seen how they’re treating their son? What about this?
What about that? And we’ve all done it. And before you know it, that gossip is judgment, that gossip is putting yourself on a pedestal over the top of someone else, that gossip turns into other things. And before you know it, oh, well, it’s not really gossip. We’re just sharing news, you’ve reframed how it is to live as a Christian.
Well, fortunately, there are ways to combat this. There are ways to combat this limit creep in our Christian life. I would call those things Holy habits. And indeed, that is the focus of our Lent course starting on the 17 March. Our Lent course is called Holy Habits.
They are things that pull us back into Christian teaching. They are things that pull us back into a tighter relationship with God. Things like when you come into Church, placing your finger in the Holy water, crossing yourself and genuflecting to Jesus Christ in the Tabernacle. In that moment, you are humbled before Jesus. And in that moment, perhaps Jesus will show you where you are pushing out of living a good Christian life.
Things like pilgrimage, where as a habit of something that you will do once or twice a year you will take yourself off somewhere to listen to what God is telling you, to listen as God pulls you back into a good way of living. Of gratitude, of listening to God and looking in your daily life and being grateful for the gifts that God gives you, being grateful for the Christian life that God calls you to, because that life is not restrictive. It is lifegiving of things like daily prayer and reading the Bible every day. Those habits pull you back into a good Christian life. Not so that you can be better than everybody else, not so that you can look at other people and go, oh, look at me, I’m a much better Christian than them. But because your heart will be full of goodness and because your soul will be full of the work of Jesus Christ, and so therefore your actions will be full of goodness and your life will be the life of Jesus Christ out in the world.
But there is another Holy habit which people find hard and which I am going to appeal to you today to make use of. Because on Tuesday it is Shrove Tuesday, it is the day that you are shriven of your sins. It is a moment of correction, of looking at your life and going, I am living way out of the safety margin of a Christian life. I want to bring it back in.
And by coming to confession, by embracing the Sacrament of reconciliation, you get to go. God, I have gossiped. God, I have done these things wrong. Lord, I seek your forgiveness. You can fall to your knees and seek God’s mercy and love and be made right again.
It is an amazing corrective. We offer it here every Tuesday, evening after evening prayer. We offer confession before Advent and before Lent are traditional periods where you would go and make your confession. And so I urge you this year to take advantage of confession. It happens over there in front of Jesus, and it is to Jesus and it is to God that you make your confession, not to me but to God.
And I want to address something that I’m sure worries some of you. The only person who will ever hear of your sin is God. You will find your Parish priest in jail long before the seal of the confession is ever broken. When you make your confession in this place to your Parish priest, it is not to me, it is to God, and I assure you of absolute and complete discretion.
So on Tuesday, I urge you, please come, be shriven of your sin. We’ll be hearing confessions after evening prayer, and I’ll be here as long as is needed. Come and kneel in front of Jesus Christ or sit, if you can’t kneel, make your confession, be shriven of your sins and reset your life within the safe bounds of the Christian life that God calls us to. Clean your heart and your soul so that your actions and your words may be those of God.
Amen.
1 Samuel 26:2,7-9,11-13,22-23, 1 Corinthians 15:45-49, Luke 6:27-38
Because as Christians. We are called to something different. We are called not simply to refrain from doing bad things, but to actively do good things.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Please take a seat.
so as we head into Lent, we prepare to think about our character’s. Who are we? Who does God call us to be? What does it mean to be a Christian?
Well, let’s start with our Old Testament reading with Samuel, and you can see Saul has done something dreadful to David usurped the throne. David has no reason to give Saul anything. And God puts in David’s hands this perfect opportunity to slay his enemy. It couldn’t be more perfect.
A deep sleep came upon Saul’s camp, and David was able to walk in. David walks in and he finds the spear right next door to Saul, and Abishai says to him, David, we can end this now. Let’s do it. And picks up the spear. But David says, no, let’s not do that.
Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m not sure that I would necessarily have the same restraints. David not only didn’t take revenge, but he left the camp with the sword and made a proclamation said to everybody within hearing that he wouldn’t raise his hand against the Lord’s anointed. Now, that speaks to David’s character. It speaks to who God has called David to be. What would you have done in the same situation if somebody had taken everything from you?
If somebody had robbed you of your life, your livelihood, your living, and everything around you, and you were sent out into the desert to be on your own, and you had that opportunity before you? What would you do? But that last line helps us understand where our scripture is taking us today. David will not raise his hand against the Lord’s anointed, and that is setting the Jewish people out as the anointed, as the people who will be saved. And so David will not raise his hand against the people who are set aside to be saved.
But Jesus goes further, a lot further. And Jesus talks about everyone, even your enemies. Jesus doesn’t just say the people that you know and that you like. Jesus says that you have to forgive and you have to act in the way that David acts to everybody, and particularly you have to do it to your enemies. You have to go that step further.
Jesus sets out exactly what it means to live, as Paul puts it in Corinthians a heavenly life, to be a heavenly man. And so this commandment to love your enemies is probably the most debated and the most discussed in theological colleges and amongst theologians. What does it mean? Can I come up with a way to change it so that Jesus somehow tells me that what I should do is hit my enemy? Can I change it so that somehow Jesus says that I have to destroy my enemy?
Can I change it so that all I have to really do is ignore my enemy? Well, let’s look at it. Let’s look and see if we can do that. As you know, I’m not normally a fan of doing Greek in sermons, but in this case, it’s important because the word for love here, the English word love is simply not enough to describe love in scripture. There are three words for love that we want to try and understand.
There is love in terms of sex, in terms of physical love, the love that you have for your wife, for your husband, for your boyfriend, for your girlfriend. There is love that you have for your family and for your friends, a kinship, that special bond. And then there is love there is a love of benevolence. That is a love that is for everybody else, Eran, love of sex, love in the sexual act, Philian, love for your friends and family, Aagapan, And that’s the word that we have here in the scripture. Love, beneficent, love. That Agapan. It’s a huge concept. It’s really big.
And it’s that love. It’s that love, that Agapan. That means that the love that David still has for Saul means that he didn’t act on the opportunity that was in front of him. Because David loved Saul, he had that love of benevolence. That is a love that it means that no matter what you do to me, I desire nothing but the highest good for you.
It’s a love that encourages us to go out of our way, to be good and kind.
We cannot love our enemies as partners, Eran or as loved ones – Philian – that’s not right. But we can seek nothing but good for our enemies. And when you start to understand that’s what this word means in this scripture, then it starts to open it up. This love, this Agapan is a doing word.
It’s not a passive word. It’s not something that you can put on a Tshirt. God is love. It’s a doing word. It is something that you have to practice and go out and do.
The Christian expression of love for our enemies is an act of love. It is doing love. It is not the absence of bad, but the action of doing good. And it’s one of the defining differences between Christians and many other faiths and philosophies that we see in the world. Jewish scripture, the Stoics, Confucius, amongst many others, have a very similar saying.
The way that they phrase it is like this,
What is hateful to thee do not do to another.
Do you see the difference there? What is hateful to you don’t do to another. It’s a negative.
But to be Christian, to follow Jesus means to DO unto others what you would have them DO unto you. Do you see the difference? And that is one of the defining differences between Christians and other faiths and philosophies. It’s one of the things that I say to people when they say, well, it’s all the same, isn’t it? No, it’s not.
Because as Christians. We are called to something different. We are called not simply to refrain from doing bad things, but to actively do good things.
Jesus goes further than that. He says, not only must we do good things, but we have to do the extra thing. Jesus gives examples of people doing good things. Even sinners. Sinners.
Even sinners. Even sinners. And then he dismisses all of it by saying, So how is that special? How is that different?
It’s one thing to be as good as your neighbor. It’s one thing to be as good as people around you. It’s one thing to be as good as the world tells you is good enough. But we as Christians measure ourselves and model ourselves against the heavenly man, not the earthly man. That’s what Paul is pulling out there in Corinthians.
We are called to do more. We are called to be better when we call ourselves Christians. This is the measure. This is the model. God’s love embraces the saint and the sinner.
And it is his love that we must copy that we must emulate that we must model if we truly want to be a heavenly people.
Amen
I know how much you all love a bit of Greek on a Sunday.
Luke 6:17,20-26
Those who experience poverty and grief and hunger are the good soil in which the seeds of the gospel can easily take root.
[automatically transcribed]
A few years ago when I began to seriously discern my vocation to the priesthood, I used to volunteer in a Church food bank. Susan, I’m sure remembers that time. I could spend some considerable time relating stories that I heard of great suffering and woe, and I lost count of the times that I left the food bank almost in tears and feeling utterly useless.
Instead, I’d rather like to relate one particular incident which left a rather strong impression on me. On Saturday morning there was a man who came in and he arrived carrying a rucksack and a tent, and he was by appearance, no young man.
He appeared to be in his late 60s, but he still carried himself upright and despite his faded and well worn clothing there was a sense of purpose about him and he looked fit. To cut a long story short, it transpired that he had served in the army.
Like all ex soldiers, he was very reluctant to talk about himself, but he mentioned some names and places with which I was familiar as an ex service man myself. But what happened then was that despite having fallen on hard times, he was not allowing himself to feel any self pity. And in fact, when other people started to come into the food bank that morning, he actively engaged with them and began to volunteer alongside us and help them.
The man told me that his name was Steve, and yet despite all of the hardship that he was clearly going through, he showed complete and utter compassion, despite his own obvious difficulties, to all the other people who were coming in that morning.
I commented on this to him, and his reply was that it was his duty to help others. Even though he had left the army some ten years previously, it still felt a duty and an obligation for him to help others, even though they were complete strangers, he could recognize that they too were going through great difficulties. And he said that whilst his training enabled him to make the best of any situation or good or bad, he would never sit back passively and allow suffering to go on without him trying to intervene in some way or other.
I came to the conclusion then that the very people that society seems to deem as being poor or living on the margins all too frequently display an openness that those with great wealth tend to lack. And I see the same sentiment in the Gospel reading that we’ve just heard. The very openness is the revelation of God’s Kingdom. We know that Luke in his Gospel, which we have just heard, gives us the famous Sermon on the Plane. It has very similar elements to Matthew’s Gospel version, but there are several key differences.
While Matthew is interested in Jewish tradition and worship and therefore places Jesus symbolically on a Mount, hence the Sermon on the Mount, Luke seems more interested in placing Jesus on level ground in solidarity with the masses of people who came to be healed. We can interpret this healing in many ways, surely the kind associated with physical ailments, but also with economic and political healing, something more in line with liberation. In a way, while Matthew talks of the poor in spirit, there is no way of dismissing Luke’s emphasis on the economic poor. It should also be noted that this passage directly follows the passage where Jesus calls the Twelve Apostles from amongst his disciples and from this point on, Luke later on says, When Jesus turns his face towards the cross in Jerusalem. We have a series of teachings, a series of healing, and a series of parables about what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ, or, to put it another way, to live as though the Kingdom of God is here now.
It may help looking at Holy Scripture to focus on various themes such as discipleship or the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God plays a great prominent role within this Holy Scripture. The poor are blessed and the Kingdom belongs to them. Jesus continues to place blessings and woes juxtaposed poor and rich, hungry and well fed, mourning and laughing, hate and beloved. We struggle with the idea that the Kingdom seems to privilege a particular group of people simply based on their social condition or social advantages.
Through no choice of their own, the poor are blessed. We much prefer the relationship established in Matthew, which is much easier to visualize and spiritualize. We can make sense of blessings to those who are poor in spirit. It seems much more inclusive, but Luke’s gospel is consistent in incorporating the economic poor, the financially poor within God’s history of Salvation, and opposing the rich. Luke’s gospel is the only one that includes Zacchaeus, the rich young ruler, the rich fool, and the unjust steward.
Luke tells us that there is a direct relationship between poverty and hunger and mourning to the experience of the Kingdom of God. But how can this relationship be defined? I perceive that there are a few things happening. First, Luke is writing in a context in which the Church is slowly beginning to emerge in its infancy. Questions revolve around relationships between the Church and the synagogue, the Roman Empire, and the significance that Jesus has yet to return.
In the meantime, the followers of the way still live on the outskirts of an Empire that puts great emphasis on power through a violent hierarchical structure. The new religious sect – Christians – are small, insignificant, poor, and highly ostracized and alienated, both by the pagans around them and by the Jewish Peoples as well. Perhaps Luke’s admonition that the world will hate you if you follow after Jesus is a way, in fact, to encourage the growing Church in the present adversity. It could also mean that the following way of the cross is also a missional call of solidarity with the world’s poor that have been hung up on crosses of poverty. If the cross is God’s ultimate no to the world’s, violence and the resurrection is the renewal of God’s life for the world, then we resurrected ones, protest and resist all the forces that continue to bring death, poverty, and hunger are among the chief, most oppressive systems that we can think of.
And so we come to another Lent through which we can focus our gaze. Power. The crowds pressed in on Jesus and wanted to touch him because power would come out of him and heal them. Power is not an evil thing in itself. There are many different sources of power. Simply expressed, power is the ability to do or to change oneself or others or our own environment.
We see this in the passage of Jesus power to heal. However, if we focus on the idea of power into blessings and woes of this part of Scripture, we can begin to see how Luke links rich and poor together. St. Basil the Great continues this connection when he wrote a homily called To the Rich, and I’ll just quote a little bit from it.
How did you come by this abundance of wealth? Care for the needy requires the expenditure of wealth. When all share alike, distributing their possessions among themselves, they each receive a small portion for their individual needs. How else can this be but that you have preferred your own enjoyment to the consolation of the many? For the more you abandon wealth, the more you lack in love.
Wealth is one of the sources of power which allows human beings to change, but it also directly connects to those who are poor.
How wealth is used is what matters. Both Luke and Saint Basil tend to lean towards the idea that wealth should be used for the good of the whole community. Woe to the rich because they have allowed their hearts to turn inwardly. Salvation is difficult for them because they have no reason to need or turn towards a savior. Woe to them because they have received their consolation already.
God reveals to the humble of heart the true source of abundant life and happiness. Jesus promises the disciples that the joys of heaven will be more than compensation for the troubles and hardships that they can expect to face in this world. A great Church Doctor, St. Thomas Aquinas, said,
no person can live without joy. That is why someone deprived of spiritual joy goes after carnal pleasures.
St. Ambrose of Milan said the following,
When I have laid aside every sin and I have taken off all malice, I am content with simplicity, destitute of evils. All that remains is that I regulate my conduct. For what good does it do me to lack worldly goods unless I am meek and gentle?
The poor and the marginalized, though know the injustice of the situation, and they therefore accept the Kingdom of God with willingness and openness, they recognize intuitively that the Kingdom of God and poverty are incompatible,and that the embrace of Jesus Christ is the means to reestablish justice.
Those who experience poverty and grief and hunger are the good soil in which the seeds of the gospel can easily take root.
In the name of the father and of the son and of the Holy spirit.
Luke 5:1-11
…and when you listen to the prompting of Jesus and you are open to the work of miracles around you, then miracles will happen. But only when you are open to the prompting of Jesus and only when you have an eye to see them.
The name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Please sit.
Our gospel today sits within a series of readings that we’ve had over the last couple of weeks of transition. We think particularly of Candlemats last week. Candlemass is a feast of transition, sitting as it does 40 days after Christmas, which, of course, means it sits between the winter Equinox and the spring solstice. And so we have that transition, that movement from darkness into light. And our gospel continues that theme of transition.
Last week we heard Jesus preaching in the synagogue and he will come back and preach in the synagogue again. But this reading here in Luke marks the point at which Jesus starts to preach outside of the synagogue. He’s transitioning from preaching inside the synagogue to the Jewish people within that building to everybody outside. Now, ultimately, of course, the doors of the synagogue will be closed to Jesus, and Jesus will be completely on the road. His pulpit will be a mound, his pulpit will be the boat, and people will come and listen to him. Now, do you remember last week I told you how big Nazareth was? Can any of you remember how big Nazareth was? 20,000 people? Yeah, it was a town.
It was huge. And where Genesette was on the Sea of Galilee. It’s different now. But then there were about nine huge towns around that sea. And Interestingly, it sits about 600 meters below sea level.
It’s in a dip in the Earth. And these nine settlements that sat around the sea were where Jesus preached and where Jesus healed – each of those settlements and the smallest of them had 15,000 people in them. And so this transition of being in the synagogue with a few people to being on the road with tens of thousands of people marks that huge transition in Jesus Ministry. It is, of course, a huge opportunity for Jesus to preach the good news to everybody, not just those who go to the building to hear the word of God, but to everybody and how many of Jesus miracles and I know you’re all sick of me saying it, but how many of Jesus miracles start with a miracle of the crowds being so big that Jesus has to retreat a little so that he can preach for them?
That, of course, is a model for us here at St. Anselm. To remember that we are not just here in this building to preach to those who want to come on a Sunday morning or to those who come to morning prayer or daily Mass or evening prayer, but to go out there in Hayes and preach the Gospel as Jesus did. And that, of course, is what we have been starting to do. And now that COVID blessedly is retreating, we shall be moving up again with that. With, we pray, the appointment of a mission priest here in Hayes who will be based here at St. Anselm, but whose job will be to be out there preaching, as Jesus did in that boat on the Sea of Galilee.
Now when you read these Gospels and you read where I always say, well, the first miracle, of course, was that there were so many people there that Jesus had to pull out, that can kind-of diminish a miracle. What do we mean by a miracle? And I’m always reticent to say that Jesus’s miracles were not miracles. They were just the everyday things that some of us don’t happen to see.
But in this case, I do wonder about the miracle, and I wonder about Jesus on that boat with Simon Peter. And I wonder if instead of divine inspiration, what happened there was that Jesus saw something that nobody else did. That in itself, of course, can be a miracle. And I was thinking about what did Jesus see that the others didn’t? He saw that big Shoal of fish.
That’s no great miracle in itself. But if we apply that to the world around us, I started thinking, well, I wonder how many people saw apples fall from trees before Newton saw one and realized that it was gravity. Is that the same kind of miracle that we saw Jesus perform on the boat? And I came to the conclusion that, yes, yes, it was. And it is a miracle that all of us can partake in.
It is having an eye for the miraculous around us. It is having an eye for what God has put in front of us and inquiring deeply and looking for it in the world, because when we stop looking for miracles, we stop seeing them. But when we open our eyes to seeing a miracle, then we will see them. And the circumstances of this miracle are really interesting because what Luke is telling us here is that it was the wrong time, so they finished fishing. Fishing happens at night, and this was in the daytime, so it was the wrong time.
The people who were there to do the fishing did not want to go and do the fishing. They were tired and fed up and they had been out and they had tried to fish and they had come up with nothing. The circumstances were less than ideal. But Jesus said to those men, Come on, let’s go do this. And those men, and it’s the second half of the gospel that I think is the most powerful, those men listened to Jesus. Even though all of the circumstances were wrong, they listened.
And when they listened and they opened their eyes to see what was in front of them, they encountered a miracle that still happens even when we are tired, even when we are fed up, even when the circumstances aren’t right, we can all sit here and go, well, you know what? The weather is great today. I don’t think I’ll go to Church or actually, you know what? I could talk to that person about coming to Church or I could talk to that person about Jesus. I don’t think they’re quite in the right place to hear it, so I’ll leave it alone.
There will always be reasons not to preach the gospel. There will always be reasons to not see a miracle around you. But this gospel and this series of readings we’ve had over the last few weeks that idea of transition is about opening our eyes to the miracle and the work God around us. And when we see it, we can do nothing else except – regardless of the circumstances – tell our friends about it.
Over the next few months you’re going to hear me get an awful lot more enthusiastic about going out there and preaching the gospel. I feel in many ways over the last twelve months we’ve had our shoe laces tied together and we haven’t been able to go out and preach as much as we want to, but we continued and will grow to go and do that and more to be open to the prompting of Jesus every day.
And so this week what I would like you to do is start to think about where Jesus prompting you – not in the big stuff, but in the little stuff be open to where Jesus is prompting you day to day. When you get up in the morning, what is Jesus prompting you? Is it that thing that you’ve been putting off or is it that conversation that you’ve not wanted to have? And when you listen to the prompting of Jesus and you are open to the work of miracles around you, then miracles will happen. But only when you are open to the prompting of Jesus and only when you have an eye to see them.
Amen.
1 Corinthians 12:31-13:13 – Luke 4:21-30
We forget that our entire lives are a journey of change. We get wrapped up in me. I come as I am, and I am perfect as I am, because this is the way God has made me, and that’s it.
But that is pride, that is ego. So we must face the journey that Jesus calls us on with humility. And we must trust that our brothers and sisters around us will hold us in that humility, in that fragility, in that place of pain and hurt, because it does hurt to hear things and to be told that we’re not doing things as well as we could do and know that our brothers and sisters will hold us in love.
[automatically transcribed]
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Please sit.
And so we continue our gospel reading from last week. We pick up Jesus speaking in the synagogue and that wonderful sermon from Bishop Jonathan, which is on the website for you to have a listen to, and I urge you to do so.
It was a beautiful sermon, and Bishop Jonathan talked about how Jesus spoke in the synagogue. But as we continue this week, what seems like a perfectly normal event in the synagogue, Jesus reading from the scrolls that were given him and teaching. He was a Rabbi. He was a teacher. People sat and listened to him.
What on earth caused them to be so angry? Why did they go from listening to what the Rabbi was teaching and hearing the scripture and listening to what he had to say to being so angry, so outraged? It feels like it spins on a coin.
The reason they were angry is because Jesus was talking about Salvation for the Gentiles. And as far as the Jewish people who were gathered there were concerned the only thing the Gentiles were useful for and the way they talked about the Gentiles was, and the phrase was, as fuel for the fires of hell.
And Jesus is telling them that the Gentiles are going to be saved, the Gentiles, everybody will be taken up into heaven. And so all of a sudden, the Jewish people were outraged. The people of the synagogue were outraged by this.
All of a sudden, Jesus was saying that God’s love was not just for a few, but for all. And that was groundbreaking. And that meant that the Jewish people in that synagogue had to consider the other, the outsider, the person who wasn’t in the club.
To help us understand that a little bit. Let’s talk about Nazareth now.
Nazareth, when I say Nazareth to you, I imagine what comes to mind is a village. And part of the reason for that is because we think about Bethlehem as a village, which in those days it was, and we think about small groups of people in a village. But Nazareth wasn’t a village. Nazareth was a town. It was a city.
It was large. There were as many as 20,000 people living in Nazareth. This was not a small little village on the outskirts of Israel. This is a place that is bounded by three major roads that go through Jerusalem. You’ve got the main road that goes to Jerusalem that all the pilgrims are on.
You have the main Damascus – Egypt road, which all the trade goes along, and you have the main road that takes you to the sea, to the Mediterranean. And so Nazareth was a bustling large town of 20,000 people that constantly had different people coming through it, constantly had people from far away places, constantly had non Jewish people coming through it. And so the people of this synagogue had sat there and they put their blinkers on and they had said, we are set aside for God and nobody else is allowed or will be saved by God. And Jesus just in that one little line threw all of that out.
And he didn’t say to them because this feels right. He didn’t say to them because it’s a good thing to do. He argued and told them it was the right thing to do because that’s what the scripture showed. That is what the Old Testament showed, what we call the Old Testament. And he uses Elijah and he uses those great examples of the first part, the Old Testament, as we know, as the example of the fact that the Gentiles were healed and were included in Salvation. That is a really hard thing to hear.
And I’ve got sympathy for the people in that synagogue because how many times have you sat in Church and listened to a sermon or how many times have you sat in Church and listened to a piece of scripture and it has made you uncomfortable? How many times have you come to Church and you’ve listened to the pastor say something and you’ve gone, no, no, I don’t agree with that. That’s not right because it’s not nice, because it doesn’t feel like the right thing to do. And often pastors when they point to scripture and say, this is why you should do this, this is why this is right or this is why this is wrong, people will go, yeah, but it makes me feel bad. Jesus doesn’t care if you feel bad.
It’s here in the gospel. He stands in front of the people who know him best, and he tells them something deeply upsetting, something that is so far beyond the pale, so offensive that they grab hold of him and take him to the top of a hill to throw him off it.
Now, I hope that I will never stand up in front of you in this place and tell you something so offensive that you will grab hold of me and take me up onto the Chilterns to throw me off in escarpments. But you should be prepared to be made uncomfortable in Church. You should be prepared to hear things that you don’t agree with. And it’s very interesting because as most of you know, I put out a little message on Sunday mornings most days, and I put it out on Facebook and on Twitter and on WhatsApp? And I say, come to Church, be loved and come and be accepted into our family.
But this morning I put out a message that says, come to Church and hear something you don’t agree with. Now on a normal Sunday morning, my little tweet gets retweeted five or six times by different people and it gets liked 20 or 30 times. But today not a one, not one person liked it. Not one person retweeted it because people don’t like to hear things that are hard to hear, but that is what it is, part of what being a Christian is about, just as it was for the Jewish people all of that time ago in Nazareth. And how often do we judge a Church or judge a community by whether or not we already agree with what they prove?
Increasingly in our society, we think people are great when we agree with them, and we think they are evil when we disagree with them. But I urge you to be more open than that. I urge you not to caricature anybody because of whether or not you instinctively think they are right or wrong, but to listen to what they have to say. Jesus himself went to synagogue, even when it must have grated dreadfully for him when he was hearing things that he fundamentally didn’t agree with. But he went and he was part of the worshipping community, because it is that community of people rubbing up alongside one another, that worshipping community of God that forms us into that likeness of Christ, ready for heaven.
And so you will come here and you will hear things that you don’t like. But here is the rub. Jesus came and brought with him a gospel, the good news. Jesus preaches the good news. Each and every one of us has the opportunity to be saved, and that opportunity is offered in love.
Every single person is welcome through that door. Every single person, regardless of their beliefs, regardless of the life that they have led, is welcome through that door. And we will welcome every single person who comes through that door, every single pace person in Hayes, through the gift of faith, hope and love. And in that action of faith, hope and love, that person will be brought into our family, embraced. We pray that they will find Jesus Christ, that in finding Jesus Christ, they will be changed.
And that’s the bit that those of us who come to Church sometimes forget. We forget that our entire lives are a journey of change. We get wrapped up in me. I come as I am, and I am perfect as I am, because this is the way God has made me, and that’s it.
But that is pride, that is ego. So we must face the journey that Jesus calls us on with humility. And we must trust that our brothers and sisters around us will hold us in that humility, in that fragility, in that place of pain and hurt, because it does hurt to hear things and to be told that we’re not doing things as well as we could do and know that our brothers and sisters will hold us in love.
And we are changed by that action. We are changed by the love of those around us. And we must always be open to the change that Jesus Christ calls us to.
And so this week, I want you to think about who you are in this gospel.
Are you the Gentiles that Jesus speaks of that will be healed through loving him and knowing him? Or are you the people in the synagogue who are outraged at the very idea that God welcomes all?
I get it wrong regularly I fall and stumble most weeks not just on this, but on many things, but the thing about stumbling is that you generally end up on your knees and you can ask for forgiveness, you can ask for love within your faith of hope in the future that you will become more like Jesus Christ every day.
So when you stumble this week, when you fall, when you make mistakes fall to your knees and ask Jesus for the strength to be better, to change, to be Jesus in the world.
Amen.
Nehemiah 8:2-6,8-10 Psalm 18(19):8-10,15 1 Corinthians 12:12-14,27 & Luke 1:1-4,4:14-21
…and what was given to the Lord to do in that unique way that was his mission in this world is now given to us. We are to be Christ through those doors to this community who needs him and his love and his Spirit.
[automatically transcribed]
I want to take us initially not to the readings that we’ve just heard, but to Easter day, to the evening of the first Easter day when two disciples are walking away from Jerusalem and they are on the road to Emmaus. It’s one of my absolutely favourite resurrection stories anywhere in the Gospels. And you’ll remember, I’m sure, what happens that those two disciples are walking along and talking to one another about all that has happened in Jerusalem over the previous few days.
And a stranger comes and walks with them. And as they walk further along the road, he unfolds the Scriptures to them. That’s what we’re told. He unfolds the Scriptures to them and he explains to them how everything that has happened, the death and the resurrection of the Lord, has all, as it were, being contained in the pages of the Scriptures.
And we’re told St Luke tells us, the same Gospel writer that we’ve heard from this morning, that their hearts burned within them, their hearts burned within them. As this stranger unfolds to them the Scriptures, they reach the home of these two in Emmaus. They go in, the two disciples invite the stranger to stay for something to eat with them and they break bread together.
And in the breaking of the bread, we’re told, you’ll remember, the stranger is recognised. The disciples realise, the penny drops, that the stranger is no less than the risen Lord, the risen Christ. And we’re told he vanished from their sight.
That story of the Emmaus road is a wonderful illustration of what we’re doing now, and I’m sure it was written by St Luke with just that purpose of explaining the mass, explaining what happens when we come together as members of the body of Christ. We listen to the Scriptures, we listen to the Word of God and we break bread together.
We come to the altar to celebrate and to receive the Sacrament of the Lord’s body and blood. And the Lord is here, the risen Christ is with us. And why did he vanish from their sight? Why did he vanish from the sight of the disciples at the breaking of the bread? Because, as it were, the Lord himself was now present in them, present in the Christian community, present in those who were his witnesses, who had listened to the word of God and who had shared in the breaking of the bread present in us.
The risen Christ is in his body by the power and operation of his Holy Spirit. So the Lord himself walks with the disciples and unfolds the Scriptures to them and explains how everything had been foretold. Now, of course, the Scriptures for those early disciples were not what we call the Gospels or the letters of St. Paul, our New Testament. The Scriptures for those two disciples were what we call the Old Testament, the writings of the prophets and the other parts and teachings and elements of what we now call the Old Testament.
And the wonderful lesson for us is that the good news of Jesus Christ, everything about the Lord, his death, his resurrection, it’s all as it were contained there in the books, in the pages of the Old Testament, we read the Scriptures, we read the whole Bible through the light of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The Gospel as it were shines its light back on the pages of the Bible. And all is there for us to see. Once we are reading with the eyes of faith, once we are reading as disciples of the written Lord. And that’s exactly what happens in our Gospel reading today.
Jesus himself comes into the synagogue, takes up the words of the Prophet Isaiah. The Spirit of the Lord has been given to me. And he says as if to us now, he says to the congregation, today, these words are being fulfilled. Those words of the Prophet Isaiah, they make sense when we understand that they are speaking about Christ, they are speaking about our Saviour. And because Christ is now in his body, because Christ is now alive in and through the life of the Church and we are his members, what is true of Christ, what is fulfilled in the Lord through those words of the Prophet Isaiah is as it were now to be true of us.
So we are to be the people who in the world in our own generation bring good news to the poor. We are to bring Liberty to the captives. We are to bring sight to the blind. We are to be Christ in our own generation. And so, just as the Lord himself is anointed by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, that’s his baptism in the River Jordan, so we as members of the body of Christ, we too are anointed for the part that we will play in the life of the body of Christ, being by our words and actions, good news for the poor in our own generation.
So, of course, that brings us to confirmation. And when our two candidates for confirmation come forward after the prayer for the gift of the Holy Spirit, after the laying on of my hands, the Bishop’s hands the sign of communicating the Holy Spirit to you at your confirmation, you will be anointed with the noble oil of Chrism, setting you apart as members of the body of Christ to play your part in being the body of Christ in this Parish, in your own homes and families, in the place where you work and everything that you do, you will be anointed as the Lord Himself was anointed to be good news for the poor. And you will be equipped by the Holy Spirit to play your part.
In the second reading from St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, that wonderful image of the Body of Christ in which the Spirit is given to each and every member with a particular part to play. Susan comes to be commissioned for the particular work of lay Ministry in this place. Father Matthew has been ordained to be your Parish priest. But everyone, every member of the body has their part to play. Every member of the body, every single one of us has a part to play in helping the whole body.
Helping all of us here present to be and to share that good news.
In the first reading from the Prophet Nehemiah that we heard this morning. That wonderful image of Nehemiah and Ezra and the Levites. All those people given those different ministries, unfolding the Scriptures, helping the people to understand what the Lord is saying through the pages of the Scriptures. And what’s the result. A day of celebration.
A day of Jubilee. Go and eat the fat and drink the sweet wine. A day of celebration. We should love reading the Word of God. Hearing it expounded.
We should love coming to live out the Emmaus Road experience here in Church. Listening to the Scriptures being unfolded, sharing in the breaking of bread. We should go out full of joy that we have shared in this and we should go out confident in our mission to be good news to the poor, sight to the blind, liberty to captives in our own generation.
So candidates for confirmation, we rejoice with you today as you take this great step into the fullness of the life of the Body of Christ. And we are reminded by all of our readings today that we are members together in the Body of Christ.
And what was given to the Lord to do in that unique way that was his mission in this world is now given to us. We are to be Christ through those doors to this community who needs him and his love and his Spirit. And it is given to us to be the means of God’s work going forward.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy spirit.
John 2:1-11
Each and every one of us can carry out those miracles. Each and every one of us can look into any situation, any difficult path that somebody is on in front of us, understand that that person is in pain or is going to be in pain, that that person is in trouble or going to be in trouble. And through one small act of sympathy, one small act of kindness, one small act of love continue the miracles of Jesus Christ in the here and now.
[automatically transcribed]
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
So let’s have a look at our gospel for today. It’s the wedding of Canna, and it comes up a great deal in our Gospels, and certainly in the daily mass. It comes up very frequently. And I often preach on that line from Mary, ‘do what He tells you’, because it’s just a generally really good instruction for Christians. Do as He tells you.
When Mary, his mother, understands him better than anyone else. But today I want to take it in a slightly different direction. I want to look at some of the history and the reality of what it must have felt like at that wedding and at that feast.
Now, Palestinian weddings are quite different to ours. They would be a feast that would last all day, and then in the evening, the couple would be lifted up and they would be carried through the village on the longest possible route and they’d be in their bridal garments.
They would look like a King and Queen, and in fact, they were treated exactly like a King and a Queen, and their word was law. And then they were taken to their home, where they held court for a week, where everybody came and visited.
There was no honeymoon, but they were really held in great esteem. It’s why we have so much imagery of weddings in the Gospels and in the New Testament, because it is great, this great feast and awaiting the bridegroom, the King. That’s where that imagery comes from.
Some of the later writings that didn’t get into the Bible say that Mary was related to one of the people at the wedding. In fact, they think that she was the sister of the mother of the person whose wedding it was.
And the gospel goes into kind of great detail to tell us that it was Canna in Galilee, not Canna, there are several Cannas, but this one was in Galilee. And in fact, to this Canna, you can see from Nazareth – that’s how close it is to where Jesus and his family grew up. And so this was a family affair. This was a family wedding.
This is why Mary was there. This is why Jesus was there. And drink at these feasts. Drink at these festivals was vital. As the rabbis of the time wrote, ‘there is no joy without wine’.
Very sensible men, these rabbis. But don’t misunderstand that as getting drunk. That was a very bad thing to do. You were not meant to drink to excess. And in fact, the wine at these feasts and wine in general at the time was drunk diluted two parts water to one part wine.
So then wine was vital and wine was a central part of the feasts. And without it, you would have been seen as not a terribly good host. And that would have brought shame on you.
Now, Jesus arrives at this family do, and he arrives not just on his own, but with five additional guests. He’s brought the disciples that he’s just called to him.
He’s brought these five additional guests. I like to think that he’s turned up at the family, He’s turned up at the family do, and how would you feel if your cousin turned up with five people that you hadn’t catered for? You wouldn’t be overly impressed would you.
And so Mary, his mother, feels, I suspect, a little bit responsible for this. My son, has turned up with these extra people. Jesus, you need to do something about this. You need to sort this out. You’ve turned up with these extra people.
Now you sort it out. It is a mother talking to her son. And of course, that’s a thread that we’ve had mothers and their children over the last month or so, all the way through Christmas, mothers and their sons. So a mother is saying to her son, Listen, you need to do something about this. And then Jesus replies with that line, Woman, what is this that you turn to me?
Now, the English actually does a bit of a disservice to this – woman. It’s dismissive, isn’t it? It’s not nice, it’s accusatory, it’s rude. Who on Earth would turn to their mother and go, Woman, what business is this of ours? It’s rude.
And the difficulty is we don’t really have a good translation for the word that Jesus used. In fact, we see it one other time in the Gospel. And it is the moment at which Jesus hands John to Mary and Mary to John when he hung on the cross. That’s the other time we see this word. It appears twice, but we see it a lot in the literature of the time.
We see it a lot in letters. We see it a lot. In fact, it’s in Homer. And the best translation is a term of respect. It’s quite a formal word.
And so maybe a better translation might be, my lady, my lady, what is this to us? And Mary turns around and just says to the guests, Just do whatever he tells you to do, which I just think is brilliant, because it’s that wonderful, again, it’s that human relationship between mother and son. My lady, what is this to do with us? And so Jesus performs the miracle.
He turns the water into wine. And what’s really fascinating about this is the first sign, this is Jesus first miracle. And where does Jesus choose to show his first miracle? It’s not at some big leader’s house. It’s not at somebody who is important.
It’s not at a military leader, it’s not with royalty. But it happened in a place that was humble, that was lowly. And Jesus did this task for a poor village girl and for his mother.
And I think that’s very, very important. The first miracle that Jesus performs in the gospel is firstly one of love, and it is one that he’s directed to carry out by his mother. It sets up the whole of the gospel as Jesus being with the poor and with the humble, not with the mighty and the strong.
He does it out of sympathy. He does it out of kindness, and he does it out of understanding. And the miracle he performs is not the miracles that we see in the rest of the gospel, but it is a miracle of joy.
It is a miracle that lifts people’s hearts. It’s almost a frivolous miracle. He turns water into wine for the party. And so this gospel is teaching us that we shouldn’t be dour in Jesus love. We should be joyful in his love.
And in that joy we should lift people to God. And we do that through acts of kindness. We do that through acts of sympathy. We do that through acts of understanding. Because Jesus understood if the wine gave out at this party, then this family would face shame.
He saw and understood the needs of that family.
Now a lot of us can perhaps act in big heroic ways when we need to. And we’ve seen it throughout the pandemic, haven’t we? We’ve seen how people have acted in enormous and heroic ways. We are moved by big heroic stories of the person who puts their life on the line to rescue others, of the man who dives into the sea to rescue another. We are moved by those big heroic, sweeping stories.
But today’s miracle, the first of Jesus miracles, is not big and heroic. It is small, and it is loving. And in that miracle, Jesus gives us the way to live our lives in his footsteps. It starts as a very human act, and it ends as an entirely divine pattern for the way that we live our lives, to look at our fellow man, to look at our families, to look at those around us, to understand them, to act towards them with small acts of sympathy, small acts of kindness, small acts of love. And it’s in those small acts that Jesus most clearly reveals himself to the world.
Each and every one of us can carry out those miracles. Each and every one of us can look into any situation, any difficult path that somebody is on in front of us, understand that that person is in pain or is going to be in pain, that that person is in trouble or going to be in trouble. And through one small act of sympathy, one small act of kindness, one small act of love continue the miracles of Jesus Christ in the here and now.
And so as we return from the heroic feast that we’ve seen over Christmas and I don’t know about you, but I feel that I have carried out a heroic feast over Christmas. As we return to ordinary time it is not to be deflated it is not to be brought low, but in ordinary time. It is to be lifted up in sympathy, in kindness and in Amen.
Titus 2:11-14,3:4-7 & Luke 3:15-16,21-22
If you take nothing away this week, take away in your mind that image of Jesus Christ quietly on his knees on his own and his father reaching down from heaven with the Holy Spirit and saying to him, you are my son, the beloved. That is is the relationship that you have with God.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen,
Today’s gospel reading prompts a huge question, if Jesus was born without sin, if Jesus was the Son of God, then why on Earth did he need to go and be baptised? Why did Jesus need to be cleansed of his sins? That’s why we come to baptism. So why did Jesus need to? That question has been in the minds of Christians throughout the ages.
And when you start reading around it to try and find out what the earliest Christians thought about this question. This is kind of like the beginning of theology. People asking questions about Jesus and his life. Then the answer the early Christians came to is wonderful. It’s just perfect.
The reason Jesus went to be baptised is because his mother told him to.
And I love that as an answer, because anybody who grew up in a culture, in a matriarchal culture – and I’m Welsh, which let me tell you, Mums are very much in charge. When Mum says, you need to go, do something off you go and do it. And I can see many mothers in the room nodding right now when Mum says, you need to go, do something, go and do it. And the reality is we can understand it because we’ve also known baptisms like that, haven’t we?
And it’s generally Grandma who says, Why on Earth haven’t you had this child Baptised yet? And so I love the humanity of that answer, and it builds on that concept of the Holy family that we have been attempting to understand over the last few weeks. That family who travelled together to be registered in Bethlehem, that family who couldn’t find any way to stay, that family who huddled together in the warmth in the stable, that family who gave birth to Jesus Christ, that family who went out into the world and lost Jesus when he was twelve and found him in the temple.
That family who when the wine ran out at the wedding, Mary said to Jesus, Will you go and sort this out, to which Jesus replied, but my hour has not yet come.
Well, this is the answer to that statement in the wedding of Cana, Jesus hour had now come. And that is the answer to the question, why was Jesus baptised? It was because his hour had come. A great movement towards God had started across Israel. A great movement towards God had started and was being pointed at by John the Baptist.
Now was the time that Jesus declared himself publicly and said, Here I am the Son of God here to proclaim the good news of God, my Father. And the story continues from this point. This is the hour. At this point, Jesus was about 30. This is where he begins his public Ministry.
He goes from this place into the temptation in the desert. He’s recognised by everybody else he calls his first disciples. He performs many healings. Ultimately he ends up at the cross. He comes back to us again. Then he ascends into heaven.
But this. This is where it starts. The baptism of Jesus by John is the moment that that feeling of expectancy. That feeling of expectancy we pick up in the beginning of the Gospel of Luke is fulfilled.
But right there, right at the start of Luke, we’ve already got things being skewed and said, AHA, you thought that John was the Messiah, but here, straight away at the start. No, it’s not John. It’s Jesus. And everything that John does points to Jesus. And it’s just sets up everything in the Gospel of Luke.
And the baptism of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke is slightly different to the other Gospels. So last year I think we had Matthew and the heavens opened and thundered and a Dove descended. And the voice of God said, this is my son in whom I am well pleased, Mark. Not Matthew. But in Luke it’s far quieter.
“Now when all the people have been baptised and while Jesus, after his own baptism was at prayer, heaven opened and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily shape like a Dove. And a voice came from heaven. You are my Son, the Beloved. My favour rests on you.”
No tearing asunder of the heaven here, no booming voice to the crowds, but a quiet, personal revelation in the moment of baptism. It’s one of the most striking and powerful images of the Holy Trinity of God, the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
My favour, rests on you.
Today, as we were sprinkled with the water of baptism, as we were sprinkled with that Holy water, we stand before God, just as Jesus did, asking and praying that His favour will rest on us. That moment today of the water being sprinkled. That moment when you come to receive Jesus Christ in the Sacrament, you are in the same place as Jesus Christ at prayer.
In this gospel of Luke, it is a single thread that carries from you all the way back to Jesus. In that moment, that moment of quiet prayer. When God says My favour, Jesus on you.
The New Year is full of new starts. The New Year is full of exciting possibilities. The New Year is full of expectancy. The New Year is full of opportunity.
The New Year is full of opportunity to renew your relationship with God. To make our relationship with God clear.
The second reading helps us understand how we do that. How we get to that moment where we are on our knees in prayer as Jesus was in the gospel. We are told to live a good life, to give up everything that doesn’t lead to God and have no ambition except to do good.
Amen.
If you take nothing away this week, take away in your mind that image of Jesus Christ quietly on his knees on his own and his father reaching down from heaven with the Holy Spirit and saying to him, you are my son, the beloved. That is is the relationship that you have with God.
Hold that and carry it through this year.
Ephesians 1:3-6,15-18 & John 1:1-5,9-14
[automatically transcribed]
Pray for the desire to live your life as Jesus has called you to.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen, please sit down. As I touched on at the start of Mass, we are still in Christmas. This is the second Sunday of Christmas. There are some places that have transferred the solemnity, the Feast of Epiphany, to today the day when the Magi arrived to see Jesus Christ.
We are keeping it here on Thursday on its proper date, and we have a high Mass in the morning and a high Mass in the evening because it’s important that we don’t cut our feasts short. We spend a long time in fast in the Church, and that is a good and right thing. It is a way of concentrating our mind on Jesus Christ. But to then short change Jesus when we come to our feasts is the same as cheating during Lent or cheating during Advent in your fast. It is important to keep both, but that doesn’t stop us, of course, turning to the New Year as big ben chimes on Friday night into Saturday morning for our New Year sitting and going right, a New Year, a new me, a fresh start. New Year’s resolutions.
And actually, it’s the perfect time to start thinking about New Year’s resolutions, how you are going to live a better life. And it’s the perfect time because we are still in the middle of the Feast of Christmas.
It’s the perfect time because at Christmas, Jesus was born in each and every one of us. So during this feast, during this celebration, we are closer to Jesus than we are possibly at any other time of the year. So when we sit down and we say to ourselves, These are the things that I am going to do this year. These are the changes that I am going to make. Then we find ourselves at the point closest to Jesus because ultimately it is he that guides us.
He has guided us since the very, very beginning, and it is no different today. We sit, we look at the year ahead. And with Jesus freshly born again inside our hearts, we face the year and think, what is my New Year’s resolution going to be?
Well, I’m going to eat less. I’m going to exercise more. I’m going to love people more. I’m going to forgive all those people that I have been unable to forgive over the years. I’m going to give more to charity. I’m going to volunteer at the food bank. I’m going to go and say to Father Matthew that I want to serve at the altar.
I’m going to read the Bible every single day and before you know it, you are rather overwhelmed with New Year’s resolutions – and how many of us manage to keep them even to the end of January. Never-mind throughout the year.
So many of our New Year’s resolutions at their heart are about denying desire for something else.
So let’s take me.
I eat too much, my desire for food and for the enjoyment of company outweighs my desire to lose weight.
So if I say right, I am going to do this and nothing’s going going to get in my way. That might be achievable. And if I were to do it on my own, then, as I have proved to myself many times over, I will probably fail. And so what I’ve come to realise over the last decade or so, not just through New Year’s reservations, but through my desire to want to get to know Jesus better is that the denial of desire isn’t always the right thing. Let me explain what I mean.
Jesus wants us to live better lives, and my weight is one example. But for you, it could be something else entirely. Jesus wants us to live better lives in Him. But some of those things are really, really hard. Take another example that I had in that list.
Forgiveness. I know there are people in this congregation, and I count myself in them who have somebody in their life that they cannot forgive, who has done something to them so bad that they cannot forgive. And there are people in this congregation who have said to me, I will never forgive this person for what they’ve done to me. And I’ve said the same thing. And as I look at you, you’re nodding at me.
I stand here and I say regularly that forgiveness is the hardest thing that we are called to as Christians. So here we go. Here is the bar that I will never forgive somebody. Well, I could right now go. My New Year’s resolution is that I’m going to forgive all these people, but we know that that is too hard.
So then how do we even start to go about those things that are too hard? How do we start to shift the desire from one thing to another thing? Because desire is a strong emotion. And so if we can just nudge it from one thing to another, then with Jesus help, we’ll achieve it. This is what you do.
You want to change. You desire to change for Jesus. You don’t say I am going to forgive this person that I cannot forgive. You say I want to forgive this person, and then you spend the next twelve months working on that, on wanting to forgive this person, on wanting to be a better person in Jesus, on shifting that desire of enjoying and enjoying that I will never forgive this person and shifting the desire to wanting to forgive this person. That’s the first step wanting to do the right thing.
And it’s an important first step, because what you do then is you open your heart to the desire of living the life that Jesus has called you to. And when you open your heart to the desire of living your life as Jesus has called to, then he will flood in, and he will help you.
Our second reading from St. Paul helps us understand how that works.
Blessed be God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings of heaven in Christ. Before the world was made, he chose us, chose us in Christ to be Holy and spotless and to live through love in His presence, determining that we should become His adopted sons through Jesus Christ for His own kind purposes, to make us praise the glory of His Grace, his free gift to us in the beloved.
It is because Jesus wants us to live this life. It is because Jesus made us to live this life.
It is because when we give Him the opportunity to be in our hearts, that he will help us achieve these things, that that is possible.
That will explain why I Paul, having once heard about the faith, about your faith in the Lord Jesus and the love that you show towards all the Saints, have never failed to remember you in my prayers and to thank God for you.
This is the second key element in shifting to a new life in Jesus Christ. It is that you are surrounded by people who are praying for your success. If you want to change something, if you want to live a better life in Jesus life, you cannot do it alone.
You do it with Jesus in your heart and you do it surrounded by your friends who pray for you, who ask God to help you, who encourage you and support you.
And that’s what we are in this Church. A family of encouragers, a family of people who pray. When we pray for people on a Sunday, when we pray for people at daily Mass, when we pray for people, when we go to bed, we are helping them achieve those changes in their life that they are looking for. We are helping them live a life closer to Jesus Christ. It is not an act of piety. You don’t kneel at your bedside and pray because I tell you to you kneel at your bedside and pray because you are helping the person you are praying for just as much as if you stand here on a Wednesday and give somebody food from the food bank in your prayer for that person, you are helping them just as much.
And so that is your job. Pray for your friends.
May he enlighten the eyes of your mind so that you can see what hope His call holds for you. What rich glories he has promised the Saints will inherit.
There’s the third part of change in Jesus Christ and the change that we are looking for in our lives. It is in that action of praying for other people. God sees you.
God sees your heart and in that moment he enlightens you as to what you are called to do in this world. It’s back to that theme that I so often preach. Pray and do.
I know that’s a lot to take in. There are three big elements there to take away. So take this reading from Ephesians home.
Read it. Use it as the model as you look to your next twelve months. Use it as your model to figure out what it is you are going to do to live a better life. And if something is too big, if something is too difficult, if something is so deeply ingrained in who you are that you cannot shift it in one go, then pray for the desire to want to change it. Pray for the desire to want to shift it.
Pray for the desire to live your life as Jesus has called you to.
Amen.
1 Samuel 1:20-22,24-28 &Luke 2:41-52
That is our mission here at St. Anselm. Our mission is to pray for those who have no family who have stopped recognising God in the middle of their family, to welcome them here and to let them know that they will always have a family. They will always be loved. They will always be cared for, and they will never, ever be on their own.
In The name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen, please sit.
This summer, as many of you know, our little family went to Rome, and it’s the first time, and we’ve gone as a family. I’ve been many times before, and Edmund has got increasingly jealous every time I’ve gone, when can I go? When can I go? And so this year we took advantage of the very reasonable prices to travel given COVID and we all went to Rome.
And there was a little Church just around the corner from the apartment we were staying in. And it was for St. Monica, mother of Saint Augustine and St. Monica, famous for praying for her son her entire life to become Christian. Because Saint Augustine was not Christian.
He was a Berber. But she prayed her whole life that he would come to know Jesus Christ. And it was only on her death bed that he finally converted and became a Christian. The prayers of a mother for her son finally came to fruition and gave us one of the greatest Doctors and teachers of the Church there has ever been, Saint Augustine, so central to our understanding of how to live a good and Godly life in the modern world. The prayers of her mother for her son.
And in this Church at the back there was a statue of Our Lady as so often there is in the churches in Rome, and it was surrounded by hearts, homemade handmade hearts made out of fabric, sewn beautifully with lace and just an astounding array of different materials, some really, really big, some absolutely tiny. And people were praying in front of the statue and coming and going, and I didn’t really know what it was. And so I looked it up. And it’s the Church in Rome where people who are struggling to start a family go, people who are married who want to have children but are struggling to have children.
It’s where they go and they kneel in front of that statue of Our Lady in St. Monica’s, where the prayers of a mother for her son are so held up as beautiful and good. And they pray for the gift of a child. And those hearts that are on the wall and in the cabinets and surrounding the statue of Our Lady are offerings of thanks from mothers and from fathers who have gone to that place and prayed for the gift of children. And their prayers have been answered.
And I can’t go into that Church, I’ve been back many times, and I can’t go back into that Church now without getting quite emotional because I know the power of the gift of a child. Indeed, we see it in our first reading in 1 Samuel, the lady who has prayed Hannah conceived and gave birth to her son and called him Samuel. And she said, I asked the Lord for him, a mother praying for a child.
That is the heart of a family, a mother praying for her child. It is the model of the family that we are given throughout all Scripture in the Old Testament and the New Testament, Mary praying for her child.
That is the beating central heart of any family.
And from there on out, it doesn’t really matter how the family is shaped or how the family is put together, how many children there are, how many people involved in the relationship there is. Let’s not forget that Joseph was not Jesus’ biological father. It doesn’t matter how that family is put together. But if the mother prays for her children, whether or not they are her own, whether or not they are fostered, whether or not they are adopted. It is that prayer of a mother for her child that holds the family together.
It’s that prayer that beats in a family. It’s prayer that makes the heart of the family beat. And when you stop praying, the heart stops pumping. And that’s why I believe we see so many problems in our world because the beating heart of our families has stopped praying and has stopped beating.
And so we are called in this place to pray for those who have forgotten to pray, to pray for those who have forgotten what it is that keeps the family together, to pray for those whose families are complex and difficult and so hard to understand, to pray for those who don’t have a family, to pray, for, those who quite literally wash up on our shores, to pray for those families who arrived in life boats on the beaches of England, to pray for those families who find themselves in refugee camps in Syria, to pray for those families who find themselves without enough food to eat on Christmas Day to pray for those families that suffer with violence.
Because when we pray for them, we start the heart pumping again.
We start that heart pumping out love into that family. And through that prayer, bring them to this place so that no matter how disparate, no matter how bad their family model at home may be, no matter how bad their lives are, they will be brought into our family just as you brought me into your family nearly 18 months ago, just as you did that first Sunday, I came and covered here.
That is our mission here at St. Anselm. Our mission is to pray for those who have no family who have stopped recognising God in the middle of their family, to welcome them here and to let them know that they will always have a family. They will always be loved. They will always be cared for, and they will never, ever be on their own.
Thank you for your prayers for my family. Thank you for the prayers and support you have given us over the last 18 months as my family becomes part of this family.
Thank you for all that you do to support families in Hayes, through the food bank, through looking after your neighbour. Through Fostering all of those amazing things that happen here. Let’s continue in our next twelve months. Let’s continue in that prayer. And in that action.
Let’s continue in that love of Jesus Christ and shine it out into the whole of Hayes.
Amen
Luke 1:39-45
So my constant refrain in my head through the whole of this Advent in particular has been, does anybody see Jesus alive in me? Is Jesus so strongly living inside me that other people can’t be anything other than, wow, Jesus is working in this person.
[automatically transcribed]
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen, please sit.
In this fourth week of Advent, we honour Mary, and I can preach about Mary until the cows come home in every conceivable way. Because for me, she offers me the easiest way to find the path to Jesus. Because I can look at Mary and see her not just as a Saint in heaven, not just as somebody who prays for me and wants the best for me, as a mother wants for her son, but as somebody who lived as a human with Jesus. And she held Jesus as a baby.
She fed him. She brought him into the world. She understood him entirely as a human being. But she also understood him as the man who would hang upon that cross, that her joy, her soul would be pierced by a sword.
Mary understands that with a Crown of joy comes the Cross of sorrow. To be a Christian is not to be shielded from pain, not to be protected from pain and hurt in the world. But to know that in that pain you are walking alongside Jesus Christ, and he is walking alongside you. And then in that partnership, and in that love, you will be given the strength you need to face any pain in the world. And this week, in daily Mass, we’ve been developing the theme, the idea that what we’re waiting for in Jesus coming on Christmas Day is not some external thing. It’s not something that’s happening out there, although, of course, that’s the way we tend to think about it.
We tend to think about Jesus coming into our Nativity scenes.
And in fact, today we’ll be blessing your Bambinos from your Nativity scenes during Mass. We’re not talking about those external things. It’s not a mere birthday, but what we are celebrating. And what we are preparing for is Jesus being born in us, not an external going along to a birthday party. Done, there we go. We’ve had the lovely dinner. We’ve had the presence. We’ve done that. There it is.
It’s gone. No, Jesus being born in us again, a new afresh. And the thing is, of course, we know that what happens is that over time we forget what that feeling of Jesus working inside us is like. And Jesus, we allow ourselves to drift away from Jesus. So what Advent does every year is it grabs hold of us, and it pulls us back to that reality, that Jesus exists inside us.
That is what we are really preparing for on Christmas Day, Jesus being born once again in us, not as a one time thing, not just something that happens. And then that’s it. But as a constant thing, as something that happens over and over and over again. And you know, when that happens, when we allow that to happen, when we allow Jesus to be born in us, when we follow in the footsteps of Mary and say, yes, God, your will will be done. When we say that, then something mysterious and wonderful happens and people notice it.
People see it. I’ve seen it so often when people are changed at baptism. I’ve seen it here recently. People changed in that moment when Jesus comes and sets up home inside people’s hearts. We have it in today’s gospel, the very model of how people recognise it. In Elizabeth and with John, the first thing that happens when Mary arrives to see Elizabeth is that John leaps in his mother’s womb.
He recognises Jesus in the womb of Mary and then immediately Elizabeth recognises Jesus in Mary recognising the miracle of Jesus alive inside her.
So my constant refrain in my head through the whole of this Advent in particular has been, does anybody see Jesus alive in me? Is Jesus so strongly living inside me that other people can’t be anything other than, wow, Jesus is working in this person.
And I ask myself that every day will Jesus recognise, will people recognise Jesus in me?
So this is a good question to ask yourself this week ahead of Christmas Day, when you are out in the world, will people see Jesus alive in you?
Because I tell you what, it doesn’t matter how many complex plans we have to bring people to Church doesn’t matter how many leaflets we give out, how loudly we sing Carols on Saturday mornings, how many mice pies we give out, how warm the mulled wine is, or isn’t.
It doesn’t matter what our plans are. Because what brings people to Jesus Christ is them seeing Jesus in other people. It’s seeing the difference that he makes in their lives. That is how people come to a personal relationship and a love of Jesus Christ.
That is exactly how new people have come to this Church through the parent and toddler group and the wonderful baptisms we had last week that happened because she saw Jesus in people at work.
That happened because the young lady came and saw Jesus at work in Terry, as embarrassed as he’ll be for me to say it, that happened because she saw Jesus at work in Mary Ruth, that happened because she saw Jesus at work in this place.
So spend this week before Christmas Day comes asking yourself, what is it that shines forth the light of Jesus in my life? How can I get ready to renew and refresh myself so that people may see that may understand that and may want to know more about it and will ask me if they can come to my Church if they can come and be baptised because my gosh, you are blessed.
You are so blessed and I want some of that blessing.
Do that for me this week. Ask yourself, how do people know that Jesus is alive in me?
Amen.
Luke 3:10-18 & Philippians 4:4-7
I want you to be happy, always happy in the Lord, I repeat what I want is your happiness. Let your tolerance be evident to everyone. For the Lord is near.
We couldn’t ask for a better piece of scripture today for Gaudete Sunday, for rejoicing for being joyful in the Lord than this gospel from Luke. Because people are coming to John the Baptist and asking what they should do when they’re baptised. And this reading is in two halves in the first half, in that first paragraph we can see there, people are asking John, what should we do when we’re baptised?
What changes? How should we live our lives? And John answers them. He tells them exactly what to do in their lives. He tells them to live out their faith, that their faith is not something they shouldn’t carry on like everything is just the same and nothing has changed.
When you’re baptised, you don’t come to Church, get baptised, have the party, go home and nothing has changed. Everything changes because now you are baptised with the Holy Spirit and with water and God is helping you every step of your journey. Actually, the examples couldn’t be more practical.
Tax collectors. What should we do? And what does John say to them? Stop cheating people, put the bad things behind you and live your life properly. Live your life in the way that Jesus taught us to live.
Soldiers came to John and said, what should we do? And John said, be a good soldier. Don’t beat people up, don’t knock them around the heads. Don’t steal from people. Be a good soldier.
So in baptism you’re in one sense pulled out of the world and then you’re put back in it to live your faith in the world. And that’s a good reminder for all of us who are here in Church today who come week after week is that our baptism pulls us out of the world and puts us back in it to live in the way that Jesus taught us to live.
In the second part of our gospel. John does the other thing that we are all called to do as baptised Christians.
And that is to point to Jesus in all that we do.
John could have got caught up in people saying, you’re the Messiah, you’re the Messiah. He could have gathered followers. He could have had everything that he had ever wanted. But instead, what he did was he told people to live good lives and he said, One is coming who I am not fit to tie the sandals of. He pointed to Jesus Christ.
That’s it. That’s what being baptised means. It’s as simple as that when you are baptised at that font in a few moments time you are taken from the world. God claimed you as His own. You turn your back on evil in the world and you are placed back in the world to live a good life, to be happy in the love of God.
And Saint Paul puts it best.
I want you to be happy, always happy in the Lord, I repeat what I want is your happiness. Let your tolerance be evident to everyone. For the Lord is near.
Amen
Matthew 8:5-11
Because in that love, you will discover your faith and the depth of your faith. And in that moment, you will discover the love that God has for you.
[automatically transcribed]
Well, it’s finally happened.
I didn’t compare the readings that I had for this Sunday with what was in the actual sheet that comes out on a Sunday. And so the sermon I’ve written and prepared is not for the gospel you have just heard. It’s not bad. We got the better part of 18 months in before I got the wrong gospel.
So if you give me a moment, I’m going to read you the gospel that I have written today’s. Sermon four, although not in there. The gospel that I wrote for today was the story of the Centurion who comes to Jesus and whose servant is sick. And he comes up to Jesus. And he says, Jesus, my servant, my slave is sick.
Can you please come and heal my slave? And Jesus says, Will I come to you? And the Centurion says, no, you don’t need to come to me. I am someone who commands. I know that if you give the command, my slave will be healed.
And so Jesus says, Your faith, your faith is amazing. Your faith is some of the greatest faith that I have ever seen. And it is because of your faith that your slave shall be healed. So the Centurion departs and the slave is healed. It’s a really interesting gospel.
We see Centurions in the gospel quite regularly, and they are always depicted in a good light. And a Centurion was a Roman soldier who commanded 100 men. That’s how the Roman Army worked. Each Centurion commanded 100 men. Centurions were the lifelong soldiers of the Roman Army.
They were the backbone. They were like the sergeants of the modern army. They weren’t the gunhoe young officers who were looking for a fight, looking for trouble, would run in and just fight no matter what. These were the soldiers who knew how things were done. And they had the experience of long years in the army.
They were very serious men, very balanced men, very solid men. What’s interesting, though, about this Centurion is that he loved his slave. And that was a deeply uncommon thing. And so while this soldier, on one hand, was a very common, while this soldier was a very common Centurion, what was uncommon was his love of a slave. Because in the Roman Army, if you had a slave, they were very much viewed as a living tool and nothing more so to express love for a slave was desperately uncommon.
The other thing that’s really interesting about this is that he would have known categorically would have known that Jesus as a Jewish man, could not have entered his house.
And so his request for Jesus to come and heal his slave was very interesting because he knew that Jesus couldn’t come and do it. But his faith in Jesus and his faith in Jesus ability to heal his slave was so strong that he cast aside the societal the norms of society and said, Well, I know Jesus can’t come and heal my slave. But I know that His command will heal my slave. That is the peak of his faith. That was the moment in which his faith peaked because he knew that regardless of what the rules of society were around him, that Jesus could heal the slave.
And that’s really important because he discovers that faith through his love of that slave. And that’s what we hear in the reading from Thessalonians, ‘May the Lord be generous in increasing your love and make you love one another’. And it is in that love that Jesus recognises this man’s faith. Faith is the path to the healing of Jesus Christ in your life. Faith comes to us through the love of one another, the love that Jesus gave us.
So when we allow our lives to become one of cynicism and of doubt and of unhappiness, all of that stuff gets in the way of us loving one another. And when those things get in the way of loving one another, then our faith suffers. And it is only through celebrating our love for one another that Jesus has given us and enjoying that love for one another. That friendship. That awesomeness that we have for one another, that our faith can grow and that our faith can grow to the point at which Jesus can heal us.
And that’s how it works. Our love grows into faith. Our faith brings Jesus healing. It’s not about being a member of a club or about even coming to Church, but it is about our faith in Jesus Christ.
My thought on the story of the Roman Centurion is it made me consider what outsiders can teach us. What can somebody from outside of our community teach us about love and about faith and the danger of Advent and the danger of our Church festivals is what we do is we kind of come in and we kind of close the doors. We kind of come in. And if you’re in the club, then you’re in the club. But the Roman soldier teaches us at the start of Advent that what we must do is look outside, look for people who don’t normally come to Church, look to people who we don’t think of as great examples of the faith, and through loving them, discover what it is that Jesus may be telling us.
So-called outsiders teach us about our faith and about our relationship with God. And I see it every Wednesday when we run the foodbank. People who would not come on a Sunday. But people who experience love through us through the gifts of Jesus Christ teach us so much about our own relationship with God. And so at the start of Advent, what I urge you to do is to leave Church today and consider think pray about a person in your life who is an outsider who maybe you avoid, who maybe you struggle to love.
And I would like you to pray for the strength to love that person. It may be somebody you really don’t like. But through this Advent, I want you to pray for them. I want you to hold them before God. And I want you to learn how to love them.
Because in that love, you will discover your faith and the depth of your faith. And in that moment, you will discover the love that God has for you.
Amen