SERMON 68 - SUNDAY 22 NOVEMBER 2015

Sermon delivered at Whaddon Roman Catholic Chapel, Whaddon, Wiltshire – Sunday 22nd November 2015

May I speak in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and may these words be a blessing to all who hear them.  Amen

I announced that I was preparing this sermon on the social media website, Facebook, in the hope that somebody might give me some inspiration on whether I should preach on the first or second reading and, in having decided that I would like us to reflect on the first reading, I wrote “Preparing my sermon for Sunday on Daniel”. One of my contacts wrote back “Oh, when I saw you were writing about Daniel I immediately thought about Daniel Craig and the latest Bond movie “Spectre”!  Such is the modern world – so many have forgotten about some of the most interesting and moving books in the bible and especially the richness contained within the Old Testament.  But our reading this evening could be so easily subtitled Daniel and the Spectre – the hand that writes on the wall.

Daniel is a most wonderful book because it spans, in my view, the theology of Moses and the Jews right across to our modern Christian theology of the gospels and epistles of the New Testament. It is apocryphal – a book full of prophesies and messages for us today in our modern world.

I love the book of Daniel – it is a good and relatively easy read - which I like.  You will recall that after besieging Judah and in particular the capital of Jerusalem, the Babylonians sacked the Temple and took away into captivity in Babylon not only the valuable vessels from the Temple but also the good and great of Jewish society including administrators and scholars like Daniel.  You will recall how Daniel came to the notice of the Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar, when he was able to interpret a number of dreams which the king had (just as Joseph had done for the Egyptian pharaoh) and warn him of calamities ahead, prophesying his future.  

You will also recall how Daniel’s colleagues, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah were given Babylonian ones (Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego) and after refusing to bow down to the golden image of the king they were flung into the fiery furnace only to be saved by a fourth entity seen in the furnace dancing around with the other three.  Hananiah and his two colleagues came out with not a hair singed in contrast to the king’s guards who were killed instantly by the heat when the door was opened I have no doubt that the fourth entity seen was a manifestation of the Holy Spirit which acted as God’s protection to those who truly believe that God, Yahweh, Jehovah, is the only true and living God and that all others are false.  Later on, Daniel himself is thrown into the Den of Lions for his openness in praying to God in contravention of an order of the conquering King Darius of Persia that no one is to worship any God or anything other than Darius himself.  Again, God intervenes and tames the lions so they do not hurt Daniel.

It is amazing that after all these manifestations both to the Baylonian kings and later those from Persia that they continue to worship other idols and defile or disrespect the Jewish belief in Yahweh.

In the passage we heard this evening, Nebuchadnezzar has, as prophesised by Daniel in the interpretation of the dream of the tree was stripped of his kingdom and driven away from his kingdom to live as a wild man – homeless and destitute and we read having lost his sanity eating grass like the cattle.  Having prayed to Daniel’s God, he was later restored but it should have been a salutary lesson to him and all his successors not to mess with God.

   

Now we see his son, King Belshazzar, despite the fact that he would have known well the stories from his predecessor’s reign of great and wondrous miracles and the fate of Nebuchadnezzar, indulging in a great banquet for his nobles, asking for the holy gold and silver vessels from the sacked Temple to be brought out and used for this orgy of greed and debauchery – we can well imagine the type of scene it probably was with the King and his wife and concubines and the nobles with their wives and concubines getting steadily drunker and more raucous. Belshazzar would also have known the significance of the Temple’s sacred vessels and their importance to his Jewish subjects. But worse still, as they drank from these vessels they worshipped the gods of gold, silver and bronze – the materials they were made from and not the God for whom they were made.

The Book of Daniel gives us two well-known phrases which we frequently use in our modern day speech – and I suspect the majority of people using them do not know of their origin or significance.  The first is “to enter the lion’s den” meaning to face a dangerous or uncomfortable situation and the second is “the writing’s on the wall” meaning that the end, usually a bad ending, is inevitable and in sight. The second of these comes directly from tonight’s passage.

So here is Daniel’s spectre!  A human hand suddenly appears and starts writing word which nobody can understand or read – in a language unknown to the onlookers.  After calling the enchanters, soothsayers, astrologers and other wise people, who cannot shed any light either on the meaning of the words, the queen remembers that Daniel had often been called upon by Nebuchadnezzar to interpret dreams and portents. He is called and sets about giving Belshazzar the interpretation of the words written which we are told are Mene, Mene, Tekel, Parsin meaning:

God has numbered the days of your reign and brought it to an end; you have been weighed on the scales and found wanting, your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians.

The narrative then goes on to say that Belshazzar’s life is taken that very night and that Darius, a foreign monarch, takes over the Babylonian kingdom.

Beshazzar’s crimes against God are threefold – first, He sinned not through ignorance (he already knew from the history of his father’s reign that God was all powerful and was the one and only true God) but sinned through pride and disobedience thinking that he could place himself above God; secondly, he defied God by desecrating the holy vessels and thirdly, he praised the idols of the materials from which they were made and did not honour God himself. He bore the consequences of those crimes in a similar manner to the greedy farmer (or sometimes called the rich fool -0 see Luke 12:13-21) in the later parable who built bigger and better barns to store up his crop from a motivation of greed and taking life easy rather than a desire to help and share with the people, and died that very night.  Jesus, no doubt, would have known Daniel’s story when he composed his parable and the parallels are clear. 

So how do we fair?  Do we fear the writing on the wall?  Next Sunday is advent – a time of waiting for the coming of Christ at Christmas and this Sunday we celebrate Christ as King – hence the hymns we are singing this evening. Christ taught us to love God and to love each other – the two great commandments – a theme I repeatedly labour in my sermons as being the fundamentals of our Christian faith – whatever denomination we may follow.  We are told that the coming of Christ for a second time is imminent – but we do not know precisely when.  We must always be ready and when he comes we must not be found wanting in our belief and faith.  Both Belshazzar and the Rich Fool were indulging in their own desires – putting themselves and their hedonism before God.  For both the writing was on the wall – in Belshazzar’s case literally.

Today we see many instances of people thinking first and foremost about themselves – indulging in their hedonistic fantasies and desires.  Worshipping the idols of our modern world – whether they be people or material things. Denying and defying God. 

As Christians it is our duty to life our lives knowing that the love of God is the first and the greatest love we can have – everything comes from him and we should honour and respect him.  We are not perfect, that’s why we have to acknowledge and confess our wrongdoings weekly if not daily; but if we fundamentally worship him, praise him and acknowledge him to be our creator and our savour then we can be assured that we should not suffer the spectre of the writing on the wall.

Amen

MFB/68

SERMON 67 - SUNDAY 8 NOVEMBER 2015 (REMEMBRANCE SUNDAY)

Sermon delivered at St. John’s Parish Church, West Grimstead, Wiltshire and All Saints Parish Church, Whiteparish – Sunday 8^th November 2015

Remembrance Sunday

May I speak in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and may these words be a blessing to all who hear them.  Amen

My son recently began his academic studies at the University of Hull on Humberside and I have thereby had the opportunity of revisiting the city again after many years.

Coming from Grimsby, on the southern banks of the Humber Estuary, and for many the correct side, I knew Hull in the 1950s and 1960s when my parents would take me across the muddy estuary by paddle steamer to shop and visit Father Christmas in the Hammonds Department Store (later Binns and now I believe John Lewis’s).  Because we only ever reached the city by ferry, and then only visited the centre, I was unaware of its size and importance as a major port – resembling, as I now know, the city of Southampton. What did did notice, then, were the large empty spaces throughout the centre, buildings still propped up by timber frames, and a general air of desolation and grubbiness.  My mother later told me that she and my father had originally thought of settling in Hull rather than Grimsby but the poor state of the city had put them off.

This poor state and desolation, some eight years after the Japanese surrender heralded the ending of the Second World War, were the still remaining scars from that conflagration, as Hull, like so many British cities began the long recovery from the blitz.  A constant reminder, to us of the younger non-wartime generation, of how that conflict had shaken the very local communities – not a war far away but one very much at home. 

My father, as a young “Pike” in the Cleethorpes Home Guard, recounted to me watching the German bombers flying up the Humber Estuary and the terrible red glow in the sky as Kingston-upon-Hull, to give it its full dignified title, was pounded night after night in a remorseless attempt to destroy the docks and the morale of its inhabitants.  Because we as children, had parents who had lived through the last World War, the conflict was very real to us and we could still see many of its scars.

One of my duties as a lay licensed minister, outside of the Clarendon Team, is as Alabare’s chaplain to veterans’ homes in Salisbury and on Friday I was privileged to visit our new home, Peter House, on London Road and meet two of its new residents – both of whom have suffered Post Traumatic Stress as a result of their times spent out in the Middle East and Afghanistan – wars of a very different nature and seemingly so far away from the British Isles.  I asked them what they thought of Remembrance Day and they told me that they probably would not attend any service as being upsetting and because their faith had been compromised, but nevertheless would and did daily think about and remember former colleagues and friends who had suffered or been killed as a result of these conflicts.  They also told me that because Britain had not been involved in any major conflicts since the Falklands War until the recent war on terrorism (aside from peace-keeping duties in Northern Ireland) society’s view of war had changed.  After 1945, few combatants ever spoke about their experiences in Europe, the Western Desert or more particularly in the Far East fighting German, Italian and Japanese oppression and also witnessing some terrible atrocities carried out against both combatants and civilians.  Today, these modern day veterans told me that they are now encouraged to express their thoughts and share their experiences with professionals to help them overcome the immense and damaging psychological effects on them.  The new global media means that harrowing images from war correspondents and the freedom to view news stories from different agencies throughout the world make the conflicts all that more vivid but being on the screen the true horrors, are not necessarily conveyed.  There are so many war games now available for our children to play that fact and fantasy can become confused.

I noted that two years ago I gave this address at your Remembrance Day service [at West Grimstead] when I said that friends of my daughters did not know who Winston Churchill was let alone his role in British history. Generations are growing up in this country with neither personal knowledge nor experience of war – and for that we must thank God – but there are also quite a number – family and friends of people like those veterans I met on Friday – who have been materially affected by those far away conflicts. 

Veterans have returned traumatised by what they have done and seen – many taken to drink or drugs or many simply have had to leave the Forces and cannot adjust to life in “Civvy Street”.  They return, cannot get a job, cannot adjust to having to make decisions themselves – having previously been told what to do, where to go and when.  Tensions rise, marriages fail and homelessness results.  For them there is no need to wear a poppy, the effect of war have left a permanent reminder.  Family break ups and mental health problems result.

Yes it is very good to wear our poppies with pride, to donate to Hope for Heroes and to those charities which are there specifically to help former servicemen and women overcome their physical disabilities and wounds.  But equally, there are so many others who suffer mental problems and its consequences who can often be forgotten.

I feel extremely honoured to have a ministry which includes attending to the pastoral care of such individuals. They are such rich people despite the loss, very often,  of much material wealth.  Their experiences, knowledge and patriotism mean that they deserve the best care and respect we can afford them. 

Alabare, within its veteran homes, seeks not only to give pastoral care and practical immediate help for the traumas being suffered by such people, it also seeks to prepare them for a return to a civilian life and society with programmes of retraining and help in financial budgeting and social awareness – returning them to once more being useful and kindly members of society. Bringing their riches to the fullness of God’s grace.

Jesus said, blessed are those who are the peacemakers (and many of those serving in our forces have been there for that very purpose) – for they shall be called the children of God.

We are all children of God though and as Jesus taught us, we should love each other as God loves us. On this Remembrance Sunday, let us remember that and praise God for all those who have given their lives and their health to preserve peace and overthrow tyrants so that we may continue to praise and glorify our Creator.

Amen

MFB/67

SERMON 66 - TUESDAY 27 OCTOBER 2015

Sermon delivered at Winterslow Methodist Church, Wiltshire to the Seniors’ Tuesday Club – Tuesday 27th October 2015

Mark 28-34

May I speak in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and may these words be a blessing to all who hear them.  Amen

First of all let me say how honoured I feel to be given this opportunity of coming to speak to you this morning at this short service and thank you especially, Duncan, for your help and support

As many of you will know, probably as much by the absence of the flagpole at the corner of Middleton Road and Youngs Paddock, I have now moved out of the village in circumstances which were not of my choosing. It is therefore lovely to be able to continue to be of service to the community I lived in for over 16 years.  I have now moved to a new property at Old Sarum and I am just beginning to get to know some of the people there who are now my new neighbours.

Community is so vitally important in this day of modern technology.  My young daughter has literally hundreds of friends – virtual friends – on Facebook and other social media sites. I must confess myself to using media sites and the global nature of the Internet and modern technological communication systems means that it is so easy now to communicate with people halfway across the world.  They are all our neighbours.

In our reading this morning, the Jewish lawyers, in an attempt to find out who this Jesus of Nazareth was, and by what authority he spoke and taught Jewish theology, tried to get him to reveal which of the Ten Commandments given to Moses was the greatest. It was really a trap to get him say something which they could pin as being blasphemous.  Jesus, however, used this opportunity to declare that there were only two great commandments from which all others must necessarily follow –

To love God with all your heart, soul and strength and to love your neighbour as yourself.

The first of these, should be easy for us.  If we accept that God is our Creator, that we are on this Earth because he created us to be here and that all things that we have come from him and we are mere custodians for the period of time we are here,  then it should be a fairly simple matter to give him thanks and praise. Indeed we should feel an inherent desire to do so.  As we sing our hymns of praise this morning we are worshipping him and illustrating that love of God which Jesus speaks of. 

I don’t know about you, but when I sing these rousing hymns it gives me a strange sense of elation and feeling of a connection with him.

The second can be much harder.  To love your neighbour as yourself. Accepting that we are all God’s creatures, then we are expected to treat everyone as our neighbour and treat them with that same love which God shows to them and which we would like others to show to us.  At times people can do cruel and hurtful things to us and it is easy to take revenge on them or not to love them.  The love which Jesus is talking about is that which all humans should show to each other in community.  One of Jesus’s questioners asked him “But who is my neighbour” and was answered with the parable of the Good Samaritan – which I know you all know so well.  In that parable it is not just the Samaritan himself who helps the mugged man but also the innkeeper who trusts the Samaritan, a foreigner to return to settle the bill.  With our modern global outlook, the world has shrunk and we are increasingly called upon to help our neighbours from great distances – many just now flocking from war-torn Syria and African countries. 

Here is Winterslow I was always impressed by the degree of social awareness on display – Project Uganda, Morning Star, the Link Scheme, different Church Groups and Social Groups – this Tuesday Club.  These are all ways in which we can express our love of our neighbour and make life that bit better for others.

I talked briefly about my teenage daughter. She misses her brother, my teenage son, who recently arrived at Hull University.  Having spent the summer largely in his room on the Internet he suddenly realised that having virtual cyber friends was no substitute for the social graces and skills he needed to make new real friends, colleagues, some 200 miles away in a foreign city (well it is Yorkshire!).  He has made a real effort to make those new friends and was overwhelmed with the support and friendliness with which he was greeted by all those new students in a similar position.

Jesus was right when he talked about the two great commandments.  If the whole world took these aboard – to recognise and love God and to love each other as they would love themselves – wars would be prevented, crimes would be a thing of the past and people would feel happier and safer in themselves.

As we get into the Autumn of our lives we tend to think more and more about our mortality. We wonder what Heaven would be like if we get there!  My view of Heaven is as stated by John in the book of Revelation – there will be no more pain or suffering – God has wiped every tear from the eyes of those who live there. Isn’t that a wonderful thought?

I am a great believer that as a Christian, it is up to me, and my fellow Christians, to try and bring a little bit of Heaven down here to Earth.  In a moment we shall be saying the Lord’s Prayer together and a line of that reads

“Your will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven”

We pray for a little bit of Heaven to appear here on Earth.  Today let us make a point of bringing a little bit of Heaven into the lives of somebody else.  Let’s show our love for our neighbour by what we say and what we do – it only needs to be a small thing – a smile, a kind word or even a short prayer in the privacy of our own home.

Amen

MFB/66

SERMON 65 - SUNDAY 25 OCTOBER 2015

Sermon delivered at St. Mary’s Parish Church, Calne, Wiltshire  to the Wiltshire Provincial Grand Lodge of Freemasons and Royal Arch Companions – Sunday 25th October 2015

Ezra 1:1-11; John 2:12.23

May I speak in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and may these words be a blessing to all who hear them.  Amen

First of all, let me say how wonderful it is to see so many of you here present at the Annual Church Service for the Wiltshire Craft and Royal Arch Freemasons at Calne and what a lovely setting it is too.  It is especially lovely to see so many of the brethrens’ and companions’ spouses, partners and guests here as well.

Today’s two reading were chosen with great care and for many Royal Arch Masons present, the first of those readings, the Old Testament reading from the Book of Ezra, will be very familiar indeed, as part of it is incorporated into the Royal Arch Chapter ritual.  It was, therefore, very appropriate that it should be read by our Grand Superintendent.

Ezra is believed to have been a chronicler of the times of the great Exile of the Jewish people in Babylon when there was a kind of ethnic cleansing in reverse.  On the occupation of Judah by the Baylonians, who sacked the Temple at Jerusalem, they took into captivity in Babylon (modern day Iraq) all those who were educated or powerful leaving behind those less fortunate to maintain the land with hard labour. King Solomon’s great Temple was left to fall into ruin. They actively recruited and integrated the elite classes of the Jews into Babylonian culture and we read much about this in the Book of Daniel.  Ezra was from this elite class who found himself working for the Babylonians in exile in an administrative capacity.

Eventually, in its turn, the Babylonian Empire was itself overrun by the great Persian Empire of Cyrus the Great and Ezra, the great chronicler and administrator records in this first chapter of his book how God spoke to Cyrus telling him to let some of the Jews in former Babylonian captivity return to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple. There may have also been a very practical and political reason for doing this – the Temple was all important to the Jewish Faith and its destruction and their subsequent exile away from it might well account for unrest and lack of co-operation with the new Persian masters. Therefore, by selecting certain families loyal to the regime to return, the Persians could continue to control Judah with content and compliant collaborators. One only has to think of Vichy France during the last World War as a parallel.

This return, and consequential rebuilding of the Temple forms the backdrop of the Royal Arch ritual which teaches us much about loyalty and faithfulness within the context of the Jewish faith and as a pattern to imitate. As we read further on, in the Book of Ezra, we see how Ezra later organised the people into groups to do the work; but also read how he had to admonish them when they saw the rebuilding of their own homes as having priority and the building of the Temple fell further and further behind schedule. They had, after all, managed to continue with their Faith with the absence of a Temple for over 70 years. What they craved was to live comfortably in their native homeland.

Our second reading, from the New Testament, is in contrast to our first because it talks not about the building or rebuilding of the Temple, which by then had been substantially extended by Herod the Great, from the more modest affair in Ezra’s time, but about its ill-use and destruction. 

Jesus’s outburst in the courtyard of the Temple, occurs, according to the synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, during passion week but here in John’s gospel it seems to occur much earlier on during an earlier visit of Jesus and the disciples to Jerusalem for Passover.

Jesus is angry because instead of being a place of holy pilgrimage, as built in Ezra’s time, it has become a den of swindlers and moneylenders. The Temple was important to the Jews because it was where the High Priest, once a year on the Day of Atonement, would intercede with Yahweh, God, on behalf of the people in the sanctity of the Holy of Holies and the people would sacrifice animals as personal offerings for their own sins.  The currency used at that time in Judea was that brought in by the Roman occupation but in the Temple, as a concession, Jewish or Temple currency was used. This meant that the money changers could exploit the ordinary people by using excessive rates of exchange in order for them to purchase their offerings.

In our reading, Jesus refers to the Temple being destroyed and then being rebuilt in Three Days. In fact, as John explains, Jesus is not referring to the building at all but to himself as being the Temple through which the people should worship God and seek atonement - and that he would rise again three days after his death on the Cross. In fact, the Temple continued to exist for a further 40 years but was totally destroyed in AD70 by the Romans under Titus following the Jewish Revolt and has never been rebuilt.

Both of these stories, from the Old and New Testament are very familiar to us all but what do they teach us in today’s modern day.

Many people (including many Christians) have sought to deride Freemasonry and have put so many false stories on the Internet about what we do and why it is not compatible with Christianity, yet, the more I read of the bible and the more I see of the workings of Freemasonry, the more I see the utmost compatibility between the too – indeed, many of the origins of Freemasonry are grounded in fundamental Judeo-Christian beliefs.

The Jews asked Jesus, in an attempt to trap him into committing blasphemy, what he thought was the most important of the Ten Commandments handed down to Moses. His answer, as we heard read out at the beginning of this service, was to say that there were two commandments which are the most important and if those are followed, nothing else mattered – the others necessarily follow on.  Those are

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your mind.

This he stated was the first and greatest commandment, followed by:

Love your neighbour as yourself.

(Matthew 22:37-39)

How closely these resemble the tenets of Freemasonry – a belief in and a love of the Great Architect of the Universe / the Living God Most High and displaying brotherly love relief and truth.

In his response to the Jewish elders, Jesus is saying that it is not a matter of strict adherence to the Jewish law, the rituals surrounding the Temple or indeed the Temple itself – it is through Him, the Christ the anointed on - the one who is the Temple of God – his body is the sacrifice for all our sins.  Likewise, Freemasons, as brothers are expected and pledged to love one another and support each other with that same love and affection which is expected of all Christian brothers and sisters.

Whenever somebody challenges me about Freemasonry and asks me whether I find my Christian belief and role of church minister compromised by my membership of the Craft, I easily answer this by pointing out many of the tangible things which we as Freemasons do for and in the Community.  We, quite often silently, go about helping to relieve poverty and suffering - not only in our local community but also worldwide – often contributing funds and equipment to parts of the world affected by war, famine, flood and other natural disasters. Quite frequently even before official relief funds are launched.  Both the Church and Freemasons are there to assist the population at large. Archbishop Temple famously said that the Church is one organisation which is there principally for the benefit of people other than its members.  As Freemasons we are increasingly becoming involved with community projects and extending our benefits well beyond our own membership. Jesus was asked, following his statement about loving your neighbour, “who is my neighbour” and he answered with the parable of the Good Samaritan – a story I think we all knew very well.   It is no coincidence that the Masonic Relief Fund to which every lodge and chapter is contributing is called the Masonic Samaritan Fund.

Jesus was rightly angry to see the Temple being used in a manner contrary to that which it was intended when Ezra set out with the returning exiles to restore it; but equally he was right to say that the Temple was actually him.  We use our Temples or Lodge Rooms, as I prefer to call them, for our meetings and enjoy the ritual which teaches us the discipline to live good, sober and upright lives. On becoming the chairman or master of  the lodge there is a beautiful piece of text which calls upon the newly installed master to “live respected and die regretted.” It is a a lovely piece of poetic writing which I have often quoted to those who would challenge the worth and good or Freemasonry.

However, just as the early Christians did, it is often in the dining room afterwards when we sit down to eat together that the true companionship and brotherly love reveals itself. When and where we talk about everyday things and get to learn more about each other and our lives. Where we raise money for charities often outside those of Freemasonry.  Just as we enjoyed each other’s company over lunch today so when we meet together we can feel that wonderful warmth and love which Jesus talks about.  It’s a place where we can sit down as equals - just as God sees us irrespective of rank and fortune.

Ladies, many of you I know are quite long suffering - having your husbands out several nights a week. Maybe to some it is a blessing!  We bless you for your support and it is important for you to know that within the context of the meeting and its rituals God’s work is being done.  

St. Paul referred to us as all being priests – the priesthood of all believers, and by our service to our fellow human beings and being just and upright members of society we can indeed feel assured that those two commandments are indeed being followed just as Jesus intended.

Amen

MFB/65

SERMON 64 - SUNDAY 13 SEPTEMBER 2015

Sermon delivered at St. John’s Parish Church, West Grimstead, Wiltshire  – Sunday 13th September 2015

Isaiah 50:4-9a; James 3:1-12; Mark 8:27-38 (end)

May I speak in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and may these words be a blessing to all who hear them.  Amen

As a child, one of my favourite films of all time, and it remains so, was Fred Zinnemann’s “A Man for all Seasons” based on Robert Bolt’s play of the same name. It told the biographical story of Sir Thomas More’s last six years of his life – first at the court of King Henry VIII and later in the Tower of London.  It contained a star-studded cast of that time with Paul Schofield playing More alongside Robert Shaw (of later “Jaws” fame), Leo McKern (Rumpole of the Bailey), Nigel Davenport, Susannah York, Wendy Hillier, a very young John Hurt, and Orson Welles as a slightly American-sounding Wolsey!

Sir Thomas More, as Lord Chancellor of England, and now the Roman Catholic patron saint of lawyers, is portrayed as a man putting his faith first and foremost and hoping that by remaining silent, he can avoid the necessity of swearing an oath of supremacy to Henry VIII as Head of the Church in England and thus putting his soul in danger by denying the supremacy of the Vicar of Christ, The Pope.  His silence confounds those who would seek to make him either swear the oath or else trap him into confirming by speech or writing the true reason for his refusal to do so.  As More says “When he learned his trade at the Bar it was a golden rule that an accused’s silence could not be taken as an admission of guilt”. He is held in the Tower for a whole year “a man for all seasons” because he refuses to break his silence on why he will not swear the oath.

A young man, previously an untrustworthy but sycophantic acolyte of More’s, Richard Rich, is summoned to remove More’s books from his cell, which he has brought into the Tower of London with him.  During the course of their removal Rich engages More in conversation which he then twists and reports back to the authorities that More has denied the King’s competence to make himself Head of the Church. More who has remained silent all this time is then confronted with Rich’s evidence at his trial in Westminster Hall and points out that Rich must be committing perjury as why would he have remained silent all this time just to make a very condemning statement to an acolyte he has never trusted?

The evidence is just what the court requires to commit More to the scaffold for treason and More becomes resigned to his fate.  Just as Rich is returning to his seat after giving his perjured evidence, More notices that he is wearing a chain of office. Enquiring of Rich what he is wearing he is told by Thomas Cromwell that Richard Rich has been appointed Attorney General for Wales. At which point More, looks Rich straight in the eyes and quotes from that part of St. Mark’s gospel which we heard this morning :

For what will it profit [a man] to gain the whole world and forfeit his [soul]? But for Wales??

In other words, by his perjury, by the untruthful words given under oath at the trial, Rich has forfeited his soul.  Jesus talks about such forfeiture in the context of gaining everything (“the whole world”) whereas More is emphasising that Rich has put his soul in jeopardy for something far less – a position within the Principality of Wales.

From this extract we learn the message which all three of our readings give us this morning.  The tongue is such a powerful organ of the human body.  It may be small but through it we can make a huge difference in the way we live our lives and affect others. 

The apostle James is particularly careful to warn his readers of the importance of keeping the tongue tamed – especially for those who use speech and words for a living.  As James puts it :

“3Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters,^* for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. ²For all of us make many mistakes. Anyone who makes no mistakes in speaking is perfect, able to keep the whole body in check with a bridle. ³If we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we guide their whole bodies. ⁴Or look at ships: though they are so large that it takes strong winds to drive them, yet they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs. ⁵So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great exploits.

With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God. ¹⁰From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters,^* this ought not to be so.”

Richard Rich was, at the wag of his tongue, able to send Thomas More to the axeman’s scaffold and today, I have been disappointed at some of the misinformation and xenophobia which has been stirred up against those who would help those caught up in the refugee crisis affecting Europe. Yet some of our modern day media, whose livelihood is bound up with using words, have sought, I believe, to put a popular spin on things for their own political agendas and in many cases whipped up this xenophobia. 

This morning we have been using our tongues to praise God in the worship hymns and praises we have been using.  To give him thanks for the goodness which has been bestowed upon us, to ask humbly for forgiveness in the words of the confession and, later, to send him prayers of supplication through our intercessions.  As Christians it is our duty to do all those things and to encourage others to do likewise.

But it is also important that in our everyday lives we use our tongues wisely for, as James says :

“No one can tame the tongue—a restless evil, full of deadly poison. ⁹¹¹Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and brackish water? ¹²Can a fig tree, my brothers and sisters,^* yield olives, or a grapevine figs? No more can salt water yield fresh.”

In other words, it is a matter for us as individuals to tame our own tongues – just as we as humans tame other animals. If we truly do that, and attend to it, thinking first of the implications of our words for others, and in using our tongues here in this church to be a blessing to God and the people around us, as we now are, then the same goodness should emanate when we are outside of this holy environment.  Our tongues should be used only to praise, encourage and be a blessing to all around us and not a curse otherwise we do not bear the true fruits of the Holy Spirit which should be inside each and every one of us a Christians.  It is not easy.  Today’s world seems to thrive on the dark side of life. It is so often much more easy to moan, complain, criticise, gossip and tell stories which are against others than to praise encourage and promote. I know, I struggle sometimes myself in situations where I feel that I have been badly let down or treated poorly. But even then, we can point out the errors of others in ways which don’t upset or demean.

I wonder what James would have said in his Epistle if Facebook and other Social Media had been around in his day?  I am sure his message would have been pretty much the same - only perhaps even stronger. I have to admit to being a regular user of Facebook myself – hopefully for the greater glory of God but at least in the hope of encouraging others.  Yet, it pains me often to see it used for what James would have called evil intent :

“How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire!  ⁶And the tongue is a fire. The tongue is placed among our members as a world of iniquity; it stains the whole body, sets on fire the cycle of nature,^* and is itself set on fire by hell.”

I think that should be on everybody’s Facebook page to remind the poster of the responsibility he or she has not to promote or upset others by the remarks and opinions they may post.

^*It is a sad fact that many people under the banner of being Christians have disgraced Jesus’s and James’s teaching by the way they have openly spoken on social media sites and elsewhere.  The actions of the Westboro Baptist Church in the USA immediately comes to mind. I know that is an extreme example but we can also easily upset the people around us by the way we speak to them and I, regrettably, know of quite a few cases where people have been turned off by or turned away from church by a few unfortunate words spoken from existing members. I hasten to add none from here.  As Archbishop William Temple so famously put :

The Church is the only society that exists for the benefit of those who are not its members”

We therefore, as Christians, have a duty to show to the world that we stand for the truth and should tame our tongues to use them only for the greater glory of God in the way we speak and write.  We started this morning, with saying the Peace together, in a moment we will affirm our Faith in the words of the Creed and later on we shall all stand again to say the Grace.  We speak those words as a positive declaration of our faith – our belief in Jesus Christ and his teachings and we speak such beautiful words with our tongues.

 

Let us not be like Richard Rich, prepared to perjure ourselves by distorting or denying the truth of our Faith to others or saying or implying bad things about others or upsetting others even if it does gain us some profit for a time.  Let us go out this week determined to use those same tongues, which we are using this morning here in church, in our everyday lives to praise and encourage others and in so doing show to the whole world the grace and love which marks us as Christian brothers and sisters.

Amen

 

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SERMON 63 - SUNDAY 16 AUGUST 2015

Sermon delivered at St. Lawrence’s Church, Stratford-sub-Castle, Wiltshire  – Sunday 16th August 2015

Ephesians 5:15-20; Psalm 111; John 6:51-58

May I speak in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and may these words be a blessing to all who hear them.  Amen

What do you think sustains you in life?  What is your passion? What is it that gets you excited?

In this modern day and age of instant gratification when we have so many choices at our disposal it is so easy to get side tracked away from our faith and look towards other things which can push our faith and our worship into the corner.  With a proposed extension of the relaxation of the Sunday trading laws more and more of our leisure time will be taken up with spreading out our normal week into the weekends.  I am totally at fault of this myself - for now we are firmly back in the Premier League and in Europe I shall be taking myself off to worship at St. Mary’s Stadium in Southampton on some Sundays – so let me make it clear from the outset, I am certainly in no position to admonish those who spend their Sundays on pursuits other than going to church or relaxing with a bible. Indeed, Jesus himself angered the elders of the synagogue and leaders of the Jewish law observance group on more than one occasion by working himself on the Sabbath.

Today we had two really good readings and a psalm which remind us of the importance of recalling that our Faith is based on a firm belief that Jesus is the true way to salvation and that we as Christians are expected to meet together and worship to remind one another of this and to support each other – just as we are doing here today and later will be sharing God’s gifts of bread and wine together in the act of Holy Communion.

We certainly need times of relaxation and I, for one, enjoy a glass of wine on the sofa whilst reading or watching TV or just chatting with friends.  In our first reading (Ephesians 5:15-20), Paul enjoins us not to spend our time in debauchery, in drunkenness or hedonistic pleasure but to use it wisely as time is a gift from God which can be snatched back at any moment.  In our modern world there are now three major resources for us – wisdom, knowledge and more recently ease of information.  Each can set us on different paths but information should properly lead us to knowledge but it is how we use that knowledge which will determine whether we act wisely or not.

There is a lovely verse in Psalm 111 which reads : “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom” which I take to mean “Having a respect for the Lord will lead us to a better understanding of the knowledge we have obtained through the information sought and received”.The key is that we must put everything before God through Jesus our Saviour to enable us to lead a full and wise existence. Wisdom is about making good choices which are ultimately for the greater glory of the one who created us.  That should always be our aim as loyal Christians.

“Wisdom” is the common golden thread which runs through each of our readings this morning and had we had it, also our Old Testament reading from 1 Kings which speaks about the wisdom of Solomon and the building of the temple at Jerusalem in God’s honour. When we seek wise counsel we are seeking help and advice which will lead to a better understanding of ourselves within the context of the created world and hopefully making good choices and decisions for everyone we may encounter. I have made some bad choices in my own life, and each and every one of us can think back when we’ve done likewise – very often because we have failed to listen to good counsel or simply not understood what we were being told.  This is our greatest danger.

Jesus was constantly being misunderstood. In our gospel reading the Jewish authorities could not understand what he was talking about when he said “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood will have eternal life” and their sensibilities will have been shocked by this seeming call to cannibalism!  Indeed, the early Christians were often rumoured to eat human flesh and drink blood when their Holy Communion rites were discovered by non-believers.  Surely, thought the Jewish leaders, this cannot be considered acceptable – and we read in the very next verses of John how a significant number of Jesus’s disciples fled at the thought of this rather gruesome supper – indeed, the messiah which they wanted to follow was one who was going to give them actual food and freedom from the control exercised by the Roman occupiers.This was not what they had bought into.

In fact, what Jesus was doing was predicting his own crucifixion and explaining that only through his broken body and the shedding of his blood on the Cross could we poor human beings truly obtain salvation – eternal life.  If we didn’t believe that, if we didn’t accept that truth as “meat and drink” then we were lost.  It is interesting how today we still often use the phrase “It’s meat and drink to them” when we describe something as being trite to a person – without question, simple, understandable and something being followed naturally. And so should be our faith – especially when we are called upon to witness to others who are not Christians.

There are two other famous incidences in Jesus’s life where the same message is misunderstood.  I recall preaching here in this very church about a year ago when I talked about the woman at the well who thought Jesus was talking about a real liquid when he told her that he could provide living water which would quench her thirst for all time.  The poor woman had to make a midday trip to the well every day and thought Jesus would be able to put a stop to that – just as those disciples who left Jesus thought that he would put an end to Roman occupation.  Again, he was talking about himself and using water as an analogy.  There is also that famous incident when Nicodemus came to Jesus in the night when they discussed being “born again” – with Nicodemus asking “How can a man return to his mother’s womb”. This was not what he was saying but a turning back – a repentance.

Jesus uses analogies all the time. In John we have just had the feeding of the five thousand where Jesus breaks bread – a prophecy perhaps of the last supper – and bread is very much at the fore. Through his various miracles around this part of John he has also demonstrated the power of God and that he has been sent from Heaven – a theme which John picks up on no less than thirty times in his gospel.

This morning’s gospel passage has been the subject of much theological debate and interpretation over the centuries and led to the doctrine of transubstantiation which has itself led to violent arguments, executions and even wars.  I don’t intend to get into a massive debate on this – it’s far too controversial – but it is my firm belief that Jesus is reminding his followers of his human divinity (both human and divine) and that his sacrifice on the cross is the centre of his ministry for our salvation. I therefore do not personally believe that Jesus ever intended the sacraments to be transubstantiated and the Church of England’s Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, which I signed up to on my admission as a minister, state the contrary in Article 28.  Far simpler, and a far better interpretation, in my view, is that Jesus is telling us to have Faith in his teaching, ministry and in particular his crucifixion and resurrection for the atonement of our sins.

That of course is not to diminish Holy Communion nor does that belief mean Jesus is not present at the Communion table – indeed he is present with us always but this is a special time to come together in his presence as true disciples and share a common meal.

Jesus told his disciples – and we are his modern day ones – that we should remember Him and what he did for us that first Easter in the partaking of bread and wine.  These items, so common at the table then and indeed today, represent his body and the blood he shed.  It was an intimate moment at the Last Supper when the disciples shared the dish and the wine and joined together to demonstrate their love and wisdom of Jesus.  They partook of the information he gave them, the knowledge and understanding of what he was doing by this simple act.

As we shortly go up to the alter to receive Holy Communion we should recall those prophetic words of Jesus in John’s gospel – “by eating and drinking his body and blood we are acknowledging him as our Saviour and obtaining Eternal Life” and, by doing so together during an act of worship we are also supporting one another and acting in true Christian brotherly and sisterly fashion demonstrating the Faith which we have already subscribed to.

For us he should be the very meat and drink of our Faith.

I began by asking what sustains us?  As Christians this wonderful belief that Jesus came down, broke bread with us, lived amongst us and then died for us rising so that he could continue to have a relationship with us must be the greatest thing to sustain us through life. I pray that each and every one of us remembers this simple yet enormous thought through, not only those times of anxiety and despair, but also those times when we could easily find more material substitutes to sustain us.

Let us pray,

Dear Lord, we thank you that you came down from Heaven and dwelt amongst us.

In the act of Holy Communion we remember all you did for us and that by being the meat and drink of our salvation you will continue to watch over us and guide us in the paths of righteousness during the period of our time here on Earth

And that we may live good and sober lives so that you can enrich us with your wisdom and love.

Amen

 

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SERMON 62 - SUNDAY 9 AUGUST 2015

Sermon delivered at All Saints Parish Church, Whiteparish  – Sunday 9th August 2015

Job 39:1 – 40:4; Psalm 91; Hebrews 12:1-17

May I speak in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and may these words be a blessing to all who hear them.  Amen

In preparation for my house move, I recently reviewed the sheer number of books I possess and came to the conclusion that I would need to undertake a major cull – but like so many book lovers, I know I will find it excruciatingly difficult with having so many interests – books on theology, astronomy, political biographies, art, music, history, geography, not to mention my extensive collection of books on industrial and other forms of archaeology, maritime history, railways and buses and tramways. That’s without starting on the non-fiction!  Indeed, I know full well that most information can now be gleaned through electronic technology and Wikipaedia remains a constant companion of mine; but to dispose of my books would still be sheer pain.

However, there is one section of my library which contains dozens and dozens of books which can be loosely described as “Self-Help” or “Psychology” – those I bought at a time when I thought they would bring me the answers to all my problems – those written by business gurus suggesting how I could make my business more profitable, reach out to get more clients, those written by health gurus telling me how I could look and feel better – they obviously are still in pristine condition! – those written by a number of people containing psychological tests in order to ascertain my personality and suggesting what best form of occupation would suit my personality; books on leadership and so on.

However, there sitting in amongst all of these is a specific genre about “parenting” – and there are dozens of them – from the cradle to dealing with the emotions of teenagers with titles like “The Sixty Minute Father”, “Getting through The Troublesome Teen Years”, “Bringing up Teenagers”.  I’ve even attended courses in the past on parenting to see if there was any magic formula available to deal with troublesome toddlers and teenagers.  These courses taught me only one thing – I wasn’t alone and everything I experienced in bringing up my children had been experienced by others before and all we were really doing was sharing experiences – with so many different ideas and suggestions on how to deal with similar situations as there are books.

I well recall attending my first ante-natal class with my then partner.  At one point we were split into two groups – prospective mothers and prospective fathers.  Each group was asked to come up with a set of the most important questions they wanted to bring up to those running the course.  The result was fascinating – the prospective mothers wanted to ask questions relating to the actual birth – “would it hurt? how much? what pain reducing methods were available?” Should they have gas and air or a TENS machine? etc. etc.  The fathers’ main pre-occupation was “how much does it cost to bring up a child?, how and who should discipline the child, what happens if you and your partner don’t agree upon how this should be done? When should you put a child’s name down for a particular school”? Hence the purchase of so many books on this topic with so many different ideas.

The one thing that came out of all this was that I was determined to be the best father I could be – books or no books.  My own parents had not, as far as I could establish, resorted to texts book but just got on with it.  Looking back, I didn’t have the most prosperous of childhoods in terms of material things – my first bicycle was second hand, I had “Minibricks” instead of Lego; I had a Twin Trix train set instead of the Hornby set I wanted and so on. But what I did have were very loving parents – my father lovingly building for me, from scratch, a lovely castle with a draw bridge and populating it carefully with cavaliers and roundheads – which I later ungraciously swapped with a friend for cowboys and Indians; and my mother taught me how to play cricket and would often join me and my friends on our small rear lawn where we re-enacted great Ashes Test match games!  I still treasure those moments.

The bible consists of 66 books – 37 in the Old Testament and 29 in the New and book often overlooked, and often thought of as being in the Old Testament is Hebrews which, to my mind is one of the loveliest and instructional of all the books. It is found immediately after the books which have been ascribed to Paul and sits between Paul’s letter to Philemon and the epistle of James (my favourite book).  Although the style is similar to Paul’s, scholars now believe that it was not written by him.

The letter is written specifically to Jews turned Christians and is a very important book for us because it places Jesus’s ministry and death very much in the context of Jewish history and culture at the time making it clear that Jesus’s ministry and death and resurrection is a continuation of God’s endless love for his people; but also warning about the dangers of unbelief – recalling where things had gone wrong in the past in the Old Testament and calling Jesus the one and only great High Priest – emphasising the mission of Paul that salvation is only through Faith alone and not simply by a strict adherence of the Jewish laws. He recalls that it was by Faith that certain things happened in the Old Testament – the falling down of the walls of Jericho, the parting of the Red Sea and so on for example.

In the passage we read this evening, the writer is reminding his readers that throughout their history God has had occasions to rebuke them – and a reading of Judges or many of the Old Testament books give countless examples of where the wrath of God has appeared to fall down on those of his people who have lost their faith or deliberately gone against it.  It is then, the writer of Hebrews says, that God will discipline his sons (followers/us) but he does it, not as punishment, but to get us back on the right track.

At the beginning of this service we acknowledged in the opening prayers that “we have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep – we have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts”.  Our Christian doctrine and theology acknowledge that we have done and will continue to do this but if we put our faith in our shepherd he will pick us up and bring us back into the fold.

When I swapped those lovely and carefully chosen civil war figures for some cheap cowboys and Indians out of a cereals packet, I was severely admonished by my parents and made to do penance by returning to the scene of my crime, my friend’s house, and swapping them back.  Highly embarrassing for me but I duly did do that, probably cursing my parents as I did so, but it taught me a lesson, the value of things and an appreciation of the gifts given to me by my father.  So much so that even today, 50-odd years later, I can still remember the incident vividly.

The writer of Hebrews goes on to say that our Father God, in disciplining us, is acknowledging us to be a legitimate member of his family – just in the same way when we join a club we are bound by its rules and regulations. It authenticates us. The disciplining we receive from God is often in the form of hardship as part of the refining process to mould us into the persons he wants us to be. In the Old Testament Book of Malachi (Chapter 3) the writer talks about the Messiah coming as the refiner, the purifier, as God’s instrument to make us pure and righteous as he intended.  Refining can appear as a destructive process on first glance but is the first part of making us pure.

Just in the way we should and hopefully did respect our parents, although sometimes it does happen until later in life, so we should love and respect our Father God. We should do it with a good grace.  It’s a simple task – in theory.

My teenage children can be very trying at times and often will challenge my decisions which might not always fall in with their own thoughts and plans; but at the end of the day they invariably do understand why I might have had to “refine them”.  If I have succeeded in doing that and, at the same time understand the same process in my relationship with God, then I can happily throw those books away or give them to somebody else who is currently struggling.

Amen

 

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