SERMON 56 - SUNDAY 22 MARCH 2015

Sermon delivered at St. Lawrence’s Parish Church, Stratford-sub-Castle, Wiltshire and St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Chapel, Whaddon – Sunday 22nd March 2015

Hebrews 5:5-10; John 12:20-33; Romans 5:12-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

Did any of you get to witness the partial eclipse of the Sun on Friday morning? Here in Salisbury it was most disappointing with heavy cloud covering the sky until the eclipse was over – then glorious sunshine!  Ah Well!  What a wonderful sight such eclipses are though, a huge bite out of the solar disc by the Moon’s shadow - but nothing quite surpasses a total eclipse when the light from the Sun is completely blotted out and the land returns to complete darkness as happened on the Faroes this time. I was privileged enough to see this event back in 1999 when I journeyed with my then wife and two and a half year old son to Newquay in Cornwall.  I remember that day well – we journeyed through the night of the previous day to make sure we got there in good time and could book into our hotel on the bay headland.  I remember watching the Sun set in a beautifully cloudless sky over the sea the evening before thinking we were going to have a glorious day for the eclipse.  But this is England!  We woke up to the wind pounding the rain against our hotel room window.  Typical we thought.  The eclipse was due to start at 11.11 a.m. on the 11 August.  After breakfast we decided we would walk out on the headland in the lashing rain armed with a telescope and cameras in order to capture this once-in-a-lifetime event but it seemed hopeless.  At 11 a.m. the sky was overcast but the rain had stopped.  At 11.09 a.m. the clouds parted as though a divine hand had opened the celestial curtains and we saw the total eclipse of the Sun in all its glory.  Street lights came on, seabirds returned to the land to roost, dogs howled, the temperature dropped dramatically and shivering people shouted, screamed and hugged each other and cries of “Oh My God” rang out!  As we stood there, looking up at the Sun’s corona and all the stars and planets, now visible in the mid-morning, my thoughts went to how this must have been viewed by ancient people who had no knowledge of the continuous celestial dance of the Sun, Moon and planets. A shiver ran down my spine and I could see how ancient people had worshipped the Sun at Stonehenge and how dreadful it must have been for it suddenly to appear to have been blotted out – perhaps never to return.  We, of course now know that by an ingenious stroke of Creation – the Moon is 400 times closer to us than the sun and just happens to be 400 times smaller – hence its shadow perfectly fits across the Sun’s disc for the limited period it passes in front of the Sun on its monthly lunar orbit.

Today is Passiontide Sunday, when we ponder on the whole Easter story as it begins to unfold  and we read in the bible of the occurrence of a total eclipse of the Sun on a very important day and time – the moment Jesus Christ died on the Cross.   We read that darkness descended over the whole land and another event occurred – the renting of the curtain in the Temple’s Holy of Holy’s.  Not rent from bottom to top as would be the case if a human being had torn it, but from top to bottom – a sign of divine intervention.  As darkness descended and the light of the world was snuffed out, a channel was made between us and God – a direct line of communication as though God was suddenly encouraging us to be his Facebook friend!  His chosen people could communicate by prayer directly with him – they no longer needed to go through the contortions associated with the complex Temple system with all its convolutions and corruptness (we heard about the moneylenders in the Temple recently).  In Romans 5, Paul is saying to the Church in Rome, that by this one act of Jesus, his death for our sins, God has given us much grace and this grace from God is totally free.

I don’t know about you but I am a bit of a sucker for the BOGF – “Buy one get one free”.  Whether I really want a second item or not – it’s free after all!  We all like to think that we are getting a bargain.  I remember hearing once of somebody wanting to get rid of a bicycle.  They advertised it as free to a good home on their front.  There were no takers. People were suspicious.   The moment the owners  put a sign on it saying it was for sale for £10 it was taken, nicked, the following day. Says a lot about human nature does that!  So, when God says I am giving you a free gift – salvation for your soul, righteousness, repentance – he is actually putting a price on it – obedience to him. 

In Hebrews 5, the writer talks about Jesus as the Great High Priest.  What does he mean?  When the Temple curtain was torn, as we have already said, there was a direct channel of communication with God – the need for the Great High Priest to intercede on the Day of Atonement was negated and as we know, Peter later goes on to talk about the “Priesthood of all Believers” (1 Peter 2:9 and again in Revelation 5:10) – something I am very keen to evangelize as a lay minister – I guess I am a Lutheran at heart – Peter addresses the Hebrews in these terms:

But you are not like that, for you are a chosen people. You are royal priests, a holy nation, God’s very own possession. As a result, you can show others the goodness of God, for he called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light. (1 Peter 2)

The writer of Hebrews talks about Christ being a priest like Melchizedek.  What does that mean?  Isn’t this all a little confusing?  Do we need a Great High Priest or not?

We must remember that the writer of Hebrews, a much underrated book in my view and one which I think all Christians should read as a means of understanding and appreciating the importance of the Jewish heritage of our own Faith, and a link between the Old and the New Testaments, is writing in a manner which will make the reader more readily understand Christianity in his/her own age and context. For example it is a bit like trying to explain the rules of cricket to an American whose only knowledge of games with bats and balls is American baseball.  You need to explain to him that a cricket bat is like a baseball bat except….. or the pitcher pitches but the cricketer bowls the ball etc. Therefore in trying to explain the role of Christ and the relevance of his Passion it is necessary to compare him to an ancient priest from their own history - Melchizedek.  And to do that it was necessary for me to do a bit of research on good old Wikipedia as to whom Melchizedek was.

Well the first thing I learned was that Melchizedek is the name of a 30-litre bottle of champagne – imagine that a bottle that holds the equivalent of 40 ordinary bottles of champagne!  It would be a great party that required a Melchizedek!  That’s probably why I’ve never seen one. If nothing else, you’ve learned the answer to a good pub quiz question!

My source tells me that Melchizedek was King/Priest of Salem who gave Abram bread and wine after Abram had defeated King Kedorlaomer.(Genesis 14:18)  He is also mentioned in Psalm 110 (v. 4) when David writes:

 “The Lord has sworn

And will not change his mind

You are a priest for ever

In the order of Melchezedek”

It seems therefore that the writer of Hebrews is likening Jesus to a former king who was both kind and righteous and I think it interesting and not insignificant that in the quote from Genesis, Abram is refreshed by bread and wine.  This would not have gone unnoticed by the Hebrew readers – a prophesy of the Last Supper – a remembrance and a celebration.

Jesus is there to refresh us today – remember how he tells the woman at the well that the water he can provide will quench her thirst for ever.

The importance of all the readings today and of the celebration of the beginning of Passiontide is to remember and celebrate that it is only through obedience and belief in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ our Saviour that we can be saved and have eternal life.

Recently I heard that 95% of churchgoers (and I know that this does not include you) never read their bible.  What they know of it is what they hear on Sundays when it is read out to them.  More alarmingly, a massive percentage of the population have absolutely no idea what Easter is about except that it seems to have a lot to do with rabbits, eggs and chocolate but even then they don’t really know why.  It is simply another holiday and religion should be kept out of it.

We who have given our life to Christ are indeed holy priests.  The way to eternal life is by following the teachings of Christ but above all recalling that, in the words of John (John 3:18)

“Whoever believes in him is not condemned but whoever does not believe in him already stands condemned.  Light came into the world but Man loved darkness because their deeds were evil”.

Paul says, in Ephesians 5:8 :

“For you were once darkness, but now you have the light in the Lord.  Live as children of light for the fruit of the light consists of all goodness righteousness and truth.”

Very often I look at the world and think we are indeed in darkness.  But I remember that the Trinitarian God is always there.  Just as on that August day in 1999 when darkness descended upon Cornwall, the Sun never left the sky neither will God abandon us.

Amen

 

MFB/56

SERMON 55 - SUNDAY 8 MARCH 2015

Sermon delivered at St. Mary and Holy Trinity Parish Church, West Dean, Wiltshire and St. John’s Parish Church, West Grimstead – Sunday 8^th March 2015 (A reworking of Sermon 46)

Exodus 20:1-17; 1  Corinthians 1:18-25; John 2:13-22

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

There is an immense richness about each and every one of our readings this morning which I think can all be linked together with the one word “love” – just as Jesus left us the two greatest Commandments of all – Love God with all your heart and strength and love others as you would have them love you.  We’ll unpick that further in a moment.

In the first of our readings we are reminded of the Torah, the book of law handed down to the Hebrews by Moses and upon which the Jewish faith is so heavily founded – laws or a code of conduct given by God directly to his people for the proper governance and guidance of his chosen people – laws which were frequently broken but which, by a strict adherence the Jews thought they would ensure that Yahweh or Jehovah, the unspeakable God would look down favourably upon them.

Let us just recall those Ten Commandments and here is a very easy way to remember them in the order they appear in our reading from the book of Exodus:

1.         The is only one God – no others

2.         Don’t two time God by falsely worshipping other idols

3.         There are three names for God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – don’t use them wrongly.

4.         Remember the Sabbath – the letter “4” looks a bit like a deckchair to rest in

5.         Honour your father and mother – How often do children take their parents for granted and think of them as simply a cash machine – No. 5 “lend us a fiver Dad”,

6.         Do not murder – the letter “6” resembles a hangman’s noose

7.         Do not commit adultery – think of the “seven year itch” we are sometime told about

8.         Do not steal – the letter eight looks like a pair of handcuffs if turned on its side

9.         Do not bear false witness – No 9 is not 10 – it is not the last of the commandments

10.       Do not covet etc. Think of thin “1” and fat “0”. Have and have not.

That was just a bit of fun but I bet you will remember the order of the Commandments after this.  

The Old Testament is full of examples of where those commandments were broken – time and time again and we only have to look at David as a really good (or should I say bad) example of somebody who broke nearly every one of them – especially murder, coveting, adultery and theft.  We read how, during the course of the history connected with the Jewish people an attempt to keep to the law still brought about trials and tribulations and eventually, God sent down his only son, Jesus, to redeem his people – and us today.

Today we still live in a world of great hardship and poverty.  A world which more than ever needs to remember those Commandments and especially the two great ones left to us by Jesus. We read in our daily newspapers of such terrible examples of greed and selfishness – and I guess we have all, at some time or other, been victims of those two vices.  We read statistics about the fact that such a small handful of extremely wealthy people own more than the entire gross national product of the world’s 80 poorest countries.  My son said to me only the other day that he wishes he had been born thirty or so years earlier when it was possible to buy a property fairly easily, or walk into a job from university or have a decent pension scheme.  Now all these things are not easy because money is not being re-circulated into society – there are only so many cars or boats that a Premier League footballer on £140,000 per week wants or needs.  The world’s answer is print more money – quantitative easing as it’s called.  The fact of the matter is that the money printed is not backed by gold reserves but on debt which has been created in the first place by lending to people who couldn’t afford the repayments! To me it seems mere folly in fact immoral.

As the Chaplain here in Salisbury to some of the homeless and Veterans, I get really angry when I read of many injustices which have created the homeless person’s problems in the first place. Many are not entirely of their own making - but victims of dubious war or crime. The unfairness of the Sanction system for example, food poverty - one child in every nine in “prosperous” Britain going to bed hungry at night.  It’s wrong, it shouldn’t be and it certainly shouldn’t happen if we followed Jesus’s two great commandments – Love God and Love each other as you yourself would wish to be loved.

Many people think that religion and politics shouldn’t mix; that church ministers should stay away from politicians – but it is my belief that we, as practising Christians, should become involved.  We are in a period of ten weeks or so leading up to a General Election – to elect a Government for the next five years – a Government which will shape our future economy and attitude toward foreign affairs and aid.  More and more the Government is relying upon charities and particularly Christian organisations to work towards alleviating poverty both in this country and abroad,  That’s fine but I believe that we should also tackle the root cause of many of the those problems. Question those who seek to be elected.  Discern carefully whether their manifesto has a line of sight with the bible or whether a line of sight with their own ego and power.

In our gospel reading we have the finest example we could possibly have of a Christian getting angry at injustice – Jesus himself.  But we have to be angry in a righteous, not self-righteous way.  We need and should get angry when we see the world turning its back on our Christian principles.

As a bit of background to Jesus’s “tantrum” in the Temple it is necessary to understand something of the Temple system.  The Temple was made up of a series of boxes – courtyards – with the Holy of Holy’s at its centre and spreading out in a number of courtyards restricted to people of different class or hierarchy.  On the outer part was the courtyard where small animals could be bought for sacrifice.  However, to purchase your sacrificial dove or chicken or whatever you needed to use Temple money which you exchanged for your Roman coinage.  These were the money lenders or money changers who would take a massive commission both for converting the Roman money into Temple shekels and then converting back before the individual returned to the outside Roman world.   They probably also loaned money at exorbitant rates to those who didn’t quite have enough – in league with the livestock vendors, no doubt.  Does it remind you of anything today?  Cash Converters, Wonga and the like?  How many times do we read of extortionate rates being used against the poor – indeed, it is quite clear that the ones in this country who are being exploited the most are those who can least afford it!

I am a great admirer of Bishop Desmond Tutu.  Here is a man who has successfully embraced politics from his religious seat. A man who once was labelled by White politicians as a “communist” until he pointed out that the principles he preached were not from some tome by Karl Marx but from within the 66 books which make up the Holy Bible – the same book on which those same white politicians swore their oaths of allegiance when taking their seats in the South African Parliament.

It is right and proper that we should get angry as Christians.  We are first of all human beings and experience human emotions and secondly the Holy Spirit has put into our hearts compassion and feelings of sympathy and empathy for the plight of those less fortunate than ourselves together with an understanding of what Jesus felt as he preached to sinners and those who found life difficult.  However it is also important that our anger should be directed for the right reasons and with a positive aim in mind.  Jesus was angry because the money changers were cheating the ordinary folk and making money out of their reliance on an antiquated system of worship.  By dying on the cross he ended all that by giving us direct access to the Trinitarian God.  Likewise, we should become angry at those things which make God angry.  Vicky Beeching, the now controversial theologian and songwriter wrote (addressing God) “Break my heart with the things that break yours”.

How often do we – you and me – seek to put things “right” without bringing God, through Jesus, into the equation?  Howe often do we stand on the solemnity and sometimes inflexibility of the law or systems without looking at things from a deeper and wider perspective? How often do we build a fortress which, whilst seeking to protect what we have, also shuts out the Holy Spirit which should be allowed to freely enter us – especially in times of trial – when we need him most – to actually do something to stop the injustices we see around us and which we frequently bemoan.

I would like to end with a prayer using the words of Vicky Beeching’s song and let it be our strap line during Lent and the period leading up until the General election:

Father God,

Break our hearts
With the things that break Yours
Wake us up to see through Your eyes

Break our hearts
With the things that break Yours
And send us out to shine in the darkness

It's time to move outside our comfort zone
To see beyond our churches and our homes
To change the way we think and how we spend
Until we look like Jesus again

Amen

 

MFB/55

SERMON 54 - SUNDAY 8 FEBRUARY 2015

Sermon at All Saints Church, Whiteparish, Salisbury – Evening Book of Common Prayer - Sunday 8 February 2015

Psalm 65; Genesis 2:4b-end; Luke 8:22-35

May I speak in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen

Psalm 65, which we said tonight says it all I think.  A wonderful hymn of praise which reminds us all that God is in complete control; his strength sets fast the mountains and stills the raging of the seas.  The earth and all that is in it was made by him.  Creation was his and he continues to bless it by providing all that is necessary for our survival.  It is, in fact Mankind, the steward of this Creation, and not God who is likely to bring about its downfall and destruction.

I was brought up in Grimsby in the 1950s and 1960s when it was described in all the gazetteers as “the largest fishing port in the world” and as far as I was concerned it was the centre of the Universe.  The town exuded a richness of culture and neighbourliness so typical of fishing communities and its size meant that this neighbourliness extended to a population of nearly 100,000 – in fact in excess of 100,000 – nearer 130,000 - when including the town resort of Cleethorpes.  Yet despite the wealth and prosperity generated by this commercial fishing and accompanying food processing industries (it was the home of the fish finger) it never lost its sense of community and helpfulness towards others.  Nobody was expected to go (nor did go) hungry – fish was in plentiful supply from the Icelandic and Barents deep seas – mainly haddock – and was used, very often, as a kind of currency when odd jobs and favours where done.  I recall boarding a trolleybus at Riby Square and seeing the lumpers going home wearing their clogs and carrying hessian bags dripping fish juice on the floor and changing the smell of the bus from a smoky cigarette one to a smoked fish smell.

The town would go into deep mourning and a sense of empathy and sympathy would fall over the community whenever a trawler was lost at sea – a not infrequent occurrence.  Communities would draw together in prayer and practical help.  Deep sea fishing is without doubt up there with coal mining as one of the most dangerous of occupations.  I come from a long line of trawler skippers and my own grandfather lost his ship in a hazardous blizzard off the north coast of Iceland just a few days before Hitler came to power in January 1933.   Treacherous waters and sudden gales and blizzards would spring up – just as in our second reading this evening. 

The role of the Chaplain to the Deep Sea Mission was a well-respected though feared one because whenever the chaplain called at a house it was usually to impart grave news of the loss of a ship or a particular crew member – usually falling overboard or fatally injured on the icy deck.  Large funerals attended by fellow fishermen, trawler owners and skippers and family and friends were a regular occurrence and a drawing together of the community a wonderful though sad sight.

Recently my home town has featured in a series of programmes entitle “Skint” which was a “fly on the wall” documentary looking into the lives of the less fortunate members of society in Grimsby – those who are unemployed, homeless, drug addicts, youths with little prospects or purpose in life – whom society has shunned.  It was remarkable to me, that many of these were receiving little help today from the community – largely I think because following the decline of the deep sea fishing industry after the Cod War, there was such an enormous increase in unemployment (fishermen never had the same employment protection enjoyed by their landside colleagues) and consequent poverty.  Terraced streets were pulled down to make way for high rise flats which have brought with them further problems.

However, springing up from quite close by these flats is a youth centre called “Shalom” run by an aging cleric who has made it his late life’s ambition to give whatever welcome and hope he can to these less fortunate members of society who will find it hard to make a way in the world. The centre is somewhat similar to the youth centres run locally here in Salisbury by Alabare.  A safe haven where young people can meet in safety and fun – such has been its success that many of those self-same youths who have used the Centre have now themselves become volunteer workers there. It is, I think, a wonderful witness to our true Christian beliefs that it is the church and this aging cleric who have given life hope to these otherwise hopeless people.

Our first reading this evening is also known as the second account of Creation and varies from the first (in Genesis 1) in a fundamental detail and was written later.  Many people (myself included until I started my ministry training) didn’t realise that there were two accounts of Creation in the bible.  I will dwell on just one major difference this evening.  In Genesis 1, God is stated to create Man and woman at the same time and in effect gives them equal status yet in Genesis 2, read out this evening, Woman is created out of Man and was probably inserted later by the early church founders to emphasize woman’s subservient place to man as understood by the customs and culture around at that time – some 1500 BC. It is therefore important, in my view and that of some theologians more eminent than me, that we read the bible carefully remembering the context in which the scripture was written and applying it to today’s views and needs; but the remarkable thing is that it does still speak to us today and we can apply what David was saying in Psalm 65 to today’s modern world where we often try to control our planet and each other and our combined destiny’s against the will of God.  In Psalm 33 the psalmist says “God brings the counsel of nations to nought, He makes the thoughts of the peoples to be of no effect. The counsel of God stands firm for ever.  The thoughts of his heart to all generations.”

In other words by putting our trust and faith in God alone we are putting our trust and faith in an unchanging counsel.  The more we seek to change things away from the principle Christian messages/commandments “Love God with all your Heart” and “Love your neighbour as yourself” the more we are moving away from Gods good counsel and what he is wanting us to do.  Therefore again I find it very allegorical to observe that despite the wide destruction of the community and community spirit in my hometown of Grimsby there is a little oasis of Christian love and fellowship which is making a huge difference to the lives of  those who would otherwise suffer more.  A Christian organisation, demonstrating Christian values and virtues.

Jesus himself lived close to an important fishing community by the Sea of Galilee.   Although an inland fresh water lake as opposed to the deep salt water ocean around Iceland, it nevertheless had some characteristics of it colder more northern cousin.  Because of winds that can funnel along the gorges of the River Jordan, violent storms can quickly occur which can sink the quite flimsy fishing boats on the lake. 

We don’t know, from the passage, why Jesus suddenly decided to cross over the lake in the boat but he was quite content to sleep down below leaving his fellow fishermen disciples to navigate the boat across.  It must have been a humdinger of a storm because the fishermen must have been used to the sudden unpredictability of the weather but, on this occasion, they were in fear of their lives and the safety of their boat.  Jesus’s response to their fears is to say all they need to do is have faith in God and all will be well – back to the theme of Psalm 65 – God takes control.  And this is precisely what happened. 

Some facts before I close.  Six million children under five die every year of starvation?  One out of seven people goes to bed hungry every night?  The three richest people on the planet have more collective wealth than the combined gross national product of the world's forty-eight poorest countries? General Booth, who founded the Salvation Army, said, 'How can you convince a man of the love of God if his feet are perishing with the cold?'

Today’s modern world is one where we are becoming less and less community orientated – other than within those newly created electronically ones – YouTwitFace  or whatever , and have lost sight of the three messages which tonight’s two readings and psalm clearly communicate : the praise the one and only True God, to acknowledge him as creator and owner of the world and all creation and to be in community with your fellow human beings - loving them as he has, does and will always love us.  This is the faith of our church, this is our faith.

Let us pray:-

Our God,

In this world which seems so busy and with so many things to do

We ask that you make us stop each day to think about others.

To drop a tear of sympathy for those less fortunate than ourselves,

To pray for them, talk to them and be a willing ear to their sorrows,

To consider what we can do for them from our resources and to put these into action,

Remembering that those same resources truly belong to you- we being mere custodians for a period

To continue to praise, honour and adore you and treat others as you have treated and blessed us. Through Jesus Christ your Son and our Saviour.

Amen

 

MFB/Sermon/54

SERMON 53 - SUNDAY 25 JANUARY 2015

Sermon at RC Chapel, Whaddon, Salisbury – Evening Prayer - Sunday 25 January 2015

Psalm 33; Titus 2: 1-15

May I speak in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen

I love Psalm 33 – it is so full of optimism and praise for God and reminds us that the most fastidious of plans which we might have can be so easily thwarted and frustrate us - but those which God has, whilst often confounding us, are the ones that prevail. 

How often do we plan things right down to the tiniest detail and yet something which we haven’t planned or which we didn’t spot comes up and completely throws all our hard planning to one side. 

I have to confess to be being rather an avid fan of the programme Air Crash Investigation which examines in close detail what caused some of the deadliest and notorious of airliner crashes.  I am not sure what that says about my personality! It never ceases to amaze me, and worry me too, how the deadliest of disasters are often caused by the simplest of errors and also that 95% of all air crashes have an element of human error involved – like the pilot who switched off the wrong engine at Kegworth, or the engineer who fitted the plane’s windscreen with screws too short for the purpose or the air traffic controller who simply forget that there was an aircraft on the runway when giving permission for another one to land.  We often say, “I’m only human” as an excuse for things we’ve done wrong, mistakes we’ve made,  but we would be well advised to think in those terms too whenever we pray to the one who, whilst coming down in human form, is also divine and who hears us when we pray in faith.

There are two phrases in tonight’s Psalm which we said together which speak strongly to me: “Sing him a new song” and “The Lord brings the counsel of the nations to naught, he frustrates the designs of the peoples; but the counsel of the Lord shall endure forever, and the designs of his heart from generation to generation.”

The psalmist is saying that we need to repent – to turn away from our old ways – to turn to new ones – the ones he wants for us – to sing him a new song.  And in the later quote he reminds us (and here he is talking principally about the peoples of Israel) that unless we are working to the same agenda as him, all our plans and energy will come to nought and we must always keep his desires and grace in mind. As God’s servants we are here to serve him in today’s world. By the way we worship and act we are witnesses to his love and desires.

Paul takes up this theme in his letter to Titus. Titus was a young church leader in Crete, the largest of the Greek islands – and in the passage which was read to us tonight he is addressing the church leadership through this letter to Titus – the essence of which is that the leadership must teach sound Christian Doctrine to the Christian community.  The beginning of the letter, Chapter 1, which was not read this evening, reminds those Christians in Crete that they must remain pure in heart and demonstrate that purity in the way they speak and behave and this is evening more so when addressed in the second chapter to the leaders of the church. Titus is specifically called upon to teach what is “consistent with sound doctrine…to be temperate, serious, prudent and sound in faith, in love and in endurance”.

From what we know of historic records, at this time Cretans were far from these ideals and Paul was anxious that where people stated to be Christians, and in particular were visibly seen as leaders of this new religious “order”, they should give no cause for criticism that they did not adhere to what he calls doctrine.

When we read the list of virtues which Paul asks Titus and his groups to display none of them should come as anything of a surprise to us.  Indeed as Christians in the 21^st Century, we should be displaying all of these virtues in a world that sees so much disruption and evil and where it is often hard to be able to show our Christian grace without appearing as a doormat or being ridiculed.

I am not sure I quite agree with Titus’s views on slavery in verse 9 and 10 – these verses actually being removed from the Lectionary - but I have deliberately kept them in because at the time Paul was writing this letter, slavery was just as much a part of everyday life as owning a mobile phone today or car.  In effect, Paul is telling the slaves to act in a way expected of them – as he too is asking the church leaders also to act in a way expected of them. As Christians, to act in a way expected of you.

The role of us, as active disciples of Christ in 2015, is also to act as expected.  It is no good, for example, for me to stand here and denounce Sunday trading and then, in the same breath, go into Tesco straight afterwards or more unlikely still, denounce the evils of drink and then go over the road and have a pint or two in the Three Crowns Inn.  That is something which you would be quite right not to expect me to do if I were to preach to you the doctrine of abstinence.  We are all expected to live pious lives – that doesn’t mean, of course, boring - lives – Jesus’s own life was very far from boring – but lives which honour the teachings and deeds of Jesus Christ.  

Over the years different churches have taught different doctrines resulting in many ecumenical councils to work out difference between churches and within churches – especially the eradication of heresies and the forming of a common doctrinal view on who Jesus actually was – Divine, Human or Both?  And also as to when he became Divine or was he always Divine?  “Ecumenical” comes from the word “economy” – which comes from the two Greek words “oikos” meaning “household” and “nomos” meaning “law” – in other words “the laws of the house”.  I am currently undertaking a specific module on Christian Doctrine and ever since Jesus’s time theologians have argued at great length over doctrine – resulting in the Great Schism of 1054 and later the forming of the Protestant Faith in 1519. Much blood has been spilled over differences in Christian Doctrine – a virtual civil war between Christians. So it is good to go back to read Paul’s letters when he was setting up and ministering to the early Christian churches around the Mediterranean.  And here, in Titus, as in his two books to Timothy, his other great young progeny, he simply goes back to the basics of Jesus’s teachings as a basis for Christian Doctrine.

As I pursue my studies as a minister of this church I often think of how theologians have often complicated our thinking.  Yes, it is true that the bible, all 66 different books (39 Old and 27 New Testament) need careful analysis and interpretation - often to understand their historical background and context – hermeneutics as theologians call it,  but the message is often very clear and simple and this letter to Titus is no exception.

The final two paragraphs could so easily have been written this weekend – rather than nearly 2,000 years ago and I think it worth repeating them again:

“11For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all,^{* 12}training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions, and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly, ¹³while we wait for the blessed hope and the manifestation of the glory of our great God and Saviour,^* Jesus Christ. ¹⁴He it is who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds.

15Declare these things; exhort and reprove with all authority.^* Let no one look down on you.”

 

If we follow that advice I think we can do little wrong in living up to what is expected of us by he who created us and in doing this we can live in peace with ourselves and God taking whatever life may throw at us:

 

Let us pray:-

 

A prayer: by St. Therese of Lisieux

Our God,

We ask for ourselves and for those dearest to us

The grace to fulfil perfectly your holy will

And to accept for love of you

The joys and sorrows of this passing life

So that one day we may be reunited in heaven for all eternity.

Amen

 

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SERMON 52 - SUNDAY 18 JANUARY 2015

Sermon at St. Lawrence’s Parish Church, Stratford-sub-Castle, Salisbury - Evensong - Sunday 18 January 2015

Matthew 8:5-13; Luke 7:1-10

May I speak in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen

When I was just a little boy, we had a small 9-inch TV, A Bush if I remember correctly, which would take about five minutes to “warm up” – so you had to use your Radio Times to know in advance when to switch the set on – and once the cathode tube was glowing you had the excitement of watching just one channel – BBC TV. That channel only became BBC 1 when BBC 2 arrived.  We didn’t even have ITV so Coronation Street, Peyton Place, Danger Man, No Hiding Place, the Flintstones and other goodies could only ever be seen when I went around to a friend’s or cousin’s. Life was simple, your knowledge of news events came from either the radio, one TV channel or newspaper.

Today that is all very different.  We are bombarded with news and information all the time.  This one small hand held computer – my mobile – is far more powerful than all the then sophisticated equipment which landed Man on the Moon. Even as I stand here preaching to you, messages will be pinging their way to me through emails and social media; and as events unfolded last weekend in France I was intrigued by the differing emphases being placed on the event by the different news agencies – all with their own political or social or cultural agenda – CNN News, Sky News, RT News, BBC News, Al Jazeera News, even Chinese News.  All of these and many many more are available so that we can get the news story which best suits us.  The same event can be portrayed in so many different ways and even to some, what may appear to be a terrible act of terrorism may be, to others, an heroic act of religious fervour.  Now I am not for one moment condoning the acts in Paris last week but simply pointing out that such events set in their historic background may appear different many years later.  For example are Nelson Mandela, Martin McGuinness, Michael Collins, Jomo Kenyatta, Oliver Cromwell or William Wallace terrorists or freedom fighters?  We must leave it to our own judgement of history to decide – and it will very much depend upon what books of history we read for each will have its own agenda – hero or villain.

This leads me to tonight’s gospel reading from Matthew – the healing of the Centurion’s servant – but before I even go into analysing and commenting upon it – it is worth remembering, like the news stories of last week, Matthew’s account is not the only one – Luke also has this story in his gospel which is written in a different style entirely. You will find his version at Luke 7:1-10 and it makes an interesting comparison when read after Matthew’s – and I think we can assume that this is the same event and that there were not two different centurions with servants being asked to be healed by Jesus especially as both events occurred in the same city of Capernaum.

In tonight’s version we have the Centurion himself seeking out Jesus – we are told that the Centurion came to him and said “Lord my servant is lying at home paralysed in terrible distress” – to which Jesus immediately says “I will come and cure him” prompting the Centurion to reply strangely, “Lord I am not worthy to have you under my roof but only speak the word and my servant will be healed”. The Centurion then goes on to say that he is a man of great authority and can command those under him to come and go as he pleases and this pronouncement of his great authority and command amazes Jesus, who immediately does as the Centurion asks and heals the servant remotely. This is one of only two occasions when Jesus acts to heal a non-Jew or does so at the request of a non-Jew (actually we don’t know for certain that the servant was not a Jew and the Centurion himself might have been Jewish because very often officers in the Temple or Royal Herodian Guard often used titles similar to those used by their Roman lords as a sign of solidarity with their conquerors). The other occasion when Jesus healed a non-Jew was the Canaanite woman. So what was the reluctance of the Centurion to have Jesus come to his home? In fact, the translation of what precisely Jesus said in response to the original request is in some doubt and it might not have been that Jesus said “I will come and cure him” but rather “Shall I come and cure him”? - a question rather than a statement.  We cannot be certain but in Matthew’s version the Centurion himself makes it clear that Jesus is not to bother himself coming because he believes he can cure the servant remotely.

Luke’s version is significantly different. In it, Jesus is still in Capernaum but it is not the Centurion who requests Jesus to heal the servant but a group of Jewish elders whom he sends out to find Jesus. These elders impress upon Jesus the fact that this Centurion is a good friend to the Jewish people – he built them a synagogue apparently - and so Jesus goes with them to the Centurion’s house; but when close approaching the property some friends of the Centurion – not the Centurion himself – come out and tell Jesus not to trouble himself coming into the house – and a similar conversation takes place as in Matthew’s gospel about commanding people to come and go – but this is with the friends and not the Centurion – indeed, in the whole narrative by Luke the Centurion not once appears himself – and I think this is significant. It was when those friends returned to the house that they found the servant restored to good health. So in both accounts we do have the common denominators of a reluctance for Jesus to come to the house and an absolute faith in Jesus’s ability to heal the servant.

So what can we glean from this?  Well I think the first thing to note is that as there are two versions of this story and each of them has some distinct differences. We can take neither of them as being a definitive expose of the actual true events. Just as all those different TV channels gave differing accounts of the Charlie massacre in Paris, so these two gospel accounts vary.  However, the Charlie Massacre did take place, there are common aspects to all the versions reported and we must take our own view of what we are being told by looking at all versions.

Similarly, the bible is a living book.  When reading it we must be open to what it says to each one of us.  To me, the common story of the Centurion is that here we have someone, somebody, who is not a Pharisee or Sadducee, who has heard of Christ’s healing ministry and fully believes. In his sending out of the twelve elsewhere in Matthew (10:6) Jesus tells them not to bother with the Gentiles – that his and their mission is to minister to the “Lost Sheep of Israel” and as we saw earlier, Jesus’s healing ministry seems fairly restricted to Jews only. However, here, because of the massive faith which the Centurion has – that Jesus can heal remotely – he is demonstrating that Jesus has come for everybody and, as we know, St. Paul later was to deliberately spread the gospel to many Gentile cultures.  It is interesting that there are two other important events in the New Testament involving Centurions – the Centurion at the foot of the Cross who announces that Jesus is indeed the Son of God when all around were jeering and Cornelius who was baptised by Peter in Acts (10) where Luke devotes a whole detailed chapter to his and his family’s conversion and Peter’s revelation that it is okay to eat non-Kosher food.

So let’s not get too obsessed with getting every little detail in our heads as we read our scripture. Accept and reflect upon the lessons or narratives they seek to convey. The gospels were written at least 50 years after the events they seek to record.  Today with our mobile phones, our “TwitFaces” or whatever, we crave instant accurate information.  Sometimes it is good to sit down and reflect on the message. Here the message I think is simple – Jesus Christ’s healing hand is available to all who genuinely believe that he and the Holy Spirit are with us here and now – even if, as in Luke’s version, the Centurion who believed never actually saw him.

This reminds me very much of the words of Jesus recorded in John 20:28 to Doubting Thomas “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet come to believe”.

May we all be so blessed.

Amen

 

MFB/Sermon/52

SERMON 51 - SUNDAY 11 JANUARY 2015

Sermon at St. John’s Parish Church, West Grimstead, Salisbury - Morning Worship - Sunday 11 January 2015

Genesis 1:1-5; Psalm 29; Acts 19:1-7;  Mark 1:4-11

May I speak in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen

When I started the preparation for this sermon – on the topic of the Baptism of Christ, I did what I suspect a lot of preachers do – I went back through my old sermons to see if I had preached on it before and, if so, whether there was anything I could use again or indeed if I could preach the whole thing again.  Well, I discovered that I had indeed preached on it before, exactly one year ago, and the congregation I had preached it to was none other than yourselves.  Knowing how well attentive you all are here, at St. John’s, to the sermons preached I was confident that I could not get away with giving you the same sermon twice – you would have readily remembered what I had said last time – yes?

Today’s first reading takes us back to page one of the bible – those so well known words of the Creation story.  “In the beginning…God.” I’ll come back to that in a moment.

Did any of you attend any of the “Darkness into Light” services in the Cathedral last month? If you did, like me, you will have witnessed a wonderful spectacle as the cathedral, cloaked in darkness, gradually became filled with light from hundreds of candles – from a single candle at the west end right up to the Trinity Chapel in the east – before the Prisoners of Conscience Window. Candle upon candle was lit, down the nave and side aisles and into the transepts and chapels – filling the nooks and crannies of that wonderful medieval building with a wonderful warm glow. This was figuratively to announce the coming into the world of God incarnate – the Light of the World. In the same way that our Genesis reading this morning starts “In the beginning…” so does John’s gospel start - the same echoing of that first book of the bible.  “In the beginning was the Word” (Jesus) just as in the beginning was God – emphasising that the two are one and the same and then a little later on John announces that John the Baptist was not the “Light” but gave testimony to the “Light” – the light being of course Jesus.

It is therefore no coincidence that John chooses to commence his gospel in this way.  For many theologians, the coming of Christ into the world is seen as a Second Creation. The world which God had created had gone so horribly wrong, following the Fall and the Flood, that it needed God to come down to Earth as a man and put things right - by his three years of ministry and his ultimate atonement for our sins, past, present and future, on the Cross. 

John, like Mark, then moves immediately into the narrative of Jesus’s baptism.  Scholars readily acknowledge that the first gospel to be written was that of Mark’s and as we embark upon Year B in the Church of England’s lectionary, so Mark’s gospel will unfold in all the gospel readings we have throughout the year.  Mark’s gospel advances at an immense pace – it seems that Mark is in such a hurry to get everything recorded and written down yet unlike Matthew and Luke, there is no Christmas story – no birth narrative, no shepherds, no wise men or lowing cattle or even donkeys.  Mark plunges straight in with the reading we’ve just heard. So for both Mark and John this is a significant point in Jesus’s history on Earth – marking as it does the beginning of his ministry – the moment when God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit unite in one place on Earth – the Holy Spirit descending like a dove and God announcing that he is well pleased – God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit all together on Earth. 

In Genesis, we see the three together again at the First Creation – “The earth was without form and void”; “the Spirit of the God moved over the waters” and “God divided the darkness and the light”.

Let us compare that to the baptism story – The Earth was a fallen place, Man had lost his connections with God by making religious observance rather than genuine worship of greater importance. But here, right at the beginning of this New Creation we see God in the form of a man and how does he begin his ministry – with water and the Holy Spirit – demonstrating a rebirth.  Symbolically, in full immersion baptisms, there is a figurative death of old ways – “repentance” to use the word of John the Baptist as the person goes under the water and a figurative re-birth (being “born again” as the Charismatics say) as he or she is raised up out of the water.

Did Jesus (God incarnate) need to be baptised?  Well yes – to show the way to others and demonstrate the re-birth, the re-creation so necessary for our salvation.

I want to say a little bit more about light and also look at our second reading from Acts. 

In my village, Winterslow, there has been debate going on for many years now about whether or not the main roads should be street-lit.  The general consensus has been that they should not, as the darkness which descends upon the village at night, particularly at this time of year, affords such wonderful views of God’s wider creation – the wonders of the heavens – the night sky – and on good nights we can see wonderful views of the Milky Way, the Great Galaxy in Andromeda, the Great Nebula on Orion and so on.  These are light years away from us - millions of light years away in fact.  Through my telescope, for example, the furthest I have seen is 40 million light years away – a galaxy in the constellation of Leo, the Lion. I am literally looking at something as it appeared 40 million years ago. It might not even be there now!  My telescope is a time machine! As an amateur astronomer I am sometimes asked whether the massive distances and study of the cosmos, black holes, big bangs and so on test my faith as to whether there really is a God.  My answer is emphatic -  these things make me even more sure that there is a God and it also makes me feel quite important that despite the vastness of God’s Creation – the Universe and maybe beyond even that – he sent his only Son, Jesus Christ, down to planet Earth, a seeming small insignificant planet orbiting a small unremarkable star in the out reaches of one of billions of ordinary galaxies becomes he so loved our world and by implication – us!

Scientists will tell you that darkness is simply the absence of light.  You can demonstrate this quite easily when you see a shadow.  It is cast when the light source is blotted out by an object. The only way in which that shadow can be removed is either to remove the object or to provide another light source.  In the Genesis Creation story we are told that God created the light and separated it from the darkness.  In fact we now know that day and night are caused by the rotation of the Earth on its own axis which means that, at one particular point on the Equator, for 12 hours the land is pointing towards the Sun and for 12 hours the Sun has dipped below the horizon because the land is pointing away from the Sun – but the Sun is always there and if you were to travel in a space craft beyond the orbit of the Earth like the Apollo astronauts, you would see the Sun all the time (as does happen at the poles).

In the same way God created light at the Second Creation.  The Light of God was always there but humankind had placed objects (over reliance on religious observance for example) and evil to blot out that original light.  We were cut off from God and in shadow. Christ became the second light to remove those dark places and the great news is that with the Holy Spirit he is still here amongst us today shining his light into the darkest places if we will only acknowledge and believe in him.

This leads us nicely into our Second Reading from Acts.  Here we read of Paul, that new convert to Christianity, meeting up with some new believers who, following the example of Christ, had allowed themselves to be baptised like John – with water.  Paul reminds them that such baptism was an acknowledgement of repentance – that they had agreed to turn away from their sins and follow the true faith taught by Jesus Christ, John being the testimony to the light as written by John.  However, before his ascension, Jesus had promised his followers that in due course they would receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit, the same Spirit which had descended upon him at his baptism of repentance and had also hovered over the fact of the water at the First Creation. In other words, necessary for the completion of the conversion to being true Christians – followers of Christ with full gifts and fruits of the Spirit. When the new believers told Paul they didn’t know what he was talking about when he spoke of the baptism of the Holy Spirit, Paul laid his hands upon them and baptised them in the name of Jesus Christ and they received the Holy Spirit.

In our Church, generally when we baptise somebody we no longer immerse them fully. However, symbolically we use water as did John and the priest will make the sign of the Cross and baptise in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. At a later date, when the candidate has had an opportunity to fully comprehend and make his own mind up, he may confirm those commitments for himself. He is blessed with the Holy Spirit from the moment he accepts Jesus Christ as his Saviour.

Baptism does not make us perfect.  As Christians we are not perfect and all of us have flaws.  I remember the story being told once by an evangelistic preacher at Spring Harvest that we are all like cracked pots – not I hasten to say “crack pots” – although some might disagree! – cracked pots within which the light of Christ shines – for we should all have Christ’s light within us.  It is often only through our cracks, our humility our vulnerability our fragility that the light can shine out to others. The way we accept adversity.

James, in the first chapter of his book talks about us only becoming “mature and complete” – the Hebrew word he uses means “perfect” – through the perseverance brought about through trials in our lives. And so, to be truly Christ-like, true and perfect followers of Christ we need to repent (turn away from our dark ways); accept Jesus as our Lord and Saviour (receiving the Holy Spirit) and show his light with joy through the trials and tribulations of this life. A mirror of Christ’s own life in fact – repentance before John the Baptist, receiving and having the gifts of the Holy Spirit and his final suffering on the Cross leading to his perfect resurrection.

What an incredible story and what an incredible act the follow. Today, let us make a pledge to lead a life where our light can shine out and dispel the gloom and darkness,  which often surrounds us and all those whom we should love – our neighbour. Even through our cracks.

Let us pray a prayer inspired by Psalm 119

Almighty God

We are often beset by trials and difficulties

We often feel surrounded by darkness or gloom

 

We often feel lost and hopeless

We often forget that you are always there with us

We often try and go it alone

We often forget to talk things through with you

We often let the pressures of this hectic life get us down

 

Help us to remember that you sent your Son, Jesus Christ

and the Holy Spirit to be with us in your Second Creation

That your word will continue to be a lamp to our feet

And a light to our path

And that we may glorify you in the light which you have put within us

Amen

 

MFB/Sermon/51