SERMON 71 - SUNDAY 14 FEBRUARY 2016

Sermon delivered at All Saint’s Church, Whiteparish, Wiltshire – Sunday 14^th February 2016

Jonah 3; Luke 18:9-14

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

When I first read tonight’s passages of scripture in preparation for this evening’s service I was immediately reminded of a story I heard a few years ago which, hopefully, is very much a one off – as it does not show the Church of England in a very good light.

The story goes that a new young and enthusiastic curate became the vicar of a wealthy parish somewhere in the Home Counties.  Having undertaken his placement training in an inner city he had seen deprivation and un-Godliness in great abundance and felt that the church had an important place in any community in shaping people to care more about each other, their environment and thereby break the spiral of evil he saw about that place.

This young vicar felt that even in a rich dormitory town close to London evil and depravation were still present and, anxious to touch the hearts of those less fortunate and to encourage them to come to church, one day he placed a huge billboard outside the front of the church which read “All Sinners Welcome”. It wasn’t long before one of the church wardens spotted it and began to protest. He consulted the parishioners and they requested the young vicar to remove it. They argued that this was giving the church a bad name. Those attending it were good, wealthy and righteous people. They didn’t want to attract the “riff raff” – especially those with no money – and the sign also suggested that those attending that church were themselves sinners. The young cleric refused and there started a battle which involved the archdeacon and the bishop and the good and the great of the Diocese leading to the young cleric’s removal and sending to a parish “more appropriate to his calling”.

I tell you this story because it happened not so many years ago and closely resembles the scriptural stories we heard this evening.  Jesus said, when similarly challenged by the Pharisees when he called Levi (Matthew) the Tax Collector and ate with his colleagues, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor but the sick. But go and learn what this means: I desire mercy, not sacrifice. For I have not come to call the righteous but the sinners” [Matthew 9.9-13] and again we read in Luke how Jesus came and ate in the house of Zacchaeus another tax collector and agent of the Romans and at the end of the meal declared “Today salvation has come to this house because this man too, is a son of Abraham; for the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.” [Luke 19:1-10].

As we begin our journey through Lent so the concept of salvation should be foremost in our minds. From the period from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday is a major journey for all Christians – following as it does Christ’s own journey from the wilderness and temptations, through the triumph of Palm Sunday, the highs and lows of Holy Week culminating in the crucifixion and resurrection. As we go on this Lenten journey of pilgrimage it is good to remind ourselves why Jesus became incarnate and died on the Cross.

Many of us in the Clarendon Team will be following Tim Heaton’s study guide “The Road to Heaven” in our Lent Groups. This guide uses the Martin Sheen film “The Way” to remind us of five important questions – all connected with salvation:

1.         What are we saved from?

2.         What are we saved for?

3.         Who can be saved?

4.         What do we have to do to be saved?

5.         How are we saved?

I don’t want to spoil it for those of you who are doing the course by trying to give you answers to all these questions in this short sermon but I will try and answer the third question from my own theological viewpoint – who can be saved?

It is very clear from Jesus’s teaching and also the moral of the story of Jonah, which Jesus himself referred to as The Sign of Jonah, that all sinners are capable of being saved provided that they repent of their sins honestly and genuinely and agree to sin no more. Jesus did not come into the world to condemn it, we are told, and did not condemn the woman found committing adultery – he merely asked her to sin no more.

However, a lesson we do receive from these readings in scripture is that we must be prepared to humble ourselves before a merciful God. Humility, repentance and especially forgiveness are essential ingredients for salvation. The story of Jonah contains much teaching for us in this regard.  Jonah was sent by God to Ninevah, a Godless city, to warn its king and people of the need to repent and turn from their evil ways.  Jonah, fearful for his own life if he were to evangelise to the Ninevans, ran away to sea where, as we all know from the most famous part of the story, he was cast overboard and swallowed by a large fish. He later himself repented in a long prayer whilst inside the fish and God gave him a second chance.

Sent off to Ninevah a second time he arrived and gave God’s message to the people.

But here we see a rather smug Jonah hoping that the people of Ninevah will not repent and that they will meet their doom at the hands of a punishing God. Here we see a rather self-righteous Jonah feeling better than them feeling sure that, unlike him, they will not repent and will get nuked! As we read tonight, they did indeed repent and God did not destroy the city.  Jonah had actually done quite a good job – he must have been a really good evangelist.  Instead of celebrating the success of God’s mission he was given, he sulks because God has actually accepted their contrition and saved them. The last chapter of Jonah, where he sits under a fig tree lamenting the saving of Ninevah says much about his character as being very flawed himself and needing salvation. But for that he must be prepared to forgive, just as Jesus in the prayer he gave us, the Lord’s Prayer, puts forgiveness at the heart of it.

Jesus in his parable of the sinner and the Pharisee makes the point again that for a sinner to recognise his sin and want to do something about it takes an amazing amount of courage and humility and an asking for forgiveness.

I wonder what Jesus would have made of the church I mentioned at the beginning of this short talk?  I have no doubt that he would have recognised the congregation of that church to be very similar indeed to the Pharisees surrounding the Temple in Jerusalem.  That like the Pharisees they felt an adherence to the law (or in our more recent examples the ritual of the church) would lead to salvation whereas the truth is that our God is a merciful God (“always to have mercy we are told”) and that the true way to salvation is a not just a belief in God’s existence, not just doing good deeds, not just giving money and time to the church but having a real and open and loving heart towards his Son, Jesus, which means being in a relationship with him through the Holy Spirit. That also means loving our fellow humans – fellow creatures of God and being prepared to accept them for the people they are. 

As the character Tom in “The Way” finds out, it is by being with fellow pilgrims, by loving them as God loves us, by treating others with respect, by allowing them the opportunity and encouraging them to be saved, that we are ourselves assured of salvation ourselves.  Tom at first rejected those who joined him on the route to Santiago de Compostela as a hindrance to his own journey but later came to realise that even with their flaws, he recognised those in himself and they journeyed together with mutual love and respect for each other.

During these coming weeks, as we progress through Lent, many will have decided to give things up. This year I have chosen not to give anything up but instead I have decided to dedicate more time in helping those who might seek salvation. Encouraging others to find their spirituality and thereby themselves.  I work as chaplain to the homeless here in Salisbury. Many of those I minister to are like those whom the church at the beginning would have shun from their doors. When I sit and talk to them many are in places of darkness through events which were not entirely of their making and their sins very often are brought about by the even greater sins of others. Forgiveness is what will break this circle and lead to salvation.

Not one of them is past redemption.  So during this Lent, let’s think what we can do to minister to somebody we know might be struggling and make them feel that they too are God’s chosen whom he loves and wants to save. 

Amen

MFB/71/11022016

SERMON 70 - SUNDAY 7 FEBRUARY 2016

Sermon delivered at St. Mary’s Church, Alderbury, Wiltshire – Sunday 7^th February 2016

Exodus 34:29-35; 2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2; Luke 9:28-36

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 the Old Testament reading we heard first, this morning, Moses returns down from the summit of Mount Sinai after having conversed with God and having been given the law (in the form of the tablets containing the Ten Commandments).  Totally unbeknown to him, the skin on his face was shining so brightly following this divine encounter that Aaron and all the Jewish leaders were afraid to come near him.  Such was the glory of God reflected in his face that Moses had to place a veil over that face in order to converse with the leaders and congregation. The passage goes on to suggest that every time, afterwards, when Moses went to converse with God he would remove the veil only to cover up his face again when returning from the mountain.

Quite a story. Here the glory of God is revealed by the light shining from Moses skin which is also mirrored in our Gospel reading by the account of the Transfiguration when Jesus appears to be joined by Moses and the prophet Elijah. Again we read how the figures appeared to glow dazzlingly white and the two prophets are described as appearing “in glory”.  Any Jew seeing this amazing sight would have immediately been transported back in time to our earlier reading – an acknowledgement that these figures, just like Moses himself on Mount Sinai, had been clothed in the light of God’s glory. Only Peter, and his companions, James and John, were present to see this. They also heard the voice of God coming from a cloud, “This is my Son, My Chosen, listen to him”.

It must have been awesome – perhaps terrifying. For Peter, it was clearly a revelation and an affirmation of his faith in following Jesus, recognising the importance of this event.  But Peter, like so many of us, brings it down to basics and the factual, rather than the spiritual. He thinks of it as some permanent state requiring the building or three shelters.  He thinks the moment can be bottled and preserved – perhaps just like the way his fish can be salted.  He misses the point – here is a short revelation of God’s glory through his Son who is soon to make the journey to Jerusalem and the horror of rejection and crucifixion.

And here too is a parallel, Moses himself was rejected several times by those he led out of Egypt.  Many believing that they might have been better off staying under the control of their slave masters than traipsing through the wilderness on a “wing and a prayer”.  Indeed, you will recall that whilst Moses was up the mountain conversing with God, the people built and started to worship a golden calf idol.

In our Epistle reading from Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians, the author refers back to our first reading. Such was God’s glory revealed that it proved too dazzling to the people and it seemed Moses reserved his glowing face only for conversing with God. Paul, writing to the early Christian church members, who would have been Jewish in origin, would have known their Hebrew Scripture and recall this passage.  Paul suggests that the veil which separated the people from a realisation of God’s glory was not the veil over Moses face but a veil across the hearts of the people themselves – a hardening of their hearts. Such a veil would prevent the glory being reflected in the faces of Moses’s hearers – just as if we were to place a curtain over a mirror so we could no longer see our own reflection.

Paul is saying that the veil should be removed so that God’s glory can shine in the faces of us all.  I am reminded of two further pieces of scripture when I read this – the tearing of the veil of the Temple at the moment of Jesus’s death on the Cross – symbolising that we all have access to God’s forgiveness and grace without shutting him away behind a screen and also that piece in Matthew 5:15 “Don’t hide your light under a bushel”.

When I was a young lawyer I used to commute most days between Brighton and London Victoria. As time went on I would travel in the same carriage each morning with the same travelling companions. One of those was a young lady named Val whom I discovered was also a lawyer working in the city. But what struck me about her was that she didn’t look like the average business commuter – the lawyer, accountant, business executive. Whilst most commuters would be quiet, reading their papers or asleep, she would read her daily devotions and she literally beamed as she sat there and engaged in conversation. I got to know her over a number of years commuting and discovered that she was an Evangelical Christian, a member of the Christian Lawyers' Association, which through her I later joined, and she made it her business not to undertake any legal matters in an adversarial way but only undertook pro bona work or constructive work to help people. I tell this story because there was surrounding her a glow of God’s grace.

You can often see this same glow in the faces of people in love.  And what greater love can there be than to love God with all your heart and soul. Indeed, Jesus himself, when questioned, relayed this to the teachers of the law as being the greatest of the commandments, followed by loving each other. From these two simple yet, often for us humans, quite difficult things to achieve, will flow the glory of God.

When people are in love they will feel fully alive. St. Irenaeus is often quoted as saying “The glory of God is a human being fully alive”. When we love God we should feel fully alive and that should be seen by others. When I saw Val on the train and saw the love and compassion she showed to others, even towards grumpy fellow commuters, I really felt that I wanted some of what she had got.  Just as Peter wanted to bottle the moment of the Transfiguration – keeping Jesus and the prophets there - we too would love to be able to stay up there on the mountain top.  But these are often only just that - mountain top experiences – in the case of Moses and Jesus quite literally. 

Being a Christian is hard work – nobody ever said it would be any different [and if they did they were misleading you]. The disciples often found it hard to believe and follow, hard to heal, hard to minister and were often chastised and challenged (sometimes by Jesus himself). In today’s world there is a great revival of Christianity – not in the western world but in Africa and Asia. There the poverty and war and famine could hardly be described as a mountain top experience yet in amongst all those dark valleys towering mountain tops do appear – miraculous healings and steadfast faith.  As we have seen both Moses’s and Jesus’s mountain top experiences preceded very difficult and challenging times indeed.  People like Val glowed in amongst the tired and grumpy commuters. Moses shone amongst the disgruntled wanderers, Jesus’s Transfiguration came at a time when he was about to be crucified. We shine brightest when our surroundings are dark.

I can speak from personal experience too.  After my licensing as a minister I was on a high – right at the top of the mountain. I remember our curate telling me (and others too) to be wary for it is when we give our life to God’s ministry we will find Satan just around the corner to pull us down. Six months later my world seemed to collapse around me when I encountered a major personal storm. I was determined, however, that my faith would remain steadfast and that experience (entering a deep and very long and dark tunnel) tested my faith to the utmost. I needed a light to see me through that tunnel until I could see natural daylight at the end of it.  I never felt alone during that time but it was not easy. Now, thanks to God and the power of the Holy Spirit I am out of the tunnel, into the bright sunshine and the tunnel is not only behind me but round a corner where I can no longer see it – or to use another metaphor, I am now once again standing on the summit with the dark valley down below me.

At some stage I will be forced to come down again, just as Jesus and Moses and Elijah had to come down from their mountains but that glory which God has shared out to us, that light which we have received through the power of the Holy Spirit, we must bring down with us and spread through the dark canyons of this bitter dark and sometimes, it appears, Godless world. With the Holy Spirit in us and shining from us we have a piece of God’s chosen Son also in us. A Son in whom God the Father is well pleased.

Let us pray:

O God, Glorious and Faithful

To those who seek you with a sincere heart

you reveal the beauty of your face

Strengthen us in Faith

to embrace the mystery of the cross

and open our hearts to its transfiguring power;

that clinging in love to your will for us,

we may walk the path of discipleship

as  followers of your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord

Amen

MFB/70/05012016

SERMON 69 - SUNDAY 24 JANUARY 2016

Sermon delivered at St. Mary’s Church, West Dean , Wiltshire – Sunday 24^th January 2016

Nehemiah 8:1-3,5-6,8-10; 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a; Luke 4:14-2

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

Our First Reading, from Nehemiah, and our Gospel reading today have a common theme – the law. Something, which as a student of, and then a practising solicitor for over thirty years, has taken up a great deal of my life. 

I was very privileged to have been presented with my final professional certificate by the then Master of the Rolls, Lord Denning, a relatively local man to this part of the world (from Whitchurch in Hampshire), who made a great name for himself in legal circles by his often unusual judgments in the Court of Appeal which grafted the rules of Equity onto the Common Law.

Our English legal system is made up of three basic strands – common law (the law of the Crown administered through the courts and producing case law), statute – laws made by Parliament and Equity – rules of fairness and justice which began their journey in the ecclesiastical courts of the Lord Chancellor (who was usually a cleric).  Indeed, the Degree of Batchelor of Law is actually Batchelor of Laws indicating the duality of our system – law and equity. Of course today we also have to add European Law and the statutory human rights legislation.

Lord Denning would take a case, consider the common law remedy and if he found it too harsh or wanting -without regard for the fairness of the situation - he would seek to provide what we lawyers call an equitable remedy - which he would deliver in a clipped judgment spoken with his soft Hampshire burr.  In simple terms, for example, if somebody stole food, then the common law would provide a remedy – say a custodial sentence. The proven act of stealing in itself leading to the common law remedy. Applying, Equity, the courts would then look at the surrounding circumstances – the fact that the accused’s family was starving and the food was taken because the Lord of the Manor refused access to a food store to his peasants – and the sentence could be revoked or changed to something less harsh. This difference between the Crown’s law and the Church’s Equity led to the dispute between King Henry II and Thomas Becket.  But the Courts of Equity had a maxim – “He comes to Equity must come with clean hands” – in other words, the person seeking an Equitable solution must themselves not be tainted or using Equity to evade their responsibilities.

In our First Reading, we are taken back to those days following the return of the Exiles to Jerusalem from Babylon to rebuild the Temple and the Walls.  Much of the book of Nehemiah is taken up with the rebuilding of the walls.  The Hebrews had been in captivity for seventy years under the control of the Babylonians influenced by their pagan worship and Ezra, the priest who had led many of them out of that captivity, felt it necessary to remind them of the Laws of Moses which God had given to him on Mount Sinai – especially the Ten Commandments.  

Many may well have forgotten the law or if they hadn’t forgotten it, then its meaning or its interpretation had become lost.  Even today, in Jewish synagogues (the word “synagogue” means place of learning) the Torah (or first five books of the Old Testament containing the law) is read out by the rabbi completely through the course of every year – a bit like our three-year lectionary cycle of gospel readings – in order to remind the Jewish congregation of the law and its meaning.  The early covenants with God made it necessary, in the eyes of the Jews, to observe the law in its entirety in order for God to bless the people.  Failure to observe the law they thought would bring about calamity and destruction – such as the Babylonian Exile itself. Over a period of time more and more complicated rules were embedded into the law and many can be read in the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy. Some make quite humorous reading in today’s modern world. Some are quite sinister.

The interpretation of scripture is something which, today, can cause immense problems and you only have to watch some of the TV Evangelists to see some incredibly interesting and zany interpretations often connected with the “prosperity gospel”.  In theology, scriptural interpretation is called hermeneutics – something which later, as a theology student, I had to try and get my head around. It is all well and good to read scripture piecemeal, as we often do in church on a Sunday – short readings from the lectionary – but it is quite another to understand the passage within the context of the whole of the bible story and the events surrounding it. In the case of Ezra, the passage tells us that the Levites, i.e. those who are not priests but rather like us licensed lay ministers – trained and authorised to assist the priests as a holy clan – stood by to interpret the law as it was spoken out by Ezra the priest so there could be no doubt as to its meaning.

Likewise, in our Gospel reading, we again heard of the reading of scripture and its interpretation – this time by Jesus himself in his local synagogue.  This time the piece of scripture he was given to read was not from the Torah but from the prophet Isaiah where it is written:-

“The spirit of the Lord is on me,

Because he has anointed me

to preach good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim freedom for prisoners

and recovery of sight for the blind,

to release the oppressed,

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour” [Isaiah 61:1-2]

Jesus’s hermeneutics is simple – this passage foretells his arrival on Earth as the Son of God and he proclaims that this piece of scripture, this prophesy, has been fulfilled that very day in the sight and hearing of the congregation.  Jesus is here, the anointed one is here, the Messiah is here.  No wonder, then, the local Nazarene congregation, local to Jesus and his family, found this so hard to believe or thought of it as blasphemy that the local carpenter’s son should make such claims. Indeed, such was the outcry that the local people sought to drive him out of the town and push him over a cliff.

It is so easy to simply read the words of scripture and not to undertake a study or reflection of them – especially how scripture interacts with our lives today or its prophetic qualities. 

I readily admit that I have to take time out to sit down and read my bible but when I do – usually first thing in the morning with a cup of tea by my bed - I find there is always something new and refreshing to discover and often a message for me for the day ahead. In particular, I find that Jesus’s wonderful interpretation of the law is so profound and wise. The bible is full of so many do’s and don’ts in the Old Testament law. The presence of these so very often goes towards people’s reluctance to read their bible or follow the Christian faith believing that being a Christian means the end of having any fun in life. Wrong!  I have lots of fun!

Jesus was at great pains to tell the Pharisees and the Sadducees that he had come not to break the law but to fulfil it – that all the laws were put in place to support the good news that is Jesus Christ – our great high priest and intercessor, the one through whom we can seek God’s forgiveness direct. The one who saved us by dying on the Cross for our sins. When asked by the teachers of the law which of the commandments was the greatest he answered that there were two – “Love your God with all your heart, mind and body” and “Love your neighbour as God loves you”.  Upon these basic precepts all other laws follows. What a simple and yet great message – I love it!  It even applies to our complicated system of English laws. The long reading out of the law in Jerusalem by Ezra could have been dispensed with and the feast celebrations referred to in Nehemiah could have commenced earlier!  But in reality how easy is it for us to obey these two short commandments?

Paul in that part of his first letter to the Corinthians, which was read to us, goes some way to giving us the answer. Basically, we can’t do it on our own - but only through the unity which is the Church. In this respect I don’t mean the church as in the building or parish but all Christ’s community of faithful disciples. We need to help each other and then we can then reach out to those who do not share our Faith and show them the love which God has shown to us.  Here today, in this building, we all have different gifts given to us by the Holy Spirit. We are not all prophets, we are not all teachers, we are not all preachers, we do not all have the gift of healing, we do not all speak in tongues or interpret tongues, but each of us does possess a gift or more likely gifts which have been given and which we need each other’s help to discern. As Paul puts it, the body needs all its different parts to help it function and Christ’s community on Earth likewise needs all those gifts collected up from all its different disciples. 

So my message to you today is how can we, as individuals, discern what gifts we have and how can we use them to fulfil the prophesies and the “law” – to love God with all our hearts and our neighbours as ourselves?  You might like to think about the community here in West Dean. Here we have a population living close to a railway and a church with great facilities. How can we, acting together as one body in Christ, show that love of God through our actions locally. We can start with much prayer asking God to show us these things.

Let us pray

Lord, there are so many things in my life that I do not understand,

So many scriptural passages which need interpreting for me

So many questions about the future that I need to ask.
What is Your plan for me?
What is the work You want me to do?

All I really know is that You love me.
Show me the road You want me to walk –
to fulfilment, to happiness, to holiness and to help me love my neighbour.

And if You are calling me to
ministry or additional duties give me the strength to say “yes”
and the grace to begin even now
to prepare myself for the challenge
of a life spent in Your service and
in the care of Your people.

I ask You this in Jesus’ Name.

  

Amen

MFB/69/23012016

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