First Sunday of Christmas

Colossians 3.12-17; Luke 2.41-52

This Sunday is commonly called the Sunday of the Holy Family as we read of Jesus and His parents taking their annual trip to the Passover celebration in Jerusalem. The reading from St. Paul's letter to the Colossians also contains what you might call instructions about how to get on in a Christian community, in what might be regarded and is thought of sometimes as the Christian 'family' and how we should conduct our relationships under God. Families come in all sorts of shapes and sizes these days and I don't think their is a stereotypical family now. Much is said from different individuals and groups and agencies about the demise of the family as we once knew it and the effect this has, especially on children. But however families are constituted these days, relationships still only flourish in an atmosphere of love, loving kindness, trust and forgiveness. And I think it's these 'values' and much more than values that we see and hear in Scripture passages such as we've heard this morning. And our relationship with God also depends upon these same values, values which are about ourselves as people, that make us what we are in life and how we get on with others. God Himself, as the Holy Trinity is a relationship of love into which we are drawn as we open up our minds and hearts to Him. And as we live in relationship with God and other people, our own character and personality is shaped, in a particular way; we 'become' a particular type of person. As we live in a relationship with God through Jesus Christ and in that way, get to know Him, to submit ourselves to His ways, we become Christ-like; our being is formed and shaped to be like His.

This is what Jesus himself did in His own earthly family. As we read of Him this morning He's causing His parents no little consternation. And it's three days before they find Him. A significant length of time that prefigures the three days of His death and resurrection. And when they do find Him and His mother remonstrates with Him He says that He's about His Father's business. In that response we see that He has a sense of God calling Him even at the age of 12 years. But then even so, He returns to His family and St. Luke tells us that He was obedient to Mary and Joseph. Other translations of the passage say that He submitted Himself to them. So, He has much to learn both from God and from His earthly parents. As a child, He does His heavenly Father's will and submits to His earthly parents. And it's that way with us too. God calls us to Him as our heavenly Father, to do His will and His work, and as followers of Christ to become Christ-like in this world. And He also places us in relationship to other people, in the first instance and in our most formative years, in a family, however that family is formed, and we have to submit to all that it means to be part of that family, it's rules and values.

As Christians, some of our most immediate relationships are with other members of the Church, other members of the Body of Christ. And it's from these others that St. Paul says we should learn as well; that we should learn about love and forgiveness and that we should encourage and admonish one another as together we learn and grow. He says that as we do this we should continually give thanks, that we should learn from one another's wisdom with a sense of gratitude. And all this too in a context of worship, in psalms, hymns and spiritual songs to God, as he says. So from St. Paul we learn that being part of the Body of Christ, being a member of the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church is essential to our nurture and upbringing as a Christian, because it's in that Body and being part of the Body of Christ that we learn the Truth of God and the reality of Christian discipleship. We can't do it on our own, we can't learn of Christ fully on our own, we must be part of the Church.

One of the things I tried to get across in my Christmas sermon is that as we read the story and look at the events of the birth of Jesus, and read of people's response to it at the time, and as we try to understand how God could become incarnate, could be born in human form and what that means for us, there comes a point where our mind cannot grasp the significance of what is going on; we reach the limits of human understanding. And it's at that point that we have to come to the story in faith, we have to come to the story with our heart and accept in faith what is happening and then live out the consequences in faith. We do that with lots of things in life, like falling in love which is beyond understanding, like coping with illness and tragedy and death. Very often, the extremities of life bring out qualities in people that cannot be explained with the human reason and that's because they are the response of the heart. The heart often takes over where the mind gives way. And so it is with God.

And I couldn't help noticing the link between the account of Jesus birth in St. Luke's gospel we read on Christmas Day and what we've read in his gospel today. He says that when the shepherds visited Jesus and told Mary and Joseph what they'd heard and seen of the angels, that Mary 'treasured all these things and pondered them in her heart.' And again also, after her difficult and possibly confusing conversation with her Son Jesus in the temple, after finding Him, St. Luke says that 'His mother treasured all these things in her heart.' The King James version actually repeats that she 'treasured and pondered all these things in her heart.'

Notice Mary's great faith. St. Luke says that she first treasures both joyful and difficult words and events, for both are mysterious in the Godly sense, that is, beyond human reason. She knows these words and events have meaning and so rather than dismissing them or trying to forget them as we often try to do with difficult things, Mary, in faith, treasures them, gives them the highest order of importance in her life. Perhaps that's natural for a mother when it comes to her son but it's an example for all of us. And then she pondered the words and events. If you look up the word 'ponder' in the dictionary you'll see that it has to do, not just with thinking something over, but is about weight and solemnity. I think we can see here that Mary is seriously contemplating these words and events, she gives them the seriousness they deserve, and she isn't just trying to rationalise things but she lets their significance draw itself out over time.

All of this is typical of our Christian formation and nurture, of our living in relationship with God and as part of the Church, the Body of Christ. We don't necessarily understand what God does with us and says and asks of us but we are called, like Mary, to act in faith, to treasure God's word to us no matter what, whether we understand or not and then to ponder it as Mary does over what can be a lifetime. And we might never work out the significance of things where God is concerned because being called into a relationship with God is being called into participating in a mystery. We are simply called to live in relationship with God and one another, in faith and when we do that then in a real sense, God's Spirit lives and works in us and God in Christ is born in us not just at Christmas but in every new day.

The Nativity of the Lord

Isaiah 9.2-7; Titus 2.11-14; Luke 2.1-20

First of all I'd like to take this opportunity to wish each and every one of you a very happy and peaceful Christmas. This is my thirteenth Christmas sermon at St. Andrew's; not that I'm counting, but I just thought that it was a significant number not an unlucky number but it just happens to be the number of men sat around the table at the last supper. And I say that not to cast us ahead of time, time passes quickly enough, but just as a gentle reminder that what we celebrate tonight (today) is just the start of the whole drama of what theologians might call the 'Salvation event', of the incarnation, death and resurrection of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. And so tonight we hear the beginning of the story again. It's the same story, told in the same way, surrounded by the same music and same words. And we repeat it all year after year, unchangingly. In these days of choice and variety and relentless change, it can feel a bit strange to do that and you might ask why we keep on doing this thing, telling this story in the same way time after time after time, year in, year out? Why don't we change it, perhaps to make it more interesting, make it more attractive to people? Make it 'edgy'? I think that's the terminology used these days to describe grabbing attention and provoking peoples' interest.

Well there are a number of reasons why we don't change the way we tell the story. One of them is because we are doing it in a way commanded by Jesus and interpreted by the Church, and reaffirmed as such repeatedly down the centuries as the best way of telling the story. It's the best way because it contains all that we need to know. In that sense we do it according to our Tradition, according to the Holy Tradition, the Tradition of the Church and not the tradition of men. We stick to Holy Tradition and do it that way because it's a sacred story telling us of the fact of God's coming to humankind for our salvation. And it's not open to any other interpretation, but the Church's interpretation, because the Church is the place where the story resides and is played out in time. It belongs to the Church because the Church is the Body of Christ and it's Christ's story. It's not open for individuals to come and decide what the story of Christmas means to them. It's for us to take on what the story means to the Church and as part of the Church, part of the Body of Christ, what it means for us.

The story contains everlasting truth about God, to be handed down generation to generation in this same way, because it is sacred and contains the Truth of God. And if we've lost the sense of anything in the Western world these days it's the sense of the sacred, of what is sacred. And that's because we seem to have to bring everything down to our own human level and make it understandable to our human reason. The trouble is that when we use our reason in this way, when we try to make everything understandable, when we subject everything to the 'light of reason', we tend to also reduce everything to ordinariness and everything has a similar value. And if we have difficulty understanding something with our rational mind we do our best to reinterpret it and reframe it so that we can give meaning to it, give our meaning to it and lose its own meaning in the process. And always when we do that we devalue whatever it is we are trying to understand. And when we do that with the Christmas story especially, not only have we missed the point we've missed the power of the story and the glory that could be ours.

God doesn't change. God is as He has always been, is now and always will be. We affirm that truth time and time again. It's we that change, you and I. In the thirteen different sermons I've preached, I've said something different every time, not because God has changed but only because I've changed. My own understanding of God has changed. My mind has seen Him in different ways and different lights, like a kaleidoscope if you like, slowly turning with the years giving different colours and patterns. And you know, because of that there's a sense in which it gets harder all the time. It gets harder to accept, with my rational mind that what I was told as a boy about God is the Truth. And no matter how much I change and my understanding changes, the Truth never does.

But what I have learned in all these years is that there comes a point where we have to put our rational mind to one side and then just look, look into the mystery of God. Because God is a mystery. He can never be understood with the rational mind. And isn't that the biggest stumbling block for we sophisticated 21st century affluent, rational, wise men? We don't like to admit that our mind lets us down. But if we do admit it then we can see that what we have to bring to God from that point onward is our heart, that centre of our Being that's been described down the centuries as the heart. And with the heart we move into a different kind of understanding, into the kind of understanding that is about love and faith. And it's here that we start to make real progress with God. An unknown English Priest of the 14th century wrote a little book which was given the title 'The Cloud of Unknowing' and in it he wrote on this very point we've come to now. He said that 'God can be known through love, but with our understanding, never.' And so it's the heart that we have to bring to this unchanging story that we hear again tonight (today) because we can only glean the story's real meaning and depth of meaning with the heart. We make that real and living connection with the God in this story, not with the mind but with the heart. And with the heart we bring our love and our faith. It's a totally different way of living, never mind, understanding. And one that we find so very very difficult in this day and age. It's always been difficult and never more so than now. So when we bring our heart to this never changing story, to this eternal, everlastin and unchanging God, what do we find?

I've been trying to encourage people here at church over the weeks of Advent to look beyond the busyness, present giving, and partying, to look beyond even the school nativity presentations to what is within and beyond them. All of those things, the present giving and partying and the children doing their nativity presentations are delightful and bring us a sense of joy. But it's what's within them and beyond them is what we are meant to be giving our heart to at Christmas. And that is what those things point us toward - God being born as a baby in a stable in Bethlehem; the uncreated God, becoming a creature; the immortal becoming mortal; and not for Himself, but for us; so that we might have salvation, that is, His healing and peace, now in this life; so that we might have the life Adam had before he and Eve fell from grace. And what it means is that God becomes man and earth is lifted up to heaven. And THAT, when we bring our heart to it is where and when we find the real joy of Christmas, because our heart has at last found God. It was the great St. Augustine that said 'our hearts are restless till they find their rest in God.' And that is Truth.

One of the biggest delusions of the Christmas season and one reason why people, most of whom have been so disappointed by it in the past, why they try to take Christmas from us is that real joy isn't to be found in the family coming together, eating together, exchanging gifts, having a party. Very often those things just lead to more frustration, disappointment and heartache, that's why there are more divorces and suicides at Christmas than any other time of year. Those things tend to enhance or raise what has been buried before and all the emotion that goes with it. No, the REAL joy of Christmas is to be found in the REAL meaning of the Christmas story, which we can only understand with the heart and then live in faith.

God comes to meet us at Christmas and offers us the blessing of new life, of salvation, of resurrection so that even though the body dies, we know by faith that that isn't the end of the story, that like what we celebrate tonight (today) it's just the beginning. And we can't know and understand this with the mind, but the heart leads us into the joy of knowing this to be true, so that with St. Paul we can say 'I know whom I have believed'. Not, I understand, but 'I know.'

And this is as true for us now as it was 2,000 years ago, so much so that tonight is as if there has never been a Christmas before, as though this is the first time that God comes to us as and in the baby in the stable. God comes to meet us now, at this moment. Will you bring the understanding of your heart to him tonight (today)? Will you lay aside your reason, make that sacrifice and in faith bring your heart to him tonight (today)? And give yourself a real chance of finding and experiencing some real joy?

I'd like to conclude by recounting some words of St. Gregory of Nazianzus, one of of the great Fathers of the Church. This is what he said about the meaning of Christmas some 1700 years ago:

'Christ is born: let us glorify Him. Christ comes down from heaven; let us go out to meet him. Christ descends to earth: let us be raised on high. Let all the world sing to the Lord: let the heavens rejoice and let the earth be glad, for his sake who was first in heaven and then on earth. Christ is here in the flesh: let us exult with fear and joy - with fear, because of our sins; with joy, because of the hope that He brings us.... This is the solemnity we are celebrating today: the arrival of God among us, so that we might go to God - or more precisely, return to God. So that stripping of our old humanity we might put on the new; for as in Adam we were dead, son in Christ we become alive: we are born with Him, and we rise again with Him....For this is the feast of my being made whole, my returning to the condition God designed for me, to the original Adam. So let us revere the nativity which releases us from the chains of evil. Let us honour this tiny Bethlehem which restores us to paradise. Let us reverence this crib because from it, we who were deprived of self-understanding, are fed by the divine understanding, the Word of God himself,'

Christ is born, glorify him, find your joy the Lord this Christmas.

Third Sunday of Advent

Philippians 4.4-7; Luke 3.7-18

We continue with St. John the Baptist this week following on from last week. His message we see now it uncompromising and the challenge fierce - 'You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits worthy of repentance.' St. John goes right to the heart of the matter with a question. What's driving you? Is it something somebody said? Has somebody or something pricked your conscience? What's made you head in this direction, in St. John's direction and ultimately in the direction of the Messiah; in the direction of God? St. John says we are a brood of vipers. He pulls no punches. I think by that, he's saying we are filled with poison and no better than crawling on our bellies. And we are all in it together, a 'brood', he says. We could all take offence because surely we are better than that? But he makes his point quite clearly then issues his challenge. If we are repentant and that's why we've come to him, why we've come to God then we should show it by bearing the 'fruit of repentance', he says. We should show we are serious by turning our hearts and minds to God again in real ways, so that it shows in our lives.

And we can't claim descent from Abraham as some sort of protection from the 'wrath to come' as he puts it. We can't claim some belonging to the Church as giving us some sort of salvation, that we've been born and brought up in the Church. That won't do, he says. God works in everybody if and when He wants to and can make us members, but more is needed, a response on our part. It's not good enough that we've been baptised and confirmed. So very many have, millions upon millions. But it hasn't done them any good and won't do because there's been no response to God's grace in their heart. There hasn't been the fruit of repentance.

And St. John says these things, makes us think so hard, gives us so great a challenge, because it's no less than God we've come looking for whether we knew it or not. And if we think we've come to someone less than God then we've got a rude awakening. Repentance will prepare us to meet with Him and St. John tells us what we should do to show the fruits of repentance. And here we have, prefigured, the Sermon on the Mount. St. John preaches much the same as Jesus, so much so that people think he's the Messiah. But he's simply helping people get ready for their meeting with God, from whom comes all grace and truth. Because that meeting will be their salvation. And that's the difference. That's why it needs repentance. The Saviour of the world is coming to meet with us and we need to be ready.

I think we tend to forget that at Christmas time, that Christmas is solely about God, about who and what He is. We forget because everything around it takes our minds and hearts away from Him. We see a baby in a manger but that's about as far as it goes. We forget that the baby is God. And we forget that Christmas is about His great love for His creation about His coming to us for our 'health and salvation'; which as far as the Church is concerned, is the same thing. And we forget that God comes down to us so that we can ascend to Him, so that having been made in His image we can take on His likeness also. His coming to us makes that possible. Had He not done so it would not be possible. He would be for ever distant. When people say that Christmas is for children they have truly 'lost the plot' because Christmas is for the whole of mankind.

And this is why St. Paul can exhort the Philippians and so we as well to 'Rejoice in the Lord always', not to worry about anything and to thank God in our requests to Him. This is why St. Paul can say that the peace of God will guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. It's because He knows what the incarnation means, He knows what the presence of Christ means and not just to himself but to the whole of the Church and the whole of mankind. Repentance brings that change of heart and mind that tunes us in to God so that we are able to give thanks to God in all things because our health and salvation are in Him and not in earthly and human things.

So we see that baby in the manger and we see God and see our salvation. Christmas is no less than that and that's the image we need to have in front of us if we are to make the most of Christmas. And for such great a thing is it not right to prepare properly, to turn the heart and mind to God in repentance and to show the fruit of that turning? We can do no less for such a great thing that has happened for us.

Second Sunday of Advent

Philippians 1.3-11; Luke 3.1-6

I said last week that during this season of Advent we aren't thinking so much about the traditional themes of Death, Judgement, Heaven and Hell, as about Who it is we are preparing to celebrate and What it is we are preparing to celebrate on the 25th December. I made the point that there is so much around us that has the potential of drawing us away from concentrating on what the Nativity of the Lord is all about, and we really ought to do our best to step aside from it all and make every effort to make a proper preparation for the celebration, a preparation of mind, heart, soul and spirit. The focus of our readings in the season help us to do that.

Today, we are challenged directly by no less that John the Baptist, and that challenge will continue in the gospel reading next week also. And the first thing we are challenged about is the historicity of the event, of the St. John's call to people. St. Luke is at pains to locate St. John's ministry at a particular time and place in history. He does the same at the beginning of the previous chapter when he tells of the registration that took place, which Joseph and Mary were caught up in. Historians do cast doubt on the accuracy of St. Luke's facts. But I think the point that St. Luke is trying to make is that for him there is no doubt as the actuality of these events and that is why he's doing his best to 'pin them down' as it were in a time and place. So we too are called right away to cast our doubt aside and go right into the story. We are being asked to believe, to take St. Luke at his word.

And isn't God Himself like that? The journey of faith is one of banishing doubt, of putting doubt aside and taking God at His word. We don't get anywhere at all with God unless we are prepared to believe. We are being called, in a way, to test God out although He says, in scripture 'do not put the Lord your God to the test'. How else are we to come to believe unless we do just that? We have to take what we are told, be it request or commandment and, in a way, put it to the test. Only then will we know if what we read and hear is the Truth. All through the Bible we read that people are only healed and saved when they actually do what God is telling them to do. And time and time again we hear God and Jesus being angry and disappointed because people wouldn't put their trust in them, wouldn't have faith in them. So, the first step, and maybe the most important step in preparation for our celebration of the Lord's Nativity is to bring our faith to it, bring our best powers of belief to it.

Then we listen to what St. John has to say. His message, St. Luke says is a 'baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.' St. John is calling people to repentance. He's calling them to a change of mind, heart and soul. He's calling people to turn their hearts from themselves and the world, to God. He's calling them to receive the sign and seal of that in repentance. And that's because it's only in and through the act of repentance that God will work in us. God may bring us to the point of wanting to have that change of mind and heart but it's for us to do the work of turning to him. That's because God gives each and every one of us, free will. We get to choose. God has given us responsibility for our own destiny. He's given us the ability to choose between life and death. We can do what God calls us to do or we can go our own way. And we recall His words to the Hebrews in the Old Testament in the book of Deuteronomy 'I put before you today a choice, between life and death'; and you may recall also God's encouragement of the people to 'choose life.' And that's because, even though He's given us free will, he still wants us to use it wisely. But he's gifted us with the ability forge our own destiny. And having done that He continues to walk with us by giving us the way to come back to Him at any time through repentance.

And so we hear St. John's words again; 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make His paths straight'. St. John is encouraging us at this time to repentance, to make a way for the Lord in heart and mind. He says what it looks and feels like to make that repentance and to prepare the way for God; 'every valley shall be filled, every mountain and hill made low, the crooked made straight, the rough ways made smooth.' And the result? 'All flesh shall see the salvation of God. What St. John is saying is that the pathway of repentance is the avenue to salvation. And salvation of course, in spiritual terms has connotations of healing and health. The way of repentance leads to our spiritual healing with God taking His place in our lives. We recover the relationship we had with God before the fall of Adam; and that through the person and work of Jesus Christ. His sacrifice, once and for all has made this possible. And John, the forerunner of Jesus is the forerunner of our salvation, of the healing of our relationship with God, which began with the birth of Jesus himself.

So we can either heed St. John's call today or we can ignore it. We can believe that, because he was a real person at a real time in a real place, sent by God to be the forerunner of Christ, our salvation is a reality, and that we CAN turn again in heart and mind to God and receive His blessing; or we can keep on doubting. We can keep on asking did it really happen? Are these real people we read of in the Bible? Does what unbelievers say have some sort of credence? Or we can be quietly and slowly but surely, by all the commercialism and dumbing down, be drawn away from the real message being given to us at Christmas time.

The choice is ours. But the call is clear. Take the opportunity to believe and answer the call this Christmas, to turn your heart and mind to God in repentance and receive the salvation held out for you.

Advent Sunday

1 Thessalonians 3.9-13; Luke 21.25-36

Advent Sunday, the first day of the Church's year in the West and we begin the year by looking forward; looking forward to celebrating the Nativity of the Lord at Christmas and also to His second coming. And so with that looking forward our minds are focussed by the traditional themes of Advent - Death, Judgement, Heaven and Hell. It sounds like pretty serious and sombre stuff. In a way our worship seems to reflect that with the traditional Advent readings which remind us of the themes. Our hymns and music have the same feeling about them, generally speaking, we have purple as our seasonal colour and we've few if no flowers in Church.

We've got to be carefully though, that in those respects we don't make the Advent season like Lent. It may be a time to reflect but it isn't meant to have the same feeling and atmosphere at all. The themes of Death, Judgement, Heaven and Hell are there as I said, to focus the mind, but from the perspective of a healthy sense of God's place and presence in our lives; from what you might call the standpoint of a 'lively' and living faith; and not from a place of great doubt and anxiety. The themes are not meant in that sense to frighten us into submission to God but to help increase our faith and our sense of assurance that God has all in His providence and that 'He upholds us with the power of His might' as St. Paul put it and again, that 'nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord; neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth.' You might recognise those words of St. Paul from his letter to the Romans with which we begin the funeral service. Our lives as Christians are founded on faith, hope and love of God and one another and it's from that standpoint that we have in mind the themes of Death, Judgement, Heaven and Hell and take part in the Advent season; that is, from the standpoint of great confidence in God.

Having mentioned those themes though, I do so only to give us the opportunity to think about the frame of mind in which we might make our way through this four short weeks of Advent and how to keep it. There's nothing like contemplating those themes to focus the mind on our past, our present and our future. So I'm not going to look into those themes during Advent at least not directly anyway. What I want to do both on the Sundays and in our Tuesday evening services is to prepare in a more direct way for the celebration of the Nativity of the Lord and what it means for us, before the event, rather than at the time or after. I'm going to be looking more during the Advent season at what Christmas is and, with that in mind preparing heart, mind and soul so that we can appreciate it more fully. And in so doing, we might get a proper appreciation as to how we should have that constant state of expectation of Jesus's coming again. As the Advent collect says, we 'cast away the works of darkness and put on the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life, so that on the last day when he shall come again, we may rise to the life immortal.' It's about being ready now, so that, when it happens, when we meet Christ again, we will receive what He promised. In that way we are able to appreciate His first coming and our celebration of it.

So during this Advent season, what I invite you to do is first of all think about what it is we are celebrating on the 25th December, who it is are celebrating on the 25th December. That might sound like a rather pointless plea because we all know don't we? Well mark my words, it isn't, and we don't, necessarily; and I'll tell you why. The reason it's not a pointless plea is because everyone of us is subject to a ruthless dumbing down of the most important event the universe has ever and will ever know - the coming of God into the world in His incarnate Christ and His life, His death and His resurrection. No other event has had as profound an impact upon the whole world. But it's no holds barred in our materialist, secularist, political correctness-gone-mad Western world. There are elements that will stop at nothing to rob us of any appreciation whatever of God in our lives. And remember it's the devil we are up against here and evil invading the lives of individuals and society, that is doing it. And especially vicious are those who call themselves atheists and who seek to rob us of our God and our Christ have no argument except to denigrate the intellect of people who sense that there's more to life than can be seen or touched. They seek to be classed as intellectuals with a superior understanding of life and the universe, but they are nothing of the sort, they are mere naysayers. Thy and the 'politically correct', whatever that really means other than 'I don't like what you do and think and say', tell us we are causing offence by using our Christian symbols and celebrating the important points in our faith, but have no regard to the offence they are causing us by their self righteous demands.

And it's more subtle than that too. We are encouraged, even from within the Church to popularise God and Christ so that He can be understood, so that people can more readily understand we are told, and so come to know and love him much more easily. Well here again, we don't make God any more attractive by turning sacred music into jingles or by reducing the beautifully expressive language of scripture and traditional hymnody into language you read in tabloid newspapers and hear on reality tv shows. And that's because when we do popularise God in that way, He becomes 'ordinary', He becomes the same as everything else in this world, when we should be showing Him as completely extra-ordinary. And when you put God on a par with everything else in life, a life of so many choices, then God is usually last to be chosen. Yes, God came to earth as a man and was everything a man was, but the point is He was everything God is as well and everything a man is not. And when we popularise Him that's the bit we miss, the most important bit, that it's God we are talking about here, not simply a baby born in a stable. If we miss that fact that it's God we are celebrating, because all we see is the baby in the manger, we miss the point entirely. And I think we miss Him so very much at this time and if at this time than more so the rest of the year.

We'll have the children in Church as we always do at Christmas and we'll be singing and hearing the children sing children's stuff and it will be lovely and I've nothing against it in that sense, as long as we realise that there's much more to it and we don't leave the children there too, with children's stuff, so that they never really grow in faith and love of God. One of the most wonderful things that's coming out of the Young Generations Sunday Slot is that when the children are writing the prayers now, left to themselves, they are beginning to write some quite sophisticated theologically and mystically profound prayers. They are actually leaving behind 'childish things' quite naturally, as they think about themselves and other people and especially about God. I've been amazed at what the children are writing as they grow in confidence and are allowed to dig down inside them and yes, listen to the living God speak in them.

We don't like to think about Death, Judgement, Heaven and Hell, they are too hard to think about, they throw up too many questions, raise anxieties; so we try to push them out of the way, to forget them either purposely or by negligence. Or we minimise their impact by thinking of them in ways that take out the 'sting'. But looked at in the right way, from having a sense in God's presence and power in our lives, those themes actually help us in the living of our lives, living our lives to the full. And isn't it like that when we come to think beyond those themes to God Himself? The contemplation of God throws up too many questions for most people, raises too many anxieties, so we give up thinking about Him or think about Him in ways that we can cope with or manage. The trouble is that then, in thinking of Him in ways we can manage, we bring Him down to our size, and when He's our size, He's not big enough to handle the really serious issues in life and in death. We can't have any faith in or love for a man-sized God.

But Jesus was, you might say, a God-sized man. So much so that we believe Him to be God incarnate, God in the flesh. And it's as such that we are thinking about Him this Advent. Not simply as a baby, born in a stable, but the uncreated God, come among us, in the flesh. And as we think of Him as such, as we've removed all the dumbing down and the popularising, we must ask ourselves, how do we receive Him, what attitude should we have, what state of body, mind, spirit and soul need we have to receive Him as God come among us? Think of that over the next four weeks, and if you can, come on Tuesday evening at 7.00 0'clock when I'll be saying more, about just that.

2nd Sunday before Advent

Hebrews 10.11-25; Mark 13.1-8

In the Eastern Church today (15th November) is the start of what is known as the Nativity Fast; the start of the 40 days to Christmas. It's not as strict a fast as Great Lent but it is nevertheless a time of fasting. We in the West have a shortened time of preparation for Christmas that we call Advent and it has a slightly different feel to it. In a way, this last couple of weeks of our Ordinary Time, have a theme, that of the Kingdom of God which, if taken in the right spirit make a nice lead in to Advent and which, taken together with the four weeks of Advent give something like the length of the Nativity Fast. On Advent Sunday in two weeks time we will begin to think in earnest about our preparation for the Christmas celebration and what that means in terms of preparation of heart and mind so that we might come to the celebration in the right way. And I hope that all of us will take advantage of the time to make a good preparation so that we can find new meaning in the celebration and new hope in God when Christmas comes around.

Last Tuesday bishop James sent out a letter to all the clergy and to all PCCs asking them to put aside a whole PCC meeting to consider three questions: How are we serving our community; How can we kindle our love for God and our love for our neighbour; and how can we grow numerically? I think it's the last question, more than the other two that is exercising bishop James, as it was the subject of his Presidential address at the last diocesan synod recently and he sent out a copy of his address with his letter. It was strange or providential, really, to receive that letter when I did, because only the week before, following our Question Time in church I was thinking about the questions that had been asked and writing about that for the next issue of our parish magazine. I'll leave you to read the whole article when it's published and I think you'll find it has a bearing on bishop James's letter. But I think the short and only answer to the question 'how can we grow numerically' is when more people's hearts and minds are turned to God and the whole of their life is lived in Him. You see, I really and truly believe after quite a long time in the Church now, and seeing many people come and go, that the only thing that keeps people coming to Church, in the end, is if God means more to them than just about anything or anyone else; when their whole life, as I said, is lived 'in Him'. The term 'in Him' is the only one I can come up with which adequately expresses what I want to say, and really it's what Jesus said when he talked about 'abiding' in Him. It's that life giving, life enhancing spiritual connection that you just can't live your life without. It's being a branch on the vine so that if you are cut off you wither and die. So there's not just a wish or a desire or a longing for the connection, there's a real, life or death need.

Now I raise this today because I think the readings set for today are taking us in that direction. It's the direction of the Kingdom, the direction of Advent, the direction of God. St. Paul reminds us in his letter to the Hebrews that Jesus himself is the once and only sacrifice for our sins so that we are no longer cut off from God, except through our own wilfulness. Our continuing sin, through our own free will, through our own negligence, weakness and our own deliberate fault keeps us distanced from God, it obscures God's image in us, blocks it out so that we can't see it, like dust on a mirror stops us seeing our own reflection. But the sacrifice for our sin has been made in Jesus once and for all and true repentance, that hard personal work of repentance, of turning the heart to God, brings us back, restores or reveals the image of God in us again, and our life giving relationship with God is restored to its fullness. Our sins have been washed away in baptism, which we are reminded about where the reading talks about being sprinkled and washed with water. Our sins have been washed away in baptism and the Spirit of God given to us once and for all; and it's only our continuing sinfulness that grieves the Spirit and hinders the Spirit's work in us. So, blessed are those who mourn, as Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, blessed are those who mourn over their sinfulness and weep tears of repentance and turn again to God.

As we are reminded of this very personal thing that Jesus has done for each one of us in giving himself for us, St. Paul in his letter to the Hebrews exhorts us to remember all this, to hold fast to this 'confession of our hope' as he says. And then he goes on to say that we should encourage one another in the faith. He says that we shouldn't neglect to meet together, because how can we encourage one another in the faith if we never meet to worship together? And notice he says 'not neglecting to meet together as is the HABIT of some.' How very easy it is to slip into the habit of not coming to church. How easy it is to 'give church a miss' this week, and then next week and then the week after and the week after that. And it's much easier for me because I have to come, I'm paid to come to church unlike yourselves. But I have been and will be again, God willing, in the very dangerous and difficult position of waking up on a Sunday morning and having to decide whether or not to go to church. And I use the words difficult and dangerous because Sunday morning's got to be the devil's favourite and most busy time of the week. At that most perilous time of the week, when you aren't on a rota for anything or you don't have to take the children to church for Andy's Kids or go and watch them perform, and when you take out getting your attendance mark so the kids will get a place in school or the nagging feeling of guilt you'll have if you don't go, there's really only your love for God that will stop you turning over and pulling the covers over you and will get you out of bed, into your clothes and through the church door on a Sunday morning. In the end, only your love for God will bring you here, week after week, month after month, year after long year. And that's how it should be, and there's not enough of it and that's why attendances are falling.

And we aren't really moved these days by the sort of writing we've read in St. Mark's gospel today out of which we hear echoes about what is known as the 'end time', the apocalypse when history will be rolled up and God's eternal kingdom will come to pass. We in the West have become so numbed and desensitised to any notion of urgency in life, of any notion of eternal judgement or reckoning, that we can no longer be frightened into a relationship with God as maybe our predecessors were, who feared that they might go to hell or suffer eternal damnation if they didn't please God. That might not altogether be a bad thing, but at the very least we really perhaps should have some feeling for the fact that our life and what we do with it has consequences that go far beyond our immediate self and lifespan.

As I said, only our love for God will keep us coming to church. Only because we want to please God hour by hour, day by day will we keep coming to church. And it's as we see this in one another that we are encouraged by one another to love God more and to, as St. Paul so eloquently put it 'provoke one another to love and good deeds.'

So as we think about these things over this next couple of weeks and certainly in the season of Advent, as we look forward to the celebration of the Nativity of our Lord, let us use this as a time of real reflection, of preparation of heart and mind, as a time to do some more of the work in ourselves of repentance, of turning our hearts to God again so that we can with a real wish and longing sing 'O come, O come Emmanuel'.

All Saints

Hebrews 12.18-24; Matthew 5.1-12

November is the time in the Church's year specifically dedicated to Remembrance as we celebrate All Saints day today, All Souls tomorrow, Remembrance Sunday next week and then finally at the very end of the month we remember St. Andrew, the 'First Called' of the disciples.

But these celebrations and memorials aren't simply a remembrance of people who have passed on, they also give us the opportunity to thin more deeply about our own life, the Kingdom of God and what we ourselves might be passing on to eventually. With regard to these things I've always found the final prayers at the a burial of ashes quite challenging and evocative. The prayers are:

Heavenly Father,

we thank you for all those whom we love but see no longer.

As we remember N in this place,

hold before us our beginning and our ending,

the dust from which we come

and the death to which we move,

with a firm hope in your eternal love and purposes for us,

in Jesus Christ our Lord.

God of hope,

grant that we, with all who have believed in you,

may be united in the full knowledge of your love

and the unclouded vision of your glory;

through Jesus Christ our Lord.

May the infinite and glorious Trinity,

the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,

direct our life in good works,

and after our journey through this world

grant us eternal rest with all the saints.

Those words seem to take us through the whole sweep of our lives in a moment, place us firmly in the Kingdom and also within the providence of God. They take us beyond the horizon of our sight and of our understanding. And as such they demand of us, faith. So, I find those words at one both a comfort, as they place my life firmly in God, and also a challenge, asking me what I really believe, about myself, about life and about God. And I'm challenged to make sense out of life as the prayer tries to give me some sense of what life is.

And it's the same with our readings this morning, first from St. Paul's letter to the Hebrews and then in St. Matthew's gospel.

The reading from Hebrews places us in God's kingdom, through the saving work of Jesus Christ. It says that we aren't like Moses and the people of Israel who came to Mount Sinai and were forbidden to climb the mountain to get close to God. On that sort of thinking was based the whole idea of having to make sacrifices to God to get close to Him and to be able to communicate with Him. But the writer tells us that through Jesus we come to Mount Zion, to the gathering of all the faithful around God's throne perpetually in His presence. So by this we see ourselves as Christians given the hope, through Christ, and the assurance of our place with the saints.

But then comes the challenge in St. Matthew's gospel; because it tells us who these saints are - the poor in Spirit - those who depend upon God totally; those who mourn, and here that means those who mourn over their sins, those who are always conscious of their sinfulness and are genuinely repentant. The meek are those who, being dependent upon God have strength. Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness are those whose greatest desire is to see God's kingdom as first in their lives.

Do you see the challenge? Looked at in this way, Jesus is giving us a definition of what it means to have the character and the life of a saint. St. Paul said that we should work out our own salvation in fear and trembling and I'm sure it was this sort of thing that he had in mind. Jesus calls us to examine ourselves continually, day by day and to ask ourselves how far we meet this challenge in the whole of our life.

So you see in calling us to think about our loved ones who have passed away and the Saints the Church has us recall week by week, year by year, we are being asked to look at ourselves and ask ourselves if we have that sense of being in the Kingdom now; that sense of heading towards Mount Zion to be gathered around God's throne with all the saints, and probably most importantly a sense of doing the work of sainthood, which is a true and steady turning to God in repentance and faith.

Last Sunday after Trinity

Bible Sunday 2 Timothy 3.14-4.5; John 5.36-47

Whenever people asked me recently where I was going or where I'd been for my holiday and I said 'Patmos', their responses and especially their facial expressions, gave away that they either hadn't read the last book of the Bible or they hadn't remembered one of the details they'd read. So, I usually followed up my one word answer with 'the place that St. John was exiled when he wrote Revelation'. It was quite funny really because I sometimes find myself caught out in the same sort of way showing that my knowledge of the Bible leaves something to be desired. Bible study groups can be interesting places, watching people trying to hide their ignorance of it in different ways. But the Bible is a big book, indeed, it's lots of books all between two covers, and knowing it in the same way as memorising things like dates, and kings and queens of England is pretty pointless anyway. Our reading of it and our study of it certainly needs to be more and very much more than that.

Somebody once said to me that the Bible is the most bought and least read of books. Where they'd picked that up from I don't know but that's another piece of ill conceived trivia. The Bible, together with the other great Holy books of the world is probably one of the very few books that's read every day all over the world. And I'd go so far as to say that there's a sense in which it's probably being read continuously as the world spins on its axis and day gives way to night and back to day again. But I think it is true that while a great majority of the population knows of the Bible's existence, relatively few understand what it's really all about and how it's best read. There's not a great deal of understanding, certainly of those outside the Church, of what it is, how it was put together and how we should approach it. And because of that, many, many people even in the Church, seem to be a little if not very, afraid of it. It seems to me that because they are not Bible 'scholars' or learned critics, they feel it's not for them to have an opinion about what they read so they leave it up to others to do the work for them. So, I'd just like to say a couple of things about how I think it's best to come to the Bible in this day and age and it's a way that I think has been true since the Church began.

In this 21st century world, we are deluged by and are drowning in information, in the written word especially. We have books, magazines, newspapers, tv, radio, computers, ipods, mobile phones, the internet. Every minute of every day and night we have immediate access to just about any piece of information its possible to have. At one time, a household might proudly display the family encyclopedia of maybe up to 30 volumes containing a world of information. With Yahoo, Google and Wikipedia, so much more is available, a veritable universe worth of information. It's no wonder the Bible gets lost in all of that. And because it gets lost, then its voice becomes overwhelmed by all this other information. One of the responses to that is that the Bible is now available in lots of different versions made to appeal to every age group of boys and girls, men and women, as if through all these different versions, it will make its voice heard much more. I'm not so sure it works like that, so that, when we come to church and hear the Bible read, it can be so much more 'noise' to add to the noise we hear in the world outside the Church.

Contrast that with the world 2,000 years ago, without all the technology we have now and without the access to printed material we have now. I wonder if we can imagine what the people felt like, many of whom may not have been able to read, who listened to the Hebrew scriptures in the synagogue or listened in the Christian Church gatherings, to one of the apostles' letters or the gospel writings. I wonder how different their response was to ours? One can only imagine but I guess that they would be much more attentive, coming with more of a sense of inquiry and wonder at what they were hearing? St. Paul writes to his pupil Timothy that scripture is 'inspired by God'. He had that sense about scripture that elevated far above all the other information he gathered from day to day. And St. Paul was a learned man, a Pharisee and a Roman citizen, well used to dealing with information. And he wanted Jesus' disciples to treat scripture in the same way. What he's saying in actual fact is that when they listen to scripture being read, it's as if God himself is speaking to them, and so what they hear of it is God 'teaching, reproving, correcting and training them for righteousness', as he say; the end being that they may be 'proficient, equipped for every good work.' So St. Paul says that when they hear scripture its God himself speaking to them. And that's how we ourselves should come to the scriptures today. And that should form our attitude to the scriptures as we listen.

When we read the gospel we take the book in procession into the midst of the people, usually, as if Jesus himself we in the midst of us teaching us. You'll notice in some churches people turn to face the gospel, just as you would turn to someone speaking to you. Again, this acknowledges Christ himself speaking to us through the gospel. And our attitude to what we hear is reflected in the gospel acclamation before it where we say Alleluia! - Praise God! for what we are hearing. This is how we are meant to come to the scriptures, to hear God speaking to us and to learn from Him and in the process be raised up and our lives changed. That's why we call the Scriptures the Word of God. God speaks and creation happens, things change.

And just a word about how we set about getting meaning from the scriptures and how we set about understanding them. In this day and age we believe it's good to decide for ourselves, to have our own opinions and points of view about everything. And this includes the Bible. The history is too long to go into but we must remember that we can't come to the Bible like that. It's not for each person to have his or her own interpretation. Its in this respect that the Bible has probably been most abused in the past. We need to remember always that it was the Church that put what's called the Canon of the Bible together. The Church decided, in its early years, what writings at the time were truly inspired by God and should be put in the collection of books that has been handed down to us. And just as the Church put the Bible together, it's for the Church to interpret the Bible, its for the Church to be the final arbiter on what it means and teaches. Where the Church is concerned, you can't make it up as you wish. There has to be some foundation of understanding. St. Vincent of Lerins, in the 5th century says that 'Every care should be taken to hold fast to what has been believed everywhere, always, and by all.' He said this in relation to the faith and teaching of the Church and that faith and teaching is based on what the Church understands from God's Word written.

So on this Bible Sunday maybe we can come to the Bible afresh particularly each Sunday as we come to worship. Maybe we can come with a greater sense of anticipation and attention so that we might all the more hear God speaking to us. And to listen more to what the Church has to say about God's Word, the more to build our faith in and knowledge of the living God.

Twelfth Sunday after Trinity

James 1.17-27; Mark 7.1-8, 14-15, 21-23

Today we are out of St. Paul's letter to the Ephesians and into the letter of James; and out of St. John's gospel and back into St. Mark's. And they are interesting readings today hanging around that one pivotal sentence in James - 'Be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves.

It reminds me of the story I heard about the vicar who stood in the pulpit one Sunday and preached his sermon. The next week he came to his sermon and he preached the same sermon over again. The people thought he'd just got confused because he was getting on a bit. The next week he preached the same sermon again and people began to get a bit concerned, wondering what was going on. After six weeks of the same sermon the churchwardens, having fielded lots of complaints from people finally came to the vicar, quite anxious, and asked him, 'vicar, do you realise you've preached the same sermon six times in a row?' The vicar said, 'Yes, of course.' So the churchwardens asked him 'When are you going to preach something different then, because the congregation are tired of hearing it and are complaining about hearing the same one over and over again?' The vicar replied, 'I'll preach a different sermon when there's evidence that you've taken notice of this one.' I can tell you from my own experience that it can be quite dispiriting, to say the least, when you stand in the pulpit week by week, month by month, and year by year and little, for some people at least, seems to change. But then I look at myself and challenge myself in the same way. So today's readings, as always, speak to me just as much if not more, to me as they do to you.

'Be doers of the word and not merely hearers who decieve themselves.' These are strong and challenging words. Jesus in St. Mark's gospel is saying to the Pharisees and to everyone else, when they call into question his disciples' behaviour, that what we hear has to go into the heart and make a difference there, and change us, within. And religious practice is useless and utterly pointless if it doesn't. Because true religion isn't about how many times you turn up at church in the course of a year, or about what we do in church in the worship; it's about how much you love others and especially those less fortunate than yourself, which can indeed be the person sitting next to you or in front or behind you. And here lies one of the greatest challenges. And doubtless we all fall down righthere. And that's why God invented forgiveness, streaming from Him, through the cross of Christ, to us first of all, before we even have the chance to offer it to our neighbour, because without knowing His forgiveness we can't offer it to anyone else, at least with any integrity. 'Forgiveness makes life worthwhile.' I read that just this last week and it hit home with me, I felt it to be true. Forgiveness, true forgiveness is from the heart. And that's where Jesus was pointing when he rhymed off the catalogue of what are commonly called sins at the end of the reading from St. Mark's gospel today. We all hang around most of these things, at least up in our heads from time to time, it's all a matter of degree. And most of us, for most of these might say 'There but for the grace of God go I.' That's why you can see people baying for the blood of paedophiles and child killers very often, even when they don't know them. I've often wondered why they do that and I think it's that psychological 'trick' of projection. It's because they know that they themselves may at some time have harboured, even subconsciously, the same sorts of thoughts, and they hate that in themselves, hate even the thought that they could think such things. And the hate is vented on those who openly manifest those sins. And Jesus is saying that we should remember that it's what's in the heart that's important and our religion has to work on our heart so that out of it comes love, in its different forms, notably in service to our neighbour, whoever our neighbour might be.

And we fall down in this regard from time to time, every one of us. Like a pendulum we rock backwards and forwards between outright sinfulness and grace, often without realising it. And it's so easy to do that, if we will admit it, to fall into that way of living where we are neither really one thing nor the other but keep swinging back and forth like the pendulum between sin and grace. And so as St. James says we are like those who look in a mirror and when we go away from it, forget what we've seen.

There's a story of a Zen Buddhist novice monk who goes to his teacher and ask 'What must I do to learn the truth?' and the teacher gives the novice a mirror. If we could only look in that mirror a bit longer and then seeing how we really are, first forgive ourselves, love ourselves then we are beginning to 'do' the work of God, we are beginning to turn our heart to God in love, not merely hearing that commandment of Jesus to love your neighbour as yourself. Remembering that to love your neighbout at all, you have to first love yourself. Which reminds me of that other story of the child who was given a puzzle of the world with thousands of pieces, to put together, by his father. The father was amazed that his son put the puzzle together very quickly indeed so he asked his son 'how did you complete the puzzle so quickly?' And the child said, 'well, dad, I noticed that on the back of the puzzle was the figure of a man, so I put the man together and then turned the puzzle over.' And of course the lesson there is that if you want to put the world right, even your own personal world, you have to put yourself right first.

You can't put your world right, from a religious point of view, from a Christian point of view, unless you put yourself right first, or at least begin to do so. And make no mistake this is very, very difficult. In fact it's the hardest of work in the world. That's why we all fall down from time to time, each and every one of us. That's why it's so much easier to listen to a sermon then forget it than actually do what you've been challenged with. But in God's great and amazing graciousness he forgives us, and that should drive us to our knees in thanksgiving if nothing else does.

The morning prayer readings for this morning contanin that wonderful section from Revelation chapter 3 were God says 'Listen, I am standing at the door knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me.' That reading is pictured in that wonderful pre-Raphaelite painting by Holman Hunt of the Light of the World and which is pictured in the mosaic here in church at the entrance to the chapel; Jesus, the Light of the World, standing at the door of the heart and knocking. Answering that knock and then letting Christ into our heart is the first step to a new awareness of ourself, the first step to a new forgiveness of ourself and the first step to a new loving of ourself. And it's from that first step that all else flows. I first heard and responded to those words when I was 12 years old, and I've been opening and shutting the door ever since, if you see what I mean. Because it's so hard, day by day, week by week, year by year to let Christ be in your heart right at the heart of everything you are and do.

So these readings today, whilst so very challenging, offer us at the same time, a way to come closer in love to God, to come closer in love to one another, and most of all to come closer, in love, to ourself. And in that we see that to be doers of the word and not merely hearers is the best gift we could give both ourselves and everyone we live with.

Tenth Sunday after Trinity

Ephesians 5.15-20; John 6.51-58

I'm not usually given to making judgements in public about the state of society at large as I've got to the age now where I might just fall into the category of 'grumpy old man'. But the reading from Ephesians this morning reminded me of a news item I saw this week about Leeds City Council's measures to try and stem the culture of binge drinking in the town. If you saw it you'll remember that in clubs and pubs that want to sell cheap alcohol there has to be a queueing system just like at the post office or bank where only one at a time can step up to the bar. They can order just two drinks at one time and they are watched by six burly door keepers and two police officers, paid for by the club proprietor. It really made me rather 'grumpy' to say the least because I personally believe that it's not the responsibility of club and pub owners, nor the responsibility of the local council to take any measures to stop people drinking themselves into an early grave. It is solely the responsibility of the individuals themselves. We live in a society these days that's made it acceptable for individuals not to bear any responsibility towards themselves or their neighbours. 'You just live as you like and the council or the government or somebody else will pick up the tab' is the watchword. And if there's one thing that's wrong with our culture these days it's that.

Now that's as far as I'm going with my commentary on today's society. But it also drew me back to how our society at large has perceived Christianity, or anything to do with God, for a long time, as being simply a set of do's and don'ts and mainly - recalling the 10 Commandments - don'ts. But you see, it's not about do's and don'ts, Chrisitanity and God are about life and death - literally. Let me show it to you this way; and it bears very much upon what I've been saying over the last few weeks, for those of you who have been here, about these parts of St. John's gospel that we are reading.

Here we see the Jews getting things completely confused, and it was from that confusion that they drew their conclusion that Jesus was a heretic. In just the same way, people outside the Church draw conclusions about the Christian faith - because they are confused about it, and especially about the very basics of it. The readings this morning aren't about what we eat or drink, they are about our life, and on what basis we live it.

If I asked everybody in Church today what you want most out of life you'll all probably say happiness or peace, above even lots of money because even though we know that money can make life a lot easier and more desirable and a lot happier in lots of ways, it's not in the end the key to what's good about life. No, happiness, peace, health, those are the things that you WILL choose. And those are what God and Christianity are about. And this is how I know.

When Moses was leading the people through the wilderness, after he'd received the commandments from God, there came a time, after many trials when God said to them 'look, if you do what I've laid down, a good, happy, prosperous and blessed life is guaranteed. If you don't do what I've laid down, the opposite will happen; you'll be in all sorts of misery all your life. So you can say that on the one hand there's life and on the other there's death. But it's up to you to choose.' That's how God laid it out before the people. And then he said something that was the key to the whole thing. He said 'you choose'. But actually, he was so for his people that he tried to persuade them in one particular direction and he said - Deuteronomy 30.19 'I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your desendants may live.' So you see, God put the responsibility on the shoulders of each and every one of the people. 'You choose'. One way life, the other way death. And that was it.

Each Sunday there's an appointed Old Testament reading and this week's tells of the time when God asks Solomon what he desires. God says, he can have anything he wants. And Solomon chooses to have wisdom, understanding between good and evil so that he could govern the people wisely. Again, God put the responsibility firmly on Solomon's shoulders. 'You choose' he said. And we read that the result of his choice wasn't only the gift of wisdom but he became the wealthiest man alive in very many respects.

St. Paul in our New Testament reading this morning isn't just having a go at binge drinking. He's pointing out that behaviour like that, is unwise and in reality it's death dealing, one way or another. It's a bad choice. And if you want a life that gives you good things then you need to make different choices. You need to take the responsibility of making better choices.

God, and Jesus show us and model for us a way of life that leads to health, wealth and prosperity of so may different kinds, a way of life that is joyful and peaceful in ways beyond our wildest imagining. But one that is available if we simply make the right choice. And then having made it, sticking to it, in faith and in trust that it is the right way, because by the mere fact of having to have faith means that these things don't come all that easily, but they do come, because God himself says, 'Ask and you WILL receive, seek and you WILL find, knock and the door WILL be opened.' And having made the choice we need to believe it through thick and thin and that's where most fall down, through lack of trust.

So you see it's not Christianity that brings war and mayhem and death and disruption as has been lied about down the centuries, it's simply peoples' bad choices and lack of faith. And the choice is yours, God hands that choice to you in every minute of every single day of your life. 'You choose!'

Ninth Sunday after Trinity

Ephesians 4.25-5.2; John 6.35, 41-51

As we've moved into St. John's gospel these last few weeks I've been talking about maturing in the faith, about making the daily decision to follow Christ and as St. Paul says to grow into the 'full stature' of Christ; and last week we thought about the childlike faith that God wants us to have but also about moving on by committing ourselves wholeheartedly to what Jesus teaches and preaches.

The dialogue between Jesus, the disciples and those who come to them to hear Jesus is centred at present around Jesus being 'the bread of life'. And in that we are thinking about Jesus being our spiritual nourishment. To the 'untrained' ear the words we read today from St. John's gospel don't sound very appealing, with references to eating and drinking Jesus's flesh and blood. But how else do you get over the point, and this image surely does, about Jesus and His Spirit being our spiritual food and drink, our spiritual nourishment. And just to push it home in a contemporary sense, it's often said these days that 'you are what you eat'. You might recall the tv advert for Green Giant sweetcorn and the two little boys eating it with great relish when they remember that saying. I expect they've only taken to heart the 'giant' bit. I don't imagine they'd want to grow up green. But the point is well made. If we are to be Christlike we need to be nourished by him. There have been huge theological debates about how this happens and especially in terms of the eucharist, which have raged for centuries, but for now we can let those pass us by and just take on this idea of Jesus himself being our spiritual food and drink so that we might become evermore like him and so grow into His likeness today.

And some of that likeness is recounted by St. Paul in his letter to the Ephesians and especially in that part of it that we've read this morning. St. Paul gives out this list both of instructions and characteristics of Christ likeness. What it means in terms of thoughts, words and deeds to be mature in the faith, remembering that we are continuing our reading from last week where St. Paul is talking about maturing in the faith. But I'd like to draw your attention to a sentence in the middle of this reading which gives the motivation for doing our best to align ourselves with these instructions and characteristics. Because it's necessary to know why we are being asked to do something especially if it's asking us to stretch ourselves somewhat and maybe to step out in faith in behaviour and thinking that seems at first difficult because it's not what might be called our natural inclination. And the sentence is this; and as I said, it's right in the middle of the reading - 'And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption.' Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked.'

Remember that St. Paul is talking to baptised Christians; people who have given themselves to the Christian way of life. They've made that commitment and so have set out on that road to growth in Christ, to maturity as Christians. So any behaviour that is alien to that way of life, that isn't congruent with what they profess, isn't just a lapse in standards or misbehaviour. It goes much deeper than that. It pierces right to the heart of their relationship with God. It grieves Him. And it grieves Him because it shows a lack of love for others and so a lack of love for Him. And that's why St. Paul goes on after the sentence right in the middle to talk about behaviour and speech and thinking that is and shows forth love for one another and for God.

So what we are being asked to remember is that when we follow the Christian way, we are not just living up to a standard, we are living a relationship, with God and with one another that has to be cared for and nourished and worked on, just as any relationship of love has to be worked on. And when things go wrong, repentance and forgiveness is the way that things are put right. And that putting right is a two way thing; repentance on the one hand and forgiveness on the other. That's how it works. We work to develop our relationships in love and in that way grow into the likeness of Christ, becoming mature in Christ, and when that goes wrong we are given a way of putting things right, again in a Christ like way, the way of forgiveness. And there is no other way if we are committed to the way of Christ. We can make all sorts of excuses and have all sorts of explanations for how we live and relate to one another but when it comes down to it, for Christians there is only one way, the way that does not grieve the Spirit of God, but delights Him.

Over the next couple of weeks as we continue to read this part of St. John's gospel we hear all sorts of arguments that arise out of peoples' misunderstanding and unwillingness to understand, but we'll leave that until then. For now we simply need to come to terms with what keeps us going in the faith, what keeps us moving forward in the Christian faith. And that is receiving our nourishment for our spiritual growth from God through Jesus Christ. And developing the awareness that we are building a relationship of love with Him and our neighbour, that is ever more precious as we build it, so that when it breaks down it is grieving to God. And that in itself should give us the will to always want to build one another up in faith so that we all come to the full stature of Christ, firm in faith and love for one another.

Eighth Sunday after Trinity

Ephesians 4.1-16; John 6.24-35

As you may have noticed, those who constructed the lectionary have got bored with St. Mark's gospel and have taken a detour for these few weeks into St. John's gospel. This gospel as I'm sure you are aware is quite unlike the other three. You could say and many do that it is more 'spiritual'. I'm not sure what people mean by that exactly because different people seem to define 'sprirituality' differently. But there's a lot of Jesus praying in St. John's gospel, whole chapters in fact, and because of that, much more seems to come through of his relationship with his heavenly Father. And so we tap into something of Jesus's own spiritual life. Because of that we seem to move out of the ordinary, every day course of things to something with much more depth. That's not to say that St. John's gospel is any less couched in daily happenings. The detail with which St. John describes things that happen, no less that the other gospel writers gives us cause to believe that these things really did happen. I suppose the modern parallel would be High Definition tv. St. John loses nothing in the sharpness and reality with which he describes events even though what comes across more than in the other gospels is the spiritual aspect of those events. So in St. John's gospel you could say we are seeing Jesus in 'high definition' compared to the other gospels. And that has been why this gospel, more than the others I think it's true to say, has had a greater impact on peoples' lives, many more of them moving nearer to God on reading it. So, this is serious stuff. It's for grown ups.

Over recent months at St. Andrew's we've put a great deal more effort into working with the children that come here week by week both to church and in the school. The work with children at St. Andrew's has always been of a very high quality and high standard, it's just that we've invested rather more time and resources recently so that they have the opportunity of expressing what God means to them in our worship in a bigger way. It's had quite an impact both on themselves and on us adults especially. Most people have been delighted and moved, one way and another by the work the children have been doing and by the worship that they lead. It's been terrific. And it's strange how adults are really moved by anything that the children do, either here in church or in school. I've often wondered why the children have such an impact. I suspect it's because as much as anything they remind we adults of our childhood, they remind us of our long lost innocence, and there'll be all sorts of emotions that come along with that. I've noticed that adults in church seem to respond much better to simple, child-like things than to what you might call 'grown up' things. And I think that's because many adults, mature though they are in years, despite coming to church for many years, never actually mature in the faith or in their spirituality. It shows in different ways especially in our life together as the Church. And that's a pity. And it's not what God wants.

No matter how much we yearn for our childhood, St. Paul reminds us, as he does today in his letter to the Ephesians that God calls us to maturity in the faith. He says 'The gifts he gave were..... to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, TO MATURITY, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. We must NO LONGER BE CHILDREN......But speaking the truth in love, we must GROW UP in every way into him who is the head, into Christ....' St. John shows us the 'full stature of Christ' as St. Paul puts it and St. Paul says it's like Christ that we should grow up to be.

Now you may say that Jesus said we must accept the Kingdom like little children and when speaking of children he said that the Kingdom of God was theirs. Yes, that's true. But what he meant for us was that we are to accept the Kingdom as children accept things, usually with wonder, awe, curiosity and faith. Children trust, far more than adults and its that trust that Jesus asks us to have. But having done that we are to grow in the faith, we are to grow in our spirituality and grow in our spirituality just as we do bodily and psychologically.

And it will show in what we do - 'the work of God' as St. John calls it. 'Then they said to him, 'Master, what must we do to perform the works of God?' Jesus answered them, 'This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.' It's as simple as that. Just believe. But its simplicity is its difficulty too. To see and understand what the work of God is that Jesus is talking about we need look no further than the Sermon on the Mount. There isn't time this morning to read through it but when you get home read it in St. Matthew's gospel from the beginning of chapter 5 and then ask yourself how far your thinking, belief and behaviour correspond to what Jesus says there. For the closer you get to that the more mature in the faith you can call yourself.

And that's just the outward expression of what's going in inwardly in that relationship with the Father. How mature is that? How much faith do we actually put in God. How does our faith measure against that of Jesus because St. Paul says that Jesus is the measure. And this is grown up stuff. It's what we hope our children, given the opportunity we are giving them, will eventually aspire to. And it's what we all should aspire to, without exception. There isn't one of us that is exempt from growing to maturity in Christ. None of us is exempt from 'putting away childish things' as St. Paul said elsewhere and growing in faith. And so when we see the children doing things in church, yes we should be delighted by them and our hearts should be warmed by them but at the same time we adults need to ask ourselves how far we have moved on from those childish things. We need to ask ourselves if we have grown at all.

And if we haven't it's never too late, never too late to begin to have more faith, never too late to believe, to trust that bit more what for instance we read in the Sermon on the Mount and in other places in the Bible. For note what Jesus says right at the end of that Sermon in Matthew 7.24ff - He who hears these words of mine and ACTS on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock. That's the sort of faith we are to mature into as followers of Jesus. It's that sort of faith we are to teach the children about so that they too might grow into it and themselves be part of a build up the body of Christ for theirs and the next generation after them.

So as St. Paul says, let us no longer be chidren, tossed to and fro and blwon about by every wind of doctrine, by people's trickery, by their craftiness and deceitful scheming. But speaking the truth in love, grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ.

Seventh Sunday after Trinity

This sermon will appear when I've fished my notes out of the filing cabinet aka rubbish bin!

Sixth Sunday after Trinity

Ephesians 2.11-22; Mark 6.30-34, 53-56

Over the last couple of weeks I've been using the readings, especially from St. Mark's gospel to say something about faith. (Sorry to readers that they don't appear on the blog. That was because I was giving myself a rest from the computer, which kind of fits in with what I've got to say this time.) And today we change tack a bit. You might recall, if you were present at the time that I said that St. Mark's gospel is my favourite, not least because it shows us Jesus as a man of action and the gospel moves on at a tremendous pace, reinforcing this view. But today, between the lines, we can see how Jesus manages to keep going and also see something of what the Church is meant to be for us.

We take up the gospel this morning where the disciples have come back from having been sent out by Jesus on their first mission, teaching and healing. And they tell Jesus all about it. When St. Luke talks about a similar mission where Jesus sends them out they come back, we are told, overjoyed by all they have seen and heard. So the disciples will have gathered again probably very excited, but also very tired. They'd have been still fuelled with adrenaline and very soon would come the opposite of the adrenaline rush, exhaustion. So what does Jesus do? He obviously recognises this because he says to them; 'Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.' And St. Mark, indeed, tells us that people are still demanding much of them, taking up so much of their time that they have no time even to eat.

So the thing that stands out in this reading, because it contrasts so markedly with everything else that's going on, is Jesus making sure that the disciples get enough rest. We see that on other occasions too and Jesus himself making sure that he gives himself time, that he isn't overburdened by other peoples demands and expectations. He gives himself time to rest, time to think, time to pray. And that's because his ministry is so demanding. All the time people are clamouring for his attention, not in their ones and two's but whole towns and villages it seems. Sometimes, Jesus even purposely avoids people; and that's because he needs the time to himself simply to recover and prepare. So here we see him making sure that his disciples get the same sort of rest, he takes care of his disciples in the same way he takes care of others. He meets their needs as he meets the needs of others.

The Church is notoriously bad for not following Jesus's example. All the time we expect too much of people, we put too many demands on people with one burden and another, or at least, we have done historically. I hope St. Andrew's is not like that now. There are those who do a great deal of work here and I hope I always encourage them to take enough rest. But it needs to be more than that. The Church should be first and foremost a place of healing for body, mind and spirit.

There's one word that stands out in the reading from Ephesians this morning and that is 'peace'; and while it's meant in the sense of peace between groups of people and relates to the work of Jesus in bringing the peace of reconciliation between Jews and Gentiles, making them one people under God; I'm suggesting that first and foremost the Church should be a place of peace. It should be a place where people can come and find peace, a peace that brings healing of body, mind and spirit.

When people come to the Church, meaning us, we really should be that sort of people that offers peace to them; that we embody the peace of God which can be passed on to them. So often people come and they find the opposite in the Church, a place of overwhelming demand and business. No wonder they leave; for when they find all of that, well, they are just finding what they find in the world outside the Church, what they were fleeing from anyway. So, the Church should be a place of peace where people can come to be refreshed and renewed in every way. And then they might find it to be the place of healing that it should be. If we are Christ's body now on earth then we as the Church should be a healing place for people, just as Jesus was 2,000 years ago. I wonder what we would do if we had whole towns and villages knocking at our door, wanting to be healed?

But doesn't the fact that they aren't make us want to ask the question 'why not?' For surely, in this day and age, if we were a peaceful, healing place then people would flock here. Well, it's something to think about certainly. And I think our readings this morning demand that of us. First to ask ourselves, do we get the rest, relaxation and recreation we need, as individuals, in our hugely demanding lives? And then secondly, do we as the Church offer the peace and healing that Jesus did, which is a basic characteristic of the Kingdom of God and which is surely a feature of a church which has Jesus risen and alive in it?

Maybe as we take our holidays or take our rest over these summer weeks we could ask ourselves those questions and during the time we take out to pray, ask God to show us how we might become what we see of Jesus and the disciples in these readings this morning.

Third Sunday after Trininty

2 Corinthians 8.7-15; Mark 5.21-43

As we make our way through the chapters of St. Mark's gospel in these Sundays after Trinity, we are looking at what it means for us to be followers of Jesus, for us to be his disciples, for us to be called Christians. From Advent to Pentecost we were looking at the great events of Jesus life and the impact he had on those around him and how they responded to all he said and did. And now we turn the searchlight, as it were, upon ourselves. We look at ourselves, with reference to Jesus and ask ourselves what it means for each of us to be a follower, a disciple, a Christian.

St. Mark's gospel opens with Jesus' proclamation of the Good News - 'Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand.' The Kingdom of God is, for Jesus, the Good News he has come to bring, and he shows what the Kingdom means in his life and his teaching. He shows what it means for himself and for the people. And immediately we see him ministering many healings amongst the people. And throughout the gospels we see healings of body, mind and spirit both by the teaching and by the actions of Jesus. And as we read all of that, which in St. Mark's gospel happens very quickly indeed, one miracle after another, we might begin to ask ourselves why we don't see much of it today, why it all seems so improbable, why it's not something in our own experience.

Well, in actual fact, we do see healings, almost every day; but we put them down to medical science, to the pills and potions we are given by the doctor. And I think we mostly forget the miracle that is our own mind and body and spirit that actually does the healing, aided by the pills and potions. But more than that, it is commonly accepted these days that there is a link between a persons will, faith and belief and the ability to recover from illness; that much healing begins in the thoughts a person has about their ability to recover. And so our own state of mind and heart and soul is crucial in the healing process.

Now that's just at the level of the everyday, at the level of what goes on in the world around us. But it's not unconnected with what Jesus shows us in this gospel reading today and is reflected somewhat in the 2nd letter to the Corinthians, which is about how things happen in the Kingdom of God, or should I say how I believe things to happen. We've been shown two miracles of healing today which are wonderful things for Jairus's daughter and the woman. But the healings are not just the important things here. The lessons we learn from what surrounds them are more important for us, today, as we go about our business, trying to be followers of Jesus.

As you ask yourself why we don't see these healing miracles in the same way today, you might also, as you think about you and yours, why your prayers don't seem to be answered very powerfully either. And I think we have the answer here in what Jesus says to Jairus and the woman. And it's all to do with this thing we call faith, for we've heard in the gospels before what Jesus said about faith and it's seeming ability to overcome every obstacle, to move mountains. And how to have faith then, seems to be key. When you look at these two individuals closely, first of all you see that they take a great risk. Jairus was a leader of the synagogue, one who would be very wary of being seen to go to Jesus for help. He could have had a lot to lose if his colleagues had seen him. The woman, well, she was a woman who with the condition she had would have been regarded as ritually unclean and had to stay outside of what you might call polite society until she was better. But she'd been in that condition for 12 years so probably felt she hadn't much to lose anyway. In any case, they both took a huge risk. Nobody said that faith wasn't risky.

Now these stories are placed by St. Mark, one inside the other, for whatever reason, and they both have similar elements. When Jesus felt the power go out of him and asked who touched him, the woman, it's said, came to him 'in fear and trembling'. Likewise, when Jairus heard his daughter had died, Jesus said to him 'do not fear, only believe'. The woman had already been physically healed but it was after that, after she'd told Jesus it was her who touched him, had told him the truth, that he said to her 'go in peace and be healed of your disease.' So fear in the woman and in Jairus is a central element in the stories. And maybe that's because it's fear that is the opposite of faith. We usually see doubt as being the opposite of faith, but it isn't, it's fear. Faith cannot exist where there is fear, and fear has no place where there is faith. And that's because fear robs us of every opportunity to do anything at all about our condition. It's the one thing, the one emotion that stops us dead in our tracks and keeps us pinned down and paralysed.

So if we put these things together we can see how faith works. First of all it means taking a risk. It means betting all upon God, so to speak, putting all in the hands of God, all that we are, all that we have, and all that we do. We take the risk that God has the answer. The woman St. Mark says, told Jesus the truth and we have to as well for faith to work. We have to come before God, in truth, without trying to deceive ourselves or deny anything about ourselves or our condition. Then as we do that, we put our trust in God, we put away our fear and we have faith that God will answer our prayer. When we trust then we put away fear.

And it's really as simple as that; but oh so hard at the same time, because it cuts right across our natural, fallen inclination which is to try and have the answer and work out the answer for ourself. And if you've been with this up to this point now you might see that in actual fact what it means is that we are being asked, by faith, to give ourselves to God in this whole hearted way. And we all know and not just because we are told but because we have personal experience that you have to give before you can receive. Faith is giving yourself to God in your entirety that you might receive the fullness of his blessings. That's what these two people we've read about today, did and look what it meant for them. And if it can happen for them, it can happen for us.

Trinity Sunday

Romans 8.12-17; John 3.1-17

Today is an important day in our calendar because on this day we call to mind, not our Lord or one of the saints, but a teaching of the Church that is foundational to calling ourselves 'Christian.' Because in this teaching we have received since the early days of the Church, not simply the idea or the opinion, but the belief that Jesus is fully God, just as the Father is fully God; and also that the Holy Spirit is, likewise, fully God. And furthermore that there isn't as a consequence, three Gods, but they are one God. To put it very simply we could say that 1 plus 1 plus 1 equals 1. This teaching of the Holy Trinity is handed down since the beginning of the Church as Truth we are to both accept and believe as true and in doing so we can call ourselves Christians and members of the Church. Belief in this teaching is what marks us out as Christian and is what distinguishes us as such from others who hold that Jesus was merely a prophet or a teacher or wise man, someone less than God himself.

The teaching arose out of fierce dispute in those early years of the Church about who Jesus was. And the argument was whether or not Jesus was both fully man and fully God at one and the same time. The belief prevailed that he was indeed such and it was settled at the great Ecumenical Council of Nicea in the year 325. The one who fought most ardently for its acceptance was St. Athanasius, and to this day we profess such a belief in the creed each Sunday which is referred to as the Nicene Creed.

The teaching of the Holy Trinity, it has to be said, is difficult to understand and rationalise for lay people like ourselves, although we might have academic theologians in our midst who have a better grasp. The remainder of us have to take it on trust, in faith. Indeed, in the end it can't be rationalised at all. It has to be believed. It is a mystery, and it's right that it should be because we are talking about God here and if he was no longer a mystery to us we would God. And mystery though it is, the whole of Christian theology and belief is based upon it and as such we live our Christian lives on the basis of it too.

Here's a couple of things that Athanasius said about the Holy Trinity, in a letter to a man named Serapion. "It will not be out of place to consider the ancient tradition, teaching and faith of the Catholic Church, which was revealed by the Lord, proclaimed by the apostles and guarded by the fathers. For upon this faith the Church is built, and if anyone were to lapse from it, they would no longer be Christian either in fact or in name. We acknowledge the Trinity, holy and perfect, to consist of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.....in the Church, one God is preached, one God who is above all things and through all things and in all things. God is 'above all things' as Father, for he is principle and source; he is 'through all things' through the Word; and he is 'in all things' in the Holy Spirit....all that belongs to the Father belongs to the Son, and so the graces given by the Son in the Spirit are true gifts of the Father. Similarly, when the Spirit dwells in us, the Word who bestows the Spirit is in us too, and the Father is present in the Word. This is the meaning of the text: 'My Father and I will come to him and make our home with him'. This is also Paul's teaching in his second Letter to the Corinthians: 'The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.' For grace and the gift of the Trinity are given by the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit."

If I'm honest I used to think this teaching, this belief mattered not very much at all. The reality was that it was too difficult for me to understand and so I would put it to one side, preferring to see Jesus as merely human and indeed in some respects super human, being endowed with special Godly powers. My joy and my suffering and indeed that of the whole of humanity I could see in Jesus and so it was comforting to know that God's Son had the same sort of experience. But that's all it remained - comforting, and nothing else. And God was still 'up there' and me 'down here' and there was such a great divide.

As I've come to think of this teaching more and more recently too, and to accept and believe it that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are one and the fullness of each resides in the other, and put that together with the belief that we humans are made in the image and likeness of God and that in our baptism we have the Holy Spirit given to us, it's made me see that it is in our reach to have what Jesus said he came to give us, and that is 'life in all its fullness', that we can 'do that things that he did and more'. It's made me see that we are indeed, literally 'children of God' and that the Church does indeed 'embody' Jesus himself, that we his eyes and hands and feet.

I can't really explain what it means to me now because you can't explain a mystery. You have to believe it and know it within your own self for it to begin to make a difference. And when you come to think about what it's worth, well it's what many of the Saints died in defending, this faith of the New Testament Church, the Faith once delivered and handed down by the apostles. The Faith in which we now stand, the Tradition we hand on to the next generations. And it's important to keep this day to affirm and underline the teaching so that it never does become neglected or watered down or rationalised, but that it continues to be handed down and changes lives for all time.