Blogday 2021: Seen and not heard

It's rather a novelty actually writing something down for this blogling, at the moment, that is neither a sermon nor a video. Making short videos is somewhat easier now because they take less time to do and, with my workload increasing, perhaps I am taking the easy option.

Here it is, nonetheless, the sixteenth birthday of this blog. It's a significant year because it marks ten years since I left the CofE and found the ACC in which I think I have flourished ever since. In those ten years, both I and the CofE have changed markedly. I have been able to study properly now, not just get a pat on the head from the established training programmes for being inclusive of diverse "traditions" within the established church. My conclusion has been that the G3 - i.e. the Continuing Anglican bodies that are pursuing organic unity - are true and rightful inheritors of the Oxford Movement and that they form true and orthodox Catholicism in the Anglican heritage which the Tractarians rediscovered and which the modern CofE has sold for a mess of pottage. I am grateful to Presiding Bishop Chandler Jones of the ACA for reminding me that Fr Alfred Patten foresaw the need for the Continuing Anglican Church.

That need has been proved correct. The CofE has shown itself to be a Congregational body in all but name. Now, I am not saying that Congregational churches are necessarily wrong but rather they demonstrate a lack of Catholic cohesion and a marked temptation to believe what they want. It's healthy that no two parishes are the same but it's when they are doctrinally different that problems arise. As Prof Craig Paterson reminded me, if everyone says they are eating different things, can anyone be eating the same meal. Sometimes I wonder if they are eating in the same restaurant. Certainly if "Christian" atheism is tolerated in the CofE then anything goes, but at what cost?

 My problem is that there is an institutional disingenuity within the CofE in trying to hold different orthodoxies to be true. One might be minded of the famous Orthodox Phronema in which continuity with the mindset of the Apostolic Church trumps the use of Reason, but the Orthodox Phronema has, at its heart, the doctrine of the Nicene Creed. The CofE has lost that because it has given liberty to its members to attribute their own meanings to the words of the Creed. Ten years ago, I remember Anglicans telling me that they weren't going to allow the Creed to tell them what to believe. The evidence of that is bearing fruit.

As numbers decline, the CofE is now putting plans together for parishes to be run by groups of lay volunteers. There is a pretence at consulting the congregation, but this is often a lip-service. The forms are filled in and filed, but the decisions have already been made by the Deans, Archdeacons and Bishops before the congregation is consulted. It gives the illusion that the congregation is consulted. The congregation is to be seen and not heard. While I was a member of the CofE, I raised objections which were seen and not heard. I was faced with the duplicity of archdeacons and deans. I am not alone: a good friend actually called out the bare-faced lies of an archdeacon at a PCC meeting. That was over a decade ago. Looking at the Thinking Anglicans site, I am led to believe things have not improved. 

I am somewhat concerned for the fate of Forward in Faith. Recent pictures of the movements of the Bishop of Fulham seem to show the constant, chimere-clad presence of Dame Sarah Mullally, CEO of the Diocese of London. I get the impression that the Bishop of Fulham has been given a short leash from his superior. The impression I also get is that this is what "mutual flourishing" means and that FiF need constant supervision to ensure that their presence in the CofE is mitigated to preserve the "inclusive" and "diverse" nature of the CofE. I get that impression because that toleration-by-limitation-and-supervision was what I personally faced ten years ago when presented with working agreements deliberately designed to restrict my adherence to the Catholic Faith. I said, "satis est!" and found peace.

I found peace by ending the Quixotic idea of holding together two contradictories. Ironically, in letting go of the CofE, I also let go of the Papacy which I had seen as supplying the consistency the CofE was lacking. Once you see Orthodoxy and Catholicism enshrined in the preamble of the 1549 Book of Common Prayer and know that the BCP is to be interpreted through the Early Church then you begin to appreciate that Anglican Catholicism has existed since the Roman roads were first trod in these shores. Too long, Anglican Catholicism has been seen and not heard in the UK.

We tend to get shouted down. Every so often, I get a comment by a zealous Roman Catholic telling me that my church and I are not valid. The only reason that they post such things is to publicly denounce me out of hatred or a need to be seen to be right. It can't be love or they would remember to admonish me privately first, or even just to pass over this blog. This is typical of what is happening to anyone trying to promote orthodoxy: we are to be seen and not heard. That has certainly been the view of more than one Bishop of Dover.

The trouble is that, in being seen, the light has been taken out from under a bushel. The moment we are seen, there are questions. The moment there are questions, attempts to suppress those questions become difficult - social changes show us that. The Anglican Catholic Diocese of the United Kingdom celebrates its thirtieth birthday in less than a month. We are still here and we stand with all Orthodox and Catholic Christians in proclaiming the Ancient Faith that will not be politically spun or suppressed. I rather think that this is why this little blogling still exists after sixteen years. 

All this seems to be a CofE-bashing post. That isn't my intention but, given that this is the church that claims the spiritual health of the Nation despite fewer than a tenth of the population asserting their membership, a spiritually unhealthy church based on confusion and wilful obfuscation to achieve political rather than spiritual ends. That said, vast credit and blessings must go to those simple parish priests and lay-folk who simply try, week in, week out, to live out their Christian faith sincerely; those who keep their heads out of politics in favour of meeting the needs of their immediate neighbours; those whose preaching of the Gospel is seen and not heard. There are plenty of those who call themselves Church of England, and I am inclined to believe their testimony over the hierarchy of the CofE. 

As for me? I, too, must keep studying in order to preach, teach and administer the Catholic Faith once delivered to the saints for I have still so much to learn. This will be another busy year of research and writing and I pray, through the merits of St Anselm, St Odile, St Benedict and St Thomas Aquinas, to the Almighty One True God that my work may bear His fruit.

Martyrdom at Christmas

 

A reflection on the martyrs that surround the Feast of the Nativity.

Generating the Messiah

Sermon for the Feast of the Nativity

When did you last see a robin at Christmas? Only on a card or a decoration?

When did you last build a snowman on Christmas Day?

Come to think of it, how many White Christmasses have there been in recent years in the UK?

[PAUSE]

Whatever the reason may be, the traditional Christmas scenes are few and far between. We have to rely on spray-on snow, plastic holly wreaths and other ornaments. We don't have Christmasses like Bob Cratchit might have known. No longer is the boar's head brought out on a platter for the lord of the manor.

We cling to a romantic image of what Christmas should be like and become crestfallen when the world seems to move further away from that image. Things don't seem the same with robins replaced with sparrows, nor snow-bound country scenes with a rain-soaked council estate.

Some of us work so very hard to make Christmas a happy time of year. We try to make things joyful with lights and trees and thoughtful gifts. And yet, all of our efforts can be thwarted by one simple virus.

It's good to work hard to make Christmas special. We are Christians after all and preparing our homes and families to spread some of our joy at the birth of God Incarnate is valuable. We can be reassured that anything that we do in the Name of Christ will bear fruit. We must not necessarily expect this fruit to be ripe every December 25th.

[PAUSE]

Throughout Advent, we have been looking at how we play our part in generating the Christ. Our Lord has a genealogy and we can read two different lists of His ancestors at the beginning of St Matthew's Gospel, and the beginning of Jesus' ministry in St Luke's Gospel. The lists differ because St Matthew and St Luke are making different points. St Matthew starts with Abraham and works forwards showing the Jewish heritage of Jesus. St Luke starts with Jesus and draws the line back to God Himself, emphasising Jesus Humanity and His Divinity. In these lists we see the sweep of History as it is. There have been so many changes to generate the Messiah and now here He is.

[PAUSE]

We cannot expect each Christmas to fit the chocolate-box fantasy of a nineteenth century Christmas. The Scrooge of today does not work in a lending house, nor does he deprive his employees of coal. The Scrooge of today exploits the poor and uses their labour for his gain. The Scrooge of today runs the workhouses. We can romanticise the down-trodden worker in Bob Cratchit, but we miss the reason why our T-shirts and trainers are so cheap.

Although Scrooge has changed his appearance and mode of employment, he is still the same human being whose reasons for living the life he does run deep. He still requires salvation. He still possesses that reflection of the Divine image buried beneath his fallenness. He is still redeemable, even if the ghosts themselves must take on different appearances in order to make their point. 

[PAUSE]

This is where we come in. Appearances change but the substances do not. We bear witness to the unchanging nature of the Faith and to the Divine and Human natures of Christ from Eternity. In some ways, Jesus is a product of His time in terms of His clothes, His language and His customs, but His truth does not change, His teaching does not change, His love does not change and His commandments do not change. Certainly His Divinity cannot change!

While the apostles might be surprised at how we say the Mass, they still recognise what we are doing. They still see the same Jesus at our altars as at theirs. They see that the Church continues and teaches the same Faith to this day. They see the very same sacraments at our hands that they hold in theirs.

[PAUSE]

They also see that some have fallen away because they see the romance of the world around as being more important than what the Church preserves. They see those singing songs about how great it feels to be a Christian and who concentrate on their selves rather than turning East to face God.

They see a church filled with politics and movements for justice and inequality and correctness rather than a Church that centres itself firmly on teaching people to put on Christ. They see a church filled with robins and snowmen, holly and ivy, and snow covered country houses rather than a Church gathered around a Virgin, a bemused but supremely faithful artisan-husband and a manger filled with God's Light.

[PAUSE]

We are the Church. We generate the Messiah for our time by putting on the same Christ pointed out by St Luke and St Matthew and all the other saints. Christmas looks like however it appears outside your window, however it appears in your house, and however it appears in your heart, but it is what it is in the Eternal presence of Christ.

Is the Messiah being generated in your heart, or is it full of robins?

O Dear

 

A short reflection on the O Antiphons.

Do please also check out Fr Anthony Chadwick's meditations on them.

https://youtube.com/channel/UCBt2evHlE6Q1tvbkdceT5NQ

The Fourth of the Four: Heaven

 

What is Heaven for God?

Generating righteousness

Sermon for the fourth Sunday in Advent

The Church says, "Do not commit adultery!" The world says, "Shut up! Judge not lest ye be judged!" 

Have you heard that sort of thing?

[PAUSE]

It's worth remembering that if the Devil can use the words of God to mislead us, then he will. There are many who try to use Holy Scripture to justify their actions or to condemn others.

Our Lord does indeed say, "judge not lest ye be judged" but that's not to stop us from making an assessment of whether something is good or bad, but rather a reminder that we, too, must submit ourselves to the same assessment.

You obviously remember that, when we judge, we are making an assessment between what is right and what is wrong. But to make that assessment we do need to know what right and wrong are in the first place, and that's the problem. If we can't see, then our assessment is flawed. We can only judge as far as we can see: we cannot truly see the speck in someone else's eye if our own eye has got a piece of two-by-four stuck in it.

How do we remove the two-by-four? That ought to be easy, oughtn't it?

Well, you'd have thought so, wouldn't you?

[PAUSE]

St John the Baptist cries out the words he has heard from Isaiah, "make straight the way of the Lord."

Isn't the Lord's way straight already?

Not if we are the ones making the path!

It's clear that it is not God's responsibility to prepare His way, but ours. It is we who have to prepare ourselves for His coming. It is the path to our own heart that needs to be straightened and tended. This requires repentance. But how do we repent?

We know that repentance means turning to God but it also means seeking His righteousness. It is an action to perform, not just the reciting of a prayer of confession. We have to work repentance.

This means we have to learn to be righteous ourselves because God is righteous. God is what it means to be good, so if we seek to be good then we seek God. If we succeed in being good then God is with us.

But we need God to do this right from the start! We cannot be truly good without God. We cannot work our way to Heaven by our own effort. God is the beginning of life's journey and He is its end. With our eyes fixed on Him and our hearts making Him a home, we make straight in life's desert a highway for our God.

[PAUSE]

The challenge, then, is to focus not on changing the Church's teaching. Adultery is a sin and the Church will declare it because God declares it and God is not only a judge but He is justice itself. The challenge is to put on Christ, to follow His example, to change our ways for the ways of righteousness and, with Him, become like Him. The challenge is to judge the world by allowing God to transform us. 

[PAUSE]

God has created us to live a good life and enjoy it. This is why He comes to us as a baby, for what is more joyful, more glorious, more human than the birth of a baby? How about the birth of a baby that is God with us?

The Third of the Four: Hell

 

What the existence of Hell means.

Generating joy

Sermon for the third Sunday in Advent

It's rather difficult being happy at the moment, isn't it? There is much sadness and, as Christians, we must mourn with those who mourn. It's about time we gave up trying to be happy and become joyful instead.

[PAUSE]

Happiness is not the same as joy. We are happy when things go our way. We are happy when we find something unexpectedly pleasurable. We are happy when we have good luck. That's the problem: happiness depends on our circumstances here and now. That's why the word happy is related to words such as happening and mishap. Christians are not called to be happy, we are called to be joyful.

[PAUSE]

Happiness depends on luck: Joy does not.

Happiness depends on who's around us: Joy does not.

Happiness depends on our circumstances, our social standing, our possessions and our location: Joy does not.

St Paul recognises this which is why he tells us to be careful for nothing. We should not associate our joy with anything that worries us. Joy is one of the treasures that we store up in heaven. It is one of the fruits of the Holy Ghost and it requires growing.

The Psalmist says we may live our lives in the morning, sowing the seed of good works in sorrow and hardship but, when evening comes, we come home in joy bringing the sheaves of our labours with us. Often we confuse the search for joy with the search for happiness and this explains much of why the world around us is in a state.

The world's search for happiness is like growing weeds rather than good plants. Some weeds like dandelions and daisies look pretty but they fall away. The world chases weed after weed after weed and cannot understand why it isn't getting happier. The happiness the world offers is immediate gratification but, after a while, that pleasure cloys and bores us.

Joy is not like that. We can rejoice in the Lord always even when we are grieving. True joy is to be found in gazing upon the face of Almighty God and seeing in Him all our desires satisfied Eternally. That is what we are looking for and it requires work because we are fallen from God. If we want joy then we must seek God for only God can give us joy: it is from the Holy Ghost. 

This is why the holy martyrs can bear such incredible pain: they do not find happiness in the pain, but rather they find joy in loving God so much. Greater love hath no man than this that a man lay down his life for his friends. The martyrs long for nothing less than the friendship of God and their pains for Him mean that they reap the fruit of joy. See St Stephen's joy in seeing Christ Jesus at the right hand of the Father as he is stoned to death. 

[PAUSE]

You don't have to be a martyr to find joy. It's just more noticeable with them as their joy is more obvious. All the saints find joy in their lives walking with God and sainthood is our calling too. Advent is all about preparing ourselves for Joy which we find when we gaze upon the face of a baby who is God. In Advent we hear the tidings of great joy, not of great happiness.

The birth of the Christ Child is more than just a happening: it is Eternity breaking into Time; it is Joy breaking into Happiness.

And how do we gain this great joy? We ask God for it and then prepare our lives by seeking to be like Him. We seek the end of our Happy Christmasses by growing Joyful ones.

The Second of the Four: Judgement

 

How judgement is rooted in the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

Generating family

Sermon for the second Sunday in Advent

We worship the One True God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and yet most of us are not Jewish. We have a priesthood but it is not of the priesthood of Levi. We have a Passover but we hold it every week, not just once a year. There are things we do that look Jewish, but few of us are actually descendants from Abraham. If the first Christians are Jews then shouldn't all Christians be Jewish?

[PAUSE]

You know the answer to this already, don't you? The very first Council - the Council of Jerusalem settled this right at the beginning of the Church's mission to the world. You can read that in the fifteenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. St James calls the council and St Peter gives God's word on it. Gentiles can become Christian but they must not eat food sacrificed to idols and they must not commit fornication.

It is, however, St Paul, a Jew of the best pedigree, the most Jewish of Jews who says that Gentiles are not second class Christians but full members of the body of Christ. There are no second class citizens in the Body of Christ. 

God reveals Himself in the covenants with Noah, Abraham, the Hebrews in the desert and with David. He makes a nation of them but they fall away. And now God gives the New Covenant with us all. Jesus has to be born a man, and this is why God gives the world the Jewish people to prepare the world for the birth in time of God Incarnate. The Jews are chosen to be the family of God before He is born. After He has come, He redeems us all. We are all now one family. 

[PAUSE]

This is why racism would be laughable if it weren't so serious. After all, a race is formed from a few families living together and growing and prospering in the land. And yet, right from the beginning, God sees us all as being one family in Adam and Eve. There is only the human race, really. We are all brothers and sisters together. 

[PAUSE]

It is in Advent that we remember this fact. We cannot undo the sins of the past because God doesn't give us that power. We cannot apologise for the sins of those long dead because God holds us guilty of our own sins, not the sins of our fathers. We can learn to see Christ in the person of everyone we meet. We can learn to behave like brothers and sisters. We can learn to hear the hurt of our family and bear it with them. But we are the people of God and we can bring everyone to the manger to gaze upon our new baby brother and Lord.

The First of the Four: Death

 

A reflection on Death for Advent

Generating hope

Sermon for the first Sunday in Advent

How long is a generation? Twenty-five years? Fifty years? We talk of Generation X and Generation Z as both beginning in the latter half of the twentieth century, so it's clearly not much more than fifty years. 

If this is true then how do we account for Our Lord's words when He says, "Assuredly, I say to you, this generation will by no means pass away till all things take place."? Of course, He is talking of all the frightening things that will happen before the Son of Man comes in glory. If that's true, wouldn't they have happened by now?

[PAUSE]

There are prominent biblical scholars who say that because Jesus says this, He is not the promised Messiah but just a prophet waiting for the end. They say He is not the Son of Man who is to come in glory. Do not listen to them! St John the Evangelist bears wireless to Jesus saying that He will be recognised as the Son of Man when He is crucified. 

Our Lord is saying quite clearly that He will come again before the end of the generation. And, yet again, we can ask ourselves, "if this is true have we missed it?"

[PAUSE]

Remember how tempting it is to worry that it's been too long and we should have seen something by now. This is a temptation of the Devil to make us downcast and despair. All through our lives, the Devil does his best to get us to focus on the earth and forget about Heaven. All the more reason for us to lift up our heads and look up! We need to wake up out of our despair at the brokenness of the World and see the coming dawn.

Yes, we're still here and the generation has not passed away. This is because there is another meaning to the word.

A mother and a father generate a family - that's what the word means, thus a generation belongs to a family. When the family is old enough, it becomes a race of people. The generation that Jesus is speaking of is the family of Abraham: the family that Abraham generates that will be as numerous as the dust of the Earth. 

And so, we see that Our Lord is saying that the family of Abraham will not pass away before His return. This is good news for our Jewish brothers and sisters! The Messiah is waiting for them! But don't forget that we Christians are also of the generation of Abraham grafted in to the family as St Paul says. 

[PAUSE]

When the Lord comes again, the children of Israel and the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church will be there waiting for Him. It is our duty and our joy to lift up our heads into the dark of the night to wait for His coming dawn. We have not missed it, for Man has not changed since the moment of his generation. There is still sin and there is still repentance. There is still hatred and there is still love. There is still pain and there is still an end to pain. The world may appear to be falling to all manner of war, famine, pestilence and death but Christ is still present to His People and Christ is still coming in glory: this generation has not passed away for we are that generation. This is our joy but it is our duty.

[PAUSE]

We have to show this world that the events of two thousand years in our past are still very much in our present and future. Our Faith is so old and we have been waiting a long, long time. But we are still here. The Gospel hasn't changed so we don't need to try change it for today. The grace of the sacraments hasn't changed so we don't need to try and change the way we administer them. God has not changed so we don't need to update the way we approach Him for this generation has not changed nor passed away. A church that rejects the old will never see the new.

[PAUSE]

So here we stand again at another one of two thousand Advent Sundays. And still we raise our heads from a dying world towards God's light. And still we say, "Come, Lord Jesus!" And then we have hope.

As we forgive those...

 

A reflection on the need to be a forgiving Church.

Comings and goings

Sermon for the Sunday next before Advent

"Behold! The days come...," shouts the prophet Jeremiah, and the days do come. The Messiah appears, teaches, works wonders, is crucified, dies, rises again from the dead and ascends to Heaven in glory. And we have missed it. The days have come and gone. And we look upon the words of Jeremiah only with hindsight.

[PAUSE]

The passage of time does happen. It isn't an illusion: we do truly grow up and grow old. We experience that and, further, this is an experience common to everyone. There is, however, an illusion we suffer from: this is the illusion that once something has passed it no longer has any part of our lives. Our great-great-great-great grandparents may be dead but our existence now depends on the fact that they will always exist in the records of Time. Indeed, if there were no first parent there would be no us!

The illusion that we have is that the past is not as important as the future. We can see that in today's throwaway culture. As soon as our phone outlives its use, it gets thrown away and is forgotten about. We forget our old school teachers because we grow up, and we forget what we are taught because we don't need that knowledge.

But this cannot be true for the Christian. To the world, Jesus is in the past and gone. To us, He is present here and now and we shall see Him with our eyes and touch Him with our tongues in the Blessed Sacrament. For us, the Past is as present as the Now is. The Christian needs to learn how to experience the past in the present. The Christian needs to learn how to help the children experience the past in the present. The Christian needs to be a child of Eternity.

[PAUSE]

Being a Child of Eternity means that we regard the testimony of the First Christians to be of as much important as the Christians of today. In fact, the First Christians are truly fortunate because the ministry of Our Lord is in their living memory, unlike ours. And yet, we are surrounded by the great cloud of saints who are still with us. They may appeared to have died but their death is only a death to this fleeting world. Their lives are in Christ and Christ lives now.

Being a Child of Eternity means we are to live the Christian life in which we grow in God. We may fail but we recognise our failures and make amends before Almighty God. Our time is spent growing, healing and becoming in Christ.

[PAUSE]

Today is the last Sunday of the Liturgical Year. Today we look back on the person we once were and see how far we have come. Next Sunday, we begin to look forward again to the coming of Christ once more. We begin the New Year with a new start but from the old place of where we are now. In Christ, all things are new because all things are now: this is what Eternity is. We may be bound to Time with its past, present and future, but the salvation that Christ promises us fills our past, present and future, shoring us up for Eternity.

To this world, we come and we go. To Heaven, we just are. We cannot live our lives rejecting our forefathers because we stand with them in Eternity. They are our neighbours in Eternity and we must love them and learn from them. We must be faithful to the Church Eternal.

Any church which believes that it has to alter the truth in order to minister to Christians of any age is in danger of losing its neighbours in Eternity. A church which seeks relevance in the present age will be stuck to this present age: it will lose both the past and the future by being unfaithful to the Church Eternal.

[PAUSE]

We do not seek to be relevant in any day and age but rather to be consistent with every day and age. At the end of this Liturgical Year, we prepare ourselves to bring the same Catholic Faith into the New Liturgical Year. The prayers will be the same; the rites will be the same; the sacraments will be the same; but we will be different through growth in Christ. Then, one day, freed from past, present and future, we will become Children of Eternity and participate in an Eternal Liturgy before the throne of God Himself.

Is the English Rite Right?

 

A few thoughts on how ethnicity affects the Church and how we should seek unity rather than uniformity.

Salvation and the twiddling of thumbs

Sermon for the twenty-fourth Sunday after Trinity

Hooray for the Colossians! St Paul is clearly extremely thankful for what is happening in that church. He has heard of their faith in Our Lord; he has heard of their love for one another; and he has heard of their hope in the promise of Heaven. What more could he wish for?

And yet he does want more from the Colossians! They are not done yet.

[PAUSE]

St Paul wants the Colossians to be filled with the knowledge of God's will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; he wants them to walk worthy of the Lord and please Him; he wants them to be fruitful in all good works and increasing in the knowledge of God.

Why? Why does St Paul want more for the Colossians? Is their faith in the Lord not enough? If the Colossians have already been saved, then St Paul's prayers are irrelevant: they'll be answered in Heaven so there's no need to make any spiritual progress on Earth 

[PAUSE]

There is a temptation to see our salvation as a one-off event in our lives. If that's true then the moment we are saved we have to start twiddling our thumbs until the Second Coming. If we are saved at one moment in time then our life from then on is inconsequential - it doesn't matter. 

But then, you could say, isn't our life from then on just a case of helping others see the light of Christ and spreading the Gospel? That's hardly thumb-twiddling. This is a good point: if we have faith in God then we should love our neighbour as ourselves. But if we are saved, then it doesn't matter whether we do love our neighbours as ourselves. All the saved people could just cease to preach the Gospel and that would be the end of that.

It seems clear to say that we are saved from the moment we believe is not consistent with what St Paul understands nor what Christ's salvation means. The fact is that we are meant to grow and, as the Lord says, bear fruit that shall lasts. If our fruit is to last then it cannot be the fruit of this world which will pass away. If our fruit is to last then we are growing it for Eternity. We are becoming saved because we are becoming like Christ. It isn't enough for the man to believe that Jesus will raise his daughter, he has to ask Him. It isn't enough for the woman to believe that her flow of blood can be stopped, she must touch the hem of the Lord's garment. Faith demands action and that action will cultivate faith. In that sense, in choosing to follow God, we play our own part in our own creation and perfection. That creation and perfection depends absolutely on God's love for us, but it is God's love that gives us the choice as to how we grow in Him. Jesus saves us but we have a choice in precisely who we are for Him to save.

[PAUSE]

We have to see that our salvation in Christ is a process: a journey towards the horizon where God stands in His infinite light. The Colossians will bear the fruit of the Holy Ghost at the prayers of St Paul. And he will pray for us too - if we choose to ask him rather than twiddling our thumbs waiting for salvation.

Fear, St Martin and the Armistice

 

A reflection on the role that fear plays in destabilising us and why the acquisition of courage is vital for the Christian Faith.

What Caesar owns

Sermon for the twenty-third Sunday after Trinity

You've obviously got the idea by now. "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and unto God that which is God's." But then you've had that question in your head, "doesn't God own everything?" That means Caesar owns nothing and so we don't need to pay taxes after all! Hooray!

Except Jesus pays the temple tax for Himself and for Peter, so clearly there is something wrong with thinking that we don't have to pay tax because God owns everything.

So what does Jesus mean? Does Caesar actually own something that needs to be paid back?

[PAUSE]

The relationship between the Christian and the World is rather strained. We are to be in the world and not of it. All through His ministry to us, Our Lord makes it clear that material goods don't really mean much when we consider God's love for us. If someone wants our cloak, we give our tunic. If someone wants us to go one mile, we go two. We give them up because they don't matter as much to us as God does.

Of course, clothes, houses, food and money have uses. They are good to have so that the business of living isn't too hard: we are frail human beings after all. Even Our Lord makes use of clothes, houses, food and money because, in His Human Nature, He is as weak and frail as we are. But these things aren't our life. They aren't worth losing a walk with God.

[PAUSE]

We see around us a world raging because of the inequality of money and resources. There are revolutions and rebellions against the rich about whatever they are rich in. Claiming ownership over something material often leads to strife and hatred somewhere along the line. And Jesus tells us that paying taxes is not worth losing sleep over: all is God's and He will give and take away as He pleases. It is our own inmost love for Him that matters. 

[PAUSE]

If God has created us then we are His. The world forgets that. We have to learn to render our very selves to God. To whatever we render ourselves, that is what we worship. Whatever we spend our time, energy, pain and self on, that is the thing we truly worship. Where our treasure is, there our heart is also. Shouldn't our hearts be in the tabernacle with Our Lord?

Bound to the Dead

 

A reflection on the nature of praying for each other whether we are alive or beyond this life.

The truth of the king

Sermon for the feast of Christ the King

Do you believe politicians tell the truth?

The image of the corrupt politician is quite a famous one that we see on television or in films. Many such characters are, unfortunately, based on real life politicians who have deceived us.

This leads us into some rather difficult problems. Look at recent events. It only takes the papers to report that a politician says not to panic about fuel shortages and we do the opposite. Why? We have it in our heads that if a politician says not to panic, then there is something to panic about. We simply do not trust our politicians.

Are kings any better? Should we trust a king?

[PAUSE]

History shows that kings are no more trustworthy than other political figures. Certainly, during the Wars of the Roses or the Civil War, you have to be very careful who you trust. Betrayal and intrigue make for a very unsettled peace. When there is no trust, there can only be a false peace while everyone waits to see who will make the next move. A kingdom based on a lack of trust is unstable and will fall.

But why don't we trust our leaders?

[PAUSE]

Ultimately, if politicians want to be trusted then they must demonstrate that they have the interests of all people at heart. These days, we suspect that many of our leaders have only the interests of bug business and not the people on the street. We expect our leaders to be in the pocket of the billionaires and controlled by those with economic power. If a politician were to demonstrate that he was not going to be controlled by money or power, then he might be seen to be someone you can trust.

[PAUSE]

That's not enough. In order to trust politicians, we would need to be persuaded that they are competent. They would need to show that they have authority and wisdom in order to face the uncertain challenges of the future. We need to believe that they can guide us through times of economic turmoil, threats from others, and through pandemics.

So, a trustworthy leader would have at heart the interests of the people he leads. He would reject the advances of the powerful. Yet he would possess authority and wisdom to give confidence to his people that things are under control.

Is there such a person? 

Well, look at the Man standing before Pontius Pilate. He stands before the rich and powerful and does not bend to their will. He has salvation for all people in His hands. He has authority to heal the sick and drive away demons. He has wisdom to teach His followers that love fulfills all of the law. Surely, this is a leader we can trust.

Surely Christ is truly King.

Visible and invisible

Sermon for the twenty-first Sunday after Trinity

Do you ever stop what you're doing and wonder whether there's something happening around you that you just can't put your finger on? Do you look at the News and think that there's something you're not being told? Do you find your Facebook feed occasionally points to some conspiracy theory that somehow makes sense? What do you make of all this?

[PAUSE]

It is true that the public have been prevented from knowing the truth before it's too late. The hunt for the Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq is not something easily forgotten, nor has it been adequately explained. There have been conspiracies which is why we always seem to be looking for then even when they aren't there.

At the moment, we are surrounded with theories about COVID that may or may not be true. Before that, however,  there were the same theories about Bird Flu, Swine Flu and Mad Cow Disease.

There are lots of theories that we are being controlled and manipulated, nudged gently into accepting something that is actually unacceptable. But this is nothing new.

[PAUSE]

St Paul looks at his world and sees the Roman forces marching through the city on some errand. He hears of fighting at the outskirts of the Empire and is probably old enough to remember some insurrections that have taken place in Israel. At the centre of it all is the Emperor whose mind is not an open book to St Paul, nor does he know of the attempts on the Emperor's life, though he may suspect that Christians will be blamed for any trouble that the Emperor hears about. The Jewish authorities have already tried to pin false charges on him just as they did to the Lord.

St Paul, like us, sits in a political, social and spiritual whirlwind not quite knowing what will happen. How can he defend himself against the confusion and fear that rush towards him? How does he deal with forces that he cannot understand?

[PAUSE]

"Put on the armour of God," he tells the Ephesians, "and remember that we are not fighting human beings." St Paul tells us that it is not what we can see that wishes us the harm. When we fell in the Garden of Eden, we let Evil into Creation. It was already there outside, knocking at the door which we opened through our disobedience to God. Evil is the by-product of our free-will and of the Devil's free-will.

The battle truly is between Good and Evil, but it is we who are the battleground, as individuals and as a society. We can't predict its spread, nor do we have power of ourselves to stop it. This is why we need the armour of God: God Himself is our armour. Look at what armour He gives us: truth, righteousness, the Gospel of peace, faith, salvation, the Spirit and the word of God. All of these come directly from God. God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.

What we are up against are things invisible: principalities, powers and rulers of darkness. They cloud our mind, distract us from understanding what's going on and convincing us to worry about our future and fear for our lives. The lie that they spread most easily is that we are fighting people. They convince us that there are people to hate. This is not true: we are to love our neighbour. The depth of our love is most obviously shown to our worst enemy. This is where the armour of God really comes in.

The armour of God can be used at all times and especially when we cannot see the bigger picture. We don't need to know about conspiracy theories when we see the truth of God's love for us and when we simply have faith in our salvation in Him. Even if there is a New World Order seeking to bring down the Church of God, it cannot win. It doesn't matter how powerful our enemy is, the truth is that God loves us and God is saving us and God is supreme in the Universe. We need to trust Him when all is dark around us. It doesn't matter how close the virus is to us when, in Christ, we have assurance of eternal life in the Gospel of peace and from the Word of God Himself. And when we find ourselves making a decision that we can't see the outcome, we choose the way of righteousness, however painful it may be, for righteousness will always, always lead us to God Himself. 

[PAUSE]

Let the world have its conspiracies. As long as we are working God's will in the world, the machinations of evil amount to nothing. All things work for good for those who love God. 

The Handmaid's Freedom

 

A reflection on how true religion frees the believer and Pharisaism does not.

Time management

Sermon for the twentieth Sunday after Trinity

Just how do you redeem Time? 

St Paul expects us to do just that, "for," he says, "the days are evil."

What does he mean?

[PAUSE]

Time is not something that we understand very well. It just happens to us. We have no control over it. Unless we have a TARDIS, there is no way we are free to go back and forth within Time. If we have no control over it, how can we redeem the time?

[PAUSE]

When we redeem something, we buy it back. This is the whole point of our redemption by Christ. Christ buys our lives back with His very life. But whom does he pay?

There are lots of different answers that Christians give but in many ways the answer is obvious. 

To ask whom we pay is the wrong question. When we buy something back, we recognise that there is a debt to pay - there is something lacking. Now, when there is a lack of goodness, that is the presence of evil. In choosing evil in the first place, there is a lack of good that we cannot pay. We need someone purely good to make that payment and thus destroy evil. That Redeemer is Christ. That is how our redemption works: we need Our Lord to plug the gap in our goodness which we call evil.

And this is how we can redeem the time as St Paul bids us.

[PAUSE]

St Paul tells us that the days are evil. There is a lack of goodness that needs to be filled in our time. We can only rid ourselves of evil by filling it with Christ. It means that, as we face evil in each day, we need to bring it to Christ in prayer and, instead of contributing to the day's evil, redeem the time by doing something good. 

You may be familiar with a prayer attributed to St Francis. It isn't actually his, but it certainly expresses his sentiments. It begins, "Lord, make me a channel of your peace." It is a prayer about redeeming our time, especially when it says, "where there is hatred, let me bring Your love." That's what we must do in every thought, word and deed. By letting Christ into our lives, homes, work and society, we can begin to redeem the time from the evil in the days.

[PAUSE]

Christ gives His body to the world to redeem it. The Church is given to the world to make Christ's body present in all places and all times. As Christians, we are the means of giving God's Grace to a world that lacks God's goodness. How will you redeem your time, today?

There's no discouragement...

 

 

A reflection on the dreadful events of today in the UK and why we must have hope to continue towards Christ.

Growing your investment in Christ

 A reflection on the need for every Christian to invest themselves in the Church.

Is all vanity?

Sermons for the nineteenth Sunday after Trinity

St Paul bids us not to walk in the vanity of our minds. What does he mean?

[PAUSE]

When we do something in vain, it means a wasted effort. Our work comes to nothing. It is all wasted, fruitless, pointless. It is vanity. It is in vain.

We can see how sad this is when we are trying to do something specific. Too many times we see on the news of someone trying to save someone else's life but in vain despite their efforts. That is truly a tragedy: vanity is a tragedy. But trying to save someone's life in vain is far from being a complete tragedy. Vanity has a greater tragedy.

[PAUSE]

If vanity is a tragedy when a longed-for outcome is missed then what about a life lived in vain? What if all we do is a waste of time and we don't care about it? A life lived for nothing in particular. A life lived for no-one in particular. A life just lived - if you can call it living.

St Paul asks us to reclaim our purpose in life. He shows us that the life of vanity is rich only in sin and selfishness. 

What is the point of hoarding money if you're not going to use it? It has no-use otherwise? What is the point of being too concerned with your appearance? You will age and die and all people are ugly when they are dead. What is the point of living for pleasure after pleasure? You will get bored and soon no pleasure will be enjoyable. This is vanity - all is vanity!

There is no earthly point to living.

But there is a heavenly point to living.

[PAUSE]

If St Paul warns us against walking in the vanity of our minds then he is reminding us that not only do we have a final destiny in Heaven with God, but we have a purpose for God here and now. We should be preparing for our last end but we need to do that right now - always now. 

God gives our lives meaning and purpose and that meaning and purpose are present to us every second of our lives. We are not meant to live vainly. We are not meant to idle our time away twiddling our thumbs until He comes again. To do so disrespects the gift of life that He has given us now, now, now!

[PAUSE]

But this sounds too hard, doesn't it? Accounting for every second of our lives. Directing every action, every word and every thought to God's purposes in us. It feels like an invasion of our selves and an abuse of our freedom to be ourselves. But we are fallen and earthly minded and, to an extent, we cannot help that. But we must try. We must struggle against the world and its infecting our being. 

It is the Prince of this World, the Devil himself, who tries to convince us that God has no right to be in our lives. It is he who tries to convince us that we need a break from God. It is he who tries to convince us that we are wasting our effort of repenting of sin and falling in sin and repenting of sin again and again and again. It is the Devil who tries to convince us that we should lie back, enjoy ourselves and let nature take its course. 

No!

Just say no!

[PAUSE]

Any effort to turn to God is not in vain. Any effort to stop sinning is recorded and acted upon. God wants us for Himself to be loved and to be active in His love. That is the life to be lived now and it is the life we will achieve long after the Devil has been shut up for Eternity in Hell.

Your life is not in vain, so do not give in to vanity!

Anglican Catholic Rosary

 

Should an Anglican Catholic pray the Rosary?

The house of good repute

Sermon for the eighteenth Sunday after Trinity

The house of Windsor. The house of Tudor. The house of Stewart. The house of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.

Here in the UK, these houses mean something to us. They are the royal dynasties. The last one is that of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. You'll notice that they each have a different bearing on British history. They each have a reputation. The Tudors are the reformers; the Stewarts are the monarchs struggling for power. And the Windsors? Time will tell.

Each house has a reputation made by its members and, perhaps, you might hear an older member of the house saying to his son, "remember, you have the family tradition to uphold!" The reputation is set by the elders and maintained, theoretically, by the juniors as they grow. To be a member of the house means to look back at the founding father and continue his legacy. The authority is backward pointing.

[PAUSE]

And what of the Messiah, the son of David? Well, surely any son of David would look to King David and seek to uphold his name? Any son of David would bow to David's good example, preserve that heritage and continue to uphold the principles. However, a reading of the Chronicles or the second book of Samuel shows us that many of the sons of David have not been worthy of the name. 

It's not altogether surprising why. King David, while a hero of the Hebrews, is deeply flawed. Even as a king, there are times when he lets his children behave appallingly to the extent that Absolom rebels against him and temporarily takes his crown. Every house has its skeletons in the closet. And these skeletons come back to haunt the generations that come after.

[PAUSE]

Yet, with David regarded as the hero, to be a son of David is a big deal. The Messiah is a son of David and the Jews hope that he will be very much the conquering hero that David is in their eyes. 

Our Lord Jesus, however, points out something odd about the Messiah. Psalm cx says "The Lord said unto my Lord..." The Messiah is the one whom King David calls, "Lord". Rather than the Messiah deferring to David as the head of the house, David recognises the Messiah a thousand years his descendant as his senior. The Messiah may be the son of David, but it is the Messiah who is head of the house.

This is why the Scribes and Pharisees are silenced. To admit this means that their reputation of David as the head of the Royal household is broken. It means their reliance on being from good families to bolster their standing in society is ruined. It means that the Man standing in front of them is the true head of the house and they do not like it. Jesus is the son of David. He is the Messiah. He is the Lord.

[PAUSE]

Again we see Jesus being the one after Whom the whole family of God is named. In Him we are related and it is His name that we bear and it is a good name.

I does mean that we do truly need to see everyone who calls themselves Christian as part of our family and treat them accordingly. This is what it means to be born again. In being baptised we are born into the family of God. We cease to be of the family of the world.

It also means that we need to see those who aren't Christian as being potential members of our family and treating them in such a way that they should want to be part of our family. The Scribes and Pharisees use the name of David to shut the door to salvation. Jesus uses the blood and water from His side to open that door and to make every human being who chooses to become a blood relation through the waters of Baptism.

[PAUSE]

The one outside the Church needs to be able to say, "see how these Christians love one another!" The one outside the Church needs to be able to recognise the head of the household in us. The one outside the Church needs to be able to see that he or she is welcome to become part of that family and this family will be brought to salvation in Christ Jesus.

If this is what the one outside the Church needs then how will you live your life to give them what they need. How will you prove that you are a member of the house of Jesus?

Swatting Swots

 

A reflection on the dangers of intellectual pride.

For He shall give His angels...

 

A reflection for Michaelmas.

The End of Unity

Sermon for the seventeenth Sunday after Trinity

The Lord Jesus heals a man on the Sabbath Day. The Scribes and Pharisees are scandalised. They cannot offer an explanation as to why it is not lawful to heal on the Sabbath Day. 

But can't you sympathise with them a bit? After all, it's there in the Ten Commandments. Keep the Sabbath holy. Do no work on the Sabbath. And there are lists and rules to tell you what is meant by work. This is a law given by God Himself to Moses. Surely, the Scribes and Pharisees are right to worry about the business of healing someone on the Sabbath, aren't they?

[PAUSE]

We often get accused of observing petty rules, too, don't we? We have rules about fasting, rules about moral conduct especially in private matters , rules about how the Church should be run. Is Jesus saying that we need to forget the rules sometimes and do what feels right?

If so, do rules really matter if they can be disobeyed with God's approval? What if it's the rules that God Himself gives that can be disobeyed with God's approval? Does this not make them completely arbitrary?

[PAUSE]

As always, the Lord is making a point. The rules for the Sabbath Day have been made for a reason. To do no work on the Sabbath Day is a clear statement of freedom. Only slaves work all the time. But to save your ass or your ox from a pit is to save your livelihood and your ability to control how and when you work. It isn't every day that your ox falls on a pit, so it isn't every day you have to get them out. It is still in keeping with the Sabbath and it is still true that one should do no work on the Sabbath.

The rules of the Sabbath Day have a clear purpose, one that is rooted in God's love for us. We need to rest and God provides us an opportunity to take that rest and tells us to treat it seriously by separating it from the rest of the week. He is acting less like a Commander and more like a Father.

This is true of all God's laws. They are not arbitrary: they point us to where we're going. They have a reason and there are times when the spirit of the law is more important than the letter of the law. Look at how Our Lord actually makes the rules tougher when He says that even to be angry with someone is like murdering them. Look how He says that lusting after someone is committing adultery. 

Behind every rule is a reason and that reason must point us and lead us to God.

[PAUSE]

The rules of the Church sometimes seem arbitrary and wrong. But the spirit behind them can show us why they are necessary and just how far they apply. Wearing the wrong colour chasuble won't invalidate the Mass but it will stand out against what the rest of the Church is doing. 

At every stage, our every action needs to be weighed against what God wants for us as individuals and as a species. The Church serves as a means to help people realise who they are. The rules of the Church are there to help people progress to their common end - unity with the Most Holy God in His Kingdom. 

Healing on the Sabbath is not only permissible, it is mandatory for the good of another, for love is ever abiding. 

[PAUSE]

So we, the Church, stand up and say, "yes, Lord, it is permissible to heal on the Sabbath!"

And then we say, "but heal us, too, Lord!"

And then He does.

Synod, society and sociability

 A reflection on the current Provincial Synod

Raising a family

Sermon for the sixteenth Sunday after Trinity

For many people, the family is a terrible place to be. For some, Dad's an alcoholic who beats Mum when she hides the money. But then Grandad abused Dad when he was a boy. But then Grandad never knew who his father was, but only a succession of men who showed up in his house and treated his mother like dirt.

There is a reason for a family's dysfunction and often it goes back - way back!

[PAUSE]

Of course, we cannot be held responsible for the sins of our fathers, but we are responsible for how we allow the sins of our fathers to affect our life. Dad may be an alcoholic but we need not be. Grandad may be an abuser, but that will not excuse any abuse at our hands. The sins of our fathers provide an explanation for  their actions not an excuse nor a justification for them.

But the sins of our fathers leave us weakened. We need to heal.

[PAUSE]

At first glance, the Church does not seem to be the place to heal. We know well that there has been a woeful catalogue of abuse carried out. Some who have been entrusted with the care of souls have sought the care of their own perverted pleasure rather than bringing the love of God to those desperate to know that they have some value.

But the Church is a family. We are all related to each other by more than our own blood. We are related by the blood of Christ. Jesus is our surname.

[PAUSE]

God chooses to reveal Himself as Father, Son and Holy Ghost. He chooses His words with care. It is clear that He wants us to think of Mankind's relationship with Him as being a family. This is why He uses the names of Father and Son. In receiving the sacrament, we take into ourselves the true Blood of Christ. We become blood relations more and more as we continue in the Church.

Jesus gives life to the family. See how He raises the son of the Widow of Nain. She who loses a family has it restored to her. He is the means by which the whole Christian family is reconciled to God. This family, dysfunctional, filled with scandals and sin, is restored by Christ Himself Who is ever present in His Church. We sin but we have a way to return.

But we have to play our part in helping this family to heal and grow. If we love Christ, we must keep His commandments. We must love God. We must love neighbour.

And we must forgive other who trespass against us.

[PAUSE]

Just as the sins of the fathers infect later generations so the virtues of fathers can help the healing progress. To forgive truly is an act of rebellion against the Devil and a renunciation of his membership of our family. To forgive the unforgivable is an act of heroism and sacrifice, and sacrifice means to make holy. 

A life that is committed to God, seeking forgiveness and freely forgiving, seeking His love and freely loving, seeking holiness and freely offering sacrifice - this life is the life of the Church and one that we need to embrace in order to find healing.

[PAUSE]

God is a father, but He is not an abusive father, though He will be accused of that by some who do not read the Scriptures carefully and fully. God is Our Father and our surname is Jesus. Whether we like it or not, we are the family of the Church and we will find healing in that family despite the sins of the fathers. Jesus can raise this family from the dead. Indeed, He already has!

A reflection for time

 

A few thoughts on why it is best to keep our minds focused on the here and now in our prayers.

Signalling Holiness

Sermon for the fifteenth Sunday after Trinity

Do you find yourself being beaten by the good deeds of others?

You offer a man a slice of cake and he says loudly, "oh no! I'm a vegan. I wouldn't dream of hurting animals just for a slice of cake!"

You try to sell a poppy for Remembrance Sunday but the woman says loudly, "don't you have one in this colour? I only support all those in the services who suffer from discrimination from their superiors."

You try to donate some children's bibles to your local school but the head of the PTA says loudly, "we can't possibly take those! We can't be seen to have those. It would ruin our image as an inclusive school!"

It seems that all your good deeds just aren't that good, doesn't it?

[PAUSE]

What is most interesting is that the response to your attempts to do something nice are met with loud voices of refusal. Why are they so loud in saying, "no!" and then giving a reason which makes you seem like the bad guy? They could just either politely say, "thanks, but not for me!" or quietly dispose of what you give them into the nearest bin.

Why be so loud?

To be loud means that they want other people to hear. They don't just want you to hear their disapproval, they want others to hear that they disapprove. They have to be seen to be first in tackling an issue to gain the approval of others or to remain in the acceptable set. They are virtue signalling.

[PAUSE]

Virtue Signalling is exactly that. Those who practise virtue signalling proclaim their disapproval of what is socially unacceptable loudly to prove that they are good people.

Why do people need to prove themselves to be good? Why not just be good and let others deal with their issues?

[PAUSE]

What is interesting is that there is a lot of talk of "being good without God." Of course, you can do good things without believing in God - some atheists have been better philanthropists than many Christians! But nonetheless, what is inescapable is that if there is such a thing as goodness then there is God.

And God wants us to be good, not to be seen to be good.

[PAUSE]

If we seek first the approval of others then we simply will not find any happiness. There will always be some way in which we have to struggle to keep up with the whims of society. Further, we alienate ourselves from others who are not keeping up with the whims of society.

Being socially acceptable falls under the category of Mammon because it is a lust for the approval of others. It is an idol.

Christ bids us to seek first the Kingdom of God and His Righteousness. He bids us to be holy not be seen to be holy. We are to do good because we love God and to make real our faith in Him. Of course, we do need to be worried about the welfare of others - we are to love our neighbour - but we must do so in the context of the love of God, not in the glow of society's nod of approval.

Doing things to be socially acceptable does not help us address our sins within us, nor does it help us deal with our own insecurities about who we are. Only God can deal with our sins. Only God can tell us who we truly are. Only God can transform us into the people that He created us to be and who we long to be. 

[PAUSE]

Jesus bids us to be holy in ourselves. How quietly can you be holy?

The ministry of the laity

 A few thoughts on the calling to be a layperson in the Church of God.

The dimensions of a hardened heart

 

A few thoughts on a recent dialogue with those who have lost the ability to hear.

How the mountain comes to Jesus

Ten lepers, all healed, but only one thanks Jesus in worship.

Why should it matter if this tenth leper - the one who returned to thank Our Lord - was a Samaritan?

[PAUSE]

Of course, the Jews and the Samaritans have been fighting since the time that they were released from captivity in Babylon. The Jews believe that Jerusalem is the place where God is to be honoured on Mount Moriah. The Samaritans believe that it should be Mount Gerizim. This may sound petty, but it's all to do with where the patriarch Joshua begins building the Jewish nation starting with the most important thought about where to worship God.

Once you have a division as to where your people should worship based on your treasured history and treasured relationship with God, then you can see how much this changes things. It not only means that the Jews and Samaritans worship in different places, but they have different scriptures and practices. In each others eyes, the other becomes unclean and to be avoided at all costs.

If Samaritans are to be avoided, and lepers are to be avoided, what must be the life of a Samaritan leper?

[PAUSE]

If the grateful leper is a Samaritan then what we see is something important about Jesus.

The first clue is in His Holy Name. Jesus is the Greek version of Joshua. It is the conquest of Joshua that leads to the establishment of the Hebrew Nation and it is the disagreement about Joshua's conquest that causes the Jewish-Samaritan schism.

And it is Jesus Who presents an end to that schism by making things whole. Notice that the nine lepers are all healed, but the Samaritan leper is made whole by Faith in Jesus. Jesus is the fulfillment of what Joshua started. Jesus is the King of God's Kingdom and it is Faith in Him that makes the Kingdom whole. It is Faith in Jesus Christ that makes us whole.

[PAUSE]

We, like the leper, are full of incompleteness, brokenness, and divisions. Our flesh wars against our spirit and so we cannot do the good that we should do. The divisions with our society and within ourselves are like disagreements in where to worship God. What matters is that we do worship Him in spirit and in truth.

The divisions in the Church will be healed by the Lord at His Coming Again, and we have to have faith in that. It means that we should show generosity to Christians who have different interpretations of Holy Scripture and end all point-scoring exercises which are designed to hurt, belittle and divide.

It does mean, however, that only Jesus completes the Faith. This is not a fake Jesus on a mountain of our own making, but the real Jesus Who does not sit in agreement with our society's ideas of good and bad, Who does not change His mind about what constitutes sin and Who demands our perfection in Him. It is Jesus Who makes the mountain not we who put Him on it.

Must prayer be mustered?

 

A few thoughts on the Rule of Prayer.

The hope of lawlessness

Sermon for the thirteenth Sunday after Trinity

A man lies bleeding and dying by the side of the road and the very people who should help him do not. The priest passes by. The Levite passes by. It is only the contemptible heretic who bothers to perform the act of humanity and lift this poor man out of the dirt.

[PAUSE]

Of course, the way that this is often presented is that the priest and Levite are utterly inconsiderate and practically inhuman in the way that they ignore the suffering of the poor man, but this isn't the point that's being made. Jesus tells us about the Good Samaritan as part of a discourse on Law, especially the Jewish Law which is quite extensive and not always interpreted correctly but rather for the convenience of those who impose that law.

The priest and the Levite show us that all that the Law can do is show us that something is wrong. The Law tells us that we have sinned. It convicts us of every little thought. Indeed, it is Jesus Himself Who shows us that the correct interpretation of the Law is more demanding than even the Scribes and Pharisees would want it. To burn with anger at someone is to murder them. To lust after someone is to commit adultery. Even the hidden things we think are judged by the Law. 

Ironically, it is the Law of the priest and Levite who pass over the dying man, that is not being applied fully. "Love thy neighbour" is there in the Old Testament before Jesus even opens His Holy mouth to explain it. For over a thousand years, "Love thy neighbour" has been present to Mankind from the mouth of God to Moses, yet the priest and the Levite pass it by.

So what's the point of living under laws? They clearly don't work!

[PAUSE]

That's not the point either. Laws do work at the task assigned to them. Laws allow human beings to know how to live together. What laws cannot do is make us better people. Every day we are scandalised and hurt by the news of people breaking the law across the world. Our inability to do anything about it is the same inability of the priest and the Levite. We can only do so much, but we cannot make the wounds of humanity heal by throwing the rule book at them. Two thousand years after meeting the Good Samaritan and we are no better.

The only way that Humanity can be made good is for someone to create goodness in us. We cannot create goodness. We need the Samaritan.

[PAUSE]

But the Samaritan is a heretic! Surely heretics lead us away from God.

This is true. Read the Church Fathers and you will see that there are so many heretics who try to distort what Our Lord Jesus tells us or what the Father has given us or what the Holy Ghost inspires. The Samaritan worships the same God as the priest and Levite, but his love is genuine and is not bound by the law. This Samaritan possesses a goodness which fulfills all the law, even "Love thy neighbour".

It is Jesus Who is the Samaritan for that is what the Scribes and Pharisees call Him for His apparent lawlessness. Rather, it is this Good Samaritan, this Lord Jesus who not only shows how the law is supposed to work but also shows how He fulfills it in Himself. It is He Who restores life to the dying. It is He Who pays the price for our care. It is He Who gives His Church the grace through the two pennies of Word and Sacrament to keep alive human beings broken by the robbery of the Devil. The law gives nothing. Grace gives it all.

[PAUSE]

We must prepare ourselves for the reality that this world is not going to get better. We have not become more moral people, nor have we become less. We have not become more enlightened through technological advances, nor have they obliterated the wisdom of the ancients. We are not getting worse but we are certainly not getting better.

Humanity always will be fallen until the Last Day when all will be raised in Christ. Until then, the Church has all that we need to keep ticking by until Christ returns. 

Miscommunicating Misogyny

 A few thoughts on the Catholic doctrine of the male-only priesthood.

Free Failing

Sermon for the twelfth Sunday after Trinity

Do you feel like a failure?

If so then it hurts to be asked why you think that, doesn't it?

Some people feel like a failure because everything seems to be going wrong. Others feel like a failure because they keep making matters worse. Others feel like a failure because they have not achieved what they burn to achieve. Others keep committing the same sin again and again and lose heart because they aren't stopping sinning.

A sense of failure can play havoc with our lives and we often wonder what's the point of carrying on when we make so much mess and hurt other people.

And it all looks much worse written down.

[PAUSE]

If someone were to present you with all your failures written down, the pain might be too much to bear. To see Life's F-grade staring you in the face seems to make it real, unmistakable, too true. Having your failures written down not only makes them real, it makes them permanent.

Just when you think that it's all too much to bear, St Paul wades in. "Oh no, not St Paul!" Yes, St Paul wades in and shows us how we have failed. Only he shows us how we have failed to understand failure. 

[PAUSE]

To see failure written down strips it of its full reality. The Ten Commandments are terrifying statements of God's will and they form the basis of our moral thinking, but they are flat - they don't have the full picture. Human beings have a tendency to have flat thinking where only that in black and white matters. By the letter of the Law we are condemned to death. Those who separate themselves from God, die.

And then Jesus comes along and says that He will not change a dot or tittle of the Law. Even He says that those who separate themselves from God will die.

St Paul tells us that Jesus' masterstroke is to give us His Spirit to draw us up from the page. In accepting the rule of Christ and in receiving His Spirit, we are drawn out of the page of our failures and given the fullness of His life.

St Paul testifies that this is true of himself: he once persecuted the Church of God and was responsible for the deaths of Christians but he is lifted from this failure into God's truth. The page is two-dimensional and we are not. The moral chaos of life causes us to stumble and fail, but the Spirit of God gives us the realisation that we are bigger and greater and more precious than our errors. 

Our failures do not stop us from being ministers of the New Testament, indeed, they show just how great God is and, further, how much more valued we are than what we have done. Our failures are two-dimensional; we are three-, four-, five-, six-, even possibly infinitely-dimensional in God.

[PAUSE]

We fail, sometimes so greatly that the very thought of our failure makes us question whether life is worth living. But, the Cross of Christ nails those failures to the page, His Resurrection lifts us up from the page, and His Spirit bears us up from the page. For nothing, nothing whatever, can stop us from being lovable and from being loved by God and in Him all our failures will be put right forever.

Reductionism and Groupthink

 

A few thoughts on two insidious aspects of modern thought.

Unacceptable Accidental Acedia

 

A few thoughts on getting back to church.

How to hail Mary

Sermon for the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

How often do you say the Hail Mary?

Once a week?

Nine times a day for the Angelus?

One hundred and fifty times for a full rosary?

Or perhaps not at all! After all, the Hail Mary prayer is not in the Book of Common Prayer, is it?

It's a shame, because it is formed from ideas we find in the Bible, it has been repeated by many of the Church Fathers and there is good reason for us to say it. The Hail Mary is s good Catholic prayer: it belongs to the Catholic Church of which we are a part.

[PAUSE]

First, the prayer begins, "Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee." These are the words of the Archangel Gabriel when announcing the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ to Our Lady. These are words that cannot be separated from Our Lord's coming again. The angel calls her "full of grace" and he uses a word that is only found twice in the New Testament. On both occasions, it means that God has supplied His grace. The first time the word is used is here; the second time, the word is used by St Paul in the first chapter to the Ephesians in which he explains how the death of Christ bestows grace upon us for salvation. Mary is the only living person who is singled out as being full of grace before the Crucifixion and the Greek word used here shows that God's giving grace to Mary has been completed. She needs no more grace - she is full of grace.

This is a singular honour and shows that Mary has already received God's grace whereas everyone else receives God's grace as a result of the Crucifixion. We know this because the Archangel immediately says that God is with Mary, and we know that Grace is the active presence of Almighty God. Even before the conception of Our Lord, God is actively present with Mary. He has already foreseen her willingness to be His Mother and is with her. 

[PAUSE]

The next phrase is "Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb" which are the words of Cousin Elizabeth to Mary. Her unborn son, John the Baptist, already recognises the presence of Jesus within Mary and this unborn baby reveals this truth to Elizabeth. This is why she calls Mary blessed and also recognises that the fruit of her womb is blessed, too, though she does not know His name. We do know, though, which is why we add the Lord's name to Elizabeth's words: "Blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus!"

This allows us to understand the remainder of the prayer.

We say "Holy Mary" because Mary has been separated out for God's purposes which is what the word 'Holy' means. We call her Mother of God because Jesus Christ is fully God and fully Man. While Jesus is born a man of Mary, He is still genetically God and He is inseparable from His Humanity. Thus Mary is fully and properly Mother of God. 

This means that, if Jesus is King, then His Mother is a queen albeit a Queen Mother. In the Old Testament, kings could be approached at the request of their mothers as did Solomon's mother at the rather wicked request of Adonijah.

Further, we know that we are surrounded by the cloud of witnesses who stand with Our Lord in Eternity. If He can hear our prayers then they can too, for the saints are like Him. Thus it is perfectly reasonable for Mary to hear our prayers and bring them to her son, the Son of God. It means we can say quite sincerely, "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death."

[PAUSE]

Of course, we must always listen to other Christians who struggle with this. They may pray directly to Our Lord, and there is nothing wrong with that whatsoever. But in saying the Hail Mary, we are doing something perfectly biblical and perfectly healthy. We stand with St Elizabeth and her son St John the Baptist. We stand alongside the Archangel Gabriel and the angels with Him. We stand with the countless saints who have, themselves prayed the Hail Mary.

And we stand with Our Lady, Mary Mother of God. And she stands with Christ in worship of Him and Him alone. Likewise we all worship God alone alongside Mary and all the saints. Truly, she is full of grace and, one day, so will we be!

Newman, Patten and Piety

 

A reflection on how Orthodoxy must influence practice of the Faith and not the other way around.

Choosing destruction?

Sermon for the tenth Sunday after Trinity

Standing and looking upon the city, we see Jesus weeping. We are watching the Creator of the Universe overcome with absolute grief and why? He knows that Jerusalem will be destroyed in forty years' time. 

But why doesn't He stop it?

Why does He allow the destruction of Jerusalem to happen? Why not come again in glory with a horde of archangels and save Jerusalem from itself?

[PAUSE]

Jesus says that the destruction of Jerusalem is come because it has not recognised the time of its salvation. Jerusalem refuses to recognise that Jesus is Our Lord and Saviour and it must pay a price for its choice.

The consequences are clear, Jerusalem is indeed utterly destroyed. It passes away to dust.

This is because God has made a choice, too. He has chosen to honour the free will of human beings rather than to force them to worship Him. Human free will gives us control of our destiny and God chooses to give us that control. It means we are free to choose Him and recognise Him as the Saviour. It means we are free not to recognise Him as the Saviour.

Put bluntly, if we choose not to be saved, God honours that. He honours it and weeps. He weeps because refusing Salvation means destruction.

Jesus Himself tells us that there is an unforgivable sin and this is against the Holy Ghost. It is a refusal of God's help and love.

Jerusalem has refused the Saviour, so it passes into dust. Remnants exist but it only as a testament to its destruction.

And so God weeps.

But this weeping is not the end.

[PAUSE]

St John tells us of the New Jerusalem coming down from Heaven out of God. It is not the Old Jerusalem which is destroyed. It is the New Jerusalem adorned as a bride for her husband. God separates the Old Jerusalem from the New Jerusalem. God separates out the first Creation from the second. He makes all things new, and He offers us the choice to be part of that New Creation.

It is our choice to be saved and be transformed. It is our choice not to be saved and to be given up to destruction. This destruction is not God's will for us but it will happen just as surely as putting your hand in the fire will burn you. It's not the fire's fault you got burned, is it?

[PAUSE]

After weeping, the Lord comes into the temple and removes all the obstacles that others have put there. He throws out the money changers and merchants who are in the way of people honestly seeking Him.

He clears the path for us. He teaches us, warns us, shows us, weeps for us, dies for us and rises again for us. 

Our Lord's victory upon the Cross is the successful and total removal of the barriers which prevent us from getting back to God, thus opening the way to Salvation. Surely it's about time we made up our minds to be saved, isn't it?

Pride, Polemics and Validity

 A reflection on why trying to browbeat each other into conversion simply will not be convincing.

Led into temptation?

Sermon for the ninth Sunday after Trinity

Sometimes familiar words trip off our tongues and we are unaware that we use then so frequently. If an atheist says, "goodbye" to you then he is actually praying "God be with you!" 

We, too, become ignorant of what we are saying with our familiar prayers. The Lord's Prayer is a case in point. How often do we rattle that off without thinking about it? Yet it contains things which ought to worry us. It tells us that the way our trespasses are forgiven depends on how much we are prepared to forgive others their trespasses. It also mentions the fact that our Faith can be tested. We are all in danger of falling into temptation. The Christian is in no less danger of sinning than anyone else.

[PAUSE]

This is what St Paul is telling us. The Israelites have gone through the Exodus from Egypt. They have all seen the cloud of God's presence. They have all drunk from the water from the rock. This is how they have received Baptism and the Eucharist before Our Lord's life on Earth. And yet they have fallen into sin. The world around them has tested their faith and they have made idols and the have committed fornication, despite being God's chosen people. And, despite being God's chosen people, they did not see the Promised Land on account of their sin.

And St Paul warns us, the Church, that the same could happen to us. The wages of sin is death. If we sin, we end up losing the life that God wants for us. It doesn't matter if we've been baptised or confirmed or ordained, sin brings death. Being part of the Church doesn't excuse us - indeed it makes things worse!

[PAUSE]

We do face temptation daily and we do sin. This is why forgiveness is so important. Repentance brings us back in line with Christ and His Life-giving Death. Yet, the fact that, whenever we fall into temptation, God gives us a way out of temptation shows that we cannot be excused from sin by saying that we were tempted beyond our means. If we walk with God then we should see the way out when we are tempted. But St Paul is talking to the whole Church. We need to be looking after each other. If we admit our temptations to others, if we go to Confession, if we let people know that we are struggling with temptation then God gives us the Church itself as a sanctuary to help and encourage and support. In the Church there is forgiveness and compassion as well as a rejection of all sin. If you cannot find forgiveness, compassion and rejection of sin in your church, then that church must answer to God for that. The point is that we never go through temptation alone. 

This also means that we, too, must be ready to help and support anyone who is facing temptation in the same manner that we would want help and support. We are only forgiven as much as we are ready to forgive. We should not expect support inbour temptation unless we are willing to support someone in theirs with the same level of generosity and love and rejection of all sin.

[PAUSE]

Living out God's commandment of Love is hard work and we often face an uphill struggle against Sin, the World and the Devil. But God has given His Church victory over Sin, the World and the Devil. We stand fast, keep turning to the Lord and He will not lead us into temptation but deliver us from Evil.

Anglican Catholicism and the Intercession of the Saints

 

Why do Anglican Catholics pray to saints? Is it allowed?

The Greater name of James

Sermon for the feast of St James the Greater

What do you know of St James?

You might first ask, "which one?" for you know there are two disciples called James. The other we celebrate with St Philip on the first of May.

The fact that this James has a feast day of his own might tell you that this is St James the Greater, the brother of St John. This is the James who, together with St Peter and St John, bears witness to the more intimate sayings of the Lord. He is also present at the Transfiguration. This James is the first Bishop of Jerusalem. He is the first of the Apostles to lose his life as a martyr under Herod.

The second thing you might know is that his name is not James - it's Jacob.

[PAUSE]

Well, that's a bit pedantic. It's like saying that the Lord's name is Joshua and not Jesus. While Jesus is the Greek version of Joshua and is fairly direct, the name James is actually a medieval Latin version of Jacob. The name has travelled quite extensively and, unlike the Lord's Name, St James would never have been called that in His lifetime. He will always have been Jacob.

Now, why is this relevant? Why is the fact that the name of this Holy and Venerable Apostle has changed so radically in contrast to his Master and Our Lord?

[PAUSE]

The life of St James has been embroidered by stories. There is a tale that he went to Spain but there is no evidence for this before the eighth century. All we really know of St James is what we see in the New Testament and we even hear his name hidden in our modern ears.

Like Jacob, St James wrestles with God - not physically. He asks to drink the same cup as Our Lord. He asks Jesus to sit down with his brother either side of Him in Heaven. He wrestles with this Jesus who goes to His death. He wrestles with himself as he flees from the scene of His arrest. Yet he stays with the other disciples to bear witness to the Resurrection. 

Like Jacob, St James witnesses God. He sees Heaven opened and the light of God pouring out on Mount Tabor. Like Jacob, St James becomes the spiritual father to an uncountable number of Christians.

His name travels and, in travelling, alters. His testimony does not. While his name gets altered by the centuries, the name of his Master does not but is repeated faithfully and lovingly to all people. In having his name altered, St James receives the promised new name from Our Lord. He is like the patriarch Jacob but he is so much more for He has not just wrestled with God and seen God in a fragment of His glory, but He has born witness to our Salvation to the extent of his own blood. He has decreased to make his testimony increase.

[PAUSE]

Our names, too, will change and alter. Like many martyrs of God, our names will probably be forgotten altogether by an indifferent world. But God gives us our new name, our true name by which He calls us. God is always faithful, we have to learn to be faithful too, just like the Great St James himself.