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.