Penderfyniad clir?

Given the welcome presence of my Welsh Colleagues, I am hoping that their fervent examples will bear much fruit in the years to come. Another Welsh revival would certainly give those of us in England a bit of a fillip!

Of course, if a female Archdeacon, Peggy Jackson, in the Church in Wales gets her way, we may well find a few people come our way.

Her motion is to prevent those who cannot in conscience believe that women can be ordained from being ordained themselves. Essentially, her idea is to allow to die out those who hold the Catholic Faith in the Church in Wales. With no Catholic priests, there will be no provision for those Catholic laity, either. That’s not what I call flourishing.

So what is her argument?

It runs as follows.

1)      The Church in Wales (CiW) has made a clear decision that women may be admitted to all orders.

2)      In order to protect those established members of the CiW who cannot in conscience receive the ordination of women, a Code of Practice was drawn up.

3)      The Code of Practice states that during a period of reception, those who object to the ordination of women are not to be barred from ordination.

4)      Since the Code is temporary in nature, it was not intended for a parallel structure to exist for Catholics.

First conclusion: Any structure within the CiW for those who deny the decision of the CiW to ordain women is temporary.

5)      The Code encourages “mutual flourishing”.

6)      Women who train for ordination find themselves training with and under those who doubt their integrity to do so.

7)      These women have to undergo extra hurdles in order to reach ordination.

8)      These women do not realise their full potential and the Church uses their gifts.

Second Conclusion: The Code of Practice does not allow ordained women to flourish to the best of their ability.

This boils down to

A)     The Code of Practice calls for “mutual flourishing”.

B)      The Code of Practice does not allow for female ordinands to flourish.

C)      Therefore the Code of Practice is self contradictory.

Thus the Code should be resiled.

Now what if, for the sake of equality, we do a little mutatis mutandis on statements 5 to 8?

9)      The Code encourages “mutual flourishing”.

10)   Catholics who train for ordination find themselves training with and under those who doubt their integrity to do so.

11)   These Catholics have to undergo extra hurdles in order to reach ordination.

12)   These Catholics do not realise their full potential and the Church loses their gifts.

The Code of Practice is still not fit for purpose but clearly it would need to be resiled in the opposite favour.

The only difference lies in the clear decision which says that women can be ordained and thus skews the argument in favour of allowing women ordinands to flourish at the expense of Catholic ordinands. If there is to be any “mutual flourishing” then it is only temporary in nature and to be repealed once the Catholics are in a sufficient minority. To my mind, this does suggest that the commitment to “mutual flourishing” has been made with crossed fingers and suffers the death of the thousand caveats. Peggy Jackson is being less than venerable in not even thinking what Catholics in her Diocese are going to do.

If the CiW were acting with any degree of integrity at all, it should never have set up a Code of Practice which has essentially benefitted from the dying talents of the Catholic Wing so that it cannot actually flourish within or without the CiW. The CofE is no better.

I really should like to make it quite clear to those in Forward in Faith in the UK that it is absolutely clear that none of the British Provinces are committed to the flourishing of the Catholic Faith as once the CofE received because of their clear decision – this clear departure from the Catholic Faith. They want you to die out. The Evangelicals are already departing for various Protestant jurisdictions. You need to find a Catholic jurisdiction. Find somewhere to go.

The Anglican Catholic Church exists and will happily talk with you about your future but, if you don’t like us, then go to Rome, to ROCOR, to the Old Roman Catholic Church. Just get out.

Get out of the CofE. Get out of the CiW. You will suffer immeasurably in your souls if you stay. You will lose status, location and even livelihoods if you do go, but the Disciples lost more on your behalf and have gained a hundredfold more in Heaven for doing so.

Mae Duw yn dy fendithio!

De profundis clamavi ad Te, Domine

Sermon for the Day of Resurrection

In the Beginning, God creates the Heavens and the Earth and from this moment there is the dark deep.

And the Holy Ghost hovers over the face of this darkness and knows that this darkness is not what should be. Light comes and the darkness is relegated to the shadows of the things that come to be at the hands of God.

[PAUSE]

In the Beginning is the Word. And the Word is with God and the Word is God. He, too, sees the darkness of the deep. He sees how this darkness seeps its way into Creation through cracks made by the choice of the Humanity He creates. He sees how Creation flounders in this dark flood and He hates it. He hates it literally with every fibre of His being, because He is not of the darkness and He desires nothing more than we, His Children to be free from this darkness. And so, He strips Himself of all that is of His Divine Royalty and dives into the dark deep.

For a while, He floats at the surface between darkness and light, offering His hand to pull to the surface those who are drowning in the darkness. He teaches them how to reach the surface, how to tell which way is up, how to stay afloat and await rescue. Yet, there are those who know and love darkness and cling on to things that make them sink. These lovers of darkness spitefully nail a heavy cruciform weight to Him and He sinks yet further into the darkness until He is seen no more.

[PAUSE]Physics tells us that a body with density less than that of water will float. He is not of the darkness; He is the light itself. His control of all Creation means that He can transform this cruciform weight into a thing of light and, like a bubble, rises to the surface with a rush that erupts onto the world and renders it speechless save the word, “Rabboni?”

And this is the genius of it for, to save us, He brings us to the surface and bids us partake of His very being so that we may become as light as He is. In becoming things of light, the darkness repels us. Thus the Church floats upon the face of the deep. It possesses the keys of Heaven because it knows how to cling on to the One Who Ascends and Who will return to draw us out of the deep from which we call to Our Lord.

[PAUSE]

The call of Humanity is heard, and we see the face of the dark deep bubble and froth as He bursts back onto the surface in His Risen Glory, taking breaths of air again and, in so doing, making the air sweet for us to breathe. His Light shines in our darkness, and the darkness cannot even begin to grasp Him. We may float and bob on the surface, we may flounder and flail in the storms that rush over us, we may sink into the depths: we are, however, of God by His grace, and the darkness may pass over us, but the light of Christ will not pass over. We, too, through our trust in Him will rise and one day soar up into the light where He is and will dwell there for ever where there is no darkness at all.

Choosing the Cross

How would you like to die?

 It’s not a question that many of us want to consider and, when we are forced to confront it, we are most likely to say something like, “in bed, surrounded by my family,” or, “doing something I love.“ The fact of the matter is, whether we like it or not, God is the One Who determines that. Whether we live for a hundred years or a hundred seconds is something that God knows and is accordance with the state of Creation. Our physical death is the means whereby the influences of sin and evil in our lives are brought to an abrupt halt. While we all accept that we must die, what we cannot do, and perhaps are resentful about it, is choose how and when we are to die. It is knowing that there are a million and one unpleasant ways to die that causes our fear. Perhaps it is not so much the fear of being dead, but the fear of dying that is uppermost when we consider our own ends.

But would you choose to be Crucified?

Once we realise the actual, physical mechanics of Crucifixion and the biological impact that it has on the body then we begin to realise what happens to Our Lord Jesus Christ on Good Friday. We begin to realise just how beaten up He is before He even gets to see Pontius Pilate. We begin to realise the extent to which His body is lacerated by the scourge before He even reaches the Cross. And as for the Crucifixion itself…

It is once we consider the science of crucifixion that we just begin to step into a tiny inkling of what this Greater Love of which Our Lord speaks. That He would willingly give up His life in this particular manner on behalf of all humanity is humbling in the extreme and utterly inconceivable. And yet, we are still faced with something even more galling.

Given the many and varied ways that human beings have managed to dispatch each other over the centuries, why does God choose Crucifixion? Could the sacrifice not be made like Sydney Carton in a swift manner? Or like Archbishop Romero with a gunshot during Divine Worship? Even the sacrifices of animals demanded by the Torah have a quick dispatch rather than the long, tortured ordeal that Our Lord suffers. Surely, with His foreknowledge and His knowledge of our subjunctive existence (the things that might be) as our indicative existence (the things that are), God need not suffer so much.

And then it strikes again, like some thunderbolt. The Reason that God chooses this is not out of His necessity, but for ours. Our need to be rescued from Evil demands such a terrible death out of sheer love for us. Not only is the ransom paid, but the suffering of every single human being is wrested from the grip of the Devil as a defeat and lifted up sky-ward as a complete and utter triumph over the whole host of Evil Intelligences. Not only are our sins nailed to the cross with Our Lord, but also our sufferings at the hand of Evil. The tree with which human beings freely choose to disobey God and thereby must accept Death as the consequence of that choice, becomes the tree whereon God Himself accepts the same consequence and thereby makes it Holy just as He hallows the waters of Baptism in the Jordan and the hands, lives and works of the Apostles through His sharing His life with them. We are hit by the fact that God would rather choose Crucifixion than let even one single person be lost to Gehenna.

This is the Love with which we are presented and Love also presents us with a free choice because it will never coerce us into accepting its advances. We still can choose to reject Christ if we wish and thus spend Eternity away from Him. Can we honestly look Him in the eye and reject Him as He hangs on the Cross for our salvation?

And what if we accept Him? What if we choose to return that love? Then we have a cross to bear, too. We, too, face crucifixion. But we can be assured that it will be the Evil and Sin that will be nailed there permanently and any and all of the pain we suffer will be that of our birth into the Resurrection of Christ where no evil, no suffering, no pain, no sorrow, no conflict can ever touch us.

 If Christ chooses the Cross, then we must too. It is our glory and our victory. In choosing the Cross, it is all finished and we rise again!

Ecce homo

You may have heard those words, “Ecce homo!” and you will probably hear them translated as, “Behold the Man!” We might hear these words in a grandiose manner, pronounced in great gravity and enunciation. Yet, “ecce homo” might also be translated, “Look! It’s THIS man!” and spoken with an air of frustration, desperation, and confusion.

Pontius Pilate has been seeking to release Jesus knowing that the Jewish Authorities have not the slightest shred of evidence against Him. There are a lot of Jesuses and Joshuas and similar sounding names out there. Perhaps the massing crowd baying for the release of Barabbas don’t know which Jesus this is. If they will surely know Him as the teacher, the moralist, even the wonder-worker! If he just shows Jesus to the crowd, perhaps this injustice will stop. “Look! It’s THIS man!”

Pilate is not the first to give an “ecce homo”. These words don’t have to be spoken. They can be communicated by a kiss. “Look! THAT’s the man!” The words are followed by a rattling of swords, an ear cut off and an ear restored. Jesus is led away to some more “ecce homo”s. “Look! THAT’s the man who would destroy the temple!” “Look! THAT’s the man who blasphemes” “Look! THAT’s the man!”

The phrase “Ecce homo” can be found in the eighth verse of the fifty-second psalm.

“ecce homo qui non posuit Deum adiutorem suum sed speravit in multitudine divitiarum suarum et praevaluit in vanitate sua”

“Lo, this is the man that took not God for his strength: but trusted unto the multitude of his riches, and strengthened himself in his wickedness.”

It is this verse the Devil – the accuser – might use of each one of us. We are the ones who have failed to trust God completely. In his malice, the Devil points out to God our sins as if God does not know what they already are. We stand accused as fingers point at us “Look! THAT’s the man!” “Look! THAT’s the woman!”

We need not stand alone in our accusation for we can choose to stand with Christ and thus have Him stand with us. In this simple phrase, “ecce homo” time and space are bent and warped in dimensions that physics cannot reach. If we, in the twenty-first century, can stand with Christ in His passion whereby our sinful selves are nailed with Him to the Cross, our presence must be bound up with His. This is not a figurative act. This is a real bending of the fabric of Reality.

As the Israelites had to make many sacrifices and send many scapegoats out into the desert, only one sacrifice of Christ can take place for us all. It happens once, and it happens for everyone, past present and future. Just as the Israelites must partake of the sacrifice for it to have any effect, so we must partake of the single sacrifice of Christ. It is St John the Baptist who first points out Our Lord with the words, “ecce agnus Dei!” – “Look! THAT’s the Lamb of God.”

Behold that Lamb of God! Behold Him that taketh away the sins of the World! The Mass that Our Lord instigates on this Maundy Thursday is precisely the single sacrifice that binds all Christians throughout Time to Eternity itself. “Look! THIS is my body!” “Look! THIS is my blood!” There are so many who cannot or will not accept the utter reality of Christ as present at the Mass as we are, if not more so. We are truly given His flesh. We are truly given His blood. We truly partake of that sacrifice of Maundy Thursday and the great sacrifice of Good Friday! We are there with Him and while many will point at the Crucified Lord and catcall, “Look! THAT’s the man!” we will look and say, “Yes! THAT’s Him who is destroying our sins!”

And then, they will look at us and say “Look! THAT’s the man” “Look! THAT’s the woman!” and we will know that we are truly with Him this day in paradise!

The Law of Atonement

Sermon for Palm Sunday (Mattins)

Are you old enough to remember Lee Majors in The Fall Guy? The title of that programme is a bit of a pun. It is supposed to refer to the fact that Lee Majors is a stunt man using his skills to fight crime. His skill is knowing how to fall, hence the title. Of course, this is a play on the notion of a fall guy as someone who takes a punishment for someone else. A fall guy is a whipping boy or a scapegoat.

As a boy, King Charles I is said to have had a whipping boy – the first Earl of Dysart! – who was punished for the little prince’s misbehaviour. Have you taken the rap for someone else’s crimes? How does that feel? Does it make it right to punish the innocent in order to atone for the sins of the guilty?

[PAUSE]

The prophet Isaiah seems to be suggesting that Our Lord Jesus Christ came into the world to be punished for our sakes.

Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth. He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare his generation? for he was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was he stricken.

God lays upon His Son the iniquity, the sins of us all. All that we have done amiss; every single time we have disobeyed God; every time we have failed to love the Lord Our God with all our hearts, minds and strength; every time we have failed to love our neighbour as ourselves; each one of these causes Our Lord to receive bruises. All this is prefigured in the system of sacrifices that God gives to the Hebrews. According to the Law of the Old Testament, In order to be reconciled with God, you have to make sacrifice of two goats: one is a sin offering which is killed in the temple; the other is cast away into the wilderness bearing your transgressions. Aaron the priest has to do this for all of Israel on the Day of Atonement. The sins of all Israel are laid upon the scapegoat. If Jesus is the scapegoat for all humanity, how dreadful God must be to punish His innocent Son on behalf of sinful human beings! Why can’t God just pardon human beings of their sins, or punish us for our sins? Why do we have to see the dreadful spectacle of an innocent man dangling on the cross just to appease a petty, punishing deity who can’t let sins go?

The trouble is that we think too much in terms of crime and punishment. The only way that we human beings can deal with Sin and Evil is to bring things into the law courts. We see murderers convicted; we see burglars sent to gaol; we see person who has caused the injury pay the costs. What we don’t see is the actual sin being dealt with. The murder case may be ended, but someone is still dead; a family is still mourning; people are still scarred and weakened by this sin. It may be because of the murder of his father that a son is so scarred that he commits murder himself. The Law does nothing about Evil, it just sort of tries to shut it away. But Evil still lies lurking behind the prison door, waiting to climb out! It spreads, oozing out from under the prison door no matter how tightly we shut it. Something needs to be done to tackle Evil itself.

[PAUSE]

Evil is an absence of Good. It is a hole that needs to be filled. If human nature is damaged by Evil, then it will take a human being undamaged by Evil to destroy it. But this is beyond our capability, because we are all damaged. It can only take one who is truly Good – truly God – to heal us from Evil. Our Saviour has to be truly human and truly God. It has to be Jesus.

[PAUSE]

As we watch Our Lord go to His crucifixion this week, we see One Who has chosen to bear all of our sins in His own body on the tree so that Evil may be stopped in Him and that, in Him, our humanity might be restored. Further, in suffering so much, He demonstrates God’s love for us in our sufferings at the hands of Evil. As He suffers, He gives all our grief, our pain our suffering dignity and worth in the eyes of God. In His terrible death, all our tragedies are given a deeper joy and a hope of Resurrection.

This is no petty punishing God! This is a God who cannot stand the slightest drop of Evil. And He would rather die than allow His little ones to be infected with it forever.

The shoes of the Alpha Male

Sermon for the Fifth Sunday in Lent

The social life of the teenager is remarkably complicated, these days. It’s perhaps most pronounced in the relationships between teenage girls. There is always some form of popularity contest going on and, if you win this contest, you are rewarded with a group of friends vying for your approval.

But aren’t all human social groups a bit like that? There is always a top dog, and others coveting attention from that top dog. Can you see it in your life? Can you see it here in Church?

It seems that the same is true with Our Lord and His disciples. We see James and John wanting the best seats in Heaven. And you can understand the other disciples’ reactions, can’t you?

Why should James and John have the best seats? You’ve given up just as much of your life for Jesus as they have? You’ve been there and listened to His sermons. You’ve tried to put His teaching into practice. You’re as much a disciple as they are, aren’t you?

This is quite normal human behaviour for human beings, something we perhaps share with the apes, but we know the strife that it causes.

But we cannot blames James and John. If we were present with James and John, would we not want to get close to Jesus? Of course we would! But would it be because Jesus is popular, or would it be because of something else?

[PAUSE]

Look at how the disciples started out. Peter, Andrew, James, John – all leave their boats to follow Jesus at one word from Him! It seems like the disciples are drawn to Him like moths to a flame. Now where have we seen that before? Moses and the Disciples are drawn to the fire of God. For Moses, it burns in a bush; for the Disciples, it shines in the very life and work of Jesus. An ordinary bush, an ordinary man – both extraordinary! In these most ordinary of things, we find ourselves struggling not to behave in an ordinary way. Moses has to be told to put off his shoes because the ground on which he walks is holy. Likewise, James and John are told not to behave like other human beings and see Jesus as just a charismatic teacher.

[PAUSE]

Moses’ feet touch the ground, the very dust from which we human beings have been made by the hand of God. He is grounded in reality. And standing here, on the ground, in the reality that he has always known, he finds himself in the presence of the God Who says, “I Am That I Am.” Moses is told in no uncertain terms that God is the One Who Is – and that the very act of being comes from God alone. The ground becomes holy precisely because God says it is. Things become holy because God separates them out for His purposes. By taking off his shoes and touching the ground, Moses becomes humble. In being humble, he is made holy by God for the purposes of redeeming Israel from Egypt.

[PAUSE]

The Disciples find themselves in the presence of the Man Jesus and when they begin that usual process of seeing Him as the top dog and vying for His attention, He tells them to be humble. He tells them to put aside this meaningless popularity contest and start being real human beings being neither greater nor lesser than another, but all of immeasurable value to the Creator. The Disciples live and move and have their being with God Incarnate. In the act of the Word being made Flesh and dwelling among us, we are presented with the fact that each one of us – every single human being, without exception – can be made holy. That is the call of the Church. The Church is Holy, and we are called to become holy, to live holy lives, to centre them on Christ, to repent TO Him.

[PAUSE]

Our calling to become members of the Church is a call to take off our shoes and stand on holy ground. It is a call to put off lives of competition for limited resources and find lives which are rooted in the business of being human shared with the Infinite Being of God Himself. We are made holy only by God, irrespective of other’s holiness. Not even priesthood makes a man holy – ordination sets that man apart to distribute the sacraments irrespective of his holiness. We can never say that the Bishop is automatically holier than the one that sits in the pew. In many circumstances, it has been the other way around. It is in living God-centred lives in prayer and obedience that helps us draw closer to Him and from Him find our holiness.

[PAUSE]

To become holy, we must put off our shoes, forget about social status, and commit ourselves to the reality of God that only touches our understanding and experience briefly. To become holy, we must stand on the ground from which we are made and gaze into the Infinity of Love: only then -ONLY then - will the cold, dark world around us catch His fire.

The Prodigal God

Sermon for the fourth Sunday in Lent

The common carp lays about three-hundred thousand eggs in one go. That’s a lot! So why aren’t the rivers and ponds absolutely full of carp?

In fact, it’s counted a success if a mating pair of fish see a pair of their offspring to grow up to adulthood. If only two fish survive out of all the eggs the female carp can lay, then that’s a lot of eggs wasted. It seems very wasteful of the common carp.

In our current day and age, we are very conscious about wasting things. Councils have got better at providing recycling for bottles, plastic and paper. Our waste food goes into compost bins and we are encouraged to re-use water in a water-butt. We seem to have a keen eye for spotting where things are wasted.

We know the prodigal son all too well. We see how he wasted his inheritance and leads a life that ends up in the pig-sty. Yet, perhaps we ought to see that his tendency to be wasteful might be genetic. Isn’t the father just as wasteful?

[PAUSE]

Let’s look at the evidence. First, the father is willing to give up half of all that he possesses for his son to waste, not knowing what he will do with it. Second, when the son does return, the father throws a lavish party for him. No wonder the other son seems put out – he doesn’t get that treatment!

It’s clear that Our Lord tells the parable in order to show how God works, and if that is how God works, then He’s just as wasteful as we are! Surely we can be excused wastefulness if God is like that? Look, He wastes this world on us and He even wastes His Son on sinful human beings!

[PAUSE]

You know very well that there is something not quite right with that argument. We’re comparing two kinds of extravagance – Gluttony and Generosity – and they are opposites when it comes to the way we deal with the good things that God gives us. What we need to do is to look at the direction of how these gifts are being used. The father of the Prodigal Son gives what he has to His son. The son takes what he has and uses it all up on himself. The father shows Generosity; the son shows Gluttony. Gluttony is a sin that we only seem to associate with eating too much. Eating too much is indeed Gluttony, but it is not all that Gluttony is. C.S Lewis would remind us that we can be gluttonous by insisting that we have a piece of toast which must be done exactly to our desires or not at all.

Gluttony also breeds the sin of Envy in others. If Jacob lavishes his attention on Joseph for his own pleasure and not for Joseph’s own good, then it is natural that the other brothers become envious and thus sell Joseph into slavery. Gluttony and Avarice together divide the world into the “haves” and the “have-nots” and we become obsessed with who has what. We can see this so clearly in Society now. See how many political movements are formed out of envy due to gluttony which is rife in society. See how one group having a significant political power means that another group seek to redress that balance. That’s how political revolutions take place!

The key is that human beings learn to be generous. We need to turn our gifts and belongings outwards to other for the love of each other, not because we are forced to. We need to view the idea of tax as our opportunity to contribute to society rather than something that takes away from what we have. We need to be willing to give of ourselves for the real benefit of others not for how it makes us feel – that’s the mistake that Jacob makes when he spoils Joseph. Gluttony can hide very well. Repentance is key here.

[PAUSE]

Of course we remember that repentance is more about turning to God than turning away from sin. Turning away from sin is the by-product from turning to God. In turning our point of view out from ourselves and our own good, we turn our gluttony into generosity, and this makes the difference between extravagance and waste. Wasting things robs them of the power to benefit anyone else. Generosity does not rob anyone, it passes along and keeps passing things along until it is stopped by gluttony.

The carp may be extravagant in laying so many eggs, but the ecosystem of the river benefits from that extravagance so that it remains living and beautiful.


The father may be extravagant in celebrating his son’s return, but the son is able to live again and live more wisely to everyone’s benefit.

God is extravagant in grace and mercy. He forgives so freely and even sends His son to die for us so that we might be reconciled to Him, and then He throws a party in Heaven at our return. God so loves the world…

Not only are we to turn our extravagance outwards to other people for their sake, but we need to turn it upwards to God. The more we are extravagant in thanking Him and praising Him, just like the shepherd finding the lost sheep and the woman finding the lost coin, the more we will pass on to our broken, gluttonous, prodigal, and miserable society those abundant gifts of God for all our benefits.

Rather than being wasteful, our extravagance becomes an investment!

"I know! I know!"

Sermon for the Third Sunday in Lent (Mattins)

Why is the school swot so infuriating?

You know the type. The moment the very question mark has escaped the teacher’s lips, that spotlessly clean hand goes up with a barely suppressed, “me, me, me! I know! I know!” The worse thing is, the swot does know, every single time.

People who are right are hard to bear at times, especially when they are so smug about it. It’s that smugness that we find so infuriating. What we really object to is that school swots give their answers in a way that suggests that they are better than we are because they know more. Clearly, we recognise the sin of pride in their activity. School swots see greater worth in knowing things than appreciating their relationship with the people around them. Their knowledge is valued above love, and that is pride. The fact that it’s always “me, me me!” shows where their priorities lie.

Yet, if we’re not careful, we might forget something.

[PAUSE]

The school swot is a child. Children need to learn. The school swot may know the answer and thus doesn’t need to be taught what the answer is. The lesson that needs to be learned is that the way that we present our knowledge has repercussions. We see that most when we listen to Joseph tell his brothers and his father Jacob of his dreams.

[PAUSE]

The fact of the matter is that Joseph’s dreams are absolutely spot on. They do foretell the future accurately. They also reveal much about Joseph’s attitude to other people. We can see how his attitude has been shaped by Jacob’s love for him and we can see that this comes out in the way that he speaks. He is a tell-tale on his brothers but his concern is about how much credit with Daddy he will get if he does tell on his brothers. Even before his dreams, he is behaving in a thoroughly objectionable manner. He needs to learn.

Actually, we learn a lot about what God is like here. We can see how He looks into the hearts of Joseph’s brothers and sees boiling away in them the indignation, the anger, the cruel intentions which Joseph’s actions have caused. In the great incomprehensible mind of God, we can begin to see how He can use the situation not only to fulfil Joseph’s dreams but also to teach him how to behave and how to love. It is the brothers who cause Joseph’s suffering and languishing in slavery and prison, but it is God who uses this suffering to make Joseph better. Joseph does the right thing and learns to trust in God. He stops loving himself for his own sake and starts loving God more. He grows up from being the spoiled child and is raised to the height of Pharaoh’s deputy but as a humbler, kinder, less self-interested man.

[PAUSE]

Children have a lot to teach us grown-ups for, in them, we see ourselves more obviously. We can see ourselves fighting over positions of power, over titles, over riches. If the worst that a child can do is say, “me, me, me, I know!” then perhaps we should listen to their answer rather than despising them for knowing. They will learn how to behave in time at the hands of teachers who have their best interests at heart.

If we trust God then we will be taught humility but only if we’re willing to receive the lesson. When we see someone trying to show off, we can fall into resentment and indignation, but that isn’t the Christian way. We must bless and not curse. The son of Sirach says,

“Better is he that laboureth, and aboundeth in all things, than he that boasteth himself, and wanteth bread. My son, glorify thy soul in meekness, and give it honour according to the dignity thereof.”

And, in the letter to the Hebrews, we read,

“Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering; (for he is faithful that promised;) And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works: Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.”

We have to remember that show-offs and swots are immensely forgivable and that, in showing off, they have revealed themselves to be just as vulnerable and in need of learning and growing as we are. By trusting in God when our patience is tested and bearing up when we suffer the unfairness that others’ actions inflict on us, then we do grow, and we grow from the solid Rock that is Our Lord Jesus Christ.

The Scale of Political Supernovae

Perhaps, one day, I will get back to my love of Astronomy. There is a great deal of beauty in studying the Universe beyond our little planet and way beyond our little Sun. At every scale, there is something worth studying. We can look at moons and meteors, comets and coronae, planets individually and in context with the others. We have just started to pick up on planets orbiting distant stars. Each time, we can increase the scale from the astronomically parochial Earth-Moon system to galactic, intergalactic and even further beyond. I’ve long been interested in the shape of the entire Universe my own mathematical journey once gave me the language to discuss large-scale structures.

One occurrence that always makes me rather wistful is the supernova – the death of a largish star. When a supernova occurs, it spells the death, not only of the star itself but also the deaths of the planets that surround it. A star ages when it runs out of hydrogen to use as fuel and subsequently begins to create heavier and heavier elements as it tries to keep its core running. It’s like a nuclear reactor but runs on smashing atoms together rather than tearing them apart. As you smash atoms together, you begin to create heavier elements: helium, lithium, carbon, oxygen, and iron. This means that the star can start to collapse in on itself because it is so heavy. This will heat the core up to an extent that it will puff off any remaining gases and lighter particles at an alarming rate. This is the supernova. It is bright, brilliant and, in the scale of the universe very short-lived. What remains can be a dwarf star, neutron star or even the famous black hole.

To put it into perspective, our little Sun will probably not go supernova but rather form a less spectacular event called a nova. It’s like a supernova but on a smaller scale.

But it’s all a question of scale.

On the small scale, our Sun going nova will destroy all life on Earth. It will boil the gas giants of Jupiter and Saturn, evaporate Mercury and Venus, and leave the Earth a cinder floating in space. That’s the small scale. On the scale of the Universe? It will be like a tiny bubble in your lemonade appear and disappear barely noticed.

All of this is way beyond the scale of human beings. In the scale of the Universe, we come and go from irrelevance into irrelevance. Nothing that we do matters to this vast expanse of space.

But it does to God.

And God works on all scales.

I look at our politics of the last few years and I see what I can only understand as the beginnings of a supernova. Political activity and unrest are getting more fervent, social structures are colliding, breaking apart and reforming. In the UK we are heading out into the unknown as Brexit seems to be changing all that we understand about Parliament and challenging our understanding of democracy. It’s frightening, exhilarating, disturbing and the cause of much stress. An end is coming, but also a beginning. A Reformation.

Even when a star dies, its component parts blown into space have the potential to create new structures. The same is true here.

For example, the Established Church is in decline and will soon go supernova. It cannot hold onto integrities which cannot be reconciled because, for all its good intentions and prayers, one integrity has roots that are not of God. It will fall, and what will be left will be component parts which will need to regroup in order to survive. Pope Benedict is right; the Church of the Future will be smaller, less grand but much more faithful.

All this is happening on scales beyond the individual.

Brexit will, in all probability happen. If it does not, then there will be a political crisis and loss of faith in democracy the like of which this country has not seen. Brexiteers will not take a rescinding of Article 50 lightly. If Brexit does happen, then there will be a scale of resentment from the pro-Europeans that will poison political relationships for years to come. It seems that we are in between a rock and a hard place.

We can go absolutely potty and focus in on our little bubble, or little piece of politics. We can become monomaniacally pro-Brexit or con-Brexit and bleat and swear and threaten and bewail when the worst happens. The monomaniac is so sure of his understanding, so at home in his echo chamber, and so utterly convinced of the worst, that he has become a Kripkean Dogmatist. The monomaniac of either party faces his own supernova as that single issue becomes so concentrated that a single event will cause an explosion of personal energy to the extent that life will never be the same again.

Monomaniacs need to change scale for their own health. We need to make our prayers to God and look up.

A time will come when Brexit will be a dim memory, an obscure word in the dictionary which people no longer see as significant in their lives. We need to learn to see ourselves beyond our political upheavals. What politics do we want? How can we live with those of an opposite political ideology? God is on every scale and it is in every scale that we need to make our prayer, not just in the narrow focus of our own monomania. Indeed, if we’re not “monomaniacal” about God, then perhaps we are worshipping an idol of our own making.

Brexit will come and Brexit will go and, until then, we must be courageous and deny our monomaniacal pursuit of doom by remembering that there is always hope. We must be courageous to enjoy the life that God gives us, even in the face of turmoil. The supernova will happen, and there will always be a remnant left behind as the wind blows the lightweight material away. God will not forget us. He is here on our scale, whatever that will be!

Back to School already?

Sermon for the Second Sunday in Lent (Mattins)

Around about the end of July, many shops will proudly announce their new season called “Back to School”. Given that the school year has only just ended, it seems rather an unkind reminder for those who have to go back to school, especially teachers!

For many people, school days are not the best days of your life. There is a great fear in having to learn something, especially when you don’t want to learn that thing. When have you had to solve a quadratic equation in your life? When has your knowledge of ox-bow lakes or the chemical composition of sulphuric acid actually been useful beyond the pub quiz? Well, you never know…

What’s the point of learning things that you don’t want to learn?

[PAUSE]

One of the concerns that many have about religious belief is the idea that it indoctrinates people. We can certainly see how some Muslims are indoctrinated into beliefs that are damaging to themselves and certainly to others. Christians, too, are not immune and some people find themselves being bullied into belief by Christians who seem to derive their worth by forcing their religion on others. There is now such thing as spiritual abuse in which religious belief is used to control another for selfish or secular reasons, or even to enforce beliefs that aren’t actually necessary to the Christian Religion.

The process of Indoctrination involves teaching children a set of beliefs uncritically. What does that mean? Should we be allowed to question whether or not God exists? Should we be allowed to think that Our Lord and Saviour is not present in the Sacrament of the Altar? Of course, we should! It’s part of our human condition that we are free to question whatever is presented to us. God gives us free-will and we are not truly human unless we use it. Indoctrination is therefore dehumanising.

The son of Sirach talks of the benefits of pursuing the Wisdom of God. “Wisdom exalteth her children, and layeth hold of them that seek her. He that loveth her loveth life; and they that seek to her early shall be filled with joy. He that holdeth her fast shall inherit glory; and wheresoever she entereth, the Lord will bless.”

We are presented with good reason to seek after wisdom and this means careful study of the Holy Scripture and the teaching of the Church. What we do notice from this is that we are being presented with the choice whether or not to seek after this wisdom. Wisdom is there like the pearl beyond price lying hidden in the field. People will sell all that they have to possess it for the search for Wisdom is a search for God Himself and His wisdom is expressed perfectly by His Word – Our Lord Jesus Christ! “They that serve her shall minister to the Holy One: and them that love her the Lord doth love. Whoso giveth ear unto her shall judge the nations: and he that attendeth unto her shall dwell securely.”

Seeking wisdom is hard work but we know that because living is hard work especially in this sinful and fallen world. “If a man commit himself unto her, he shall inherit her; and his generation shall hold her in possession. For at the first she will walk with him by crooked ways, and bring fear and dread upon him, and torment him with her discipline, until she may trust his soul, and try him by her laws. Then will she return the straight way unto him, and comfort him, and shew him her secrets.” This is why we often dread learning: it challenges cherished beliefs and lifts us out of our comfort zones.

We can also fear learning because we can be shown up for being wrong. The fact that we are free to believe does mean that we can be wrong. The son of Sirach tells us that if we go wrong, Wisdom will forsake us, and give us over to his own ruin. “Observe the opportunity, and beware of evil; and be not ashamed when it concerneth thy soul. For there is a shame that bringeth sin; and there is a shame which is glory and grace.”

The beauty of the love of God means that if we go wrong, there is always a way back to Him. In healing the paralytic, Our Lord shows that sins can be forgiven very easily by God. In so doing, He shows up the wisdom of the Pharisees as being defective. Their love does not go far enough. The Pharisees will strain at a gnat in order to prove someone wrong and yet swallow a camel by refusing to see that it is love that fulfils the Law, not blind obedience to it.



If we can go wrong, if we can even doubt the existence of God Himself and thus be convinced to lose our salvation, how can we be certain of anything?

The answer is Faith.

[PAUSE]

Faith is a type of knowledge because it is given by God. We can doubt that He exists but then we need to turn to Him and ask for our faith to be strengthened. God is always approachable. Yes, our faith can be tested to breaking point but, that’s true of any belief that we have. Our knowledge is imperfect and the imperfect vanishes away when the perfect comes. What we think we know is only a shadow of what is. Our freedom to think can certainly challenge that Faith but if we are willing to recognise the Holy Ghost as the One Who walks alongside us albeit invisibly, then we always have the way to God.

This does mean that we need to be patient with those who go astray because it could so easily be we that go astray. No, we must not accept any heresy or deviation from the Wisdom of God, but we must recognise God’s gift of freedom of thought to everyone even if it means their rejection of God – that’s the pain of love. Our only recourse is to bear witness to the Faith that is once delivered to the saints revealed by Almighty God written for our edification and taught by those who seek His Wisdom in humility and love. And let us use our Lent to go back to school and learn the Truth of God in Faith, Hope and Love.

Publishing publishing

I have just taken the unusual step of deleting the Stations of the Cross that I blogged in 2011, shortly after my departure from the CofE.

This is because I have published them in book form for £3 from Lulu.

I have been trying to publish more books that I have found in bits and pieces on my laptop before another change in my life occurs, hence the flurry of activity. It's a sort of mental spring-clean or intellectual download, I suppose.

I am very grateful for the patronage of so many people who find worth in what I write and hope that they might continue to find some aspect of God therein.

#GodToo

Sermon for the First Sunday in Lent (Mattins)

What does God make of the #MeToo campaign?

In recent years, we have seen high profile figures accused and convicted of horrible abuses of their power and influence. While this is horrible in itself, the fact that many of these abuses have been at the hands of leaders within Christ’s Church is clearly rocking the faith of so many people. It’s understandable that members of the clergy are being regarded with suspicion and that the loss of trust in the Church is growing.

Yet, we also have the other problem of false accusation in which people’s lives are blighted by mistaken, misunderstood or even malicious individuals. The destruction to an innocent person’s reputation by false accusation is devastating even if there is a clear proof of innocence.

A proof of innocence? Surely, it’s innocent until proven guilty. If only members of society would remember that…

So what does God say to those who cry #MeToo?

[PAUSE]

“Whatsoever is brought upon thee take cheerfully, and be patient when thou art changed to a low estate.For gold is tried in the fire, and acceptable men in the furnace of adversity.”

That sounds very much like a slap in the face for anyone who has suffered abuse or has been wrongly accused. Does this mean that we are to roll over and just take the abuse?

If we know anything about God, it is that He is good and righteous. We believe that He will come to be our judge. All the way through Holy Scripture, we learn of His fairness from hearing the blood of Abel crying from the ground, granting the barren Sarah a son while yet comforting Hagar, restoring Job’s fortune, restoring the sight of the blind, up to the glorification of the Faithful in the Revelation of St John the Divine. Do we think that God does not hear the complaints of those who have been denied justice?

The fact of the matter is that in the act of becoming Christians, we have to be prepared for our faith to be tested. “If thou come to serve the Lord, prepare thy soul for temptation. Set thy heart aright, and constantly endure, and make not haste in time of trouble.Cleave unto him, and depart not away, that thou mayest be increased at thy last end.” This is why the Bishop gives each candidate a little slap when they are confirmed to remind them of this. As far as this life is concerned there will always be injustice. True justice can only be meted out by the hand of God Himself Who alone is in possession of all the facts. To forget that and seek our own judgment is an act of faithlessness in God.

[PAUSE]

But we have been given law by which crimes and injustice can be shown for what they are. No human being should ever have to undergo sexual harassment or any form of abuse. Perpetrators of abuse must be punished, and God’s Love for both victim and perpetrator will ensure that this will happen. But we have to keep faithful and not become vigilantes seeking our own punishment on those who have abused us. The #MeToo movement highlights two injustices – the silencing of those who have been abused and those who have had their lives ruined by what amounts to being guilty until proven innocent. Neither is acceptable and yet the balance is very difficult to strike. We cannot sacrifice the principle of “innocent until proven guilty” for any reason for otherwise we will find ourselves back in slavery to those whose whims declare what guilt and innocence are, and thus throwing God aside in favour of man-made laws which have caused so much suffering in the past.

We forget, however, that the rule of law is God’s gift to us, and we must learn to trust it and use it appropriately.

We can look at the examples of the saints like St Oscar Romero shot while saying Mass after asking the United States to stop arming the corrupt Salvadoran Government during the Civil War, or like St Martin of Porres who through patience overcomes the racial discrimination which prevent him from taking Religious Orders and serving the poor in Peru, or like St Damien of Molokai who would rather succumb to leprosy than allow the voice of those shunned by Society on account of their disease.

The approach of the saints is a preparation to suffer injustice in order to achieve justice – a greater justice that pours down from the Throne of God. Our duty, as Christians, is to observe the two commandments that Our Lord gives us. When faced with injustice we turn to God first in prayer and pray, pray, pray so fervently that it hurts. Then we look at people, not at abstract laws and theoretical precepts and we seek true justice. While those who abuse and hurt and murder must and will be punished, every Christian must look for the good of all people, for each and every one of us is a victim of Sin either by being on the receiving end of it or by committing it. Humanity cannot simply be divided up into those who are oppressed and those who are oppressors because oppression by Evil does not work that way. We are all victims of Evil, and it is this injustice that is resolved through the Cross of Christ. Our motivation for justice must spring from Love and not a desire for power.

Our Lord is baptised in order to associate with everyone whom Evil touches. He identifies with sinners so that sinners can be identified with Him and find in Him, not only justice, but mercy, peace and love too. Ultimately, we will fall into the hands of the Lord, and not into the hands of men: for as his majesty is, so is his mercy.

Where Wisdom may be found

Sermon for Quinquagesima Sunday (Mattins)

We are very familiar with those three visitors who appear in our Nativity Sets. We hear them called Magi, three kings or the three wise men. You don’t doubt that they are wise because they have the sense to follow the star of Bethlehem to find Our Lord.

Is it wise, then, to follow your horoscope in the paper? After all, that is what the Magi are doing in some sense?

Is it wise to give up all that is familiar to you and strike out a living alone based on vague promises of wealth and happiness? After all, this is what Abraham does.

You can probably think of situations in which it is wise to do things which, at the time, seem strange, uncomfortable or just plain stupid. And there are times when it is strange, uncomfortable and just plain stupid to keep carrying on as we are. If you’ve been living in a tent on the same bit of ground for the past ten years and you hear reports of a tornado, do you stay where you are?

It seems that wisdom is something very desirable for us to have. But what is it?

[PAUSE]

There are several books in Holy Scripture which are described as being Wisdom literature: they are meant to sow wisdom in the people who listen carefully. These are the books of Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Songs, which we sometimes call the Song of Solomon, the Book of Wisdom, often called the Wisdome of Solomon, and Ecclesiasticus which is often called the Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach, or just Sirach for short. In these books we find lessons in the nature of suffering, how to sing to God, good ideas for godly living. Even how to fall in love! Surely, though, the human race has been doing all these things without the need for the Bible. Why do we need this Wisdom Literature?

What many people don’t know is that the Wisdom of Sirach has a prologue in the Greek Old Testament written, apparently, by the grandson of Jesus the Son of Sirach. He says, “Many great teachings have been given to us through the Law and the Prophets and the others that followed them, and for these we should praise Israel for instruction and wisdom. Now, those who read the scriptures must not only themselves understand them, but must also as lovers of learning be able through the spoken and written word to help the outsiders.” What we see is that what we understand by wisdom is completely bound up in the Scriptures and the study of the bible. And this makes sense. Job may tell us about his suffering, but the book of Job is something deeper than that. It may not answer directly the question “why do bad things happen to good people?” but a careful study of it reveals much into human nature and how we approach people who are in pain and misery. Further, it reveals a God Who is not absent but rather takes pride in those who love Him.

Likewise, the Song of Songs may appear risqué but we see how God fits in to the business of human relationships. In all Wisdom literature, we find recorded the plain fact that Wisdom is the life lived in the fear of God. Of course, by “fear” we can certainly understand the sense of awe and worship when we are face-to-face with the Creator of the Universe. We have to let that fear into our lives because it is a fear that encourages pure love. It is not a fear that destroys it.

[PAUSE]

Wisdom is for every Christian. It is not just for those who are clever, have lots of degrees, or have written many books. We must remember that the Wise King Solomon was tempted into idolatry by his six hundred wives. Indeed, we live in a time when the most intelligent and most academic of people encourage us to give up on God and on our religion. There are even those who lead the Church who seek to draw us away from God by embracing the things of this world – they, too, are modern versions of Solomon. Wisdom is for us all. It is enshrined in Scripture and in the Tradition that arises from and interacts with it, and our fear and love for God compels us to receive it.

[PAUSE]

Lent is the perfect time for sharpening our Wisdom through careful study of the Scriptures, but we do need to ask God for His Wisdom first so that we don’t acquire the wisdom of the world that will reject Him. We should fear that we don’t love God enough and it will be this fear that drives us to know Him better. We remember that we are dust and unto dust shall we return, and we remember that God has given us the Scriptures and the Holy Ghost that we might go beyond our dust and into Eternal life in His love.

Shameless Publicity

I have, over the course of the past three years, been busy on a couple of projects for my Diocese and my bishop.

I am pleased to say that I have been able to publish both of these books and invite interested readers to take a look for themselves by clicking on the links below.

Anglican Catholicism: Unchanging Faith in a Changing World

Whom Seek Ye?

Goodness out of Eden

Sermon for Sexagesima (Mattins)


It seems rather mean to punish all snakes for the action of just one.


It seems rather mean to punish all men and women for the actions of Adam and Eve.


It may seem mean, but is it? How would we know?


[PAUSE]


The consequences of the Fall are far reaching. Adam and Eve are expelled from Eden. This means that all of their children will be born out of Eden, too. If Adam and Eve are the parents of all humanity, then we are all born outside of the place where once mankind walked and talked with God as friends. If we are born out of Eden, then we are born needing the grace of God to find that place again. Human beings must live their lives out in this state of separation from God. We are not left without His love, but our every action can lead us further from Him. We have this knowledge that Good and Evil exist, but do we have the ability to tell the two apart when we are so separated from the true Goodness that is God?


If we are separated from God by the Fall, then we cannot be sure. How can we judge angels and men as St Paul tells us? How can we be salt for the world if we have lost our saltiness? How can we be judges if we are so fallen?


[PAUSE]


It is clear that Christians can behave unjustly to each other. St Paul sees the Corinthians taking each other to court. Our Lord sees His disciples arguing about who is the greatest and whether someone else who is not a disciple can be truly following Jesus. Our judgement is impaired through living outside Eden and it is impaired because we only think we know what Good and Evil are. If we truly did know Good and Evil, then we would want to cut Evil out from the very heart of our being even at great cost to ourselves.


We are no different in this day and age. The Episcopal Church in America has been engaged in lawsuit after lawsuit in much the same way that St Paul saw in Corinth. We see the Church of Rome and the Church of England reeling from the scandal of priests who seem to have forgotten that offending against children and exploiting the vulnerable brings about a punishment so terrible that being drowned with a millstone around the neck would be infinitely preferable. We, too, must be careful as our own sins are no less offensive. All sin is offensive. All sin deepens our separation from God.


[PAUSE]


What can we do? We cannot work our way back into Eden. We are completely unable to amend our lives with our own knowledge of Good and Evil. It is that very knowledge of Good and Evil that sees us thrown out of Eden in the first place.


The only way is through Christ Himself. We must put on Christ, join ourselves to Him and not wander from what He teaches. Through Baptism, we are incorporated into the Body of Christ which can step past the Seraph with the flaming sword guarding the entrance to Eden. Yet, even if we are Baptised, this will not save us if we stick to our own ideas of what Good and Evil are. God tells us what Good and Evil are. So many Christians these days think that fornication is Good, or try to reason that they have not committed it when they have. An act of fornication might be forgivable, but if we don’t believe that it is sinful, how can we be joined to Christ and be with Him in Paradise? Can two walk together except they be agreed?


[PAUSE]


We are not saved by the Law. We are saved through the Grace and Love of God and this means we cherish what He decides is Good and has been Good from before the beginning of the Universe. Evil separates us from Him; Good binds us to Him and it means that we must cultivate goodness in our hearts.


The beauty of penitential seasons like Lent is that we have an opportunity to listen to what God calls Good and pursue that, cutting out of our lives anything that tears us away from Him. If we accept what God calls good then we will not offend His children and cause them to stumble. By clinging on to Christ Himself in Scripture and in Sacrament, we will re-enter Eden and regain that wonderful life that we once had with God.

Begin the begin

Sermon for Septuagesima

In the beginning…

What’s so controversial about that?

Given the much-hyped conflict between Science and Religion, it’s easy to overlook one simple thing: both Science and Christianity make the claim that there was a beginning. We might argue about the nature of that beginning, but we’re agreed that our existence has a beginning. It’s quite reasonable, then, to ask what began that beginning. Whatever began that beginning cannot have had a beginning and must always exist, can’t be made of matter, and must have made a clear choice to begin the beginning. Whatever many modern scientists may say, the belief in our Creator God is rational, reasonable and very plausible. It takes a lot of complex argument to come up with an alternative and, despite their best efforts, no-one – and certainly not Stephen Hawking - has really succeeded.

[PAUSE]

Today, Septuagesima, is the Scriptural New Year. Seventy days before Easter, we begin at the beginning again, reflecting on God’s creative power. Why today though?

As we prepare for the discipline of Lent, we need to go back and remember what we are trying to achieve in Lent. The fasting of Lent may prepare ourselves for Easter but we need to prepare to prepare. We can’t just embark upon a fast that we choose. All things must begin with God and His Creation. We often forget to do so, though. Human beings have been very good at creating their own gods. While the golden calf and the bronze serpent have been consigned to the bin of idolatry, we still have a tendency to want God to be what we make Him out to be. The god we make is often the one who either turns a blind eye to our sins, or makes it so that we haven’t really done any wrong. If we want to find out the God we worship, then we need to see Him as He is, away from our own biases and preconceptions, away from all that we see around us, away from all the things that influence us. We need to go right back to basics. We need to go to the beginning.

What do we see there, in the beginning?

[PAUSE]

In the beginning, we see God. In the beginning is His Word. In the beginning, we see His Spirit moving over the face of the waters that He has just created. We see the Father, Son and Holy Spirit already there before any thing exists. This is what God tells us about Himself as we read the Holy Scriptures. He tells Moses, “I AM.” He tells the Scribes and Pharisees that, before Abraham was, “I AM.” There, in the darkness before the light comes, there is God.

Then comes Creation: heavens, earth, waters, light, firmament, seas and land, grass and herb and tree, sun, moon and stars, animals, cattle and Man. At each stage, God reveals more about Himself. All of His creation is good – very good!
In the very act of creating things, God reveals to us what is good. Goodness comes from God – it does not come from us. Goodness is not made up by Society. For God to say that His creation is good means that Goodness must be there in the beginning before Creation. In the beginning we see that God is good, and goodness is part of who He is.
And this is where Septuagesima comes in.

[PAUSE]

During Lent, we tend to look at what’s good for us. We tend to call the shots by giving up chocolate or television, or taking up exercise or reading, which we do because that’s what we think will be good for us. But do we approach Lent selfishly, seeking our own way of discipline in getting back to God? That’s what many people do, using it as an excuse to find some accomplishment like Movember, or Veganuary, or a month without alcohol. What people outside the Church don’t know is that Christians take up Lent for the love of God, and that this means going right back to the beginning with Him. These weeks of the Gesimas are an opportunity for us to make that preparation to begin again, to return to God in prayer and look at ourselves with Him, seeking how we may make our Lent with His involvement.

[PAUSE]

Can we really begin again? Of course we can! Look, God promises us a new heaven and a new earth if we will but be faithful to Him. He is willing to begin again just as we should want to begin again. The Benedictines have a saying - always we begin again. Each day is new and God always wants us to begin with Him.

This is how we must live life: begin at the beginning until we come to the end and then stop. If God is with us in the beginning, then He’ll be with us at the end, too. You can be sure of that!

The Continuum Blog: a rapprochement

The Continuum Blog: a rapprochement

I suppose it’s a psychological quirk of Anglo-Catholics to be looking back at the past. I like to look back at some of my old posts and see how I have changed.

For once I have done what I don’t normally do: I have deleted a post which no longer serves a purpose.

About a decade ago, I had a falling out with those who run the Continuum Blog over the desires of the TAC to enter into dialogue with the Church of Rome. I was (and presumably still am, I very much hope) friends with one of the TAC proponents of the Ordinariate, though we haven’t spoken in years. I found the language that was being used to be unacceptable and so I made my thoughts plain.

Now, some ten years later, things have changed. For starters, I joined the Anglican Catholic Church to which the Continuum blog owners either belong or are in communio in sacris following the wonderful concordat signed. Secondly, I have climbed down from my rather rarefied position as a Tridentine Anglican Papalist for the simple reason that I came to realise that I was trying to hold on to ideas which I could no longer in conscience defend. I will still call myself an Anglican Papalist only in a much more nuanced sense but I do have to concur that the Ordinariate is not the way for the Anglican to find communion with the Holy See.

Given that the owners of the Continuum Blog are American and I am painfully English, I know that they will take issue with my stance on the Book of Common Prayer. What we certainly do have in common is that we have had to fight and fight hard. We fight, however, on different battle grounds. We cannot expect the cavalry to be expert in the care and use of cannons any more than we can expect the artillerymen to work in combative livery.

To all intents and purposes, the most recent battle for the Continuum Blog is over: they have stated their position with regard to those who leave behind their Anglicanism at the door of the Personal Ordinariate. I cannot blame that exodus in any way, but am rather grieved that they found Rome to be the only solution. However, I do believe the Continuum Bloggers were right to call them out on this even if I do not appreciate the language used. I have benefitted greatly from their wisdom and learning and sorely wish that my own was up to their standard.

In the UK, I am still engaged in battle. We have not the resources of the ACC in the United States, and we have the three big Churches that overshadow us massively, namely Canterbury, Rome and Mammon though I do seriously wonder, sometimes, whether the first and the last are the same. That being said, I also wonder where the second is heading given the bizarre antics of the Patriarch of the West. The Continuum Bloggers are used to being big hitters because they have fought for a quarter of a century longer than we have here in Blighty. We have a lot of work to do here, and it is an uphill struggle and solidarity from our brethren across the pond is vitally important.

Given that I am now in the same fold as the Continuum Bloggers, I feel that the time is right for me to offer the re-establishment of contact with my confraternity over the water. Actually, I think this is something that I should have done a long time ago. Nonetheless, I offer this blog post as an olive branch in the hope that, even if we can’t agree on our positions, we remain part of the same communion and have the same goals as befits the Continuing Churches. I hope, therefore, that my readership will take advantage of the wealth of learning resources on the Continuum Blog and that it may continue in its course of edification and education.

Custard Pies, Spacetime, Joy and Brexit

Joy, beautiful spark of Divinity,
Daughter from Elysium,
We enter, drunk with fire,
Heavenly One, thy sanctuary!
Your magic binds again
What convention strictly divided;
All people become brothers,
Where your gentle wing abides.

Who has succeeded in the great attempt,
To be a friend's friend,
Whoever has won a lovely woman,
Add his to the jubilation!
Indeed, who even just has one soul
To call his own in this world!
And whoever never managed, he should steal away
Crying from this union!

All creatures drink of joy
At the nature's breasts.
All Just Ones, all Evil Ones
Follow her trail of roses.
Kisses she gave us and grapevines,
A friend, proven in death.
Salaciousness was given to the worm
And the cherub stands before God.

Gladly, like His suns fly
through the heavens' grand plan
Go on, brothers, your way,
Joyful, like a hero to victory.

Be embraced, Millions!
This kiss to all the world!
Brothers, above the starry canopy
There must dwell a loving Father.
Are you collapsing, millions?
Do you sense the creator, world?
Seek him above the starry canopy!
Above stars must He dwell.

The Anthem of the European Union nonetheless!

Of course, with Brexit looming, the UK’s relationship with the EU is certainly uncertain and complex. These are strange days politically and we face some very strange times ahead. The media is simply oversaturating our lives with stories about what we can expect and this divided media is polarising our country with this oversaturation. We find ourselves divided among ourselves. Media is a house divided; Parliaments is two houses divided; the CofE is a house divided. And when a house is divided, the question must be asked, “how can this house stand?”

Clearly, many of us are affected by these deepening divisions. Ex-patriots are facing a serious blow to their personal identity; companies are being sold cheaply to overseas buyers; the person on the street is worrying about how life can go on as normal after the threat of a no-deal Brexit. And with the noise of the divided media, the problem comes down to this: in facing such an uncertain future, whom can we believe?

How about this?

Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.

We keep looking at the future and we forget to be ourselves here and now. We lose our existence as beings of the present moment. And in the present moment there can be joy!

My Bishop, the Rt Rev Damien Mead, has to juggle his sacred duties with his secular duties – indeed, he, like every Christian, sanctifies his secular duties by bringing them into God. Like all bishops, his burden is onerous. Yet, I notice he still finds joy enough to take a custard pie in the face all in the cause of charity. Here, in amid the heavy concerns of pastoral duty, there is joy in the present moment.

Our Lord is deadly serious, sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. He bids us to be present to Him in the here and now as we stand before Him in the throes of sin, or throes of repentance. Of course, we Catholics do not regard the present moment as a detachment from the rest of Time but rather set within it as an interface between past and future both of which have existence in the mind of God but also imperfectly within our own minds as memory and expectation.

We are faced with demons of the past and of the future which contribute to our regrets and fears constantly and also numb us to our interconnectedness in History. Today, we have such a forensic attitude to History and such a Statistical attitude to what is to come. We always see ourselves as the observers aloof to both the past and to the future until it they both conspire to impact into our daily lives.

Whatever Time actually is, whether it is an attribute of God’s being or a creature as utterly subordinate to the Divine command as we are, whatever its purpose is, perhaps a mechanism whereby we have an arena to understand how we exercise our free-will and imago Dei, it is something which exists for our Good and for the fulness of our Humanity. That’s something we forget. And we allow both our experiences of the past and our hopes and fears for the future to make us who we are, forgetting that it is God who makes us who we are, above the shrill screeches of vanquished Evil.

As Space is to Art and Sculpture, so Time is to Music and Speech.

A Musician presents a score as a spatial representation of a work that has its expression in Time. Likewise, we experience a painting in snapshots of Time as our senses experience it. Time and Space are always mixed within our lives – both produce the canvas for our existence. Our Eternity with God as Creations of God will be this interplay of Time and Space perfected. How we temporal beings are to experience this extra tempore I don’t know. One suggestion is that, in creating Time, God has necessarily entered into Time and thus travels with us as the only One with the roadmap of the future. I’m not convinced by that, personally – it makes God too small.

Indeed, any understanding of God that we have is too small. His revelation to us sets some impression of how our relationship is to work. His changelessness means that His Holiness is changeless and thus the nature of Sin is changeless, so the relationship that we have to God is clear for our limit understanding. Yet, God stands beyond our thinking and has the capacity to do things that we can find incomprehensible. He is more terrifying, more unpredictable, more unknowable than our Future, more challenging, more exacting, more revealing than our Past. And that’s why we have to learn to trust Him.

This period of uncertainty presents us with a single challenge to trust in God, face both past and future and be joyful. We have to rejoice in the Lord alway. The way we rescue our pasts and our futures is by learning to be joyful once more. This may sound very existential as if we were Camus’ Sisyphus, and in some sense we really do have to cock a snook at Evil by daring to be joyful despite what it throws at us. But we do so always in context for we cannot disjoint ourselves from either past or present. To be Catholic means to mourn with the martyrs in their torture and to exalt in their witness to God. We shudder at the dismemberment of St James Intercisus, the disembowelling of St Elmo, and at the appalling choice that faced St Gianna Beretta Molla who chose her death rather than that of her unborn daughter and we remember with joy that these have overcome Evil at the very source. Their agonies are past: their present is an Eternal Now with their Creator.

Our agonies are to come, but we are given time to be with God and develop our trust in Him. No, this is not going to be easy and we are weak. Nonetheless, we trust God even when things seem black and we rejoice – we rejoice as best we can, presenting before God every single little things that He has given us with gratitude and humility. There is always something there, even if it is a single painless breath that we once took ten years ago. Our loved one dies, and yet there is a joy that we knew them at all. We fall into poverty, and there is a joy that we have enjoyed a little wealth at some point. We lose our health, and there is a joy that we once ran and jumped and played with abandon. These joys may exist in the past but, in sacrificing them to God we find ourselves sanctifying them for the joy of every human being, past, present and future that they may share in their joy and we in theirs and all may share in the joy of God which is always Now, Now, Now!

I do worry about how Brexit will affect my family, their growth and education and livelihoods and I have fears for my own future too. However, I intend, with the help of my Creator, to walk through the door that leads into Tomorrow with my head held high and all my hope set on Him and Him alone in His ineffable Eternity. There may be trouble ahead, but while there’s moonlight and music and love and romance…

So let’s bring on Brexit, and live dangerously trusting in God!

The repentance of tops and magnets

Sermon for the fifth Sunday after Epiphany (Mattins)


Did you know that, according to St Matthew, the first word of Our Lord’s ministry is “Repent!”?


That seems to be the central theme of all of the prophets of the Old Testament and, indeed, all of the apostles of the New. Throughout human history, there is this clear, uncompromising call – Repent!


Does God need to repent?


[PAUSE]


The prophet Amos seems to report that God does need to repent. Twice, God threatens Israel with punishment; twice Amos begs the Lord to forgive Israel; and twice the Lord repents with the words, “this shall not be.” How are we to understand this? Can God sin?


[PAUSE]


Clearly not. How can God separate Himself from Himself? That doesn’t make sense. Perhaps then, repentance is not really about sin and evil.


The prophet Amos records for us his conversation with God. Like Abraham, he pleads for God for other people. Abraham manages to persuade God to spare Sodom if there can be found ten righteous people within the city. Similarly, Amos seems to persuade God from bringing pestilence and fire upon Israel.


We do have to remember that God is omniscient. This means that He knows all that is possible to know. And, if you think carefully, this does mean that He knows not just what is and was and will be, but what could have been, what could be, and what could happen. God knows all the possible consequences and outcomes of every situation. He can speak of possibilities as well as reality.


For the sins of Israel, God could let grasshoppers consume Israel; He could burn up Israel by fire and He knows the outcome. This shows us very clearly that faithless Israel deserves these punishments. Anyone who forsakes the Lord God deserves terrible punishment. This is what God wants us to know, but see how He is open to be persuaded from such a course of action. It’s clear that God does not want to abandon Israel and that He wants to give Sodom every chance to return to Him. There will, however, come a time when there will be no opportunity to do so. Sodom falls, and Israel is led into captivity.


And this is what is essential if we want to know what repentance really is. God turns His eyes from what is His right to exercise punishment, but rather seeks to rescue Israel from Evil through the bringing down of the wicked rulers of Israel and the source of Evil. God repents by turning away His eyes from the possibility of vengeance to the reality of His love. In so doing, He shares with us what could be, but shows us that He turns Himself to us in love and in truth.


God repents by turning toward us as we are in our sinfulness, and bids us turn to him away from that sinfulness. Repentance is about the changing of the mind to what is good and loving and true. It’s clear that God does not want to lose any one of His children, and Holy Scripture is filled with God confronting sinners with the truth of sin and evil, but also with His divine forgiveness and unconditional love seeking our transformation into beings of love, light and truth. Every time we turn from God, He steps in front of us with the same message of love. We just have to turn to Him away from all sin and evil.


[PAUSE]


Sometimes, we seem to be like tops spinning around and around on the spot trying to avoid looking at God in order to follow our own selfish desires. All we need to do is to stop and turn to Him and allow Him to draw us to Himself. We need to be less like tops and more like magnets aligned to our Creator.

Sex and Tolerant Conservatism

Many moons ago, I was introduced by John Beeler to the notion of Tolerant Conservatism, to wit:

Charity and discretion about people’s failings while at the same time not making excuses for those vices either.

The point of the Catholic Faith is to demonstrate what sin is and thus show people who have ears to hear how they have sinned. It is also very much supposed to be a reassurance that, despite one’s sin, God’s love always offers a way back without damnation. We can always be restored to righteousness with no conditions except that we desire to be restored to righteousness wholeheartedly.


I find this incredibly healthy. Even today, I see too many people sit in judgment over other. This judgment is not the same as God’s Judgment: Man’s judgment springs from law which can only say where we have gone wrong; God’s judgment puts things right.


This is why I am so wary of the Liberal movement and its successor – the Progressive movement – both within the Church and in secular society. If by Liberalism, we mean the pursuit of freedom of opportunity for everyone to follow their conscience and excel in what they do, then I am in full favour and a proud Liberal. But that is not what being Liberal means now. Being Liberal now seems about being free to be who we want to be and to be free from the demands of others which may prevent that. The former is more conducive to the cohesion of Society and the latter conducive to its division.


I find it ironic that proponents of this Modern Liberalism only apply it to those who agree with them. As a proud conservative Christian – i.e. one who holds to the traditional teaching of the Church, in particular men and women being substantially different within humanity and fornication being inherently sinful and with all the consequences therefrom– I am judged to be illiberal and therefore not allowed the freedom to be who I am because it impinges on other, more worthy, freedoms of others within Society. I am judged to be homophobic, transphobic, and misogynist and must therefore be censured, censored lest I incense the ire of decent members of Society. This Modern Liberalism is intensely illiberal.


Let us, for example, look at the current question of surrogacy. You may know that the diver, Tom Daley and his (male) partner have had a baby by surrogacy. What we do not hear about is the person who carried that baby in her womb for nine months. We do not hear about her involvement despite the fact that this child bears her DNA. The woman has been whitewashed out of that relationship. The fact of the matter is that two homosexual males have an inherently sterile relationship UNLESS a woman is involved. What we will soon see is that women in poverty will be encouraged to be surrogate mothers for payment. What if the baby is not satisfactory, or disabled, or dies in the womb? I have already heard of a case of a single man who entered into a surrogacy agreement with a woman of little economical means who subsequently bore him a child with Down’s Syndrome. He refused to take the baby or to pay the sum due leaving a woman in penury with a completely dependent child. Is it any wonder that my mind is turning to the Handmaid’s Tale?


Liberalism needs to ground itself in basic facts: we simply cannot be what we want to be. Such a freedom is always going to encroach upon the same freedoms of others. The same desire that wants to see women being regarded as equals within the human genus is actually seeking to define women out of existence because it refuses the basic facts of the sacredness of being a man and the sacredness of being a woman and the intransigence between the two. As a man, I cannot know what it is like to be a woman, and Society doesn’t seem to get this. Society confuses being and doing grotesquely. Look at the retail industry: blue for boys, pink for girls; trucks for boys, dolls for girls; heavy shoes for jumping in mud for boys, pretty princess shoes for girls. Whether or not we have a visceral reaction to a boy playing with dolls, it’s clear that the boy is still a boy and that his preference for playing with dolls does not change what is written in every cell in his body.


Likewise, a stay-at-home father is often regarded as doing “women’s work.” He is not. He is doing his own work in looking after his children and playing a different role from his wife who is earning the money. The work does not rewrite DNA: DNA is a fact, not an opinion and Progressivism needs to ground itself in inalienable facts if it is to do justice to the human condition.


And this is where I am proudly conservative because I regard tradition highly and seek to preserve the corpus of human experience. It seems to me that the Revolutionary Spirit found in the present swathes of Social Justice Warriors seems out to deny the human beings of the past their own existence which has been completed. They are who they were and they were who they are. We have to share solidarity with all humanity throughout all ages because, despite the proud claims of the Progressives, humanity has not changed morally-speaking. Thinking that we have progressed will lead to the Progressives becoming ironically the cause of an enslaved society. It will be the Modern Liberals that will bring about the reality of the societies found in the Handmaid’s Tale, the Hunger Games, 1984, and even the Time Machine.


We can look, say, at the Carry On films which are probably being derided once more. They seem to have gone up and down in popularity since their time due to how politically correct their humour is found to be at the time. However, they are never allowed to be of their time. No, gawping at a woman’s chest is tacky and yet, the heterosexual male naturally finds the female figure attractive. The figure of Sid James lusting after Barbara Windsor is horrific in that Babs is being dehumanised, yet it is also tragic as Sid dehumanises himself as an animal on heat, and it is comedic in that this is how humanity is. That is something that has been expressed in all human culture from the beginnings of human culture. It has always been the source of comedy. Human experience finds much comedy in the figure of the man in the thrall of sexual desire because it is a common experience which conflicts with manners.


It is absolutely abhorrent for a man to force his attentions upon women, and rape is a disgusting way to treat a human being. Yet it is impolite and degrading to remark upon a woman’s body in a way that will make her feel uncomfortable and less-than-human. The comedy arises in this tension between the male animal seeking gratification of his desire and the homo sapiens seeking to rise above his animal instinct and treat a woman with the respect and dignity she deserves. And yet, comedy is the thin median between tragedy on the one side and horror on the other. Conservatism should seek to keep the boundaries by which this line is apparent: tolerance should allow someone forgiveness when they transgress this line and, having transgressed, render remorse, apology and transformation. Every human male should learn to feel disgust at the thought of a woman being raped and seek to check his natural instincts. Every woman should indeed call out any activity that she finds infringes her body autonomy. Both sexes must also recognise that mistakes happen, sometimes with terrible consequences. There needs to be the capacity for forgiveness but it must be recognised that this forgiveness may take a long time to complete and at a cost commensurate with the offence.


Conservatism ensures that we keep to the same standard as always even though some societies have gone against that. Conservatism keeps that ideal standard going above the changes and chances of this fleeting world and, for me, engages in a reflection of the Divine Nature. Conservatism recognises that there are moral absolutes and objective moral values. These values turn Hume’s “ought”s into concrete “is”s. In recognising both the immutability of these values and also the brokenness of human nature, we see Tolerant Conservatism as being a fully Christian view of politics. I don’t doubt that Christians can take other political stances: it is the Christian Royal Priesthood that will sanctify politics. However, the Christian does need to make room for the King of Kings as a king and thus recognise the limits to which human beings are truly free. The fact is that we are free to be the people whom God has created us to be, not whom we create ourselves to be.


The seeds of dystopia are always in our society and they always will be. We need to learn about all kinds of Fascism. Conservatism has its own Fascism as the Nationalist movements of the last century show us; Socialism has its own Fascism which fell largely at the end of the Century and yet still afflicts countries today; we need, therefore, to be on our guard against Liberal and Progressive Fascism which is beginning to build up in our youngsters disillusioned with any ideal that disallows themselves to define themselves as they desire. Once the generation of old-style conservatives has lost control, the Social Justice Warriors will succeed them. They have a chance to see how their politics could become intolerant and alter their stances accordingly. I pray that they will take this chance.

The evil that God does

Sermon for the fourth Sunday after Epiphany (Mattins)


Do you know the difference between good and evil?


We like to think so, don’t we? We know the Ten Commandments and that idolatry is evil and adultery is evil and stealing is evil, et c. However, we also know that the Lord Himself has a habit of showing us up. If we are angry with someone without good cause then we are murdering them in our hearts. If a man lusts after a woman then he is committing adultery with her in his heart. It’s clear that good and evil aren’t as clear cut as we think they are, and that’s our problem.


Can God do evil? It would appear that the Prophet Amos thinks He can!

Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord hath not done it?

[PAUSE]


It’s verses like that that often give people a reason to think that God is a monster but it’s worth trying to understand what Amos is saying here. What is this evil in the city? Other translations have the word “disaster” instead of “evil”. We human beings tend to think of disasters as being a natural evil. Indeed, people like Stephen Fry have used natural disasters to show why they believe that, if God exists, then He is a nasty piece of work.


Perhaps you have seen that piece of film of the baby iguana being chased by snakes. You watch as it scrabbles over rocks as snake upon snake upon snake lashes out hoping to grab the little lizard. How you breathe a sigh of relief when it escapes their clutches! But why did you take the iguana’s side?


Look at it the other way. Think of the starving snakes desperate for some food. They need to eat to stay alive. Here is an opportunity of food and they all seek to grab it. And they fail. Those snakes have to face another day with the pain of hunger.


So which is good and which is evil?


The poor snake has been tarred with being evil because it is dangerous to human beings and because the Devil disguised himself as one.


Perhaps God is evil for making animals behave like this in the first place. If animals didn’t eat each other, everything would be okay.


And here we face a bit of a problem. God loves us and the Cross of Christ proves that. His creation is Good even if we find it hard to stomach sometimes. But that’s the problem – we’re the ones calling it evil, not God. The lightning is terrifying, but it’s not evil. The lion and the gazelle are both glorious examples of God working through evolution and we perceive their beauty. We may not understand wasps, slugs, spider, scorpions, snakes or tapeworms, but a careful study of them shows how perfectly designed for their environment they are.


God’s creation is good. Water is our life, but we can drown in it. Fire keeps us warm, but it can burn us. Things that keep us alive and happy can hurt and kill us. God’s good creation can be used to harm us.


When a city is flooded, God is responsible only in the sense that He makes water do what water does. Whose responsibility is it for building the city where it can be flooded? If a small child dies of starvation in Somalia, God is responsible only in the sense that He created us to need food. Whose responsibility is it that this child has to live in poverty in Somalia in the first place? There will be hotter summers and colder winters under Global Warming. More people will find it difficult to live. God is responsible only for the way that weather follows the laws of physics. Whose responsibility is it that Global Warming started at the same time as the Industrial Revolution?


[PAUSE]


Human beings have to take some responsibility for the disaster that befalls them, and this is precisely what the Prophet Amos is telling us. Rejecting God is bad for our health. Living in a way that dishonours God has consequences for us – in our language it looks like punishment for our sins but this punishment comes simply from the consequences of our actions.


Our Lord Himself tells us that the people killed by a falling tower are not receiving a result of their personal sins. However, the law of gravity says that towers fall and the way that the tower was built clearly had a weakness. The builders have to take responsibility of their failings.


The evil in human society is a consequence of the Evil that infects human nature. Often we are unconscious of the wrong that we do. If we buy cheap clothes then we could be funding modern slavery. If we don’t dispose of plastic safely then we could be contributing to the destruction of ocean life, and thus all life on this planet.


[PAUSE]


This all sounds very depressing and human beings do have a lot of responsibility to take for the state of the planet. However, the point is that we have a Saviour who promises that all things will be made new – new heavens and a new earth – and that we ourselves will be made new. That doesn’t mean that we should forget about things as they are now. We are still affected by the consequences of the human race even if we are not personally directly responsible. We need to show our love for neighbour by being active, reducing poverty, ending oppression, and, above all, showing the love of God in our lives trusting that all things are possible with God.


Just as the sea is made turbulent by waves, so is our human life made turbulent by all our sins. If we live according to the will of God then we bring with us the One Who calms the storm just by being in the same boat as us. By returning to God and obedience to Him, we become instruments of His Peace and do our Fallen World some good.


In the face of the disasters in life, St Paul has these words for all who turn to God:

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.