Continuing Laughter

A few years back, the Anglican Catholic Church had a stall at the Christian Resources Exhibition in Epsom. Much of it was a very positive experience as we met some interesting people and saw the clever things they were doing for the sake of the Gospel. Unfortunately, it was very expensive for a little Diocese, but it was well worth doing. It was fun and good-humoured, except...

There are two instances where such good humour wasn't in evidence. One was a stall by another church group whose remit was to restore orthodoxy to the CofE. They sat in their stall with faces like thunder and, to be honest, they didn't seem to be engaging with people. I guess that the Thirty-nine Articles will do that to you if you eat them for breakfast, dinner and tea.

The other was a persistent female minister who wanted to argue with us constantly about doctrine which she disagreed with vehemently and refused to listen to our explanations. She would make a beeline for us with volleys of diatribes all designed to tell us how awful we are.

Admittedly, we are a "loathsome" church according to some in the CofE. That's understandable: the existence of the ACC is due to a fundamental disagreement as to what Catholic Faith teaches. The Continuing Anglican Church was born of fire and fury. We were angry at the betrayal of what the Church had always believed and taught by those who wanted Doctrine to move with the times. There are still good reasons for us to be angry. This is usually when the CofE claims to speak for all Christians or undermines the faith of those who follow tradition or when they have been completely dismissive of us and actively obstructive. These days, we find that we can work around the obstacles that the CofE episcopacy puts in our way, largely because we have good friends in the CofE priesthood who are willing to ignore the snobbery of their bishops. 

The fact is that we are small but stable in our doctrine and stable in our leadership. And, contrary to the opinions propagated by those who hate us, we do have a sense of humour.

Once, knowing my Bishop's love of classic Disney, I photoshopped a "Mickey Mouse" biretta to his head. Of course I sent it to him. We do laugh at ourselves, of course. It would be hard not to. Sometimes, we seem like the ecclesiastical equivalent of Dad's Army. We all have our eccentricities and quirks. Some of us would be more at home across the Bosporus and thus find themselves regaled with stage whispers of, "don't mention the filioque!" Others of us pale at the sight of a Canterbury Cap, so of course I "threaten" to petition the Bishop to make them obligatory.

We need a sense of humour given some of the flak we get. There's a website out there which might seem to offend us, but we find it funny largely because of the sheer bald untruths it contains! It might as well be a Spitting Image sketch. I take it as quite a compliment to be lampooned so roundly. Perhaps it wasn't meant to offend at all, but rather give us an affectionate "roast".

Humour is vital in this day and age. As our modern civilization is taking a bit of a big hit at the moment, things seem dark. We need to laugh again - not in the sneering, unpleasantness of character assassination that seems to make up most of modern humour and against which St Benedict rails in the rule. We need rather to laugh at ourselves in love, noting our propensity for hypocrisy and hubris, and knowing that humour brings us back to earth with the same sort of bump as falling off a swing after trying to be Superman.

Of course, the seriousness of the present COVID-19 is obvious. People are dying, and that just isn’t funny for their relatives. The Economy will take a hit and many institutions are being tested to the limit. And yet, we are not insignificant little beings that rise and die in a day. All flesh may be grass and all the glory of Man but the flower of grass which withereth and falleth away, but the Word of the Lord endureth forever. And we bear His image. We are not insignificant or why else would God die for us? We are not completely Evil, or why else should we be saved? Our will is not completely corrupt or else why would the Lord take upon Himself a human will?

And that’s grounds for laughter.

We laugh because, despite the agonies and miseries that we bear, we are loved and that love would rather see us suffer pain in order to feel love truly than to disappear into insignificance. We laugh because of the incongruity of our desire and what we really need. We laugh because what seems to be utterly ridiculous to an unbelieving, cold, indifferent Universe is true – God exists, God loves, and God saves.

This is what Continuing Anglicanism fights for furiously. We believe what the Church has always believed and we look at those who have changed the rules, not with derision, but with the same anger that one has for a dearly beloved brother who would rather risk his life in a death-trap of a car than stay with something reliable and true. We don’t do hatred and, if we do then we lose our Christianity. The trouble is, being frightfully English, we don’t do anger very well unless someone puts the tea in the cup before the milk. I suspect our American brethren are the same, only not with tea: Americans can’t make tea!

We may walk apart from the CofE. We may be enraged at what she has become. We may rub our foreheads at the latest misguided gimmick she uses to pull in the crowds. We must, however, look for ways at least to laugh together at the Devil and his vain attempts to win the battle he has already lost and never had a chance of winning, while simultaneously realising that we are still very vulnerable to his temptations. In times of trouble, we just have to force ourselves to gaze at God through the glass darkly and live, laugh and love.

For the record, we had a metal darkly once, but it rusted

Pestilence and Penitence

And so we find ourselves in strange times. I won't say unprecedented as there is always a precedent if we look hard enough. In my lifetime, I have never seen churches closed and the Mass suspended.

Is that a lack of faith?

We do need to balance our spiritual lives and physical lives carefully. The spiritual life should come first because that is where we encounter God most keenly and it is where our immortality begins. Our bodies will rise again with our souls so that we can be the complete person that we are. 

Does that mean that the churches should stay open and the Mass said in defiance of this pestilence?

We should first listen to God. Rather than launch ourselves into action or pious fury, rather than cower behind closed doors, rather than scan the news constantly, we should connect with God. This is where isolation can be a benefit as it forces us to look at the state of our immediate personal environment and do something about it.

So, first we pray to God for the eyes of our souls to be opened and cleared from the detritus of our daily living. Then we can see what He shows us.

Secondly, we pray to God for the wherewithal to put right the state of our souls as far as we are able. This outbreak happening during Lent may indeed be a vehicle by which God meets us in our isolation show us what our real illness is. It will be His sacrifice upon the Cross that will save us from all our sicknesses but we have to apply the remedy, just as Naaman has to do the almost banal and take a bath!

Thirdly, we must pray to God for strength when things get messy. The paralytic let down through the roof has his sons forgiven but when he is healed, he is still expected to pick up his own bed and walk. We cannot expect life to be without struggle because this denies us the opportunity to love in all the fullness of its meaning. We cannot simply continue to hold Masses in proud defiance of this pestilence because that action is rooted in pride, not humility. 

Fourthly, we must pray for the courage to love others and potentially open ourselves up to infection. St Damien of Molokai is renowned for catching the disease of those to whom he was called to minister. He was able to bear a disease that we might not. Our strengths and weaknesses differ from person to person. The only constants are God and Love. We need to dare to love God first and then dare to love our neighbour. That takes great courage at times.

Fifthly, we must pray to be beacons of God's hope and light to them that sit in darkness and the shadow of death. We must obviously pray for the alleviation of the suffering caused by this disease, but we also have to remember that a virus is right on the edge of what it means to be a living thing and deserves the respect that all things living require, for God is the Life. It is our rejection of God that means we must take the consequences of our actions whereby this virus lives in the disorder we created for it. Our hope is in God who will bring us out of death and into life where we are in harmony with all things. And we are to live out this hope and die in this hope so that others may know of God's great love even in the darkest, blackest night.

Then, when we have prayed in isolation, we go out and live joyfully for the love of God and neighbour, venerating the cross of our own suffering, and doing God's will in humility, praying all the while.

When "generous orthodoxy" isn't.

Sermon for the third Sunday in Lent

Does it bother you that we are not in communion with Rome? Does it bother you that we are not in communion with the Orthodox Churches? What about the Church of England?

History is littered with excommunications. Priests refuse to give the sacraments to princes and paupers alike on account of their sinful lives. Bishops refuse to share in the sacraments with other bishops because they believe that they are teaching things which are contrary to the Christian Faith. Our lack of communion with Rome and the Orthodox Churches are facts of history and bear witness to our disagreement about what Christ teaches.

Is excommunication the best way to deal with people who disagree with us about the Catholic Faith?

[PAUSE]

St Paul is writing again to the Church in Corinth. We only have two of the letters he writes: there are at least two more out there somewhere. The main reason he writes again and again is that there are disputes within the Church in Corinth. The first time he writes, there are people within the Church who are trying to separate from each other because they recognise different bishops. They follow Paul, Cephas, Apollos or Christ. Those who say they follow Christ mean that they don’t regard anyone as apostles but go straight to Christ. This first time, St Paul says:

“Now this I say, that every one of you saith, I am of Paul; and I of Apollos; and I of Cephas; and I of Christ. Is Christ divided? was Paul crucified for you? or were ye baptized in the name of Paul?”

St Paul categorically states that the Church should not be divided.

“Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you; but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment.”

By the time we get to the second letter to the Corinthians, St Paul says,

“Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you. And will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.”

He is quite clear. The Church should not be divided by personalities. We cannot reject our bishop if he is teaching what Christ bids him to teach. Nor can we decide to have as our bishop the person who makes us laugh, or has a nice singing voice, or preaches in a particular way. If God has called a man to be our priest or bishop, then He has done so for our good whether we like him or not.

However, if a bishop or priest starts preaching or teaching that which is contrary to the Catholic Faith, then St Paul says we cannot be yoked to him. He who does not preach Christ Incarnate, Crucified and Risen is not for Christ but has been deceived. If any of our priests says that he does not believe in the Resurrection, then he has automatically departed from the Church.

[PAUSE]

There is a phrase that is becoming current in some churches – “generous orthodoxy”. It’s a way that a committed evangelical can be in communion with an Anglo-Catholic. The trouble is, it focuses on the appearance of worship. If the Evangelical does not believe in sacraments then how can he have the same faith as the Anglo-Catholic? “Generous Orthodoxy” is an attempt to unite the Church in appearance but not in truth.

[PAUSE]

If we think the Church needs uniting, then we must unite it on the basis of the truth of what we believe. If we trust our own interpretations of the Bible then we cannot unite with someone with a different interpretation without first entering into dialogue to see whether both interpretations can agree on the truth.

We can be generous in our orthodoxy by assuming that someone who calls themselves a Christian is what they say until they show us very clearly that they aren’t. Anyone who preaches hatred of another human being is clearly not a Christian. St John says, “Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him.” If Christ is the Way the Truth and the Life as He claims, then no Christian can preach hatred of another human soul.

[PAUSE]

We should want to be in communion with all Christians. Our Lord Himself prays for all who believe in Him, “That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.”

It is Christ that truly unites us.

Whether the Pope likes it or not, we are already in communion with him. Whether the bishops of the Orthodox Churches like it or not, we are already in communion with them. Whether we like it or not, we are in communion with any bishop who has received the Apostolic Succession and consecrates the Real Body and Real Blood of Christ in union with the apostles according to the Catholic Faith. There is only one Lord Jesus Christ. If we receive Him, then we are in communion with everyone else who truly receives Him whether we believe that they do or not. This is why we must be generous.

However, we are not to use communion to endorse behaviour which demonstrates that we are not Christian. St Paul says “if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such an one no not to eat.” This is because anyone who thinks these are acceptable to Our Lord clearly does not believe in the same Jesus Christ as we see in History but rather an idol of his own making. We cannot be in communion with false Christs. However, just because we are not in communion with others does not mean that we should stop loving them. Love for our neighbour is always commanded for every Christian no matter who that neighbour is or what he believes.

[PAUSE]

If we are in communion with Our Lord, then this is enough for us to worry about because, in following Him, we will naturally unite ourselves to all those who love Him too.

The Truth Naked

Sermon for the second Sunday in Lent

There is a sculpture of the Crucifixion by Michelangelo which is quite unusual. It displays his usual skill and mastery over the stone from which he carves it. The figure of Our Lord is beautifully life-like and displays the great misery of one crucified. What is unusual is that Our Lord is naked – completely and utterly naked. Nothing is left to the imagination.

Does that trouble you? The crucifix that you’re most familiar with probably shows Our Lord clothed only in a loincloth. This is inaccurate. The fact is that people are crucified naked.

[PAUSE]

Nudity is something that Christians have struggled with for a long time. Some have revered the naked body, others have reviled it.  Pope Pius IX famously has the statues of naked men and women covered up in part of the nineteenth century reaction against nudity. St Francis strips naked before the bishop to show his contempt for worldly possessions. So why is it shameful? Why do people get hot under the collar about it?

God created us naked. Naked we come out of the womb. The first Christians are baptised naked. And yet, the moment someone comes on the television showing a little more flesh than usual, there’s an uproar. Some television programmes exist to display nudity precisely to scandalise “polite society”.

Perhaps one reason is because in our day and age, people equate nudity with sex. People deliberately change their bodies so that they will become more attractive when naked. They cover themselves in tattoos, have hair removed, even go in for plastic surgery so that they will look better with no clothes on. Some people develop dreadful eating disorders because they believe that their body is grotesquely ugly and they so desperately want to be beautiful, forgetting that they already are beautiful.

[PAUSE]

When Adam and Eve sin, they realise that they are naked. The truth of their sin is apparent to everyone like a bad tattoo. And so, in shame, they cover themselves because they know that God will see the Evil that they have done. Now that they know that what Good and Evil are, they know that God hates Evil and that they have to cover up this blemish. We see the young man, probably St Mark himself, stripped of his clothes as he runs away from those arresting Jesus. His nudity exposes his shame. And this shame taints us all.

We find ourselves in bodies that age, wither and fall to bits. Our beauty fades, even for those who try and change their bodies in order to remain beautiful according to the standards of a sinful world. The aging of our bodies is testament to our sinfulness because the wages of sin is death. Our society hates the sight of old people because it reminds them of this. Look at the efforts we go to to stay young! And yet, the aged body is no less beautiful to God than the young body. He created both.

St Paul reminds us of the great promise of God.

“For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven: If so be that being clothed we shall not be found naked. For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened: not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life.”

When we rise again from the dead, we will still have our body. You would not be you without your body, just as your dead body would not be you. But God will give us immortality to put on like a garment. Death will not reign in our bodies and our nakedness will not be shameful because we will be without the sin that separates us from God.

So why wear clothes now? Why can’t we be naked now?

[PAUSE]

St Paul reminds us that we are always to behave respectably. When he writes his letters, the only women with uncovered hair were the prostitutes. So, Christian women should be modest in order to demonstrate a willingness to engage with secular society but not succumb to its excesses. The same is no less true for men. We often forget the terrible part that men play in degrading the bodies of women and their own by encouraging them to dress provocatively. By remaining decently clothed, we show our community that we will not give ourselves over to its disrespect of the naked body.

To God we will always be naked, but then we should want to be naked before God. When we stop hiding ourselves from Him, when we reveal the sins we have committed, the dark thoughts we have imagined and the wicked motives we have harboured, then He will do something about them and make us beautiful again in our own eyes. We will be glorious because our sinful bodies will be like His glorious body. Confession allows us to see our own beauty again.

[PAUSE]

We should not be scandalised by the sight of a naked Jesus. He is naked for us to show that, in Him, there is no shame and great beauty in being the people He created

Reviewing Anglican Catholicism

I find myself quite surprised that my book on Anglican Catholicism has been reviewed on Amazon. Two reviews have been very kind and encouraging. One review takes me to task for using Anglican Catholicism in the title when, perhaps, I should have used "The Anglican Catholic Church". My reviewer is a self-described Anglo-Catholic in the Episcopal Church of the USA and one, I assume, that likes to refer to himself as an Anglican Catholic.

When I was on Facebook, I was a member of a group called "Anglican Catholicism" which had members who thought themselves as such but held to the diverse beliefs of ECUSA or the CofE. This included people who accept the confusion of sexual identity within the sacraments and even one man who claimed that the Quicunque Vult was Satanic in origin! I think I stand by my decision not to dabble in Facebook.

On the other side, "Anglican Catholic" is a term used by the Anglican Ordinariate for their members. These are people who are in communion with the Pope and who reject the validity of their former priests in the Anglican lineage. The fact of the matter is that they are Roman Catholics because they are under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome. 

As I said in my book, the principles of Anglican Catholicism lie in the authority of the Church of the First Millennium with a magisterium built on Scripture, Tradition and Reason in that order of importance, in the standard of worship being the 1549 Book of Common Prayer and liturgies that conform to it, and in the valid Apostolic Succession of Anglican Orders. The Affirmation of St Louis is a precis of this. Agree with these, and you have a claim to being an Anglican Catholic.

My opinion is quite clear. Anyone who accepts the heresies of ECUSA and the CofE denies their right to the term because they equivocate on what it means to be Catholic. There are no female Catholic priests. There are no Catholic spouses of the same sex. That's just how it is. Nor is an Anglican Catholic properly in communion with Rome. People can choose what they like to believe but labels are exclusive not inclusive otherwise they are utterly meaningless. A label makes a discrimination.

Discrimination is a word feared by the Liberal because it always means a discrimination into an oppressor and an oppressed. This is because many Liberals today subscribe to Marxist Critical Theory rather than the language of the Love of God. Their talk is of rights, power, privilege and entitlement never of the love of God that we find in the Bible nor of His promise of Eternal life unless it is all reinterpreted through their Marxist lens.

Discrimination proper involves the simple task of telling one thing from another and treating them with the appropriate action. Discrimination is not always a discrimination against, but Marxist philosophy will always make it so. Women are different from men: they are both deserving of respect and love by virtue of their humanity, but their physical differences to which Science bears witness and their spiritual differences to which Holy Scripture bears witness means that they cannot be treated interchangeably. Their differences must be respected in order to give them the full dignity of being human.

And so the same with Anglican Catholicism. One cannot be an Anglican Catholic if one believes that women can be ordained priest and thus disrespect her God-given difference to be a woman. This has political ramifications for any communion that does.

I had rather hoped that my book would be clear on this point, but my reviewer didn't think that it was a book for him in mind. His opinion is perfectly valid and I'm flattered that he took the trouble not only to buy a copy but to read it and review it. I do believe, however, that the title is correct as it stands and if this offends people, well, that's unfortunate but perhaps necessary. We could all do with being offended sometimes: it reminds us what we truly believe... such as the perfectly Orthodox Christian Creed known as the Quicunque Vult.

The Betrayal of God

Sermon for the first Sunday in Lent

“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

Surely, these are the most chilling words a Christian can hear, for this is the sound of abandonment, an expression of betrayal. If God abandons and betrays us, what hope have we left? And yet, there seem to be many who are indeed victims of betrayal.

A woman thrown out of her home.

A baby thrown under a bush to die.

A man told to sacrifice his only son.

A young man facing his own father who is ready to kill him.

A nation overrun by a controlling empire.

A man whose friends have betrayed him to the authorities or left him to face execution alone.

These images may be found in the pages of Holy Scripture. They may also be found in the news today. Betrayal is real. The sense of being betrayed by God is real.

[PAUSE]

In our abandonment, we are overwhelmed with so many negative feelings. We mourn the loss. We shiver in our nakedness, exposed to the elements where once we were protected. We shiver in fear as we realise our invulnerability and expect agony to strike at any minute. We want to stay still because we don’t know what’s out there. We want to run to escape the danger that is stalking us. And we are left with that single most horrible truth that we are utterly on our own.

If God abandons us then we are so very much on our own but if God betrays us, then we are confronted with even worse emotions: revulsion, loathing and utter hatred. We say with the psalmist:

“Let the sentence of guiltiness proceed against him: and now that he lieth, let him rise up no more. Yea, even mine own familiar friend, whom I trusted: who did also eat of my bread, hath laid great wait for me.”

It isn’t for nothing that Dante describes Judas being in the lowest, darkest, coldest region of Hell. If God betrays us, then perhaps He isn’t real.

[PAUSE]

Many people think this and rejoice. It means that they can do what they want. It means nothing matters and the best thing to do is just to enjoy life and perish in the grave. Make up your own morality – it’s all good!

No, no it isn’t.

The problem with betrayal is that it casts a veil over our eyes and this is not always our fault. Betrayal strikes at us deeply. We are wounded at the core and it is difficult to see how this can possibly heal.

Betrayal is a very long and sharp spear that penetrates deep inside of us to our very heart.

But doesn’t that sound familiar?

[PAUSE]

At the time He is betrayed, Our Lord is doing something vitally important. He gives us His Body and Blood to eat and drink. This is not symbolic, but a real physical reality. We take into ourselves His Body: a Body that is betrayed, wounded at the very heart by the cruel lance, from which wound pours His Precious Blood. In giving us Himself, Our Lord has made the ultimate identification with all humanity. He is here to suffer WITH us and, in suffering with us, He gives our pain and sorrow, our misery at the hands of those without pity, a meaning more glorious than our betrayers want for us.

Our Lord takes all our betrayal upon Himself on the Cross. This cry of abandonment, of betrayal that He screams from the cross is for us. It is our suffering that He brings to His Father in Heaven. It means that we are heard. In our abandonment, we are heard. In our misery, we are heard. In our danger, we are heard. In the agony of the most excruciating torture, we are heard.

God has not betrayed us. He has given us His Body and Blood: He cannot betray us.

But we still suffer.

[PAUSE]

Yes, and that is Mankind’s fault for sinning right at the beginning. Humanity walked away from God first. Our suffering is part of the struggle to free ourselves from Evil to get back to what is Good. When we are betrayed, the veil comes down to obscure us from the truth of God’s goodness. Yet, at the crucifixion of Our Lord, the veil is torn in two.

We suffer and we suffer hard. But whatever obscures the Light of God’s love for us can be torn away by turning to Him. The Bible is full of complaints to God. The point is that He hears everyone. But we have to be patient even when suffering seems unendurable. We have to trust, even when it seems that God Himself has betrayed us. We have to have faith even when we can see no good, no way out, and no end.

[PAUSE]

Lent bids us rise above our feelings to look to the Truth of our situation. We find that Truth in the Cross, and that Cross points to God’s glory and our joy!

Justifying the Lawyers

Sermon for Quinquagesima

Why do lawyers get such bad press?

For many people, the lawyer is an "ambulance chaser", someone who has grown fat charging an exorbitant amount of money to interpret the Law to free the guilty and punish the innocent.

But it's not true.

What is a lawyer for?

[PAUSE]

We have the Law - a system of rules which allow human beings to live together in some form of harmony. But human beings are complicated, so the Law is complicated.

The fact of the matter is that, if human beings weren't so predisposed to sin and doing the wrong thing, there would be no need of the Law: as St Paul would remind us, the Law is there to tell us what is right and what is wrong. That's its function.

And we should be thankful for it.

[PAUSE]

Look at the end of the captivity in Babylon. When the Jews are allowed to leave and rebuild Jerusalem, they need to rebuild their society too. When Ezra and Nehemiah find the books of the Law, the people are thrilled. They weep when the Law shows how bad things have become and they commit themselves to making their society better. The lawyers - people trained to understand the Law - become important. 

[PAUSE]

So we see this Lawyer, one who seems to be well known to the community, listen to Jesus. He has clearly been listening to Jesus for a while because he is able to repeat the commandments that Jesus treasures and bids us follow.

But Jesus is a controversial figure, one whom the Scribes and Pharisees believe is disrupting the harmony and order of Society. This Lawyer seeks to test Jesus, to hear how subversive He is. 

And Jesus turns the tables on him. What should we do to inherit eternal life? Love God; love your neighbour. It's almost obscenely simple. If we all kept these two commandments, there is no need for the Law and no need for Lawyers.

And this becomes uncomfortable for the Lawyer for, out of his own mouth, he has made himself redundant.

Think fast! How can the Lawyer demonstrate that he is a vital, good and wholesome contributor to Society? Seek for the technicality. The Law will still be needed to judge who the neighbour is. "And who is my neighbour?"

[PAUSE]

The answer is that parable.The famous parable. The parable that puts the epitome of the law-abiding, the priest, the Levite, beneath the lawless Samaritan.

And yet, the Samaritan is keeping the very law that the Lawyer has given. Jesus is not destroying the Law: He is preaching it. He shows so clearly that the Law of Eternity is written not in books but in the Word of God. The letter flattens the law to human thoughts which can become obsessed with tiny details so that gnats are strained out and camels are swallowed. 

The parable of the Good Samaritan shows us that we are all to become lawyers - lawyers from the heart. In order to do so, we need Our Lord there in our hearts to give His Law its fullest meaning.

[PAUSE]

Human lawyers do the vital job of interpreting a wildly complicated system of rules so that we can live this life in harmony with others.

We Christians are to be lawyers of the higher law, to expose evil and reveal the good, not to prosecute but to stand alongside the sinner in the knowledge that God Himself will give all good things in order that sin might be destroyed and the human being freed from evil. 

Lent gives us the opportunity to grow the law of God in our hearts, to commit ourselves to living out that Law and to prepare ourselves to reveal that law to a world that is obsessed with legalism and petty detail.

The good lawyer is to be respected, but then the good lawyer is a good Samaritan.

Proving the Rule

Sermon for Sexagesima

Is it ever acceptable to run a red light? Punch someone on the nose? Steal a loaf of bread? Commit adultery?

They say that exceptions prove the rule, but what exactly does that mean?

[PAUSE]

We have the idea that “prove” means showing something to be right, but that is not quite what it means. It’s related to the word “probe” meaning to examine, test or try something out. To prove a rule means to see just how far it works before it breaks down.

The law says we must stop at a red light, and yet there are exceptions. The reasons for not stopping at a red light must outweigh the reasons to stop at a red light. Likewise, punching someone on the nose is acceptable in some situations, like boxing. But what about stealing or committing adultery?

Again we can think of situations where stealing might be very easily forgivable, but adultery is difficult to be so tolerant. You can steal out of dire necessity, in which case the sin of stealing is of much less weight than those who have caused the dire necessity. But is there a dire necessity for adultery?

Stealing and adultery are contrary to God’s commandments and therefore sinful, but the degree of sin depends very much on circumstances. The same is true for all sin: not all sin is sin unto death, as St John reminds us but it does not stop the sin from being sinful. All sin drives a wedge between us and God.

[PAUSE]

Consider our Lenten fasting. We break the fast whether we have a three-course meal or a surreptitious smartie. Indeed, there is no legal compulsion for us to fast at all during Lent. The only reason that we should do so should be our desire to get closer to God. Yet, there is no point in fasting if we’re not going to do anything about the sins that separate us from God. Fasting might help us to control ourselves and help our spirits wage a better war against our lusts of the flesh but we do need to take stock of how we separate ourselves from God.

St Paul warns the Corinthians that we can drink the same spiritual drink from the Rock that is Christ but if we’re going to make exceptions from living the Christian life, then we will perish in the wilderness just as the Hebrews did in their Exodus from Egypt.

If we think that we’re okay, then we need to take heed lest we fall.

[PAUSE]

One of the great temptations we face from the Devil is “it’s only a little thing, God won’t mind this little exception.” We can pinch one of someone else’s biscuits or cast a lascivious eye over some scantily clad woman in a magazine but these can never be rewards for doing something good. The trivialisation of sin has been our problem from the very Fall itself – “it’s only one little apple, Eve!”

This is why we must pray that we do not allow ourselves to think that we are bigger than temptation. We should know that we cannot stand when we are tempted unless given the grace of God to withstand that temptation. But God wouldn’t lead us into temptation, would he?

Oh yes, He would!

[PAUSE]

He would do so if we were so arrogant as to believe that we have no sin. He would force us to look at the exceptions that we make to His rule by suffering their natural consequences so that we might turn and repent. We see that time and time again in the Bible, and time and time again in our lives.

If we are serious in praying to God, “lead us not into temptation” then we need to play our part by noting how vulnerable we are to being tempted and relying on God to find the way out. We will fall into sin again and again but this does not stop God from being willing to forgive us. It just means we have to repent again and again and try and do something about our tendency to sin.

[PAUSE]

It is not God’s Rule that needs to be proved by exceptions, it’s the exceptions that we make that need to be proved by God’s Rule. We have to remember that God’s Law is good for us, especially in an age in which we are being tempted to see it as restrictive, soul-destroying and even inhumane. God’s Law is restrictive: it binds sin away from us. God’s Law is not soul-destroying: it reinforces the soul against the lusts of the body. God’s Law is not inhumane: it is for our growth to become the human beings He created us to be, reunited with Him in Eternity.

It is our love of God which needs to be proved: we already have proof of God’s love for us.

Jobs on the fridge

Sermon for Septuagesima

What is the point of a newborn baby?

[PAUSE]

It’s terrifying to think that there are people who don’t even recognise babies as being real people, but something biological which bears human DNA. Once you have returned the confused gaze given by someone just a few minutes old, you should not be in any doubt that you are in the presence of a very new person who shares personhood with you, who shares life with you, and shares the need to be loved with you. Just as Our Lord suffers you to come to Him, so must we suffer the little children to come to Him, too, because there can be no distinction.

But what is the point of a newborn baby?

[PAUSE]

To ask that question is to ask that age-old question, “what is the meaning of life?”

We find the answer to that question in the second chapter of the Book of Genesis.

“[T]he Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul… And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.”

Is that all we are? God’s gardeners?

[PAUSE]

Well, yes, in a way. We exist in order to serve God, to love Him and to love our neighbour, to live in a world created by God, and to take pleasure in that work.

The trouble is that we human beings have a tendency to look down on labouring. We see some jobs as being beneath our dignity, jobs for somebody else to do. We have a tendency to say, “I’m to clever and important to clean toilets.” And what we miss is the dignity that God gave us to be workers for Him.

For He is not just an employer, He is our Father. He longs to reward us and give us good things. He takes great pleasure in what we do. He is someone who profits by it. There is nothing that we can do or make that is already His. He is the loving parent who sees the child pick up a crayon and draw a wobbly picture of Mummy and Daddy and Spot the Dog and is thrilled to bits and pins it up on the fridge. We have a greater dignity being labourers for God than we give to those who work for us. If we want to rejoice in what we do, then we must give others an opportunity for them to rejoice, too.

Of course, we’re not all created to perform the same tasks. St Paul reminds us that there are apostles, evangelists, prophets, teachers, pastors, workers of miracles, healers, assistants, politicians and interpreters. There are tent-makers, soldiers, fishermen, carpenters… the list goes on. We are all created to serve God in being the person that we are with all our strengths and weaknesses.

The trouble is that the presence of Sin and Evil often obscures who we are.

[PAUSE]

As we approach Lent, we are faced with the opportunity to fast and pray for a release from our sins and to recover our mission in life, the reason God made us. No, that doesn’t necessarily have a simple answer and it may be only when we have passed from this life that we find out. That’s okay. The point is that we use whatever means we have at our disposal to work for God. Prayer and fasting help us to see more clearly what God wants us to do.

[PAUSE]

This Lent, let us direct our prayers and fasting to discover God’s mission for us as individuals and as a Church. Perhaps, then, God will pin our work up on His fridge.

Purifying Ecclesiastical Decrepitude

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

The church building is showing its age. The white plaster is greying and cracking in places. The woodwork is riddled with woodworm. The brasswork is dull and without lustre. The altar frontals are fading and getting a bit tatty. The ornaments are covered in dust. The corners of the ceiling are a bit mouldy. The floor needs a good sweep. It all looks tired and faded and a bit miserable.

This would seem an accurate picture for many, especially in those places where the congregation has dwindled and aged to the point where the regular upkeep of the building is becoming progressively more and more difficult. It’s all rather sad and discouraging. But what can you do?

[PAUSE]

The aged Simeon probably feels the same way. His body has aged. His legs hurt. His eyes are not as keen as they once were. Here he is, about to perform a ritual that he has performed hundreds of times before, for people who are probably just going through the motions. Jerusalem is controlled by the Romans who care nothing for God. The Jewish Religion is controlled by a ruling elite of Scribes and Pharisees who are more interested in the tassels on their fine robes than worshipping God in their hearts. Everything seems a bit worn out, baggy and a bit loose at the seams.

And yet despite all this, with his customary professionalism and kindness, aged Simeon spies the young couple entering into the temple with their little boy and prepares the rite of purification for this young mother.

And the house is suddenly filled with glory. Why?

[PAUSE]

There are many remarkable things about Mary and Jesus which we should love to think upon. That’s what the church year is for so that we can pay close attention to all those little things Our Lord does for us and what Our Lady points out to us. The purification of Mary is very closely associated with the events of the Epiphany of the Lord in one particular aspect.

Our Lord goes through rituals that are unnecessary for Him. He is circumcised, but He is already a child of God. He is given presents by Magi but doesn’t need them. He is baptised by St John but has not sinned. He attends a wedding and, even though His time has not yet come, turns water into wine. Our Lady comes forward for purification and yet is already pure. If these are all unnecessary, why do Our Lord and Lady go through with them?

You might say that these are acts of humility and obedience, and you would be right. You might say that these allow Our Divine Lord Jesus Christ to identify with us fallen human beings, and you would be right. There is one more thing – purification.

[PAUSE]

In His Circumcision, Our Lord takes the whole Law of God upon Himself and liberates us from its letter. He prefers us to circumcise our hearts. The Law is purified by Christ’s obedience so that we can be justified by Faith.

In His visitation by the Magi. Our Lord receives gifts of gold for His Kingship, frankincense for His priesthood and myrrh for His burial. In so doing, He purifies our understanding of kingship, of priesthood and even Death itself.

In His Baptism, Our Lord purifies the waters of repentance into waters of incorporation into the Church and membership with Him. He purifies Baptism so that the outward sign receives its inward grace.

In turning water into wine, Our Lord purifies marriage so that a man and a woman may receive grace to live a married life as God intended it as the necessity of water to live is transformed into the richness of God’s love in good wine.

In presenting herself for purification, Our Lady is shown that through her purification, God purifies the Church, giving Light to lighten the Gentiles and the Glory of God’s people, Israel. For God has promised, “I will shake all nations, and the desire of all nations shall come: and I will fill this house with glory, saith the Lord of hosts.”

For Simeon, the general decay of his body is transformed by the truth of God’s promise. He can die in peace but he realises the glory of resurrection and the restoration of that which is falling to bits. All he has done is kept faithful to God as the light fades and things go stale, and his faith is rewarded by this vision of glory in the face of the little tiny Messiah.

[PAUSE]

And so it is with us. Things look as if they are falling to bits. Institutions are crumbling; church buildings are falling into disrepair; Society is losing sight of what is right and wrong. We need just to let it happen – hard to do, but this is how we make our sacrifice. God will shake, God will judge and God will purify

Our job is simple: we continue. We continue to hold the faith. We continue to say the old prayers. We continue to proclaim the same Gospel as was first proclaimed in the Resurrection of Our Lord. We continue to believe the old faith as the Ancient Creeds express. We continue to fight for God’s eternal law of love for all human beings. We continue to hold the same hope that the first martyrs held. We continue to do what we can for the love of God. Like Simeon, we shall see our lives, our homes, our churches and our societies purified and glorified in the Light of Lights.

And we, too, will depart in peace and then see the Glory of God Himself eternally.

The lips that speak the word

Sermon for the third Sunday after Epiphany

One big criticism that we get from other criticism is that all of our public prayers are read from a book. They will say that, if we were praying from the heart, we would not need books at all! These Christians will use St Paul's words that the letter kills but the spirit gives life.

Are we right to defend our worship against this sort of accusation?

[PAUSE]

Well, first, let’s remember that when St Paul talks about the letter killing but the spirit giving life, he is talking about the Law and how we apply it. It is the spirit of the Law that makes it worth following otherwise all kinds of injustice follows if we just apply the letter of the law without due consideration. This is why the Lord says that the Sabbath is made for Man not Man for the Sabbath. Indeed, this is the point, the Sabbath, the Law and the Liturgy are made for Man, not the other way around.

But the words of our liturgy are very, very important.

Through the prophet Hosea, God calls people back from the worship of idols,

“O Israel, return unto the Lord thy God; for thou hast fallen by thine iniquity. Take with you words, and turn to the Lord: say unto him, ‘Take away all iniquity, and receive us graciously: so will we render the calves of our lips. Asshur shall not save us; we will not ride upon horses: neither will we say any more to the work of our hands, Ye are our gods: for in thee the fatherless findeth mercy.’”

We are to approach God with words and render the sacrifice of the “calves of our lips”. We are to approach God with words from the heart. It is through words that our covenant with God is made. It is through words that, when the priest says, “this is my Body”, the Lord Jesus Christ utters them and makes the sacrament happen. The words we say today join with the words that Christians have always said and these words join us with Christ.

We use words because we can do nothing else. No sacrifice will do to absolve us from our sins except the one perfect sacrifice of Our Lord upon the Cross. The words of our liturgy bring us to that sacrifice and make us part of it.

[PAUSE]

We say the words in common with our fellow Christians who stand around us and we find solidarity with them. We pray together; we worship together; we glorify God together. At least, we appear to do so. What if we’re just saying the words but our mind is elsewhere?

This is very common and it takes a disciplined mind to focus on what we are saying all the time and to mean every word. We should strive for that. What fixed liturgical prayer does for us is to form a scaffold on which our spirituality can develop and grow provided that we put the effort in. Our mind may wander off but it has something to come back to.

We must remember that we are trying to talk with God which is very difficult when the physical world around us distracts us from His presence. He forgives our distraction readily, but we do need to try and focus on what we are saying so that it comes from the heart as well as the lips.

[PAUSE]

We know that words are very powerful and we must use them with care. With our words we can affirm God or deny Him. With words we can build up our neighbour or destroy him. With words we can enter into a covenant with the Great Creator Who will give us His very self for our food.

Look at what happens when God the Father utters a Word.

Tweeting the Gospel?

Sermon for the second Sunday after Epiphany

That’s a very strange response to an introduction.

St Philip comes up to Jesus and says, “Lord, Andrew says there are some Greeks outside who would like to see you.”

And Jesus does not say, “bring them in, please Philip.” He does not say, “do you know what they want?” Nor does He say, “tell them to go away.” Rather He starts talking about His impending crucifixion. It all seems a bit like answering the doorbell by saying, “I’m going to die, shortly!”

How might the Greeks react?

[PAUSE]

In order to understand why Our Lord responds in such a peculiar fashion, we have to look at who these Greeks are. Jerusalem is a very cosmopolitan place in which many people from all over the Roman Empire come for various reasons. We have already witnessed Our Lord’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem riding on a donkey which has clearly raised up interest among the crowds gathering for the Passover. It is very probable that these Greeks are either converts to Judaism or that they are considering the possibility of becoming Jews. In seeing Jesus arrive into Jerusalem in such a fashion, they clearly want to know Who He is and why this has happened.

And they are Greeks. This means that they are not just Gentiles by birth but they are people renowned for their thinking. They are interested in what Jesus has to say and intend to weigh Him up by His words and teaching.

That should make a lot of sense to us. In a General Election, we are faced with a number of candidates to choose from. Surely, it makes sense to make an informed choice based on what the candidates produce in their speeches and in their campaign literature. It becomes a matter, then, of choosing the candidate whose policies we like the best or, in most cases, the policies we dislike the least.

This is how people approach their religion, too. They try to find the religion that best suits them and go for that. We see many people today taking little bits from one religion and little bits from another. Why? Because they choose the bits that suit their own spirituality as they understand it.

 [PAUSE]

There are fewer and fewer practising Christians in the West and, yet, still Christmas, Easter, St Valentine’s Day and Halloween are still popular festivals. Non-Christians still enjoy Nativity plays, Easter Egg hunts, and nice cosy messages of love. Many reject the Christian Faith and they do so because it does not meet with their spirituality or their worldview. They have their own spirituality and their mind is made up.

In making up their minds, they have begun a process that hardens their hearts. Our Lord quotes the prophet Isaiah and tells those around him that God “hath blinded their eyes, and hardened their heart; that they should not see with their eyes, nor understand with their heart, and be converted, and I should heal them.”

Just as God has ordained that things fall when we drop them, and that electricity flows when we switch on the plug, so this hardening of the heart is a consequence of the unbeliever’s choice which follows the pattern that God has set. Once the heart is hardened, then the voice of God will sound only like a rumble of thunder.

[PAUSE]

The Greeks think that Jesus will give them words of wisdom which they can take away with them to do with what they will. They want a soundbite – a tweet! Something to make them feel warm and fuzzy. The only thing that He will give them is the Cross and the sign of Jonah. The Greeks want wisdom and Jesus will only show them His agony, dangling on an instrument of torture.

Our Lord’s teaching is bound up in His actions and cannot be separated. Christmas Day, Easter Day, St Valentine’s Day, Halloween, all have any meaning because of the Cross. The Cross is the centre of Christian teaching and, if we diminish its importance, then we diminish Our Lord, and we diminish His Resurrection.

And yet, if we embrace the Cross fully, truly and humbly in full recognition of Our Lord’s love for us, then we will hear the voice of God speaking to us and His Word will be of infinitely greater worth and comfort than any warm, fuzzy, inspirational message found in a tweet.

Haunted Churches?

Sermon for the first Sunday after Epiphany

It has been said that the British Isles are the most haunted place on Earth. Whether or not that’s true, people find that some of the creepiest places are ancient churches and the ruins of abbeys. There’s almost an expectation to see some apparition wandering about through the ancient stones. Why are churches so creepy, especially at night? Surely a church is supposed to be a holy place?

[PAUSE]

Christians are required to believe in ghosts – no, not the sheet-waving, chain-clanking spectres of classic fiction. We believe in the Holy Ghost which means that we are meant to believe in at least one spirit. What does this mean?

Our Lord says, “God is a Spirit: and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.” The image that we have to dispel is that God is like the ghosts that appear in stories. God is a spirit. He does not have a body; He cannot be seen; He is like the wind which blows and we feel its effects. Clearly, Jesus is talking of the Holy Ghost here, after all, Jesus is not a spirit. He has a body; He can be seen and we can touch Him.

In saying this, Jesus is challenging an error that has persisted throughout human history: that God has a place on earth in which He dwells. The Jews and Samaritans have been arguing about where to worship God for a long time and the question has divided the people of God. In calling God a spirit, Jesus is saying that God is like the air we breathe which is always here but noticeable when it moves. You can’t say that the air is over here but not over there.

Jesus is also saying that there is more to our life than just physical matter and this is where we are now. So many people say that there is nothing beyond what we can see, hear, touch, taste or smell. They will say that when you’re dead, you’re dead and that’s it. They don’t believe in ghosts. Others believe that their gods are physical objects. This is why some people worship idols: they are the gods that can be seen. Yet, we are not to worship a god made of matter. We are to worship God in spirit and we are to worship Him in truth. Spirits truly exist.

But Jesus is saying something more.

[PAUSE]

Jesus always refers to God as His Father and that He is to be worshipped, so we worship God the Father. Jesus says that we must worship God in spirit, so the Holy Spirit is indeed God. Jesus says that we must worship God in truth, and Jesus calls Himself the Truth, so Jesus must also be God. Here, in this time of Epiphany, the Holy Trinity is seen again in the words of the Lord Jesus Christ even as the Holy Trinity was revealed at His Baptism in the river Jordan. There are three Persons but One God. This cannot happen with things that are made of matter. God is a spirit and we must worship Him in spirit and in truth.

Does this mean we have to worship Him in His spirit or with our spirits?

[PAUSE]

The answer is both. We are beings with a spirit, too, because we live and breathe, and we are conscious. We are not mere matter, but an inseparable mix of body and spirit. Take one away and we cease to be human. We are not to see ourselves as biological machines but as beings that reflect God Himself in our spirit and in our body, just as Our Lord Jesus Christ is both human and divine. Because we have a spirit, we must respect our bodies and keep them fit for the service of God. Because we have a body, we must curb its appetites so that we take care of our spirits.

[PAUSE]

Why are churches so creepy? Are they haunted? It is more likely that in an old church building, we become aware of the presence of the spirit of God moving just as the cold draughts move around the building. God is everywhere, but we feel His presence more keenly in holy places, none more so than in the Sacrament of the altar. In a holy church, we have nothing to fear for it is the presence of the spirit of God who challenges our pre-occupation with being physical things. It is when we are unnerved by things beyond our understanding that we remember our duty and kneel before the Spirit of God in worship.

Thinking about “Thinking about conservative Christianity and divisions”

I came across this article by the retired CofE priest Stephen Parsons whom I have mentioned before here. Mr Parsons has been a voice for those who have suffered much abuse at the hands of disgraced ministers such as John Smythe and Peter Ball from the Evangelical and Catholic wings of the CofE respectively, and the institutional covers-up that these two abusers have relied upon to continue their work. I am conscious that when he writes, he does so with much compassion for those who have suffered much. In this piece, however, he does display a deeply unfortunate passion for the Liberal Agenda and thus, in my mind at least, undermines his compassion for those who are abused.

I have said very clearly that I believe that the Liberal Agenda is not properly Christian and I have given my reasons. This is something that I have to argue with my friends and family. I do think that the more I see of the Liberal Agenda eating its way through the Established Church and consuming good ministers and worshippers, the more I am convinced that this is a pernicious evil perpetrated to tear people from the loving arms of their Creator. I may be wrong, I must accept that, but this conviction has been growing faster and faster the more I see posts such as Mr Parsons’.

Mr Parsons’ main focus in this article is against conservative Christians, and it seems that, by this, he is concentrating on the conservative Evangelicals. The trouble is that there are conservative Catholics too and it is speaking against us that his arguments do unravel.

We do share many points of agreement. It is true to say that some conservative Christians reject “many of the achievements of two hundred years of scientific research.” There are many who, like the Westborough Baptist Church, scream out their hatred of homosexuals and proclaim God’s approval of their hatred despite this being so very much against the commandments of God. 

As a conservative Anglican Catholic, I accept very many of the findings of Science but I put them in their proper place as discoveries about Creation in itself. Yet, I do not believe that Science is a source of theological authority. Human beings may indeed be compared with the beasts that perish and that is how Science treats us. Scientific studies of the brain produce insights into the biological mechanism that is our body and gives ways of treating disorders, but it still misses out on the existence of the mind, of subjective consciousness and even something as simple as conservation of existence, i.e. why we should continue to be at any given moment. In that Science can be done by the complete rejection of God, we must question its role as being able to contribute anything theologically meaningful. We need God’s self-revelation in order to do anything theological. This means, if we want to believe in God, we have to have something definitive that tells us Who He Is.

And we have just that. Aside from the philosophical “proofs” of the Existence of God, we have the existence of Jesus Christ as a Historical Fact. We have the writings of the Evangelists in which modern scholarship is in agreement with the scholarship of the past that these Gospels are eye-witness testimony to the Life, Death, Resurrection and Teaching of Our Lord which have been passed down through the centuries in a myriad manuscripts copied faithfully from the First Century. That only tiny, non-doctrinal differences occur in these many, many manuscripts shows not only their reliability but, also, the importance that each scribe placed upon these words in order to get them right. So we have the Gospels. And we have the writings that came out of these from St Paul, St John, St Peter, St James and St Jude. We have Jesus, the good Jew, quoting the Hebrew Canon thus giving Christian weight to the Hebrew Scriptures. We have that writings of those who knew Jesus, who knew the apostles and those who read them and listened and wrote about them. We have those great arguments, the Councils in which those arguments were framed and settled. And we have the first millennium in which the Church, though always teetering on the edge of schism was largely in agreement about the Doctrine of Christ that it received.

In short, Conservative Christianity has already thought about, mulled over, and reached clear decisions about things and any of us can read these deliberations to this day. We simply do not need to re-invent the wheel. It is also why Conservative Catholics are in closer agreement to each other than many Evangelicals who do indeed seem to want to re-invent the wheel every time they split.

Thus, Mr Parsons is deeply wrong when he says, “The idea that even the words of Scripture do not give us certainties is very threatening to many conservative Christians.” The idea does not threaten us: it does not make sense to us. I really do not think Mr Parsons has actually thought about Conservative Christians at all. Perhaps he cannot: perhaps he and I have no real language in common with which to come to any theological agreement.

My real issue with Mr Parsons is his lack of Faith and how he is willing to put forward a fear-mongering of his own through a tyranny of whim and emotion whilst trying to undermine the very thing by which Christians know they are saved. Faith is about cultivating something as a certainty even in the face of doubt. We conservatives believe that God exists and cling to that based on the evidence that we have which must be the theological evidence that we have received. For conservative Anglican Catholics, this evidence is Holy Scripture, Holy Tradition, Holy Reason, each being the foundation of the next. This is faith, and it is faith in God through our Lord Jesus Christ. It is a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Greeks and, clearly threatening to the liberals.

Yes. Salvation is indeed a work in progress, but the immutability of Christian Doctrine provides the rod by which my progress in holiness can be measured. We are not “once-saved, always saved,” there is no single moment of conversion. But while we rehearse our formulae, we move along the groove in a record towards the centre that is Christ, not around and around in circles as perhaps Mr Parsons thinks we live.

The truths of Science are horizontal and limited to the 11 dimensions (or whatever it is now) of physical reality and they do not touch upon the real issues of life and death. Science does not give us our morality: it tells us how different patterns of behaviour work through various Game Theoretic methods. Where then does Mr Parsons get the belief that the Church should be “liberal, inclusive and open to the findings of scientific research” especially when “liberal” seems to mean “willing to reject what God commands”, “inclusive” seems to mean “rejecting the notion of sin”, and “open to the findings of scientific research” seems to mean “accepting an authority which cannot make any theological or moral statement”? If the liberal believes that the Bible is not authoritative then why bother with the commandment to love one’s neighbour? Or why not reinterpret “love” to mean whatever you want. Actually, that is indeed what seems to be happening given ECUSA Bishop Michael Curry’s equivocating sermon at the recent Royal Wedding.

In praising the integrity of human nature to be spiritual and creative, Mr Parsons seems not to see that there is this business of sin infecting human nature and both common sense and basic psychology are just as infected aspects of our humanity as anything else. Of all people, he should know how sin destroys lives as he bears witness to it often enough. The reason that Smythe and Ball are exposed is because there is a firm, immutable standard against which they fall short and are seen to fall short. The same is true for the Westborough Baptist Church: they are seen to promote evil because they disobey one of the Lord’s Commandments very obviously. The fact of the matter is that human beings have fallen; they sin; they are sinned against; they sin because they are sinned against and they are sinned against because they sin. If there is no fixed moral compass then sin goes away and all this suffering is irrelevant.

If we try to save ourselves then we fall into the Pelagianism that was condemned by the Early Church. For Mr Parsons, that Pelagianism is expressed when he says, “Does what you believe enrich your life, enable you to flourish as a human being and bring you into touch with a God who gives you hope, love and joy?” whereby we become responsible in telling God how we want to flourish. I see little flourishing of the children slaughtered by Herod. I see little flourishing of St Paul languishing in prison. I see little flourishing of people dying in dark prisons for their faith, for the very certainty, the very conviction of the Faith that Mr Parsons believes “allows absolutely no scope for disagreement or doubt”. In fact, I see in what Mr Parsons says nothing that values the witness of the countless millions who have suffered for the Faith that the Liberal Agenda wants us to hold back on the grounds that we have more to learn about God from sources that are fundamentally opposed to God, such as Scientific Materialism, Freudian Psychology and Cultural Marxism. The Liberal Agenda robs the martyrs of their dignity and robs us of the possibility of being martyrs in our own way.

I am sure that Mr Parsons would agree that the one common theme that characterises the human condition is struggle. We have to struggle with God in order to realise that we should not want to be the people that we want to be, but rather the person that God wants us to be. That means a denial of worldly thinking. It means a denial of the social expectations of political correctness, of the language of entitlement and diversity, of sexual freedom. Sex may be a gift from God but it is not a right, nor is it always a gift that can be exercised. Our Lord suffers because we have to suffer. He did not have to suffer given His omnipotence, but He clearly feels that it is necessary to suffer because of the reality of our own pains. We have to do things God’s way and this means our life becomes that of service to the Gospel in order to proclaim the freedom that is coming in the morning. For the conservative Christian, nothing is more apparent than the fact that we are passing through this life. Mr Parsons would want us to settle down and be comfortable in this life on the grounds that it is psychologically better for us.

If conservative Christianity presents a “take it or leave it” approach to doctrine then this is because we believe firmly in in One God to which the three Creeds bear witness. Yes, God has made us free to choose whatever we want to believe. This doesn’t change the fact that there is One Church, One Faith, One Lord, et c. It means that one’s personal experience cannot be as authoritative as Scripture, Tradition and Reason. Experience is a means of hypothesis to test against the revealed truth. It is valuable but not one single experience is automatically authoritative. It means that we do wander in doubt and difficulty and that we can only ever build on what is already there. If God says that Fornication is a sin, then it is a sin no matter how liberating it feels. If only a heterosexual couple can marry in the eyes of God, then it cannot be changed no matter how badly we feel. If Society expects us to sin, then it is Society that will be judged harshly when God comes again in glory.

Where I am in agreement with Mr Parsons is that the legalism of certain expressions of conservative Christianity needs to stop. The monk obeys the Benedictine Rule because he knows it will keep his community together as they follow the Catholic Faith to God. He submits himself to its discipline, even to its sanctions and stripes, because he knows that his earthly body must be kept in submission to his spirit. Both body and spirit are God's, but both need to be brought into line for the good of the self and of the community in a more perfect love for God. It isn't a question of whether He loves me: I exist therefore I am loved. It's whether I love Him that matters more, and this involves a denial of myself and a conformity to Him. The self that I deny is the one defined by myself, by my experiences and by my society. I am of God's creation, corrupted by the sin of my species, and saved from the Hell of living in these sins by my Creator. If I follow Mr Parsons' programme of progress, I shall find myself drowning in the saccharin senses of self-righteousness and self-satisfaction at actuating my own identity in the very Hell that I long to leave. 

Give me my cross now so that I might stand a chance of resurrection in Christ when the time comes.

Sons in quicksand

Sermon for the second Sunday after Christmas

One thing that simple biology tells us very clearly is that we can only be the child of one father, genetically speaking. Of course, we could be a child by being adopted by someone who is not our genetic father, but whom we regard as our father with no less affection.

When we pray the Lord’s Prayer and say “Our Father,” who are we talking to, God or the Devil?

[PAUSE]

Okay, that’s an alarming statement, but St John says:

“Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God. In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil: whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother.”

Thus, if the Devil really is our father, then the Lord’s Prayer takes on a very sinister and upsetting turn.

Is it true that we know that we are not a child of God if we sin? We know that we sin perhaps daily, perhaps in the same way each time, but we repent, confess our sins and return to God, don’t we? Surely, the Blood of Christ washes our sins away so that we are regarded as sinless before God?

The key to understanding St John is to understand his language. When he talks of committing sin, he means a continual committing of sin. He says that if we really are the children of God then we must be seeking to stop sinning. It is very true that if we do sin then we do have an advocate in Heaven, namely Our Lord Jesus Christ, but if we are putting no effort into stopping sinning then all our praises of God are just lip-service. If we make put no effort to stop sinning then we make the Blood of Christ cheaper than water. St John is clear: we cannot go through life saying, “yes, I sinned, but God will clear up the mess.”

[PAUSE]

The saints of the New Testament are very clear about one thing. We are passing through the world. We are not to become worldly. The reason is so very clear. We are being given the opportunity to return to God and that this should be the focus of our life. Our intention should be purely on accepting God’s grace by which we become His children. This is our Hope Again, St John says:

“every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure.”

We are not passive in our salvation because we have to turn to the Saviour and to grab His hand in order to be pulled from the mire of sin and the grasp of the Devil. We are to purify ourselves. What does this mean?

A glass of pure water contains only water, just water and nothing but water. A bar of pure gold contains only gold, just gold and nothing but gold. Being pure is about being focussed on one thing, and that is what we need to do in order to work out our salvation with fear and trembling because in being pure we are aware of Our Lord’s saving grace within us making that salvation happen.

The man who gets stuck in quicksand has all his attention focussed upon his rescuer. He calls to him, listens to him and reaches out to him and is thus pulled from a wet, dark and smothering death. He doesn’t concentrate on the quicksand which is swallowing him for that would lead to despair and also it would stop him from paying full attention to his rescuer. We do not save ourselves but, by striving to be purely devoted to Christ, we are making ourselves available to be saved and co-operating with the grace He gives us.

[PAUSE]

In purifying ourselves, we progress in ceasing to sin because we are focussed away from sin and on to the One Who saves us, redeems us and sanctifies us. Further, we become focussed on how much He is like us and we like Him because, in our purity, we shall see Him as He really is.