Chants for Anglican usage

I have just created a playlist of chants for traditional Anglican usage in a domestic setting. 

I will try to add to it, so if there are any requests, please let me know.

Merbecke's Benedicite

As requested.

Pointing the finger

A reflection on St John Baptist, St Peter and St Paul.

Sometimes people point in different directions to the same thing.

Creeping out from under the sheet

Sermon for the third Sunday after Trinity

It's a fact that babies have to learn disgust. What we may find disgusting is largely due to what our parents tell us is disgusting. Daddy won't eat the half-chewed biscuit tells Baby that you just don't eat food that someone else is eating.

Breaking disgust, then, is going to be a difficult matter.

[PAUSE]

St Peter sees a sheet from God containing animals that Jews would call unclean. St Peter feels disgust at seeing these and being told to eat them. His upbringing has taught him this disgust. His reaction comes from the gut. And yet God Himself tells Peter that he can eat these animals.

You can imagine a bit of a conflict going on in St Peter. His upbringing and his faith in God are at odds. How would you feel about having to eat a mussel for the first time. Peter knows that, for love of God, he must overcome his disgust.

And then Cornelius' envoys arrive.

[PAUSE]

St Peter probably does not feel disgust at entering a Gentile's house, but his upbringing tells him that there is something not right about it. Jews and Gentiles are not meant to mix. 

Yet St Peter knows he must overcome this reaction because God tells him that Cornelius is to be accepted into the Church. In one fell swoop, God condemns racism by showing that all races may become Christian and worship Our Lord Jesus Christ.

But wait! Didn't God Himself say which animals were clean and unclean. Didn't God create St Peter's disgust? Didn't God tell Jew to separate from Gentile? Didn't God thus bring about racism?

[PAUSE]

We have to understand the Old Testament carefully. At the time of Moses, the races of the Gentiles identified with their pagan gods. To these Gentiles, the Lord God was just a god of the mountains, and one among many. These Gentiles engaged in orgies and even sacrificed their babies to their false gods. And God, Our Lord God, made it clear that the Jews were to have nothing to do with them. They were not to be like them. 

To show their separation, they had to demonstrate their cleanliness by washing, by eating the right things, and by living a code of moral cleanliness. This is how Israel was supposed to be a holy people. This is why the Jews of St Peter's time make much show of their purity, even by showing that they have purely Jewish ancestry.

And then in comes Cornelius. .

[PAUSE]

Cornelius is not like other Gentiles. He worships God. We know he worships God because the Holy Ghost shows St Peter, and shows us too, that Cornelius is truly worshipping God. He deserves to be baptised; he deserves to be allowed to come to Christ.

Cornelius is not a Gentile who worships a false god and so God separates him out into His Church at St Peter's hands.

[PAUSE]

God destroys racism by showing that anyone who truly worships Him is part of the Church. Jew, Gentile, Male, Female, Slave, Free - all may enter the Church and be welcomed in by hands and a heart that have been pierced just so we might enter in. 

What doesn't happen, though, is that Evil become Good, and God makes that clear. Only those who worship Him may enter the Church. Those who go against His will through hating Him or hating neighbour need to repent and worship God - not for His sake, but for theirs.

The animals on the sheet were not evil: they were different. What God calls clean we should not call unclean. If we do then it is the Evil that creeps out from under the sheet that will consume us.

Being right in the com-box

I felt rather sorry for the administrators of a certain Sarum-based Facebook group.

Consider a parishioner asking about the Sarum Rite in behalf of his female priest in ECUSA. All goes very well until some smarty-pants comments with "She?"

The meaning is very clear. Smarty-Pants does not believe that women can be ordained. As far as I am concerned, he is spot on: women cannot be ordained Catholic priests - the Church has spoken authoritatively on that. Yet there are those who believe otherwise for the best of intentions if not the best of reasons. The point is that Smarty-Pants has missed the point. So monoscopic is he that he wants to be right in every single com-box, even when it is not the issue.

The question was about the Sarum Rite and its execution, not on the finer points of Catholic Dogmata.

What irks me most about Smarty-Pants is that I know that I am little different and am just as likely to derail an com-box conversation in order to press an unnecessary point. 

I saw another post in a Gary Larson cartoon group in which a DIY-evangelist posted a picture of Samson along with a form of sermon. The reaction was as expected and it seemed many were driven away from Christ rather than invited to come to him.

This is the difference between invitation and coercion. From what we understand of the parable, we are invited to the Wedding Feast of the Lamb. God does not force us to the feast with a battalion of angels armed with red-hot pokers. At all times, we are respected and the context of our social intercourse is due that respect. If we want to invite people, then we have to invite them at a time in which the invitation is appealing, in a way in which makes the invitation appealing. Treading on people's conversations shows a level of contempt for their integrity as human beings.

But then, perhaps social media does not help. it provides too much anonymity, too many hiding places and too little accountability for our words. I saw another FB post which said, "only num-skulls post in com-boxes" and I have some sympathy with that.

The main ingredient in being an ambassador for Christ is humility. The moment that we cultivate a certain smugness for being right, the moment we believe that we are the champions for orthodoxy, the moment we assume the prophet's mantle, the further down the ladder we descend into the grasping hands of the Evil One.

We are living in a world in which polarization threatens to tear us apart and destroy the love that we need to have for our neighbours. We can be more orthodox than St Athanasius but if we have no love and spew our orthodoxy into the face of everyone in every situation and in answer to every question, we are nothing, have nothing and will receive nothing from God because we will have shut Him out of the temple of our own idol of our smugness.

God save us all from com-boxes so that we might become human beings again!

Forgiving before the fact

Sermon for the second Sunday after Trinity

After Our Lord, one name dominates the New Testament and it is not St Peter.

St Paul not only features in the Acts of the Apostles, he is credited with the authorship of more books of the Bible than anyone else from the lofty epistle to the Romans to the little epistle written on behalf of of a runaway slave.

Yet, when we first meet him, St Paul - or Saul as he is then - is a persecutor of Christians. 

Saul becomes a Christian: he is saved from his sins. 

What justice is there for those he persecuted?

[PAUSE]

The fact of the matter is that St Paul is an accessory to murder. He consents to the death of St Stephen; He works to have Christians arrested; he delivers them up to the authorities who will torture and kill them. That means that the guilt of their blood is on his hands. Where is justice for the persecuted? If God forgives St Paul doesn't this make a mockery of the sufferings of those whom he persecuted?

[PAUSE]

First, we must note that before he is even converted, Saul is forgiven. St Stephen cries out for his forgiveness at the point of death. This is something Christians do. They forgive, and they are ready forgive not for their own psychological benefit but for the good of the person who wrongs them. The Lord's commandments are clear: love means forgiveness. It means abandoning pursuit of personal justice so that God can bring good out of evil. 

St Stephen's murder is not justified. It doesn't somehow become good just because God uses his murder to bring St Stephen home to heaven and to bring Saul to Christ. All sin is abhorrent to God and murder is sin. Yet this is God's victory over sin and evil. This is His victory over the Devil, that the intentions of those who perpetrate evil are thwarted when God brings about something greater. From the death of St Stephen comes the conversion of St Paul. From the conversion of St Paul comes much of the New Testament and, from the witness of the New Testament, more come to Christ. Those who seek to perpetuate evil find that good will spring forth. The trap that they have laid for others, they have fallen into it themselves.

There is only one unforgivable sin and that is to sin against the Holy Ghost. It is the hardened wilful act of denying the truth, calling evil good and good evil. If we refuse to come to God then He, out of love not insisting on its own way, will respect that decision. Saul does not commit the Unforgivable Sin.

But what about justice for the people he persecuted? They may have forgiven Saul, but can we forget? Can the horrendous acts of genocide that we witnessed in the last century be forgiven? Can all that pain and sorrow, that fear and bloodshed, that humiliation, degradation, and pitiless indifference to the humanity of others just be swept away in an act of forgiveness?

If we think God will forget all that misery then we have failed to hear his words to Saul: why persecutest thou Me? When we injure another person, when we hate another person, when we commit any form of inhumanity against any one of our brothers and sisters, we do the same to God Himself in the person of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Every blasphemous act committed in the Holocaust was as much committed against God as it was against any Jew, any homosexual, any non-conformist, any Roma, any Jehovah's Witness or disabled person.

God's justice is not like our justice. We can only try a criminal, find him guilty and sentence him to be punished. But we cannot make wrong right. We cannot mete out perfect justice. How can we find justice for the millions who suffer because of the actions of one man?

We cannot.

God can.

The best we can do is forgive and ask God to bring about His good in the lives of even the most ardent criminal. In recognising the humanity of criminals, in recognising criminals as our brothers and sister, we stop the Devil's intention to separate us from God and from each other.

This is hard.

But all sin is against God, and God is ready to forgive. The more that we forgive the more that we become like God. And still further, God promises to wipe every tear from our eyes. All will be well and all will be well and all manner of things will be well. 

One heart to bind them all

A reflection for the feast of the Sacred Heart. Why we need to reflect on the mending of society by destroying "white superiority" with an "unEnglish" feast.

Making your apologies

Sermon for the first Sunday after Trinity

Have you apologised?

The word has changed its meaning even in the last hundred-and-fifty years. When St John Henry Newman issues his apology for his life, he isn't saying sorry for being born, he's defending his life, his thinking and his controversial decisions against an attack made by Charles Kingsley who seems to suggest that Catholics can't tell the truth.

Making an apology originally means to defend our position when it has been challenged. Over time, it has come to mean saying sorry for wrongdoing. We see the Archbishop of Canterbury apologising for the Amritsar massacre, but he isn't defending it.

Sometimes, though, Christians need to apologise but not be sorry. We also need to make sure that we do not confuse apology with Christian teaching or with prophecy.

[PAUSE]

We see St Philip teaching the Eunuch. The Eunuch is interested, eager to learn and open to ideas. All St Philip has to do is explain the Christian Faith so that the man may learn. St Philip is teaching.

We see St Paul before the Areopagus. Questions are being fired at him and he is defending the Christian Faith. St Paul is apologising.

We hear Elijah confront Ahab and Jezebel for leading Israel away from faith in God. He proclaims what God is telling him. Elijah is prophesying.

The Church has a duty to do all three, but not every Christian is called to be a prophet, apologist and teacher all at once.

[PAUSE]

The problem that many Christians have is  that they believe that they are automatically called to be prophets. These are the Christians who will indiscriminately judge other people based on their lifestyle. The will not invite sinners to repent, they will demand people repent. They quote Holy Scripture at people and condemn people to Hell. 

And yet, Holy Scripture is very clear, to be a prophet requires a clear call from God because prophecy is proclaiming what God has specifically told us to say. It is not an excuse to use the Bible to condemn those who disagree with us to Hell. It is those who disagree with God who condemn themselves to Hell and only then in very specific circumstances not generally known to others.

To be a prophet requires a life of complete dedication. The great prophets spend their lives in the wilderness listening to God and to God alone. It is not for everyone.

[PAUSE]

Other Christians believe that they have been called to be teachers. They will explain what they think Holy Scripture means and try to force their interpretation on people. The Church's teaching is clearly based on Holy Scripture, Tradition and Reason and those whom God calls to teach must spend a long time in prayer and study. The good teacher educates and informs, presenting what the Church teaches and then letting the student make of it what they will. The bad teacher indoctrinates, denies the student the opportunity to think for himself, and refuses to answer genuine questions. Teaching is not for everyone.

[PAUSE]

All Christians, however, are called to make apologies. St Peter says:

"Sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear: Having a good conscience; that, whereas they speak evil of you, as of evildoers, they may be ashamed that falsely accuse your good conversation in Christ."

We must always be ready to say why we believe what we do. In order to do this, we need to be right with God. We need to listen to Him, spend time in prayer, and question ourselves and God as to what we really believe and why. We need to listen to the Church's prophets and teachers so that we know we are not walking away from God by making an false God in our hearts.

[PAUSE]

A time will come when every Christian will have to stand up and make their apology, speaking the truth from their hearts. A time will come when every Christian will have to present Christ to the world anew. A time will come when every Christian will face those who fundamentally disagree with God and show them that they are loved even if they don't want to be.

But there will never be a time when any Christian will ever have to say sorry for loving Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Poles together?

Again I find myself struggling with social media. One of my previous posts unintentionally offended a friend just by the misuse and unqualification of a single word. My aim was to demonstrate the idealistic and unreasoned aims of many coupled with the extremism of a few could be highly destructive. By misusing that word, my post took on an entirely different view which was not what I wanted.

This exemplifies something that is happening in our civilization today. 

I won't pretend that I am not concerned with present events. Indeed, perhaps I am too concerned with them that I want to retreat into a cosy cloister. I am not a sociable animal but I do love my fellow man - or try to at least. What I am witnessing is a polarization of society as a result of initially forced separation. Our Lockdown has kept us apart physically; our social media has encouraged us to engage in separation of ideology. It's no wonder that there is unrest.

Again I refer to the civil unrest due to racial tensions. We do have a problem here and it can only be resolved by refusing to be separated and respecting the humanity of others. We need to be generous enough to allow the other to be wrong.

Unfortunately, that falls into the same problem as the Prisoners' Dilemma. It can only work if everyone commits to coming together for working out the problem rationally. As soon as one person refuses to enter the debate, the goal is lost. 

Should Sir Winston Churchill be allowed to get away with what we now recognise as racist comments? Well, given that he passed away in 1965, we cannot do a thing to bring him to account for them. Is defacing his memory the way forward? Well, it brings the issue to light and allows the pain of others to be heard, but it does not account for the fact that he led this country in a desperate fight on behalf of many minorities against one of the worst racists this world has ever seen. What we can do easily lose in all this is our sense of proportion. I am reminded of Ghandi's racism against those of African heritage and yet look what he does for Indian emancipation.

We have to be reasoned and willing to dialogue with those with whom we disagree with even most profoundly. While I understand that protests give an expression of solidarity and sound a louder note of dissent, destructive iconoclasm which terrifies everyone on every side cannot be allowed to take over. We are returning to the days of digging up Oliver Cromwell in order to try them for regicide and hang in order to feel that justice has been done. This also has its parallel with mad Pope Stephen digging up Pope Formosus at the Cadaver Synod. What justice does it bring?

If we want justice against the dead, we cannot ever hope to administer it ourselves. All we do is vent our frustrations on corpses and statues to the extent that we become unreasoned.

If we want true social justice in which all bigotry, prejudice, slavery, bad blood and various phobias are erased, then that judgement can never be passed by a human being or even a council of human beings. There will always be an accusation of bias or privilege no matter who makes the judgement.

The only true judgement can come from one who knows what it is to be human and from whom all justice flows. Only God can right all wrongs. Only God can bring the dead to account. Only God has the ability to judge every instance of sin fairly and for the good of both oppressed and oppressor alike.

Until that Day of Judgment, we can only do our best, and our inability to create a justice that benefits all human beings means we have no choice but to forge relationships with those who may even wish us dead. This is precisely the content of Our Lord's commandments to love God and love neighbour. It's the best we can do, even to the extent of living together in the most profound of contradictions.

Now, it may well be that one of my readers takes issue with what I have written. If that is the case then I wish it to be understood unequivocally and absolutely that I have intended no offence, no belittling of anyone or their positions, no diminution of their humanity or any aspect of their humanity. I have tried to be honest and truthful. If that offends then I have nothing to say except to express profound sorrow and regret that the offence has occurred and hope that a cup of tea, a biscuit, a prayer and a hand of honest and committed friendship might be some amelioration.

The Body from the outside.

A reflection for Corpus Christi.

Back to School

The more I think about things, the more I realise that I should not be a Romantic. Before I get myself into too much trouble, I ought to explain.

The more I look at social media and listen to the news, the more I hear noise of different groups of society shouting past each other.

Take the slogan, "black lives matter".

Of course they matter and any Christian with half a brain can see that. The logic is simple:

A) All black people are human.

B) All human beings matter to God.

C) All black people matter to God.

Oh! Hello Barbara!

(A) is easily verified empirically.

(B) is easily deduced from Holy Scripture.

(C) follows because Barbara says so.

Corollary:

(D) If black lives matter to God then they matter to everyone.

Thus by Modus Ponendo Ponens, black lives matter to everyone. Denial of that is a denial of logic, science or of God.

It seems so dry but look at what this does not say.

"Black lives matter" does not say "only black lives matter." What it does suggest is that immediate attention needs to be brought into the state in which black lives are regarded. That this is being focussed on indicates quite clearly that there is an impression that black lives don't matter. 

Let us be clear. If a house is on fire, we don't first treat the house next door for dry rot because "all houses are equal". The immediate need must be addressed. If black people are being led to believe that their lives don't matter, then there is a contravention of the most simple argument that I have reproduced above.

The trouble is that "dry logic" and critical thinking is being passed over for indoctrination rather than education. I am all for Evolution being taught in schools as a dominant scientific theory but I would also like to see Creationism taught as well if only to force students to think about what is needed to convince them of a fact and to cut out the rubbish.

I am not a literary person though I do appreciate the deep truths of the human condition that great literature reveals. The danger is that, without the dry scholasticism, and with an uncritical acceptance of a "woke" agenda unrecognised by the German Romantics, a popularist and unchallenged idealism can take over and read into statements things that aren't there. 

How easily the fact that we are justified by faith becomes being 'justified by faith alone", or "black lives matter" becomes "only black lives matter". 

My own life has been affected by seeing monasticism in a romantic ideal or by pining for chapels rigged up with appropriate decor. My Sehnsucht  might be an emotional reality but it does me no good unless it is examined rationally, dispassionately and precisely. How the popular caricatures of Shelley, Schubert and Schelling would frown at my pressing the human spirit for definition and precision!

If the protests in America and the UK show us anything is that things have been allowed to fester without rational dialogue being allowed to reveal the situation more clearly. Outpourings of emotion and wilful ignorance of people's plight simply will not do: both will fray civilization. Those who clamour for a romantic ideal revolution will be appalled at the reality of that revolution. We see the effects of what happens when emotional reactions control reasoned discussion in both the French Revolution and First World War where an impassioned nationalism, false Romanticism takes over, colours language and stifles Reason.

I will take dry scholasticism over this popular, unreasoned romanticism any day. 

Non-Athanasian Idols

A reflection on why the Athanasian Creed is important

Salvation in Triplicate

Sermon for Trinity Sunday

 

You have the idea by now, haven't you? The Father is God, the Son is God and the Holy Ghost is God, and yet there be not three gods but One God. Easy to say, isn't it? But do we take the time to wrestle with it in our prayer?

It's very often the case, when we pray in ourselves, that we confuse who we're praying to. We might start our prayer to the Father and end it praying to the Son without realising it. Does it matter?

It depends on how you're praying.

[PAUSE]

One of the great and most misunderstood heresy against God is that of Modalism. It's misunderstood because people either miss it completely, or see it where it is not.

Modalism arises when we try to concentrate on there being One God and make the Father, Son and Holy Ghost just disguises of that One God. We could say that the Father and the Son are one God so, because the Son dies on the cross, the Father also dies on the cross. Clearly, this is wrong. The Father is not made man, so He does not die upon the cross. 

We also make the same mistake if we try to baptise in the name of the Creator, the Redeemer and the Sanctifier. Our Lord is very clear: we are to baptise in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Why is this the same mistake?

[PAUSE]

Modalism occurs when we get the relationships between Father, Son and Holy Ghost wrong. All three are the Creator but they don't all create in the same way. All three are the Redeemer, but only the Son is crucified as part of that redemption.  We do not receive the Body of the Father, or the Blood of the Holy Ghost. All three are sanctifiers but not in the same way. 

The same man may be an accountant, a bricklayer and a soldier, but this does not divide him up into three different men. Likewise there are many bricklayers doing the same job, but this doesn't make them one man, nor does it tell us anything more about who each of these bricklayers are.

 Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier are job descriptions: they express what God does, not Who He is.

Listen to St Paul:

" For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God."

St Paul prays the Father to give us the riches of the Holy Ghost. He prays the Holy Ghost to strengthen us. He prays Christ to dwell in us. All this so we might be filled with the fullness of God beyond our imagination. This is our salvation in a nutshell. 

We are saved by God, each member of the Holy Trinity contributing to our justification, purification, and sanctification in different ways according to their personalities but as One God. That One God hears our prayers but if we only think of Him as one who answers prayer, then perhaps we don't really know Him at all.

So how should we pray?

[PAUSE]

There is no hard and fast rule for private prayer, nor should there be. We encounter God as we are and we encounter Him in each Person of the Trinity in different ways. However, we need to ensure that we worship the One True God, and this means praying in such a way as to recognise the Unity of God without treating the Trinity as identical persons. We worship one God in three persons.

Perhaps then, we should model our private prayer on our public worship. Public worship brings us all together before God, and our love for each other should bring us ever closer together so that we become one humanity in a multiplicity of persons reflecting God Himself.

Our private prayer to God may start confused but as we ascend in our love for Him, our words will become unnecessary and we shall sit and be with Him as He is in His incomprehensible majesty. 

Know your friend

Sermon for Whitsunday

We hear the rushing wind. We see the tongues of fire. We see the Church born as the breath of Our Lord Jesus Christ breathed in Easter Day ignites and changes the world forever.

We see the effects of the Holy Ghost. We We hear St Paul tell us of the war between the flesh and the spirit. But do we know what this Holy Spirit is?

[PAUSE]

Yes we can all recite our creeds and enjoy the faith that they express: we know that the Holy Spirit is fully God and yet is neither Father not Son, but this doesn't really answer the question. To see Jesus is to see the Father, but not the Holy Ghost. What kind of being is the Holy Ghost?

[PAUSE]

To understand this, we have to go back to Good Friday at its most awful and, at the same time, at the moment of greatest triumph. All four Gospels agree on one thing, when Jesus dies, He gives up the ghost.

Of course, Jesus dies only in His humanity. It is His human spirit, His human ghost, that leaves His body. This tells us a lot about ourselves. We have a spirit and this spirit is not the same as our soul.

What's the difference?

The spirit is to the soul as the breath is to the throat.

If we understand that the soul is what it means to be us - our us-ness - then it is the spirit that expresses that us-ness.

If the Holy Ghost is like the breath of God then He carries with Him all that God wants to express. Jesus is the Word of God and a word needs breath to be spoken. And so Jesus is conceived in the body of the Blessed Virgin by the Holy Ghost. 

Thus the Holy Spirit is the bringer of life to humanity for Our Lord breathes His Life into us. But Jesus says that He is the Life, and St John says that God is a spirit. Thus God is His own Spirit. The Holy Spirit is God.

[PAUSE]

St Paul and St John both say that we must live spiritual lives. The Life of the Spirit is at war with the Life of the Flesh. This does not mean that we must hate our bodies, but rather love them more by not allowing them to rule our lives. The Life of the Flesh is what our body lives when we say that we have neither soul nor spirit. The Life of the Flesh is like sailing a ship without a rudder in a storm and hoping that we will end up at our destination. The Life of the Spirit is to hold our rudder firm and directed to the light in the darkness of the storm. The Life of the Spirit is to recognise the direction of the Holy Ghost. 

It is important to remember that the Holy Ghost does not contradict what we read in Holy Scripture or in the Church's doctrine because He gives it to us. If the Holy Ghost gives us God's grace and the Holy Ghost is the expression of Who God is, then this tells us what Grace really is. Grace is God's active presence in our lives. 

To live the Life of the Spirit is to live lives of grace and sacrament. It is to allow the Spirit to take direction and lead us into Love, Joy, Peace, Longsuffering, Gentleness, Goodness, Faith, Meekness and Temperance. 

[PAUSE] 

In this battle between Flesh and Spirit, it isn't our enemy that we need to know: it is our friend. The Friend is always with us: we just need to ask Him for help. This Friend is God Himself.

A conviction of spirit

Sermon for the Sunday after the Ascension

When the Lord ascends into heaven, we find ourselves looking back to see what he has already told us to see if it makes sense after His Resurrection.

At the Last Supper, He tells us that He will send His Spirit and, lo and behold, He appears after His Resurrection breathing out His Spirit onto the Disciples. But what does He say at the Last Supper?

"And when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: Of sin, because they believe not on me; Of righteousness, because I go to my Father, and ye see me no more; Of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged."

What does He mean?

[PAUSE]

The message of Our Lord has always been that we must repent from sin and to Him. Throughout His ministry, He battles the authorities of a world that has become spiritually bankrupt. He has preached against those who make up their own version of righteousness. He scolds those who call people out as sinners but without doing anything about their own sin. He exposes those who make up their own sins.

Is it any wonder that the Holy Ghost wi do exactly the same thing? 

The Holy Ghost will show that the world is wrong about sin because it refuses to believe Our Lord's clear statement that He and only He is the Way out of sin and death and into Life.

The Holy Ghost will show the world is wrong about righteousness because Jesus ascends into Heaven, so His followers must live by faith in Him who is unseen and that this faith is the beginning of our righteousness.

The Holy Ghost will show the world is wrong about judgment because the way the world makes judgments is based on a law of accusation and recrimination rather than the Law of God which seeks to make right rather than  condemn. This is why the prince of this world can only be Satan Himself. The Holy Ghost will reveal this fact to all of Our Lord's Church.

[PAUSE]

Often we are told that the Holy Ghost is working in the Church only by people speaking in tongues, or by excitable exhibitions of worship, or by miraculous healings. While He may certainly be present in any one of these ways, the fact remains that we know that the Holy Spirit is working in the world, in the Church and in our lives when we see people turn to Christ, when we see people repent of their sins and when they renounce evil.

Does that sound familiar?

[PAUSE]

This is what it means to be baptized in the Holy Ghost. At our Baptism, we make these promises either for ourselves or for our godchildren. It is a commitment to allowing the Holy Spirit to live in us and in our children. This is the grace that we are given at Baptism for we gain the conviction to reject the world in favour of the true worship of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

And the Holy Ghost will give us the courage of our convictions

Captive captivity

For today

Moving in Anglican Circles

I returned to Facebook after a couple of years off mainly to keep in touch with family and friends and participate with my wider church and the G4 community that I now joyfully belong to.

However, within a fortnight, I have felt like dropping the whole thing again due to the actions of some people in a supposedly "Anglican Catholic" group. Admittedly, the term "Anglican Catholic" is not owned by my church, though it does hold the legal right to "Anglican Catholic Church". This means that there is a discrepancy between what some see as a synonym for "Anglo-Catholic" and our more deliberate use of the term.

However, what I found in this group was what I would describe as a lack of definition of terms. Thus, in the group, we had members of the Anglican Communion, members of the Anglican Ordinariate, and members of the G4. Some were liberal, supporting heterodoxy of the Anglican Communion. Some were roundly Protestant, seeking to enforce the Thirty-Nine Articles at every stage.

It meant that the same arguments would be held again and again. The same old points would be raised, the same old questions asked, the same old arguments raged. All the newcomer to the group had to do was say, "hooray for women priests!" or "do Anglican Catholics believe the XXXIX Articles?" and much virtual blood would be spilt as the Reformation happened all over again. And I got sick of it.

The things that infuriated me most were the invective levelled at each other, or the claims to great personal doctrinal authority by people speaking codswallop, and the constant talking past each other. There was no common language: everyone said just what they wanted to hear. The moral that has taken me all to long to learn is that if you join a Facebook group to be educated, you will only be educated in the fallenness of mankind.

One thing I love about my Anglican Catholic Church is that it is clear what it believes and states it. If you cannot accept that belief then peace be with you as you travel on. If you can accept our belief then will be happy to walk with you.

The fact of the matter is that we are a broader church than people would give us credit. We can accommodate Masses in the Roman style with the "Big six", triple candles at paschaltide and biretta. We can accommodate Masses in the Sarum style. We can even accommodate prayer book Masses. The provisor in each of these cases is that the liturgy has to be allowed by canon. We may not use the Roman Missal, nor the Sarum missal nor the prayerbook Missal that does not conform to the 1549 and thus the 1928 US prayer book. For example, the canon of the 1662 BCP is too truncated for our public Mass.

In our Church, we have those who accept the Perpetual Virginity, Immaculate Conception, and Assumption of the Blessed Virgin. We have those who will not pray to the saints, preferring the "direct line". This is all fine. However, the principle that we must follow is given by St Benedict.

"As often as any special business has to be transacted in the monastery, let the abbot convoke the whole community and himself state what is the matter in hand. And having listened to the counsel of the brethren, let him settle the matter in his own mind and do what seems to him most

expedient. And we have thus said that all are to be called to council because it is often to a junior that the Lord reveals what is best. But let the brethren so give counsel with all subjection and humility that they presume not with any forwardness to defend what shall have seemed good to them; but rather let the decision depend upon the abbot’s discretion, so that he shall decide what is best, that they all may yield ready obedience: but just as it behoves the disciples to be obedient to the master, so also it becomes him to arrange all things prudently and justly." (Chapter III of the Rule)

For any Catholic Church, we must read "bishop" for "abbot" in the above.  In our Anglican Catholic Church, we MUST accept the bishop's authority in all matters of faith that are lawful and honest. That is what we sign up to when we join, and say our canonical oaths. In signing up to being Anglican Catholic, we are subordinating our opinion to the rule of the Church and accepting an authority that is above us. We must accept the hierarchy. That is a humiliation and obedience. The upshot is that we learn humiliation for the love of Christ and we learn obedience to Christ for love of Him, especially when we have to do as we are told when we don't like it.

On the other hand, the wise bishop will seek to be as accommodating as possible within the bounds of his own obedience to the Church and the Catholic Faith. This means not only accepting Low Church worship in a High Church but cherishing it as a valid way of doing things in accordance with Our Lord's command.

I have been blessed by those in my Diocese whose liturgy is different from my own. I have been blessed by those who do not see Our Lady as Immaculate but love her nonetheless. I have been blessed by all my confraternity because they represent the colour and breadth of strict Orthodoxy as expressed in the Anglican Catholic Church.

I am glad to have left certain Facebook groups and they are probably very glad that I have left due to my holding to the ancient Catholic Faith. My hope is that we learn to live truly and authentically within the parameters of what is orthodox and, having given our opinion, move on in seeking first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, at all times seeking to maintain true charity especially with those who disagree with us.

Commitment to the Lukewarm

Sermon for the fifth Sunday after Easter

We have travelled with St John to five of the seven churches. Now it's time to visit the last two. Or do we have to? Can we just say that we've visited them and leave it there?

Obviously we can't stop! We've started so we must finish.

And that's the point.

[PAUSE]

The churches of Philadelphia and Laodicea have very different attitudes to commitment.

Philadelphia has seen a lot of persecution by the Jewish authorities of that area and is under constant threat of being wiped out by people who hate the Christian Faith. Jesus says that these particular Jews who hate so much are in a synagogue with Satan himself. And yet, the Philadelphians are holding on to the good that they know. And Jesus says that their patience is His patience. Just as they share His suffering, He shares their suffering. Commitment goes both ways. And by patiently enduring persecution, they will share in Our Lord's victory.

The Philadelphians have started, and they will finish. They are committed.

Not so the Laodiceans.

[PAUSE]

The Laodiceans, by contrast, are entitled. They have a thriving economy, excellent medical facilities and hot running water - all the mod cons. They have become comfortable and their love for Our Lord has cooled: it has become lukewarm. How will they act if they suffer the same persecution as the Philadelphians?

You might struggle in thinking that they are committed Christians.

[PAUSE]

Some people have a very peculiar idea of commitment. These are Today's Laodiceans. They will join the church enthusiastically, go to all the festivals, put on all the vestments, and meet all the dignitaries. They will take up positions in the church that look good and hold honour. They might even swear canonical oaths in order to make their position look more serious and responsible. 

However, then the bishop asks Today's Laodiceans to do something that they don't want to do. Or the bishop might ask Today's Laodiceans to stop doing something. The result is the same in either case. The moment that the bishop exercises his rightful authority, they take umbrage and leave. They will not endure. Their commitment is worth nothing.

And Jesus says, "No man having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.”

[PAUSE]

The problem is that Today's Laodicean always has an eye to the exit, just in case. They will not set sail because they always have one foot on dry land. They will only burn a bridge as long as they have built another to run back. They will marry but only with a prenuptial agreement. 

At no point are they prepared to take the chance and suffer for their faith. At no point are they prepared to submit fully to authorities over them under God to shape them into more spiritually adept Christians willing to serve the Church and Her Bridegroom.

[PAUSE]

Most of us are somewhere on the path between Philadelphia and Laodicea. We need to make sure that we are walking to Philadelphia from Laodicea by committing ourselves to becoming more committed to Christ. Ours isn't an overnight transformation, but a hard process that will involve hardship, pain and suffering as well as fellowship, feasts and joy. It requires active obedience, laying aside our own desires, and embracing the humiliation of the Cross.

In order to commit fully, we have to burn our bridges, close our escape routes and tear up any thought of a prenuptial agreement. We have to trust in God wholly and completely, or at least work to be able to do that. This involves courage but not risk, for God is worthy of our trust, even when we can't see through the darkness. We have to burn for Christ which we can't do if we've left the door of the oven open to escape if it gets too hot! 

That's what we sign up for as Christians. Shall we endure to the end? 

How to kill a church

Sermon for the fourth Sunday after Easter

After cycling around Ephesus, Smyrna and Pergamos, we have discovered the need to keep elements of those churches alive. We need to be as strict with our doctrine as Ephesus, admit that we are in spiritual poverty as Smyrna, and seek to be as well-read and as intelligent about the ways of the world as Pergamos. If we follow this, what could possibly go wrong? 

Unfortunately, we find our answer in the churches of Thyatira and Sardis.

[PAUSE]

As we enter the church in Thyatira, we are confronted with a charismatic woman - a prophetess - who claims to be speaking the word of God. Although we don't know her real name, Jesus names her Jezebel. That's rather harsh. You will remember that Jezebel is the wife of Ahab who incites people to worship Baal rather than God and opposes the rightful prophet Elijah. You may also remember that she meets a bad end, courtesy of faithful servants and a pack of dogs. 

So this Thyatiran prophetess is being identified with that wicked queen. Like Jezebel, she is enticing people to sexual immorality and to idol worship. And she claims to be a Christian.

Sometimes, all it takes is a charismatic leader to make a church turn bad. We see this time and again with the likes of those televangelists who cream off vast sums of money and live morally reprehensible lifestyles while prattling pious platitudes to the people. This Charismatic Leader will convince people that God has changed His mind about certain sins and that it is now okay to commit them. The Charismatic Leader will put up a picture of Jesus which fits this teaching and make Him unrecognisable. This picture is a cartoon, not an ikon. This Charismatic Leader, male or female, has the spirit of Jezebel.

[PAUSE]

The church in Sardis doesn't fare much better. Jesus call that church dead. Why's that? It looks okay, services are taking place, people call themselves Christians. But there is a great big temple in the centre dedicated to Cybele who is thought to be able to bring the dead back to life. So the people of Sardis don't consider it any problem that they can go to church to worship Jesus and then pop in to offer a sacrifice to Cybele. After all, they both teach the same thing that the dead can be raised. Doesn't matter, does it? It's all good.

[PAUSE]

No, it isn't. While different religions teach similar things, even things that we Christians believe, we believe in one God, not one God among many. We believe that only in Our Lord Jesus Christ is there true salvation from sin and death. Only in Him will we find our own resurrection as part of His Church.

In Sardis, we see how it is easy to pay lip-service to all gods and none in order to get what we want.

The lesson from both Thyatira and Sardis is clear: if you want to kill a church, embrace paganism, embrace sin especially those of idolatry, fornication and idolatry, and embrace the cult of personality. 

[PAUSE]

Thus we must leave Thyatira and Sardis, not on foot, or by cycling, but by Formula One racing cars. We have to avoid these churches like the plague, isolating ourselves from their contageous teaching that leads to death.

The only Charismatic Leader we must embrace is God who is truly charismatic for He gives His good gifts to His children. Our bishops and clergy only ever lead us by holding fast to the teaching of the Church as it has been given to us. We can trust our bishops but we need to educate ourselves so that we encounter God for ourselves in our Bible reading, our study and in receiving Him in the sacraments of the Church which are unalterable for the very reasons that Thyatira and Sardis show us. Knowing that we are active in our faith helps our bishops and clergy to continue the teaching and the sacraments of God so that we can all work together to bring life and light to the world. 

[PAUSE]

Our duty is always to love God first and then neighbour. Jezebel does neither. However, we have God's promise: Jezebel will fall from her tower, and the Children of God will rise from the dead to Eternal Life. Let's live that promise!

Cycling around Ephesus, Smyrna and Pergamos

Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamos

Which church would you like to belong to?

[PAUSE]

The Church in Ephesus is the major church in Asia. It stands in the centre of Greek worship of pagan gods and calls out heresy. The Church at Ephesus tests all that it bears and measures it against the Word of God.

The Church in Smyrna is a poor church and is surrounded by a large population of Jews who hate Christianity for perverting the Jewish faith. It does all that it can to use its meagre resources to carry on.

The Church in Pergamos is an academic church with a large library. Emperor worship occurs in the city yet the church holds fast to the Name of Jesus.

So which church would you like to join?   

[PAUSE]

Hold on! Aren't they all supposed to be part of the same One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church? If so then it really doesn't matter which church you go to. Surely the orthodox Ephesus, the impoverished Smyrna and the well-read Pergamos are the same. They all peach the risen Christ, don't they?

This is true. In order to be a Christian, you have to accept that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, God Incarnate, born, crucified and risen from the dead. If we believe in the Risen Christ then we have to believe that He has risen again for a reason. We have to believe that He is still interested in His Church despite His Ascension. We have to believe that He continues to speak to His Church as well as through His Church.

He says very different things. While these churches are all part of the One Church, they are doing things differently and they all need to hear what He says to them. And what does He say? 

The orthodox Ephesus: He calls it lacking in love.

The poor Smyrna: He says that it is going to suffer greatly.

The well-read Pergamos: He says that it has compromised the Christian Faith with false teaching.

Which church do you want to belong to, now?

[PAUSE]

We might say in a fit of piety that we would want to be part of the church in Smyrna because at least that Church hadn't departed from the Faith. But then, in order to join, we should make ourselves as poor as they, sell all that we have for its support and prepare for hard times.

Fair enough, let's go to Ephesus instead to make use of the riches that we have. We might say that we want to make sure that we preach the right things, believe the right creeds, and reject all false doctrine. So many people do this but, in their zeal, they forget to love. They become Thought Police and Christianity becomes an exercise in ticking boxes and reading the right documents.

Hmm. Perhaps we should go to Pergamos instead in order to be a little more open to other possibilities. We might say that we want to be well-read and accommodate different opinions. The trouble now is that we compromise our Faith and water it down by accepting doctrines that go against what Jesus says.

Well then, we need to go back to our Faith and give up all our books and learning and be small and simple. Let's go to Smyrna.

And round and round we go. Smyrna, Ephesus, Pergamos and back to Smyrna.

[PAUSE]

We cannot expect our local church to be unchanging. We have to listen to Christ and grow. This does mean that there will be stages in how we grow. We need Ephesus and Pergamos to balance out and we need Smyrna to keep things real. Orthodoxy is vital because Orthodoxy points to Who God is. A broad education prevents us from becoming brittle. And we must remember our spiritual poverty to prevent us from becoming proud or too loose in our belief.

The key thing is that we are not treading in circles. We are spiralling upwards towards Christ. That might seem like circles at times but, if we're truly listening, we will get closer and closer to what the three churches have in common - Our Lord Jesus Christ.