Unfair God

Sermon for the second Sunday after Easter

God discriminates.

This is quite true: Our Creator is guilty of discrimination. Many people in this day and age put God on trial for discrimination against women, against people who describe themselves as gay, even against animals given all the ritual slaughter of lambs, oxen and other animals in the Old Testament.

God is not an equal opportunities employer: women have all the hard work in bearing children and still cannot become priests. Those who work for an hour get paid as much as those who do a full day's work. Those who break the rules succeed at the expense of those keep the rules.

God is even described as a monster for torturing His own Son to death.

God is unfair.

And that's how it should be.

[PAUSE]

St Paul explains very clearly just why God should be unfair:

 "I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ, and be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith: that I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death; if by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead."

God has created each one of us with a sense of fair play. It's something that He shares with us. He is utterly righteous and so we have that. 

The trouble is that we have corrupted our sense of right and wrong. Many of our decisions of what is fair and right are to do with how powerful we are or how powerful someone else is, or how rich we are or how rich someone else is. Sometimes we judge what is fair out of envy rather than looking at real need.

And St Paul wants to get away from all that. He sees his own sense of righteousness as severely lacking in comparison with God. What he gains in the world's eyes, he loses in God's eyes. He wants to get away from the language of rights, entitlement, oppression and privilege, and back to the language of Love which can only come from God Himself.

[PAUSE]

It is ironic that people try to judge God using their understanding of what is good and righteous. These are like people who refuse to switch on the light and blame the light for the room being dark!

If they think that God is a monster for sacrificing His Son, then they miss the fact that the Son willingly offers Himself up as a purely Good sacrifice in order to destroy Evil as one might destroy a hole in a pure gold bar by filling it in with pure gold.

[PAUSE]

In order to be righteous, we must always look to God. We have to stop valuing what we have and who we are by our own reckoning and seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness. Only then will we gain, and what we gain will be of more value than we can imagine. What we gain will be God Himself.

Breathe on me, Breath of God

Sermon for the first Sunday after Easter

How would you like  someone to breathe on you?

Even before the dreaded virus made breathing on someone a form of assault, there was always something rather unpleasant about someone breathing on you. It's all about germs, isn't it?

However, breathing on people and things is a ceremonial action. According to ancient tradition, the priest breathes in the face of the newly baptised, the bishop breathes on the Chrism Oil and, in some rites, the priest breathes into the chalice at the consecration.

And you know the reason why. Jesus breathes on His disciples and tells them to receive the Holy Ghost. The breath is the outward sign of the Holy Ghost being given to the Disciples.

So what's the Day of Pentecost for? Isn't that when the Holy Spirit descends on the Disciples?

[PAUSE]

What Jesus is doing here is giving us yet another proof of the Trinity. The Holy Ghost has His origin in the Father just as the Son has His origin in the Father. The Son - Our Lord Jesus Christ - is eternally begotten of the Father. The Holy Ghost eternally proceeds from the Father but enters into Time through the Son. When Jesus breathes on His disciples, the Holy Ghost enters into our frame and experience of being. The Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father through the Son. 

In breathing on His disciples after His Resurrection, Our Lord completes our baptism for us. We are baptised with water into His death and then with His Spirit into His life. It is only when Jesus' earthly ministry is ended at His Ascension that the ministry of the Holy Ghost can begin in us. That is why there is a wait between receiving the Holy Ghost from the Son after the Resurrection and being charged with the Spirit at Pentecost.

That doesn't stop us from being uncomfortable when a priest breathes on us, does it?

[PAUSE]

We do have to balance our worship responsibly. Our breath carries germs and we cannot escape that. It is a sign of our humanity and our eventual death. It means that we just cannot be blasé about our actions and compromise someone else's health. The priest that breathes into the chalice as part of the liturgy is the only one who receives it: the congregation receive only the Body of Christ. We must not put the Lord Our God to the test just as when Satan tempts Our Lord to throw Himself down from the top of the temple to prove God's power off to unbelievers.

On the other hand, God appears to us in our frailty even in the breath of the air. When we receive His breath, we live even though we take our last breath on this earth.

The fact is that for all of us who are baptised and loves God, our last breath on earth will be this tainted air, but our first breath in Heaven will be the Holy Ghost in us.

Lockdown to Freedom

Sermon for the Day of Resurrection

Alleluia! He is risen!

But is He invading your privacy?

[PAUSE]

A popular theme among Paschal sermons this year will be the appearance of Our Lord to the Disciples behind locked doors. We know that the Disciples are in hiding for fear of the Jews just as we are in hiding for fear of the virus. Jesus appears to them despite the doors being shut. One wonders whether He will wash His hands to two verses of Happy Birthday.

The fact is that Our Lord chooses to appear behind closed doors to His Disciples rather than out in public. He could also conceivably appear in Pontius Pilate's house, or in Caiaphas' bedroom. Why not? It would be such a statement for Him to appear behind the locked doors of the people who crucified Him. But He doesn't.

Doesn't this reticence to appear and challenge those who speak against Him make the job of proclaiming the Gospel difficult?

Why behind closed doors? Why not in public where all doubt can be removed? Doesn't He want people to know Him for certain?

[PAUSE]

It seems that the Lord is a respecter of privacy. It is only to those who have invited Him into their lives that He appears in His post-crucifixion glory. Strictly speaking, we have no privacy with God. Even the thoughts of our inmost hearts are known by God. Indeed, God knows what it is like to be us because He has given being to us in the first place. This means He has nothing to prove to those who hate Him. 

On the Cross, the Lord displays His love for us in the fullest way that one human being can show another. There is no way we fallen human beings can see a greater love until we can see God as He is. And Love does not insist on its own way. Our Lord can be locked out of the room by those who are as afraid of Him as the Disciples are afraid of the Jews and as we are afraid of the virus.

Pharaoh keeps his heart locked to God, but soon finds that he could not open it even if he wanted to: the door has rusted shut This is a warning to those who refuse to believe.

[PAUSE]

There is another side to this, though. This is such good news for those that love God. Even in a lockdown, He is still with you. You might not receive the Blessed Sacrament, but there is nothing to say that this is the only way that Christ can be present with you. The sacraments are given to us by God as certain vehicles of His grace: that does not mean that they are the only vehicles of His grace.

In lockdown, we can expect God to be present to us at this wonderful time of year, just as He is present for us at the Mass. Our doors may be locked, but our hearts need not be. As our faith grows in the uncertainty of a world infected not only by viruses, but more horribly with Sin and Death, the more our hearts can open to receive more.

[PAUSE]

Of course, just as opening the door risks letting in the virus, so opening our hearts risks great pain. But Our Lord's heart was opened with a spear and so He knows our pain. And He suffers our pain. And He releases us from our pain. The fear is gone. The doors fling open. The light shines in.

He is risen indeed, Alleluia!

Pushing through the darkness

A reflection on Holy Saturday during the COVID19 pandemic.

Stripping back to Glory

A reflection for Good Friday during the COVID19 pandemic.

Glory in betrayal

A reflection for Maundy Thursday during the COVID19 pandemic.

Spikenard and spite

Sermon for Palm Sunday

We are privileged to spend time with Mary, Martha and Lazarus as they entertain Our Lord and the disciples. Although we have to stand back from the table in order to let the meal take place, we can still see the genuine love and affection that Mary, Martha and Lazarus have for Jesus and His friends. 

Before we know it, a glorious smell hits our noses. It is a strong, earthy, sweet and spicy smell but it is certainly not unpleasant and it overpowers all those wonderful aromas of Martha's cooking. We look and we see an empty alabaster box on the floor and Mary wiping the feet of Jesus with her hair. She has used all of the spikenard, every single expensive drop. 

And everyone breathes in this smell. For many, it will bring back memories of the day they buried someone very dear. Others will think of the far distant Himalayas where spikenard is native and dream of foreign lands. Others will rest in the warm smell and forget about the smell of the street and the hurley burley of daily life. And one will be consumed with envy, spite and resentment as he will not benefit from the proceeds of selling this perfume.

[PAUSE]

For Judas, something is only worth as much as people are willing to pay for it. He knows the price of spikenard; he knows how much there was in the purse and how much there is now; shortly he will know that the price of a Messiah is thirty pieces of silver. For Judas, the loss of the spikenard means that the poor will get no benefit from their poverty - at least that's the impression that he's trying to sell.

And how blind he is! He walks in darkness oblivious to the needs of human beings that go beyond the filling of the belly. He cannot smell in the spikenard the love that people have for each other. He cannot perceive the concern that Mary has that Our Lord be honoured. 

We might feel contempt for Judas' attitude but we have to admit that this is such a common occurrence. How often do human beings ruin something with their bad attitude? We see the phenomenon of people ruining children's programmes with unpleasant ideas in order to make them relevant to Society. Statues of statesmen are torn down, their good works forgotten because they adhered to ideas which we find unpalatable today. Sometimes, we see something beautiful and we have to ruin it. Why?

[PAUSE]

There is a simple answer: we simply cannot cope with pure good. We become so overwhelmed by its sheer, glorious positivity that we are unable to cope with it and must sully it to bring it to our sad and sordid level. This is what Judas is doing: faced with the impurity of his heart and his motives, he tries to destroy the warmth of Mary's offering, justifying it with some pressing and worthy issue that just isn't relevant here. And this is why he loses his soul.

Rather than repent and seek to be transformed so that he can bear pure love and goodness, he wants to continue as he is and thus rules himself out of life.

[PAUSE]

The point of Lent is for us to try and open ourselves to God's transforming power so that we can be in the presence of His Goodness. If we were to see Him as He is in our sinful state we would be utterly destroyed - torn to pieces by the sin in our nature pulling away from God, burnt up by the fire of His love.

Today, we come onto the final week of Lent, and we can be tempted to see our failures to keep the spirit of Lent, our continued sinfulness, and the terrible truth that we will in all likelihood sin again. What Mary has done for Christ, she has done for us too. She might be a sinner, but she is still capable of loving to the best of her ability and it cannot be taken from her. 

The same is true for us too. Sometimes we just need to stop fretting about our sins, sit down with Our Lord and smell the spikenard.

Forsaken by ikons

We find ourselves in a time of isolation and solitude which Nature has forced on us. For once, at Easter, we face the prospect of the church bells being silent, chancels being dark and thuribles cold.

As I sit saying my daily offices, I am usually surrounded by faces peering down at me from the ikons that are dotted around. But it is Passiontide, so all the ikons are hidden and I face my prayers as if I have been cut off from the hope of Heaven. It is lonely and uncomfortable. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

But this is where the world is now, sitting on its own, deprived of the warmth of companionship. People are dying alone, declared untouchable and not for the first time in our history. We want to help, and we try our best, but the separation is too much for us.

When we first sinned, we cut ourselves off from God. We forsook Him utterly through disobedience and the first degree of hatred of Him. We suffer the consequences of that isolation: we will always be distant to some extent even from the people we love most. Our subjective self is utterly unavailable to anyone else except God, and He has been pushed out because we wanted Him to leave us to ourselves.

The Passion of the Christ is for us - to save us from the complete isolation of Hell. To accomplish this He suffers the same isolation. We cannot even watch with Him one brief hour. He prays, sweat falling like blood, with the faces of His friends turned away and veiled by sleep, fear and ignorance.

He stands isolated before the Pharisees, before Pilate, before the soldiers who strip Him at each turn from the warmth of being a human being and leaving behind a cold and bleeding subhuman. He hangs isolated on His own cross, the World and it's sins upon His shoulders alone. He dies alone and yet surrounded by the crowd. He is buried alone despite knowing the mourning of those who love Him.

The Day of Resurrection brings more instances of being alone. St Mary Magdalene encounters the Risen Lord alone. There is an intimate companionship on the road to Emmaus. The fearful solitude of the locked room is breached by God. No longer do we have to endure a lonely death for someone crosses with us at the most intimate level.

The Church doors may be locked on Easter Day but this is the opportunity for us to receive the Risen Lord bursting in to our lives despite the locked doors. This is the opportunity for the prayers we offer to deepen through the sorrow of the Passion and open up a place within our souls to encounter Jesus alive and warm and in fellowship. 

On Easter Day, I will once again see the eyes of the citizens of Heaven looking at me and reminding me of what God wants for all His Church. We can get there by seeking God even in our isolation. He is there and will be found by all who open the closet of their heart to Him.

Hooray for Thorny Issues!

Sermon for the Fifth Sunday in Lent being Passion Sunday

What do you find most irritating? Your son's solitary sock lying in front of the washing machine just after you've set it going? The new set of scratches on the table leg made by the cat? The man in your workplace who has bad breath and literally uses the word "literally" every five minutes?

The phrase "thorn in the side" has long been in use. We use it when we speak of a recurring irritation that prevents us from doing what we want to do or at least making a pleasant task unpleasant. It is that constant distraction, the background noise, the pain in the foot, the way that someone speaks to us, or will not leave us alone.

St Paul says that, even when he is so blessed by God, God will not take away the thorn in his flesh. Can God love us and not relieve us even from little pains?

[PAUSE]

During times of isolation and confinement, we become more acutely aware of things that truly bother us, especially in the people whom we love most. If we're doing Lent well, we will also be aware of things that irritate us about ourselves. We become aware of our own habits and how we react to the shortcomings of others. Do we ask God to take them away?

Of course we don't!

[PAUSE]

It is a fact that pearls are formed in oysters by a grain of sand in their shells. That grain is a source of constant irritation, and so the oyster encases that grain in a substance that becomes a pearl. It helps the oyster deal with that irritation.

What the Christian has is worth more than pearls, it is Love.

What irritates us most about the people we love are precisely  the things  that make them different from who we are. Our son's robust joy of living results in him not putting his sock in the washing pile. Our cat's useful ability to catch mice necessitates sharp claws. Our colleague might be irritating, but that's because he is who he is and that makes him the neighbour we need to love because God loves him.

The things that irritate us most are the things that ground us in reality. Einstein says that it is because he possesses a stomach that he has to worry about money. The people of Corinth are philosophers and thinkers. If they had their way, they would be free of the body and just sail through existence as disembodied minds.

That's not what God wants. St Paul, too, could spend his whole day in prayer and ecstasy, but he would not do what he needs to do. The thorn in his flesh is there to ground him, to remind him that he is still earthly, and that he must be humble before God. 

So St Paul turns his irritations around. They become something to rejoice in because they remind him who he is and Who God is. His irritations become a thing of glory: when he is weak, God is strong. In enduring the pain of his thorn, St Paul is venerating the cross he has to bear, and God gives him the grace to endure and to rejoice in enduring.

[PAUSE]

We Christians know that we have bodies and spirits and that we need both to be truly human. The thorns in our flesh keep us together and make us really human.

Only when Christ comes again will we be rid of the things that irritate us because we shall be complete. Until then, we must live with those things that niggle us most and praise God for allowing them to keep us truly human.

Irritating, isn't it?

Sowing alms

Sermon for the fourth Sunday in Lent

A letter plops through the door. It's addressed to you personally and you don't know who it's from. How exciting! And then you open it. "Friend, can you spare £1 a month to support XYZ...?"

How do you feel? Is it a disappointment?

[PAUSE]

There are lots of charities out there all asking for money. Many are very worthy and make a real difference to the lives of the needy. Others are less scrupulous and spend the money on less than useful administration.

Sometimes we tire of all this. It seems to be unending begging.

[PAUSE]

St Paul seems to be a bit unscrupulous, too. He tells the Corinthians that he has boasted how generous they are to the Macedonians. This seems to have made the Macedonians give more to the relief fund for the needy of Jerusalem. Now St Paul is telling the Corinthians that he's sending people to them to help them collect alms so that when the Macedonians visit, he won't be embarrassed by a small Corinthian collection. 

Is St Paul being cheeky or is he being manipulative and dishonest?

[PAUSE]

If we look carefully at St Paul's theology of almsgiving, we see that he is perhaps being a bit cheeky but ultimately has concerns for the well-being of the Corinthians, Macedonians and needy of Jerusalem at the forefront of his intentions.

St Paul tells us that he sees almsgiving to be like sowing seed. If we show much seed then we can expect a good yield. But surely, if the Corinthians are generous in giving money to the needy, they are not going to get a return on an investment?

St Paul is using the same association of giving alms with sowing seed as Our Lord does. Almsgiving is not just giving money, it is taking pains to make a positive difference in someone's life. The more goodness we sow, the more goodness is to reap. Unlike material goods which decrease when we share them, the goodness of God that we sow in the world increases when we share it. This is why St Paul is not being dishonest or manipulative in challenging the Corinthians to be cheerful givers and to be generous. He wants everyone to benefit. Even if people compete at doing good things, they do so in the knowledge that everyone wins. 

That's how it is with God. Everyone wins.

[PAUSE]

If we hold onto a worldly view of material worth, then it becomes harder and harder to give, because the more we give the less we have. Our Lord Jesus challenges us to change our point of view and see what we have as seeds to sow and grow. What we lose physically, we gain spiritually and substantially so that, when harvest time comes, we actually have more than we planted through God's goodness.

[PAUSE]

How much do we give, then? As much as we can hope to bring good into everyone's lives. We might not be able to give to everyone, but we should rejoice in the knowledge that what we do give will make a difference.

After all, the seed that Our Lord does is His own body in the grave. Look how that grows and bears fruit!

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.