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.

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.