How Patronising!

Sermon preached at the Cathedral Church of St Augustine of Canterbury on the Feast of All Saints

Do you have a patron saint?

St Cecilia?

St Martin?

St Gregory the Great?

How do you interact with them?

[PAUSE]

Well can you interact with them?

That's a question we often get asked. 

"Why do you expect the dead 

to listen to you?"

they say.

"That's necromancy!"

Well, Hallowe'en was yesterday

so it stands to reason

why our more fervent 

Protestant brothers and sisters

might have the dead on their mind.

But the saints are not dead.

They are alive.

They hear us.

They pray for us.

And we need only one verse of the Bible

to prove it.

[PAUSE]

Hebrews xii.1 

"Wherefore seeing 

we also are compassed about 

with so great a cloud of witnesses, 

let us lay aside every weight, 

and the sin which doth so easily beset us, 

and let us run with patience 

the race that is set before us,"

"So great a cloud of witnesses."

St Paul is referring to the saints

that he has just mentioned

who have overcome the world

by faith in God.

The saints are a cloud

of witnesses.

What is a witness?

To be a witness,

you need to be conscious.

You need to be able

to see, to hear, to be aware

of what you are witnessing.

The dead witness nothing.

Only those who are alive

can actively bear witness.

Inanimate objects,

like a smoking gun,

can only bear witness

as a sign.

They are not witnesses 

in themselves.

So what!

So what?

The saints can't be dead then!

Our Lord Himself tells us that

when He says that He is not

the God of the dead

but the living.

Only the living can worship God.

So the saints must 

not only be still alive,

they must be able to see

in order to bear witness.

What are they witnessing?

[PAUSE]

Us.

They are witnessing us

as we run the same race

of salvation that

they ran

- the same race that they ran

and that they won.

They see us strive for God

and they cheer us on.

We know that Heaven rejoices

when the sinner truly repents.

So they do not witness us

like a social experiment,

in a lab with security cameras

and television monitors.

They are interested in us,

they are cheering us on.

They want us to win!

And they surround us

like a cloud.

They are near us

even though we 

can't point to where 

they are.

Let's just take stock then.

We know

that the saints are alive,

that they see,

that they are cheering us on

that they are near us

that they want us to succeed

and that they bear witness of us.

Bear witness of us to whom?

You don't bear witness 

for no reason.

[PAUSE]

It's clear that

the saints bear witness

of us to God.

They aren't being tattle tales,

telling God about

who snaffled

all the chocolate bourbons.

If they are interested

in our progress to God,

then they bear witness of us

to God.

They pray for us.

They have all Eternity

to hear every prayer

that we utter to them

and they bear witness

of our prayers

and add their prayers to ours.

Together,

the smoke 

of the prayers of the saints

rises up before God

like incense.

The saints surround us

like the cloud of incense

that surrounds us

during our Mass.

We are surrounded by prayer.

We are surrounded by truth.

We are surrounded by love.

The saints are for us

because God is for us.

Although we sit here

blind and deaf 

to the glory of God

upon His throne of Heaven,

we can be confident that

here, at Mass,

we are part of His court

standing with the saints

who behold Him face to face

and who pray that,

one day,

we will be able to do the same.

[PAUSE]

All the saints

are our patrons,

but some of their real lives

resonate with us

more than with others.

If you haven't done so,

find your patron saint

and ask for their prayers

and may their earthly example

guide you to stand by their side

in Heaven.

Anglican Catholics in Europe

 

Why building networks is important.

Policy policies and policy policy policies

A matter of love and death for the Anglican Catholic

Why thinking about our last end needn't be morbid.

Will you Luke at that?

Sermon for the Feast of St Luke

Have you noticed that St Luke doesn't appear in the canon of the Mass?

We have the apostles, including St Paul.

We have early bishops of Rome, like St Linus, St Cletus, St Clement and St Xystus. We have other bishops and martyrs like St Cornelius and St Cyprian, St Barnabus, St Ignatius, St Lucy and St Anastasia, even St Chrysogonus!

But no St Luke the Evangelist.

Granted also that neither does St Mark appear, nor even St Joseph.

Why not?

[PAUSE]

It does seem odd that the Church does not include the writer of the most historically detailed Gospel. St Luke is a magnificent historian of his time. Modern historians such as Ramsay, Harnack, Cadbury and Sherwin-White class St Luke as being of great importance and value. His Gospel is history, biography and theology rolled into one.

Yet he is not good enough to include in the canon of the Mass.

No, that's not true, and St Luke himself shows why.

How many disciples are there?

"Twelve, if you count Judas," everyone says enthusiastically!

Nope!

St Luke points out that there are at least seventy who are being sent out to spread the Gospel of Our Lord's presence among us in the neighbouring towns and cities.

Do we know their names?

Possibly there are lists out there with their names including that of St Aristobulus.

Who?

According to second century sources, St Aristobulus was sent to Britain after the day of Pentecost which means that the Church in England has existed from the first century.

But he seems to be forgotten too.

There are more names than we can.handle. We can't recite all the relevant saints or we would distract ourselves from the business of the Mass itself. We have to limit whose names we read out.

But we also have feast days like St Luke's today where we can thank.him and thank God for him and his witness to the Truth.

He is certainly not forgotten. Morning and Evening prayer contain those most important Gospel canticles which St Luke recorded: the Benedictus, the Magnificat, the Nunc Dimittis. He is there in the Litany listed among the apostles and evangelists. It is not an insult that he is not in the canon of the Mass for St Luke himself wants us to focus on the mystery unfolding before our very eyes - the same mystery that he bears witness to in his Gospel.

And yes we are allowed to think of St Luke as we read his words. He is a saint worth getting to know as he tells us categorically not just of what he witnessed but the people he associates with. He introduces us to Our Lady from whom he tells the story of Our Lord's birth. He introduces us to St Peter and St John who tell us of the events of the Gethsemane and the words spoken at the cross.

He introduces us to the closes circle of Our Lord's friends who themselves draw us in further to meet the Christ Himself.

[PAUSE]

St Luke doesn't need his name in the canon of the Mass. He just wants us to meet Christ which is exactly what the Mass is for.

GENEROSITY in Anglicanism

Why generosity in engaging with others is an act of love.

Minding the open book

Sermon preached at the Cathedral Church of St Augustine of Canterbury on the nineteenth Sunday after Trinity

Tubbo the Clown

is performing at Mia's party.

He gives Mia's mummy

a pack of cards

and asks her to pick a card

memorise it

and put it 

back in the pack

without telling him.

After some over theatrical

moans and groans,

waving of hands 

and a rubber chicken,

Tubbo says,

"eight of diamonds!"

"Yes!" exclaims Mia's mummy

Cue much applause

and bowing and tripping over

big clown shoes.

How does he do it?

Can Tubbo really 

read minds?

[PAUSE]

The more sceptical of us

might suggest that

he can't.

We would probably say

that he is using 

a rigged deck of cards.

He might be using 

the reflection

in Mia's mummy's glasses.

Or perhaps,

he is using some

deep psychological trick.

[PAUSE,]

Mind reading acts

these days

rely on careful observation

of a person.

Knowing how 

people act normally

and how they react

unconsciously to 

various events,

can give a gifted observer

a good idea of what

people are thinking.

Just subtle little mannerisms

can expose to an eagle-eye

what we are thinking.

Poker players call these 

little signs 'tells'

because they use them to

tell if someone is bluffing.

We're very used to this

with the people closest to us.

"That face" on a parent

usually means 

that you have done something wrong.

[PAUSE]

What, then, are we to make 

of Our Lord

knowing the thoughts

of the scribes

who are watching Him

heal a man with the palsy.

Is this an act of mind reading,

or has He seen "that face"

on the scribes

when He forgives

the paralysed man

his sins.

Do the scribes

have a "tell"?

We can understand

if this is the case.

We can see the sneers,

the raised eyebrows,

the hands balling 

into fists.

And we can tell 

that they are taking issue

with Our Lord's authority

to forgive sins.

We don't need to read minds

to know what they are thinking.

So perhaps Our Lord

isn't a mind reader at all.

Except...

[PAUSE]

He is.

But the minds being read

aren't just

the minds of the scribes.

Right at the beginning,

all we see is a paralysed man

being brought to

Our Lord by friends.

We see their faith in Jesus.

What we don't see

is that the man 

needs forgiveness

in order to be healed.

Our Lord is the first to admit

that not every illness 

is the result of sin.

But equally, 

some illnesses

might be the result 

of sin.

How does Our Lord know

that forgiving this man's sin

will heal him?

[PAUSE]

Our Lord knows his thoughts.

And He knows the thoughts

of the scribes.

He knows our thoughts

because He knows us.

He knows our "tells".

He knows our triggers.

He knows our deepest

darkest thoughts.

Got a deep dark secret?

Sonething you want 

to keep hidden?

Something which would 

mortify you if someone else knows?

Well, sorry, 

Our Lord knows it.

Does that make you 

uncomfortable?

Why?

[PAUSE]

If God knows our shame,

why is that a problem?

What we see here in front of us,

is a God Who doesn't raise 

His eyebrows,

doesn't tut-tut,

doesn't condemn,

but seeks to heal.

He wants to make us better.

He wants to forgive our sins.

But we need to come to Him

or be carried to Him

in order to find

the healing of our souls

through the forgiveness

of our sins.

We are sinners.

We know that

and we have a tendency

to scold others

or sneer at others

or avoid others 

because of their sins.

But God is not like that.

And He doesn't want us to be like that.

This is why priests

cannot reveal

what is told them in confession.

God wants us 

to confess to Him

and not be ashamed

of coming to confession.

We should be ashamed

of sinning.

We should not be ashamed

of repenting

of confessing

of wanting to be healed.

Because God is not

ashamed of creating us

as the Incarnation,

Death and Resurrection

proves in spades.

[PAUSE]

God reads our minds

because He knows us.

The converse is also true.

If we know God,

we know His mind too.

We can read the Mind of God

if we choose to.

But that means a life of 

searching for Him

and seeking His "tell"

which can only be found

in the Word of God.