Priests, lepers and rubber stamps

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

Why is the tenth leper so good?

Just because 

he comes back 

to glorify Jesus? 

Is that all?

Where are the other nine?

Doing what they are told to do!

They have been told 

to show themselves 

to the priests.

That is what they are doing!

Only the Samaritan turns back.

If anything, 

this Samaritan leper 

is being disobedient.

He's not doing 

what Our Lord tells him.

And he is praised for it!

[PAUSE]

Why does Our Lord 

send the lepers to the priests 

in the first place?

This is standard Jewish practice. 

Lepers are not permitted 

to be part of Society 

on the grounds of their 

contagious disease. 

That's a standard practice 

and we do it even today! 

Think of the self-isolation 

that we do when we have COVID. 

Of course with leprosy, 

or whatever skin disease these ten men have,

 it stays contagious for longer. 

In order to re-enter Jewish society, 

a (hopefully former) leper 

has to show himself 

to the priests 

who administer their own tests 

to see whether he is free 

from the disease.

Let's be clear on this: 

in order to be able to re-enter society, 

it is the priests that need 

to declare a man clean. 

The person with the disease 

doesn't get to say, "I'm all betfer!" 

Even if everyone can see 

that there are 

no more spots or lesions 

on his body, 

only the priest can say 

whether a man is free 

from the disease.

It's the priest who holds 

the rubber stamps marked 

"clean" and "unclean".

[PAUSE]

So the ten lepers 

go their way and, 

on the way, 

they are healed.

But the nine Jewish lepers 

won't know that 

until they are seen 

by the priests. 

Even if they say, 

"ooh I suddenly feel better!" 

or "gosh, Gerald! 

You don't look blotchy any more!" 

they can't say that 

they are healed 

until they have seen the priests.

And here's the thing.

The priests don't heal them.

It's not they who are making 

the disease go away. 

They are just declaring a fact.

These men are healed 

through a distinct action 

of God Himself.

And one man, 

the Samaritan, 

sees it for what it is.

[PAUSE]

For someone as hated 

as the Samaritan, 

it's entirely possible 

that the priests 

will not declare him clean, 

just because he is a Samaritan.

But that's not fair.

He is clean.

He does not need 

the Jewish Law 

to tell him that.

It is not the Jewish Law 

that saves him.

It is Christ.

And he sees 

and turns back 

to the One Who has done this, 

Who has made him.healthy again. 

This man is in utter joy 

at knowing 

the Source of his healing 

and turns to worship Him.

And a few years after this, 

a faithful Jew, 

a great Pharisee, 

full of the knowledge 

of the Law and the prophets 

will see exactly the same thing.

[PAUSE]

St Paul comes 

to the same 

God-given revelation 

as this former leper. 

We are not saved 

by what the Jewish Law 

does for us. 

Law can only tell us 

whether we are 

right or wrong, 

clean or unclean, 

fit for Society or unfit for Society. 

It is not by doing 

the works of the Law 

that makes us right with God. 

We are not justified by works of the Law.

"Thy faith hath made thee whole."

The leper is cleansed 

and made whole 

by Our Lord 

because he has faith 

in Our Lord 

and acts on this faith. 

We, too, are justified 

- made whole, 

made right with God, 

but not by faith alone 

rather by a faith acting 

in obedience, 

in harmony,

in co-operation

not with a Law which cannot save, 

but with Christ Who does save.

In this miracle, 

Our Lord is completely respecting 

the integrity of the Law 

by telling the lepers to obey it.

Yet, through the faith of one man 

we are shown that

it is the Christ that saves, 

not the Law.

[PAUSE]

Our healing,

our salvation,

comes from presenting 

ourselves to Christ

as we are,

all fractures, foibles

and fallibilities.

And then, 

we hear the voice of Our Lady,

"Do whatever He tells you."

And we do that

with faith in Him

and in that faith

we find His healing for us

which begins with Eternal life.

That is salvation.

That is His promise.

That is our hope and joy.

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Why we need to be careful of street-preachers.

Surprising the Lawyer

Sermon for the thirteenth Sunday after Trinity

Where on earth did this lawyer come from?

We see our Lord receiving back the seventy disciples from a highly successful mission in which the words of love have been backed up with signs and wonders from Almighty God.

We hear Him telling them how blessed they are at what has happened at their hands.

And then, from nowhere, up pops a lawyer to tempt Our Lord on matters of law.

Who is he? Where has he come from?

Either he is one of the disciples, or he is a gatecrasher.

Which is it?

Time to do some detective work!

[PAUSE]

What do we know about this lawyer?

We know first that he is described as a "certain lawyer". This might suggest that he is known.

Second, we know that he knows the two most important commandments to love God and neighbour because Our Lord tells him that he has got that right.

Third, we know that it is important for him to appear to be right in the eyes of men. He wants to tempt Our Lord and wishes to justify himself before the disciples. 

The result is one of the most well-known parables about who our neighbour is.

So who is this lawyer?

[PAUSE]

He is clearly known to the disciples and has clearly been listening to Our Lord's teaching, but it is also apparent that he has only done so in order to trap Our Lord. He is a hanger-on with apparently less than honourable motives. What we see here is another attempt to undermine Our Lord's authority.

"Lord, what must I do to inherit eternal life?"

As we watch we notice that Our Lord doesn't answer the question - at least not immediately. Rather than give an answer, He seeks to establish the legal basis on which this lawyer is asking his question. To do so means that the lawyer must answer or show that he doesn't know his own career.

As a result, he answers his own question.

What must we do to inherit eternal life? Love God with every fibre and faculty of our being and love our neighbour as ourself, as one of our family, as one with whom we share a God-given and God-loved nature.

He can't argue any more. The lawyer has answered his own question.

And now, he feels foolish for even asking. So, just to save face, he tries a technicality.

"Who is my neighbour?"

The lawyer asks to try and force Our Lord into a tricky situation.

For the Lawyer, "neighbour" means Israelite. If Our Lord affirms this, then He undoes all His work in showing His love for the Samaritans, the Romans, the Greeks and the Syro-Phoenicians and all mankind.

But if Our Lord says that "neighbour" means anyone including Samaritans, Romans, Greeksvand Syro-Phoenicians, then he can denounce Our Lord as denying what the Law explicitly says.

How can Our Lord escape this trap?

He gives us His parable.

[PAUSE]

In this parable that Our Lord is telling us it is the Samaritan that shows love. Not the priest, not the Levite, not the representatives of the best of Israelite society. It is the Samaritan who is obeying the commandment. The lawyer can't quibble over that. The law is being obeyed.

Neighbourhood can't go one way. If Tom is near to you, then you are near to Tom. So if Tom is your neighbour, then you are his. If you deserved to be loved, then so does Tom.

If Samaritans are capable of loving their neighbour, then they are capable of being loved because they can be neighbours.

A masterstroke and God be praised in Our Lord Jesus Christ!

[PAUSE]

The Law of the Old Testament is not denied nor criticised nor disobeyed, but it is cherished and obeyed to the full. The laws of Jewish rituals and ceremonies may no longer apply to us who live in the New Covenant, but the Law of Love was written for everyone for all time!

The law to love goes deeper than any law written on scrolls and parchment because it is written in our very beings.

If we are capable of being loved, then we are capable of loving. 

If we are capable of loving, then we are capable of being loved.

No exceptions.

Our Lord has created us because He loves us from Eternity and it is in Eternity that He means for us to live.

For that to happen we must choose to grow in love and thus bring ourselves to fruition in Him, for God is Love, and Love does not insist on its own way. 

In using the Law to thwart those who ask questions in bad faith, Our Lord shows us that it has always been His intention for Him to be our neighbour and we His.

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Ephphathahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Sermon for the Twelfth Sunday after Trinity

What a glorious word! Ephphatha! Be open! Our English pronunciation of the word doesn’t do it justice. This is because Greek doesn’t have the same quantity of guttural letters as Hebrew and Aramaic do. The best they can do is the “h” in “help” or “ch” as in “Bach”. In Aramaic, the last Hebrew letter of Ephphatha isn’t accounted for in our English bibles but it is a letter called chet that roughly makes the same sound as when you breathe on your glasses to clean them.

It is also the same sound that you hear the Bishop make when he breathes into the Oil of Chrism or into the font at the Paschal Vigil. That’s not an accident. The Bishop is using the authority which has been passed to him through the Apostles from Our Lord. Indeed, we know that Our Lord breathes on His disciples saying, “receive the Holy Ghost.” The Bishop is doing that self-same thing.

The Hebrew word for “spirit” is, again, difficult to spell in English. It looks like ruach but it ends with the same Hebrew letter chet – that hard breathing sound as if you were cleaning glass. What is very interesting is that there is this relationship between spirit and breath. We sing, “breathe on me, Breath of God” and Whom do we mean? Clearly, we are talking about the Holy Ghost.

[PAUSE]

Notice what is happening here. We see this deaf and mute man approach Our Lord. From the fact that he has a speech impediment, we can reasonably assume that he was born deaf and that he has simply never been able to learn how to speak because of his inability to hear. Like the man born blind, he comes to Jesus imperfectly made seeking to be made whole.

What happens next is quite telling: Jesus is taking him aside from the multitude, putting His fingers into his ears. He is spitting (yuck!) and touching his tongue. See, He is looking up to heaven, sighing, and saying to this man, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.”

He takes him aside. This man as a person, not God’s magic show participant. He puts His fingers in his ears, touches his tongue with spittle. He looks to Heaven and sighs. Sighs? He breathes out on this man and utters the word “Ephphathahhhhh” with that breath.

We are witnessing something truly fantastic. We are witnessing Creation itself. New ears, new tongue, new life! Notice, that we see here the Father in Heaven, the Son touching the man, and the Holy Ghost pouring forth from Our Lord upon this most fortunate of men. We see here a man who is touched, healed and recreated by God: Father, Son and Holy Ghost. This is one act of creation by one God in three Persons. And we get to witness it too, two thousand years later.

So why don’t we get healed like that? Shouldn’t our bishop come to us and breathe all over us and heal us?

[PAUSE]

We do have our monthly healing services and they are very important, but we remember that our focus must be on our souls and bringing ourselves in line with God. St Paul complains that he has his thorn in the flesh which God doesn’t take away from him. God tells St Paul that His grace is sufficient for Him. Life is not about the healing of the body which is mortal but the healing of the soul first because the soul is immortal. It is in our very selves that we need to be healed first because it is in our souls that we orient our lives to move towards God. Our prayers for healing must not be demands for healing. Healing prayers are about our standing with God, in God and by God as broken beings, that need healing in ways we don’t appreciate. While pain is awful, and the suffering of others unbearable, we bring to God in our prayers for healing all those imperfections, all those failures of body, mind and spirit to work perfectly. In our prayer for healing we bring our own inability to hear God’s word, our inability to see Him at work, our inability to speak His love and our inability to control the forces of evil that whisper deliciously in our ears daily.

And what does God do?

Many would say our prayers fall on deaf ears.

[PAUSE]

But there is none as deaf as the one who chooses not to hear. As Christians, we choose to hear. While we present God with all that we need, we receive grace from Him – He promises that. That grace might heal us straight away. That grace might take five days, weeks, months, years to heal us. That grace may never heal us, not in the way we expect, but will bring us a life lived with, despite and because of our pains, sorrows and sufferings. We may not see it, but a life lived in prayer within the darkness of pain, may prove to be truly most wonderful and glorious after death when we see that life with God by our side as we look on it in the context of Eternity.

Just as the Holy Trinity goes beyond our understanding, so His healing of our imperfections will go beyond our understanding. The more we pray, the more we will come to know how He is working with us.

And, when our eyes finally close in death, then we shall hear that word, “Ephphathahhhh!”

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The most important sixteenth of a square inch

Sermon preached at the Cathedral Church of St Augustine of Canterbury on the Sunday in the Octave of the Assumption

Is that it?

A little flake

a sixteenth of 

a square inch in size?

And you're calling

that a significant relic?

You must be joking!

People might look

at our relic on the Lady Chapel altar

and think just these things.

It's true.

It might be housed

in a very special reliquary

but our relic 

is just a tiny, tiny scrap

of material.

It's marginally less underwhelming

than a Mr Whippy ice cream

for dessert at The Ritz.

Until you think about it.

[PAUSE]

Let's be clear.

On Our Lady Chapel altar

is a relic

of Our Lady's veil.

It may be tiny.

But one thing is clear.

However tiny it is.

Our Lady,

the Queen of Heaven,

the Theotokos

the Mother of God

has touched it.

The same hands

as those which nursed

Our Redeemer as a baby

and held His body

taken down from the cross

have touched

that little spot of material.

We have a direct connection

to the truth of the Gospels,

and it is among us.

[PAUSE]

People might think

how silly it is

to get worked up

about a 2000 year-old 

fragment of cloth.

But we have every reason to celebrate

especially as there are

no physical relics of Our Lady's body.

No-one has a relic 

of Our Lady's body.

The heads of St Peter and St Paul

are in the Vatican.

There are incorrupt bodies of 

St Francis Xavier

and St Padre Pio

and others 

All the apostles of the New Testament

have bodily relics.

But there are none 

of Our Lady.

Not one.

Not even her hair.

What does this tell you?

[PAUSE]

There are no bodily relics

because Our Lady's body

is no longer on Earth.

She has a tomb 

in the Garden of Gethsemane,

but it is empty.

This makes 

her relic so much more important.

It proves that she exists.

It proves she has a connection with us

despite being in Heaven.

Her veil for us

becomes yet another thread

that ties the reality of Earth

with the reality of Heaven.

Mary is testament 

to our salvation.

Whatever Our Lord assumes

that He saves.

He assumes our humanity

to save our humanity.

He assumes our will

to save our will.

He assumes His mother 

to save our human family.

And the evidence is there

in our Lady Chapel.

[PAUSE]

But Our Lady still shares 

something with us.

She touches her son

at His birth and His death.

And with her,

we touch her son

in the Eucharist.

This is the gift Our Lord

shares with all of us.

In assuming His Mother,

she becomes our Mother

to venerate and honour,

for we must always honour

our father and our mother

as the Lord commands.

And she shares her son with us

and her concern for us

is His concern for us.

[PAUSE]

It may be tiny

but that sixteenth of a square inch,

is evidence of our salvation

and our welcome into

the court of Heaven.