Conspiring with the enemy?

Sermon for the third Sunday after Trinity preached at the Cathedral Church of St Augustine of Canterbury

It's Monday evening and, 

given the nice weather, 

you think you ought to go 

for an evening constitutional 

- a walk before bedtime.

As you pass through the town, 

the twilight deepens 

and the deep blue of the night sky 

darkens the roads and streets. 

As you turn the corner, 

in front of The Bishop's Finger 

- that's the name of the pub, 

and it's a dodgy old dive, too 

- you see your favourite priest 

talking and laughing with a woman.

What woman?

You know THAT woman 

- the one who "works at night"!

Well, what do you say 

next Sunday morning 

when you see your favourite priest 

all clad in his chasuable 

and looking holy? 

Would you sidle up to him and say, 

"I know who you were with, Monday night!" 

Or would you be on the phone to the bishop?

 Or would you interrupt the sermon 

to denounce him 

to all and sundry?

[PAUSE]

This is the trouble with the priesthood. 

Many people today seem to think 

that their priest must look 

beyond reproach in order 

to be beyond reproach. 

Absolutely a priest must not 

bring his office into disrepute, 

but that also means he must do 

what his office demands.

We see our blessed Lord 

talking with sinners 

- all the kinds of people 

you would want to steer clear of. 

You know the type of person: 

it may even be the person 

who has done you the greatest wrong. 

And Our Blessed Lord is standing there

chatting with them, 

laughing at their jokes, 

all as if these folk were 

as the angels in heaven. 

The very people that you think 

stand arm in arm with the Devil himself 

are enjoying the company of God.

[PAUSE]

We know Our Lord to be beyond reproach, 

but there is a sense of 

"whose side are you on, Lord?"

But then we think, whose side are we on? 

Who gets to pick the teams?

We know the message of the Gospel. 

We know the meaning of the parables. 

But still, we have to face the fact that 

there will be in Heaven 

people who on earth 

showed really dubious morals, 

who committed grave sins, 

who hurt many people. 

Worse, they may get into Heaven 

ahead of us!

[PAUSE]

This is the scandal of Salvation. 

It is open to everyone. 

Our Lord created each one of us, 

saint and sinner, 

and He seeks 

to save each one of us, 

saint and sinner. 

And it doesn't matter 

if you have murdered millions!

If you come to Christ 

and repent of your sins, 

if you are baptised 

and eat of the Bread of Life, 

if you long to love God 

with all your heart, soul, mind and strength

- you shall be saved. 

There is no doubt.

So the murderer of millions can be saved?

Yes.

But he murdered millions. 

What about justice?

That depends on what you think salvation is.

[PAUSE]

If you think salvation 

is an escape from Hell,

or a "get out of jail free" card, 

then there does seem to be an injustice. 

If a murderer gets the same 

"get out of Hell" card as we do, 

where's his accountability.

But what if salvation and justice 

are about making things right? 

What if they are about healing wounds? 

What if they are about being made perfect?

Well, then, 

in order to be made perfect, 

we must turn and 

see what we have done. 

And, if we are being made perfect, 

if we see what 

Our Lord sees 

of what we have done, 

then that will hurt a lot. 

It will be because we start loving 

the same way that He loves 

that will hurt.

[PAUSE]

Our Lord sees 

not taxcollecters and prostitutes, 

not sinners, 

but the people He created 

who have fallen 

and who come to Him 

knowing that there is something wrong, something that needs to be put right 

and that only He can help.

And that's the attitude 

that we should all have. 

Yes, there are people 

who we could never associate with. 

That's because we are not perfect. 

But, as we grow in perfection, 

the more we reflect Our Lord 

and the more that people will see in us 

the opportunity for true health 

and true happiness. 

If we are seen talking 

with people of dubious reputation, 

then let it be because 

God has found His lost sheep 

and is using us 

to bring them home 

to health, happiness and Heaven.

Anglican Catholics and the Sacred Heart

 

How Anglican is the Sacred Heart?

Settling for Poverty

Sermon for the second Sunday after Trinity

There are so many decisions in life.

When you start your day, you have to decide what to wear, whether you have time for breakfast, what to eat for breakfast, whether you’re going to take a chance on those eggs that might be past their best.

You have to decide on how you spend your day, what tasks you have to complete first, whether you need to contact that person, whether you need to pop out for some peptobismol on account of those eggs.

Every day, we are having to decide between all kinds of possibilities.

How do you make your decisions?

[PAUSE]

You receive an invitation to dinner from someone you’ve vaguely heard of. Do you decide to go?

Well, clearly, you have to weigh up your options, but you do so based on a series of value judgements. You have just bought that piece of land on which you are hoping to build a new home for you and the family. You have a new wife and want to spend more time with her. You’ve just got that new car and want to give it a spin. And you have this invitation to dinner from this bloke you’ve barely heard of.

The decision you have to make is based on what you know and what you don’t. You have the things that you know – the new car, the piece of land and the new wife. You’ve been involved in these decisions and you roughly know what you’re getting with each of them, but this dinner invitation is out of the blue and you simply don’t know what to expect. With the restaurants you’re used to, you know the food you’re getting, but while this chap could have a Michelin rated chef, he could also have ordered a bargain bucket from KFC. You know your new wife, but this chap you don’t. He could be a sparkling raconteur like Kenneth Williams or Sir Peter Ustinov, or he could be more dull and irritating than the chap who wants to know your favourite humming noise. You have a decision to weigh up.

[PAUSE]

Seen from this side of the parable, we don’t really find the actions of those who refuse the invitation to dinner all that unreasonable. They have better things to do, and this dinner invitation doesn’t really enter their lives. Indeed, the people who do accept the invitation are those whose lives make an impromptu invitation very appealing. They have nothing better in their lives and so what reason do they have to refuse. A dinner invitation beats sitting there with all your aches and pains in all your poverty.

And so this feast, this dinner is populated by people whose lives have been brightened by being invited. They are truly grateful and receive something wonderful. That does beg the question: why weren’t these invited in the first place?

[PAUSE]

Clearly, Our Lord is making a contrast between people who have everything and those who have nothing. It’s not really a question about when people get invited but rather a question of who accepts the invitation. Those who reject it do so on the belief that what they have is better than this invitation to a feast. Those who accept it do so on the basis that this feast offers more to them than their lives do.

The question Our Lord is asking us is, what does this invitation to a feast offer you above what you already have?

To those who are content with this life, this feast offers nothing. To those who recognise the poverty of their lives, this feast makes a welcome opportunity for true joy.

While there is so much in this world that is good – and, let’s be fair, new land, new cars and new wives are good – their goodness depends on something greater. The newness fades. The novelty wears off. The land gets built on, the car gets old, the marriage becomes customary. Even in earthly prosperity, there is poverty and people never really see it unless they accept the evidence of this life.

We Christians recognise that anything that is good in this life is good because God made it good. His feast of goodness is taking place now and while it touches the things we have, it is God Himself Who presents to us Himself as the only true good. Only He is good in Himself, everything else is a pale reflection of Him.

We accept His invitation to the feast when we start looking beyond the enjoyable things of a life without Him. God can bless us with a new car, but that car can be taken away. God can and does bless a marriage, but relationships can falter and people don’t last forever. What is lasting for us is the invitation that we have to enjoy God. That’s not just an invitation to a feast after this life – it’s an invitation to a feast that is available to us now. While the Mass is part of that feast, it is the presence of God in our lives that is cultivated by word and sacrament, and it is this presence, this grace, that is the feast to which we are invited. It is a feast that is happening right now, because God is with us right now.

[PAUSE]

The danger we face, particularly in the West, is a false contentment. We are tempted to settle for a life that makes us comfortably numb to what is truly meaningful. We are not to put our trust in things that pass away but rather look through them to the God Who gives them to us and to enjoy a feast that comes with gratitude and humility. We recognise our poverty, all that we lack, our moral disability, moral blindness, moral lameness, and we accept the invitation to a feast that will open our eyes, strengthen our limbs and set us truly aright with God.

Anglican Catholic Aliens?

 

Is there life on other planets?

Lining up for communion?

Sermon for the Sunday in the Octave of Corpus Christi

You know what the Lord says, don’t you? “This is my body. This is my blood.” Yet, when you come up for communion, you still can’t get away from the fact that you are given a small white disc that tastes like rather papery bread, and a sip of some red fluid that tastes remarkably like wine.

Let us suppose that you are shown into a room in which are a line-up of ten wafers and ten chalices of wine. You are told that one of the wafers and one of the chalices have been consecrated at a Mass. Would you be able to pick out the Body and Blood of Christ from that which is not?

Well, why not?

Does that not bother you?

[PAUSE]

For some, the question doesn’t matter. They will say that the wafer and wine are only the body and blood to the person who believes that when they receive them, otherwise they are just wafer and wine and nothing else. To them, the fact that one of the wafers and the chalices have been consecrated means nothing – none of them are the Body and Blood.

If that’s true, then what is the point of consecration? What’s the point of the Mass if we only receive the Body and Blood of Christ as a result of our personal faith? How can there be communion with the person next to us at the altar rail if we believe that we receive Christ, but they might be suffering from a crippling doubt?

If we receive the Body and Blood only by virtue of our own personal faith, then we could never know with whom we are in communion within the same Mass. Indeed, if the Body and Blood are only present subjectively, then how do we know that we are all receiving the same Body and Blood? It’s Body and Blood in name only. There’s nothing substantial.

So much for a sacrament of unity. We are only united insofar as we say we are.

[PAUSE]

Our Lord says more than that, though. We must eat of His flesh and drink of His blood to have life within us. At the Last Supper, the Disciples are receiving that flesh and blood even though Our Lord is sitting there distributing it. Oh yes, it’s a mystery, but think of the feeding of the Five Thousand. We don’t know how it is done. We only know that it is done.

There, at the Last Supper, there can be no doubt that the Disciples are all receiving the same thing in the same way from the same person, and it is this that they are commanded to do in remembrance of Him so that all might receive the same flesh and the same blood of the same person that these Disciples themselves receive.

We all receive the same body and blood, stretching back to that one event. This is why Our Lord calls Himself the true vine, because we are all receiving the same nourishment from Him in the same way throughout History. Along these branches that spring from Our Lord, we grow and pass on so that we become united in one in His flesh so that we can become one in His Divinity.

What you receive is truly the Body and Blood of Christ, objectively, really, truly and fully – body, blood, soul and divinity!

[PAUSE]

But at that line-up of wafers and chalices, which do you pick?

They all look the same. The unconsecrated looks like the consecrated.

That’s true. We do not perceive the Body and Blood physically, but only spiritually through faith. The sacrament is not for the eyes of our body, but for the eyes of the soul. We all receive the same thing, but that same thing enters into us at the deepest levels to make us whole where we need to be made whole. This is the point: we are united in what we actually receive, but once it enters into us it fits us better for Heaven.

This is our communion with Our Lord and with the Church. It is not made on the basis of who we are, but on the basis of Who Christ Is.

[PAUSE]

So which wafer and which chalice do we pick?

None of them.

If the wafer and the chalice were truly consecrated, then they would be in a Church safely guarded and revered and not permitted to be subjected to silly experiments like this.

We cannot play games with the King of Heaven. We cannot put Our Lord to the test.

If He is truly present under the appearance of wafer and wine, then He is to be worshipped with reverence and love. If a mouse eats a crumb from a consecrated wafer, then it consumes Christ, but what does this say about the reverence for His presence if this is allowed to happen?

This is why we have all the elaborate ceremony. We need corporals to catch any crumbs. We need the ciborium to carry the wafers. We need the priest to hold his fingers together after touching the consecrated host in order to prevent any particles from falling. We need the chalice to be thoroughly cleansed after communion to ensure that all the Body and Blood of Christ is truly consumed.

[PAUSE]

So what do you do at the line up?

Walk out and pray for those who created this line-up. They are in dire need of the nourishment that only Christ will provide for His Church.

 

Anglican Catholicism and the Undivided Church

But there has never been a time when the Church has been undivided, has there?

But there has never been a time when the Church has been undivided, has there?

Riddle me, Trinity

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

Tubbo the clown

has a riddle for you.

With his best W.C. Fields impression,

he shows you four grapes 

and asks if you can arrange

all four grapes

so that they are all 

3 inches apart,

one from another

- all the same distance

one from another.

Sally thinks she knows 

the answer.

She is the school swot

after all.

She arranges them into a square.

Tubbo points out

that the grapes opposite each other

are over an inch further away 

than the grapes they are next to.

Kyle makes three of them 

into a triangle 

and puts the fourth in the middle.

Tubbo shows Kyle

that the grape in the middle

is closer than three inches

to the other three grapes.

Can it be done?

What's the answer?

[PAUSE]

Nicodemus has a riddle for you.

Jesus is telling him

that he has to be born again.

Nicodemus asks,

"can a man enter a second time

into his mother's womb?"

What's the answer?

How can you be born again?

And just what do all these riddles

have to do with Trinity Sunday?

[PAUSE]

Almughty God has a riddle for you.

One God.

Three Persons.

Each Person is God.

All Persons are distinct.

How is it done?

It boggles the brain.

Every time we see Jesus,

we see God.

 But the Father is God,

so is Jesus the Father?

No!

He's the Son

and the Father and the Son

can't be the same.

A son can't be the same person

as his father.

By now,

Some brains have given up,

and the sanctuary carpet

is providing greater relief

and making more spiritual sense.

 But, be of good cheer.

Surely,

the fact that you don't know

what's going on

makes you realise

that you believe in a God

who is incomprehensible

to the minds of men combined.

Everything  

every concept,

every degree of inifinity,

that this universe contains

is minuscule to God.

[PAUSE]

Let's face it.

We can't even understand ourselves.

We are a riddle to ourselves.

We are all bundles 

of contradictions,

even to ourselves.

We want to do what's good,

but we do what's bad instead.

We know we mustn't say that thing,

but we say the thing.

We know it's not kind to smirk

at Sally for getting the riddle wrong

but we smirk at Sally

for getting the riddle wrong.

We don't understand ourselves.

We don't know the answer

to the riddle that is us.

How do we expect to understand 

The Trinity?

[PAUSE]

We need help from above.

We need help from above

to figure us out,

to make us better,

to renew and refresh minds

clouded with sin

and contradiction,

self-loathing and self-promotion.

We need the one from above.

And we have Him.

And He says,

"you must be born again."

Except He doesn't.

And this is where Nicodemus 

gets confused.

You see,

Our Lord and Nicodemus

are conversing in Greek.

And the Greek word for "again: 

is the same as the Greek word for

"from above."

Nicodemus hears "born again"

Our Lord says, "from above."

Our Lord is saying

that we need Creation, Redemption

and Sanctification

in order to receive Salvation.

To be born from above,

is to be born of

water and the Spirit

- Baptism.

And Our Lord explicitly commands us

to be baptised

in the Name of 

the Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

We are baptised,

born from above

through the one God

in three Persons.

It doesn't matter if it confuses us.

We rejoice in the confusion

because, quite frankly,

it makes more sense

than this chaotic and fallen world.

[PAUSE]

Nicodemus' riddle points us

beyond our world

to the Truth.

That's the God we embrace,

even if it doesn't give us

an easy answer to the riddle.

And what about our own riddle?

God knows the answer for that!

Yes.

God knows the answer for that.