The way the Resurrection lies

Sermon for the First Sunday after Easter

What reasons do people have to tell lies?

You might lie to protect yourself or you might lie to gain something.

Of course, it’s right to lie to the Nazi police if you’re hiding Anne Frank in your house. In that sort of circumstance, you need to be quite clear that you are protecting someone from Evil. If you’re lying to protect your reputation or from receiving punishment for doing something wrong, then this is clearly an offence.

What might you gain from lying? By and large, people lie in order to gain something of value to them. You might lie to gain riches, or to gain power over someone, or to gain fame. Fame, of course, is nothing if it doesn’t come with either riches or power attached.

So then. Are the Disciples lying when they say that they have seen Our Lord? Is St Paul lying when he says that he has seen Jesus?

[PAUSE]

Many people would say that the New Testament is based on the lies of the Disciples. If that’s true, then what do the Disciples hope to gain? What would they hope to achieve? Most of them carry their belief in the Resurrection of Our Lord to pretty horrible deaths. St Paul, for example, loses his reputation, his powerful position among the Pharisees in the Synagogue, his stability, his health, his freedom, and finally his head. If he’s telling lies, then they are very costly indeed!

Surely, the most likely circumstance is that St Paul is telling the truth. If he’s right then we should hear what he says.

For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures: And that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve: After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep. After that, he was seen of James; then of all the apostles. And last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time.

We have here St Paul testifying to the fact that more than five hundred people have seen Jesus alive after the crucifixion, and he includes himself in that.

[PAUSE]

We have to be quite clear with ourselves. The New Testament is written to testify of an historical fact, not a myth, nor a fable nor nice bedtime story. If we were given access to the TARDIS then we can expect to be among those who see Jesus alive following His death.

Of course the world will doubt us. In general, people do not rise from the dead. This is why we fear death. Yet we have eyewitness statements that see this happening which is why this is a unique account. We don’t have to apologise for this. The facts are clear: Christ has risen indeed. By “indeed”, again, we hear a statement of fact. This is no ghost, nor hallucination, nor dream, nor spiritual revelation. Jesus Christ has risen from the dead in His body. We have handled Him, touched Him and embraced Him. Try putting your arms around an idea!

But we do live in an increasingly sceptical society. This is only natural since the Resurrection is two millennia distant in Time. The fact is that the effects of this Resurrection are still here today. As Jesus tells us, He has come to bring a sword that will divide people. People will either believe in His bodily resurrection from the dead or they won’t. This is what separates the Church out in Society. If we believe in the Resurrection then we do have to come out from living a life that denies it.

Too often, the sword of Jesus’ words divides our very selves as we say one thing and do another. The Resurrection of Jesus calls us out of our unbelief into the New Jerusalem. This division comes about when we live a lie rather than the truth. The monk is always a monk. He is not sometimes a monk and sometimes not depending on whether he is walking in the cloister or down the high street. The Christian is always a Christian, not someone who says she believes in the Resurrection and then lives her life as if there is no resurrection from the dead for her. If there is no resurrection, then St Paul has given up everything for nothing and so have we.

Jesus is the way resurrection lies. Blessed are all those who commit themselves to this fact.

Penderfyniad clir?

Given the welcome presence of my Welsh Colleagues, I am hoping that their fervent examples will bear much fruit in the years to come. Another Welsh revival would certainly give those of us in England a bit of a fillip!

Of course, if a female Archdeacon, Peggy Jackson, in the Church in Wales gets her way, we may well find a few people come our way.

Her motion is to prevent those who cannot in conscience believe that women can be ordained from being ordained themselves. Essentially, her idea is to allow to die out those who hold the Catholic Faith in the Church in Wales. With no Catholic priests, there will be no provision for those Catholic laity, either. That’s not what I call flourishing.

So what is her argument?

It runs as follows.

1)      The Church in Wales (CiW) has made a clear decision that women may be admitted to all orders.

2)      In order to protect those established members of the CiW who cannot in conscience receive the ordination of women, a Code of Practice was drawn up.

3)      The Code of Practice states that during a period of reception, those who object to the ordination of women are not to be barred from ordination.

4)      Since the Code is temporary in nature, it was not intended for a parallel structure to exist for Catholics.

First conclusion: Any structure within the CiW for those who deny the decision of the CiW to ordain women is temporary.

5)      The Code encourages “mutual flourishing”.

6)      Women who train for ordination find themselves training with and under those who doubt their integrity to do so.

7)      These women have to undergo extra hurdles in order to reach ordination.

8)      These women do not realise their full potential and the Church uses their gifts.

Second Conclusion: The Code of Practice does not allow ordained women to flourish to the best of their ability.

This boils down to

A)     The Code of Practice calls for “mutual flourishing”.

B)      The Code of Practice does not allow for female ordinands to flourish.

C)      Therefore the Code of Practice is self contradictory.

Thus the Code should be resiled.

Now what if, for the sake of equality, we do a little mutatis mutandis on statements 5 to 8?

9)      The Code encourages “mutual flourishing”.

10)   Catholics who train for ordination find themselves training with and under those who doubt their integrity to do so.

11)   These Catholics have to undergo extra hurdles in order to reach ordination.

12)   These Catholics do not realise their full potential and the Church loses their gifts.

The Code of Practice is still not fit for purpose but clearly it would need to be resiled in the opposite favour.

The only difference lies in the clear decision which says that women can be ordained and thus skews the argument in favour of allowing women ordinands to flourish at the expense of Catholic ordinands. If there is to be any “mutual flourishing” then it is only temporary in nature and to be repealed once the Catholics are in a sufficient minority. To my mind, this does suggest that the commitment to “mutual flourishing” has been made with crossed fingers and suffers the death of the thousand caveats. Peggy Jackson is being less than venerable in not even thinking what Catholics in her Diocese are going to do.

If the CiW were acting with any degree of integrity at all, it should never have set up a Code of Practice which has essentially benefitted from the dying talents of the Catholic Wing so that it cannot actually flourish within or without the CiW. The CofE is no better.

I really should like to make it quite clear to those in Forward in Faith in the UK that it is absolutely clear that none of the British Provinces are committed to the flourishing of the Catholic Faith as once the CofE received because of their clear decision – this clear departure from the Catholic Faith. They want you to die out. The Evangelicals are already departing for various Protestant jurisdictions. You need to find a Catholic jurisdiction. Find somewhere to go.

The Anglican Catholic Church exists and will happily talk with you about your future but, if you don’t like us, then go to Rome, to ROCOR, to the Old Roman Catholic Church. Just get out.

Get out of the CofE. Get out of the CiW. You will suffer immeasurably in your souls if you stay. You will lose status, location and even livelihoods if you do go, but the Disciples lost more on your behalf and have gained a hundredfold more in Heaven for doing so.

Mae Duw yn dy fendithio!

De profundis clamavi ad Te, Domine

Sermon for the Day of Resurrection

In the Beginning, God creates the Heavens and the Earth and from this moment there is the dark deep.

And the Holy Ghost hovers over the face of this darkness and knows that this darkness is not what should be. Light comes and the darkness is relegated to the shadows of the things that come to be at the hands of God.

[PAUSE]

In the Beginning is the Word. And the Word is with God and the Word is God. He, too, sees the darkness of the deep. He sees how this darkness seeps its way into Creation through cracks made by the choice of the Humanity He creates. He sees how Creation flounders in this dark flood and He hates it. He hates it literally with every fibre of His being, because He is not of the darkness and He desires nothing more than we, His Children to be free from this darkness. And so, He strips Himself of all that is of His Divine Royalty and dives into the dark deep.

For a while, He floats at the surface between darkness and light, offering His hand to pull to the surface those who are drowning in the darkness. He teaches them how to reach the surface, how to tell which way is up, how to stay afloat and await rescue. Yet, there are those who know and love darkness and cling on to things that make them sink. These lovers of darkness spitefully nail a heavy cruciform weight to Him and He sinks yet further into the darkness until He is seen no more.

[PAUSE]Physics tells us that a body with density less than that of water will float. He is not of the darkness; He is the light itself. His control of all Creation means that He can transform this cruciform weight into a thing of light and, like a bubble, rises to the surface with a rush that erupts onto the world and renders it speechless save the word, “Rabboni?”

And this is the genius of it for, to save us, He brings us to the surface and bids us partake of His very being so that we may become as light as He is. In becoming things of light, the darkness repels us. Thus the Church floats upon the face of the deep. It possesses the keys of Heaven because it knows how to cling on to the One Who Ascends and Who will return to draw us out of the deep from which we call to Our Lord.

[PAUSE]

The call of Humanity is heard, and we see the face of the dark deep bubble and froth as He bursts back onto the surface in His Risen Glory, taking breaths of air again and, in so doing, making the air sweet for us to breathe. His Light shines in our darkness, and the darkness cannot even begin to grasp Him. We may float and bob on the surface, we may flounder and flail in the storms that rush over us, we may sink into the depths: we are, however, of God by His grace, and the darkness may pass over us, but the light of Christ will not pass over. We, too, through our trust in Him will rise and one day soar up into the light where He is and will dwell there for ever where there is no darkness at all.

Choosing the Cross

How would you like to die?

 It’s not a question that many of us want to consider and, when we are forced to confront it, we are most likely to say something like, “in bed, surrounded by my family,” or, “doing something I love.“ The fact of the matter is, whether we like it or not, God is the One Who determines that. Whether we live for a hundred years or a hundred seconds is something that God knows and is accordance with the state of Creation. Our physical death is the means whereby the influences of sin and evil in our lives are brought to an abrupt halt. While we all accept that we must die, what we cannot do, and perhaps are resentful about it, is choose how and when we are to die. It is knowing that there are a million and one unpleasant ways to die that causes our fear. Perhaps it is not so much the fear of being dead, but the fear of dying that is uppermost when we consider our own ends.

But would you choose to be Crucified?

Once we realise the actual, physical mechanics of Crucifixion and the biological impact that it has on the body then we begin to realise what happens to Our Lord Jesus Christ on Good Friday. We begin to realise just how beaten up He is before He even gets to see Pontius Pilate. We begin to realise the extent to which His body is lacerated by the scourge before He even reaches the Cross. And as for the Crucifixion itself…

It is once we consider the science of crucifixion that we just begin to step into a tiny inkling of what this Greater Love of which Our Lord speaks. That He would willingly give up His life in this particular manner on behalf of all humanity is humbling in the extreme and utterly inconceivable. And yet, we are still faced with something even more galling.

Given the many and varied ways that human beings have managed to dispatch each other over the centuries, why does God choose Crucifixion? Could the sacrifice not be made like Sydney Carton in a swift manner? Or like Archbishop Romero with a gunshot during Divine Worship? Even the sacrifices of animals demanded by the Torah have a quick dispatch rather than the long, tortured ordeal that Our Lord suffers. Surely, with His foreknowledge and His knowledge of our subjunctive existence (the things that might be) as our indicative existence (the things that are), God need not suffer so much.

And then it strikes again, like some thunderbolt. The Reason that God chooses this is not out of His necessity, but for ours. Our need to be rescued from Evil demands such a terrible death out of sheer love for us. Not only is the ransom paid, but the suffering of every single human being is wrested from the grip of the Devil as a defeat and lifted up sky-ward as a complete and utter triumph over the whole host of Evil Intelligences. Not only are our sins nailed to the cross with Our Lord, but also our sufferings at the hand of Evil. The tree with which human beings freely choose to disobey God and thereby must accept Death as the consequence of that choice, becomes the tree whereon God Himself accepts the same consequence and thereby makes it Holy just as He hallows the waters of Baptism in the Jordan and the hands, lives and works of the Apostles through His sharing His life with them. We are hit by the fact that God would rather choose Crucifixion than let even one single person be lost to Gehenna.

This is the Love with which we are presented and Love also presents us with a free choice because it will never coerce us into accepting its advances. We still can choose to reject Christ if we wish and thus spend Eternity away from Him. Can we honestly look Him in the eye and reject Him as He hangs on the Cross for our salvation?

And what if we accept Him? What if we choose to return that love? Then we have a cross to bear, too. We, too, face crucifixion. But we can be assured that it will be the Evil and Sin that will be nailed there permanently and any and all of the pain we suffer will be that of our birth into the Resurrection of Christ where no evil, no suffering, no pain, no sorrow, no conflict can ever touch us.

 If Christ chooses the Cross, then we must too. It is our glory and our victory. In choosing the Cross, it is all finished and we rise again!

Ecce homo

You may have heard those words, “Ecce homo!” and you will probably hear them translated as, “Behold the Man!” We might hear these words in a grandiose manner, pronounced in great gravity and enunciation. Yet, “ecce homo” might also be translated, “Look! It’s THIS man!” and spoken with an air of frustration, desperation, and confusion.

Pontius Pilate has been seeking to release Jesus knowing that the Jewish Authorities have not the slightest shred of evidence against Him. There are a lot of Jesuses and Joshuas and similar sounding names out there. Perhaps the massing crowd baying for the release of Barabbas don’t know which Jesus this is. If they will surely know Him as the teacher, the moralist, even the wonder-worker! If he just shows Jesus to the crowd, perhaps this injustice will stop. “Look! It’s THIS man!”

Pilate is not the first to give an “ecce homo”. These words don’t have to be spoken. They can be communicated by a kiss. “Look! THAT’s the man!” The words are followed by a rattling of swords, an ear cut off and an ear restored. Jesus is led away to some more “ecce homo”s. “Look! THAT’s the man who would destroy the temple!” “Look! THAT’s the man who blasphemes” “Look! THAT’s the man!”

The phrase “Ecce homo” can be found in the eighth verse of the fifty-second psalm.

“ecce homo qui non posuit Deum adiutorem suum sed speravit in multitudine divitiarum suarum et praevaluit in vanitate sua”

“Lo, this is the man that took not God for his strength: but trusted unto the multitude of his riches, and strengthened himself in his wickedness.”

It is this verse the Devil – the accuser – might use of each one of us. We are the ones who have failed to trust God completely. In his malice, the Devil points out to God our sins as if God does not know what they already are. We stand accused as fingers point at us “Look! THAT’s the man!” “Look! THAT’s the woman!”

We need not stand alone in our accusation for we can choose to stand with Christ and thus have Him stand with us. In this simple phrase, “ecce homo” time and space are bent and warped in dimensions that physics cannot reach. If we, in the twenty-first century, can stand with Christ in His passion whereby our sinful selves are nailed with Him to the Cross, our presence must be bound up with His. This is not a figurative act. This is a real bending of the fabric of Reality.

As the Israelites had to make many sacrifices and send many scapegoats out into the desert, only one sacrifice of Christ can take place for us all. It happens once, and it happens for everyone, past present and future. Just as the Israelites must partake of the sacrifice for it to have any effect, so we must partake of the single sacrifice of Christ. It is St John the Baptist who first points out Our Lord with the words, “ecce agnus Dei!” – “Look! THAT’s the Lamb of God.”

Behold that Lamb of God! Behold Him that taketh away the sins of the World! The Mass that Our Lord instigates on this Maundy Thursday is precisely the single sacrifice that binds all Christians throughout Time to Eternity itself. “Look! THIS is my body!” “Look! THIS is my blood!” There are so many who cannot or will not accept the utter reality of Christ as present at the Mass as we are, if not more so. We are truly given His flesh. We are truly given His blood. We truly partake of that sacrifice of Maundy Thursday and the great sacrifice of Good Friday! We are there with Him and while many will point at the Crucified Lord and catcall, “Look! THAT’s the man!” we will look and say, “Yes! THAT’s Him who is destroying our sins!”

And then, they will look at us and say “Look! THAT’s the man” “Look! THAT’s the woman!” and we will know that we are truly with Him this day in paradise!

The Law of Atonement

Sermon for Palm Sunday (Mattins)

Are you old enough to remember Lee Majors in The Fall Guy? The title of that programme is a bit of a pun. It is supposed to refer to the fact that Lee Majors is a stunt man using his skills to fight crime. His skill is knowing how to fall, hence the title. Of course, this is a play on the notion of a fall guy as someone who takes a punishment for someone else. A fall guy is a whipping boy or a scapegoat.

As a boy, King Charles I is said to have had a whipping boy – the first Earl of Dysart! – who was punished for the little prince’s misbehaviour. Have you taken the rap for someone else’s crimes? How does that feel? Does it make it right to punish the innocent in order to atone for the sins of the guilty?

[PAUSE]

The prophet Isaiah seems to be suggesting that Our Lord Jesus Christ came into the world to be punished for our sakes.

Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth. He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare his generation? for he was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was he stricken.

God lays upon His Son the iniquity, the sins of us all. All that we have done amiss; every single time we have disobeyed God; every time we have failed to love the Lord Our God with all our hearts, minds and strength; every time we have failed to love our neighbour as ourselves; each one of these causes Our Lord to receive bruises. All this is prefigured in the system of sacrifices that God gives to the Hebrews. According to the Law of the Old Testament, In order to be reconciled with God, you have to make sacrifice of two goats: one is a sin offering which is killed in the temple; the other is cast away into the wilderness bearing your transgressions. Aaron the priest has to do this for all of Israel on the Day of Atonement. The sins of all Israel are laid upon the scapegoat. If Jesus is the scapegoat for all humanity, how dreadful God must be to punish His innocent Son on behalf of sinful human beings! Why can’t God just pardon human beings of their sins, or punish us for our sins? Why do we have to see the dreadful spectacle of an innocent man dangling on the cross just to appease a petty, punishing deity who can’t let sins go?

The trouble is that we think too much in terms of crime and punishment. The only way that we human beings can deal with Sin and Evil is to bring things into the law courts. We see murderers convicted; we see burglars sent to gaol; we see person who has caused the injury pay the costs. What we don’t see is the actual sin being dealt with. The murder case may be ended, but someone is still dead; a family is still mourning; people are still scarred and weakened by this sin. It may be because of the murder of his father that a son is so scarred that he commits murder himself. The Law does nothing about Evil, it just sort of tries to shut it away. But Evil still lies lurking behind the prison door, waiting to climb out! It spreads, oozing out from under the prison door no matter how tightly we shut it. Something needs to be done to tackle Evil itself.

[PAUSE]

Evil is an absence of Good. It is a hole that needs to be filled. If human nature is damaged by Evil, then it will take a human being undamaged by Evil to destroy it. But this is beyond our capability, because we are all damaged. It can only take one who is truly Good – truly God – to heal us from Evil. Our Saviour has to be truly human and truly God. It has to be Jesus.

[PAUSE]

As we watch Our Lord go to His crucifixion this week, we see One Who has chosen to bear all of our sins in His own body on the tree so that Evil may be stopped in Him and that, in Him, our humanity might be restored. Further, in suffering so much, He demonstrates God’s love for us in our sufferings at the hands of Evil. As He suffers, He gives all our grief, our pain our suffering dignity and worth in the eyes of God. In His terrible death, all our tragedies are given a deeper joy and a hope of Resurrection.

This is no petty punishing God! This is a God who cannot stand the slightest drop of Evil. And He would rather die than allow His little ones to be infected with it forever.

The shoes of the Alpha Male

Sermon for the Fifth Sunday in Lent

The social life of the teenager is remarkably complicated, these days. It’s perhaps most pronounced in the relationships between teenage girls. There is always some form of popularity contest going on and, if you win this contest, you are rewarded with a group of friends vying for your approval.

But aren’t all human social groups a bit like that? There is always a top dog, and others coveting attention from that top dog. Can you see it in your life? Can you see it here in Church?

It seems that the same is true with Our Lord and His disciples. We see James and John wanting the best seats in Heaven. And you can understand the other disciples’ reactions, can’t you?

Why should James and John have the best seats? You’ve given up just as much of your life for Jesus as they have? You’ve been there and listened to His sermons. You’ve tried to put His teaching into practice. You’re as much a disciple as they are, aren’t you?

This is quite normal human behaviour for human beings, something we perhaps share with the apes, but we know the strife that it causes.

But we cannot blames James and John. If we were present with James and John, would we not want to get close to Jesus? Of course we would! But would it be because Jesus is popular, or would it be because of something else?

[PAUSE]

Look at how the disciples started out. Peter, Andrew, James, John – all leave their boats to follow Jesus at one word from Him! It seems like the disciples are drawn to Him like moths to a flame. Now where have we seen that before? Moses and the Disciples are drawn to the fire of God. For Moses, it burns in a bush; for the Disciples, it shines in the very life and work of Jesus. An ordinary bush, an ordinary man – both extraordinary! In these most ordinary of things, we find ourselves struggling not to behave in an ordinary way. Moses has to be told to put off his shoes because the ground on which he walks is holy. Likewise, James and John are told not to behave like other human beings and see Jesus as just a charismatic teacher.

[PAUSE]

Moses’ feet touch the ground, the very dust from which we human beings have been made by the hand of God. He is grounded in reality. And standing here, on the ground, in the reality that he has always known, he finds himself in the presence of the God Who says, “I Am That I Am.” Moses is told in no uncertain terms that God is the One Who Is – and that the very act of being comes from God alone. The ground becomes holy precisely because God says it is. Things become holy because God separates them out for His purposes. By taking off his shoes and touching the ground, Moses becomes humble. In being humble, he is made holy by God for the purposes of redeeming Israel from Egypt.

[PAUSE]

The Disciples find themselves in the presence of the Man Jesus and when they begin that usual process of seeing Him as the top dog and vying for His attention, He tells them to be humble. He tells them to put aside this meaningless popularity contest and start being real human beings being neither greater nor lesser than another, but all of immeasurable value to the Creator. The Disciples live and move and have their being with God Incarnate. In the act of the Word being made Flesh and dwelling among us, we are presented with the fact that each one of us – every single human being, without exception – can be made holy. That is the call of the Church. The Church is Holy, and we are called to become holy, to live holy lives, to centre them on Christ, to repent TO Him.

[PAUSE]

Our calling to become members of the Church is a call to take off our shoes and stand on holy ground. It is a call to put off lives of competition for limited resources and find lives which are rooted in the business of being human shared with the Infinite Being of God Himself. We are made holy only by God, irrespective of other’s holiness. Not even priesthood makes a man holy – ordination sets that man apart to distribute the sacraments irrespective of his holiness. We can never say that the Bishop is automatically holier than the one that sits in the pew. In many circumstances, it has been the other way around. It is in living God-centred lives in prayer and obedience that helps us draw closer to Him and from Him find our holiness.

[PAUSE]

To become holy, we must put off our shoes, forget about social status, and commit ourselves to the reality of God that only touches our understanding and experience briefly. To become holy, we must stand on the ground from which we are made and gaze into the Infinity of Love: only then -ONLY then - will the cold, dark world around us catch His fire.