Where have all the angels gone?

Sermon for Michaelmas Day

Where have all the angels gone?

There are tales of angels fighting enemy forces during battles in the First World War, appearing out of thin air to aid tired and failing heroes. If an angel host fights on your side it means that your cause is just, doesn’t it? Unfortunately these just seem to be just wartime propaganda to justify – even glorify – the cause for warfare.

The precedent is quite clear. The prophet Elisha gets a whole host of angels to stand with him against the king of Syria. If Elisha stands on the cause of God then it must follow that anyone who fights for God’s cause must receive the same treatment.

Then where are they?

[PAUSE]

Elisha gets a host to stand with him, but Jonathan does not.

St Peter is loosed from his chains by and angel, but St James is not.

John the Baptist’s conception is announced by an angel, but Moses’ is not.

In times of despair today, some people are visited by angels and some are not.

Why? Are some of us just not good enough to receive angelic help?

[PAUSE]

This is exactly the same problem that we face when we ask where all the miracles have gone and the answer is the same. Miracles are happening and angels are visiting but we don’t see them and the reason is quite clear. If we had angels in constant visible attendance, the human race would automatically start treating them like genies. The human race would quickly become a collection of spoilt children unwilling to take responsibility for their own actions, unwilling to live the life that God gives us to live as ourselves, unwilling to be transformed into Children of Light.

The evidence for this is very obvious indeed, especially since we seem to regard Planet Earth as something to exploit rather than care for. And we seem to regard other human beings as things to exploit rather than care for. Why should the angels become visible based on this evidence?

[PAUSE]

Let us be clear. To ask whether we are good enough for angels and miracles makes no sense. You might as well have a birthday on October 32^nd. You can be rich enough to own a top-of-the-range Mercedes Benz, but you can’t be good enough to own one.

The fact is that we do have angels looking after us all the time. God promises that He will give His angels charge over us to protect us lest we dash our feet against a stone.

Wait! Does this mean that God promises to send an angel to stop us stubbing our toes?

No. Clearly not. This is not what the Psalmist means when he tells of angels preventing us from dashing our foot against a stone. He is speaking of the angels clearing our way to God from obstacles.

This is where the battle lies.

[PAUSE]

We hear St John talk of war in Heaven where the good angels fight the bad. This battle is over humanity, and it is a battle that still rages in Time over each one of us. The angels have only one goal: to get the Children of God back to God. Their battle is unseen and unknown and it is best for us if it remains that way otherwise we would become mere spectators to our own lives.

There are times when God commands the angels to become visible, but only for His purposes and not ours. Someone might say, “that’s not fair! I could do with seeing my guardian angel now!” but who said that God was fair? God is not fair – He is generous, abundantly generous and kind and far above issues of human fairness. Human fairness is often self-serving unlike love and trust. God has His reasons to reveal angels to some and not to others. We need to trust that.

That's not to say that the angels aren't around us now. We could be entertaining angels and not know it.

[PAUSE]

The angels haven't gone anywhere. It's we who are on the journey back to God. Rather than worry about seeing angels, let us be thankful to them for clearing the way back to God Who created both Man and the angels.

Consequences for Marcion

Sermon for the fourteenth Sunday after Trinity

It’s very tempting to think that Marcion was right.

Who’s Marcion?

Marcion says that he is a Christian who does not believe that the God he reads about in the Old Testament is the same God that he reads about in the New Testament. Marcion thinks that it would be a good idea to cut out the Old Testament altogether as well as those bits of the New Testament which are sympathetic to the Old Testament?

But why?

Marcion hears the prophet Zephaniah declare that God says, “I will utterly consume all things from off the land, saith the Lord. I will consume man and beast; I will consume the fowls of the heaven, and the fishes of the sea, and the stumbling blocks with the wicked: and I will cut off man from off the land, saith the Lord.” Marcion remembers how similar this sounds to God’s fury at the people in Noah’s time just before He wipes them off the face of the Earth with a flood.

And then Marcion hears Our Lord say, “Thy sins are forgiven. Thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace.”

You can see the thoughts go around Marcion’s head. If Jesus is God, then he’s not the same God as the one that drowned the Earth in a flood. They have completely different characters. Hasn’t Marcion got a point?

[PAUSE]

The main trouble with Marcion’s argument is that Our Lord Jesus Christ was born a Jew and for the purpose of saving the people of God. Jesus Himself reminds us that He was sent first to save the people of Israel and then the Gentile. All Jesus’ acts of worship conform to the Jewish standards of worship. The Blessed Virgin teaches her little boy the Jewish faith that she has received from old time, and her little boy grows up in that faith as the Messiah – the one who fulfils that faith. His ministry is steeped in the words of the Law and the Prophets, only He reveals their true nature as laws for the heart, not for blind observance. Jesus is the Son of the God worshipped by Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and there is no getting around this. The Father of Jesus is the God of the Old Testament, and therefore the God of the New. And Jesus and the Father are One.

So why is God so different between the two testaments?

[PAUSE]

It seems difficult to say that God is the same in both Testaments, but it is true. Our difficulty is that we tend to see God as we see ourselves. We hear phrases like “the wrath of God” and we see a furious bearded old man on a throne hurling thunderbolts. That image we have, though, is an old image of the Greek god Zeus and is therefore a distortion. God does not experience wrath in the same way we do – how can an Eternal Being be angry at things in Time? What we see in the “wrath of God” are the consequences of our sins.

[PAUSE]

Take a china plate and hold it at arm’s length above a stone floor. Now let go.

Take a glass tumbler and hold it at arm’s length above a stone floor. Now let go.

Take a plastic beaker and hold it at arm’s length above a stone floor. Now let go.

In each case, the object falls. The tumbler and the plate break, but they all fall down. That’s the way that God arranges the Universe. That is the law of Gravity. We can’t change that, and if God were to change the law of gravity then the whole Universe would be changed too.

The same is true. If we sin and keep on sinning then this will have effects on the world around us. Every little sin we commit goes out into the world like the butterfly flapping its wings. And, as the Butterfly Effect takes hold, this can whip up a storm that can destroy us. This storm is the wrath of God because it is the consequence of our sins according to the rules and laws with which God has created the Universe.

We look at the world that God destroys yet saving Noah. We see Israel taken into captivity in Babylon. We see the temple of Jerusalem destroyed. And we say that it’s the wrath of God. Indeed it is. These are the logical consequences of our sins and we have to accept those consequences. It doesn’t matter if we destroy the environment around us knowingly or unknowingly, the result is the same and we are punished by those consequences. We can’t blame God because He created the world and us and told us how to live in order to enjoy it – and we did not listen to Him.

[PAUSE]

Hold a plate at arm’s length over a stone floor. Now let go. Does the plate smash?

Not if someone catches it.

Not if we allow someone to catch it.

Not if we call out for help for someone to catch it.

Not if we, knowing how foolish we are to have let go of the the plate repent, call out for help.

[PAUSE]

We humans are a foolish race. We expect God to save us from the consequences of our sin by changing the Universe just to help us out. And we forget that God has the power over life and death itself. Even if we are broken by the consequences of our sins, we can be mended, transformed and recreated. Even death is not something to fear when God is with us.

And this is the God that Marcion rejects in favour of a god of his own making, torn away from Eternity and flattened into Time and Space.

[PAUSE]

This world is buzzing with the consequences of sin, but it also buzzes with the consequences of love. We must accept the consequences of both in order to respect the Universe and the One God Who created it, but work to send out into the Universe the love of the same One God Who will save it.

Walking the wrong talk

Sermon for the thirteenth Sunday after Trinity

Every family seems to have a scandal. Somewhere along the line, someone upsets a brother or a sister or a cousin. You may have heard of parents disowning children or children divorcing their parents. We certainly know of many marriages which have ended badly.

Is it ever right for a family to break apart? There are certainly families so dysfunctional that they have to be broken up.

It seems that the Church is just such a dysfunctional family.

[PAUSE]

The Church has been riven with many schisms and factions. Even today, we witness congregations disowning their parent church and realigning themselves with others. Though many would deny it, this is true of all branches of the Church. It has happened in the Orthodox Church which has fractured most recently over the issue of Ukraine; the Anglican Communion is fragmenting along issues which boil down to the authority of Holy Scripture; and Pope Francis has recently said that he doesn’t have a problem with those who threaten to break away from the Church of Rome over issues his pontificate raises.

Surely this isn’t right. Surely there is only One Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. How can that break apart?

[PAUSE]

First, we should realise that St Paul witnesses fragmentation in the Church. His letters to the Corinthians and to the Romans demonstrate that he is committed to resolving disputes. However, there are occasions when a split must occur. St Paul writes to St Timothy who is in Ephesus. His main concern about the church in Ephesus is that strange teachings are arising. St Paul tells him, “charge some that they teach no other doctrine, Neither give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which minister questions, rather than godly edifying which is in faith: so do.”

These false teachers are Nicolaitans and Our Lord tells St John in the book of Revelation that the Church in Ephesus has done well to hate their teaching. We still don’t quite know what the Nicolaitans teach but several Church Fathers such as St Hippolytus and St Epiphanius suggest that the Nicolaitans are the followers of a deacon called Nicolas who has fallen into sexual immorality and impurity and changes the teaching of the Church to reflect that.

St Paul is very clear, “If any man teach otherwise, and consent not to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which is according to godliness; He is proud, knowing nothing, but doting about questions and strifes of words, whereof cometh envy, strife, railings, evil surmisings, Perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds, and destitute of the truth, supposing that gain is godliness: from such withdraw thyself.”

For the health of the Church, the Christian must walk away from anyone who changes the Faith from what Our Lord Jesus Christ teaches us, from what He shows us and from what His disciples bear witness. St Paul tells us that those who change the Faith like to change and quibble about what words mean, and argue about what is really being taught. We have seen this before, because we know that the Devil likes to quote Holy Scripture but in such a way as to make it mean what it does not.

So, we must withdraw from those who change what Our Lord Jesus Christ teaches.

But…

[PAUSE]

There is an important thing here that we must take care. Our Lord Jesus commends us for hating the teaching of the Nicolaitans, but not for hating the Nicolaitans. The one thing that can never change is that all humanity is one family and that we share this humanity with everyone, even evil doers. We have the same humanity as Our Lady, St Peter, St John, St Paul, St Theresa of Calcutta, even the same humanity as Our Lord. But we also have the same humanity as our worst enemy, the greatest schismatics, the Nicolaitans, and dictators such as Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot. We cannot change that.

Each person is still our neighbour and still worthy of our love because they bear the same humanity as we do, and the teaching of Christ is that we love them. There is a difference between walking away from those who preach a false Gospel and hating them.

[PAUSE]

When we have to walk away, we must do so with tears in our eyes, feeling for the people who have been so deceived and remembering that we ourselves can easily be corrupted if we are not careful. We must pray to God vigorously begging Him to save those who have thing so badly wrong, and begging Him to show us of any false teaching that we might be holding onto. We must keep the door of the Church unlocked and a light burning in the window for those who leave the Church through false teaching so that they can see the way back and find God’s forgiveness and joy at their return.

Slave subversion

Sermon for the twelfth Sunday after Trinity

The Church has often been accused of endorsing slavery. You can see why. The Old Testament has passages which permit selling people into slavery. Even St Paul appears to be encouraging slavery when he writes things like “Servants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh; not with eyeservice, as menpleasers; but in singleness of heart, fearing God.” Further, St Paul sends the runaway slave Onesimus back to his master Philemon and he is proud of it!

[PAUSE]

The issue of slavery is a blight on Western Civilisation and we are still reeling from its effects. Over the centuries, under the pretence of civilisation, human beings have been bought and sold like cattle and treated as less than cattle. Slavery has been presented as acceptable by the ruling elite, even as statements of fashion, and the dreadful reality hidden away until recent times.

[PAUSE]

We know why slavery is appalling: a human being is being robbed of the dignity of being human and treated like a piece of property, no better than a bull, a goat or a sheep.

It has to be said, though, that this is a different form of slavery than that described in the Old Testament. In the Jewish Law, someone in dire financial difficulty could sell themselves or a child to another in order to work off the debt. Yet, let us be clear on this, this form of slavery had rights and was not meant to be permanent. Indeed, in the Old Testament, this form of slave would be better translated as bondsman – someone under a bond of debt.

In other cultures, and most notably, the Roman Empire, the slave was indeed a piece of property of another human being. While a slave could be freed, there was no guarantee of freedom, no guarantee of rights, not even a guarantee of kindness. Roman Law is designed to uphold this view. If a slave runs away to you, then you are legally required to return that slave to his master because he is not you property. If you keep that slave, then you are guilty of theft in the eyes of Roman Law.

[PAUSE]

And this is St Paul’s dilemma. Onesimus has run away from Philemon and found his way to St Paul. Under Roman Law, St Paul must return Onesimus. Does this sound familiar?

We know what the Lord says about the Roman Law: Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's. What we see in St Paul’s letter to Philemon is precisely how he does just that.

He creates a bond of brotherhood between Philemon and Onesimus. The Roman Law only has power over a slave for as long as long as there is a distance between master and slave. As soon as the master realises the dignity of the slave; as soon as the master realises his shared humanity with the slave; as soon as the master realises that the slave is his brother to be loved and cherished and adored, then the Roman Law is utterly meaningless. As long as the commandment “Love thy neighbour as thyself” is in effect, any law which relies on one person being of lesser value than another is void.

[PAUSE]

It’s true to say that some parts of the Church have done better than others to stamp out slavery. Horribly, some parts of the Church have done better than others to endorse slavery. The fact is, however, whenever another human being is seen as the property of another, there is a violation of the commandment of God. It needs to be fought.

And yes, there is slavery today.

There is slavery in sweatshops where children are forced to make cut-price clothes for less than the cost of living.

There is slavery in car washes in which people are forced to wash cars by those who exploit their circumstances as asylum seekers or illegal immigrants.

There is slavery in the sex industry in which girls are being sold for their bodies. We don’t need to go further to think about the horrors that await them.

All this slavery can be stopped the moment we realise our duty of love to our neighbour. It means we need to be careful what we buy and where from. We need to be considerate of those who deliver our packages at night. We need to look into the eyes of those who wash our cars. We need to protect our young men and women from those who would seek to use their bodies in a vile and disgusting manner.

But above all, we need to become slaves of love.

[PAUSE]

We are God’s property through our creation and yet God would have us become like Him. His yoke is easy, His burden is light. To be a slave of Christ is to gain the world. To be a slave of Christ is to gain Christ. There are those who work in the darkness who need to hear that!

When Gehazi needs a wash

Sermon for the eleventh Sunday after Trinity

What do you think is the most infectious disease in the world?

No disease is pleasant to suffer, but there are some truly terrible candidate out there. Ebola, AIDS, bird flu. Even diseases like measles, mumps and rubella can be more than just a short period of being unwell; they can have lasting effects.

Of course, it is important to get inoculated against these diseases because, if we can stop their spread, they can die out like smallpox and cowpox.

There is, however, a truly horrible infectious disease – one which, if not treated, invariably leads to death.

Eternal death.

It is called Sin.

[PAUSE]

That sounds a bit overdramatic and, to many, laughable. Yet this is probably a fact of the culture in which we live: sin seems harmless. Surely, whatever you do behind closed doors is your own business. As long as you don’t hurt other people, any sins you commit don’t really matter. Sin is passé, old hat, just a way of trying to control people.

How wrong! Every single sin matters. St Paul is clear: the wages of sin is death.

Yes, but who gets to say what sin is? Surely many things which we used to call sinful are okay? Surely sin is an outdated concept?

[PAUSE]

Let us be clear: all sin is a separation of us from God. Every single act of sin drives a wedge between us and the God Who loves us. That’s not His doing, it’s ours. Humanity has contracted this disease from the very first act of disobedience which we see in the Garden of Eden.

We are like Naaman: we have become weakened by the presence of sin in our society. We contract the disease of sin by wilfully separating ourselves from God. It doesn’t matter if we are a great general, or politician, or celebrity, or bishop. We have the capacity to sin and, more often than not, we do sin.

What we see in Naaman is that the cure of this disease is just so easy to do. It doesn’t involve beating yourself up, or whipping yourself with chains, or starving yourself to death. The cure for sin is simply to wash.

[PAUSE]

Our first bath takes place in the font at our Baptism. We are washed from whatever sins we have committed and we are inoculated against the permanent effect of sin. What does this mean?

It means that, if we sin after baptism, there is always a way back, because we are members of the Church from that moment on. Being in the Church means that we have access to God’s grace. When we sin, we turn back to God and we find ourselves clean again through the blood and water that pour forth from His side at His crucifixion.

Just as Naaman’s is restored to that of a child, so are our souls when we confess, repent and receive absolution.

It’s wonderful news! Reconciliation with God is freely available. The trouble is, so is sin!

[PAUSE]

Look how simply Naaman is healed! But look how easily Gehazi falls into sin. And look at how quickly he becomes diseased and unclean.

What we see in Gehazi is just how contagious sin is. Sin moves as rapidly as a tear in a very fine fabric. We think it’s been patched up, but the rip starts again somewhere else. And while Naaman is now cleansed, just a single moment of weakness from as holy a man as Gehazi rips him away from the God he serves.

Is this the end of Gehazi?

[PAUSE]

Grace and Absolution from sin is always freely available. It can be found in the Church and all we need to do is just ask for it sincerely, seeking to make reparation and to rejoin the Body of Christ. It is very likely that we will sin again and again and again, sometimes the same sin more than four-hundred and ninety times. It doesn’t matter. The love of God makes it easy to come back to Him. The hard part is living with the consequences of what we do wrong, and that can sting badly. Even then, by living in faith and willingly receiving the punishment in Time for our sins, we will find ourselves clean and whole for all Eternity in the loving arms of Our Lord Jesus Christ.