Unfair God

Sermon for the second Sunday after Easter

God discriminates.

This is quite true: Our Creator is guilty of discrimination. Many people in this day and age put God on trial for discrimination against women, against people who describe themselves as gay, even against animals given all the ritual slaughter of lambs, oxen and other animals in the Old Testament.

God is not an equal opportunities employer: women have all the hard work in bearing children and still cannot become priests. Those who work for an hour get paid as much as those who do a full day's work. Those who break the rules succeed at the expense of those keep the rules.

God is even described as a monster for torturing His own Son to death.

God is unfair.

And that's how it should be.

[PAUSE]

St Paul explains very clearly just why God should be unfair:

 "I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ, and be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith: that I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death; if by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead."

God has created each one of us with a sense of fair play. It's something that He shares with us. He is utterly righteous and so we have that. 

The trouble is that we have corrupted our sense of right and wrong. Many of our decisions of what is fair and right are to do with how powerful we are or how powerful someone else is, or how rich we are or how rich someone else is. Sometimes we judge what is fair out of envy rather than looking at real need.

And St Paul wants to get away from all that. He sees his own sense of righteousness as severely lacking in comparison with God. What he gains in the world's eyes, he loses in God's eyes. He wants to get away from the language of rights, entitlement, oppression and privilege, and back to the language of Love which can only come from God Himself.

[PAUSE]

It is ironic that people try to judge God using their understanding of what is good and righteous. These are like people who refuse to switch on the light and blame the light for the room being dark!

If they think that God is a monster for sacrificing His Son, then they miss the fact that the Son willingly offers Himself up as a purely Good sacrifice in order to destroy Evil as one might destroy a hole in a pure gold bar by filling it in with pure gold.

[PAUSE]

In order to be righteous, we must always look to God. We have to stop valuing what we have and who we are by our own reckoning and seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness. Only then will we gain, and what we gain will be of more value than we can imagine. What we gain will be God Himself.

Breathe on me, Breath of God

Sermon for the first Sunday after Easter

How would you like  someone to breathe on you?

Even before the dreaded virus made breathing on someone a form of assault, there was always something rather unpleasant about someone breathing on you. It's all about germs, isn't it?

However, breathing on people and things is a ceremonial action. According to ancient tradition, the priest breathes in the face of the newly baptised, the bishop breathes on the Chrism Oil and, in some rites, the priest breathes into the chalice at the consecration.

And you know the reason why. Jesus breathes on His disciples and tells them to receive the Holy Ghost. The breath is the outward sign of the Holy Ghost being given to the Disciples.

So what's the Day of Pentecost for? Isn't that when the Holy Spirit descends on the Disciples?

[PAUSE]

What Jesus is doing here is giving us yet another proof of the Trinity. The Holy Ghost has His origin in the Father just as the Son has His origin in the Father. The Son - Our Lord Jesus Christ - is eternally begotten of the Father. The Holy Ghost eternally proceeds from the Father but enters into Time through the Son. When Jesus breathes on His disciples, the Holy Ghost enters into our frame and experience of being. The Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father through the Son. 

In breathing on His disciples after His Resurrection, Our Lord completes our baptism for us. We are baptised with water into His death and then with His Spirit into His life. It is only when Jesus' earthly ministry is ended at His Ascension that the ministry of the Holy Ghost can begin in us. That is why there is a wait between receiving the Holy Ghost from the Son after the Resurrection and being charged with the Spirit at Pentecost.

That doesn't stop us from being uncomfortable when a priest breathes on us, does it?

[PAUSE]

We do have to balance our worship responsibly. Our breath carries germs and we cannot escape that. It is a sign of our humanity and our eventual death. It means that we just cannot be blasé about our actions and compromise someone else's health. The priest that breathes into the chalice as part of the liturgy is the only one who receives it: the congregation receive only the Body of Christ. We must not put the Lord Our God to the test just as when Satan tempts Our Lord to throw Himself down from the top of the temple to prove God's power off to unbelievers.

On the other hand, God appears to us in our frailty even in the breath of the air. When we receive His breath, we live even though we take our last breath on this earth.

The fact is that for all of us who are baptised and loves God, our last breath on earth will be this tainted air, but our first breath in Heaven will be the Holy Ghost in us.

Lockdown to Freedom

Sermon for the Day of Resurrection

Alleluia! He is risen!

But is He invading your privacy?

[PAUSE]

A popular theme among Paschal sermons this year will be the appearance of Our Lord to the Disciples behind locked doors. We know that the Disciples are in hiding for fear of the Jews just as we are in hiding for fear of the virus. Jesus appears to them despite the doors being shut. One wonders whether He will wash His hands to two verses of Happy Birthday.

The fact is that Our Lord chooses to appear behind closed doors to His Disciples rather than out in public. He could also conceivably appear in Pontius Pilate's house, or in Caiaphas' bedroom. Why not? It would be such a statement for Him to appear behind the locked doors of the people who crucified Him. But He doesn't.

Doesn't this reticence to appear and challenge those who speak against Him make the job of proclaiming the Gospel difficult?

Why behind closed doors? Why not in public where all doubt can be removed? Doesn't He want people to know Him for certain?

[PAUSE]

It seems that the Lord is a respecter of privacy. It is only to those who have invited Him into their lives that He appears in His post-crucifixion glory. Strictly speaking, we have no privacy with God. Even the thoughts of our inmost hearts are known by God. Indeed, God knows what it is like to be us because He has given being to us in the first place. This means He has nothing to prove to those who hate Him. 

On the Cross, the Lord displays His love for us in the fullest way that one human being can show another. There is no way we fallen human beings can see a greater love until we can see God as He is. And Love does not insist on its own way. Our Lord can be locked out of the room by those who are as afraid of Him as the Disciples are afraid of the Jews and as we are afraid of the virus.

Pharaoh keeps his heart locked to God, but soon finds that he could not open it even if he wanted to: the door has rusted shut This is a warning to those who refuse to believe.

[PAUSE]

There is another side to this, though. This is such good news for those that love God. Even in a lockdown, He is still with you. You might not receive the Blessed Sacrament, but there is nothing to say that this is the only way that Christ can be present with you. The sacraments are given to us by God as certain vehicles of His grace: that does not mean that they are the only vehicles of His grace.

In lockdown, we can expect God to be present to us at this wonderful time of year, just as He is present for us at the Mass. Our doors may be locked, but our hearts need not be. As our faith grows in the uncertainty of a world infected not only by viruses, but more horribly with Sin and Death, the more our hearts can open to receive more.

[PAUSE]

Of course, just as opening the door risks letting in the virus, so opening our hearts risks great pain. But Our Lord's heart was opened with a spear and so He knows our pain. And He suffers our pain. And He releases us from our pain. The fear is gone. The doors fling open. The light shines in.

He is risen indeed, Alleluia!

Pushing through the darkness

A reflection on Holy Saturday during the COVID19 pandemic.

Stripping back to Glory

A reflection for Good Friday during the COVID19 pandemic.

Glory in betrayal

A reflection for Maundy Thursday during the COVID19 pandemic.

Spikenard and spite

Sermon for Palm Sunday

We are privileged to spend time with Mary, Martha and Lazarus as they entertain Our Lord and the disciples. Although we have to stand back from the table in order to let the meal take place, we can still see the genuine love and affection that Mary, Martha and Lazarus have for Jesus and His friends. 

Before we know it, a glorious smell hits our noses. It is a strong, earthy, sweet and spicy smell but it is certainly not unpleasant and it overpowers all those wonderful aromas of Martha's cooking. We look and we see an empty alabaster box on the floor and Mary wiping the feet of Jesus with her hair. She has used all of the spikenard, every single expensive drop. 

And everyone breathes in this smell. For many, it will bring back memories of the day they buried someone very dear. Others will think of the far distant Himalayas where spikenard is native and dream of foreign lands. Others will rest in the warm smell and forget about the smell of the street and the hurley burley of daily life. And one will be consumed with envy, spite and resentment as he will not benefit from the proceeds of selling this perfume.

[PAUSE]

For Judas, something is only worth as much as people are willing to pay for it. He knows the price of spikenard; he knows how much there was in the purse and how much there is now; shortly he will know that the price of a Messiah is thirty pieces of silver. For Judas, the loss of the spikenard means that the poor will get no benefit from their poverty - at least that's the impression that he's trying to sell.

And how blind he is! He walks in darkness oblivious to the needs of human beings that go beyond the filling of the belly. He cannot smell in the spikenard the love that people have for each other. He cannot perceive the concern that Mary has that Our Lord be honoured. 

We might feel contempt for Judas' attitude but we have to admit that this is such a common occurrence. How often do human beings ruin something with their bad attitude? We see the phenomenon of people ruining children's programmes with unpleasant ideas in order to make them relevant to Society. Statues of statesmen are torn down, their good works forgotten because they adhered to ideas which we find unpalatable today. Sometimes, we see something beautiful and we have to ruin it. Why?

[PAUSE]

There is a simple answer: we simply cannot cope with pure good. We become so overwhelmed by its sheer, glorious positivity that we are unable to cope with it and must sully it to bring it to our sad and sordid level. This is what Judas is doing: faced with the impurity of his heart and his motives, he tries to destroy the warmth of Mary's offering, justifying it with some pressing and worthy issue that just isn't relevant here. And this is why he loses his soul.

Rather than repent and seek to be transformed so that he can bear pure love and goodness, he wants to continue as he is and thus rules himself out of life.

[PAUSE]

The point of Lent is for us to try and open ourselves to God's transforming power so that we can be in the presence of His Goodness. If we were to see Him as He is in our sinful state we would be utterly destroyed - torn to pieces by the sin in our nature pulling away from God, burnt up by the fire of His love.

Today, we come onto the final week of Lent, and we can be tempted to see our failures to keep the spirit of Lent, our continued sinfulness, and the terrible truth that we will in all likelihood sin again. What Mary has done for Christ, she has done for us too. She might be a sinner, but she is still capable of loving to the best of her ability and it cannot be taken from her. 

The same is true for us too. Sometimes we just need to stop fretting about our sins, sit down with Our Lord and smell the spikenard.

Forsaken by ikons

We find ourselves in a time of isolation and solitude which Nature has forced on us. For once, at Easter, we face the prospect of the church bells being silent, chancels being dark and thuribles cold.

As I sit saying my daily offices, I am usually surrounded by faces peering down at me from the ikons that are dotted around. But it is Passiontide, so all the ikons are hidden and I face my prayers as if I have been cut off from the hope of Heaven. It is lonely and uncomfortable. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

But this is where the world is now, sitting on its own, deprived of the warmth of companionship. People are dying alone, declared untouchable and not for the first time in our history. We want to help, and we try our best, but the separation is too much for us.

When we first sinned, we cut ourselves off from God. We forsook Him utterly through disobedience and the first degree of hatred of Him. We suffer the consequences of that isolation: we will always be distant to some extent even from the people we love most. Our subjective self is utterly unavailable to anyone else except God, and He has been pushed out because we wanted Him to leave us to ourselves.

The Passion of the Christ is for us - to save us from the complete isolation of Hell. To accomplish this He suffers the same isolation. We cannot even watch with Him one brief hour. He prays, sweat falling like blood, with the faces of His friends turned away and veiled by sleep, fear and ignorance.

He stands isolated before the Pharisees, before Pilate, before the soldiers who strip Him at each turn from the warmth of being a human being and leaving behind a cold and bleeding subhuman. He hangs isolated on His own cross, the World and it's sins upon His shoulders alone. He dies alone and yet surrounded by the crowd. He is buried alone despite knowing the mourning of those who love Him.

The Day of Resurrection brings more instances of being alone. St Mary Magdalene encounters the Risen Lord alone. There is an intimate companionship on the road to Emmaus. The fearful solitude of the locked room is breached by God. No longer do we have to endure a lonely death for someone crosses with us at the most intimate level.

The Church doors may be locked on Easter Day but this is the opportunity for us to receive the Risen Lord bursting in to our lives despite the locked doors. This is the opportunity for the prayers we offer to deepen through the sorrow of the Passion and open up a place within our souls to encounter Jesus alive and warm and in fellowship. 

On Easter Day, I will once again see the eyes of the citizens of Heaven looking at me and reminding me of what God wants for all His Church. We can get there by seeking God even in our isolation. He is there and will be found by all who open the closet of their heart to Him.