Pointing the finger

A reflection on St John Baptist, St Peter and St Paul.

Sometimes people point in different directions to the same thing.

Creeping out from under the sheet

Sermon for the third Sunday after Trinity

It's a fact that babies have to learn disgust. What we may find disgusting is largely due to what our parents tell us is disgusting. Daddy won't eat the half-chewed biscuit tells Baby that you just don't eat food that someone else is eating.

Breaking disgust, then, is going to be a difficult matter.

[PAUSE]

St Peter sees a sheet from God containing animals that Jews would call unclean. St Peter feels disgust at seeing these and being told to eat them. His upbringing has taught him this disgust. His reaction comes from the gut. And yet God Himself tells Peter that he can eat these animals.

You can imagine a bit of a conflict going on in St Peter. His upbringing and his faith in God are at odds. How would you feel about having to eat a mussel for the first time. Peter knows that, for love of God, he must overcome his disgust.

And then Cornelius' envoys arrive.

[PAUSE]

St Peter probably does not feel disgust at entering a Gentile's house, but his upbringing tells him that there is something not right about it. Jews and Gentiles are not meant to mix. 

Yet St Peter knows he must overcome this reaction because God tells him that Cornelius is to be accepted into the Church. In one fell swoop, God condemns racism by showing that all races may become Christian and worship Our Lord Jesus Christ.

But wait! Didn't God Himself say which animals were clean and unclean. Didn't God create St Peter's disgust? Didn't God tell Jew to separate from Gentile? Didn't God thus bring about racism?

[PAUSE]

We have to understand the Old Testament carefully. At the time of Moses, the races of the Gentiles identified with their pagan gods. To these Gentiles, the Lord God was just a god of the mountains, and one among many. These Gentiles engaged in orgies and even sacrificed their babies to their false gods. And God, Our Lord God, made it clear that the Jews were to have nothing to do with them. They were not to be like them. 

To show their separation, they had to demonstrate their cleanliness by washing, by eating the right things, and by living a code of moral cleanliness. This is how Israel was supposed to be a holy people. This is why the Jews of St Peter's time make much show of their purity, even by showing that they have purely Jewish ancestry.

And then in comes Cornelius. .

[PAUSE]

Cornelius is not like other Gentiles. He worships God. We know he worships God because the Holy Ghost shows St Peter, and shows us too, that Cornelius is truly worshipping God. He deserves to be baptised; he deserves to be allowed to come to Christ.

Cornelius is not a Gentile who worships a false god and so God separates him out into His Church at St Peter's hands.

[PAUSE]

God destroys racism by showing that anyone who truly worships Him is part of the Church. Jew, Gentile, Male, Female, Slave, Free - all may enter the Church and be welcomed in by hands and a heart that have been pierced just so we might enter in. 

What doesn't happen, though, is that Evil become Good, and God makes that clear. Only those who worship Him may enter the Church. Those who go against His will through hating Him or hating neighbour need to repent and worship God - not for His sake, but for theirs.

The animals on the sheet were not evil: they were different. What God calls clean we should not call unclean. If we do then it is the Evil that creeps out from under the sheet that will consume us.

Being right in the com-box

I felt rather sorry for the administrators of a certain Sarum-based Facebook group.

Consider a parishioner asking about the Sarum Rite in behalf of his female priest in ECUSA. All goes very well until some smarty-pants comments with "She?"

The meaning is very clear. Smarty-Pants does not believe that women can be ordained. As far as I am concerned, he is spot on: women cannot be ordained Catholic priests - the Church has spoken authoritatively on that. Yet there are those who believe otherwise for the best of intentions if not the best of reasons. The point is that Smarty-Pants has missed the point. So monoscopic is he that he wants to be right in every single com-box, even when it is not the issue.

The question was about the Sarum Rite and its execution, not on the finer points of Catholic Dogmata.

What irks me most about Smarty-Pants is that I know that I am little different and am just as likely to derail an com-box conversation in order to press an unnecessary point. 

I saw another post in a Gary Larson cartoon group in which a DIY-evangelist posted a picture of Samson along with a form of sermon. The reaction was as expected and it seemed many were driven away from Christ rather than invited to come to him.

This is the difference between invitation and coercion. From what we understand of the parable, we are invited to the Wedding Feast of the Lamb. God does not force us to the feast with a battalion of angels armed with red-hot pokers. At all times, we are respected and the context of our social intercourse is due that respect. If we want to invite people, then we have to invite them at a time in which the invitation is appealing, in a way in which makes the invitation appealing. Treading on people's conversations shows a level of contempt for their integrity as human beings.

But then, perhaps social media does not help. it provides too much anonymity, too many hiding places and too little accountability for our words. I saw another FB post which said, "only num-skulls post in com-boxes" and I have some sympathy with that.

The main ingredient in being an ambassador for Christ is humility. The moment that we cultivate a certain smugness for being right, the moment we believe that we are the champions for orthodoxy, the moment we assume the prophet's mantle, the further down the ladder we descend into the grasping hands of the Evil One.

We are living in a world in which polarization threatens to tear us apart and destroy the love that we need to have for our neighbours. We can be more orthodox than St Athanasius but if we have no love and spew our orthodoxy into the face of everyone in every situation and in answer to every question, we are nothing, have nothing and will receive nothing from God because we will have shut Him out of the temple of our own idol of our smugness.

God save us all from com-boxes so that we might become human beings again!

Forgiving before the fact

Sermon for the second Sunday after Trinity

After Our Lord, one name dominates the New Testament and it is not St Peter.

St Paul not only features in the Acts of the Apostles, he is credited with the authorship of more books of the Bible than anyone else from the lofty epistle to the Romans to the little epistle written on behalf of of a runaway slave.

Yet, when we first meet him, St Paul - or Saul as he is then - is a persecutor of Christians. 

Saul becomes a Christian: he is saved from his sins. 

What justice is there for those he persecuted?

[PAUSE]

The fact of the matter is that St Paul is an accessory to murder. He consents to the death of St Stephen; He works to have Christians arrested; he delivers them up to the authorities who will torture and kill them. That means that the guilt of their blood is on his hands. Where is justice for the persecuted? If God forgives St Paul doesn't this make a mockery of the sufferings of those whom he persecuted?

[PAUSE]

First, we must note that before he is even converted, Saul is forgiven. St Stephen cries out for his forgiveness at the point of death. This is something Christians do. They forgive, and they are ready forgive not for their own psychological benefit but for the good of the person who wrongs them. The Lord's commandments are clear: love means forgiveness. It means abandoning pursuit of personal justice so that God can bring good out of evil. 

St Stephen's murder is not justified. It doesn't somehow become good just because God uses his murder to bring St Stephen home to heaven and to bring Saul to Christ. All sin is abhorrent to God and murder is sin. Yet this is God's victory over sin and evil. This is His victory over the Devil, that the intentions of those who perpetrate evil are thwarted when God brings about something greater. From the death of St Stephen comes the conversion of St Paul. From the conversion of St Paul comes much of the New Testament and, from the witness of the New Testament, more come to Christ. Those who seek to perpetuate evil find that good will spring forth. The trap that they have laid for others, they have fallen into it themselves.

There is only one unforgivable sin and that is to sin against the Holy Ghost. It is the hardened wilful act of denying the truth, calling evil good and good evil. If we refuse to come to God then He, out of love not insisting on its own way, will respect that decision. Saul does not commit the Unforgivable Sin.

But what about justice for the people he persecuted? They may have forgiven Saul, but can we forget? Can the horrendous acts of genocide that we witnessed in the last century be forgiven? Can all that pain and sorrow, that fear and bloodshed, that humiliation, degradation, and pitiless indifference to the humanity of others just be swept away in an act of forgiveness?

If we think God will forget all that misery then we have failed to hear his words to Saul: why persecutest thou Me? When we injure another person, when we hate another person, when we commit any form of inhumanity against any one of our brothers and sisters, we do the same to God Himself in the person of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Every blasphemous act committed in the Holocaust was as much committed against God as it was against any Jew, any homosexual, any non-conformist, any Roma, any Jehovah's Witness or disabled person.

God's justice is not like our justice. We can only try a criminal, find him guilty and sentence him to be punished. But we cannot make wrong right. We cannot mete out perfect justice. How can we find justice for the millions who suffer because of the actions of one man?

We cannot.

God can.

The best we can do is forgive and ask God to bring about His good in the lives of even the most ardent criminal. In recognising the humanity of criminals, in recognising criminals as our brothers and sister, we stop the Devil's intention to separate us from God and from each other.

This is hard.

But all sin is against God, and God is ready to forgive. The more that we forgive the more that we become like God. And still further, God promises to wipe every tear from our eyes. All will be well and all will be well and all manner of things will be well. 

One heart to bind them all

A reflection for the feast of the Sacred Heart. Why we need to reflect on the mending of society by destroying "white superiority" with an "unEnglish" feast.

Making your apologies

Sermon for the first Sunday after Trinity

Have you apologised?

The word has changed its meaning even in the last hundred-and-fifty years. When St John Henry Newman issues his apology for his life, he isn't saying sorry for being born, he's defending his life, his thinking and his controversial decisions against an attack made by Charles Kingsley who seems to suggest that Catholics can't tell the truth.

Making an apology originally means to defend our position when it has been challenged. Over time, it has come to mean saying sorry for wrongdoing. We see the Archbishop of Canterbury apologising for the Amritsar massacre, but he isn't defending it.

Sometimes, though, Christians need to apologise but not be sorry. We also need to make sure that we do not confuse apology with Christian teaching or with prophecy.

[PAUSE]

We see St Philip teaching the Eunuch. The Eunuch is interested, eager to learn and open to ideas. All St Philip has to do is explain the Christian Faith so that the man may learn. St Philip is teaching.

We see St Paul before the Areopagus. Questions are being fired at him and he is defending the Christian Faith. St Paul is apologising.

We hear Elijah confront Ahab and Jezebel for leading Israel away from faith in God. He proclaims what God is telling him. Elijah is prophesying.

The Church has a duty to do all three, but not every Christian is called to be a prophet, apologist and teacher all at once.

[PAUSE]

The problem that many Christians have is  that they believe that they are automatically called to be prophets. These are the Christians who will indiscriminately judge other people based on their lifestyle. The will not invite sinners to repent, they will demand people repent. They quote Holy Scripture at people and condemn people to Hell. 

And yet, Holy Scripture is very clear, to be a prophet requires a clear call from God because prophecy is proclaiming what God has specifically told us to say. It is not an excuse to use the Bible to condemn those who disagree with us to Hell. It is those who disagree with God who condemn themselves to Hell and only then in very specific circumstances not generally known to others.

To be a prophet requires a life of complete dedication. The great prophets spend their lives in the wilderness listening to God and to God alone. It is not for everyone.

[PAUSE]

Other Christians believe that they have been called to be teachers. They will explain what they think Holy Scripture means and try to force their interpretation on people. The Church's teaching is clearly based on Holy Scripture, Tradition and Reason and those whom God calls to teach must spend a long time in prayer and study. The good teacher educates and informs, presenting what the Church teaches and then letting the student make of it what they will. The bad teacher indoctrinates, denies the student the opportunity to think for himself, and refuses to answer genuine questions. Teaching is not for everyone.

[PAUSE]

All Christians, however, are called to make apologies. St Peter says:

"Sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear: Having a good conscience; that, whereas they speak evil of you, as of evildoers, they may be ashamed that falsely accuse your good conversation in Christ."

We must always be ready to say why we believe what we do. In order to do this, we need to be right with God. We need to listen to Him, spend time in prayer, and question ourselves and God as to what we really believe and why. We need to listen to the Church's prophets and teachers so that we know we are not walking away from God by making an false God in our hearts.

[PAUSE]

A time will come when every Christian will have to stand up and make their apology, speaking the truth from their hearts. A time will come when every Christian will have to present Christ to the world anew. A time will come when every Christian will face those who fundamentally disagree with God and show them that they are loved even if they don't want to be.

But there will never be a time when any Christian will ever have to say sorry for loving Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Poles together?

Again I find myself struggling with social media. One of my previous posts unintentionally offended a friend just by the misuse and unqualification of a single word. My aim was to demonstrate the idealistic and unreasoned aims of many coupled with the extremism of a few could be highly destructive. By misusing that word, my post took on an entirely different view which was not what I wanted.

This exemplifies something that is happening in our civilization today. 

I won't pretend that I am not concerned with present events. Indeed, perhaps I am too concerned with them that I want to retreat into a cosy cloister. I am not a sociable animal but I do love my fellow man - or try to at least. What I am witnessing is a polarization of society as a result of initially forced separation. Our Lockdown has kept us apart physically; our social media has encouraged us to engage in separation of ideology. It's no wonder that there is unrest.

Again I refer to the civil unrest due to racial tensions. We do have a problem here and it can only be resolved by refusing to be separated and respecting the humanity of others. We need to be generous enough to allow the other to be wrong.

Unfortunately, that falls into the same problem as the Prisoners' Dilemma. It can only work if everyone commits to coming together for working out the problem rationally. As soon as one person refuses to enter the debate, the goal is lost. 

Should Sir Winston Churchill be allowed to get away with what we now recognise as racist comments? Well, given that he passed away in 1965, we cannot do a thing to bring him to account for them. Is defacing his memory the way forward? Well, it brings the issue to light and allows the pain of others to be heard, but it does not account for the fact that he led this country in a desperate fight on behalf of many minorities against one of the worst racists this world has ever seen. What we can do easily lose in all this is our sense of proportion. I am reminded of Ghandi's racism against those of African heritage and yet look what he does for Indian emancipation.

We have to be reasoned and willing to dialogue with those with whom we disagree with even most profoundly. While I understand that protests give an expression of solidarity and sound a louder note of dissent, destructive iconoclasm which terrifies everyone on every side cannot be allowed to take over. We are returning to the days of digging up Oliver Cromwell in order to try them for regicide and hang in order to feel that justice has been done. This also has its parallel with mad Pope Stephen digging up Pope Formosus at the Cadaver Synod. What justice does it bring?

If we want justice against the dead, we cannot ever hope to administer it ourselves. All we do is vent our frustrations on corpses and statues to the extent that we become unreasoned.

If we want true social justice in which all bigotry, prejudice, slavery, bad blood and various phobias are erased, then that judgement can never be passed by a human being or even a council of human beings. There will always be an accusation of bias or privilege no matter who makes the judgement.

The only true judgement can come from one who knows what it is to be human and from whom all justice flows. Only God can right all wrongs. Only God can bring the dead to account. Only God has the ability to judge every instance of sin fairly and for the good of both oppressed and oppressor alike.

Until that Day of Judgment, we can only do our best, and our inability to create a justice that benefits all human beings means we have no choice but to forge relationships with those who may even wish us dead. This is precisely the content of Our Lord's commandments to love God and love neighbour. It's the best we can do, even to the extent of living together in the most profound of contradictions.

Now, it may well be that one of my readers takes issue with what I have written. If that is the case then I wish it to be understood unequivocally and absolutely that I have intended no offence, no belittling of anyone or their positions, no diminution of their humanity or any aspect of their humanity. I have tried to be honest and truthful. If that offends then I have nothing to say except to express profound sorrow and regret that the offence has occurred and hope that a cup of tea, a biscuit, a prayer and a hand of honest and committed friendship might be some amelioration.

The Body from the outside.

A reflection for Corpus Christi.

Back to School

The more I think about things, the more I realise that I should not be a Romantic. Before I get myself into too much trouble, I ought to explain.

The more I look at social media and listen to the news, the more I hear noise of different groups of society shouting past each other.

Take the slogan, "black lives matter".

Of course they matter and any Christian with half a brain can see that. The logic is simple:

A) All black people are human.

B) All human beings matter to God.

C) All black people matter to God.

Oh! Hello Barbara!

(A) is easily verified empirically.

(B) is easily deduced from Holy Scripture.

(C) follows because Barbara says so.

Corollary:

(D) If black lives matter to God then they matter to everyone.

Thus by Modus Ponendo Ponens, black lives matter to everyone. Denial of that is a denial of logic, science or of God.

It seems so dry but look at what this does not say.

"Black lives matter" does not say "only black lives matter." What it does suggest is that immediate attention needs to be brought into the state in which black lives are regarded. That this is being focussed on indicates quite clearly that there is an impression that black lives don't matter. 

Let us be clear. If a house is on fire, we don't first treat the house next door for dry rot because "all houses are equal". The immediate need must be addressed. If black people are being led to believe that their lives don't matter, then there is a contravention of the most simple argument that I have reproduced above.

The trouble is that "dry logic" and critical thinking is being passed over for indoctrination rather than education. I am all for Evolution being taught in schools as a dominant scientific theory but I would also like to see Creationism taught as well if only to force students to think about what is needed to convince them of a fact and to cut out the rubbish.

I am not a literary person though I do appreciate the deep truths of the human condition that great literature reveals. The danger is that, without the dry scholasticism, and with an uncritical acceptance of a "woke" agenda unrecognised by the German Romantics, a popularist and unchallenged idealism can take over and read into statements things that aren't there. 

How easily the fact that we are justified by faith becomes being 'justified by faith alone", or "black lives matter" becomes "only black lives matter". 

My own life has been affected by seeing monasticism in a romantic ideal or by pining for chapels rigged up with appropriate decor. My Sehnsucht  might be an emotional reality but it does me no good unless it is examined rationally, dispassionately and precisely. How the popular caricatures of Shelley, Schubert and Schelling would frown at my pressing the human spirit for definition and precision!

If the protests in America and the UK show us anything is that things have been allowed to fester without rational dialogue being allowed to reveal the situation more clearly. Outpourings of emotion and wilful ignorance of people's plight simply will not do: both will fray civilization. Those who clamour for a romantic ideal revolution will be appalled at the reality of that revolution. We see the effects of what happens when emotional reactions control reasoned discussion in both the French Revolution and First World War where an impassioned nationalism, false Romanticism takes over, colours language and stifles Reason.

I will take dry scholasticism over this popular, unreasoned romanticism any day. 

Non-Athanasian Idols

A reflection on why the Athanasian Creed is important

Salvation in Triplicate

Sermon for Trinity Sunday

 

You have the idea by now, haven't you? The Father is God, the Son is God and the Holy Ghost is God, and yet there be not three gods but One God. Easy to say, isn't it? But do we take the time to wrestle with it in our prayer?

It's very often the case, when we pray in ourselves, that we confuse who we're praying to. We might start our prayer to the Father and end it praying to the Son without realising it. Does it matter?

It depends on how you're praying.

[PAUSE]

One of the great and most misunderstood heresy against God is that of Modalism. It's misunderstood because people either miss it completely, or see it where it is not.

Modalism arises when we try to concentrate on there being One God and make the Father, Son and Holy Ghost just disguises of that One God. We could say that the Father and the Son are one God so, because the Son dies on the cross, the Father also dies on the cross. Clearly, this is wrong. The Father is not made man, so He does not die upon the cross. 

We also make the same mistake if we try to baptise in the name of the Creator, the Redeemer and the Sanctifier. Our Lord is very clear: we are to baptise in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Why is this the same mistake?

[PAUSE]

Modalism occurs when we get the relationships between Father, Son and Holy Ghost wrong. All three are the Creator but they don't all create in the same way. All three are the Redeemer, but only the Son is crucified as part of that redemption.  We do not receive the Body of the Father, or the Blood of the Holy Ghost. All three are sanctifiers but not in the same way. 

The same man may be an accountant, a bricklayer and a soldier, but this does not divide him up into three different men. Likewise there are many bricklayers doing the same job, but this doesn't make them one man, nor does it tell us anything more about who each of these bricklayers are.

 Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier are job descriptions: they express what God does, not Who He is.

Listen to St Paul:

" For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God."

St Paul prays the Father to give us the riches of the Holy Ghost. He prays the Holy Ghost to strengthen us. He prays Christ to dwell in us. All this so we might be filled with the fullness of God beyond our imagination. This is our salvation in a nutshell. 

We are saved by God, each member of the Holy Trinity contributing to our justification, purification, and sanctification in different ways according to their personalities but as One God. That One God hears our prayers but if we only think of Him as one who answers prayer, then perhaps we don't really know Him at all.

So how should we pray?

[PAUSE]

There is no hard and fast rule for private prayer, nor should there be. We encounter God as we are and we encounter Him in each Person of the Trinity in different ways. However, we need to ensure that we worship the One True God, and this means praying in such a way as to recognise the Unity of God without treating the Trinity as identical persons. We worship one God in three persons.

Perhaps then, we should model our private prayer on our public worship. Public worship brings us all together before God, and our love for each other should bring us ever closer together so that we become one humanity in a multiplicity of persons reflecting God Himself.

Our private prayer to God may start confused but as we ascend in our love for Him, our words will become unnecessary and we shall sit and be with Him as He is in His incomprehensible majesty.