Learning to dance

Propers for Trinity Sunday

Sermon for Trinity Sunday

Christians all have to learn the dance.

Dancing is all about making the right steps at the right time - or at least it used to be. Contrast the courtly dances of Henry VIII or Jane Austen with how we dance today. What was once a finely choreographed group activity has become very individual. We dance with our own moves regardless to what others are doing, sometimes with acrobatics! We have moved from a group of dancers moving as one to a lot of people doing their own thing. We have lost the ability to participate as a unity.

[PAUSE]

God, of course, is a unity: one God in three Persons, though even that is a bit of a twist of language. The relationship between the Persons of the Trinity goes by the name of perichoresis which is Greek for "dancing around". The human mind is incapable of understanding the Trinity because the Trinity is not like anything created so, to us, the Father, Son and Holy Ghost dance around in our minds as now we focus on the Trinity and now we focus on the Unity and now the Trinity and now...

Thoughts of God, as He is, jostle around our heads as we try in vain to think of Him. The good news is that He doesn't expect us to think of Him accurately. He wants us to love Him and trust Him. He wants us to learn to dance.

[PAUSE]

This means we have to listen to His music and learn His steps and that's enough for us to draw close to Him. If the music is a waltz then we have to take God's hand and let Him lead us, being careful to watch where we put our feet. If the music is a pavan then we must dance with God and with others, taking care to imitate the steps and move in time.

The dance of God is not a solo affair that we might find on Tiktok; it involves others and being in tune with them. Just as we see the Trinity dance around each other as One, so we too must dance as one.

When we think of God the Son, we move to God the Father to whom the Son looks in prayer and to Whom He submits His Humanity. When we think of God the Father, we move to God the Holy Ghost as He moves over the face of the waters of Creation. When we think of God the Holy Ghost, we see Him breathed upon the Apostles from the mouth of God the Son. And the dance goes around again. We are carried between the Persons by the dance of Eternity formed by their relationships to each other and yet, there is but One God.

[PAUSE] 

While this might be beyond our understanding, it forms the basis of our dance into the same Eternity. Our dance is with God and with our neighbour and it is borne on our relationships with each other. There will be disruption while we learn the steps; we will have to dance around those who dance only their solitary steps and content themselves with their own music; we will have to dance around those who seek actively to disrupt our steps. Letting God lead means we can dance around all obstacles: we might be ungainly or lumbering but God makes our steps with Him graceful and elegant.

[PAUSE]

Love is the dance and we must learn it. We might complain of our two left feet but that is not an excuse. God dances in Himself and He wants us to dance with Him.

Will you give Him the pleasure of this dance?

St Augustine and the Anglican Catholic Church

 

A reflection on how St Augustine's Mission is continued in the Anglican Catholic Church.

Feeling the Spirit

Propers for Whitsunday

Sermon for Whitsunday

How do you know the Holy Spirit?

There are many who claim to be filled with the Holy Spirit and are not. There are also those who hold Ebenezer Scrooge up as their model and regard any talk of being moved by the Holy Spirit as being affected by indigestion.

Both of these views have one thing in common. They both rely on the Holy Spirit expressing Himself through our feelings. But how do we know that our sense of the Holy Ghost is not just wishful thinking or a product of an overactive emotion?

[PAUSE]

The fact of the matter is that people can whip themselves up into frenzies and claim it to be the Holy Spirit. In many cases, it is really just a product of mass hysteria. Is that what happens to the Apostles?

Well, clearly not. There are certainly high emotion and unbridled elation. But there are also tongues of fire. And there are tongues of men. There is order amid the chaos - indeed, more order than chaos. The Apostles speak and they speak to be understood beyond the confines of Jerusalem. Moreover, they speak of the wonderful works of God. It isn't babble. Nor is it just the unrelenting use of platitudes. What they speak is substantial, true and intended to be heard by all who want to listen.

Of course, there will be those Scrooges who don't listen and, without further thought, accuse the Apostles of downing too many shots of tequila. Our Lord tells us that the World is deaf to the Holy Ghost. Indeed, St Paul tells us that the will of our flesh is in direct opposition to the will of the Holy Spirit. 

So how do we know the Holy Spirit?

[PAUSE]

We do not know the Spirit in ourselves only. We are fallen and need to learn to listen again. Our feelings are not reliable for us to say "this is the Holy Spirit moving in me!" The Holy Spirit is God and God is One. This means that, if we feel the Holy Spirit moving within us, then He moves us in accordance with what God has always said and done. In that sense, He will say nothing new because He will always be consistent with what Our Lord Jesus says and does. He will always be consistent with what the Father says and does. The same Spirit that moves us now is the same Spirit that moves the Apostles two thousand years ago.

The Holy Spirit moves us only as part of the Church and in a way that the Church recognises. He will not contradict what has already been revealed to us but He will clarify it. His effects may be felt but they will not be feelings alone. The Holy Spirit will allow His movements to be tested against Scripture, Tradition and Reason because these come from Him, too.

We receive the Holy Spirit at our Baptism and our growth in the same Spirit is strengthened through Confirmation. Indeed, we can be sure of the presence of the Holy Ghost through the Sacraments. The Sacraments give us grace and grace is the active presence of God with us and in us. They are His promise to us. Denial of the sacraments is a denial of the work of the Holy Spirit in God's Church.

[PAUSE]

Let us all be clear. We can see the Holy Spirit at work if we live our lives as part of the Living Church. There are still signs and wonders. People still do speak in tongues but they speak to be understood. There are still miracles - light anomalies at the consecration of Bishops, improbable coincidences, stigmata and prophecy - but they happen within the Church and for the Church and for the greater glory of God. The world will explain them away but the Church will know.

You may feel Him moving, but how do you know the Holy Spirit?

The Will, the Communion and the ACC

 

A reflection on the relationship between the Anglican Communion and the Anglican Catholic Church.

Persecution preparation

Propers for the Sunday in the Octave of the Ascension

Sermon for the Sunday in the Octave of the Ascension

So what now?

The Lord ascends into Heaven and then there is this pause as the disciples wait for something to happen.

After standing around and being told by the angels about the Second Coming of the Lord, the disciples do the only thing that they can: they go home to their common room and stay together.

They're lucky. They know what they are waiting for.

What are you waiting for?

[PAUSE]

St Peter reminds us that the end of the world is nigh. It's a bit rich of him because, two thousand years later, we are still waiting for the end. There are lots of elaborate theories - premillennialism, postmillennialism, even some very spurious theories like The Rapture. So much ink has been spilled trying to predict or to determine when the end will happen.

But, after telling us that the end is near, St Peter tells us what we should be doing. We are to be sober, prayerful, and charitable. Nowhere does he say that we need to be obsessing about the end. Indeed St Peter is mindful that the Lord has told him that no-one - not even the Son - knows when the end will happen.

For St Peter, it's not when or how the end happens, it is that it happens. We are to prepare to meet Christ at any moment and that means living the faith. 

Indeed, rather than preparing for the end, we ought to be preparing for our faith to be tested by our living in this world. Our faith is tested by the suffering induced by living in a world that has become hostile to God. Our Lord says that this will involve persecution. 

Certainly this means the physical persecution that the Church has seen under the Emperors Diocletian and Decius, but there is also spiritual persecution that comes from other people, even Society itself, and from the Devil.

In Africa and Asia, there is gross physical persecution and we cannot forget our brothers and sisters being tortured and killed for the Faith. In the West, we have a different type of persecution - this is very much an attack on our spirits. We are encouraged to drop our Faith, or relax our standards, or accept that which is immoral. We are encouraged to receive the superficial expression of being virtuous in exchange for the struggle to be virtuous in our hearts. We are being told to shut up because we offend others just by telling the truth, and that our love, this true and wonderful life-affirming Holy Love that is God, is really hate-speech and the denial of the individual's right to control what other people think.

This is persecution nonetheless and we must be sober. This means we must not allow our spiritual senses to be filled by being drunk in the spirits of this world. We must stand firm using subtlety, generousity and that love which is not a simple feeling of "niceness" but that thing that underpins all of existence. If we think of love as just a feeling then we are drunk on the worldly spirit of deception and are no longer sober.

[PAUSE]

We are not to look for the end but be sober, prayerful and charitable. That end will come soon enough and not in the way we expect. 

So what are you waiting for?

Looking up for Humility

 A reflection for Ascension Day

Praying for sacrifice

Propers for Rogation Sunday

Sermon for Rogation Sunday

Does He really mean it? Can we really ask anything of the Father in Jesus' Name and it will be given to us?

There are people who really believe that you can ask God for whatever you want: as long as you add the words, "in Jesus' Name" to your prayer, you will get it! A fast car, a big house, smart suits, et c. In fact, they also say that if you don't get what you want then it's a sign that you don't have enough faith in God.

They are wrong.

[PAUSE]

As we listen to Our Lord in the garden on the night He is betrayed, we hear Him ask God to take the cup of suffering from Him. That's what Jesus wants. And God says, "No!"

There are some who say that this is evidence of a cruel God, of a weak Jesus and of the complete foolishness of the Christian Faith.

But listen again.

Jesus prays if it is possible that the cup would pass from Him, yet not what He wills but what His Father wills. He knows that He must suffer on the Cross: any human being of healthy mind would follow his instincts and run to preserve his life. 

But it is not possible for the cup to pass from Him. Yet rather than follow His human instincts, the Lord bends His will to obey His Father. It is His humanity that moves to fit the truth. The Son does not bend truth to fit His own will.

And this is how we pray in the Name of Jesus. We pray the truth.

We bring to God the things that we think we need and, having prayed fervently for them, we sacrifice them to His will. In doing so, we are admitting three things.

We admit that we are utterly dependent on God for His goodness. We admit that we do not know enough about ourselves or each other to pray for the right thing. We admit that we trust God to give us what we need for our good even when He gives us precisely what we are praying against.

To pray in the Name of Jesus is to sacrifice our will to His. Remember: to sacrifice means to make holy, to set apart for God. The more we make this sacrifice, the more we align ourselves to God and the deeper our prayers become.

[PAUSE]

Sacrifice means the pain of separation. If there were no pain then what we are giving in sacrifice cannot be worth much to us, nor can loving God.

We can pray for a loved one to recover from cancer, and pray with tears and wailing. But when she dies and our prayers seem unanswered then we remember that we sacrifice our tears, our sorrow, our grief and anger. We give our loved one back to God. And God Who weeps over the death of Lazarus takes her into Him. Her death is made holy. Our grief is sanctified. Our love grows.

[PAUSE]

Our prayers are valuable to God. They express our needs and desires so we need to make sure they are worth the sacrifice. They express ourselves to God. But this is a two-way street. If we expect God to hear us then we must be prepared to listen and obey. He has made sacrifices for us, after all.

The Oily bird catches the Warm

 A reflection on St John's experience of being boiled in oil and how it should lead us into modesty and humility.

Presenting Temptation

Propers for the fourth Sunday after Easter

Sermon for the fourth Sunday after Easter

What does it mean to be tempted? How do you understand what Temptation is?

[PAUSE]

There is a gift for you, all wrapped up in shiny paper and string. It sits on your table looking full of promise. And there is the label, "Open Me!"

Do you?

Well, of course you do. It's a gift for you. It has your name on it. It contains precisely what you've ever wanted. But wait! Just before you start undoing the string, what do you need to do?

[PAUSE]

Who's the present from?

Does it say?

You know full well that someone who loves you will have given you something thoughtful. You know full well that someone who hates you will have given you a very nasty surprise. And there is someone who hates you. He hates you because he hates God.

That present could be something that looks perfectly fine, but only later will it reveal its curse.

[PAUSE]

Each thought we have is a present. If we want to open that present, if we want to let that thought into our hearts and minds, then we need to check who it's from first.

God is the Father of lights. He is the source of all being, of all that is. He does not change. He does not vary His opinions or change His mind. What is good stays good. What is evil stays evil. 

This is important. We cannot say with regard to good, "that was then but this is now." The whole point of temptation is that it tells us that what was evil is now good and what was good is now evil.

"Ah!" says the present, "what about slavery. Slavery used to be good and now it's evil!"

No. Read the Bible. Listen to God. See how servants, bondsmen and handmaidens had rights with God - they weren't slaves. See how they were given stability and care. See how they were released from any debt. See how Onesimus and Philemon were reconciled as servants of each other.

Slavery has never been good. What changes are the meanings of words. The Devil uses words carefully to wrap up his lies and convince us that God has changed good and evil. It is with words that the Devil wraps up his presents for us.

[PAUSE]

When we pray, "lead us not into temptation" we can be sure that God will not tempt us to sin, but we have to recognise that we can be tempted and, further, tempted beyond our ability. Each one of us can fall. Each one of us can open that present even though we know we are not supposed to. When we pray, "lead us not into temptation" we pray that God would keep us away from those great temptations where we will fall away from Him.

The Cross of Christ is our protection. When we fall, we look to that Cross and we find forgiveness and truth. In the Cross of Christ our sins die and we emerge from the tomb at one with Christ.

The present that God gives comes wrapped in the truth, even when that truth hurts us deeply. It may not be an appealing present but it is much more wonderful than the cheap baubles with which the devil draws us to Hell.

[PAUSE]

As far as we can, we must check every thought that comes into our head and see if it comes from God. It requires practice and, when we fail, we can try again. The more we do, the more we resist the Devil and he will flee from us.

Have you opened that present yet?