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Monday, July 31, 2023

The chains of sin and the chains of thinking

 

How being legalistic can make chains for the innocent.

Saturday, July 29, 2023

The world in Church clothing?

Sermon for the eighth Sunday after Trinity

You have probably read the book,
“God is not Great”
by the late Christopher Hitchens.

He is of the opinion that
Religion poisons everything.

Is he right?

[PAUSE]

Our Lord is very clear.

A good tree produces good fruit;  
an evil tree produces evil fruit.

The idea is quite simple –
we know how good something is
by the effects that it has
on its surroundings.

For those outside the Church,
how does the Church look to them?

What effects has the Church had
on the world around it?

Well, here we begin
to meet people who say that
the church has damaged them.

We see people who say that
the church supports slavery.

We hear people say that
the church supports
sexism,
racism,
homophobia.

We hear of people talk about
the abuse that is going on in the Church
and which is being covered up
by priests and bishops rather
than being brought into the light
and dealt with according to the Law.

The abuse scandals are dreadful
and they damage the Church
because people outside the church
hold the church to the same standards
that our Lord gives.

A good tree produces good fruit,
a bad tree produces bad fruit.

Is the church a good tree or a bad tree?

[PAUSE]

Certainly,
we can look into history
and see how God punishes Israel
for falling away.

We can see how
the apostasy of the Hebrews
results in captivity in Babylon
and why the temple is destroyed by the Romans.

That would suggest that Israel is not a good tree.

You can probably see the problem.

The Church and Israel are
made up of individuals –
individuals whose actions
affect the whole society.

When we look at
what Jesus is actually saying,
we say that he is talking about
those who seek to lead the church,
those who seek to lead Israel's religion.

He is not holding the whole Church
or all of Israel to account,
but the Church and Israel together
suffer the results of the evil fruit
born from evil rulers.

[PAUSE}

We are born in sin.

We are not born sinners,
but from the moment of our birth,
we are surrounded by
the effects of the sins of other people
which weaken us and lead us astray.

It's also true to say
from the moment of our birth,
we are surrounded by
the effects of the good work of other people
which strengthen us
and lead us to God.

The society in which we are born
is filled with this chaotic struggle
between evil and good
and the effects of good works and sin.

The Lord is also clear
that the tree is judged by
the fruit that it bears when the fruit is ripe.

Even good fruit tastes wrong
when it is unripe.

So it is unfair
to judge the whole
based on the actions
of some of its members
at any given moment in time.

To see the good of the Church as a whole,
we need to see it in complete maturity.

That can't happen until the end.

But we can see some evil effects.

We can see evil
when abuse is committed
and covered up.

We can see evil
when the innocent
are corrupted.

We can see evil
when people are convinced that
they are better to be at home
rather than go to Church.

 We see evil when the faith of other Christians
is trodden under foot.

[PAUSE]

The trouble is that
we can't do anything
about the evil trees in our midst.

We can only deal with their effects.

One of the great successes
is that the Church shows us
what good and evil are.

We can only judge that abuse is evil
because we know what good is
and that this is still in Society around us.

The fact that Society knows that
slavery is wrong
means that
the teaching of the Church that
every human being is a dearly loved creation of God
regardless of race, sex, or any other aspect
has been learned in the world around us.

Of course,
from outside the Church
it is possible that what gets called good
might not really be good,
and what gets called evil
might not really be evil,
especially when evil seeks
to convince good people to change the rules
for something that is good in appearance
but hides evil under its sheepskin coat.

Without the Faith of the Church,
society cannot make the moral judgement
because the moral judgement
is grounded in Almighty God –
the same God Whom they have rejected
because of the sins of His followers.

In rejecting Him,
they reject the grounds
to judge the wolves in sheep’s clothing.

We cannot change
the evil effects in our midst,
but we can show the world
how to live a good life
by doing just that.

If we know God,
then we know what good is,
because whatever is good
by definition
follows the will of God
and fulfils His purpose.

All we can do is
to live lives dedicated to God
for then,
if we are a good tree,
we will bear good fruit
whether or not
the tree next to us is evil
and thus bearing evil fruit.

[PAUSE]

Christopher Hitchens is quite right
to call out instances of the evil
in the Church.

He can only do so
because the Church
has a moral law given to it by God
and which can be seen by all mankind.

We should be thankful for that
but we must make sure that
it is God who determines what is good
and not the Devil under his cloak of light.

Monday, July 24, 2023

St James - a legendary saint!

 

What does a Christian do when faced with legend in the lives of the saints?

Saturday, July 22, 2023

The Devil's Protection Racket

Sermon for the seventh Sunday after Trinity

How do you understand the word yield?

Saint Paul tells us that we have yielded our members servants to uncleanness. We often understand the word yield as meaning to give something up after a struggle. For example, we might think of soldiers yielding to the onslaught of the enemy. All we might think of a yield of grain, that is what the wheat gives up to us at harvest time. If we have yielded to unrighteousness, does that mean evil has conquered us?

[PAUSE]

It's true that we are in the midst of a battle with sin. Every day we are tempted to sin and often we fall into sin. Often we lose our battle against temptation, does that mean we are in danger of death?

It's important to understand what St Paul means here. When he says yield, he doesn't mean that our life is ripped away from us as the spoils of our war with sin. He actually means that we offer ourselves to sin in some kind of protection racket led by the Devil. Look at him tempting Our Lord with an easy life if only He would bow down and worship him. The Devil means that we see sin as the stronger power and so we pay it service so that we choose the path of least resistance in order not to get hurt and rather live a quieter life. If we don't, he promises us a hard life of persecution and temptation.

St Paul is saying that before we encounter Our Lord’s Incarnation, we live lives which trouble us least and this means sinning in order to go with the flow. We allow ourselves to become servants of uncleanness because that’s what everyone else is doing, and what everyone else is benefitting from.

The temptation is to see ourselves as victims of sin and that we cannot do anything but sin against God. If we succumb to this temptation then we spend our lives cowering in fear of sin and death and this is not the life that Christ wants for us for perfect love casts out fear.

St Paul says that the Devil’s protection racket is a sham. We have a choice. We always have a choice. We are not so far conquered by sin that our service to uncleanness is inevitable, for he tells us to yield ourselves as servants to righteousness and holiness. He is presenting us with a different narrative for our lives.

Before we meet the Lord, the stronger pull on our lives is our own belly, our own righteousness, our own intellect blinded to the truth of God. When Christ Our God appears, our eyes are opened. No longer are Sin, the World and the Devil the strongest forces in our lives, but Christ is. We see Christ the conqueror on the Cross, crucifying the powers of evil. We see Christ bursting the gates of Hades in triumph to open the way of righteousness for all those who have died. We see Christ rising again and destroying the sting of death.

This means that our battle has ceased to be a foregone conclusion. We may be weak in the face of the temptations of evil, but we have one who has already won the war on our behalf. It means that while we often fall into sin, we need not see ourselves as victims anymore. To define ourselves as victims means that we have been utterly conquered by our oppressors so that we cannot accept that in paying dues to sin, we make others victims too. To be a victim means that we cannot forgive because to forgive would rob us of our identity as a victim. To say that our sin is inevitable means that we have given up the fight to be with Our Lord.

Our lives are not defined by victimhood but rather by growth in Christ. This means a life of struggle against sin in which we fall many, many times in the same old ways. It means struggling against our weakness, struggling against our need to be accepted by the world, struggling not to take the path of least resistance and to swim up against the flow. If we truly believe that Christ has conquered sin and death then our focus and duty is in the service of righteousness and holiness whereby God makes us right with Him and sets our lives apart for Him.

[PAUSE]

The Devil’s protection racket tempts us to focus on being a victim. If the Cross shows us that Christ is the perfect victim then His victimhood bursts the power of Hell wide open. There’s no need for us to pay any more heed to sin but rather to turn and grow in Christ.

 

Monday, July 17, 2023

St Osmund - a true Anglican Catholic

 



Why rite and ritual matter in God's Holy Church.

Saturday, July 15, 2023

You fool!

Sermon for the sixth Sunday after Trinity

Is Jesus in danger of Hellfire?

"Of course not," you say,
"What a silly thing to say!"

But listen.

Our Lord says clearly,
"whosoever shall say, 
Thou fool, shall be 
in danger of hell fire."

But later, 
He says to the Pharisees,
"Ye fools and blind: 
for whether is greater, 
the gold, or the temple 
that sanctifieth the gold?

Ye fools and blind:
for whether is greater, 
the gift, or the altar 
that sanctifieth the gift?"

Twice does He call 
the Pharisees fools.

Surely, by His own words,
Jesus is in danger of Hellfire.

[PAUSE]

Of course Our Lord
sits at the right hand 
of the Father in Glory.

So what's happening here.

What does Our Lord mean
by calling someone
a fool
and why are we 
in danger of Hellfire 
if we do?

The word for fool
that Our Lord is using
has a sense of being unable to speak.

In fact, 
it might be related 
to our word
"mystery".

A fool does not know
what he is talking about.

To be a fool
is not to understand anything,
and to pretend that you do.

When Our Lord calls 
the Pharisees fools
He is speaking the truth
because they are blind
to the truth of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

He knows that 
they don't know 
what they are talking about
but are leading the people astray
and giving them 
unfair burdens to bear.

If Our Lord is justified
in calling Pharisees fools,
why can't we call people fools
if they don't know 
what they are talking about?

[PAUSE]

You already know the answer.

We might be wrong.

To judge another's knowledge
as being wrong 
means we have to be certain
that we are right.

We are judged
in the same way we judge others.

Our Lord judges 
the Pharisees fools
not for their damnation
but their salvation.

He shakes them
in love
so that they can see the truth
and that others see the truth.

But we don't have 
the same authority
because we don't have 
perfect knowledge
or perfect love.

It means that
we have to examine
ourselves
to see why we think
that someone is a fool.

We also need to 
examine ourselves
to ensure that
the person we think is foolish
is still someone
we love as a human being.

Our Lord makes it clear
that we are only justified
in calling someone a fool
to save them from Hellfire
out of love for them
and of God
and not for any sense
of our pride
or moral superiority.

This is why 
calling someone a fool
leads into danger of Hellfire.

Hellfire can only be avoided
by Love
and by Truth.

[PAUSE]

Our Lord 
is the Way out 
of the pains of Hellfire.

We would be
fools
not to follow Him!


Monday, July 10, 2023

Saturday, July 08, 2023

The heart of the community

Sermon for the fifth Sunday after Trinity

You do all that anyway, 
don't you?

You're compassionate,
kind,
loving, 
courteous, 
considerate
and, rather than curse,
you bless people.

Of course you do! 
At least to everyone you meet.

But what about online?

[PAUSE]

It doesn't take long
on Social Media
before unpleasantness starts,
especially between Sci Fi fans 
and, sadly,
religious groups.

There is a lot of media,
videos, blogs, groups
which have titles such as
"Craig destroys Oppy"
or 
"Fradd shames White".

What they mean 
is that Craig and Fradd
have put forward
convincing reasons
why Oppy and Tate are wrong.

Notice how the use of language
is sensationalist
and designed to get
an emotional reaction,
designed to make you post a message
designed to make you interact
and keep interacting
so that social media platforms
earn more money from
advertising and promotions 

Craig, Oppy, Fradd and White
conduct themselves
with nothing less than
human respect and decency
in their discussions,
but the internet distorts their debates
into something that 
has greater importance
than it deserves.

Do you notice
that social media
is trying to distort 
your view of the world
and encourage you to be
angry?

[PAUSE]

St Peter wants to promote harmony.

Christians are meant 
to be together,
to look out for one another
and those outside the Church.

He exhorts us to be caring.

To love rather than hate.
To bless rather than curse.
To run away from evil
and to embrace what is good.

This is easier in a physical community
in which we see people face to face
and recognise the humanity
they share with us.

But, social media is different.

You sit alone
and all you may well be doing
is interacting with a box of lights
that reduces a human being 
to text on a screen.

It is because
the humanity of another
is obscured
that our sense of community
goes out the window.

It's easy to spread hate
when you don't see the person
whom you are hating.

[PAUSE]

St Peter doesn't need to know the internet
to help us know what we should be doing.

We are courteous and kind
for the good of other people,
but our motivation must come
from the love that we cultivate
within our souls.

We aren't courteous
because we fear the shame
that faces us if we are discourteous.

We are courteous
because courtesy is good.

We share,
not out of a sense of obligation,
but because sharing is good.

All good things come from God.

If we love God,
then courtesy,
kindness,
blessing and love
are things that we desire
precisely because they come from God
and not from Society.

Many people will tell you
that living the moral life
is something made by 
the society around us.

This means that Society
thinks that the moral life
is something it determines
and thus controls 
and, if you act in a way
that Society finds disagreeable,
then you will be held up 
to ridicule
and hatred
and never, ever be forgiven.

But God is not like that.

From Him, 
we will always receive love,
and kindness
and courtesy
even when things around us
are so black 
that we cannot even feel
His love for us.

It's because of Him
and His regard for us
that we show the same regard
for other people.

[PAUSE]

The way we interact online
should be just as we react offline.

We may appear to be alone
in front of the computer screen
but God is with us
and we remain His Church
in everything we do.

Our conduct online
should be shrewd as vipers
in recognising the traps of the Enemy
to get angry and post things
that belittle others
or make a mountain
out of a molehill, 
but we should also be
as innocent as doves
seeking always to interact
in a way that recognises the humanity
of the person we disagree with
and offer the same hand of friendship
that God has offered to us 
still bearing the wound of the nail.

[PAUSE]

Both St Peter and St Paul 
bid us to have God's mind,
and to hold it at all times,
especially when we are tempted
to think we are alone 
and can't be seen.

This way Society loses its power.

But, faced with such a threat,
Society will seek to punish those
who refuse to recognise its hold.

That's when the hateful messages start.

That's when we respond
with the most profound blessings
we can muster.

Monday, July 03, 2023

An Anglican Catholic view of Purgatory and prayers for the dead

 



Why praying for the dead is more natural than the doctrine of Purgatory.


For similar views on the relationship we have with the Saints, please see here:



Saturday, July 01, 2023

The Hope of Dust

Sermon for the fourth Sunday after Trinity

“Vanity, vanity, all is vanity!”

Thus says the Preacher of Ecclesiastes.

What is vanity?

Well, if we do something in vain,
then there's no point in doing it.

There is no value in the outcome.

Something is done in vain
if it changes nothing.

So what does Saint Paul mean
when he says that
Creation is made subject to vanity?

 

[PAUSE]

 

It looks as if Saint Paul is saying
that our suffering is worthless.

If creation is subject to vanity,
then it can change nothing.

Creation has no effect on what is happening.

Our suffering,
which Saint Paul says,
is not to be compared with heavenly things,
is a thing of creation.

So it appears that whatever we do,
there is no point to it.

There is nothing we can do.

Our creation produces nothing.

 

[PAUSE]

 

It can't mean that can it?

If all our actions are worthless,
why are we commanded by our Lord
to preach the gospel at all?

Why does Saint Paul himself
offer himself up to all the
humiliations,
sufferings
and pain
even to martyrdom
if it is of no avail?

 

Saint Paul is very clear that,
in order for anything to have worth,
it must be given Grace
because Grace perfects Nature.

This means that
because God is the only One
Who deserves worship,
He gives worth to whatever
He is involved with
just by being involved in it.

Creation of itself
produces nothing that is eternal.

If modern cosmology is correct,
the Universe will
expand
and expand
and expand
until all the things are
far apart, cold and lifeless.

In this Universe,
at the end of time,
there isn't even dust.

As far as this Universe is concerned,
we are worthless
because there is
no lasting worth to give.

 

[PAUSE]

 

Saint Paul says that human beings
face the same corruption and decay
because we are things of Creation
but, crucially, we are given Hope.

 

Hope is not a vague emotion.

It's not the hope of,
“I hope it's not going to rain today.”

It's about looking to the future
with all its uncertainty
while holding the hand of God.

We have no knowledge
of the future
except that it is all destined for dust.

With our hand in God's,
we find ourselves
with the possibility of true worth,
because God alone possesses all worth.

He alone is to be given worship.

 

The world tempts us to lose hope.

We see that in the way that
important issues like
climate change
and how wars are progressing
and whether there is a threat
of a nuclear explosion.

Modern news services
seem to be alarmist in nature,
designed to take away the hope
that human beings should have
for the future.

But for the point of view of Creation,
it will all end as dust
and be blown
and scattered to the furthermost reaches
of the Universe.

Our Lord says there will be wars
and rumours of wars.

He tells us of pestilences,
famines,
invading armies
and even of the destruction
of the Temple.

That is what this Creation offers us apart from God.

But Grace perfects Nature.

The active presence of God
gives Nature its purpose
and an end that is filled with His glory.

If we trust Him,
then our universe ends in God
for eternity.

God subjects his creation to vanity
in order to give us hope that,
being freed from sin,
we might be washed,
justified,
sanctified,
and glorified in Him.

 

[PAUSE]

 

Without the Cross
our hope is vain.

Without the Cross
our future is dust.

Without the Cross
our suffering,
pains,
terror
and misery
mean nothing.

In God
all our sufferings
become as much badges of honour
as the wounds on
the hands,
feet
and side
of Our Lord.

All suffering in hope
becomes something
of which we can be proud
because it is a sign of
our perfection in God's grace.

The Cross is not vanity.

In Grace, neither are we.