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Monday, January 29, 2024

Mere Anglicanism and Theosis

 

What possibly went wrong at the ACNA conference.

Sunday, January 28, 2024

Mind your own business!

Sermon for Septuagesima 

People who worked
for one hour
are paid the same fair days wages
as those who worked
a twelve hour day.

Why does it sound unfair?

We know it isn't unfair
because Our Lord
uses this parable to tell us 
something about ourselves.

[PAUSE]

The person who seems
to come in for the most criticism
is the Employer
who justifies himself
by saying that he has a right
to do with his money 
as he pleases.

You agree with that, yes?

You can do what you like
with your own possessions.

But then...

How do you feel 
about that statistic
that a handful of people
control the majority
of the wealth in the world?

Aren't they allowed 
to hoard their money
and use it for their own purposes
which may,
or may not, 
be godly?

[PAUSE]

Some of us are very good
at deciding what
other people should do
with their money.

When we see
a rich man pass by a collecting tin
without putting something in,
we grumble something about
camels passing through eyes of needles.

When we see 
a rich man put something into
that collecting tin,
we grumble that he's making a show
of his wealth
in false generosity.

The rich man can't win.

But we don't want him to, do we?

[PAUSE]

There are two things
that Our Lord teaches us 
about money and possessions.

The first is
that we should render unto Caesar
that which is Caesar's
and unto God
that which is God's.

Material things
matter most for those
who are materially minded.

Bills must be paid.
Tax must be paid.
Debts must be paid.

This is true for all of us.

While they may be
important
they are not what defines
our relationship with God.

God's claim
on our lives
is greater than
Barclay's Bank's claim
on our overdraft.

This leads to Our Lord's second point.

Those who have been given much
will be expected to show much interest
on God's investment.

God wants us 
to bear good fruit
and has given us the means 
to grow it.

He will not expect growth
from where He has not given.

So the rich man
will always find himself
required to give an account
of what he is doing for his wealth.

But this account
will not be rendered to us,
but to God.

[PAUSE]

Those who labour all day
receive the agreed generous daily wage,
but their eyes
are on other people's
wages.

Their outrage 
comes from envy
and pride in their assumption
that their time is worth more
in their own eyes
than was agreed.

Notice also
that the Employer himself
is making use
of what he has.

He may earn more money
as a result,
but so do his employees.

The wealth is not 
buried in a field,
mattress
or investment fund.

It is being used 
and everyone benefits.

[PAUSE]

It might sicken us
to see celebrities
living the high life
in yachts,
drinking champagne
and eating Ferrero Richer,
but that money is going somewhere.

It is being rendered unto Caesar.

What concerns us 
as Christians
is what is being rendered to God.

In that sense,
that's the rich man's problem
and not ours.

[PAUSE]

We should not allow
other people's use of their wealth
to distract us
from using what we have
to the glory of God.

We should not allow
other people's expenditure
to tempt us to judge
another person
in a way that will judge us
in the same way.

It is what we do
with the wealth that 
we have been given
that matters more 
to us eternally
than other people's business.

Tuesday, January 23, 2024

Filioque, St Vincent of Lérins and Ecumenism


 Why the Vincentian Canon is of more value to the Catholic Church than we think.

Sunday, January 21, 2024

Miracles under a bushel

Sermon for the third Sunday after Epiphany

Just think.

Something wonderful
happens to you,
something life-giving,
something that changes 
your pain into joy.

What do you do next?

But then?

What do you do
after you receive
something truly wonderful?

Do you not want 
to tell someone?

Do you not want
to scream in utter happiness
that you have 
received something marvellous?

And then
Jesus says, 
"Sshh! Don't tell anyone!"

What do you do?

[PAUSE]

There are several times
when Our Lord 
tells people that He heals
not to tell anyone
what has happened to them.

In this case,
Our Lord tells the leper
not to say what has happened
but concentrate 
on fulfilling the Jewish Law
and present himself at the temple.

Our Lord
is effectively telling
the man He heals
to give thanks to God first
as a matter of priority.

But why can't the man
tell people on the way?

It is because
two men whose sight is restored 
blab to all Capernaum 
that Jesus can't go into a house
and teach
but must teach outside the city.

But surely,
people need to see the miracles!

Why?

Well,
more people will come 
to Jesus and be healed.

Yes,
but when would 
He be able to teach us
if He is busy healing everyone.

This is important,
if you think about it.

Our Lord comes
with the Good News
of our salvation
at His hands.

His message is about 
Eternal life.

Where is the leper now?

Where are those blabbing blind men now?

All those whom Jesus heals
still die.

Our Lord is clear,
Miracles follow the Message
not the other way around.

He does not need 
His miracles to be
seen by all and sundry.

If He did,
then His appearances
would be more like
a musical extravaganza
with fireworks
and people falling over
"slain in the spirit."

That's not what we get.

Our Lord heals people
as individuals
for their sake
and for the small group 
of witnesses around,
not for the sake
of making a spectacle of Himself.

To those who demand 
miracles from Him,
He will show
only His bloodstained body
dangling lifelessly
upon the Cross.

Even His Resurrection
is intimate,
reserved only for
those who love Him.

The miracles are not the message.

[PAUSE]

Our Lord is not
hiding His Light 
under a bushel.

If He did,
then we would never 
hear His word.

Even His Father speaks
in a still, small voice.

God needs no megaphone
on a street corner,
just those whom He calls
to preach His Gospel
by living that Gospel
and showing the love
of that Gospel.

We don't need to 
perform miracles
like St Peter or St John,
we just speak the Truth
and, perhaps, something wonderful
will follow.

It is the miracles
that we hide under a bushel,
not the message.

Monday, January 15, 2024

Anglican Catholicism and Women's Ministry


 Is the Anglican Catholic Church really anti-women?

Sunday, January 14, 2024

Water, Wine and Incarnation

Sermon for the second Sunday after Epiphany

You do pay attention
in the Mass, 
don't you?

Of course you do.

You notice that 
the priest first puts 
wine in the chalice.

Then he blesses 
the water
before he puts it
in the wine.

Indeed,
the Mass isn't valid
if he forgets
to add the water to the wine.

Why?

[PAUSE]

There are two reasons.

You might think 
about the blood and water
that pours from
the wound in Christ's side.

That is the historical reason.

The link between
the sacrifice of the Crucifixion
and the sacrifice of the Mass.

The Mass is a participation
in the single perfect sacrifice
of the Cross.

Adding water to the wine
makes that participation
real, true and clear.

But there is a spiritual reason too.

And it's to do 
with the water jars at Cana.

[PAUSE]

It seems odd
that we add water to wine
when wine is
mostly water anyway.

But lots of things
on this planet
are mostly water.

Indeed,
it is said that we human beings
are more than 
two-thirds water.

So when we drink water,
it's like the adding
of water to wine.

And this is deliberate.

We see, 
in adding water to wine
the truth that we say
in the Athanasian Creed.

When Jesus becomes Incarnate,
He doesn't convert His Divine Nature
into Human Nature
but takes our Nature into His.

He takes the water 
of our Humanity
into the wine of His Divinity.

Our Human nature
sits in Christ
like the water 
sits in wine.

This is how
the sacrifice of the Mass
brings us into 
communion with God
because we take
the true substance of God
into our selves.

Of course, 
that's a bit like 
adding wine to water.

But this communion
here and now
points to our salvation
in Christ when He performs
the miracle of Cana again,
this time changing
the water of our Humanity
into the wine of His Divinity
within us.

While St Paul may be
thinking of St Timothy's
physical health
when he bids him
take a little wine for his stomach,
he is also pointing us
to the health-giving benefit of wine
as an image of the life-giving benefit
of the Blood of Christ
under the figure of wine.

The Chalice 
contains
not just a taste of salvation
It is the promise
- the New Covenant -
of salvation to Eternity.

This is the same promise
that Our Lord shows
at the wedding in Cana.

He may say to His mother
that His hour has not yet come
but instead
He promises what will happen
at the hour
- the hour of Crucifixion -
by showing us our salvation
in His blood
and the taking up
of our Humanity
into God.

[PAUSE]

When you look into the chalice,
you might catch a glimpse
of your face
reflected on the surface
of the Consecrated Wine.

This is no accident
for you see yourself
looking back at you
from Eternity.




Tuesday, January 09, 2024

Sunday, January 07, 2024

Renewing from the library

Sermon for the first Sunday after Epiphany

When was the last time
you ever borrowed a book
from the library?

Perhaps you remember
being given a date
by which
you had to return the book.

But what if you hadn't finished it
by that date?

Well, then you'd pop along 
to the library and ask 
to renew it.

Then you'd be given
a new date
by which to return the book.

Your borrowing
of the book has been 
reset.

Is this what St Paul means
when he tells us 
to renew our minds?

[PAUSE]

The idea of renewal
that St Paul is using
is a return to an
uncorrupted state.

We see that our sins
leave a mark on how we think
and how we think 
can lead us into sin.

As far as our thinking goes,
we have a vicious cycle
- quite literally -
sin begets a vice
and vice weakens our mind,
our mind cannot resist temptation
so we sin.

That first sin of Adam
kick starts the whole cycle:
we sin because Adam sinned
and weakened us
to sin further.

The corruption of our mind is clear,
and we cannot truly know
what is good while our minds
are in a fallen state.

But just how do we renew it?

We need to go back to the library.

[PAUSE]

St Paul tells us 
that he speaks through Grace
- God's active presence working in us.

Our first grace of justification
occurs at our Baptism
when we are cleansed from sin
and incorporated
into Holy Church.

This is our first renewal.

But what then?

What about our sin after Baptism?

[PAUSE]

Our Lord sanctifies 
the waters of Baptism
to make them 
not just waters of repentance
but waters of life itself.

When we confess our sins
and repent of them
then the fountain of grace
that pours within us is made clean
and we return to "factory settings".

Renewing our minds
doesn't mean that we reject tradition
and the teaching of Holy Scripture
and the Fathers.

It doesn't mean that we need 
to make new doctrines
for the present age.

To renew 
means to go back,
back to the fountain,
back to the library of Faith, 
back to those whose teaching
we need to refamiliarise
our minds.

We go back,
through the grace of God
given to us in our Baptism
and turn our minds
to Him
actively
wholeheartedly
and uncompromisingly.

The beauty of our Faith
is that God ALWAYS
gives us space to repent
no matter what we have done.

The opportunity to renew
and be renewed is always there 
for us to grasp
in the sacraments
especially the Sacrament of Confession
which is there for our comfort
not our damnation
or judgement.

But we really must
want to be renewed
and take It seriously.

[PAUSE]

One day,
time will run out
when we will be renewed
no longer.

Our borrowed time will be finished
and we must return our books
to the library.

Our Lord, 
however, 
will make all things new in Him
and,
if we choose,
we can accept our final renewal
and enter into that new life
complete, whole and perfect.

And we won't have any fine to pay, either.

Thursday, January 04, 2024

Constant Change

The universe has been changing from its very moment of beginning (even Genesis demonstrates that); why should Christian belief be any different?

I am happy to believe the Theory of Evolution. It fits the evidence that I see around me and, having studied dynamical systems during my mathematical studies, I recognise behaviours in cosmology and the natural world that are predicted by these mathematical models. The empirical evidence is compelling but it is not absolutely certain. As Ross Geller says, there may be a teeny tiny possibility that it's wrong. The philosophical possibility that the Universe was created five minutes ago together with memories of aeons is not easily debunked. The opening chapters of Genesis could still be literally true as well as being theologically true.

As I say, I don't require Genesis to be literally true for my faith in God to hold. I believe in the Word of God and the Bible is secondary to that Word, unlike the Q'ran in Islamic thought in which the Word of God is the Q'ran. Genesis is theologically true which means it faithfully describes truth about God, Man and the relationship between them without requiring that truth to be expressed within the confines of scientific enquiry.

The question above was posed on the Thinking Anglicans blog. It's an interesting question in that it seeks to put Christian belief in the same category as scientific development. In the Natural Sciences, the geocentric model of the solar system is replaced with the heliocentric model which is, in turn refined by the Keplerian model before we reach today's understanding of chaotic orbits of planets orbiting a star that is itself dancing around the Milky Way. Everything is in a state of flux.

But is Christian belief something that evolves? Certainly, the Bible charts our understanding of God relationship with Man, how the eternal relates with the ephemeral. That poses a problem: if God created all things, then He created Space and Time. There is no room for His evolution. The begetting of the Son and the procession of the Holy Ghost demonstrate that the Father is the single source of all being but, in that the begetting and procession occur outside Time, this dependency of being on the Father does not diminish the Divinity of Son and Holy Ghost.

What does this mean for poor, temporal humanity? Well, if the Christian Faith is true, then it is Eternally true. The Holy Trinity is the Holy Trinity as much as at the Creation as it is at the Council of Ephesus in AD431 and as it is now and as it is when the Universe grows cold and dark in the ensuing billions of years to come.

The Christian belief is changeless but a Christian's belief grows as he discovers the same truth as Enos, Abram, Solomon, and the saints of God grow in the Faith. Since human beings all share the same nature, the nature of the relationship between Man and God is also eternal even though each one of us has to grow in that relationship. This means that what constitutes sin is eternal because sin is a breach in that relationship. Murder is as sinful now as it was when Cain killed his innocent brother. Adultery has not changed, nor has coveting. This is why they are carried by Christ from the Old Testament into the New.

If Christian belief were to change then what would be the cause of this change? What would have the authority and power to change the belief of St Ignatius to the belief of John Shelby Spong? If they are both right in their time, then what changed? Human understanding of the universe? But our understanding of the universe is always incomplete as Prof Edward Feser ably shows in The Last Superstition. Thus we can never be sure that whether the change in our belief is correct. A true change in belief must come from God, but this would render God subject to time.

While the laws of physics require refinement and correction, the underlying mathematics does not. 1+1=2 eternally. HyperKähler manifolds only admit a tri-simplectic reduction by a Lie group if they are not compact eternally. But then, it's not the laws of physics that change but our understanding of them. That Mars goes into retrograde motion across the sky is a brute fact but has different explanations depending on whether you are Ptolemy or Copernicus. The Holy Trinity is a brute fact whether you are Samuel, St Peter or St Gregory Nazianzen.

Could, then, our Faith evolve so that Christians are required to believe in a Holy Quaternity? God could, conceivably, be experienced in more persons than three. This, however, defies what has been revealed. If God reveals that He is the Trinity to Eric but a Quaternity to George this raises difficult questions. Are Eric and George believing in the same God? Why does George warrant knowing the extra Divine person and not Eric? How can Christ build a Church on a rock that shifts like sand, contradicting His own parable. How can Christ commission His disciples to baptise in the Name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost if there is also a Person X as well but does not share the Name?

The fact is that the Trinity has always been part of the Divine self-revelation from Genesis i to Revelation xxii, from Tertullian to St John Damascene. The truth has always been there to see. The Bible is inerrant in its theological truth but requires the Church Fathers to compile and gather that truth according to the tradition that they learned from their teachers all the way back to the apostles. This truth is eternal and this is why Christian belief stands outside the category of things that evolve. It is why sin is sin no matter what time period you are from and why the Church possesses an essential unity across the human epoch of this planet.

I have often found that people ask the question in order to justify their practices which run contrary to the teaching of the Church. "Times change and so must the Church. We cannot hold the same terrible beliefs of the first Christians!" As I say, the onus on these folk is to show why the Church has always got it wrong or what has the power, authority and motive to make that change happen. I often find that their answer to this question is, at best, unconvincing.

Monday, January 01, 2024

Feasting Faithfully

 


Why happiness is neither pagan nor sinful.