"Come": Advent invitation, announcement & anticipation

Isaiah 2.1-5 ‘The Lord gathers all nations together into the eternal peace of the Kingdom of God .’

Romans 13.11-14a ‘Salvation is nearer to us now.’

Matthew 24.37-44 ‘Stay awake so that you may be ready.’

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Today’s readings are shot through with the word at the heart of Advent, the liturgical season which we begin today.

And that word is ‘come’.

The word Advent, is from the Latin word ‘adventus’ meaning ‘come’ or arrive, i.e. that someone has ‘come’.

In the prophet Isaiah the word ‘come’ is an invitation:

Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD…

That he may teach us his ways

and that we may walk in his paths.

O house of Jacob,

come, let us walk

in the light of the LORD...  (Isaiah 2.3,5)

That coming is an invitation to join in the flow of many peoples and nations to the mountain of the LORD which is the Holy Presence, the Temple, of God.

In that presence, and not by our own efforts, God shall judge between the nations and resolve disputes so that the vision of what we know as the peaceable kingdom of God is realised: swords beaten into ploughshares, spears becoming pruning hooks, where war is learnt no more.

So Advent is a time of invitation, a wonderful invitation: come to meet the fullness of the presence of God and inhabit his peaceable kingdom!

Come, let us walk in the light of the LORD.

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In the letter to the Romans the word ‘come’ is an announcement:

          the hour has come… (Romans 13.11)

Just as day comes when the sun rises and dawn breaks, so the moment has come when our salvation is being realised.

And as our salvation comes - the saving presence of Jesus Christ - so we are called to a deep change in our lives.

The coming of Christ, which has happened, calls us to live lives of faithfulness and covenant, of sobriety, of harmony and appreciation of others; willing the good of the other.

It’s a wry irony that St Paul’s description of how the Christian is to live, is the opposite behaviour of many an office Christmas party over the next four weeks or so.

And that’s important, in Advent as in all times, that we don’t carry on living our lives as if there is no God, no anchor in heaven or appreciation of the presence of the One Who Comes.

Christ changes how we live our lives: military weapons, swords and guns are repurposed and interpersonal weapons, infidelity, lack of personal control and jealousy, are transformed as we put on the armour of light.

So Advent is a time when we grapple with living out the reality that ‘the hour has come.’

Already.

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Yet, in the Gospel today, it is not a coming in the past but in the future: he will come.

This is the future dimension of coming – the not yet arrived type of coming.

Because it is in the future the coming starts a time of preparation, expectation, anticipation.

There is an explicit warning: if you carry on with all the social norms and conventions of your day, without being aware of what is to come, then all you hold dear will be swept away, ‘as were the days of Noah.’ (Matthew 24.37)

Jesus describes the un-knowableness of the day and time of his coming.

The future event of Christ’s coming is something we cannot know so we are exhorted to stay awake and be ready.

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So, our scriptures today give us coming – the adventus - in three dimensions: ethical, moral and spiritual.

The invitation to ‘come’ to the mountain of the Lord purifies our ethical acting: the weapons we use against others are transformed.

Today our military weapons are as deadly as swords and spears – which are deadly, as we know from the blight of knife crime – but our weapons today kill on a scale way beyond what a sword and spear could do.

Coming to the mountain of God, to the peaceable kingdom, means that we recommit ourselves to the paths of peace: in every aspect of our lives, so that our aim is not to hurt or destroy, but to build up and restore.

The announcement that our salvation has come invites us to the moral action of how we are faithful to one other: husbands and wives to each other; parents and children to each other; friends and companions to each other, as befits those who ‘put on the Lord Jesus Christ’ (Romans 13.14).

May our aim be faithfulness to those to whom we are committed, especially those to whom we are bound by vows and bonds of love and kinship.

May it be sobriety in the face of a world intoxicated by things that are not of God.

Then the preparation, expectation and anticipation of the One Who Will Come invites our spiritual response.

This is about using the time aright to lift our gaze and open our hearts to welcome Jesus Christ.

It is, in prayer, reading of the scriptures and in our worship, that we can rekindle the anticipation of the return of Christ and his presence in our midst today.

For ‘he shall come again in glory to judge the living and the dead’ (Nicene Creed): so prepare yourself, with consistent, courageous faithful choices, for the final encounter with him.

An Advent hymn says it nicely,

Let ev’ry heart prepare a throne,

and ev’ry voice a song.

As the book of Revelation puts it:

He who testifies to these things says, “Surely I am coming soon.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus! (Revelation 22.20)

Serving in the courts of the Lord

Preached at Choral Evensong as the Minster gave thanks for Denise Mead, Verger and Administrator, who retires at Christmas.

‘My soul hath a desire and longing to enter into the courts of the Lord : my heart and my flesh rejoice in the living God.’

Psalm 84.2

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Those words are from psalm 84.

It is a psalm that rejoices in the praise of God in his holy sanctuary.

When that psalm was composed the holy dwelling place of God was understood to be the temple in Jerusalem: the place of encounter between heaven and earth, God and humanity.

That temple was an echo of the first ‘temple’, as we might call it, the Garden of Eden, the place of right worship and life with God, which humanity vacated after the disobedience there.

The earthly temple, whose dimensions were given by God, was a vital sign of how things are meant to be between God and humanity (Exodus 40), and this is what that temple in Jerusalem came to be.

But the mission of Jesus expands the vision of the temple dramatically.

The temple is now not the huge stone edifice in Jerusalem, decorated with gold and cedar wood and rich fabrics; it is not solely for the worship of the people of Israel but for all nations, for the temple is Jesus Christ himself.

Remember after he cleansed the earthly temple in Jerusalem at the beginning of his ministry in St John’s Gospel?

Jesus declared:

“Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” (John 2.19)

Those locked into the ways of the earthly temple replied:

“It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?” (v20)

‘But’, St John reminds us, ‘Jesus was speaking about the temple of his body. When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken. (vv.21-22)

So, the temple is reimagined, expanded, and is Jesus’ body so that all people can, like the sparrow in the psalm find a house, and like the swallow, nestle and nurture.

And each church building, the sanctuary of God, is an expression in stone of the hospitality of Jesus and the worship of the people of God.

And what a privilege, a ‘duty and a joy’, it is to spend time in God’s house.

The psalm captures it: ‘my soul hath a desire and longing to enter the courts of the Lord: my heart and my flesh rejoice in the living God’.

This psalm should be a beloved one to all Christians, expressing the desire and longing we have to dwell in the beauty of the presence of Jesus Christ.

Yet I can’t help but feel that this is a psalm that is especially dear to Vergers.

‘Verger’ is not a word that many people outside the church know.

And it needs to be better known in the church too.

To be a verger is to work day by day in the dwelling of the Lord of hosts, in the courts of the Lord.

Vergers are custodians, with incumbents and churchwardens, of the building set apart for the holy worship of God.

To be a verger is to help order and smooth the way for the worship of the church and her liturgies.

You’re cut out to be a verger if you can say:

For one day in thy courts : is better than a thousand.

I had rather be a door-keeper in the house of my God : than to dwell in the tents of ungodliness.

Now, a paraphrase of the Bible called ‘The Message’ puts those verses like this:

One day spent in your house, this beautiful place of worship,
    beats thousands spent on Greek island beaches.
I’d rather scrub floors in the house of my God
    than be honored as a guest in the palace of sin.

It’s not a translation, but it captures the sense of things.

Now this isn’t a speech, it’s a sermon, but it is true to say that Denise has exemplified this spirit.

Denise is not to be found on Greek islands in preference to this place – in fact getting her to have a holiday at all is quite a task!

And you can see what this place has over a foreign holiday.

This glorious Minster church: with its still beauty, early in the morning; its intense darkness when locking up after midnight Mass or the Easter Vigil, with only the flicker of the sacrament lamp giving light; with its soaring beauty, filled with music, incense and praise; with its light streaming across from the high south windows during the Sunday Eucharist, baptisms, weddings and funerals; with its simple presence as the doors are opened for the people of the parish to come in and pray during the week.

Here the verger is to be found, nesting in a church, like the swallows of the psalm.

Of course, swallows are migrating birds; they are here for a season and then fly to warmer climes, but whilst they are here it is home, their lodging place.

Soon Denise will fly away from this sanctuary, but will find another: the Lord opens his house to her, as to all people.

The true measure of a verger, as of any Christian, is to cherish the Lord’s house, but to desire and long for something even more precious, and that is life in Jesus Christ.

That is why for Denise, as for vergers through the generations, being a verger is a vocation, a calling from God, a way of loving service in God’s house, with, and for, God’s people and all to his greater glory.

So, the earthly sanctuary points to the heavenly one.

The temple we ultimately dwell in is the life of the Mystical Body of Christ, the Church.

That is the meeting point of heaven and earth, God and humanity, and where truth, beauty and goodness is to be found.

Of life in Christ we can surely say:

My soul hath a desire and longing to enter into the courts of the Lord : my heart and my flesh rejoice in the living God.

 

 

Dare to Hope, dare to Endure

Malachi 4:1-2a ‘For you the sun of righteousness shall rise.’

2 Thessalonians 3:7-12 ‘If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat.’

Luke 21:5-19 ‘By your endurance you will gain your lives.’

‘Teacher, when will these things be,

and what will be the sign when these things are about to take place?’

(Luke 21.7)

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What a scene of turmoil, destruction, darkness and upheaval we have just had described in the Gospel reading: wars, rumours of wars, natural disaster and earthquake.

In the face of that, plenty of people might dare to answer the disciples’ question: ‘Teacher, when will these things be, and what will be the sign when these things are about to take place?’ by saying that, ‘it’s now, obviously.’

Glance at the news for a couple of minutes and it’s all there.

That’s how the modern secular mind reads the world today: destruction; disaster; wipeout; annihilation.

We all have a teleology – that’s an understanding of your ultimate object or aim in life.

And your teleology, understanding of the ultimate, determines how you live your life.

A teleology of destruction, disaster, wipeout and annihilation will shape your life in a similar way.

If the news and norms of today are all there is, then no wonder you’d be hopeless and left asking, ‘what’s the point of it all?’

There is a very different teleology for believers.

If you believe that there is a Creator – God – who has purpose and a mission for the world, who wills and desires the world to flourish and be at harmony, then you can’t see the world as others do.

The vital ingredients are that there is purpose and meaning in God’s world, all brought together in the virtue of ‘hope’, which abides and endures with faith and love (1 Corinthians 13.13).

Hope is very different from the general and vague spirit of an optimist.

The optimist will be terrified in the face of the news today, the arc of history does not seem to be bending towards a good outcome, let alone justice.

But hope is rooted in the expectation of God’s past, present and enduring action in the world.

Hope knows the end of the story.

The world is patterned in hope, even as tribulation, wars, rumours of wars, natural disaster and earthquakes unfold.

It is through the lens of hope that the believer sees the world, and his or her own life.

God’s purpose in the world is the restoration of all things in Christ.

It’s described in the Book of Revelation, chapter 21:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” (Revelation 21.1-4)

It's there in the Gospel reading today: Jesus looks to the time when we come through the tribulation and he says, ‘not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your lives.’ (Luke 21.19)

That’s why St Paul can say:

I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. (Romans 8.18)

Indeed, he also says:

Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. (Romans 5.3-5)

The Gospel reading began with people staring at the Temple, a massive stone edifice ‘adorned with stones and offerings’ (Luke 21.5) and Jesus says it will all crumble.

The overarching narrative of the Bible is that the earthly Temple makes way for the gift of the heavenly, the Temple of Christ’s mystical body.

The first temple, as it were, was the Garden of Eden.

In that “temple” God placed the man and the woman to be at one with him in abundance and worship.

Their disobedience saw humanity expelled from the Garden Temple of paradise, and the consequence of that is the darkness in the world of deceit, corruption, violence and pain.

Many have tried building paradise on earth and failed: Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and their ilk, and look at how that went.

If you want to see the worst of  violence, destruction and human degradation just look at the atheistic regimes of the 20^th century.

And the will to create paradise on earth, on human terms, has not gone away.

To the believer God’s paradise, heaven, is His gift and will come in His time, not ours; is His vision, not ours; on His terms, not ours.

The Gospel calls us to place ourselves in God’s purposes and mission for the world, to see in the tumult a call to be steadfast, hope-filled, loving, faithful and to endure.

In all this, Jesus says, we have the opportunity to bear witness (Luke 21.13): witness to what? Surely to faith, and hope, and love: the three things that endure the tumult of the world.

In this new week, pray for hope, pray for endurance, pattern your life in the hope and expectation of the coming of the One who restores all things: hold on to faith, to hope and to love.

Amen.

 

Don’t be afraid to be saints!

Revelation 7.2-4, 9-14 ‘Behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages.’

1 John 3.1-3 ‘We shall see God as he is.’

Matthew 5.1-12a ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit.’

 

Let us all rejoice in the Lord,

as we celebrate the feast day in honour of all the Saints,

at whose festival the Angels rejoice and praise the Son of God.

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The entrance antiphon for today, just quoted, captures what All Saints’ Day is all about: rejoicing in the Lord and celebrating a feast day in honour of all the Saints, which prompts angelic rejoicing and praise of Jesus Christ.

"Do not be afraid to be saints. Follow Jesus Christ who is the source of freedom and light. Be open to the Lord so that He may lighten all your ways"

Those stirring words of St John Paul II point to what we need to be saints.

Don’t be afraid to be saints!

Christ will lighten the way to that, as St John writes:

See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. (1 John 3.1)

Yes, by virtue of our baptism we are part of the plebs Sancta Dei, the ‘holy common people of God’, also known as the Church, the fellowship of saints.

We are saints, with a little ‘s,’ being formed as Saints with a big ‘S’.

As saints we have all it takes to become Saints: when the clutter of our own egos, misplaced desires and sin is cleared away; which it can be when we allow God’s grace in Jesus Christ to do that.

As the First Letter of John put it:

Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. (1 John 3.2)

And this journey takes us deep into the heart of Jesus’ teaching, which is so beautifully distilled in the Beatitudes, those phrases of blessing, ‘blessed are…’, ‘blessed are…’

Again, St John says:

And everyone who thus hopes in [Jesus Christ] purifies himself as he is pure. (1 John 3.3)

That echoes Jesus own words:

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. (Matthew 5.8)

Being and becoming a Saint is to be formed more and more in the image and likeness of God as revealed in the face of Jesus Christ.

And just as each person is formed uniquely, and yet still bears God’s image, so it is with Saints.

All Saints look like Christ, but there is a multiplicity of what Saints look like.

In other words, you can only be the Saint God makes you to be, and being a saint makes you more and more truly yourself, not a pale shadow or distortion of who you are, or imitation of anyone else, other than Christ.

But this isn’t just about personal improvement or a self-help programme.

Saints can’t make it without God’s grace; and they, we, can’t do it in splendid isolation.

The ravishing vision of the Book of Revelation conveys this so wonderfully.

St John the Divine, who was entrusted with this revelation to see and write down, describes the scene:

After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands (Revelation 7.9)

That is heaven.

And heaven is tasted on earth.

The vision of Revelation is a vision of the Church at worship in heaven: and the saints on earth anticipate the worship of heaven.

This is what the poet George Herbert describes in his poem ‘Prayer’:

Softnesse, and peace, and joy, and love, and blisse,

Exalted Manna, gladnesse of the best,

Heaven in ordinarie, man well drest, (Prayer [1I])

In the Church’s banquet, the banquet of saints, we feast on ‘exalted Manna’ the supernatural bread and taste ‘heaven in ordinarie.’

Sunday by Sunday at the Eucharist – receiving ‘exalted manna’ - in this church, I see a vision of saints ‘from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb’ (Revelation 7.9.)

That is, to me, a vision of ‘heaven in ordinarie.’

I see the holy people of God, around the altar, being formed more deeply by the Holy Spirit to become the holy people of God, individually and corporately.

And that happens because we gather around the throne of the Lamb who was slain, Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God and when share his life with the palm branches of martyrdom.

And the angels, who the scriptures show adoring God’s holy presence night and day, join this praise and connect us to the worship of heaven.

So let us ever join in the angelic song, with all the Saints:

“Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honour and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.” (Revelation 7.12)

 

The humble exalted

Sirach 35.15b-17, 20-22b ‘The prayer of the humble pierces the clouds.’

2 Timothy 4.6-8, 16-18 ‘There is laid up for me the crown of righteousness.’

Luke 18.9-14 ‘The tax collector went down to his house justified, rather than the Pharisee.’

‘For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled,

but he who humbles himself will be exalted’

(Luke 18.14).

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It has been rightly said that the sin of pride is the most fundamental and dangerous of the seven deadly sins.

The spiritual masters identify pride as the root of all spiritual dysfunction; it’s a barrier to grace.

I have described before the idea of the ego-drama and the theo-drama.

The ego-drama is about control and self-glorification; the theodrama is about surrender, mission, and grace.

So as the American Bishop, Robert Barron, has said, the ego-drama is a performance where, ‘I am the star, the director, the writer, and the producer.’

Perhaps you recognise that in the words and action of the Pharisee in the parable,

‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’ (Luke 18.11-12)

If the ego-drama is about a life focused on personal ambition, control, and self-glorification, then that Pharisee is a fine example.

Disconnected from truth and grace such a person resists the ways of God and it’s all about me.

Personal and collective pride is the barrier to God’s grace because pride isolates the soul – how lonely that Pharisee is in his ego-drama – he’s turned devotion into self-congratulation.

But there’s a better story, a better offer:

The theodrama is about living in God’s story.

In God’s story we all have a part to play, rather than being prima donnas this is shown by a life of graciousness, listening attentively to God and to one another, preferring nothing to Christ because that is how we love our neighbour.

Entry into God’s life and God’s story is the way of the tax collector in the parable, the way of humility: ‘For everyone’ says Jesus, ‘who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.’ (Luke 18.14b)

This is an insistent theme through the scriptures.

Approach the Lord with humility, with reverence and awe.

It is the way of Moses who, hiding his face, takes the sandals from his feet to walk on holy ground as he encounters the presence of God in the Burning Bush (Exodus 3.5,6)

It is the way of Isaiah who cries out in the holiness of the Temple:

“Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” (Isaiah 6.5)

It is the way of Mary who says to the archangel:

‘Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.’ (Luke 1.38)

It is the way of the tax collector who keeps his eyes down and whispers:

‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ (Luke 14.13)

And you know, that’s not a weak way, a cop out way, a doormat way; it is a strong way, a virtuous way, a noble way.

That is the way that St Paul describes in our second reading, as he pours himself out for the Lord: pouring out self, that he may be filled with God’s power to take up the fight, finish the race, keep the faith. (cf 2 Timothy 4.6,7).

That’s not weakness, or fake, that is strong; indeed the Lord said clearly to him in prayer:

“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

And Paul reflects:

Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. (2 Corinthians 12.9)

So, as our first reading from the Book of Sirach, part of the Wisdom literature of scripture, puts it, in a  wonderful phrase, ‘The prayer of the humble pierces the clouds.’ (Sirach 35.21).

We see time and again that the voice of the poor person - the one who is wronged, the orphan and the widow - will be heard, when they pour out their story. (Sirach 35.17)

The voice of the so-called ‘little person’ is the voice the Lord hears, because it is a voice that finds its place in God’s story: as our psalm response said, ‘The lowly one called, and the LORD heard him.’

What a psalm! ‘The LORD is close to the broken hearted; those whose spirit is crushed he will save.’

Why?

‘For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted’ (Luke 18.14).

Humility, rooted in Christ, allows us entry into God’s life: as we believe, Christ humbled himself to share our humanity so that through him we could share in his divine life in which true joy, fulfilment is found.

Jesus’ parable holds a mirror up to each of us.

What do you see reflected back? Is there a whiff of the Pharisee, or the look of the tax collector?

In an age of fragility about who we are, may we see the face of Christ.

Each of us - and, fellow sinners, I don’t for a minute excuse myself – each of us has to account before God for our inner disposition and outward action.

Coming before the Lord, and preparing now to receive him in Holy Communion, Christ commends to us the way of that tax collector, who trusts wholly in the mercy and loving kindness of God, before he trusts in himself.

He is not timid; he is powerfully humble.

Humility, which is of Christ, is the quiet and strong way into God’s presence; pride is the brittle, self-justifying and noisy way out of it:

‘For everyone’ the Lord says, ‘who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted’

How sweet are your words

Exodus 17.8-13 ‘Whenever Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed.’

2 Timothy 3.14-4.2 ‘That the man of God be complete, equipped for every good work.’

Luke 18.1-8 ‘God will give justice to his elect, who cry to him.’

 

How sweet are your words on my tongue!

They are sweeter than honey to my mouth.

(Psalm 119.103)

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This morning’s second reading, with its reference to the scriptures, is a good opportunity to reflect on the word of God, as read in the Bible, and how that word is, to quote Psalm 119, ‘is a lantern to my feet and a light upon my path.’ (Psalm 119.105).

I hope also it will inspire each of us back to reading the Bible, or reading and hearing the Bible in a fresh way.

Each of us will have a different relationship with books.

Some of us will be novel type people, some preferring thrillers or detective works.

Some of us will be non-fiction readers, some preferring biography or meaty history.

Books can open up new worlds for us and allow our imagination to run riot.

Some people are described as ‘bookish’ meaning that they always have their head in a book, and the implication that they are so in a book they’re not in this world.

A song of my youth, in the late 1980s, had this line:

I bought you a book

Now you can read, yes

Get the experience without having to bleed (The Bolshoi, ‘She don’t know’, 1987)

Could it be that, sometimes, Christians are to be so caught up in a book, the Bible, that they’re not in this world, that they don’t know how to bleed?

We read the Bible as ‘the word of the Lord’, and know Jesus Christ as ‘the Word of God, the Word made flesh.’

The reading of the Bible is to bring us into a vibrant and living relationship with the Word Made Flesh, with Jesus Christ the one whose life blood was poured out for us.

Writing to Timothy, St Paul, speaks of being ‘acquainted with the scriptures’.

What a beautiful phrase.

Being acquainted with something or a person means to be at ease with them, familiar with them and deeply affectionate.

I wonder if that’s how you feel about the Bible?

Are you at ease with it, familiar with it, deeply affectionate towards it?

The sad fact is that Christianity in the modern world has gone down two routes, both of which would be unrecognisable to St Paul or the Fathers of the Church.

One route is the ‘Biblicist’, where the Bible is to be taken literally without nuance or appreciation of context.

The other is the ‘Bibliosceptic’, as I’ll call them, are those who say that the Bible is a text from a remote past, that has some inspiring phrases, but that’s about it.

Both take the Bible literally but not seriously.

One sore point for Biblicists and Bibliosceptics alike is part of a verse from Paul’s second letter to Timothy which was read this morning: ‘All Scripture is breathed out by God’ – that means the Bible claims to be literally true they cry!

Taking it literally one uses it like an instruction manual, and also taking it literally the other effectively bins it.

It’s tempting to quote Jesus’ words to the Sadducees: ‘You are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God.’ (Matthew 21.27)

Only one bit of the Bible was inscribed by God on tablets of stone, that’s the Ten Commandments.

The rest is breathed out by God and captured by human writers.

That is not to diminish the Bible, but to be real about it.

We are to be acquainted with the Bible, at ease with it, familiar with it, deeply affectionate towards it, because through the scriptures we meet Jesus Christ, ‘the word made flesh.’ (John 1.14).

Michael Ramsey, Archbishop of Canterbury in the 1960s, said that ‘Christians are the people, not of a book, but of a person, himself described as the Word of God’.

And what Jesus, St Paul and others call ‘the Scriptures’ refer to what we call the Old Testament.

That is the first witness to Jesus Christ, as he himself makes clear to the two disciples on the Road to Emmaus on the Day of his Resurrection:

And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself. (Luke 24.27)

That’s what the apostle Philip did on the road between Jerusalem to Gaza with an Ethiopian man when he asked about what the prophet Isaiah was on about:

Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning with this Scripture he told him the good news about Jesus. (Acts of the Apostles 8.35)

When this was opened to them on the road to Emmaus, and then Jesus broke bread, the two disciples declared:

“Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?” (Luke 24.32)

The Ethiopian heard Philip’s interpretation and asked immediately to be baptised.

We don’t read this book to get the experience without having to bleed, but we read the Scriptures to take up the cross of the One who suffered for us.

So, the Scriptures, that wonderful collection of texts, different in genre, written over centuries, are the reliable witness that the Church has to the mighty acts of God in Christ.

Their purpose is that we come to know Jesus, the Word Made Flesh, in the power of the Spirit, so that with him we see the Father’s face.

May we each renew our acquaintance with the Scriptures, cherish them, be at ease with them, love them.

As we come to taste the Living Bread from heaven may we also say of the Scriptures:

How sweet are your words on my tongue!

They are sweeter than honey to my mouth.

 

 

A Funeral Homily for the late Angela Bond RIP

 Homily preached at the funeral of Angela Bond, Croydon Minster 14th October 2025. Mother of a young child, Angela worshipped weekly at the Minster and worked in the parish office for 4 years. She died last month.

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A funeral is a time when we come together to remember, give thanks for and commend to God a person we have known and loved.

We are doing that today for Angela.

And we entrust her on a journey, begun in this life and continuing now to the very heart of God, in the hope and confidence that she is led by the hand of Jesus Christ – the way, the truth and the life - to the place prepared for her, as our gospel reading promises.

The promise and hope is offered to us that death is the birth into a new life, a life we glimpse through acts of faith and hope and love, and revealed uniquely in the life, teaching and resurrection of Jesus Christ, through whom we are promised a heavenly dwelling place.

In the introduction to the service booklet I have written a few words saying what a funeral is and, hopefully, helping us reflect on some of the feelings we have here today.

The horrible reality is that we are here because someone we love, Angela, a child of God, made in God’s image and likeness, has died and we can no longer share our lives with her on earth.

A funeral is a time of remembering, of giving thanks, of grieving and of giving and receiving comfort. It is also a time of healing and reconciliation.

When we come to our prayers shortly that is a good moment to whisper before God, things said and done that are now regretted, or things we failed to say or do for which we seek forgiveness too.

A funeral is never an easy experience, especially when the person who has died is one so relatively young, like Angela.

Here we are faced with our own mortality, that none of us will live for ever, and we are presented with the challenge of how to live our lives well and to the full.

Do go back to those words, and the words of our readings, for they seek to proclaim also something very important about today.

That proclamation we read in the scriptures is that ‘many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it’ (Song of Songs 8.6).

For Christians this love is the love of God, embodied in Jesus Christ; the floods of death could not drown his love, which endures because of his resurrection from the dead.

Angela shared that hope.

Sunday by Sunday she was here in this church, as along with Alex, she brought their daughter to learn what faith is and to know the enduring love of God: what a gift to give to a daughter.

Angela is, as we know, both a mother and daughter, and I can’t help but reflect on that picture above the desk she worked at for four years in our church office.

It’s a detail of Philippo Lippi’s  Madonna and Child. There is a glorious, golden background but in Mary’s face we see the tenderness of a mother and the sadness the will overwhelm her as she stands at the foot to the cross watching as her son dies, seeing his pain and mourning her loss.

May Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for Angela, for Hilda, for her daughter.

Finally, given Angela’s love of, commitment to and involvement in theatre, a quote from Shakespeare is not out of place.

In Hamlet Ophelia is distributing herbs to others and says, ‘there’s rosemary, that's for remembrance; pray, love, remember.’

Today we have remembered Angela.

Though separated now, we still love her – mother, daughter, sister, cousin, friend, colleague – knowing that many waters cannot quench God’s love for her.

And we pray for her, that she may rest in peace – healed and forgiven – to be perfected in God’s image, before we commend her finally to God’s mercy.

Rest eternal, grant to your servant, O Lord,

and let light perpetual shine upon her.