Called to Christ's vineyard

 Isaiah 55:6-9: ‘My thoughts are not your thoughts.’

Philippians 1:20-27: ‘For to me to live is Christ.’

Matthew 20:1-16: ‘Do you begrudge my generosity?’

 

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Moving into the Vicarage here in Walsingham last month I spent more time than I would care to on the phone - ‘on hold’ - to a national broadband supplier, who I won’t identify from the pulpit.

Aside from the dreadful tinny music, the experience of being left waiting ‘on hold’ is a weirdly frustrating one.

Even being told you’re first in the queue, next in line, doesn’t really help, especially when the answer is not very helpful.

None of us likes to be left hanging around, loitering or rudderless.

The contemporary human experience seems to be one of purposeless that leads increasingly to despair.

The ideas and accoutrements of modern living that were meant to make us so happy and liberate us have proved to be empty and increase the frustrations and not assuage them.

And, as has been observed, human beings are meaning making creatures, and so we want a sense of purpose, purpose that is informed by hope, the setting of our sights on something beyond us and higher than our experience.

The prophet Isaiah captures this in ancient and enduring wisdom.

He reveals purpose and meaning in seeking the Lord, in calling upon him and walking in his paths.

Contrary to therapeutic methods, that focus on self, we find that our meaning as persons is found by looking outside ourselves and beyond our imagining:

For as the heavens are higher than the earth,

so are my ways higher than your ways

and my thoughts than your thoughts.

That puts us in our proper place; not oppressively, but raising our sights to God our maker and redeemer, the Lord who is always beyond us, greater than us.

When we understand the divine-human order, then we can see that human dignity is found in the One who stooped down to us, to raise us up: Christ, born of the Blessed Virgin, humbles himself to share our humanity to raise us up to His divinity.

As Christians we live in and between the realities of heaven and earth.

St Paul captures it in the passage from his letter to the Philippians we heard today.

He savours what the Lord gives him to do in this world, sharing the apostolic faith, but at the same time yearns ‘to depart and be with Christ’.

St Paul lives life in the end times now.

The Lord has not put him ‘on hold’ but reveals through him the Christian calling, both to savour life in this world and to look to the life of the world to come.

We say it in the Creed:

I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Amen.

We look forward with hope, that Christ will be honoured in our bodies, whether by life or by death.

Either way, Paul says, ‘Let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ.’

This takes us to the Gospel today, which we must first put in context within St Matthew’s gospel.

The parable of the workers in the vineyard is the last one Jesus tells before entering Jerusalem.

He knows what awaits him there.

No sooner has he finished telling the parable than he says: “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be betrayed and condemned to death.”

Notice that: the parable points to the mystery of the cross. 

On the cross the Lord says he will draw all people to himself.

Christ came to seek the lost, the rudderless, the loiterers.

The master of the vineyard is uncannily Christlike because he goes seeking precisely those people.

This parable reveals the gratuity, the grace, of God in drawing us back to the vineyard from which we were expelled through sin.

That ‘vineyard’ was Eden, the garden of creation.

The Lord, like the master in the parable, now seeks those who will labour for his kingdom, not reject life in the kingdom as Adam did.

That is the grace that goes out searching, to which we are invited to respond.

Grace is not a currency, it’s not wages or reward; it is unmerited, it’s boundless, it is all sufficient.

Yet the characters in the parable try to turn it into a debate about workers and shirkers, about labour rights and working conditions.

They miss the point.

And so will we if we think God’s grace is a reward, or that more is given to some people than others: remember, grace is unmerited, boundless, all sufficient.

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD.

The master – Christ - goes out to seek the wanderer, the lost, the misguided, the ones wrapped up in themselves, to invite them into the kingdom of heaven.

He goes out relentlessly: at the third, sixth and ninth hour, and again at the eleventh.

That echoes the Cross.

At the third hour, in St Mark’s Gospel, the crucifixion begins.

It’s the time of that the morning sacrificial lamb was offered on Israel’s behalf.

At the sixth hour, the middle of the day, the brightest time, darkness fell.

At the ninth hour Christ breathed his last: the time of the slaughter of the evening Passover lamb in the Temple.

The eleventh hour is dusk, when Christ’s dead body is laid in the tomb.

From the cross – his Passion and death - Christ opens the gates, not of a return to Eden but to a renewed creation, born from the blood and water flowing from his pierced side.

At the third, sixth, ninth, eleventh hour, the Lord will seek out those who are ‘on hold’ in lives without him.

On the day of resurrection he will reveal himself - in the garden - to Mary Magdalene, who mistakes him, actually correctly identifies him, as the one who tends the garden of the renewed creation.

His mercy abounds; this parable is not a spreadsheet of the payroll department of the kingdom of heaven: it is grace, it is an invitation, and one you and I are called to pass on, as we join Christ in the market-place inviting the idlers, the rudderless those without hope into the garden of his kingdom and into his Church.

For the householder’s vineyard is a picture of the Church.

Come to the vineyard, where the grapes are produced that fill the cup of salvation and point forward to the ‘new wine’ we will drink with Christ in the Father’s kingdom (Matthew 26:29).

That invitation is not ‘on hold’ it is here, it is now.

Blessed are those who are called to the supper of the Lamb.

Disproportionate forgiveness

First sermon preached at St Mary's, Little Walsingham, and earlier at St Peter's Great Walsingham and Houghton St Giles

Sirach 27:30-28:7 ‘Forgive your neighbour the wrong he has done, and then your sins will be pardoned when you pray.’

Romans 14:7-9 ‘Whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.’

Matthew 18:21-35 ‘I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven.’

 

The Lord is compassionate and gracious,

slow to anger and rich in mercy.

 

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One of the great blessings, and challenges, of the Christian life is forgiveness – receiving forgiveness and giving it.

This challenge is being addressed in today’s gospel in the Lord’s conversation with Peter and in the parable that comes from it about someone who is forgiven but then who cannot then forgive.

Aren’t we all locked into that to some degree?

All too many people, even in the life of the Church, hardly dare believe that, in the words of the psalm, ‘The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and rich in mercy’.

The psalm is absolutely serious – and do go back and read it – when it describes the heart and nature of God and the power of His forgiveness:

It is the Lord who forgives all your sins,

who heals every one of your ills,

who redeems your life from the grave,

who crowns you with mercy and compassion.

What a glorious promise!

And if we do accept that forgiveness are we ready to be mirrors of forgiveness?

So there’s a question posed by the Gospel today: is this promise of lavish forgiveness on the radar of your life as a Christian?

So Jesus shows that true forgiveness, God’s forgiveness, is lavish and generous and it doesn’t grudge: and it needs putting into action.

70 times 7 equals 490: that’s a lot of forgiving to be getting on with.

It’s as if Jesus is saying ‘do the maths!’

This is not to test your powers of mental arithmetic, but to emphasise that the forgiveness we give to others is a reflection of the forgiveness we receive from God, through the saving death of Christ on the cross, out of love for the world (cf John 3.16).

And in saying ‘do the maths’ the Lord is drawing on a character from the book of Genesis, chapter 4.

Lamech is a relentlessly unforgiving character, who takes disproportionate vengeance on those who slight him: he says that he won’t just take sevenfold vengeance, but seventy-seven fold (Genesis 4.23-24).

Recognise it?

Jesus flips that round for Peter and you and me.

Forgive, not just seven times but seventy-seven fold.

Lamech dealt in disproportionate vengeance, and vengeance, of any sort, is not the way of Jesus Christ and not worthy of his followers: Jesus deals in disproportionate forgiveness.

So today’s gospel is all about how we live our lives as forgiven and forgiving people.

It is first about life in the Church – that’s why Peter is part of it – it’s about being reconciled to God and to one another, and then about how that forgiveness spills out into our daily lives, thus revealing the ways of the Kingdom of God.

Forgiveness demands honesty, frankness and realism from the forgiver and the one seeking forgiveness.

If I cannot be real about my sins, I can never be ready and receptive to receive forgiveness.

Farmers and gardeners alike know what happens to hard dry ground when the rains come: the rain runs off the surface and leaches any remaining goodness.

When the surface of the ground is broken up and worked then the water can soak deep into the ground and water the roots of the growing seed and plants.

So too the watering of our souls with God’s forgiving grace means that the hardened shell we protect ourselves in must be tilled, so that forgiveness can soak into us and wash out the toxins of sin.

The Church, in her wisdom, gives us a powerful sacrament to aid this in our spiritual lives.

The Sacrament of Confession is the moment when we place ourselves before God - honestly, frankly and realistically - to receive his forgiveness.

Kneeling in penitence, articulating the hard and gnarled realities of our lives that repel God’s grace, is a healing balm and saving medicine.

That is what the Sacrament of Confession gives.

Confession is perhaps the most under used Sacraments of the Church, and yet one that can give deep and enduring comfort.

Getting back to regular confession - or getting started as penitents - reacquaints us with what forgiveness is about, and draws us close to the heart of the guardian of our souls.

Confession is good for us, and those with whom we share our lives, because it is the hinge of the Lord’s Prayer, praying to the Father: ‘forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us’.

You cannot truly forgive until you have been forgiven.

And the parable makes clear; there is little worse than the forgiven person who then fails to forgive.

It shows how crushing an inability to forgive really is, especially from someone who has been relieved of the debt of sin.

The very word forgiveness has a gift at its heart.

It is a gift to receive and a gift to give.

The parable is not a tale with a moral at which we nod our heads, but is a prompt to live lives as forgiven sinners who themselves put forgiveness and reconciliation into practice.

Know yourself to be forgiven, so reacquaint yourself with God’s forgiveness in the Sacrament of Confession.

It’s hard but eternally rewarding: the clutch of sin is washed away at baptism, but our sinfulness abounds, as does God’s disproportionate forgiveness.

Seek out a priest – and there are plenty around here - knowing that he voices God’s forgiveness of your sins, the Lord ‘who’, through his saving death on the Cross, ‘forgives all your sins, who heals every one of your ills, who redeems your life from the grave, who crowns you with mercy and compassion’.

And, knowing yourself to be forgiven, forgive.

Today’s gospel is then a relentless and demanding account of forgiveness and the spiritual corrosion of the failure to seek forgiveness and forgive.

Forgiveness is not a path of weakness but a noble, virtuous way that needs the strength of God’s grace.

Try it out this week! Amongst those who rile you, offend you, disturb you, be they family, friends, colleagues, even new parish priests: no doubt there will be plenty of people and moments who can provide you with the opportunity to give disproportionate forgiveness – what a gift that is to you!

So, as redeemed sinners let us now be ready to come to receive the Lamb of God, who when entering under our roof says the word and heals us.

Treasure new and old

1 Kings 3:5-6a, 7-12 ‘You have asked for yourself understanding.’

Romans 8:28-30 ‘He predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son.’

Matthew 13:44-52 ‘He sells all that he has and buys that field.’

Preached at St Michael and All Angels, Croydon, at the Parish Mass, on the 30th anniversary of the priestly ordination of Fr Tim Pike.

And Jesus said to them, ‘Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house, who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.’

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What a field! What treasure! What a pearl!

Who wouldn’t want to trade everything in for something so very wonderful and precious?

The parables in today’s Gospel reading speak of the great spiritual riches of the kingdom of heaven: treasure to be sought and found for which we trade-in everything.

Jesus tells us: the kingdom is like treasure; the kingdom is like a merchant who seeks fine pearls.

So they sell up and buy that one field with its treasure, and that one pearl.

The parable isn’t independent financial advice – in fact it’s very unwise financially – but it is spiritual wisdom: offload everything and anything that impairs your grasp on the kingdom of heaven.

The Patristic writers, the Church Fathers, variously, see the field in which the treasure is found as the Church; the treasure within the field is the scriptures; the pearl is Jesus Christ the bread of life.

St Paul says ‘the kingdom of God is… righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.’ (Romans 14.17)

The kingdom of heaven is not a human social or political programme but it is the reign and rule of God, his sovereignty in our world and our hearts and the intimacy of a relationship with Jesus Christ the Word made Flesh.

People seek the kingdom in different ways.

Some are like the man in the first parable.

They encounter God in the Church and commit themselves totally to it but their instinct is to cover it up: once they are in the field they uncover the treasure and delight in it.

The next parable spoke of someone who traded in pearls.

This is the sort of person who trades in spiritual type things, is seeking meaning and purpose in life, knowing there’s something more.

These people dabble and trade in those sorts of pearls, until the day when they find the Greatest Pearl is in front of them, and they can have it, if they renounce their dabblings and delusions.

It’s a bit like the Magi at the birth of Christ.

It wasn’t pearls in their case but the stars: and when they saw The Star, they doggedly followed it and look where it led them.

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You inhabit that field – the Church – and the treasure is here for you: continue to delight in that treasure; yearn for it.

When we open the treasure chest of the Church there are riches beyond imagining: the Sacraments that nourish and sustain us; spiritual tools to fight off the Evil One; virtuous living shaping us in faith and hope and love; prayer that roots us into the very life of God; the saints who accompany us, give us good examples of Christian living and pray for us as we go on our journey.

You have The Pearl before your eyes and in your hearts: the pearl that is Jesus Christ, Son of God and Son of Mary.

Christ is The Pearl who gave everything for us, so that we can give everything to him and for him.

Knowing the field of the Church; the treasure within it; knowing Christ the Pearl of Great Price we are also given a challenge to tell others about this.

But if you found treasure in a field, or a priceless pearl, would you tell others about it?

We think of these things as a ‘zero-sum game’: if you win, then I lose; if you have the treasure then I can’t.

But the paradox is that the kingdom of heaven doesn’t work like that; the love of God doesn’t work like that.

Righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit endlessly generate more righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

Even human parental love does not diminish with the birth of each new child; rather, it grows.

The love a parent has for one child doesn’t halve when the second is born, it doubles! Three, it triples; four, it quadruples, and so on.

That’s a good argument for large Christian families!

If that’s true for human parents, it is truer for the his treasure of our heavenly Father.

When you and I have His treasure, we don’t have half the treasure each, there is double the treasure.

These are great parables to ponder.

That takes us to the third of the parables this morning, of the great net cast into the sea.

This parable sounds trickier and quite tough, but in fact is very merciful: God is all-merciful.

The kingdom of heaven, Jesus says, ‘is like a net that was thrown into the sea and gathered fish of every kind.’

The kingdom seeks to embrace everyone, draw in everyone.

At the same time our worthiness to be participants in the kingdom of heaven is not taken for granted.

To be citizens of the kingdom of heaven places demands upon us: we are to renounce evil and embrace righteousness.

No one is destined to be outside the kingdom but through our evil deeds, our lack of love and our rejection of the field, the treasure and the pearl, we can put ourselves outside it: that is enough to make us weep and gnash our teeth.

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Mindful of Fr Tim’s 30^th anniversary of Ordination to the Sacred Priesthood these parables give some important pointers to the life and task of the priest.

The priest must have discovered the field for himself, renounced everything and bought the field and its treasure.

The priest must tend the field where the treasure is to be found and invite others into it to discover the treasure.

The priest must know the Pearl of Great Price and behold and adore that Pearl, Jesus Christ.

Supremely the priest has the task of presenting the Pearl of Great Price to the people.

In the Mass this invitation to the treasure and to receive The Pearl is distilled into these words:

Behold the Lamb of God,

behold him who takes away the sins of the world.

Blessed are those called to the supper of the Lamb.

And you stretch out your hands to receive Him.

The parable of the Great Net gives another dimension to the priestly task, and that is calling the faithful to holiness of life and rejecting evil.

The priest joins Christ in saving souls: no priest wants anyone to go to the fiery furnace but, as fishers of men, with the apostles, want all to be drawn into the saving net of the Church.

That task happens by calling you to repentance, by enabling you to make confession of your sins so that you rediscover the Treasure and The Pearl in your lives day by day.

Along with the altar, the priest wants to be busy in the confessional!

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Jesus said to the crowd, ‘Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house, who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.’

Today let us give thanks for Fr Tim’s 30 years as a priest, for the way each one of us shares his life and he ours.

Pray for him, support him, love him: for, like the master of the house, who Jesus commends in the Gospel, he brings out the treasure and pearl of Christ, in wisdom ever old and ever new, and presents it afresh to you.

Let us then go together, with joy, to seek the kingdom of heaven.

Deliverance and renewal in Christ

 Exodus 19:2-6a ‘You shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’

Romans 5:6-11 ‘If we were reconciled by the death of the Son, much more shall we be saved by his life.’

Matthew 9:36-10:8 ‘Jesus called to him his twelve disciples and sent them out.’

 

Today’s first reading and Gospel both speak of a movement.

The movement is from a desert place to the promise of refreshment and life.

In Exodus that’s a physical deliverance, and in the Gospel that is a spiritual deliverance.

It’s the movement of life before we know Jesus Christ to life in Christ.

It’s the movement of salvation which St Paul says:

we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

God’s pattern is one of deliverance and renewal: deliverance from the power of darkness and renewal through life in His presence.

When we are in the wilderness, or in thrall to things that are spiritually corrosive or dangerous, then God will bear us on eagles’ wings and bring us to himself.

It is in this pattern that he delivered the Israelites from slavery in Egypt.

It is in this pattern that he sees the crowds who are harassed and helpless, ‘like sheep without a shepherd.’

Sheep without a shepherd lack direction, they don’t know where to find good pasture, they fall into ditches and cannot get out, they are vulnerable to predators.

That is the human condition without the Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ.

In Exodus the people who were extracted from Egypt were formed into a people, into a nation, whose first allegiance is to the Lord.

They are told that they will be a treasured possession, and they will be formed into ‘a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’

This priestly people will offer prayer and spiritual sacrifice to the Lord: this echoes the words of the first letter of St Peter addressed to the Church:

…you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light. (1 Peter 2.9)

Jesus knows that the human condition needs men and women acting in His Name to be a royal priesthood, a holy nation to aid the movement from darkness into his marvellous light.

The Apostles are the first men called to that task.

The tools they are given are the tools that are needed to get to the heart of things, tools that are powerful.

Society has various tools that can help people feel better but never ultimately lead them to salvation.

Politics is a tool for society, but it is ultimately about the ‘art of the possible’ and that does not give us meaning.

Health and wellbeing is a tool to boost people but even the fittest people can be harassed and helpless.

Work is a tool for purpose, but not everyone has it and many people are in work that does not fulfil them.

So Jesus gives the Apostles tools and power that no one else can give.

This is authority over unclean spirits, the power to heal disease and every affliction.

How often do I hear people say they are harassed and helpless, although they usually use phrases like, ‘I am just so tired’, ‘I’m running on empty’, ‘I’m tired in a way sleep can’t fix’.

Jesus sees that need, knows that need, and respond to that need in the only way that will restore, refresh and renew.

That movement is from darkness to light, slavery to freedom, life without Christ to life in Christ.

The Apostles will do that by being the Church; and we will do that by being a holy people built on the witness of those men and the power given to them.

Look around Waddon: what do you see?

I see lives in need of Christ.

And here, in this church, I see people who Christ can use to save and to heal, I see labourers being called to the harvest.

What are the tools we’ll use in this mission?

Those tools include, but are more than, social action; include, but are more than, local and national politics; include, but are more than, health and wellbeing.

Ultimately the power comes when we take up and embrace the commission of Jesus Christ first given to the Apostles:

And proclaim as you go, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons. You received without paying; give without pay.

Fed by Christ’s word and sacraments, committing our lives to the Good Lord, who wills our good and not our harm, who gives us a future with hope, is the way we move from death to life in all its abundance.

Lord, give us this bread always!

 

Go and learn what this means

Hosea 6.3-6 ‘I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice.’

Romans 4.18-25 ‘Abraham grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God.’

Matthew 9.9-13 ‘I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.’

 

‘Go and learn what this means…’ (Matthew 9.13)

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Today’s gospel reading reveals the deep logic of salvation, what Jesus came for: the mission and purpose of the Son of God:

I came not to call the righteous, but sinners. (Matthew 9.13b)

We heard the call of Matthew; the carping of the Pharisees because Jesus gathers sinners - people who are spiritually broken and sick - and eats with them; and the commission to go away and learn what the Lord says through the prophet Hosea, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice’.

Every day Jesus calls; he calls you and me from the things that preoccupy our lives, all those things that can obscure the deeper call to be children of God, to be his disciples.

Through the hubbub of jobs, family life, preening self-image, assertion of autonomy, still Jesus calls, calls men and women, calls you: ‘follow me’, come, follow me.

Matthew heard the call and responded to it.

Matthew’s preoccupation was his lucrative job.

Tax officials in antiquity were not the upstanding people they are today: as collaborators with the despised Roman occupiers, the local tax collectors were part of a corrupt regime, siphoning off sweeteners and kickbacks.

Yet it was the Matthews of this world who were invited to sit and dine with Jesus:

…as Jesus reclined at table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and were reclining with Jesus and his disciples. (Matthew 9.10)

In the gospels the catch all phrase ‘sinners’ meant a whole collection of people who violated the Covenant, be that through sexual immorality, financial impropriety, mistreatment of other people.

Jesus does not say that they are all fine, and that he accepts them just as they are.

No.

He acknowledges their sickness, that they are not whole, they need a physician, a healer.

Similarly, the Pharisees, who appear to themselves at least, to be totally sorted and right with God and the Covenant show themselves to be spiritually sick too.

None of us relishes a diagnosis when it comes to our health – physical or mental - but we generally accept that a doctor or health care professional will know how to diagnose the sickness and prescribe the right medicine.

The Pharisees could see the sickness of the ‘sinners’ but they could not see their own.

They need the physician, the doctor, as much as the sinners Jesus sits down and eats with.

Remember that you can appear to be a totally sorted, strong, beautiful, successful person and still be spiritually sick, in need of forgiveness and salvation.

The Pharisee in you and me needs to acknowledge that we’re no more superior to the people we look down on.

We all must wean ourselves off the pernicious habit of thinking we have it all right and that only people who think like us are right, the righteous.

The first step of returning to health, and accepting the prescribed treatment will work, is to acknowledge that there is a problem in the first place.

If I don’t acknowledge I have a problem, then I will never act so as to be healed.

When I have a headache, I take paracetamol; when I sin, do I see it as spiritual sickness, and, if I do, what healing medicine do I need for my soul?

Now, the Pharisees want to be right with God; they know that there is such a thing as spiritual health, as much as physical and mental health.

What the Pharisees miss, as much as the ‘sinners’ and many people today, is that Jesus comes to bring health of body, mind and spirit: that is truly holistic, and it is the precursor to holiness.

And it is holiness that the Pharisees seek which is good and right, yet there is a ‘but’ hovering.

Seek holiness, a good relationship with God, but acknowledge your own sickness too.

And that is why Jesus says them, ‘Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’ (Matthew 9.10)

Sacrifice without mercy is like a body without breath: it is dead.

Sacrifice and mercy are not mutually exclusive; they are intimately related.

The challenge the prophet Hosea issues, echoed by Jesus, is that the first step to mercy is not to point the finger at others to declare them sinners, but to start with the acknowledgement of one’s own sinfulness and lack of superiority over others.

That’s why in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus says:

So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. (Matthew 5.23,24)

The sacrifice, the offering, is wonderful and important, but it must come with the balm of mercy, reconciliation, forgiveness.

After all, Jesus will have known the text from the book of Sirach, ‘He who has mercy offers sacrifice.’ (Sirach 35.4)

Allowing mercy to shape and determine our lives is the prescription that Christ the Physician gives.

St Paul, who began life as a Pharisee, got all this when he wrote:

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. (Romans 12.1)

Jesus did not die on a Cross because people were basically okay but got a few things wrong here and there.

He died on the cross, a sacrifice for sin, to save us, to heal us, to make us holy: the healing remedy is to seek His mercy, on your knees in confession of your sins, and to reveal his mercy, in loving service to your neighbour, especially those you find distasteful and uncomfortable.

At the end of every Eucharist we are commissioned with the words, ‘Go in the peace of Christ’.

We might also hear that as, ‘Go in the mercy of Christ’.

As you go remember, ‘Christ came not to call the righteous, but sinners.’

That’s you and me, as much as ‘them’ out there!

Corpus Christi: A heavenly perspective

 Deuteronomy 8:2-3, 14b-16a ‘He fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know.’

1 Corinthians 10:16-17 ‘Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body.’

John 6:51-58 ‘My flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.’

 

The LORD rained down upon them manna to eat

and gave them the grain of heaven.

So mortals ate the bread of angels;

he sent them food in plenty. (Psalm 78.24,25)

 

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We use the word ‘perspective’ in a variety of ways.

Perspective can mean an attitude or opinion: my perspective on this is such and such.

Perspective can also be the way we see things clear sightedly: we need a sense of perspective so that things don’t get disproportionate so that they skew reality.

And perspective is a technique in art and design that makes three-dimensional objects on a flat surface appear to have depth, distance, and a realistic spatial relationship to the viewer.

Corpus Christi, today’s feast, the day of thanksgiving for the institution of Holy Communion is a day to get a sense of perspective: to see clear sightedly into the ways of Christ and not let polemic and distortion obscure our sight of Him; to have perspective enable us to see the depths and beyond the superficial; to have our minds converted so that we can say, ‘my perspective is that Jesus Christ is the Bread of Life who I receive in the sacrament of the Altar.’

The crowds of our Gospel reading lack all those forms of perspective when it comes to Christ, the Bread of Life.

They are us, until we can make our own the words of the hymn:

Thee we adore, O hidden Saviour, thee,

Who in thy Sacrament art pleased to be.

The crowds are not willing to have perspective.

They cannot put Christ’s teaching, that they must eat his flesh and drink his blood, in perspective.

They need to make some connections.

They have seen the five thousand fed, with bread to spare, but fail to make the connection that God fed the Israelites in the wilderness.

They have already heard John the Baptist declare Jesus to be the ‘Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world’, but fail to make the connection that blood of the sacrificial Lamb will be shed.

Because they can’t put it in perspective, so they squabble, ‘how can this man give us his flesh to eat?’

They need the perspective that Jesus gives.

Eating and drinking the flesh and blood of the Son of Man is how his continues to give us his life.

Christ is now risen, ascended and glorified, so how is He in us and we in Him, other than through his Sacrament as we eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood?

But we need the perspective too.

Christ instituted the Eucharist, the enduring Sacrament and sign of His presence with his people in their wilderness, on Maundy Thursday, at the heart of the intensity of Holy Week.

With everything else going on – the washing of feet, the abandonment of Jesus by the disciples, the prayer of Gethsemane, his betrayal and arrest – it is hard to get a sense of perspective of what this supper means.

Maundy Thursday was 63 days ago, so how do we put things in perspective now?

St Paul gives a clear sense of perspective in 1 Corinthians.

This is a sacred meal, not an aide memoire.

So we need a sense of perspective, the ability to see the depth of the sign.

The Eucharistic bread looks ordinary enough, but it is so much more: the bread and the wine that is presented, prepared and then consecrated according to Christ’s command is in fact a participation in His body and blood.

That sense of perspective also helps us see that what fed the Israelites in the wilderness: the fine, flaky manna fed them in one sense, but what really sustained them was the very life and power and presence of God.

There the people are told, that ‘man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.’

After a day manna went rancid; our loaves of bread go stale and then mouldy; God’s word - and Jesus is the Word Made Flesh - is what gives life, what sustains, what nourishes.

It is this sense of perspective, of reading the depth of the sacramental sign, that St Thomas Aquinas has in his Eucharistic hymns, written for this feast.

They express how we are invited to see beyond the externals to a depth of perceiving, a perspective, a vantage point that only the eye of faith can give:

Faith, our outward sense befriending,

Makes the inward vision clear.

(Tantum ergo in Pangue lingua gloriosi corporis mysterium)

It is from the perspective of being a member of the Body of Christ, the Church, that we behold the Body of Christ in the Eucharist.

The final perspective we are given is of the banquet of heaven.

What the Israelites tasted is fulfilled in the Eucharist and that leads us to the banquet of heaven.

This move from the earthly altar to the heavenly is beautifully captured by St Alphonsus Liguori in a Eucharistic hymn:

Beloved Lord in heaven above,

there, Jesus, thou awaitest me;

to gaze on thee with changless love,

yes, thus I hope, thus shall it be:

for how can he deny me heaven

who here on earth himself hath given?

Here is all the perspective we need:

The LORD rained down upon them manna to eat

and gave them the grain of heaven.

So mortals ate the bread of angels;

he sent them food in plenty. (Psalm 78.24,25)

Day of Pentecost - Evensong

 Joel 2.21-end

Acts of the Apostles 2.14-21

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You could say that the Day of Pentecost is the most dynamic of the Church’s feasts: flames moving, breath stirring, tongues loosened, and human hearts set in motion.

Our readings this evening place us right at the heart of that movement: from promise to fulfilment, from desolation to restoration, from fear to boldness.

Joel’s prophecy begins in devastation.

Israel has suffered a locust plague so severe that the land is stripped bare, the people demoralised, hope worn thin.

Yet into that bleakness God speaks a word of astonishing tenderness:

Fear not, O land; be glad and rejoice, for the Lord has done great things!

Even the animals are addressed - ‘Fear not, you beasts of the field’ - as if creation itself is being coaxed back to life.

Joel’s vision is one of total restoration.

Pastures become green again, trees bear fruit, threshing floors overflow.

And then comes that extraordinary promise:

I will restore to you the years which the swarming locust has eaten.

Not simply better days ahead, but redeemed time - lost years, wasted seasons, barren stretches of life gathered up and made fruitful again by the mercy of God.

But Joel’s prophecy rises beyond material renewal.

It culminates in something even more astonishing: ‘I will pour out my spirit on all flesh.’

Not on kings alone, nor prophets alone, nor priests alone - but on all flesh.

Sons and daughters, old and young, servants and maidservants.

The Spirit will not be rationed; God’s life flows over everyone.

Pentecost is the fulfilment of that promise.

When Peter stands before the crowds in Jerusalem, he does not offer a new idea or clever argument.

He points back to Joel and says, ‘This is what was spoken by the prophet Joel.’

What they are witnessing - the rushing wind, the tongues of fire, the disciples speaking in many languages - is not chaos but fulfilment.

The God who promised to restore the years eaten by locusts is now restoring humanity itself, breathing new life into a fearful and fractured world.

Peter emphasises the universality of the gift:

I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh… your sons and your daughters shall prophesy… your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.

The Spirit does not erase our differences; the Spirit sanctifies them.

Young and old, men and women, servants and free—each receives a share in God’s life, each is called into God’s mission.

Pentecost is not the birth of a spiritual elite; it is the birth of a Spirit‑filled people.

Joel’s promise of restoration speaks powerfully into our own lives.

The locusts of illness, grief, regret, missed opportunities stalk our lives, ready to nibble away our hope.

Pentecost tells us that God does not only forgive; God restores.

The Spirit brings life out of what seemed dead, rekindles joy where it had faded, renews courage where fear had taken root.

The disciples themselves are living proof.

Only weeks earlier they had scattered in fear.

Peter, ‘The Rock’ - a somewhat ironic nickname at this stage - had denied Jesus.

Their hopes had collapsed.

Yet on Pentecost morning Peter stands “with the eleven,” no longer hiding, no longer ashamed, but proclaiming the gospel with clarity and boldness.

The Spirit restores what fear had broken.

And forms and shapes a people, the Church.

Our task is then to be witnesses to this.

The disciples speak in many languages, not to display spiritual gifts, but so that ‘each one heard them speaking in his own language.’

Pentecost reverses the scattering of the Tower of Babel.

Where human pride once fractured communication, the Spirit creates understanding.

Where suspicion once divided, the Spirit builds communion.

This is what we must speak into a world marked by polarisation, mistrust, and the retreat into echo chambers.

Pentecost calls the Church to be a community where strangers become neighbours, where differences are gifts rather than threats, where the Spirit enables us to hear one another deeply: this is what humanity can look like!

And we cannot huddle in a like‑minded community, because the Spirit of Pentecost sends us out in mission.

Joel’s prophecy ends with a promise of salvation:

All who call upon the name of the Lord shall be delivered.

Peter echoes it:

Whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

Pentecost is not an inward‑looking feast.

It is the moment the Church is propelled outward.

The Spirit does not come to make us comfortable; the Spirit comes to make us witnesses.

A Spirit‑filled witness is not someone who has pre-packaged answers, but someone whose life points to the living God - someone who speaks truth with humility, loves with courage, forgives with generosity, hopes against hope.

Someone who, like Peter, can stand before the world and say: God’s promises are trustworthy; God’s mercy is real; God’s Spirit is for you.

Pentecost also invites us to dream again.

Joel says,

Your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions.

The Spirit gives the Church holy imagination - the ability to see the world as God sees it, to envision what God desires, to believe that renewal is possible even when circumstances suggest otherwise.

Perhaps the most countercultural thing the Church can do today is to dream: to imagine a world reconciled, a community healed, a creation restored, a humanity renewed by the breath of God.

Pentecost is God’s great ‘yes’ to a world that has known too many ‘noes.’

It is the promise that the Spirit is still being poured out, still restoring, still reconciling, still empowering.

No life is too broken, no community too divided, no church too weary for God to renew.

So as we keep the feast, let us open ourselves again to the Spirit who restores the years the locust has eaten, who forms us into a people of compassion and understanding, who sends us out as witnesses of Christ, and who teaches us to dream God’s dreams.

Come, Holy Spirit. Renew your Church. Renew your people. Renew your world.

Bound together in the One Spirit let us pray the Grace.