Salvation's Coming Home

The name of Christ will be glorified in you, and you in him 2 Thessalonians 1.11-2.2

Salvation comes to the house of Zacchaeus Luke 19.1-10

 

 

‘Today salvation has come to this house’. (Luke 19.9)

 

The story of Zacchaeus is a very familiar one.

 

But it’s familiarity should not breed contempt, or the comfortable assumption that we know what is going on here.

 

Unlike our reading over the last few Sundays, this is not a parable.

 

This is a real, historical meeting, in a real actual place, still there today, the city of Jericho.

 

But we shouldn’t read this as remote and in the past – it has direct spiritual application today!

 

It sticks in the mind with the image of the diminutive, celebrity seeking Zacchaeus climbing a tree to get a good view of Jesus.

 

There is the vivid scene of Jesus’ seeing Zacchaeus and calling him down and saying that he wants to come to Zacchaeus’ house to eat with him.

 

Then there’s Zacchaeus, in an act of reparation, pledging to pay back four times the amount of what he had cheated from other people.

 

It is a compelling encounter.

 

It bespeaks the encounter we are all called into with Jesus Christ, and one the Michaela is particularly called into today as she comes to be baptised.

 

It also reminds us that, as baptised people, as those who seek Christ today, our life can never be the same: encountering Jesus, being baptised, means an about turn in our lives: metanoia (μετάνοια) in Greek: literally ‘meta’, meaning ‘beyond’ ‘noia’ meaning thought.

 

Jesus took Zacchaeus, and takes us, beyond our own thinking with our limited horizons, into the expansive vision of sharing his life in the Kingdom of God.

 

Zacchaeus was seeking something.

 

He appears not to know what.

 

He’d heard Jesus was in town and was clearly intrigued to see him.

 

He couldn’t possibly have imagined what his seeking would lead him to.

 

The seeker is the one who is found.

 

Jesus called Zacchaeus out from being a viewer, to being the one who is seen; from being a spectator to becoming a companion as he sat down to eat.

 

Following Jesus is not a spectator sport, it is an act of participation.

 

This involves us in discerning the call of Christ in our lives.

 

It involves us listening carefully to him, hearing his word; a word that transforms our lives.

 

It involves welcoming Jesus literally into our homes and spiritually making space for him in our lives: as the great Advent hymn puts it ‘let ev'ry heart prepare a throne | and ev'ry voice a song’ (‘Hark! The glad sound’ – Philip Doddridge).

 

It involves, like Zacchaeus, sitting down and spending time with Jesus Christ.

 

We do that in prayer; that is the grounding for a deep encounter with the Living God.

 

Likewise Jesus sat down to eat with Zacchaeus: that’s where bells start ringing for us – Jesus meets us in a meal, and that meal is the Sacred Banquet of the Eucharist.

 

And at that meal and from that meal, flows reconciliation.

 

This is reconciliation with God; for Christ is the peace who makes us one with God.

 

This is reconciliation with one another; Zacchaeus makes an act of reparation in paying back what he had once cheated from people.

 

And this is what the encounter of Jesus and Zacchaeus is driving towards: ’Today salvation has come to this house…’

 

Salvation means being saved.

 

Zacchaeus was saved from a self-absorbed, locked in life paying no regard to Go or other people; Zacchaeus was saved from himself.

 

Salvation, though, needs a Saviour.

 

Contrary to all the instincts of contemporary culture salvation - being saved, being healed, being delivered - is not a self-help exercise.

 

The Holy Name, ‘Jesus’, is from the Hebrew name Yeshua (ישוע) and it means: God saves.

 

Salvation, Jesus, has come to Zacchaeus’ house, to your life, my life, Michaela’s life to save and lead us into life in him.

 

And why?

 

The answer is in the Gospel reading today: ‘… because [Zacchaeus] too is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.’

 

Today salvation – Jesus Christ – comes to this house.

Going home justified

 Luke 18.9-14 The tax collector, not the Pharisee, went home justified

 

‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’

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There is an apocryphal story of the Sunday School teacher teaching a class about today’s parable of the Pharisee and tax collector.

The Sunday School teacher retells the story of the ‘two men who went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax-collector’. Of how the Pharisee stood praying by thanking God that he was so good and generous, not like other people, and not like the tax collector who stood a way off, not even looking up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”

The Sunday School teacher concludes: ‘so children, thank God that we’re not harsh and judgemental like other people and just like that Pharisee…’

It’s easy to fall into…

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So, Jesus told this parable ‘to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt’.

I wonder if your initial reaction is like mine? ‘I don’t regard others with contempt’, this must be about someone else!

The first thing then the parable exposes is the typically human round of finger pointing, of noting the flaws and shortcomings of other people and disregarding our own.

Have I never regarded another person with contempt?

Have I never pointed the finger?

Have I never allowed the crowd to determine my views of other people?

Never?

I suspect, human as we are, that each of us have viewed others with some degree of contempt at some time.

Have you never murmured: ‘“God, I thank you that I am not like other people: bankers, estate agents, journalists, or even like…” insert the name of your preferred politician.

But it might equally be our colleague, neighbour, family member who we regard with contempt.

That is not worthy of us as Christians, and something, aided by God’s grace, that we need to conquer.

That project begins in prayer because this is a spiritual condition that needs addressing.

The parable helps us go deeper in pondering what prayer is, and what prayer is not.

Prayer is not about self-justification: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax-collector’.

Prayer is not about seeking acknowledgment for achievements, spiritual or otherwise: ‘I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income’.

Trying to position yourself in God’s sight – even, or especially, through trying to assure God that you’re hugely devout and observant - is doomed to failure, for he searches the depths of the human heart.

Prayer is not an occasion for weighing our own merits and pardoning our own offences.

That is spiritually corrosive.

So let’s flip to the positive, to that which makes us whole and healed, that is about our salvation and justification.

First and foremost prayer is about giving time and attention to God.

It is about setting our relationship with God on a proper footing.

God ‘searches me out and knows me, he knows my sitting down and standing up, he discerns my thoughts from afar’ (Psalm 139).

That’s how Psalm 139 puts it.

There is no hiding place from God, yet, just like Adam and Eve in the Garden, we try to cover ourselves with fig leaves to hide our vulnerability and shame of who we truly are.

We try to deflect God’s gaze by pointing at the shortcomings of others.

So how do we address this human disposition to blame others and present an unreal self?

The parable’s answer is: humility.

Mind you even humility itself can be twisted.

Humility becomes a martyr complex when we habitually seek to put ourselves down as a way to feel “good” about ourselves.

That’s not humility.

That’s not what the tax-collector is doing.

Proper humility is when the fig leaf of smug self-justification, spiritual pride or contempt for others is put aside.

So the words of the tax collector are the words that can, and should, be on our lips.

‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’

Those words bubble up from the heart and shape the movement of the heart.

‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’

That’s not negativity; that is reality; even though it goes against what our contemporary culture tells us.

We fall short, fellow sinners, you and me.

To say ‘I am a sinner’ means that God has somewhere to begin in my life; I acknowledge that I am in need of healing and saving

After all, Christ came to heal the sick; to bring sinners to repentance.

‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’: that is a prayer in itself.

The Eastern Orthodox Christian prayer is known as the Jesus Prayer, ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, have mercy on me a sinner’.

It is known as Prayer of the Heart, and is gently repeated, mantra like.

In so doing we stop gazing on our own image and the mask we wear and we turn our gaze to God.

As the Psalm puts it,

Hearken unto my voice, O Lord, when I cry unto thee : have mercy upon me, and hear me.

My heart hath talked of thee, Seek ye my face : Thy face, Lord, will I seek. (Psalm 27.8,9)

So let us fix our gaze always on Christ.

As you look at a crucifix, seek to gaze on the mystery of the depths of his love.

As you look at a statue of Mary cradling her Son, seek to gaze on the mystery that the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.

At the moment you hear Jesus’ words, ‘This is my body; this is my blood’, seek to gaze on Christ in bread and wine as they are elevated, lifted up for you to behold.

In prayer we turn our gaze to our heavenly Father and away from an introspective gaze at ourselves.

In prayer we don’t exalt ourselves but exalt him in our lives.

In prayer we stand, as sinners, asking his healing, salvation and peace.

‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’

Then we can go home justified.

 

 

The heart of persistence

Genesis 32.22–31 Jacob Wrestles at Peniel

2 Timothy 3.14-4.5 The man who is dedicated to God becomes fully equipped and ready for any good work

Luke 18.1-8 The parable of the unjust judge

 

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Today’s gospel reading features a parable that challenges and stretches and, perhaps, even baffles us.

 

And that’s what parables are there to do.

 

They don’t give ready answers but as we explore them meaning is generated and their point and purpose sinks in.

 

The purpose of this parable, Jesus tells us, is ‘[our] need to pray always and not to lose heart’ (Luke 18.1).

 

The parable takes us to the first century equivalent of the Small Claims Court.

 

It focuses on the persistent woman who stands ringing the doorbell of a judge who just can’t be bothered to deal with what he clearly regards as an insignificant case brought by an insignificant bothersome person: a woman; a widow.

 

Her persistence is rewarded when the judge relents and acts justly

 

It’s usually assumed when this parable is heard that it is us, you and me, who are being likened to the persistent widow.

 

Surely her persistence exemplifies the need to pray always and not lose heart.

 

We readily assume that the unjust judge in the parable is how God is; not really that interested in hearing what we have to say.

 

But what if our assumptions are all wrong?

 

What if we need to flip it around?

 

After all, we humans are the ones who more often deign to sit in judgement on God: why does he allow this; why did he permit that?

 

Some philosophers and many in our culture today even have had the audacity to declare God to be dead.

 

St Paul warned about this in our second reading:

 

³For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, ⁴and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths. (2 Timothy 4.3-4)

 

We are the ones who ‘neither fear God nor have respect for people’ (Luke 18.2).

 

We are the ones more likely to be caught up with our own preoccupations, thinking about what we want first before we ponder the mysteries of God or consider the needs of others.

 

We are the ones who are more likely to deny the claims of justice, if those claims impinge on what we want.

 

Like Jacob, in our first reading, we wrestle with an image of God that we want to control.

 

When we try to shake God off in our lives we will end up limping along, like Jacob.

 

The judge is deaf to the woman’s claims; so often we are deaf to the just claims of God.

 

It is God who is the persistent one.

 

Through history his prophets have proclaimed God’s message of fidelity to the covenant, God’s justice and righteousness, and through history even God’s people wander and stray.

 

He then sent his own Son. Who, as St Paul says:

 

6 …though he was in the form of God,

   did not regard equality with God

   as something to be exploited,

7 but emptied himself,

   taking the form of a slave,

   being born in human likeness.

And being found in human form,

8   he humbled himself

   and became obedient to the point of death—

   even death on a cross. (Philippians 2.6-8)

 

That is persistence: God’s passionate, persistent, pursuit of us.

 

Yet still we fail to embrace him wholeheartedly, still our prayer is not persistent, and we lose heart and faith in him.

 

On reflection, then, fellow sinners, it is more characteristic of we fallen human beings to be the ones who turn a deaf ear to the persistent Lord who loves us and calls us, gently and yet insistently.

 

A saint is one whose life is shaped by prayer, that radical openness to the mysteries of God, knowing that like the unjust judge the human heart can be softened, and when we have a heart of flesh, not a heart of stone, then great things begin to happen.

 

Like Blessed Mary we say ‘yes’ to God, we say ‘be it unto me according to thy word’.

 

Mary heard the call of the Saviour.

 

Listen.

 

Open the ears of your heart.

 

The Lord calls you; knocks at the door of your heart; he calls you go step forward and move deeper into his life, for there you will find life in all its abundance. .

 

An attitude of gratitude

2 Kings 5.14-17 Naaman the leper returned to Elisha and acknowledged the Lord.

2 Timothy 2.8-13 If we hold firm then we shall reign with Christ

Luke 17.11-19 No-one has come back to praise God, only this foreigner

 

 

‘Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?’

 

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Our Gospel reading today holds up to us the nature of gratitude and shines a light on our appreciation of the abundance of God’s mercy and goodness.

 

It takes us well beyond the moral of politeness and courtesy because it relates to healing, holiness and salvation.

 

This is not just Jesus telling us to say thank you for something; this is not Jesus highlighting just how rude some people can be – think of the nine who never said thank you – rather it takes us deeper.

 

What we see in this well-known story of the healing of ten people with leprosy, or some such isolating condition, is the nature of gratitude, its absence in the nine who presumably just carried on, and its presence in the one who returned to give thanks.

 

We can go further, and say that we see both the response an outlook of scarcity, contrasted with an outlook of abundance which is unlocked by gratitude.

 

So, let’s take a look at both, and honestly assess where we fit in the spectrum of scarcity and abundance.

 

Scarcity expects the bare minimum and is grudging in the face of generosity.

 

Scarcity experiences little or no delight when good things happen.

 

Scarcity doesn’t look beyond its own horizons and preferences: its first question is ‘how does this suit me?’ rather than, ‘how does this benefit others?’

 

Scarcity is life shut in on itself, closed down and frankly miserable.

 

An attitude or culture of scarcity is not about being poor or being rich, it is a spiritual condition not an economic one.

 

Too often the attitude of scarcity is a feature of human life (and the life of churches) and it needs resisting, for we become locked into ways that are sterile and frankly dead, rather than generating and life giving.

 

Thankfully the young are good at resisting this attitude.

 

Scarcity is utterly remote from Jesus’ call to life in all its abundance (John 10.10).

 

And St Paul in his first letter to Timothy gives a vision of what transforms scarcity into abundance:

 

[You] are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, thus storing up for [yourselves] the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that [you] may take hold of the life that really is life. (1 Timothy 6.18-19)

 

What transforms our spirit of scarcity is gratitude; gratitude in God ‘who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment’ (1 Timothy 6.17).

 

Gratitude is deep level thankfulness for that which has not been created by us, that which understands there is a Giver and gift that is not something we generate.

 

Gratitude does not expect, but delights in the good, the beautiful and the true.

 

Gratitude is about both counting our blessings and savouring them and attributing them to the Giver of all good things; to God.

 

Gratitude is a spiritual disposition that moves us toward the action of that one healed, saved man, who attributes his salvation to the Saviour, to Jesus Christ.

 

Gratitude moves us towards abundance of life which is life imagined in the glorious Technicolor of God’s kingdom.

 

If your life is locked into a cycle of scarcity, lived in monochrome, then practice gratitude in the little things as well as the big things.

 

Ask yourself:

 

·        What am I grateful for in my life?

·        What things can I savour more?

·        Who have I failed to show gratitude towards and how can I appreciate them more?

 

The word Eucharist derives from the Greek word εὐχαριστία (eucharistia) which means ‘thanksgiving’.

 

So every Eucharist should be an outpouring of gratitude that moves heart, mind and body to the praise of the giver of all good things.

 

Every Eucharist has a harvest character.

 

It gathers in the fruitfulness of our lives that we offer to be received - fruits and gifts that we have been given in the first place – and what flows back to us in the body and blood of Christ is his life and presence.

 

If our lives are lived in scarcity then we will have nothing to bring, nothing to offer.

 

If our lives are transformed by gratitude then we will have an abundance of thanksgiving to offer and to share.

 

And remember this is a spiritual issue not an economic one.

 

Flowing from spiritual abundance - formed by gratitude - will be generous living.

 

It is no accident that Jesus speaks of ten lepers who were healed.

 

A tenth of them, one of the ten, returned to give thanks.

 

That speaks of the Biblical principle of the ‘tithe’ the offering back to God of a tenth of what we have received from him and his creation.

 

The farmer, the gardener, the cultivator knows well that a small seed that is sown will yield far more than they plant, so they ask God to bless and multiply what they have sown and they will be richly rewarded.

 

In gratitude we learn that when we give we receive, and when we give generously, lavishly, abundantly then we receive more than our hearts can desire.

 

Those ten men were healed; one returned.

 

May we in our lives turn our backs on scarcity, open up our imaginations to the ways of God’s kingdom and return to the one from whom all blessings flow: God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

'Sing for joy, O heavens, and exult, O earth' - An Evensong sermon

Sing for joy, O heavens, and exult, O earth;

break forth, O mountains, into singing!

For the LORD has comforted his people

and will have compassion on his afflicted. (Isaiah 49.13)

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Shortly I will admit two new head choristers N and N.

Their role is to be responsible and a good example to fellow choristers in the life of the choir working under our Director of Music's direction contributing to the life of this church, its music and worship.

And we will pray for them in their task.

Our first reading tonight gave us a lovely verse for any musician but frankly any Christian, any believer in God.

It calls on the heavens and the earth - the whole creation – even the mountains to break into song, not just God’s human creatures.

It is a beautiful image the whole created order, the cosmos, breaking into song to praise the Creator.

Song is one of the gifts that God gives us; that’s why singing matters in worship and why choirs and musicians matter in the way we seek to worship the Lord.

And if mountains can sing so can we all!

First and foremost, our song is deployed in praise of God.

The great ‘song’ of Evensong is the Magnificat - Mary’s Song - ‘my soul magnifies the Lord’.

In other words, in my song my soul both enlarges and focuses my sights on God my Saviour.

Song expresses so many things: the psalms themselves reveal this, and they are the other sung building block of Evensong and Judeo-Christian worship.

The psalms are the songs of the Hebrew Bible; psalms are there to be sung, and we sing them in many and various ways, at Evensong we would sing them as tonight by Anglican Chant, or sometimes the ancient Plainsong or sometimes with a congregational response or in metred verse like a hymn.

Psalm 137 asks the question, ‘how shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange and foreign land?’.

Sometimes song does not come easily; the Israelites I their exile in Babylon could barely get out the songs of home, the songs of the Temple in Jerusalem.

But what the Israelites discovered in exile was that the way they would sing their song was in lament.

Lament, praise, thanksgiving, joy, penitence: we sing the Lord’s song in many and various ways.

In our tradition the task of leading this song falls to a choir, but that is not to absolve the rest of us from uniting our voices in praise and adoration of God; we can’t subcontract our worship.

Rather, we use our gifts, and the gifts of others, to create a symphony of praise to the Lord: we even join the mountains and the trees of the field, as Isaiah puts it elsewhere, in praise of the Creator.

The verse from Isaiah that I have alighted on comes in a passage that celebrates the restoration that God gives to his people: in times of trouble and testing, when all seems desolate and oppressive, the Lord restores his people and renews his creation.

Singing the Lord’s song is not to be confused with musical ability.

This week make your life a song – be it lament or celebration, sorrow or joy, pleading or praise – for when you know the restoration of the Lord you will know how to sing the Lord’s song.

And let us give thanks today for all who lead God’s praises in singing, and pray for N and N now to be made Head Choristers of the Boys’ Choir of this Minster Church of St John the Baptist, our patron saint who, echoing the Prophet Isaiah, cried out in the wilderness, ‘prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight, for all flesh shall see the salvation of the Lord’.

Sing for joy, O heavens, and exult, O earth;

break forth, O mountains, into singing!

For the LORD has comforted his people

and will have compassion on his afflicted.

 

St Michael & All Angels

Preached at St Michael and All Angels, West Croydon, 2nd October 2022.

Daniel 7.9-10, 13-14 His robe was white as snow

Apocalypse 12.7-12 Michael with his angels attacked the dragon

John 1.47-51 You will see heaven laid open, and the Son of Man

  

Thanks be to God for your patron saints: for St Michael the Archangel, for St Gabriel, St Raphael and all the heavenly host!

 

What a beautiful dedication and patronage you have in this church: savour it as you worship Christ and glory in his holy angels.

 

It is an honour for me to have been invited by Fr Tim to preach today. And I bring greetings from your neighbours in the Parish of Croydon, those of us at Croydon Minster and St George’s, Waddon.

 

In the presence of the angels I will bless you, O Lord. Psalm 137 (138)

 

 

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When angels are present we know that the Lord is coming close to his people and his people close to him.

 

When the Lord is present we can be sure the angels are present too.

 

The scriptures highlight times when angels are ministering most obviously.

 

When the Word becomes Flesh - ‘for us men and for our salvation’ - it is Gabriel the archangel who announces God’s call to the Blessed Virgin, who responds to the archangel with her Fiat, her ‘be it unto me according to thy word’.

 

God is present: the angel is there.

 

We rehearse that angelic encounter every time we pray the Angelus.

 

In the heat of the spiritual and cosmic battle against the forces of death and sin, Michael the archangel is to be found because the battle and victory is Christ’s: as the voice proclaims from heaven: ‘Victory and power and empire for ever have been won by our God, and all authority for Christ’ (Apoc. 12.10).

 

God is present: the angel is there.

 

When the Lord’s healing balm is offered to people who seek healing and salvation we can be sure Raphael, ‘the healing presence of God’ is there.

 

And of course, there are more than three angels attested to in scripture.

 

The multitude of the heavenly host fills the skies at key moments, such as when they call the shepherds to the manger of Bethlehem: Michael is joined by his angels in the heavenly battle (Luke 2.13; Apoc. 12.7).

 

And just as when Gabriel came to Our Lady in Nazareth, or when an angel came to Zechariah in the temple to announce the birth of John the Baptist, or when an angel came to Joseph in a dream or an angel led Paul our of prison: angels don’t just come in multitudes, but also in directly personal angelic encounters with human beings. (Luke 1.26; Matthew 1.20).

 

Angels are concerned also with the likes of you and me.

 

To speak of our Guardian Angel reminds us that God cares for each of us, individually and personally.

 

Today, 2^nd October, is also the memorial of the Guardian Angels which we wrap into our celebration of all the angels today on this, the Lord’s own day.

 

In your own trials and tribulations or when God wishes you to hear and discern his call to you, your Guardian Angel will be present, indicating that God is present with you.

 

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When angels are present we know that the Lord is coming close to his people and his people close to him.

 

Angels thread heaven and earth together, lest we think the two are remote.

 

Jacob saw that in his vision of angels ascending and descending: how awesome is the place where heaven touches earth.

 

And here in this place – St Michael’s Church - heaven touches earth in the bricks and mortar, but more than that we taste heaven on earth in the banquet in which we share now.

 

In the sacraments in general, and the Mass in particular - when the Lord is with his people and his people drawn close to him - the holy angels are in attendance.

 

Immediately before we sing of the holiness of God in the Sanctus the priest says:

 

Through [Christ] the multitude of Angels extols your majesty,

and we are united with them in exultant adoration,

as with one voice of praise we acclaim: (Preface of the Angels)

Holy. Holy. Holy…

 

The angels spin ethereal threads that weave us into the holiness of God.

 

As the Eucharistic Prayer puts it:

 

In humble prayer Almighty God: commend that these gifts be borne by the hands of your holy Angel to your altar on high in the sight of your divine majesty, so that all of us who through this most holy Body and Blood of your Son, may be filled with every grace and heavenly blessing. (The Roman Canon)

 

The angels are the threads connecting heaven and earth because Christ connect heaven earth, divinity and humanity in his Incarnation.

 

So Jacob saw a ladder reaching into heaven; and heaven reaching down to earth.

 

Jesus says, ‘you will see greater things than these; angels ascending and descending upon the Son of Man’.

 

What does that tell us?

 

It tells us that Christ - ‘the fair glory of the holy angels’ – is the route by which the heavens are opened to us, is the way to the Father, and is the fullness of God.

 

If you ever wonder if you have encountered an angel, test it by this measure: was my heart moved to Christ; was my heart moved to the mysteries of God; was my heart moved to the beatific vision, the vision of heaven touching earth, when God is all and in all?

 

If that is where your heart was moved then be sure the Lord was present and his angel was there.

 

And what a blessing that is.

 

May the angels prompt us to proclaim:

 

In the presence of the angels I will bless you, O Lord. Psalm 137 (138)