'Can one be a saint without God?'

Preached as a sermon at Croydon Minster on All Saints' Sunday, 2019

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What’s it all about?

            Life?

                        Death?

                                    Meaning?

                                                Purpose?

            Big questions.

The French writer, Albert Camus,

            in his novel La Peste -

                        which was written in 1947 in the aftermath of the Second World War -

asked a big question:

            “Peut-on être un saint sans dieu?”

Great question! (What does it mean?!)

In English it is this:

            "Can one be a saint without God?”

That’s Camus’ question,

            and he goes on to say,

                        “That's the problem, in fact the only problem, I'm up against today."

I guess that for many people

outside, and within the Church,

asking if one can be a saint without God

            is not the most pressing problem they up against.

Other things probably feature somewhat more highly.

But on this All Saints’ Sunday it is an important question.

            Can one be a saint without God?

In other words:

            do you need to believe in God,

                        does there even need to be a God,

                                    for you, or me, to be a saint

            or ‘to do to others as you could have them do to you’?

And that brings us back to what a saint is.

If a saint

            is simply

                        a virtuous or a heroic person,

                        a great role model or an all-round ‘good egg’

            then, frankly,

                        God need not come into it.

And for many people today that is enough.

            I can live my life by a set of ethical norms,

                        even if they’re shifting norms,

                                    which ultimately say that

            if I am a good person, then that’s sufficient.

Or I can just look after Number One

            because there really isn’t anything much beyond me anyway.

For Albert Camus those answers were not enough.

            Can one be a saint without God?

I am not claiming Camus as a Christian, but

            that question posed a problem for him,

            because it got to the heart

                        of what human existence,

                        meaning

                        and purpose

            is all about.

Does it come down to God or not?

Of course,

it does.

The saint

            is one who lives no longer for themselves but for God;

the saint

            is one who so rejoices in

                        and acknowledges

            the gift of life in Christ

            that death cannot conquer them;

            the saint is one so shaped and led by the Holy Spirit

                        that all their points of reference

            take them back to the Father.

The Roman Catholic Church has a very well established process for declaring

            someone to be a saint.

It’s known as Canonisation.

It is when the Church declares that,

            having examined the virtues of a particular man or woman,

they are worthy to be a model for faith;

            that their prayers for us make a real difference in our lives;

                        and that their life is a mirror of the life of Christ.

That last point is the most decisive

            because the saint mirrors the life of Christ,

                        and they do so with a texture

                        and flavour

            that only they can bring to it.

Thanks be to God for those saints, to whom we can put a name,

            and in some cases a face too.

As Anglicans the nearest that we can claim as a ‘saint making process’

            is when someone is baptised.

                        That’s using the word ‘saint’ in a different way.

                        The Church is filled with the saints,

                                    with a small ‘s’,

                        who are being formed as Saints

                                    with a capital ‘S’.

Baptism incorporates us,

            grafts us,

                        into the life of Jesus Christ.

It’s the ultimate declaration that you can only be a saint with God.

            Life,

                        death,

                                    meaning,

                                                purpose:

            they only make sense

                        when we know ourselves to be creatures of God

                                    who are brought into a relationship with him

                        as his sons and daughters.

Made in the image and likeness of God

            as his creatures;

restored in the image and likeness of God

            as his children:

                        his saints

The life of a saint is a sign

            that contradicts

                        the standards, mores and ethos

            of a self-sufficient way of life.

Not all saints were nice;

            some were rude;

                        many would be misfits in contemporary society

but all share the deepest sense that they are utterly dependent

            on God,

                        the source of all being and life,

                        the One for whom we exist.

If you want to be a saint, you’re not going to do it without God.

You cannot make yourself a saint;

            you can only yearn and desire to be a saint.

And that is the deepest yearning

            of the Christian:

mirroring Christ;

            hungering for Christ;

                        being Christ

in, and for, a world that thinks it can do it all by itself.

This life –

            the life of the saint –

is shaped and fashioned by the Holy Spirit

            who binds us together and brings to the Father.

One can never be a saint in isolation,

            and the testing bed of the saint is lived out in service

                        to the poor,

                                    the needs of others

                        and a life shaped in honouring the giftedness of all creation.

It is a life that draws from beatitude –

God’s blessing –

and returns everything in beatitude.

The Eucharist continues that work of forming saints

            as we hear his Word

                        and receive his presence

            into our bodies

            in the intensity and breadth of the sacrament of his Body and Blood,

                        as we unite with the saints of all the ages,

            with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven to proclaim:

            sanctus,

            sanctus,

            sanctus:

holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of Hosts,

heaven and earth are full

            of thy glory.

Glory be to Thee, O Lord most high.

'So simple; so deep' a sermon

First preached as a sermon at Croydon Minster on the 17th Sunday after Trinity. The readings were 2 Kings 5.1-3,7-15c (the healing of Naaman) and Luke 17.11-19 (the healing of the ten lepers)

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It’s all so simple and yet so deep.

Receiving the healing love of God is simple: God’s unconditional capacity to heal, when it is sought, is simply there.

Receiving the healing love of God is also deep: God’s healing brings us close to God’s overwhelming grace, mercy and love; it is a deep healing.

Receiving the healing love of God is the Holy Spirit’s gift - given in the name of Jesus - pouring out the creative, healing of our loving heavenly Father.

That simplicity and that depth, heals, anoints and soothes the deepest and darkest parts of our nature so that we are freed and released to be the people God made us to be in God’s image and likeness; the deep identity we find in Christ.

This story of the ten lepers is simple and deep, as is the account of the healing of Naaman. Healing for Naaman is as simple as going to that particular river right here, and not a grand river faraway: just a simple Israelite river with no magical properties; a river that is deep and healing.

The gospel story of the ten lepers sounds like a bit of a morality tale to encourage us (or make us feel guilty) to say ‘thank you’. And indeed saying ‘thank you’ and showing gratitude is really important in human society; it soothes and eases relationships and creates a culture of gratitude. And when one person starts saying ‘thank you’ the other nine are more likely to as well.

That’s the simple lesson of this encounter with Jesus: say thank you, make that a habit in your life.

But also the gospel the story of the ten lepers is a meditation on deep healing, glorifying God and finding the place of true worship.

Let’s look at each of those three features.

Deep healing. Deep healing touches every part of us, throughout our bodies and minds to the end of each tiny nerve. What does that mean? When we pray for healing for ourselves or others what are we praying for?

Deep healing is the healing of body, mind and spirit; not just of the outer person, but in their depths, at their very core. Indeed some of the most ‘healed’ people can be those who bodies or minds are wracked with pain.

And that is hard to say, because we don’t want to live with pain or discomfort. It is the mystery of the words that say of the Crucified Lord, ‘by his wounds you have been healed’ (1 Peter 2.24). The healed leper prostrated himself, literally laid down his own body before Jesus: what a joyful posture of gratitude that is in response to deep healing.

Glorifying God. The joyful posture of gratitude that the healed man showed was his glorification of God in Jesus Christ: praise of God and the response of gratitude were intertwined and inseparable as water mixed with wine, as Christ’s humanity and divinity.

The pagan Naaman and the Samaritan leper both praised God, Naaman declaring, ‘Now I know that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel’ (2 Kings 5.15b). That God is the God and Father or our Lord Jesus Christ.

Finding the place of true worship. The young girl in the story of Naaman directed this great military commander to the prophet of God in the backwater of Israel and there he found the God of all Creation.

In Jesus’ day lepers lived in quarantine at a distance from society, ritually unclean, unholy, outcasts from the people of God. This group of ten were all sent back to the Temple, to the priests to signify that they were no longer excluded from worship. The man who was healed had been excluded on two grounds – he was a leper and a Samaritan. And on being healed he turned around: this is where God’s presence is to be found: found in Jesus Christ the true Priest; the true Temple of God; the Great Physician. Jesus told all ten to go to and show themselves to the priests and effectively only one did!

So we see the simplicity of the healing and depth of what it means. We see that healing, glorifying God and gratitude go hand in hand: that’s why there is close proximity between healing and holiness. The truly holy person, the saint, knows themselves still to be human and still flawed and also to be healed.

All this prompts us to consider our grateful response to the love of God. Like Naaman we have been bathed in simple yet deep waters; the waters of baptism. We are in receipt of the healing and deliverance of God. Do we adopt a posture of gratitude? Do we offer back tokens of gratitude through the church in our giving of time, giving of our talents, giving of money?

A tenth of the group turned back to give thanks. It is the Biblical principle of the tithe; the offering of a tenth of who we are and what we have back to God who gave the gift of life in the first place.

To paraphrase the prayer of David at the consecration of the Temple (1 Chronicles 29.10-14): all things come from you, O Lord, and we’re simply offering back what you have given us: our sacrifice in response to your sacrifice; our healing in response to your holiness; our love in response to your love. Amen.

Good stewards of a Common Home

First preached as a sermon at Croydon Minster reflecting on the 'Dishonest Steward' on the Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity as we continue to focus in prayer and reflection on the Creation and Care of our Common Home. The readings were Amos 8.4-7; Luke 16.1-13

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In a world of ethically murky financial dealings - of tax avoidance and tax evasion on colossal scales by individuals and corporations; of pay day loans that escalate debt at eye watering rates; of the exploitative business model of the gig economy – in that world, the parable that we have heard this morning holds a mirror up to the ways in which money is used, is moved and is acquired.

Money is a delicate subject. It’s particularly delicate in church. And yet Jesus frequently speaks about money. The Bible as a whole - our reading from the Prophet Amos being a case in point - speaks more of money justice and distribution of wealth than it does about other matters that often preoccupy religiously minded people.

The parable touches on the way in which human beings relate to money. For a start the rich man has someone else dealing with his money. So he is detached from the consequences of what his money is doing for good or ill.

The problem with wealth is not the wealth itself, there will always be disparity in income and accumulated wealth, what is a problem is when the rich subcontract the management of the wealth to others. They lose the connection with what wealth and money is and how it can be used.

As the parable shows the behaviour of the rich man opens up the possibility of a careless approach to money by his manager. And his manager, or better translated ‘steward’ has done just that. He has been squandering the rich man’s money and property.

Once found out, the steward feels shame. Money seems hardwired to our shame reflex. Is that why we squirm when money is talked about? And closely associated to shame and money is embarrassment and guilt: I am generous enough? Can I afford this? Should I pay for that? Am I wasting my money?

In the parable the steward addressed his sense of shame, and potential to be ostracised, by turning to what one commentator has called ‘ethically murky’ practices. He settles debts quickly by knocking off some of the debt.

But it’s not his money to do that with. And don’t we see that in the way in which financial systems and economies work? Other peoples’ money: in pension funds, do we know what’s going on with our money ethically, or not? And so often it is the poor who suffer. The words of the prophet Amos don’t need a huge amount of updating; human nature is absolutely recognisable in sharp practices of short selling and getting a fast buck.

So it’s little wonder perhaps that the master, the rich man, commended the dishonest manager: because he had a casual relationship with his money he wasn’t bothered by justice and probity.

So where does all that leave us? Well, read on. Read on because Jesus gives practical wisdom and sets a higher vision and standard which he links to faithfulness in financial matters to service of God. You have to engage with the world of money: don’t be so heavenly minded that you’re of no earthly use! In a murky world be faithful, in small things so that the true treasures, the riches of heaven will be yours.

In his Encyclical Letter to all Christians, called Laudato Si’, Pope Francis speaks about our Common Home. He makes the point that we human beings inhabit a Common Home with all God’s creatures. The Greek word for ‘Common Home’ is oikomene. From the word oikomene we also get the English word economy. Pope Francis recognises in Laudatio Si’ that the environmental crisis of our times cannot be separated from economics.

The economy is not just about money, it’s much wider than that. A Christian vision of economics is more than money: it is about the good running of our Common Home, the oikomene; about being good stewards of the earth, of human society, of our household budgets and our church budgets. The steward in the parable – in Greek oikonomos - failed at that. He was not a good steward, and in that way he mirrors the poor human stewardship of the earth. And faced with his own crisis he used unjust means to get out of it, not unlike the way the rich trade carbon emissions without reducing it from their private jets.

We are stewards of the earth not possessors of it; we are stewards of wealth and money not possessors of it, and when we think we possess money without realising it possesses us, then are then we are serving wealth not God.

That’s where this parable takes us. So what we seek is not mammon but the Kingdom of God, and as Jesus promises, if we seek the Kingdom of God first then everything else we need will be given to us. And faithfulness in the little things will replicate in faithfulness in the big things. In other words small acts of generosity make a big transformative impact; small acts of caring for the creation – like fostering habitats or cutting energy usage - make a big impact when added together.

This is why we should be talking about money, the economy and the Common Good in church and not be bashful about it. What we do with our money tells us about what we value: ‘where your treasure is, there will your heart be also’ (Luke 12.34). That’s why praying about and pondering our giving to the church is important and should be talked about – and will be in the coming weeks – as a response to God’s generosity. That’s why we should encourage our children in church to think about and plan their giving.

As stewards of the riches of creation - the teaming seas and the fruitful land - may we be faithful in our enjoyment of them not exploiting but tending, and may our use of money be to the glory of God as we spend, invest and plan. Amen.

Rejoice with me: what was lost is now found!

First preached as a sermon at Croydon Minster 13th Sunday after Trinity Luke 15.1-10

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This morning’s gospel reading gives us two of the best known parables in the Gospels. It’s little wonder St Luke is traditionally thought to have been an artist, because he paints very vivid images in words. You can picture that woman - probably poor – to whom one coin really matters. There she is, in her little house, searching high and low, pulling the furniture out, getting a torch to look for the coin in dark corners. And Luke’s description has been drawn upon in Christian art associating the shepherd who has found the sheep with Christ, the Lamb of God, bearing the lost sheep on his shoulders.

These parables come from the fifteenth chapter of St Luke’s gospel which contains three parables in all: the lost sheep, the lost coin and the lost son, often known as the parable of the ‘Prodigal Son’. They focus on loss or estrangement, on being lost and, crucially, on being found. Because of that they continue to speak to us today, speaking into our human predicament.

On an individual level these parables speak to a sense of isolation and loss that many people experience in life. Young and old feel cut off. Lost: searching, not for a coin or a sheep, but for meaning and purpose. Often that search is internalised. So rather than looking out of ourselves we look in. Archbishop Rowan Williams often described spiritual death and dying as ‘life shut in on itself’: literally introspective.

We are turning inwards as individuals and a society. We are told that we have the resources to save ourselves. But that’s akin to the woman searching for the lost coin in her purse and looking nowhere else for it; or the shepherd looking for the lost sheep in a barn and not going out to find it. These parables remind us that the search for meaning and purpose is to be found beyond ourselves in God.

Writing in the twelfth century, so this is not new(!), St Bernard of Clairvaux, said,

The whole of the spiritual life turns on these two things: we are troubled when we contemplate ourselves and our sorrow brings salvation; when we contemplate God we are restored, so that we receive consolation from the joy of the Holy Spirit. From contemplation of ourselves we gain fear and humility; but from the contemplation of God, hope and love.

This theme of longing and desire located in God is at the heart of the spiritual teaching of St Augustine of Hippo too. We desire, we search, but we so often search in places where we will never find: in self, in other peoples’ bodies, or in the trappings of ambition and worldly success. Augustine knew that in his own life: ‘O God’, he writes, ‘you made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you’. God is the beginning and end of our search.

On a societal and global level these parables speak to our disorientation as something that is precious seems to have been lost. Each generation in time ends up feeling something precious has been lost. The message of the prophets throughout the millennia is that we should not nostalgically lament what we thing has been lost but that as a society together we need to look to God, paralleling the personal search, and saying that we must look outwards and upwards for salvation and not get sucked into ourselves.

In a time of reflecting of Care of our Common Home and the giftedness of Creation we might also ponder what we lose as a human family as we inhabit this world with the whole creation: I have in mind lost species, that it seems may never be found again. Loss is real. Nevertheless the pain of knowing something can never be found highlights the joy of finding something assumed to be lost. And we get glimpses of this. Only in this last week I have heard about the huge rise in the Painted Lady butterfly this year, so many more have been found and counted, and the genetic possibility of reintroducing a species of White Rhino.

So in these parables something or someone is lost and something or someone is found.

These are parables of redemption. ‘Redemption’ is one of those words that has fallen out of the day to day language of the church. Quite why this is, I don’t know.

Perhaps it is because we are becoming so terrified of being lost, that we cannot contemplate being found. Our society so often tells us: ‘if you want it you can have it’ or ‘just believe in yourself’. It sounds liberating but in the end it’s saying ‘sort yourself out, and there’s no help beyond you’. That in itself cuts people off – loss and estrangement again - and places a huge burden upon individuals to save themselves.

So what of redemption? Exploring the origins of words often gives us insights into their full meaning and richness. The word redemption originates for the Latin word redimere which means to ‘buy back’. The word’s deeper theological meaning is about deliverance and bringing back from sin. And that may be why we don’t hear the word ‘redemption’ too much now: it sounds as if the church is dwelling on sin. Sin abounds – don’t we know it? But where there’s sin, there’s redemption; where there’s sin, there’s grace!

Redemption needs reclaiming. We need to be proud to be redeemed sinners: found, brought back. The wonderful theologian Gregory of Nyssa reminds us of the healing redemption of Christ, the Good Shepherd:

When the shepherd had found the sheep, he did not punish it, nor did he get it back to the flock by driving it, but rather by placing it upon his shoulder and carrying it gently he united it to his flock.

Each parable ends with the deepest of joy on the coin, sheep and son being found again. Redemption is not punishment; redemption is not blame: redemption releases joy; redemption releases grace.

In each parable the climax is not self-satisfaction or self-congratulation, but rather the redemptive moment - the finding of the sheep, the finding of the coin - is met with absolute delight and gratitude and the impulse to share that rejoicing with others.

The woman, the shepherd, the father, ‘call together’ neighbours and friends for a celebration. This is what our worship is. When we arrive at church we are not simply gathering together as random individuals, but we are, in the Greek of the gospel synkaleo’, ‘called together’ and we become a congregation, which literally means ‘a flock joined together’.

As people who wander, err and stray, but now are found and redeemed - declared worthy to be sons and daughters of the Most High through baptism - let us rejoice that we have been found and are now coming together as the Lord’s flock. Let us enjoy the foretaste of the heavenly banquet in bread and wine, the supper of redemption; a pledge of the fullness of life and hope.

Magnifying the Lord: A New Creation in Christ

A sermon preached at Croydon Minster on Sunday 8^th September as we honoured the Blessed Virgin Mary during this time of prayer for the creation, our Common Home.

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We honour the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of the Lord, the woman who proclaims the Magnificat, and inspires us to do the same: as we honour Mary today may our souls magnify and praise the Lord too!

Mary is the most wonderful example of a human being saying ‘yes’ to God’s purposes, of loving fidelity to Christ, of bringing Christ to birth in the world and of deep, attentive pondering and prayer.

Acknowledging Mary’s place in the life and devotion of the Church more clearly focuses us on Christ.

Mary the dawn, Christ the Perfect Day;

Mary the gate, Christ the Heavenly Way!

Mary the root, Christ the Mystic Vine;

Mary the grape, Christ the Sacred Wine!

Mary the wheat, Christ the Living Bread;

Mary the rose tree, Christ the Rose blood-red!

Mary the font, Christ the Cleansing Flood;

Mary the cup, Christ the Saving Blood!

Mary the temple, Christ the temple’s Lord;

Mary the shrine, Christ the God adored!

Mary the beacon, Christ the Haven’s Rest;

Mary the mirror, Christ the Vision Blest!

Mary the mother, Christ the mother’s Son

By all things blest while endless ages run. Amen.

This woman’s faith-filled ‘yes’ opens the door to God’s grace in her life, and ours, and enables us to say in the Creed, ‘for us and for salvation he came down from heaven, was incarnate by the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and was made man’.

Jesus Christ, present at the creation of the cosmos, becomes born of one of God’s creatures so that we might be raised up to share in the divine life of the Creator.

Jesus Christ connects us to the Creator, to Mary and the creation.

Pope Francis writing on the World Day of Care for Creation last week said:

“And God saw that it was good” (Gen 1:25). God’s gaze, at the beginning of the Bible, rests lovingly on his creation. From habitable land to life-giving waters, from fruit-bearing trees to animals that share our common home, everything is dear in the eyes of God, who offers creation to men and women as a precious gift to be preserved.

Tragically, the human response to this gift has been marked by sin, selfishness and a greedy desire to possess and exploit. Egoism and self-interest have turned creation, a place of encounter and sharing, into an arena of competition and conflict.[1]

The goodness of the creation and our response to it is at the heart of the contrast between Mary and Eve, Adam and Christ (the New Adam, as St Paul calls him).

This is not a misogynistic or gendered approach, claiming that a woman caused the fall - there is a man equally complicit in it – but an image of human response, male and female.

Eve’s name literally means, ‘Mother of all the Living’ (Genesis 3.20): we are, as C.S.Lewis put it, ‘children of Eve’, creatures made in the image and likeness of God. God’s gaze rested lovingly on Eve and Adam, and still does on us. And we have also chosen not simply to mar the image of God within us but to mar the creation too.

That is where Mary’s ‘yes’ to God and our identification with Jesus Christ says that we want to be renewed in God’s image and to restore, preserve and know the creation and environment as ‘a place of encounter and sharing, not competition and conflict’.

This is where we can turn to the reading this morning from the Revelation to John the Divine.

The Book of Revelation describes or, to put it better, reveals, the turbulence that precedes the inauguration of the coming Kingdom of God, what is known as the End Times, or eschaton, from which we get the word eschatology.

It is full of confusing images and signs: beasts; monsters with countless eyes; slaughtered Lambs; the birth pangs of a woman clothed with the sun appearing in the heavens. It conjures up images that resonate with our times: fires in the Amazon; melting ice flooding low lying countries; of plague, blight and famine caused by a human disrupted climate. It speaks of the creation in turmoil and disruption.

Revelation is not meant to be a comfortable read. Born out of the close reality of martyrdom, and intensity of prayer, it vividly and mystically portrays the dramatic choices to be made: to be children of light or darkness; those who are ready either to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to God. It speaks of the image of God erased from the face of human beings by guilt, shame and sin.

How depressingly recognisable; how depressingly real! Where is hope, life, good news in all of that?

Well, in Christian theology Creation is not a one off, past event. In Genesis God rested on the seventh day in order to continue his creative and passionate love for all that he saw, which was ‘very good’.

That’s why our Christian ancestors spoke of the eighth day of creation, when all is made new in Christ. As the opening of St John’s gospel asserts:

[Christ, the Word] was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and that life was the light of all people’ (John 1.3-4)

God’s creative action of restoration continues. St Paul puts it like this, ‘if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!’ (2 Corinthians 5.17)

At the heart of the Revelation to John is a vision of the New Jerusalem, which is an image of the New Creation that Christ comes to bring, that we anticipate in our worship and yearn for as we pray, ‘thy kingdom come’.

Revelation mirrors the birthing of the Creation. The New Creation is the first creation transformed, renewed, fulfilled.

Humanity’s ‘no’ to God is transformed by Mary’s ‘yes’ to life in Christ, God-with-us.

To be a new creation, to live in a New Creation, first demands a ‘yes’ - a declaration of intent - and then action with life, priorities and habits re-directed towards God, the creation and our neighbour.

As we pray for and act in the creation that is increasingly damaged and disrupted by human activity and sin, let us pray that we will embrace Mary’s ‘yes’ to God, allowing ourselves to see God’s image not erased from our lives but renewed, so that like the woman clothed in the sun we may bring Christ to birth in the world today.

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[1] http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/messages/pont-messages/2019/documents/papa-francesco_20190901_messaggio-giornata-cura-creato.html