People Look East: An Advent Sermon

 Preached at Croydon Minster on Advent Sunday, 28 November 2021. Readings: Jeremiah 33.14-16; 1 Thessalonians 3.9-end; Luke 21.25-36

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Today, Advent Sunday, begins a new church year.

The cycle of the mystery of our redemption unfolds before us

again.

This beginning puts us in touch

with the creation of the world

and our place within it

as those

named, known and loved

by the creator and maker of all things.

 For Advent Christians,

time is not an endless loop;

what the atheist philosopher Nietzsche called the “eternal return of the same.”

 At the other extreme

the Bible does not envisage a naïve, relentless, linear progression

where everything turns out just fine

with the passing of time and ticking of the clock.

For Advent Christians time is a process of sanctification,

an upward spiral if you like.

Eternal mysteries are re-presented and we grow and flourish.

Life, like good music, takes us on such a journey, even repeating themes, the leitmotif,

are different in a new context

and our spirits are raised.

Our lives move to a definitive purpose;

that’s what we call the Christian Hope

 

Advent takes us to the very end of things –

death, judgement, heaven and hell –

and to the renewed creation

such as is described in the Revelation to John:

a new heaven and a new earth,

where all gather around in worship of the Lamb of God,

at the heart of the heavenly city.

 

This time in between, in which we find ourselves, which is but the fraction of a blink in God’s eye,

is what we are left to navigate.

It is a precious moment in which we live.

It is the only moment we have.

 

So this is where Jesus’ description of the days that will come

before the coming of the Son of Man

are pretty bewildering and disorientating.

 

Signs in the heavens.

Distress.

Confusion.

Fainting from fear and foreboding.

It could almost be a description of our own days.

 

It’s funny though, because that is what every age has concluded.

Every age has seen itself, in some way, as being in the End Times –

be it through plague,

adverse weather,

a significant date in the calendar like the Millennium,

or the apparently dissolute youth.

 

So how do we read today’s gospel?

 

We read it knowing

that Advent is the anticipation of the hope that is coming.

That is Good News;

that is Gospel, the Evangelion.

 

The dramatic description of the sun and the moon and stars,

of raging waters

and then the sprouting of the leaves of the trees,

takes us back to the description in Genesis of the Creation,

when God,

with the Word eternally present,

ordered the heavenly bodies,

stilled the waters of chaos

and caused plants and trees to sprout on the earth.

 

The birth pangs ‘in the Beginning…’ echo

the birth pangs of the New Creation.

 

This is not about time

as we know it.

It is a call to be

alert, vigilant, expectant, hopeful.

 

This is a call to centre ourselves,

orientate ourselves,

anchor ourselves

in Christ, the Word of God who endures through trial and tribulation.

Orientating ourselves in Christ happens

when we are alert at all times,

when we pray for strength not to get entangled

in all these things that are taking place,

when we set our sights beyond ourselves. 

In the Liturgy our focus is not one another, or even the ‘community’ we have together,

it is always beyond ourselves.

 The way we share the Peace emphasises that.

Positioning the Sign of Peace

at the heart of the communion

tells us that ‘the peace of God which passes all understanding’

is not generated from within a community, however good spirited,

but is a gift from Christ, who is our peace

a gift from beyond ourselves which we receive and share.

 

               Likewise, Christian  since early times celebrated the liturgy facing East,

the direction of the rising sun – s-u-n –

to see beyond ourselves

to see the coming Son -s-o-n – of Man, Jesus Christ

As an ancient Advent cry goes up: ‘People Look East!’

 

At the eye of the hurricane is a peaceful, still centre.

For Advent People, the still centre is Christ;

Christ whom we receive in the Eucharist.

 

               Fix your eyes beyond yourselves,

beyond any priest

to the Body of Christ broken for you.

                              ‘People Look East.’

 

The ancient Carthusian monastic order has the Latin motto:

‘Stat crux dum volvitur orbis’,

meaning: ‘The Cross is steady while the world turns.’

 

At the East end of the church above the High Altar; there is Christ on the Cross

for us to behold.

 

This Advent,

in a spinning, disorientating world, where time both flies and drags,

let us fix our eyes afresh on Christ.

 

Let us centre ourselves on Christ to discern

the ‘still small voice’ of the tranquillity of the Divine Presence.

 

People Look East!

Give us this day... A Harvest Sermon

 

Preached as a sermon at Croydon Minster on 3 October, Harvest Festival. Gospel reading Matthew 6.25-33

‘Give us this day our daily bread’

 

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This is one of those phrases that we say in the Lord’s Prayer, but perhaps don’t pause on it and ponder very often.

 

To pray ‘give us this day our daily bread’ is to pray some very powerful and deep words.

 

It is about grace. Grace is the way in which God gives of God’s own self to us, gratuitously, freely, without charge. Amazing!

 

‘Give us this day our daily bread’ is about savouring what we have and extracting every ounce of goodness from life.

 

‘Give us this day our daily bread’ is about looking forward, to the future, in an utterly non-anxious way.

 

Grace. Savouring. Non-anxious anticipation. These three things that flow out of the Lord’s Prayer all speak into the harvest thanksgiving we make today and to the way we navigate the cares and concerns of the world at the moment.

 

Ponder our gospel reading, where Jesus tells us not to be anxious but to focus on the gifts of God in creation. The petition, the request, ‘give us this day our daily bread’ encapsulates and distils that message.

 

That reading speaks of gifts freely given in creation, of savouring the moment we are in and a non-anxious anticipation of what is to come.

 

Yes, we might say, but that’s hard when people are, quite reasonably, feeling worried: where will my next tank of fuel come from? Will I eat or heat this autumn and winter? What will come of the ecological disaster that is unfolding in front of our eyes? And more besides.

 

So the Gospel of Jesus Christ responds:

 

From first principles. Everything in the world is fundamentally a gift, freely given. Life is not cheap, but it is free at source. I didn’t do anything to earn being alive; and nor did you. There is nothing anyone has ever done that could have brought the creation, with its abundance, richness and diversity into existence.

 

A gift is not an entitlement.

 

So we savour what we have. Last week the Church celebrated St Therese of Lisieux. Therese invites us to see God in the little details of life. Considering lilies in the field or birds in the air, the beauty of the little things is profoundly of the Gospel.

 

The Gospel moves us to notice beauty, and when we notice beauty then we can savour it. It may be the tiniest pleasure like a beautiful little flower, a robin redbreast: savour it. When you can savour those things then you can savour yourself more, and as you savour yourself anxiety loses its grip.

 

And what of non-anxious anticipation? That is the application of knowing life and all that you have to be a gift of God. That is the awareness of the little things of beauty and beginning to savour them day by day.

 

To be sure, being non-anxious when there is so much to be anxious about is hard: paralysing anxiety is not easily cast out. When anxiety and fear take hold of us they have a physiological impact that drags us down physically as well as mentally, and indeed spiritually. Savouring God’s moment means we act now, rather than wait for the future to come.

 

What the gospel invites us to is to begin to place our anxieties and cares into the loving heart of God. Our fears, anxieties and worries then are not solely about ourselves.

 

‘Give us this day our daily bread’ is a petition that is encapsulated in Jesus being the Bread of Life: it references the manna God gave to the Israelites in the wilderness, when they had just sufficient for each day; it takes us to the lavish Feeding of the Five Thousand in the Gospels, to the intensity of the Last Supper and the glory of the Banquet of Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread takes us into the mystery of the Eucharist.

 

It asks that our material, bodily needs are met, so that we do not go hungry in body, or in soul. That is echoed in our Harvest Thanksgiving too. And as Jesus says in response to Satan, ‘we do not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God’.

 

‘Give us this day our daily bread’ is a prayer that keeps us in the here and now, in the present moment. Daily bread is about the present, not about yesterday’s stale bread, or tomorrow’s not yet baked bread, but what we have to face here and now.

 

So this Harvest Thanksgiving let us give thanks for grace, for all good gifts around us; let us savour what we have and be alert to its beauty; let us be non-anxious as we anticipate more than just tomorrow, but the coming kingdom of God, where ‘sorrow and pain are no more, neither sighing, but life everlasting’.

Worth the salt?

 Preached as a sermon at Croydon Minster on Sunday 26 September 2021. Readings: Numbers 11.4-6, 10-16,24-29; James 13-end; Mark 9.38-end.

Jesus said: ‘For everyone will be salted with fire.

Salt is good; but if salt has lost saltiness, how can you season it?

Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.’ (Mark 9.49.50)

 

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Fr David, the new priest at St George’s, Waddon, loves food.

 

‘Don’t’ we all’, you might say. Yes, but Fr David takes this love of food to levels you can only dream of. He is passionate about where food is sourced from, how food, meat in particular, is prepared, how it’s transported, how it is preserved and how it is cooked.

 

Food is a massively significant part of our lives. At the moment we are rightly very concerned about food prices, which will almost inevitably affect the poorest people most. In society the quality of diets and food is a major ongoing concern.

 

Last week I learnt more than I might ever have imagined about salt, as Fr David and I were discussing this Sunday’s gospel reading. I have been reading the entry on salt in his copy of an amazing book called ‘McGee on Food and Cooking: An Encyclopaedia of Kitchen Science, History and Culture’.

 

Salt is often taken for granted and has a bit of a bad press. High salt in ready meals is bad, and too much salt in the diet leads to high blood pressure. Salt is good for us, but the salt in manufactured foods gives the average person 10 times more salt than they need. Too little salt can increase cholesterol.

 

McGee tells us about salt production, granulated table salt, iodized salt, flake salt, kosher salt, unrefined sea salt, fleur de sel ( a most delicate salt!) flavoured salts and coloured salts.

 

It's when we get to McGee on ‘The Virtues of Salt’ (p.640) that we start to get an insight into Jesus’ mysterious words, ‘For everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good; but if salt has lost saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.’

 

 

Salt is like no other substance we eat and ingest. Sodium chloride, salt, comes from the oceans, and ultimately from the rocks that erode into them. It is an essential nutrient which our bodies cannot do without. Traces of salt from the soil appear in vegetables to make it way into our diet.

 

Salt is the only natural source of one of our handful of basic tastes, which is why we add salt to many foods to fill out their flavour. Salt both enhances and modifies flavours. It also suppresses bitterness in foods.

 

We even keep it, in pure form, on a table to add to our food  for individual flavouring.

 

Salt is amazing enough, but there’s more! Salt discourages the growth of destructive bacteria while allowing harmless, and flavour producing bacteria to grow, for example in meat. That is how it preserves and improves flavours at the same time.

 

Salt can even de-ice roads to make the way clear and navigable.

 

‘For everyone will be salted with fire.

Salt is good; but if salt has lost saltiness, how can you season it?

Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.’

 

These ‘virtues of salt’ help us understand how to be ‘salty Christians’.

 

Salt comes from the rock. To be a ‘salty Christian’ is to be connected to the bedrock of salvation. As the LORD says in the prophet Isaiah:

 

‘Listen to me, you that pursue righteousness,

   you that seek the Lord.

Look to the rock from which you were hewn,

   and to the quarry from which you were dug.(Isaiah 51.1)

 

Salt meets one of the four basic human tastes, along with sweet, sour and bitter.[1] A basic human desire is for God and to ‘taste and see that the LORD is gracious’.

 

Being ‘salty Christians’ means that we enhance the flavours of God’s world and people, in how we speak and act.

 

That’s what Moses and Jesus are doing when they recognise works of healing and prophecy and do not stop them, even if not done by a disciple. Do not stop someone casting out demons in Jesus’ name for ‘no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterwards to speak evil of me’ (Mark 9.39).

 

Enhancing and flavouring human experience and existence is what ‘salty Christians’ do. We see it in the letter of James today. ‘Salty Christians’ pray for the sick, call the elders of the church to pray for them and anoint them (James 5.13). That saltiness restores them to wholeness.

 

Just as salt de-ices roads and pathways, so ‘salty Christians’ are called to melt wicked hearts and remove stumbling blocks, trip hazards and slippery ways that obstruct access to Christ for the little people of the world: children; the frail; the vulnerable.

 

Those who cause stumbling blocks and abuse children will find themselves in a place, of endless salt, a salt mine, sterile and barren like, like the extreme saltiness of the Dead Sea.

 

Salt suppresses bitterness. Being ‘salty Christians’ means we weep for the pains of the world. And what do we notice about tears? Yes, they’re salty. Little wonder the great saints have talked about the gift of tears, in other words the insight to see and be compassionate for those in bitter pains and then be moved by the Holy Spirit of God.

 

And like salt, there is much ‘salty Christians’ must preserve. The Tradition is not preservation in aspic; it is living faith that has been handed on with the essentials intact. So the Tradition is salted. Remember salt discourages the growth of destructive bacteria whole allowing constructive, and flavour producing, bacteria to grow. That is how ‘salty Christians’ are custodians of the Good News; never destructive, always flavour enhancing.

 

‘Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another’: so, as a disciple of Jesus, as a church, are we worth our salt?

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[1] Some say this oversimplifies it and there are nine basic tastes.

Embodying holiness

Preached as a sermon at Croydon Minster on Sunday 29 August. Readings: Deuteronomy 4.1-2, 6-9; James 1.17-end; Mark 7.1-8, 14,15, 21-23

Over the last few Sundays we have heard from the sixth chapter of St John’s gospel. That’s the chapter that opens with the Feeding of the Five Thousand, an event that is ‘unpacked’ as we receive Jesus’ teaching on how he is the Bread of Life and how we participate in his life as we consume the Bread of Life.

 

Eating and nourishing: it’s all very physical; of the body.

 

As Christians, we should know that bodies matter.

 

At the heart of our faith is the incarnation, which is the ultimate in saying that human bodies matter to their Maker, to God. The incarnation tells us that the Eternal Word, Jesus Christ, takes human flesh: that is; has a body, is a body. That’s what St John is saying when he declares ‘the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us’ (John 1.14)

 

That divine body nestles and grows in the womb of the human body of Mary, which is why we honour her so highly as the Mother of God.

 

In John chapter six, and elsewhere in the Gospels, Jesus is clear that to participate in his life we need to connect with his body in a physical way, the act of eating.

 

Christianity is not a religion of the mind or intellect disconnected from the body; that’s the way known as Gnosticism which is ultimately body hating. Indeed we declare, in the Creed, we believe in the Resurrection of the Body, in other words one’s soul and body are so intimately connected that God will raise both together.

 

In society today we see signs of body discomfort, to put it mildly. There’s the idolising of the body – think Love Island - and the loathing of the body when people speak of being trapped in a body, as if their body is not part of them.

 

There is a growing separation of body and mind in the Western outlook. It was put a long time ago by René  Descartes who said, ‘I think, therefore I am’. In other words, my thinking is what makes me, me. The limited body is apparently inconvenient to pure thought and reason.

 

The Olympic Games, and now the Paralympics, are fascinating because we see the human body pushed to the extremes of physical endurance, poise and power. But we also understand the intimate connection between body and mind. For the first time many athletes, such as Simone Biles, have spoken of the pressures on their minds as much as their bodies.

 

It rather gave the lie to the idea that if you want something enough, as an act of will of the mind, then you can have it. That is the route to deep frustration and malaise. Do you not want it enough? Or do you blame your body, as if it is something remote from you? ‘My body let me down’.

 

So the relationship between the body and the mind, let alone the body and the soul, is the stuff of philosophical and theological discussion and practical application.

 

That reflection on the body gives the backdrop to how we might handle this morning’s gospel. What is Jesus talking about as he condemns the Pharisees for their outward practices of holiness and cleanliness?

 

First, we should note that the Pharisees were a group within first century Judaism. Often the legalism of the Pharisees has been used to dismiss Judaism down the centuries. Not all Jews were Pharisees, and indeed some of the first followers of Jesus were themselves Pharisees.

 

Pharisees sought holiness in everyday life, what we might call ‘embodied holiness’. That in itself is laudable and good, but as we shall see there is a flaw in the application.

 

The Pharisees wanted to take the holiness codes of the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy that applied to temple priests and extend them to everyone. In so doing the practice became burdensome and, what Jesus really gets at, utterly hollow.

 

When Jesus comments on the practices of the Pharisees it was not the intention but the application that he takes issue with.

 

To hallow everyday life and action by infusing it with a vivid sense of God’s presence is a wonderful thing. Why not this week try and find small prompts in your day to spur you to the recollection of God’s presence so that you can embody holiness. That begins with cherishing the gift of the body God has given you and being at home in it.

 

For me, I wear a cross around my neck. As I put it on each morning I say the words of Jesus, ‘take up your cross daily and follow me’ (Luke 9.23). It is one small action I use to hallow the beginning of the day and intentionally commit myself again to the way of Jesus.

 

Saying grace before meals, a simple prayer of thanksgiving, is another great practice, whether eating alone or in company. It hallows the day and hallows the act of eating.

 

I could go on: prayer before bed, fish on Friday, saying the Angelus morning, noon and night, and such like, in these ‘little ways’, as St Therese of Lisieux called them, we can embody our desire for holiness.

 

There’s a health warning about holiness: it’s what Jesus pointed out with the Pharisees. No one wants to be called ‘holier than thou’. Holiness is never about superiority; that’s where the Pharisees fell short. Holiness doesn’t look down on others but invites them to look up to the Holy God.

 

The pursuit of holiness is what we do! ‘O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness’ (Psalm 97).

 

Holiness connects body and soul. It’s about the inward movement of the heart as much as outward action. When the heart is right, holiness of thinking, speaking and acting will flow.

 

St Benedict counsels, ‘Do not aspire to be called holy before you really are, but first be holy that you may be truly called so.’ (The Rule of St Benedict, Chapter IV, 62 my emphasis).

 

We come now before the Holy God, seeking the holiness that is his gift, so that as we taste the body of Christ, the Bread of Life, we may be one of body and soul and live our lives to his glory.

The Bread of Life

Preached as a sermon at Croydon Minster on Sunday 1 August, 2021, readings Exodus 16.2-4, 9-15; John 6.24-35 

I am the bread of life, says the Lord,

whoever comes to me will never be hungry,

and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. John 6.35

 

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In today’s gospel we are given more teaching by Jesus on what it means for him to be the Bread of Life. It’s a theme from last Sunday’s gospel and will be next Sunday too.

 

In John, chapter six, of which today’s gospel is a part, we are given deeper insights into what is going on in the Eucharist - and how that connects with our spiritual yearnings and physical needs - in our desire for Christ, the Bread of Life.

 

In the Olympics we see how the human body needs fuelling when it is on the extremes of physical performance. But even those of us who are not elite athletes need to refuel our bodies too.

 

But food is more than fuel. Food is also about hospitality, about companionship, about connection; human and divine. Food shows us the intimate connection between body and soul, who we are. Food nourishes cells and muscles; it nourishes the soul as we feast with others and as we fast.

 

The Eucharist elevates us beyond a simple meal into a divine human encounter where we feast on angels’ food.

 

The Biblical sources for this understanding are clear:

 

First there is the mysterious manna, ‘a fine flaky substance’ which was bread that God had given, yet as today’s psalm says: ‘so mortals ate the bread of angels; he gave them bread from heaven.’ (Psalm 78).

 

The Feeding of the Five Thousand was a revelation of miraculous abundance in Christ.

 

At the Last Supper Jesus invested the ritual meal of the Passover with new meaning, declaring that the bread he took, broke and shared was nothing less than his Body, and the wine likewise his Blood: he is the Passover Lamb.

 

At Emmaus the real presence of the Crucified and Risen Lord was signified in the broken bread.

 

The banquet of heaven unveiled in the Book of Revelation connects our earthly offering of the Eucharist with the eternal heavenly banquet.

 

The Eucharist, Holy Communion, is so much more than a simple meal; it is when our prayer ‘give us this day our daily bread’ is answered and we receive the Bread of Life.

 

It seems so unlikely in many ways. Like the crowds in the gospel we feel there should be more of a sign, perhaps something a little more spectacular than this round disk of bread, that hardly seems to be bread.

 

The sign should not detract from the One who is signified.

 

The host, as it’s known, resembles more the manna the Israelites ate in the desert rather than the sort of bread we might be used to, with butter and jam.

 

When that host is placed on your hand you hear the words, ‘The Body of Christ’. What a remarkable declaration! This is the Body of Christ, the Bread of Life. And speaking the word ‘Amen’ in response you are saying ‘yes: so be it’; you are assenting to the presence of Christ that you are to receive; you are saying, ‘Lord, give me this bread always’; you are believing.

 

There’s a saying: ‘you are what you eat’. You will receive and eat the Bread of Life: what will become of you?