AUDIO RECORDINGS

Lent Course 2-1 Lent Course 2-2

NOTES

St John the Evangelist, Roslyn

LENT COURSE 2013

Called to be Saints –

The Extraordinary Nature of

‘the Church Militant here in Earth’

‘It is probably the case that only a vibrant fullness of the Christian Church,

that is itself sufficiently mature to be the bearer of a Christian ethos,

is capable of surviving the onslaught of modern secularism.’

Fr Stephen Freeman

Session 2 – ‘Christ Centered Community’

 

Psalm 133

How very good and pleasant it is:

when kindred live together in unity!

² It is like the precious oil on the head,

running down upon the beard:

on the beard of Aaron,

running down over the collar of his robes.

³ It is like the dew of Hermon,

which falls on the mountains of Zion:

For there the Lord ordained his blessing,

life for evermore.

Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit:

As it was in the beginning, is now, and shall be for ever

Amen

Love me – Love my church

•The Battered Bride of Christ – Ephesians 5:25-32

The Invisible Church revisited – further into the story

 

•Church – ‘Sir, I have no need of that hypothesis!’

•Church ‘as an aid to my faith’

•It is where I am fed

•It is where I am encouraged

•It is where I meet with fellow Christians

•Church as ancillary to our ‘personal relationship with Jesus’

•Church as Support – not heart

•The heresy of pietism [more anon]

The Radical Shift (Part 2)

•Last week, The Radical individualism of our age – rooted in late medieval society – our way of thinking about ourselves and our lives increasingly individualistic. And this is the lens through which we understand our faith

•Personal / Unmediated – relationship with Jesus – PRIMARY

•‘Social’ gospel (service to wider world) vs ‘Evangelistic’ Gospel (making people Christians – The Church???

•Evangelism – ‘The gospel was mutated into a Churchless Christianity, devoid of sacrament and structure. This minimized gospel was easily and quickly adaptable to various cultural needs, but for the same reason, completely vulnerable to cultural forces. Evangelism is a gospel imperative, but the “making of disciples” entails their full enculturation into the Christian faith and not a single experience.‘Fr Stephen Freeman

http://glory2godforallthings.com/2013/02/11/america-and-the-perversion-of-christianity/

•Huge Fall off – from ‘Crusade’ type evangelism – 90%+ of people making ‘a decision’

 

•Impact of Christendom

•Religion as ‘a part of life’

•Weekly worship

•Prayer to ‘God(s)’

•Perhaps even part of a sect of some sort or other

•Other ‘Lord’s’ – State – Tribe – Work

•‘Everyday Life’ vs ‘Life in the Church’

•Competing Arenas of Life

•Irrelevance of Scripture to ‘Everyday Life’ – Except in personal piety, as the Church is not the Arena of faith

•‘We are not all called to be disciples’

•Monasticism [To be revisited]

•Going ‘Into the Church’ – i.e. not everyone went into the church

•The religious ‘professional’ – the loss of understanding of ‘The Priesthood of all believers’

Bible Study – the call of the disciples

 

1.What does it mean ‘to become a Christian?’

2.How might we expect our lives to change after ‘becoming a Christian’?

3.Read Mark 1:16-20  – Put yourself in the position of Simon, James and John – Compare and contrast your answers to 1. and 2. with their experience of ‘becoming a Christian’

4.  Who and What have they left behind?

5.  How is that ‘Gap’ filled

A ‘Jesus Centered Life’

 

•Again we need to realise how we are shaped by our surrounding culture – especially the religious culture – Especially in regard to ‘Pietism’. The problem we face is that we are largely ignorant of how cultural shifts have distorted our understanding of the Truth

•Pietism is rife in contemporary church

•My personal relationship with Jesus = ‘Jesus centered Life’ ergo ‘Christ Centered Community’ = ‘Association of people with that personal relationship’

•Come back to the disciples . . .

•Post Ascension???

•Where is Jesus?

•Pietistic response – ‘he lives within my heart . . .’

•[Note this is also Individualistic]

•Acts – Proclamation of the New Life in Christ – his Resurrection Life – coterminous with the Life of the Church – He Lives within the Church!!

•The PROMISE of Christ – ‘where two or three are gathered . . .’

•Love as THE expression of the Life of God

•God is Love and those who live in Love live in God and God lives in them

•Christ is manifested in the Love that is revealed in the Church

•How is the gap filled?? [Q 5 above] Luke 18:28-30

A final study – Ephesians 2:13-22

 

1.In the light of this passage and our study today – how would you define ‘Christ Centered Community’

2.In the week to come – meditate upon Colossians 3:1-4 – Remember ‘You’ is in the Plural – Your life is hidden with Christ in God – When Christ who is your life appears

 

 

 

 

In the coming weeks through Lent – Kingdom Community – Community of Formation – Charismatic Community of Witness

 

 

 

 

On a Wednesday morning I preach a relatively impromptu sermon after a few minutes spent prayerfully with the Scriptures in the vestry – a practice I trace back to my days as a curate, where each week either myself or my Vicar would put out the chairs and lay the table for Communion whilst the other pondered the texts for the day.

Here at St John’s my custom has been to follow the 1662 prayer book readings for the week, and today the gospel was the account of Jesus’ trials in the wilderness. It was a little remarked upon and so here I try to recapture some of what I said. Of course it is not the same reading a sermon on one’s own as it is to listen to it corporately in the context of the gospel reading and the Eucharist, but I offer it anyway with my prayers, for God to do with as He will. SDG

Gospel reading – Matthew 4:1-11

So we hear the words, as we do each week – ‘this is the Gospel of Christ’ – this is Gospel, Good News! And we may well ask, what is the Good News in that?? Is there Good News to be had in Lent?

Lent, as I began to suggest on Sunday is a time for stripping away illusions – for a confrontation with Reality. It is good to be disillusioned . . . of course we might think to be disillusioned is a ‘Bad Thing’ – we always here it in negative terms – ‘so and so has become very disillusioned’ – but straight away we discover that something we have been taught to think of in negative terms is not – for surely one can only become disillusioned is one was suffering in the first place from an illusion. Disillusionment is an awakening to reality – the reality may not look very pretty, but it is Real – we are no longer Asleep, or as the Scriptures would have it ‘Dead in our sins – we are beginning to come awake.

And Lent faces us with the Reality of Life, which in itself must therefore be thought of in some sense as ‘Good News’.
Last week we were all marked with ash – a double symbol of Reality. The twin related truths of our lives – we are sinners, and we are going to die. We face the Reality about ourselves – square in the face – no hiding. ‘Dust you are, and to dust you shall return!’ That which our contemporary world more than any previous culture does everything in its power to deny – the one thing that despite all our technological prowess we can at the most, given a following wind and a good dose of luck, can no more than delay for a moment – our Death – is pronounced. We were dust, we shall be dust. We are all going to die. We face it.

Although there are two things that we are told are unavoidable, death and taxes, we know that in reality some Do avoid the latter – but the other unavoidable, like death, we want to deny. Sin. It is a word that is out of fashion – but no matter, it still weave its web through each moment of our lives. It’s interesting to see though how even in Christian circles it has become less ‘significant’. For Lent, part of my reading is two books on Sin and the contrast is profound.

One very recent, has a certain jocularity of tone – its searching out of the seven deadly sins allows a little ambiguity as if perhaps each one had, at least in some regards something going for it, not that Pride, Anger, Lust, Envy, Greed, Avarice and Sloth were to be fled from, to be utterly shunned, to be rescued from. No, they are given a sort of charmingly friendly face as if they are a collection of lovable rogues. Not SO deadly sins??? [In a way also how we might be led to think of the Devil in contemporary culture, that is if we haven’t psychologised him away . . .]

The second book however, a meditation upon the Seven deadly sins, but also upon the Virtues – plays no such gamed. Although written recently, the author is a professor of the anatomy of Sin. Guided by early Christian writers, his style is sparse. Whilst the first writer lulls us to sleep in lengthy chapters, the latter with a few brief quotes lays open our condition. Didn’t think yourself proud? You do now! Too old for Lust? Think again! Anger . . . well I guess few if any of us need convincing of that, but we are not allowed any space to entertain it as in any sense less than something to be appalled at in ourselves . . and so the treatment goes on. In the space the first writer uses to try and draw a mist of uncertainty over Pride, the other exposes our condition. Like an Ice cold bath, it is shock therapy – we are Wide Awake. Like Isaiah in the Temple – we cry out ‘Woe is me! I am a man of unclean lips . . .’ It is Good Spiritual Direction – Direct and our malady is Defintiely Spiritual and terminal – Dead in Sin.

Dust you are, and to Dust you shall Return – Repent of your Sins!

Our half of the Reality is exposed – our mortal condition – but also God’s Remedy. Lent takes us with Jesus, towards the Cross and in our gospel today we are at once found out and saved.

Of course, as I have suggested – we don’t seen any good news here – indeed we may well struggle to see what on earth it has to do with us , our image of Jesus sentimentalised, the Devil, little more than a cartoon character and after all we haven’t been tempted to any of These sins, have we! Have we?

I’d like to suggest that already this morning, as with every morning we have at least committed two of them, and that we regularly commit all three, and that they are our way of hiding – hiding from God – by, as we do with death, Sin and the Devil – living as practical atheists – as if God does not exist.

‘but I haven’t turned stones into bread . . .’ I wonder – as we sat to breakfast this morning, did we acknowledge that it was only by God’s grace we had it. Were we not tempted to think we got food by our own power. ‘I earned the money to buy this food . . .’ by the strength of my arm . . . I did it. What is the difference. Jesus we know could have got food, for himself . . . as if God wasn’t the provider – as if He didn’t exist . . .

‘Well ok, but come on – I haven’t thrown myself from the Temple! :)’ No? I know I have. One of my besetting sins is this – or its equivalent. One of the things we notice about Jesus, is his steadfast refusal to draw attention to himself, to make himself the centre of things. I am sure that there is more than one of you here who has from time to time suffered me breaking into what was supposed to be our conversation, by my telling you a story about Me . . . have we this morning even told someone something about ourselves which they did not ask us to? Have we this morning sought to draw attention to ourselves, to try and make ourselves the centre of things? ‘Throw yourself from the Temple! – Make a Splash! Let everyone know you are here’  As if we are the centre of all things – ‘you keep making it all about you,’ as a wise guide constantly reminds me

‘But been offered the whole world???, and accepted???!!!’ . . . and so come the weasel words – you are free to do whatever you want . . . life is your oyster . . . you are in charge of your life . . . it all lies at your feet . . . you can do anything. It’s your Life. God? Well like a wise old uncle, he’ll be there if you need him, but hey . . . with your background, your education, with those lessons life has taught you . . . After all, is God really to be trusted as much as you trust yourself???

We are not secure in who we are as Children of God – we try to do it all for ourselves, and then mutter a prayer at the end in the hope that by doing that we might carry on doing the same

The Apostle Paul tells us – Pray continually, every moment – be turned to God – your life is Not your own, not one moment of it – if you are not dead in your sins, believing the devils lies, then you know surely that it is His Life in You which is your only hope – what God is doing in and through you.

Jesus as the Son, knows his father provides the food, he doesn’t do it for himself.

He knows the Father will glorify him, he doesn’t do it for himself.

He knows the Father will put all things under His feet . . . he does not grasp at it

God’s Remedy is the Obedience of His Son – the Only one who lives for God and so becoming Life for us. He was tempted in every way as we are yet was without sin and so lives forever to intercede for us – his Life, lived towards God, becomes thus life poured out for us.

And so there is no better place to be than here now – we hear the Good News, we See who we are – we See the obedience of Christ – and in bread and wine, God’s Remedy is presented to us – the Life of his obedient Son. The one who lived under no illusions – faced the reality of Sin, but Sinned not, faced the reality of death, which could not hold Him, and so became the source of life for all who follow him in Faith

One of the great glories of Protestant faith was its rediscovery of the unmediated relationship of each believer with Christ. But like all glorious truths, it becomes a Lie when it is allowed to become The Truth. [It may well be argued that the exaltation of this insight to the height of TOTAL revelation of the divine will for humanity, which it often became, was in no small part responsible for the rampant individualism of our societies, against which the same Protestant churches so unthinkingly rail and then exhibit in their  piety.]

There may well be folk who read this whom like I, always bristled with a certain righteous indignation, (which tended more to the righteous than the indignant), when confronted with the Catholic idea of ‘Our Relationship with Jesus’ being mediated through the saints, most especially of course the Mother of our Lord. [Although few who would take it to the extreme of not asking another member of the church to pray for us . . .]

Suffice it to say that in hanging on so vigourously to this blessed insight, that we might know Christ so directly, we have allowed ourselves to let go of a more mysterious truth. And so have strayed further from Truth and Life – our intimacy with Christ has been seriously hampered, and thus our spiritual lives immeasurably impoverished.

And that deeper truth is that of the Spirit’s indwelling  every believer, which means that Christ cannot help but be present to us in and through other members of the church. This uncomfortable Truth, which comes to us through flawed brothers and sisters rather than ‘warm inner intimacies with Jesus’, is Necessary to our Salvation – our truest and deepest healing.

One of the most disturbing aspects of Jesus’ address in the gospels to those of us in the churches, is his emphasis on Sinners – of calling sinners – of sitting and eating with sinners – of bringing Salvation to the house of a sinner. Why uncomfortable? Because whilst we often say such things as ‘we are all sinners’ – we are infrequently if ever so with one another. I do not mean that we do not commit sin in each others presence – we do this all along, but we do not bare our hearts in confession to one another. We do not meet Explicitly as Sinners whom Christ has called to himself to form this rather motley assembly of Salvation Life we call Church. Respectability and living a ‘good Christian Life’ is the pattern we tend to prefer. We make no mention of our sins, even though we commit them with unremitting frequency.

Confession is something which the church has moved away from, and these past years with indecent haste – perhaps because the clarion call of Individualism has become like the air we breathe, we do not even recognise how it distorts our faith. For many years, THE teaching on confession was on living with open hearts before one another – then gradually, especially so following the Great Schism between East and West, the emphasis moved to private confession and only before a Priest. By and large Protestant praxis has abandoned even this sacrament, and we are told to rely on ‘Our Relationship with Jesus’.

Much has been written elsewhere of the greater psychological benefit of verbal confession to another Christian. It somehow makes it Real – and indeed that is precisely what it does, but I cannot help but think that there is something far more powerful going on here. Yes, confessing to another Is confessing before Christ who indwells that other – thus it is truly a Sacrament, but I want to think for a moment about something deeper even than this.

Imagine for a moment, that someone came to you and so opens their hearts – pours out their confession to you. I wonder how that would make you feel? I suspect that for many if not all of us, it would make us feel dreadfully uncomfortable. We say we ‘feel uncomfortable with such self disclosure’ – and those who have grown up in the English culture know all about not pouring out all our emotions. Yet this is not what I am touching on here. Rather someone comes to us and plainly and without excess emotion lays the unpleasantness of their own hearts on the table before us. There Pride, their lack of obedience to Christ, how they have lived careless lives of indifference to Christ in prayer and lack of love for Him. What is going on here – why might this make us feel uncomfortable.

When a Christian in whom the Spirit of Christ dwells opens their hearts, then not only are we exposed to their hearts  – we are exposed to the One who happily lives with and eats with sinners. There is Christ, in the midst of that persons heart keeping fellowship with the unworthy, the imperfect. This confession not only releases the individual from the burden of their sin, it also lets lose Christ. Is our discomfort more to do with Christ being mediated to us in this exchange?

It seems that whenever Christ dines with sinners or keeps their company, their is always His winsome invitation to join them. Our churches and our individual lives of faith are not prepared for what happens when a Sinner comes to the party. Not meaning a notorious sinner, but an honest one. One who in revealing their inner reality consciously, also opens the door through which Christ may come, not Into their heart, but Out from their heart – calling us to live in the same openness, an openness which would transform our churches. Of course we may well demand, ‘how on earth could we cope were such openness suddenly come?!!’ We are not ready for this kind of shared Life. But that is The message of Advent – we are not ready, but He is coming. When the Sinner comes to church, openly – then so does Christ, who keeps such people company and thereby Saves and heals them, and so disturbs those who want to enjoy their privacy with Him.

It strikes me that the Life of the Church is always hamstrung by this lack. Imagine for example folk getting up to speak in public in order to be considered for high office in the church and instead of speaking at length about all their accomplishments and why they were the right person for the role, (of course with a few nods in the direction of’ ‘we’re all sinners really . . .’ and  ‘nobody is perfect’ ), they spoke instead of how they were amazed at the Grace of the church in calling one such as they. One who had no Right to lead, who was unfit, who was in the words of the prayer of Humble access ‘not even worthy to gather up the crumbs from under the table’

We began by thinking about a truth, but we are called to live in The Truth and at the heart of that Must be genuine honesty. That is life giving and healing. In my work with drug addicts,  I was always struck by their necessary and ruthless inventory of life. That those who had hit such a low, and who would seldom be seen in church, had such Life Together and that it was Safe – it was Healing. In opening up their lives, Life flowed forth. Of course to a new member such groups were always intimidating, to be surrounded by those who wanted to be well (a question Jesus asks of us is ‘Do you want to be well?’).

Well, thanks to our ‘personal relationship with Jesus’ the dynamic is utterly reversed. In Narcotics  and Alcoholics Anonymous it is the one who is learning the healing power of confession who is in the minority, the person ‘new to faith’. They come in as yet unsure that they are able to be themselves in vulnerability and thus find healing.

In our churches it is the one who knows this power who is in the minority, and in opening their heart lets out the disturbing Presence who invites us to Life. We Need each other for He is chiefly present to us in one another. In our heart of hearts we know that, and it scares us. We are not frightened of the self exposure of others, it is that we are fearful of the One who steps through the open door of their hearts, calling us to live in healing truth as well.

Christ is both Truth and Life – he calls us to the Honesty that sets Him Free amongst us.

SourceURL:file://localhost/Users/Eric/Downloads/CHRIST%20THE%20KING.doc

Sermon for CHRIST THE KING 2012

 

Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14

Revelation 1:4b-8

John 18:33-37

 

 

 

“In putting everything under him, God left nothing that is not subject to him.

Yet at present we do not see everything subject to him.” Hebrews 2:8

I wonder if you can tell me who this is?? Here is his house? And here is his car? His favourite dog has three legs 🙂

 

This man is Jose Mujica – the President of Uruguay . . . you wouldn’t have known it to look at him would you 🙂

 

What does a President look like?

Today is a very important day in the Church’s year – not only do we welcome our friends from Tolcarne 🙂 – it is actually the last day of the year. When people accuse the church of being behind the times, we must always remind them – our New Year is five weeks before yours – so Next Sunday we will celebrate Advent Sunday, the first of the New Year.

But today is a Sunday for drawing everything together – in a sense summing up our year and we sum up our Christian faith with the feast of Christ the King.

But in our gospel reading today it is clear the Pontius Pilate, the local representative of the Roman ruling powers, a man who has the power of life and death over everyone in Palestine, it is clear that this incredibly powerful man cannot tell that Jesus is a King. ‘Are you the King of the Jews?’ He can’t tell by looking. This strange and bedraggled man, dragged before him by angry religious authorities, known for having a band of followers from that disreputable area of Galilee, A King?? ‘So, you are a King??’ Jesus answered ‘you say that I am’ . . . enigmatic, not giving anything away . . . at least Jose Mujica will tell you out straight he Is the President of Uruguay however odd he looks. Jesus won’t give Pilate an answer, it is as if we have to discover for ourselves that he is the King

 

So today we celebrate what might seem to many a very Odd festival  – Christ the King??? [Slide with words] A King who doesn’t let on that he is The King – In fact so Odd is it that most people and many Christians either don’t know of it or pass over it without much thought – in other words its hidden, and that might be a Good thing 🙂

Think of All Hallows [Slide of Halloween] Christmas [Santa slide] or Easter [chocolate] and we find that major Christian festivals get hijacked – but the world doesn’t seem very interested in Christ the King, How can you distort this festival and make moeny out of it? Yet Christians are so bold as to make an extraordinary claim – that this first century, Palestinian Jew, a carpenter of humble origins, who never led an army, who never was crowned, who often had nowhere to sleep, who was followed around by prostitutes and those traitors of the Jewish people, the tax collectors and fishermen, Who was despised, rejected and finally put to death on a Roman Cross, executed as a common criminal – they claim that this Jesus, is King, [Pantokrator slide] – not just of the Jews but of the whole of Creation – indeed We are so bold and foolish to state that He is the Creator of everything that is and that in Him all things hold together, that it is his Life which sustains all life. Without Him there is nothing – he is the Centre and sustainer of all existence

 

When people get all tied up in knots over the truth of Christianity nowadays, they always seem to miss the central point, even Christians – that this is the Ruler of the Universe – and that it is Most clear here [Slide of the Cross]

 

The early Christians made this extraordinary claim, that this Jesus whom had been crucified was Lord – he was the world’s true King

 

And like if you met him you might laugh at JOse Mujica for telling you he was the President of Uruguay everyone laughed at those first Christians 🙂 Those Jews who hadn’t followed Jesus couldn’t accept it because as far as they were concerned Everyone who was put to death on a cross was Obviously under cursed by God – how else could you explain this outcome? And for the Greek people who were in many ways the dominant culture of the age (in a sense like we might think of the united States today) the idea that the Ruler of the Universe might be revealed in such weakness, broken and bloodied on a cross – well it was just laughable – even more laughable than the idea that this man could be President of Uruguay – This is a President [Obama] – but him? [Mujica] This is where presidents live [White house] but here [Mujica’s farm]?? But, people will say, ‘This is the ruler of the Universe? The World’s true and only King?? . . .’ come on!! Yet this is actually what we argue for when we argue for the truth of Christian faith

 

This is the absolute core truth of Christian faith – without this everything else falls apart – The first Christians never got tangled up in pointless arguments about Evolution or Political systems, about wars and religion – no – they had One Ludicrous claim, that Here we see perfectly revealed the world’s true King [Cross] – the core truth of Christianity and indeed we would argue, the entire Created order

 

‘You say that I am a King’ Jesus said to Pontius Pilate, ‘for this I was born and for this I came into the world to Testify to the truth – everyone who belongs to the the truth hear my voice . . .’

 

Once upon a time he had spoken of hearing his voice . . . My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish.

 

‘What is Truth?’ Pilate asked him’ And the Truth was standing right in front of Him – the heart of Christian faith is not an idea – it is a person – the person of Jesus Christ, whom Christians acknowledge as the True King of the world

 

Jose Mujica may well have changed our opinions of what a President looks like, but my guess is that he won’t be setting a new trend 🙂 I don’t expect Barack Obama, or even John Key to follow his example any time soon! But if the Christian claim that Jesus is the King, the Centre of Everything, that in his very being he is The Truth of all existence, then that changes everything.

 

What difference would it make if a person, if this person not an idea or a philosophy was in truth The Truth of all or existence?

 

Well we have seen it down through the ages – it always happens the same way – When Jesus first appeared he said – Repent, believe the Good News – and some laid down their own lives and agendas, some left families to follow him, to be with him, to learn from him and learn to obey him – in so doing they discovered that he was The Way, The Truth and The Life – the absolute centre of existence. Because The Truth is Jesus you cannot learn the Truth without knowing Him, without following him, without putting your life in his hands – which of course it already is 🙂

What might our lives look like if we were to Understand this Truth, the Christ Is the King, that he is The Truth? What might St Hilda’s look like if Everything that happened there was directed towards Jesus? What indeed might our church look like??

 

As folk know I am working on the idea of a shared Rule of Life for us as a church and the heart of the Rule is Christ Jesus, the heart of everything. Just last week I was privileged to visit somewhere with a shared rule, I visited Ngatiawa where Bishop Justin comes from, just inland from Waikanae on the West coast of North Island. And there to see a sort of church, a community where there was a daily rhythm of prayer, where lives were shared around a very noisy 🙂 common table – where folk held one another accountable in mutual love and trust. Some of the folk I met there were only in their early twenties – but it is a long long while since I have met such well formed young Christian people. On the surface they had little in common – people form relationships with people who are like us – we form deep relationships especially with those who are like us and sadly most churches are the same in that regard – but they were a very mixed bag – young and old, some who had been very well off, others who’d spent time on the streets – just like those first disciples – but a deeper community than I have met anywhere for a very long time – and at the heart – this worship and prayer – time with the King in their simple but beautiful chapel (named after Tarore whom we heard all about in chapel last week :))

 

A shared life, around a common table – food shared with one another in the presence of the King – that of course is the heart of what we do here Sunday by Sunday. This King, The King, Christ the King is only Visible in glory to the seers of Revelation and Daniel – the ANcient of Days coming on the clouds, the Alpha and the Omega who is and who was and who is to come – “In putting everything under him, God left nothing that is not subject to him. Yet at present we do not see everything subject to him.” But when those who are drawn to him come together he becomes more and more visible – where two or three are gathered, there I am in the midst of them – by this shall all know you are my disciples by your love for one another – as we are drawn closer to the Truth – Christ Jesus, our Strange and glorious King – revealed amongst us

SourceURL:file://localhost/Users/Eric/Desktop/ADVENT%202.doc

Sermon for Advent 2 – Year C – 2012

Advent 2 [Link to Audio]

Malachi 3:1-4

Phil 1: 3-11

Luke 3:1-6

 

“For no one can lay any foundation other than the one that has been laid; that foundation is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— the work of each builder will become visible, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each has done. If what has been built on the foundation survives, the builder will receive a reward. If the work is burned, the builder will suffer loss; the builder will be saved, but only as through fire.

Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.”

Last week we began our journey through the season of Advent – largely a hidden season in the churches year as Christmas expands to fill what should be space for our meditation upon the Coming of Christ. And I launched what in all probability is a futile campaign, for the church to stop referring to ‘Christmas’ and start once more to refer to The Feast of the Nativity. That we might then in Advent, stop ‘Getting ready for Christmas’ and instead be preparing ourselves for Christ and his coming.

And I spoke of the need to prepare our hearts and of how we need to ask ourselves ‘Are our hearts prepared to receive Christ’ – to which I said there could only be two responses – “No they are not! And so we run and hide as our parents Adam and Eve hid from the Presence of the LORD” – or on the other hand “No they are not, . . . but perhaps we are given an opportunity in this season of Advent to make ourselves ready?”

That of course begs a further question, just How can we prepare our hearts to be fit places for the coming of Christ? And here I suggest that again our distorted apprehension of Christmas does us few favours – If I say to you – how might we prepare our hearts ‘to welcome the baby Jesus’ (a phrase which might come to mind if we hear the words – The Feast of the Nativity) – we might perhaps see it as an opportunity to slow down – stop – seek some Peace deep within. We might think of being in church at midnight, an image which conjours up deep associations and largely to us beautiful ones – and imagine singing the words of the Carol – ‘O Holy Child of Bethlehem, descend to us we pray – cast out our sin and enter in, be born in us today’ – Be born in us today . . . it gives us a sense of something beautiful and quiet perhaps . . . be born in us today we might pray meditatively . . . we might indeed seek that deep peace within, BUT what do we find when we go within, but a heart Not ready for the Coming of Christ – All of a sudden that previous line in the carol takes on a sharper meaning ‘cast out our sin and enter in’ . . . be born in us today? A reminder that our hearts are not Ready, as we remind ourselves Sunday by Sunday  – ‘we are not fit even to gather up the crumbs from under your table’ – a reminder that this coming of Christ entails a work to be done on our hearts

And we are given a sharp reminder that we are not ready in those who herald His Coming, the Patriarchs, the prophets, Mary, Mother of our Lord and, perhaps most especially, in the strange figure of John the Baptist – the voice crying in the wilderness – Prepare the way of the LORD – make straight in the desert a highway for our God! Proclaiming a Baptism of Repentance – of turning our Lives to the One who is coming, the one for whom we are not ready – John calls us to dismantle the barriers to Christ’s coming to our hearts – get rid of the valley and hills, the sharp turns in the road around and behind which you try to hide from the LIving God. – Repentance – Throw Open your heart to Him, the one. Throw Open your heart to Him who will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing-fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing-floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.’

He baptizes with the Holy Spirit and with Fire. – Who may abide the day of his coming? And who can stand when he appears! As we consider the One who is to come, there is no avoiding this fire. As St Paul says in the words I quoted at the outset, speaking of future Judgement – the work of each person will become visible, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each has done. Are our hearts ready for His work – the blazing, purifying fire of the One who comes in the name of the Living God?

Such a theme, Advent as a preparation for the Fire of God – the one who comes and says he has come to bring Fire upon the earth, is buried in an instant in our ‘getting ready for Christmas’ With our at times complacent sentimentality in this ‘season of goodwill’ – there is no place for such Fire in our plans. We turn our backs on it, we hide from it, like anxious Marthas – upset and worried by many things, preoccupied, getting ready for Christmas, trying to avoid His Presence.

We come back to the question, how do we prepare our hearts and we get the answer we cannot – the only choice we have is to open our hearts to him, or flee. As the words of our gospel had it last week, to faint in fear and foreboding at what is coming on the earth, or to ‘Stand up and raise your heads, for your redemption is drawing nigh’

Our readings indeed the whole counsel of the Word of God, which is brought to us through the liturgy of the church each week, tells us in no uncertain terms that we cannot prepare our hearts – we cannot make our hearts a fit place for the Lord’s coming, because He is coming precisely to deal with our hearts. who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap; ³he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the Lord in righteousness.

Malachi uses a double illustration – a refining fire – and fullers soap – neither comfortable, neither fitting in with any domesticated image of Jesus. But with the Same purpose – Cleansing! Like precious metals are refined by intense heat, that the dross may be separated out, Like Wool is cleansed from all the grease with a harsh soap, Christ is the one coming to do the cleansing. The one who in his Incarnation has come, the one who will come again, and the one who is Present now. The Saviour and Judge – He Judges, finds us wanting and then goes to work Purifying ‘the descendents of Levi – Christ’s primary work in this regard it with his church.’ The Saving work of Christ cannot be separated from his Judging of us – why would we need Saving, were it not that we are judged and found wanting.

And in this regard we I think tend to make a simple error, informed by years of getting this wrong – we tend to think of Judgement as in the future – but it is not simply then. It is implicit even in the Christmas story we tell year in year out – although we tend to airbrush out those elements which remind us of this. Christ, as our collect reminds us, does come to us in great humility – but this is no quiet slipping in without effect. No. If we read the whole story we read of an Emperor whose anxiety is awakened at this coming King and who must discover how many taxpayers her has – we read of a despotic King whose rule is similarly threatened. In our Nativity plays there is little of this – what indeed might be the impact of a Nativity on Christmas eve if we closed with the slaughter of the innocents and Mary and Joseph fleeing to Egypt, before closing, ‘A Merry Christmas one and all!’

He comes among us in great humility as our collect puts it – as the judge – the Judge who has come to save – He will come in the last days as the judge who will come to Save – and he is present with us Now, as the Risen one, the great disturber of our false peace, our attempts to settle down Sunday by Sunday by Sunday – moment by moment

The problem it seems to me is that we ignore the Judgement of Christ at his first coming into the world – we have a sentimentalised understanding of it – thus we hear the words of our collect about coming in great humility that at the last, when he shall come to judge the living and the dead – it is a terrible shock – so much so that it seems that the writers of the NZPB, removed the words ‘when he shall come to judge the living and the dead’ We have created a vast difference between the coming of God in Jesus of Nazareth and His COming again at the end of time, by reducing the significance of his first coming – domesticating it – making it easy – an incarnate God who is little more than the projection of ourselves – not the coming of one who’s life threw all of life, civic, religious and private into complete turmoil that at the end we had no choice but to nail him to the Cross.

He came as Saviour and Judge Then, He will come as Saviour and judge – and he is present to us now, if we will but Throw open the door of our hearts as Judge and Saviour.

Every Sunday, in our most traditional liturgy we ‘prepare’ our hearts by acknowledging we cannot, that He Must. ‘Almighty God, to whom All hearts are open, All desires known and from whom No secrets are hidden’ We come to the place of worship and acknowledge that try as we might we cannot hide from Him – We say, we have come to worship – to meet with you – we cannot hide and then we ask ‘Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts, by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit’ As we Inspire – breathe in the Holy Spirit – as we receive our Lord in Word and Sacrament – Do your Refining work in us, Refiners fire – Purify us – Fullers soap  – Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts. That we might perfectly love thee and Worthily magnify your holy name. We are praying for the prophecy of Malachi to be brought to fruition, Here, Now –  ‘purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the Lord in righteousness.’

Advent, and this is reflected in our collect, can itself distract us if we are not alert to the Truth of our Faith – we may be distracted looking both forwards and backwards. Backwards to his coming in great humility, forwards to his coming in glorious majesty – distracting us from His Coming to us Now – Now is the day of our Judgement – Now is the Day of our Salvation, our healing, if we will but Throw open the door of our hearts to The Lord whom you seek – who Will Suddenly come to his Temple, His people. We Live in this Transforming Hope – one of the key themes of Advent – Hope of the Purifying Fire of Christ’s presence amongst us

 

I close with the words of St John – Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure. May we live in Advent Hope of his coming among us, Now in the time of this mortal life.

 

Amen

Audio of Sermon

For those who missed it

Bible Study notes for Sunday November 18th, 2012. Ordinary 33 Yr B

1 Samuel 4:1-10
For Psalm – 1 Samuel 2:1-10
Hebrews 10:11-25
Mark 13:1-8

Pride of man and earthly glory,
Sword and crown betray His trust;
What with care and toil He buildeth,
Tower and temple fall to dust.
But God’s power, hour by hour,
Is my temple and my tower.

Joachim Neander (1650-80)

These familiar words from the hymn ‘All my hope on God is founded’ speak not only to this week’s gospel, but also in several respects to our other readings. Certainly the hymn title encapsulates the Christian outlook on life.

Take time first to read through the readings. Do we see connections? [Note we use Hannah’s hymn as a commentary on the Old Testament lesson, rather than the Psalm this week.]

1. In this story of the birth of Samuel – yet another tale from Scripture of barrenness turning by God’s intervention to fruitfulness – there are two key threads being played out. Firstly the rivalry of Hannah and Peninnah, the two wives of Elkanah; and secondly the judgement against the house of Eli which is Samuel’f first prophetic act. This week we concentrate on the first.
a. Why is the house of the Lord at Shiloh? [See Joshua 18:1] What is present there?
b. ‘though the LORD had closed her womb’ The Scriptures are not shy of ascribing to God all sorts of difficulties.
i. What do we make of this?
ii. Do we see the world in the same way? If not why not?
iii. If not, have we actually lost a vital dynamic of our life before God?
c. The provocation of Peninnah goes on for some considerable time vs 6-7 What is going on here?
d. What do you make of Elkanah’s words to Hannah (vs8)
e. The prayer of Hannah (vs11) is utterly extraordinary – take time to meditate upon it
i. Discuss it together
ii. This is a form of sacrifice a form of giving over to God which is in some way or other a form of death. Famously this is revealed in Abraham’s preparedness to sacrifice Isaac, and of course ultimately in the Father giving the Son for the life of the world (something we miss when we avoid traditional trinitarian language) Here a mother ‘give(s) up’ her son. What kind of relationship does it suggest between Hannah and the LORD?
iii. Jesus said ‘the one who loses his life will find it’ – How do we give freely to the Lord that which we have entreated him for? What does it mean for us? How do we so lose our lives?
f. Eli sees the distress of Hannah but mistakes it for drunkenness – she has been ‘pouring out her soul’ before the LORD. ‘Our prayer is often lacking our presence – we do not enter fully into prayer’ Discuss
g. What does ‘remembered’ mean? (vs 19) At the Eucharist we ‘remember’ Christ’s self giving – what does it mean beyond a reminder of something??
2. Looking now at Hannah’s prayer of exultation (1Sam 2:1-10)
a. What do you make of her response regarding Peninnah? (2:1)
b. She responds by describing the LORD – her view of the World is dominated by God, He is the one who closed her womb, He is the one to whom she pours out her soul in prayer, and now she praises him recounting his attributes. ‘We know too little of God in our day and age to live so fully and truthfully before him as did Hannah’ – Discuss
3. Turning to the passage from Hebrews – here once more we are in ‘the house of the LORD vs 11 – again there is triumph over enemies vs13
a. vs 19-25 Meditate on these verses – there is the same boldness before God here that Hannah had. Is it a boldness you know in your own relationship to God?
b. What occasions the boldness of approach set out in vs 19-23?
i. What does it mean ‘to provoke one another to love and good deeds’?
ii. What does this suggest about the type of fellowship which the writer envisages?
iii. We are exhorted not to neglect meeting together – Why?
iv. What does it mean ‘to encourage one another’ in this context? How do we do this?
v. What does it mean ‘as you see the Day approaching’?
4. Finally to the gospel – ‘What with care and toil he buildeth, tower and temple fall to dust’
a. Note Jesus asks a very curious question of his disciple – clearly he does see these great buildings . . . what do you think is the point of Jesus question?
b. In Mark, above all the gospels, the disciples are portrayed as failing to understand, or to ‘See’. So blind Bartimaeus is the model disciple who Sees Jesus, without seeing him and who hears the call to discipleship without being called. ‘The Visual is immensely distracting’ – Discuss
c. The rest of this passage is precisely about how we see. How do we learn not to be ‘led astray’, or ‘alarmed’?

Sermon for Sunday November 4th, 2012
ALL SAINTS SUNDAY YrB

Wisdom of Solomon 3:1-9
Psalm 24
Revelation 21:1-6
John 11:32-44

Day and night without ceasing [the living creatures] sing,
‘Holy, holy, holy,
the Lord God the Almighty,
who was and is and is to come.’
And whenever the living creatures give glory and honour and thanks to the one who is seated on the throne, who lives for ever and ever, the twenty-four elders fall before the one who is seated on the throne and worship the one who lives for ever and ever;
they cast their crowns before the throne, singing,
‘You are worthy, our Lord and God,
to receive glory and honour and power,
for you created all things,
and by your will they existed and were created.’

Today is All Saints Sunday, the Sunday in the churches year when we remember those who have attained the beatific vision – who worship before the throne of God, those who See God. It is a Feast which to some degree or other sits rather uncomfortably with the Protestant tradition, but still lingers on. The sense of Saints as being special

I was approached by email this week by some people in China wanting to register the internet domain name stjohnsroslyn – not johnsroslyn. We still speak of our patron saint, St John the Evangelist. I thought it quite amusing that they had no sense of that with which they were dealing. But there is a fairly constant and as I see it growing tendency to try and cast aside the sense of Special Christians even amongst Christians. The sense that somehow there were some who lived far more fully and deeply into faith than most – and were thus worthy of special mention, and in the terms of the Roman Catholic Church ‘beatifying’, or giving the title Saints to. Those who are Examples for us, primarily examples of the Love of our Lord.
Perhaps it is in part because of our concerns about some of those practices that we shy away from ascribing due honour to some, but I suspect it may be more to do with a subtle even unconscious desire that we drag others down to our level. That such lives discomfort us, challenge us about the reality and depth of our own devotion to Christ – it is easier to find fault and thus feel comfortable, than to pay attention to their virtues and sense our own inadequacy, our own need for the mercy of God.
And there is undoubtedly an echo here also of what happens so frequently when we consider Christ – that the humanity of Jesus is expressed in such a way that it denies the purpose of the LIving one taking on flesh, that we might be raised to His Life, to the Life eternal, that we might share with Him in the life of God – drawn into the fellowship of Love that is the Triune God.

I have spoken of Saints as ‘examples of the love of our Lord’ – they are those who supremely amongst our brothers and sisters have entered into the Love of God in their Love for God. They are like Bartimaeus last week Hungry to see – they only have eyes for Him – as Jesus our brother and LORD only does what he sees the father doing.

I have used to define such Saints a strange phrase, one that may well be alien – those who have attained the Beatific Vision. What does this mean? Well it is quite simple, they Behold God and like the elders and the creatures in my opening words from Revelation, they perpetually worship God. The essence of being a Saint is one whose life is absorbed in the worship of the Living God – one for whom the transition from the life of this age to the life of the age to come is barely noticed, one who’s Life Is to worship God. One who has discovered the truth of one of the Protestant catechisms, that ‘The chief end of humanity is to Glorify God, and enjoy Him for ever’ – That the Worship of God is that which we were created for and that we most fully reveal our humanness in so doing.
As I said last week a dog is never more a dog than when it steals the Sunday roast from the table, We are never more human than when we take hold of the eternal life that is the Worship of the LIving God. Put another way, we are never more human than when we obey the life giving first commandment, when we worship God with all our heart and all our soul and all our mind and all our strength.

The Catholic writer GK Chesterton, a man of some considerable wit and wisdom said, ‘a man is never more ready for heaven than at the moment he dies’. Tied up in this short phrase is a simple apprehension, that as Christians we have already by virtue of our baptism been granted the gift of the life that is eternal and that there is no barrier now to our entering fully into it and so live the heavenly life, here and now. That when we die actually the truth will be made clear, that it was actually in our baptism that we died and our live was hidden with Christ in God. As I said at the Cathedral a week or so ago, Christians are those who get their dying over and done with, so that they might truly Live.

In a very real sense this is precisely what the raising of LAzarus is all about, he was dead in sin, he was ill and he died. Jesus waits – he does not rush to heal Lazarus. He wants to allow the human tragedy to be fully revealed, that we who were created for the Glory of God are in slavery to sin and death. The relationship between sin and sickness is at once mysterious and not clear to us, and Also Real. Thus when we pray for healing in a sacramental context we also confess our sins – for we recognise our need of a wholeness. Sin and disease and death are inextricably linked – Jesus heals to reveal his authority to forgive sins. So Lazarus Reveals the human tragedy, and Jesus comes to the tomb ‘greatly disturbed’ – The God of Love is Wrenched within himself at human sin and its consequences – but in Love will not allow them to have the last word and so Lazarus is given New Life, eternal Life.

In Baptism we are also included in that New Life – we die to sin and rise to new life. So the old ways are no longer appropriate – they need to be discarded. Down through the ages it has been customary for those baptised to be given White robes in exchange for their old clothes as they put off the old life and receive the New LIfe that is in Christ –

And at the heart of it this new life is Worship. For some reason or other a question which has been rattling around in my heart and mind these past weeks has been, ‘what does the life turned towards God look like?’ What does the life turned toward God look like? and the only answer I can come up with is that it looks like one who is worshipping god night and day, it is the life of a Saint.

St Paul at the beginning of his explanation of the gospel, his letter to the Romans speaks to those whom he has addressed the letter as ‘those called to be Saints’ 1Elsewhere he often refers to the Christians to whom he writes as ‘the Saints’ – so as Christians we are at once already Saints, but also called to be Saints.
This sounds a little odd until perhaps we think about our birth – when we are born we are indisputably human, totally so – but we would think that it was something very very Wrong if after 3 score years and ten we were still In and through Baptism we were still clad in nappies, 40 cm tall, not speaking etc etc – Yes when we are born we are fully human, and also we need to grow into that humanness. So also when we are baptised, born again we are fully Saints, but we need also to grow fully into that Sainthood.

Those whom the church calls Saints are those who have known this and have devoted themselves to growing fully into who in Christ they are, and this is a path that is set before us all. We all are Saints, we are all called to be Saints.

One final thing, this is something we do together. In a few minutes in the Apostles Creed we shall declare that we believe in the communion of Saints – it is a phrase we all too readily skip over but we shouldn’t. First it reminds us that we are part of the heavenly community with those who have gone before us in faith – that we are as we gather here today surrounded by a great crowd of witnesses, and that it is only the dimness of our sight that prevents us from seeing them. Here as we gather in worship we participate in the feats of heaven, the Eucharist.
I remember vividly once going to a Requiem Mass for a dear friend – at the Eucharist all I can say was that heaven and earth met – we were all together, reunited around the table at the Marriage supper of the Lamb.
In the last rites at the time of our physical death, we administer the eucharist, the heavenly food as our brother or sister enters the Joy of the Lord in the fullest sense. So in the Eucharist we are always sharing in the life of heaven, in a most vivid way

But that phrase the communion of the saints also reminds us that we need each other to grow fully into our Sainthood, as much if not more than we need each other to grow fully into our human lives.

If I can take you back to that gospel from last week, Bartimaeus, called by Jesus Leaps up! he makes a bee-line for Jesus. In so doing we can imagine the crowd  – looking – where is he going, they are being reoriented themselves towards Jesus as Bartimaeus rushes to Christ. So we need the Saints, living and departed, who are HUNGRY for Christ, to See him, to Know Him and to Love Him as examples that stop us also just milling around aimlessly in the crowd and once more to put all our heart soul mind and strength into this Life Giving business of devotion to God in Christ.

In a few minutes we will baptise Hannah – she will become a saint, cleansed form her sins she will begin to grow into her saintliness – she needs to be surrounded by Saints – she is surrounded by those who worship now around the throne of God, but she also needs you and I – Hannah needs Us to be living ever more and more deeply into the LIfe of God, that she also might see how to orient her life.

All the Saints are examples to the others called to be saints – and that means that each one of us is an example for the sake of the other and for the eternal glory of God

Amen