‘Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.’ Jn 15:13
We come here this afternoon to remember, to remember and give thanks for a sacrifice. We remember and give thanks for the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, which reconciles us with God and gives us the hope of everlasting life in him. As we meet him week by week and day by day in word and sacrament, truly present in Scripture and in his Body and Blood, what we are doing is not simply recalling the events of the past, but experiencing those events and their effects in the present. The sacrifice and its effects are a reality in our lives.
Likewise when we recall the sacrifice made by people from this village, this country and all over the world, our remembrance must likewise be an active one which has an effect in our lives. We recall the generosity of those who have tried to ensure that we can live lives free from warfare and suffering, a generosity which must leave a mark on our lives. Many people, members of our own families, as no-one has not been touched by the events of the past one hundred years, gladly offered, and still continue to offer themselves for the safety and security of humanity. An act of remembrance has a deeper significance when we know that members of Her Majesty’s Armed Forces are on active service overseas, working for peace and stability, for a safer, fairer, world, where people can live in peace and plenty. We remember too all the victims of warfare, the countless millions who have lost their lives in a century characterised by conflict, and on the 70th anniversary of the bombing of Coventry we call to mind the dreadful cost paid by our near neighbours. Our reaction will, I suspect, of necessity, be a complex one – a mixture of sadness and thankfulness, gratitude and grief – while we are grateful to live in comparative peace after a period of wholesale slaughter, we cannot fail to be moved by the cost of military and civilian lives, which continues to this day.
It is important to see the sacrificial self-giving love of God in Christ’s passion as the pattern of our lives. We are called in our baptism to share in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, and this can be lived out in any number of ways. We can remember, too, the vision of peace which characterises the understanding of the Messiah in the prophets. It is a time when the lion will lay with the lamb, and when swords will be beaten into ploughshares. So it seems as though we’re not there yet and in many ways this characterises much of the two thousand years following Christ’s birth. Humanity it seems, while it deeply wants the vision of messianic peace finds itself engaged in warfare of one sort or another.
So is there a way out of this endless cycle? In short, Yes. In the sacrifice of Jesus Christ upon the cross, who gave himself and suffered for our sins and the sins of all hu-manity: past, present and future. The slaughter of millions of people which characterised the wars of the last century is an act of brutality which nails Jesus to the cross, yet he goes to his death gladly, for love of us. It is this act of total self-giving which shows us what true love is, and how we too need to fashion our lives after this pattern of love. We must always remember that Jesus’ loving self-giving is done for the healing of sin and division – for the reconciliation of humanity with God. While we are conscious of our failings and shortcomings and need for God, we must always remember that we are a people who are forgiven, who are loved by God in a way which has the power to transform our lives. Our lives can be transformed when and if we learn to love not only our friends and family, but our enemies, only then can swords be beaten into ploughshares and the peace for which people fought, struggled and died become a reality in our world. By our trusting in the superabundance of God’s mercy and the power of the cross in our lives can we realise our hopes and dreams for peace. But we need to co-operate with a merciful and loving God, by living out lives which are informed by and filled with our faith, to bring about the peace for which we long, and which is the will of Almighty God.
Sunday, 14 November 2010
Tuesday, 12 October 2010
'I am the bread of life: and he that cometh to me shall never hunger: and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.'
It has been said that the oldest profession in the world are the ladies of the night, but as much as I hate to disappoint those of a more salacious disposition, this opinion is quite wrong. In the second chapter of the Book of Genesis we read that ‘the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.’ Thus, to work the land is to engage in something which takes us back to the very beginnings of humanity, an honourable profession indeed. The practice of coming together to offer our praise and thanksgiving to Almighty God for the goodness of creation and a harvest safely gathered in is, likewise, an ancient and honourable thing – just as the Ancient Israelites gave thanks for their life in the promised land, so do we. We should, as part of our worship of God offer him the best of all that we have as a response to a loving and generous God.
But while this is important, we need to be careful not to get things wrong – we need to ask ourselves what are we here for, not as a question of existential angst, but as a serious question. Is what we are engaged in a bit of cosy folk religion, a matter of duty, an excuse to be seen, or perhaps something more? When this church was built, its congregation, who lived on and worked the land would gather on the 1st August for Lammas, or Loaf-Mass to give thanks for a successful grain harvest and with the renewal of the Church in the nineteenth century the idea of a harvest celebration became popular once again.
But as well as giving thanks to God, we also need to be shocked challenged and changed by the example and teaching of Jesus in the second lesson. Are we as a church and a society, content simply to be fed, or is God asking more of us. Our faith is not something we can keep safe in a box, to put on like a hat for church on Sunday – it needs to be more than that. Our faith must form all that we are, and all that we do, and say, and think. Our belief in our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ needs to form the very ground of our being. This faith, like a plant, needs to be tended, watered, and protected from weeds. Like a child it needs to be nourished, encouraged, and taught.
The crowd in the Gospel story have not grasped the meaning and importance of their being fed, they have not understood its spiritual meaning but are rather interested in the prospect of another free meal, whereas Jesus feeds them as a sign of their heavenly food, the bread of eternal life. Rather than working for the food that perishes we need to work for the bread of life, which is Christ himself. We need to meet at the Lord’s table to be fed by his word and his very self, his body and blood under the forms of bread and wine, to have our bread for the journey for our life of faith together, as God is the sustenance of life itself, of our very existence, for those who trust in him, and he will fill our every need, by giving us that which we cannot work for ourselves, and for which we hunger most.
Our desire for a world where none are hungry, where all are loved, requires our cooperation with the will of God, and our trust in him. By our being fed by his word and the Eucharist our lives can be transfigured, our faith strengthened and renewed, enabling us to transform the world around us, conforming it to the will of God. We can only do this through being nourished body and soul by God – through our participation in the Eucharist, the Holy Communion, the Lord’s Supper – fed by God, with God, for God’s work in the world. Only this can satisfy our deepest hunger and thirst, and give us true peace, and hasten the coming of God’s kingdom on earth.
But while this is important, we need to be careful not to get things wrong – we need to ask ourselves what are we here for, not as a question of existential angst, but as a serious question. Is what we are engaged in a bit of cosy folk religion, a matter of duty, an excuse to be seen, or perhaps something more? When this church was built, its congregation, who lived on and worked the land would gather on the 1st August for Lammas, or Loaf-Mass to give thanks for a successful grain harvest and with the renewal of the Church in the nineteenth century the idea of a harvest celebration became popular once again.
But as well as giving thanks to God, we also need to be shocked challenged and changed by the example and teaching of Jesus in the second lesson. Are we as a church and a society, content simply to be fed, or is God asking more of us. Our faith is not something we can keep safe in a box, to put on like a hat for church on Sunday – it needs to be more than that. Our faith must form all that we are, and all that we do, and say, and think. Our belief in our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ needs to form the very ground of our being. This faith, like a plant, needs to be tended, watered, and protected from weeds. Like a child it needs to be nourished, encouraged, and taught.
The crowd in the Gospel story have not grasped the meaning and importance of their being fed, they have not understood its spiritual meaning but are rather interested in the prospect of another free meal, whereas Jesus feeds them as a sign of their heavenly food, the bread of eternal life. Rather than working for the food that perishes we need to work for the bread of life, which is Christ himself. We need to meet at the Lord’s table to be fed by his word and his very self, his body and blood under the forms of bread and wine, to have our bread for the journey for our life of faith together, as God is the sustenance of life itself, of our very existence, for those who trust in him, and he will fill our every need, by giving us that which we cannot work for ourselves, and for which we hunger most.
Our desire for a world where none are hungry, where all are loved, requires our cooperation with the will of God, and our trust in him. By our being fed by his word and the Eucharist our lives can be transfigured, our faith strengthened and renewed, enabling us to transform the world around us, conforming it to the will of God. We can only do this through being nourished body and soul by God – through our participation in the Eucharist, the Holy Communion, the Lord’s Supper – fed by God, with God, for God’s work in the world. Only this can satisfy our deepest hunger and thirst, and give us true peace, and hasten the coming of God’s kingdom on earth.
‘In this way he will be able to encourage the others with the teaching, and also show the errors of those who are opposed to it’
PREACHED AT VESPERS OF THE PATRONAL FESTIVAL OF S. AIDAN’S NEW PARKS, LEICESTER
It is fair to say that, of late, Celtic Christianity has been all the rage – with its ‘Wild Goose liturgy’ tear-and-share Eucharists, gazing into water, plenty of pebble-rubbing, and thinly-disguised nature-worship and a touchy-feely approach to the Christian faith which perhaps taps into the emotional side of the British which has been repressed by the stiff upper-lip approach.
If, however, such an understanding is allowed to go unchallenged, it will only serve to perpetuate a misunderstanding which does a great service to the life and witness of saints such as Aidan. These Celtic saints were serious, hard-working men, who took their inspiration from the first monastic communities founded in Egypt, whose leading lights were the Desert Fathers and whose lives and sayings are recorded by John Cassian and others. What we are dealing with are people, above all else, seeking to love God and their neighbour in thought, word and deed, living out the heart of the Gospel in their life and example. It is far too easy to engage in a superficial reading of them which fails to do justice to their lives of Christian service, but this will not do.
A salutary example can be found in the life of S. Aidan. A mission from the Celtic Church to the people of Northumbria had failed and it is Aidan who identifies correctly the reason why it failed. At a conference convened to discuss the failure of the mission, Aidan sets his colleagues straight: ‘Brothers, it seems to me that you were too severe on your ignorant hearers. You should have followed the practice of the apostles ... and gradually nourished them with the word of God until they were ... able to follow the loftier precepts of Christ’. In other words, Aidan saw clearly the need to meet people half-way, even when one is in the right, which is exactly what our Lord did.
In meeting people where they are, and bringing them to faith gradually, nourishing them first on the milk of human kindness before moving on to the more solid food of the Gospel, we see in Aidan a Christ-like gentleness combined with a zeal that the Good News of Christ will take root in the hearts and in the minds and in the lives of those to whom he is ministering. Aidan is sincere and serious, as Paul advises Titus to be, but he is, above all else, not overbearing, lording it over his brethren, or those whom he is seeking to convert. Rather, in patience and humility, which flow from the love of God and neighbour, his life and example speak of Christian charity lived out in a way which is infectious, to which people cannot fail to be attracted.
This, then, is the challenge to all of us here today – all the baptised people of God need to follow the example of Aidan in gentleness and love, aware of our sins and shortcomings and deeply penitent for them, yet firmly resolved to bear witness to the truth of the Gospel in our own lives. This is a demanding undertaking, one which needs to be grounded in prayer, in waiting on God, in letting him form us. It needs the comfort and strength of the Sacraments where Christ is truly present. We need to be nourished by the Body and Blood of Christ, fed in our minds, in our souls, and in our bodies, to have strength for the journey, for the task which Christ calls us to do in His name and for His glory.
This, then, is the true teaching which Aidan embodies and lives out. It stands in stark contrast to the error of touchy-feely liberalism, of a wishy-washy perversion of Christianity: the dangerous nonsense of Paul’s letter, which damages the Gospel with its laxity just like the harshness which Aidan opposed.
Aidan’s message and example, however, can be trusted as it is rooted in the example and doctrine of Christ and the Apostles – touchstones to which the Church must cling, lest it fall into error. We need then to be sincere and serious, as Paul advises Titus, since the commission to preach the Gospel by word and deed is a serious business for all Christians. We need to be sincere, as anything false or hypocritical damages the Church and the message which it proclaims. We also need to be serious, as it is our compassion, gentleness and humility, which make us truly Christ-like and our proclamation authentic. But for our doing the work of God to bear fruit, we need above else to pray for patience and perseverance. Only if we keep going can the good news of Christ flourish in our own lives and in those whom we seek to bring to new life in Christ, Such an undertaking takes time, and just as Aidan was prepared to live and preach in a way which would win out in the long run, so we too have to be prepared to be willing to taking our time and persevere in the service of Christ.
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