Saturday, 27 July 2019
Saturday, 20 July 2019
16th Sunday of Year C – Mary and Martha
It is easy for us in the twenty-first century to forget just how difficult it was to travel in the past. And how important hospitality was. In a world without service stations, hotels, and only few inns, you would depend on the kindness of strangers offering you a place to refresh and recuperate before returning to the road.
In our first reading this morning, from Genesis, we see visitors arrive outside Abraham’s tent by the oaks of Mamre. It’s the scene pictured in the famous icon of the holy Trinity by Nicholai Rublev. And these are not just any visitors, but God in embodied form, which is quite surprising, and very uncommon in the Old Testament. Abraham called the three persons Lord, the One God. He offers them water to cleanse themselves, and bread to nourish them. Sarah, Abraham’s wife, takes three measures of flour. These we understand as representing faith, hope, and love, the virtues of the Christian life, which we receive in our baptism. Abraham takes a calf, which prefigures the sacrifice of Christ, the truly gentle one, who does not refuse the Cross. After the visitors have eaten, they promise that Sarah will have a son. In response to their hospitality, generosity and faithfulness, the patriarch and his wife are rewarded. Their kindness is repaid.
In this morning’s epistle, we see that for Paul our actions as Christians are firmly rooted in our relationship with God and our understanding of His will. As Abraham’s vision of angels in Genesis gives us the merest glimpse of what God is like, in the Letter to the Colossians we see that the person of Jesus Christ is the image of the Living God, in Him we can see both what God is really like, who God is and what God does.
This morning’s Gospel follows on directly from last week’s Parable of the Good Samaritan. It is another story about making a journey, but a more positive side of travelling is shown by Martha’s welcoming of Jesus and his disciples into her home, continuing the theme of the earlier passage, although this time the travellers have arrived safely and haven’t been attacked by bandits. Martha is a model of hospitality, and looks after her guests: they’re hungry and thirsty after their travels. Martha puts her faith into practice. But she goes too far, and gets distracted by all the serving. She takes her eyes off Jesus. She forgets whom she is serving and why. However, she is not rebuked. Her service is valued.
Her sister Mary has chosen to sit at Jesus’ feet and listen to Him. Mary has chosen a good part, and is being nourished in her faith. However, the point is not simply to prefer the contemplative to the practical, or the spiritual to the physical. That would be Gnosticism. Instead we need to balance our physical needs with our spiritual ones. It is Mary who will anoint Jesus in Bethany just before His Passion. Thus faith and action need to be lived out together.
We are called to be generous as a church, both in our hospitality and our attentiveness to God. In our proclamation of the Good News, in our making the Word of God known, and inannouncing Christ, the hope of glory, through His Death and Resurrection.
As is so often the case in the Gospels it isn’t a case of ‘either…or’ but rather ‘both…and’. We need to be both active and contemplative, and always keep our eyes on Jesus, the centre of our faith, the great example of how to live a fully human life. Christians need to hospitable and welcoming, as well as prayerful. It’s something which lies at the heart of Rule of St Benedict. This begins by telling us to listen with the ear of the heart, and to welcome guests as we would welcome Christ, so that in all things God might be glorified. Prayer and service, love and contemplation, balancing physical and spiritual needs, is how God wants us to live. It is how we flourish. We are nourished at the Eucharist, so that we can live out our faith in our lives, in a balanced way. Ora et labora, pray and work, the monastic motto
Jesus’ teaching is that the way to show real hospitality is to pay attention to one’s guest, rather than just fussing to show hospitality. Instead of busyness, God tells us this morning that, like the Good Samaritan, we should be attentive to God and his message for us in the Gospel. In doing this we, like Mary will choose a good part. This choice has a moral dimension: in truly listening attentively to what God says to us, our actions and our character will be formed, helping our growth in holiness. Nourished by Word and Sacrament we progress in living out the virtues of faith, hope, and love0, which we received in our baptism, and prepare for our inheritance with the Saints in glory. We do not achieve this through prayer and contemplation alone, but by making our prayer and our work, all that we do and all that we are, a response to God and our neighbour. We are truly living in love, a love which is the nature of God and which binds together the persons of the Trinity, a love which transforms both us and our world. A love which we share so that all the world may sing the praises of to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just all might, majesty, glory, dominion, and power, now and forever.
16th Sunday of Year C – Mary and Martha
It is easy for us in the twenty-first century to forget just how difficult it was to travel in the past. And how important hospitality was. In a world without service stations, hotels, and only few inns, you would depend on the kindness of strangers offering you a place to refresh and recuperate before returning to the road.
In our first reading this morning, from Genesis, we see visitors arrive outside Abraham’s tent by the oaks of Mamre. It’s the scene pictured in the famous icon of the holy Trinity by Nicholai Rublev. And these are not just any visitors, but God in embodied form, which is quite surprising, and very uncommon in the Old Testament. Abraham called the three persons Lord, the One God. He offers them water to cleanse themselves, and bread to nourish them. Sarah, Abraham’s wife, takes three measures of flour. These we understand as representing faith, hope, and love, the virtues of the Christian life, which we receive in our baptism. Abraham takes a calf, which prefigures the sacrifice of Christ, the truly gentle one, who does not refuse the Cross. After the visitors have eaten, they promise that Sarah will have a son. In response to their hospitality, generosity and faithfulness, the patriarch and his wife are rewarded. Their kindness is repaid.
In this morning’s epistle, we see that for Paul our actions as Christians are firmly rooted in our relationship with God and our understanding of His will. As Abraham’s vision of angels in Genesis gives us the merest glimpse of what God is like, in the Letter to the Colossians we see that the person of Jesus Christ is the image of the Living God, in Him we can see both what God is really like, who God is and what God does.
This morning’s Gospel follows on directly from last week’s Parable of the Good Samaritan. It is another story about making a journey, but a more positive side of travelling is shown by Martha’s welcoming of Jesus and his disciples into her home, continuing the theme of the earlier passage, although this time the travellers have arrived safely and haven’t been attacked by bandits. Martha is a model of hospitality, and looks after her guests: they’re hungry and thirsty after their travels. Martha puts her faith into practice. But she goes too far, and gets distracted by all the serving. She takes her eyes off Jesus. She forgets whom she is serving and why. However, she is not rebuked. Her service is valued.
Her sister Mary has chosen to sit at Jesus’ feet and listen to Him. Mary has chosen a good part, and is being nourished in her faith. However, the point is not simply to prefer the contemplative to the practical, or the spiritual to the physical. That would be Gnosticism. Instead we need to balance our physical needs with our spiritual ones. It is Mary who will anoint Jesus in Bethany just before His Passion. Thus faith and action need to be lived out together.
We are called to be generous as a church, both in our hospitality and our attentiveness to God. In our proclamation of the Good News, in our making the Word of God known, and inannouncing Christ, the hope of glory, through His Death and Resurrection.
As is so often the case in the Gospels it isn’t a case of ‘either…or’ but rather ‘both…and’. We need to be both active and contemplative, and always keep our eyes on Jesus, the centre of our faith, the great example of how to live a fully human life. Christians need to hospitable and welcoming, as well as prayerful. It’s something which lies at the heart of Rule of St Benedict. This begins by telling us to listen with the ear of the heart, and to welcome guests as we would welcome Christ, so that in all things God might be glorified. Prayer and service, love and contemplation, balancing physical and spiritual needs, is how God wants us to live. It is how we flourish. We are nourished at the Eucharist, so that we can live out our faith in our lives, in a balanced way. Ora et labora, pray and work, the monastic motto
Jesus’ teaching is that the way to show real hospitality is to pay attention to one’s guest, rather than just fussing to show hospitality. Instead of busyness, God tells us this morning that, like the Good Samaritan, we should be attentive to God and his message for us in the Gospel. In doing this we, like Mary will choose a good part. This choice has a moral dimension: in truly listening attentively to what God says to us, our actions and our character will be formed, helping our growth in holiness. Nourished by Word and Sacrament we progress in living out the virtues of faith, hope, and love0, which we received in our baptism, and prepare for our inheritance with the Saints in glory. We do not achieve this through prayer and contemplation alone, but by making our prayer and our work, all that we do and all that we are, a response to God and our neighbour. We are truly living in love, a love which is the nature of God and which binds together the persons of the Trinity, a love which transforms both us and our world. A love which we share so that all the world may sing the praises of to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just all might, majesty, glory, dominion, and power, now and forever.
Saturday, 2 March 2019
The Sunday before Lent (Exodus 34:29-35, 2Cor 3:12-4:2, Luke 9:28-36)
“Three important scenes of Our Lord’s life took place on mountains. On one, He preached the Beatitudes, the practice of which would bring a Cross from the world; on the second, He showed the glory that lay beyond the Cross; and on the third, He offered Himself in death as a prelude to His glory and that of all who would believe in His name”
Fulton Sheen The Life of Christ 1970: 158
Our readings this morning have an important message: being close to God changes you. At its heart Christianity is a religion of transformation: in the Incarnation Christ became what we are, so that we might become what He is. God doesn’t want us to stay as we are. God is active in the world, through the power of His Holy Spirit. When we encounter Him in prayer, in reading Holy Scripture, and in the Sacraments, we are changed by that encounter. We become something which we were not before, our faith is deepened, we grow in holiness, and we reflect more fully the light of Him in whose image we were created.
In our reading from Exodus we see Moses’ encounter with God on Mt Sinai and its effects. The people of Israel are afraid to come near Moses because he reflects the divine radiance of God’s presence. He was to be veiled and covered because it was too much for them, they couldn’t cope. It is not so for us under the New Covenant. We have a hope, we can be bold, we can be near to Christ. He gives us the Eucharist, where we cannot only see the glory of God, but we can partake of His Very Self.
Our reading from Luke’s Gospel this morning begins on the eighth day, the first day of the Week, the day of the New Creation. Jesus and his closest apostles go up a mountain to pray. They go to be near God, and they experience the glory of God’s presence. Jesus talks with Moses and Elijah, often understood as the Law and the Prophets. They appear in glory, the glory of God’s presence, ‘and spoke of his departure, which he was to accomplish at Jerusalem’ (Lk 9:31 RSVCE) They speak of Christ’s exodus, his departure from this life, and, after His Resurrection, His Ascension and return to the Father. They talk about Christ’s death, as He has already to His disciples. They are looking to the Cross as the final definitive manifestation of God’s Glory. As we prepare to enter Lent, a time of prayer and fasting, we too look to the Cross, our only hope, and all salvation history points to it. From Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac, who is substituted by the ram in the thicket, a type of Christ, the Lamb of God, the bronze serpent lifted up in the desert, that those who look on it might live, the Suffering Servant in Isaiah, wounded for our transgressions, and bruised for our iniquities. Scripture points to the Cross, as the Transfiguration does, as a manifestation of God’s glory. It’s the culmination of salvation history. The Cross is the central point in the light of which everything makes sense. It gives us life, and joy, and fills us with love.
It may seem strange to see suffering and death as a manifestation of God’s Glory, but it is, because it demonstrates how much God loves us, and the healing and reconciliation which is achieved by it. It is painful, costly, and wonderful. The mystery of God’s love made manifest, for all to see. And because Christ is willing to undergo this for love of us, God can say, ‘This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!’ (Lk9:35 RSVCE). In Christ’s death we will see suffering transfigured by love, to make a new community of healing and reconciliation which is the Church. We, here, this morning, are part of the manifestation of God’s glory in the world. We have been changed by our encounter with God, in our Baptism and in the Eucharist, sharing His Death, and living His Risen life.
When God speaks at the Transfiguration He tells us three things about Jesus: he is the Son of God, he is loved and we should listen to him. He is God, he is loved, and filled with love, to pour it out upon us, we should listen to Him as He shows us how to have life in all its fulness. We should imitate Him. What he says and does should affect us and our lives, that’s why we are Christians. Because of this we have to be open to the possibility of being changed by God. It’s real. I know in my own life how God has been at work in it. I’ve changed and developed. It’s not easy or even pleasant, in fact it can be quite the opposite, and that’s the point. Being conformed to Christ, and sharing in His Passion is difficult, and costly, but we trust God to be at work in us, transforming us more and more into His likeness, preparing us for Heaven, and helping us to live as saints here in earth. The church takes sinners, and tries to make them saints, it’s what we’re for, it’s what we do, each and every one of us is called to this in our baptism.
That is why we are here this morning: to see the sacrifice here with our own eyes, to touch and to taste what God’s love is really like. We are here to go up the mountain and experience the glory of God, what God is really like, so that God’s love may transform us. We are given a foretaste of heaven, and prepared to be transformed by God. This is true glory: the glory of the Cross, the glory of suffering love lavished upon the world. The Transfiguration looks to the Cross to help us prepare for Lent, to begin a period of fasting and prayer, of spiritual spring cleaning, of getting back on track with God and each other, so that we may be prepared to celebrate Our Lord’s Passion, Death and Resurrection, to behold true majesty, true love and true glory: the kind that can change the world and last forever. It’s for eternity, not like the fading glory of the world, here today and gone tomorrow, but something everlasting, and wonderful.
So let us behold God’s glory, here, this morning, let us touch and taste God’s glory, let us prepare to be transformed by his love, through the power of His Holy Spirit, built up as living stones, a temple to God’s glory. Healed, restored, and reconciled. Given a foretaste of eternal life with him, so that God may take our lives and transform us, so that everything that we say, or think, or do, may proclaim him, let us tell the world about him, so that it too may believe and trust and have new life in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, to whom be ascribed, as is most right and just, all might, majesty, glory, dominion, and power, now and forever.
The Sunday before Lent (Exodus 34:29-35, 2Cor 3:12-4:2, Luke 9:28-36)
“Three important scenes of Our Lord’s life took place on mountains. On one, He preached the Beatitudes, the practice of which would bring a Cross from the world; on the second, He showed the glory that lay beyond the Cross; and on the third, He offered Himself in death as a prelude to His glory and that of all who would believe in His name”
Fulton Sheen The Life of Christ 1970: 158
Our readings this morning have an important message: being close to God changes you. At its heart Christianity is a religion of transformation: in the Incarnation Christ became what we are, so that we might become what He is. God doesn’t want us to stay as we are. God is active in the world, through the power of His Holy Spirit. When we encounter Him in prayer, in reading Holy Scripture, and in the Sacraments, we are changed by that encounter. We become something which we were not before, our faith is deepened, we grow in holiness, and we reflect more fully the light of Him in whose image we were created.
In our reading from Exodus we see Moses’ encounter with God on Mt Sinai and its effects. The people of Israel are afraid to come near Moses because he reflects the divine radiance of God’s presence. He was to be veiled and covered because it was too much for them, they couldn’t cope. It is not so for us under the New Covenant. We have a hope, we can be bold, we can be near to Christ. He gives us the Eucharist, where we cannot only see the glory of God, but we can partake of His Very Self.
Our reading from Luke’s Gospel this morning begins on the eighth day, the first day of the Week, the day of the New Creation. Jesus and his closest apostles go up a mountain to pray. They go to be near God, and they experience the glory of God’s presence. Jesus talks with Moses and Elijah, often understood as the Law and the Prophets. They appear in glory, the glory of God’s presence, ‘and spoke of his departure, which he was to accomplish at Jerusalem’ (Lk 9:31 RSVCE) They speak of Christ’s exodus, his departure from this life, and, after His Resurrection, His Ascension and return to the Father. They talk about Christ’s death, as He has already to His disciples. They are looking to the Cross as the final definitive manifestation of God’s Glory. As we prepare to enter Lent, a time of prayer and fasting, we too look to the Cross, our only hope, and all salvation history points to it. From Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac, who is substituted by the ram in the thicket, a type of Christ, the Lamb of God, the bronze serpent lifted up in the desert, that those who look on it might live, the Suffering Servant in Isaiah, wounded for our transgressions, and bruised for our iniquities. Scripture points to the Cross, as the Transfiguration does, as a manifestation of God’s glory. It’s the culmination of salvation history. The Cross is the central point in the light of which everything makes sense. It gives us life, and joy, and fills us with love.
It may seem strange to see suffering and death as a manifestation of God’s Glory, but it is, because it demonstrates how much God loves us, and the healing and reconciliation which is achieved by it. It is painful, costly, and wonderful. The mystery of God’s love made manifest, for all to see. And because Christ is willing to undergo this for love of us, God can say, ‘This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!’ (Lk9:35 RSVCE). In Christ’s death we will see suffering transfigured by love, to make a new community of healing and reconciliation which is the Church. We, here, this morning, are part of the manifestation of God’s glory in the world. We have been changed by our encounter with God, in our Baptism and in the Eucharist, sharing His Death, and living His Risen life.
When God speaks at the Transfiguration He tells us three things about Jesus: he is the Son of God, he is loved and we should listen to him. He is God, he is loved, and filled with love, to pour it out upon us, we should listen to Him as He shows us how to have life in all its fulness. We should imitate Him. What he says and does should affect us and our lives, that’s why we are Christians. Because of this we have to be open to the possibility of being changed by God. It’s real. I know in my own life how God has been at work in it. I’ve changed and developed. It’s not easy or even pleasant, in fact it can be quite the opposite, and that’s the point. Being conformed to Christ, and sharing in His Passion is difficult, and costly, but we trust God to be at work in us, transforming us more and more into His likeness, preparing us for Heaven, and helping us to live as saints here in earth. The church takes sinners, and tries to make them saints, it’s what we’re for, it’s what we do, each and every one of us is called to this in our baptism.
That is why we are here this morning: to see the sacrifice here with our own eyes, to touch and to taste what God’s love is really like. We are here to go up the mountain and experience the glory of God, what God is really like, so that God’s love may transform us. We are given a foretaste of heaven, and prepared to be transformed by God. This is true glory: the glory of the Cross, the glory of suffering love lavished upon the world. The Transfiguration looks to the Cross to help us prepare for Lent, to begin a period of fasting and prayer, of spiritual spring cleaning, of getting back on track with God and each other, so that we may be prepared to celebrate Our Lord’s Passion, Death and Resurrection, to behold true majesty, true love and true glory: the kind that can change the world and last forever. It’s for eternity, not like the fading glory of the world, here today and gone tomorrow, but something everlasting, and wonderful.
So let us behold God’s glory, here, this morning, let us touch and taste God’s glory, let us prepare to be transformed by his love, through the power of His Holy Spirit, built up as living stones, a temple to God’s glory. Healed, restored, and reconciled. Given a foretaste of eternal life with him, so that God may take our lives and transform us, so that everything that we say, or think, or do, may proclaim him, let us tell the world about him, so that it too may believe and trust and have new life in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, to whom be ascribed, as is most right and just, all might, majesty, glory, dominion, and power, now and forever.
Sunday, 18 October 2015
St Luke
One of the penalties of being religious is to be mocked and ridiculed. If Our Lord submitted Himself to the ribald humour of a degenerate Tetrarch, we may be sure that we, His followers, will not escape. The more Divine a religion is, the more the world will ridicule you, for the spirit of the world is the enemy of Christ