Votive Mass for the Peace of the City, Tuesday 9th August

Matthew 18:1-5, 10, 12-14

“Who is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven?” So the disciples ask Jesus. There is some evidence that people were quite exercised by this question at the time that Matthew’s Gospel was written. The Essene Community, a kind of monastic Jewish community which left us the Dead Sea Scrolls, held ceremonies and meals where the seating order was very important; they had a complex hierarchy in which where you sat prefigured the place you would have in the Kingdom of God, and no-one was to sit above or below their allotted place.

Now that’s all rather competitive. If someone is the greatest, then someone else is less great, and you have a pecking order defined by people constantly comparing themselves with others.  And that of course is a recipe for envy, rivalry, and even violence if social controls break down.

But Jesus showed them a child and said, this is the greatest. The point is not the innocence or simplicity of children, but their littleness. Children at the time were social nobodies, non-entities. They were not present at great functions or ceremonies, and no-one thought what their position might be in the Kingdom of Heaven. So Jesus’ answer subverts the question. Children in that world were not part of the rivalrous hierarchy that asked, “who is the greatest”. So the Kingdom of Heaven is not structured according to that question, either.

So what is the Kingdom like? Jesus tells us it is like a man owning a hundred sheep who leaves ninety-nine undefended on the hillside to search for one that has strayed.  That is an extravagant, reckless thing to do. The sheep owner doesn’t count what he’s got, doesn’t compare himself to others, doesn’t ask who is the greatest. For him, finding the one sheep that has strayed is more important than owning a hundred sheep.

That is not the logic of this world, which would have written off the loss of one sheep, because after all ninety-nine is nearly a hundred, you would still own nearly as much, you would still be in a good position to ask “who is the greatest”.  It is the logic of a kingdom which is ruled not by rivalry but by love.  Generous love that doesn’t count the cost but spends itself and risks all for the sake of one straying sheep.

As the Church we are always called to bear witness to that self-giving, generous love.  We are to live according to the values of God’s kingdom in the midst of a world of rivalry, envy and violence. We perhaps are rather aware of that contrast today.

I’m not going to try any amateur analysis of the violence that has erupted in our city and in other places in the last few days. But it is possible to say that the question, “who is the greatest?”, lurks behind many conflicts, wars and acts of violence. Envy and rivalry can create a sense of exclusion, of marginalisation, and violence often follows.

Now there can be no justification for the criminal violence we have seen on our streets. But part of the way that the Church bears witness to God’s Kingdom is by having a prophetic role. The Church is to be attentive to the scriptures and to what is going on in the world – both the movements of God’s spirit and the movements of human rivalry and sin. By so doing, the Church continues the ministry of Christ in discerning the signs of the times and pointing to their solution, to God’s Kingdom of justice, love and peace.

The prophets of old didn’t often have anything very comforting to say to their earthly cities.  The prophet Amos, in a scorching denunciation of the luxurious society of his times, said “Woe to those who are at ease in Zion!”. Woe, because the problem with those who are at ease in Zion is that often they’ve stopped noticing those who are not, and fail to see the simmering tensions beneath the surface. Jesus, in his day, wept over Jerusalem, and foretold its destruction, because it refused know the ways that made for peace.

But the hope we stand for is not founded on human strength or rivalry, on asking who is the greatest. Our hope is in God’s extravagantly generous love, the love that seeks us out when we are straying, the love that draws us beyond our rivalrous desires and gives us a place in his Kingdom of justice, love and peace. To that Kingdom, in this world, in this city, we bear witness, today and every day.

Sermon at Parish Mass Trinity 7 2011

1 Kings 19:9, 11-13

Romans 9:1-5

Matthew 14:22-33

At the British Museum at the moment there’s an exhibition called “Treasures of Heaven”, saints, relics and devotion in mediaeval Europe. It’s an exhibition mainly of reliquaries, containers for relics, and many of them are superb examples. Gilded and jewelled shrines made to contain saint’s bones or objects associated with Jesus and Mary and so on.

A few weeks ago I gave a talk to another parish in our area about the cult of relics, as a preparation for their visit to the exhibition. What struck me was their response. Quite a lot of people wanted to know how you could be sure that a relic really was what it was said to be. How do you know that a particular bone really does come from St Hubert, or a particular splinter of wood from the Cross on which Jesus was crucified?

To ask that is to ask a very modern question of a pre-modern object. Living in the 21^st Century we are, whether we like it or not, children of the enlightenment, heirs of the scientific revolution, thoroughly modern in our outlook and the questions we ask. Our approach to knowledge is based on evidence and proof, because it seems that that’s how most kinds of knowledge are handled in our world.

When mediaeval people approached a relic it was not proof, but belief, that invested the object with meaning. It was belief that made it a bridge between their own world and the heavenly world of Christ and the saints. This wasn’t pretence, but a different way of approaching reality than the one we are used to. Some of those mediaeval relics would indeed have met modern standards of proof, but some of them would not. But to judge them by modern standards as “fakes” is really to misread them, to misunderstand what the object was for.

A similar consideration applies when we read Bible stories. We need to remember that we are, unavoidably, modern people reading pre-modern texts. Stories of the miraculous can seem particularly problematic, such as the story we read today, of Jesus walking on the water, or the story we read last week of the feeding of the five thousand. How are we to interpret these stories?

For some, the first approach is to ask, what are the facts? Some Bible scholars in the 20^th Century took a rather sceptical approach to stories like this. Commentaries were published suggesting that, when Jesus had fed the five thousand, what really happened was that the moral force of his teaching persuaded the people to take out and share the hidden stashes of food they’d brought along with them. Likewise when Jesus walked on water he was really walking on a hidden sandbank.

The problem with explanations like that is that they tend to rob the story of any significance. We’re no longer inhabiting the story and listening to what it’s got to say to us. We’ve become focussed on what the story is not focussed on: skepticism, evidence, proof.

Now, for what it’s worth, much contemporary Biblical scholarship is rather more robust and recognises the weakness of trying to explain away the miraculous. The stories of the feeding of the five thousand and Jesus walking on water are told in all four Gospels. These represent four different early Christian communities – and one of them, Mark, is very early. It is almost inconceivable that there were not some extraordinary events behind these stories, events which were remembered and told in those communities, the first generation of disciples.

But equally we need to recognise that it is the telling of the stories in the community which gives them meaning. These stories are not meant to be simply a reporting of facts from the past. As with last week’s story of the feeding of the five thousand, the story of Jesus walking on the lake is told in a symbolic way. There are references to the Old Testament and to the situation of the early Christian community which wrote this story in its gospel. All of them are references full of meaning, uncovering hidden depths.

First, Jesus descends from on high and walks on the water in the dark. It is night. And this recalls the first creation story in Genesis, where we are told that in the darkness of primordial chaos the Spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters, bringing creation and life into being.

The crossing of the sea of Galilee also recall the story of the Exodus and the crossing of the red sea, and some of the psalms and the prophets in fact speak of God walking on the sea ahead of the Children of Israel, parting the waves for them.

Both of these Old Testament allusions say that it is God who walks on the sea, and the meaning is clear: Jesus is doing what God does. This meaning is brought out more clearly in the greeting Jesus gives to his disciples. Our translation this morning says, “Courage! It is I!”, but in the Greek he actually says “Do not be afraid! I am!”. Jesus uses the Divine name, the name of Yahweh, I Am Who I Am, to greet his disciples.

As with the feeding of the five thousand last week, the meaning is that God is in Jesus, feeding his people in the wilderness, walking on the sea, bringing about a new exodus, a new liberation for God’s people.

But the people in this week’s story are not the vast multitude fed with the loaves and fishes. They are the small, harried group of disciples, desperately trying to row to shore in their little insecure boat, battling through the night against wind and waves and seeming to make no progress.

Sometimes being a Christian can feel wonderfully comforting and reassuring. Like the multitude fed by Jesus in the wilderness, we are conscious of the great family of the Church throughout the world, that great communion and fellowship, celebrating the one Eucharist, knowing that we are fed by Jesus and have more than enough. At other times we may feel more like that little group in the boat. Alone, battling in the dark, making no headway against the storms.

The community in which Matthew’s Gospel was written may well have felt like that much of the time. There are a lot of references to persecution in Matthew, which suggests that this may have been something that community was familiar with. And perhaps it wasn’t a very big community. If so, this story of the little embattled group in the boat would have had a particular resonance for them. As it may, indeed, for us.

In the West we are unlikely to face real persecution for our faith. The worst we can expect is probably just to be ignored and marginalised as irrelevant, unlike our brothers and sisters in some parts of the world.

But we all from time to time know what it is like to feel that we’re struggling on in the dark and making no progress. We all know, like Peter, what it is like to feel that the waves are rising up around us.

The storms and waves that surround us might be those of anxiety or illness, grief or weariness. It matters not. However dark the night, however far out from shore we may seem to be, Jesus is with us. As with his people of old, he is God, our liberator, mighty to save. In whatever situation we are in, he says to us, “Do not be afraid! I am!”. His hand reaches out to save us. If, in faith, we keep our eyes on him, we will not sink beneath the waves.

The meaning of this story spans the years. Jesus is not past and gone, but living now; he is not trapped in expressions and understandings of the past; he is at work today and speaks to us today, in our modern world. We meet him, risen from the dead, in word and sacrament. This story is as meaningful and relevant to us as it was to our brothers and sisters who first heard it nearly two thousand years ago. As it must be, for it is a story of Jesus Christ, who is our God and our saviour, the same, yesterday, today, and for ever.

The Church teaches that the Bible is inspired by God. That doesn’t mean that it’s an infallible text dictated from on high, but it does mean that the Holy Spirit lives and breathes – inspires – through these texts. It does mean that there is something in the Bible that has the power to open us up to a living relationship with the risen Christ. So we can read a story like today’s, from a very different time and outlook, and find it still fresh, still new, speaking to us in our own context and turning our gaze to Jesus, who hand is stretched out to save whatever the storms of life may be for us.

Weekday Mass, Tuesday 2nd August

Matthew 15:1-2, 10-14

We’re getting used to appearances of the Pharisees in Matthew’s Gospel. They’re a bit like the bad guys in pantomimes, you know you have to get ready to boo when they come on stage.

These appearances of the Pharisees in Matthew have a dramatic function – they are brought on to the scene to present the counter-argument to what Jesus is saying and doing.

The Pharisees in today’s reading are “shocked”, we are told, at what Jesus says. Actually they are more than shocked, they are scandalized. A scandal is literally a stumbling block, an obstacle in your path that you can’t draw back from and can’t get round. A scandal, in the Gospels, is a serious offence that you become obsessed by and can’t let go of.

What offends the Pharisees in this passage is Jesus saying that external observances don’t matter – things like washing hands, dietary laws, Sabbath observance and so on. Instead what matters is what comes out of you, what’s in your heart.

The ritual observances of the Jewish law were of course a sign of belonging. You did these things because you belonged with the community, with the people, who did these things. But it was important to get them the right way round. According to Jesus, and later St Paul, the ritual observances were what you did as a sign that you accepted God’s generous and loving inclusion of you in his people. God’s action towards you was free and unmerited, and came first. The observance of the ritual law was your response to God’s action.

Instead, for some people, the ritual law had become a means of earning God’s favour, of buying their way in. God’s action followed their observance of the law, it was, they thought, God’s response to their action.

More than that, it was also a used as a sign of being different from other people. If you ticked all the boxes in the ritual law, then you knew that you were alright, and all those other people who didn’t, weren’t. You were an insider, they were outsiders. The law was a means of defining yourself over against other people. You’ll recall the Pharisee in the temple who prayed “I thank you that I am not like other men, and in particular not like this tax collector here”.

Jesus undermines that completely by teaching that what matters is what is in your heart, what comes from within. Because if you look into your heart and are honest, you know that you’re just the same as everyone else. All kinds of unclean thoughts lurk within and emerge in our lives: pride, violence, covetousness, lust. Suddenly there is no tick box which tells us that we’re different from other people. It’s no longer possible to define ourselves as insiders to God’s people, because we can no longer identify outsiders who are not like us.

This is what offends the Pharisees in this reading – their whole means of defining themselves and knowing that they are good and righteous, that they “belong” and other people don’t, has been undermined.

What is left then, if we can’t rely on our own construction of ourselves? Grace and mercy, and the love of God. It is within ourselves that we need to be converted, to be freed from our uncleanness. And God sends his Spirit into our hearts to reveal to us our need of grace, and to make us clean.

God, by his Spirit, will free us from the self-righteous identity which we construct by defining ourselves as different from other people. God, by his Spirit, makes us one in Christ. God welcomes us and all the other unworthy and unclean sinners into his holy people. Our belonging depends solely on his generous love and mercy, freely given to all.

Sermon at Parish Mass Trinity 6 2011

Isaiah 55:1-5

Romans 9:1-5

Matthew 14:13-21

One version of the story goes like this:

Wilfred the Hairy, who was Count of Barcelona, Urgell and Besalú at the end of the 9^th Century, had fought for the independence of his territories, which were later to be known as Catalunya. As he lay mortally wounded on a battlefield in Southern Spain, he asked his ally, the King of France, to give him a flag, a badge of honour he could leave to his descendants. The King dipped four fingers in Wilfred’s blood and drew them across his golden shield, thus creating the Catalan flag: yellow with four red stripes.

I’ve been spending part of my summer holiday visiting Barcelona, which is the regional capital of Catalunya. After years of repression under Franco, the Catalan identity has bounced back stronger than ever. Catalan is the first language spoken, the Catalan flag is everywhere, and the story of Wilfred the Hairy is still told.

History and legend are not simply facts recalled from the past with no power in the present. The story of Count Wilfred is part of the identity of the Catalan people; in telling the story they remember who they are now, it evokes a sense of belonging and shared destiny. Re-membering, in this sense, means rediscovering membership, entering anew into an identity with a community which is not just something in the past but a present reality.

It’s useful to remember, when we read the Bible, that the stories we read there have much the same kind of function. When we read the Old Testament we are reading the story of the Jewish People, the story of God’s providence and care which formed the destiny of that particular people, the people who were rescued from slavery in Egypt and received God’s revelation through the law and the prophets.

The telling of those stories in the Jewish community was and is a part of what establishes that sense of identity. The scriptures were not written to be books for private study, but to be read aloud in the assembly of the people. That wasn’t simply for instruction about righteous living and good behaviour, although that was part of it of course. Gathering together and telling the stories anew were an act of collective re-membering, re-establishing their identity as the people God chose for his own.

The early Christians continued telling those stories in their own gatherings, discovering new meanings in the light of Jesus. They also added their own stories, memories of the life of Jesus and his teachings, and the teaching of those who were closest to him in his earthly life. After a few decades these were codified and written down, forming the material we now call the Gospels. And the Gospels, like the earlier Jewish scriptures, were meant to be read aloud in the assembly of the people.

The Christian assembly, from the very beginning, was the Eucharist, the gathering for the breaking of bread. On the first day of every week, the day that Jesus rose from the dead, his followers gathered to do what he had commanded, telling the story of the last supper, sharing bread and drinking wine, his Body and his Blood, the memorial of his death until he comes again.

The Gospels were written to be read aloud at the Eucharist, to be part of our re-membering, our belonging in the people of God whom Jesus has called and established. It’s therefore very significant that all four Gospels contain the story of the feeding of the five thousand. It is an identity story of the people of God.

Firstly, it recalls the exodus from Egypt, God’s deliverance of the Jewish people from slavery. They left Egypt, you’ll recall, and were led by Moses into the desert, the wilderness of Sinai. Today’s Gospel reading says literally in Greek that Jesus went out into a desert, followed by the crowd. Now in fact the area round the Sea of Galilee is not a desert, it is a fertile area with lots of small towns dotted around. But Matthew wants us to get the meaning that Jesus is like Moses, leading God’s people out into the desert.

Then, Jesus feeds the people miraculously in the desert, just as Moses had called on God in the desert and God had sent the manna from heaven to feed the children of Israel.

But this story of the feeding of the five thousand also refers to the Eucharist – and remember that this is a story meant to be told at the Eucharist. In the desert, Jesus took bread, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to the disciples – exactly the same words as are used at the last supper.

The earliest Eucharistic liturgies we know about, from the early second century, use a peculiar Greek word to describe the portion of the bread given in Holy Communion and reserved for the sick – klasmaton. And this is exactly the same word that the Gospels use for the fragments of bread gathered up at the end of the feeding of the five thousand. This story of miraculous feeding, and the Eucharistic liturgy, use the same language. So, in the feeding of the five thousand, we have both the Exodus, and the Eucharist.

The ancient Israelites were freed by the Exodus from slavery in Egypt. What are Jesus’ disciples freed from?

Immediately before this passage, Matthew tells the story of the death of John the Baptist. On Herod’s birthday, he gave a banquet for his friends. A banquet of debauched entertainment, poisoned with envy, hatred, and malice, desire spiralling out of control and culminating in murder.

By placing Herod’s banquet immediately before the banquet which Jesus provides, Matthew makes the contrast clear. Herod’s banquet represents the old order of sin and death. Jesus gives the banquet of compassion, love and life, a banquet in which there is no rivalry or envy because there is always more than enough for everyone.

And this is precisely what is told, and enacted, and becomes real, when we gather to celebrate the Eucharist. The Last Supper, when Jesus instituted the Eucharist, was of course a Passover, a meal enacting and re-telling the Exodus, making real in the present God’s saving acts for his people of old.

So, too, the Eucharist enacts, re-tells, makes real, God’s saving acts in Jesus. His death and resurrection are our liberation from sin and death, and our entry into new life. The Eucharist is our re-membering as the people of God, in which we become what we receive, the Body of Christ.

Now, how many people were fed by Jesus with the loaves and fishes? Five thousand men, not counting the women and children, because, of course, in those days they didn’t count women and children. So, very many more than five thousand, then. It was a huge multitude.

Well, here we are, celebrating the Eucharist, entering once more into the identity that Jesus gives us as the people of God. But there aren’t five thousand of us here.

In the parish of Old Saint Pancras, there are about 26,000 people, more or less. And most of them aren’t with us here in Church. But we will be with them, as our neighbours, friends, work colleagues, the people we meet as we go about our daily lives this week.

Today we re-hear the story of our identity, the story of God’s saving work in Jesus, and we re-member our place in the people he has claimed for his own.

But that crowd in the desert wasn’t a select few. It was an enormous multitude, everyone and anyone, all sorts and conditions. Everyone has a place in the story of salvation which we tell. Everyone can find, if they will, that they too are called out of the old order of sin and death to new life in Christ.

Our challenge is to live the story we tell in a way that makes a difference not just to us but to those around us. It is to live the story in a way which rekindles the imagination of a society which, perhaps, has forgotten that there might be any other way of living than that old order of sin and death. Our challenge is to live the story that makes love real in a world where love has grown cold.

Does that seem too much of a task for our meagre resources? Fear not. For the story is the story of Jesus, who brings abundance out of our poverty. Five loaves and two fishes were enough to feed the multitude; our own poor love, if we will offer it to him, he will transform. And it will be enough, and more besides. 

Sermon at Parish Mass Trinity 1 2011

Jeremiah 28:5-9

Romans 6:12-end

Matthew 10:40-end

In the news this week was the story that many people in Greece are so worried about the future of their county’s economy, and even the survival of the Euro, that they have been converting all their savings into gold coins, to provide – they hope – some security in case their economy collapses.

Economic systems are the structures in which payment and reward can happen, the transactions of everyday life. The Gospel reading we’ve just heard, and the extract from Paul’s letter to the Romans before that, both talk about payment and reward. Both those readings are in fact the conclusions of much longer passages. Matthew talks about how the disciples of Jesus will be persecuted by human beings but rewarded by God. And Paul compares the result of living according to sin with the free gift of life which God offers.

What both Matthew and Paul do in these passages is to compare two different economic systems: not the Euro and the Pound, but something much more fundamental and different: the human economy, and God’s economy.

The human economy is founded in limited resources. There’s only so much to go round. Payment and wages are transactions carefully measured out and checked, for labour or goods of equivalent value. And the natural human thing is to try and get the best value for what you’ve got, and to hang on to as much as possible for yourself.

In the human economy, even life itself is a limited resource, not something you want to squander or give away recklessly, but something to eke out little by little. You’ve only got so much, and then death puts an end to the little you have. This economy, this imagination of the way things are, leads to rivalry and violence. The human economy, governed by the fear of death, ends up being ruled by death.

God’s economy is completely different. God does not deal in measured out payment and reward, or in limited resources. God gives, and gives in unmeasured generosity, poured out and overflowing. Generosity, in fact, is God’s very nature, a generosity which is love, continually pouring itself out without being diminished. God’s economy gives life without limit. Our very being flows from God who is the continual loving act of creating and giving.

So Paul concludes his argument in Romans with the famous verse, “the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

In other words, what I think Paul is saying is that you can choose to stay trapped in the human economy, bounded by death and ruled by rivalry and violence. Or you can choose to receive the free gift of life from God made known in Jesus. God’s gift is to live according to God’s economy of generosity and love that knows no limit. And this is not something we earn, because if you begin to live according to God’s economy, then you are leaving behind the old way of bargaining with death, of trading off the little you’ve got to try and get something in return.

The whole Christian life consists of living from God’s generosity, from his free gift, revealed to the world in Jesus, who is both the model of God’s generosity and that generosity itself, God incarnate, giving himself that we might live.

At this time of year we celebrate Corpus Christi, God’s gift of the Eucharist, the Mass and Holy Communion which Christians celebrate every Sunday.

The Mass was of course instituted by Jesus at the last supper, with the words and actions which the priest repeats in the Eucharistic Prayer. Because the Eucharist is a gift of God’s generosity, it overflows with meaning and depth, with grace and life which are inexhaustible.

Firstly, under the signs of bread and wine, Jesus gave his body and blood to his disciples, to be, for ever, the sacrament which makes present and effective his saving death on the cross. The Passover meal commemorated God’s saving actions in the past, when the Children of Israel were liberated from slavery in Egypt, but it wasn’t just calling to mind stuff that happened long ago, like watching a history programme. Rather, the Passover really made those events of the past present and effective for Jewish worshippers in their own time and place.

Jesus, by instituting the Eucharist in the context of the Passover, was establishing a new Passover, a new making present and effective of God’s saving work, this time the saving work of Jesus Christ for all people in his death and resurrection.

Secondly, the Eucharist establishes a new people, the holy people of God, who by living with Christ’s life actually become his body in the world. "Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me." We become what we receive, the body of Christ. We are, through the Eucharist, members of Christ, joined to him as our head. Jesus remakes the human race, freeing us from the old economy of sin and death and enabling us to live with God’s life and love and limitless generosity. We are, together, made into a new human nature, a “new Adam” in Christ. 

Thirdly, Jesus truly gives himself in this sacrament. He who is the truth, who cannot deceive, took bread and wine and said, “this is my body… this is my blood”. And the faith of Christians has always received those words as meaning what they say. At the consecration in the Eucharist the body and blood of Christ become truly present under the outward signs of bread and wine, together with his soul and Divinity. Jesus our risen Lord is truly present in the Blessed Sacrament. Not indeed in a way perceptible to the senses, but faith believes nor questions how.

From the very first Christians reserved a portion of the consecrated Bread to give holy communion to those who could not be present at the celebration of Mass, such as the sick or those in prison. Just as we do here in the tabernacle in the corner.

But Jesus is truly present in the Blessed Sacrament all the time, not just when It is being received in communion. So reservation of the Sacrament gave rise to devotion and worship of that special sacramental presence of Christ, even apart from the celebration of Mass.

It’s important to remember that Jesus did not institute the Eucharist so he could sit in a tabernacle being worshipped, he instituted it so that people could receive him and be transformed into his body and live with his life. But nevertheless, the generosity of God overflows all boundaries. Devotion to that sacramental presence is not an essential part of the Eucharist, but belongs to the overflow of God’s generosity and love. God does not give just enough, but more than we can ask or imagine.

The gift of the Real Presence is one that has inspired love and devotion down the ages. Most days when I come into this church there is someone here praying in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament. Whether people realise it or not, Jesus is here in his love, his presence warming cold hearts, converting sinners, comforting the troubled, setting the hearts of secret saints ablaze. And always drawing us to himself, drawing us to that most intimate and necessary union with him in Holy Communion.

So we will celebrate that gift today, God’s generous love in the Eucharist which overflows and spends itself without ever being diminished, his presence and his very self, and essence all Divine.

Homily, Wednesday 8 June 2011

John 17:11-19

We are getting near to the end of the long Last Supper scene in John’s Gospel.  We have had three chapters of profound teaching about the need to abide in Jesus as he abides in the Father, teaching about the gift of the Holy Spirit who will abide in our hearts.

And now at the end Jesus prays for his disciples, not only those in the upper room but all his disciples throughout time, the church in every age, which includes us.

This is called the “priestly prayer of Christ”: Jesus prays as the High Priest whom God has consecrated and sent into the world, and it is a prayer of consecration.  Jesus consecrates himself, as both priest and sacrificial victim. He is the one who reveals God as priest, and who does so in the midst of the world’s violence and envy, as victim. And this is the expression of the mission Jesus has received from the Father, which is to make the Father known.

But Jesus also consecrates his disciples, his disciples in every age. Through that consecration Jesus shares his priesthood and his mission with the Church. The Church is to be the visible sign of that mission in the world until the end of time, the Church, like Jesus, is to make the Father known.

By the consecration which Jesus imparts to the Church we are sanctified, set apart for the work of God, and made into a holy priesthood. The gift of the Holy Spirit in our hearts through baptism stamps that mark and character on us for ever. We are to be God’s holy people to make the world holy.

The gift of the Holy Spirit also is the gift of unity. Jesus prays that his disciples may be one in the same way as he and the Father are one. This unity is the discovery that our true life, our identity and our very being, are found in God. And this is what the mission of Christ in the world is about, the mission we now share: to make God known, to make known to the world that its true life is found in God and not elsewhere.

The world is caught in the grip of a destructive illusion that life is something we create for ourselves. The autonomous ego, the self-made person, promise life where life cannot be found. The gift of God is true life, life in the Holy Spirit which is the life of God himself.

And we are sent as Christ was, set in this world although we are not of the world because our true life is found in God. Our mission is to make God known, to bring others into that true life which is God’s gift.

Christ’s priestly prayer of consecration is a prayer for his Church for all time. That act of consecration is made real and present for us in every Eucharist. Here Christ himself, through the ministry of the priests he has called and sent, makes himself present, the consecrated priest and victim.  Ordinary stuff, bread and wine, is changed by the power of that consecration into his body and blood. Ordinary people, you and me, are changed into Christ’s body, his Church, the holy priesthood he has consecrated and sent into the world.

Here we discover again the true source of our life, the Holy Spirit who is the Father’s gift, the Spirit who makes us one in Jesus and in the Father. Here we are consecrated and sent, God’s holy people to make the world holy, to make known God’s name.

Sermon at Parish Mass Easter 6 2011

Acts 17:22-31

1 Peter 3:13-end

John 14:15-21

In the Autumn of 1831 a Russian pilgrim, called Nicholas Motovilov, made his way deep into the Siberian forests, to a remote monastery, to see a famous monk called Father Seraphim, later known to the world as Saint Seraphim of Sarov.

Seraphim had lived as a hermit in the forest for many years and had a reputation as a spiritual guide. Nicholas wanted to see if the saint by his prayers could cure him of a spreading paralysis. Which indeed he did. But Nicholas kept going back again and again to see Saint Seraphim. The love, joy, and peace that radiated from the person of the humble monk kept drawing him back.

On one occasion the saint spoke to Nicholas of the true aim of the Christian life. Nicholas had asked many people about this, and from them got the impression that the life of a Christian was primarily about going to church, doing good, or following the example and teaching of Christ. No, said Saint Seraphim.

The real aim of the Christian life is the acquisition of the Holy Spirit. The third person of the Holy Trinity, the Spirit of God, taking up his dwelling in us, and uniting us with God. That is the real aim of the Christian life. Everything else, prayer, fasting, the sacraments, works of charity, are means to this end.

This was a surprising answer for the time as most of the Church, east and west, was very much focussed on external activity and had rather forgotten about the depths within the human heart. The depths where God must dwell if we are to do the works of God. Indeed in those days it was possible to talk about the Holy Spirit as the “forgotten person of the Trinity”.

But this is what Jesus is talking about in today’s Gospel. The gift of the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, is promised to those who love Jesus. He is the Spirit of Truth, and he will abide in us. That’s one of John’s favourite words, abide. It means a real, rooted, eternal presence, the place where you truly live. Jesus abides in the Father. And we will abide in Jesus. How? By the Holy Spirit abiding in us.

Now God is infinite life and love, and gives himself without limit. If that is the case, and God gives his Spirit to us to dwell in our hearts, should we not all be made saints straight away?

Well, in a sense, we are. The New Testament talks about all believers as “saints”, and our bodies as the temples of the Holy Spirit. We are made objectively holy by the fact of God dwelling in our hearts.  There's a lovely story about Mother Teresa, when a journalist at some public occasion, wanting a story, thrust a microphone into her face and asked, “Mother Teresa, are you a saint?” She looked at him and smiled. “Yes”, she said, “and so are you.” 

But alongside that we have to admit that God’s holiness manifests itself to a greater or lesser degree in the lives of Christians. When we stop and examine our consciences, we know that we are very far from perfect, and at every Mass we confess our sins. How can this be, if the Spirit of God dwells within us?

It is true that God gives himself infinitely, and holds nothing back. What limits us is our own capacity to receive that gift. The work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts is a slow, patient transformation. The slow undoing of our sinful desires, which close us in on ourselves. The slow expansion of our hearts to God’s Spirit. So by degrees the Holy Spirit transforms us more and more into his dwelling place.

This does not happen to us automatically, or without our co-operation. We have to align our wills to the will of God so we can allow the Holy Spirit to transform us. How then can we allow God to enlarge our hearts and fill us with his presence?

There is no new or sensational answer to this. Pray, receive the sacraments, live according to the teaching of Christ. Do this, and God will dwell in you in all his fullness, uniting you with him, transforming you into himself.

This requires, of course, a certain amount of discipline. In fact it needs that old fashioned and off-putting word, asceticism. But asceticism just means “training”. Like athletic training. If you want to get fit, you go to the gym or you go for a run, frequently and regularly. Whether you feel like it or not. Whether it’s sunny or raining. You need a dedicated, disciplined commitment to make progress.

And so it is in the Christian life. The Eucharist which we participate in Sunday by Sunday, if not more frequently, renews our abiding in Christ and his in us. Renews his divine life, the gift of his Spirit, in our hearts.

Our study of the scriptures, and particularly of the teaching of Christ in the gospels, is a constant means by which we are inspired and corrected and align our wills to the will of God, leading us from sin into holiness.

And prayer. Perhaps this is where most attention is needed in the Church today, certainly in the West. The culture that surrounds us, in which we are caught up whether we like it or not, is so busy and distracted, so frantic.

The gift of the Holy Spirit is given in our hearts, deep within ourselves. And we need to dwell in ourselves if we are to receive that gift. Our prayer life needs to be disciplined, committed, and above all to be built around a core of silence and stillness in which we are centred and learn to abide within ourselves, for that is where God abides, too.

The ancient practice of Christian meditation has undergone a remarkable renewal in the Church in recent times, and many people have found it very helpful. It simply is sitting in stillness and silence, and repeating a prayer word or phrase over and over again, focussing on the prayer word in the middle of the noisy distractions that our minds throw up all the time.

It’s simple but is hard work nonetheless. One Indian sage said that we all have a tree full of chattering monkeys in our heads, and when you try to be silent and still for even a short time you become aware of that.

The point of meditation is not to make the monkeys be quiet, because they won’t be, but to focus on a stillness and a silence that is deeper than all the noise and distraction. It is not about falling asleep, but about an interior waking up, about developing an alert, focussed awareness of God who dwells in those silent depths.

Those who have practiced this for a long time begin to show in their outward lives the presence of God who is in their hearts. As St Paul says in Galatians, “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” When someone is full of the Holy Spirit these fruits become evident to all they meet, spreading the grace and work of the Spirit among others. Saint Seraphim, who was himself an example of someone transformed by the Holy Spirit, said, “find peace in your heart, and thousands will be saved around you”. That was true for him, and by God’s grace it can be true for us too.