St Mathias, Richmond

Patronal Festival.

Our Bishop, Christopher Chesssun, The Bishop of Southwark, has announced his retirement and no doubt the Crown Nominations committee is already sifting over possible successors for the job. We would I think judge it odd of they decided on two possibilities and then drew lots as to which should go forward to Downing Street and the King. Yet that, as we heard in todays reading from the Acts of the Apostles is how Mattias became one of the twelve. They selected two suitable candidates, and by that they meant people who had been with Jesus in his earthly ministry, prayed, and then left it to God to choose by casting lots. They thought that by this they could ensure that the choice was not just theirs but Gods. Was it just luck that he was chosen? Fate? Or providence?

Consider your own life for a moment. You had no choice over your parents, your genetic makeup, your early upbringing. Fate? Or Providence? As you consider how your life has developed, think how many alternate lives you could have led if you had made different decisions at crucial points. Those many roads not taken. There is a great mystery is there not about your life and my life. But whatever language you use, luck, fate or providence you are who you are now, the unique you who has never existed before and will never exist again.

St Paul says we are God’s poiema, in the Greek or in a modern translation, ‘God’s work of art’ (Ephesians 2.10). Think of a work of art for a moment perhaps one of those round this church at the moment. The artist has a particular material to work with, stone, wood, paint, wool or whatever. They bring all their creativity into play to produce something which is fresh, arresting and often beautiful. So God works with us; with  our genetic inheritance, our early formation, our life experiences, to create the unique you and me.

But we are not just passive pieces of stone or canvas to be worked on. We are called to be co-creators. We too have a spark of creativity in us. I love Kipling’s view of heaven where everyone is depicted as an artist

And only The Master shall praise us, and only The Master shall blame;

And no one shall work for money, and no one shall work for fame,

But each for the joy of the working, and each, in his separate star,

Shall draw the Thing as he sees It for the God of Things as They are!

There is a spark of creativity in all of us which we can express in different ways. It is not just in painting or sculpture or tapestry. For some it is expressed in gardening, even if it is just a window box, or flower arranging, carpentry or cooking. Above all, and in and through all, we are called to be co-creators with God in shaping our own lives and the lives of others into that work of art which God has in mind for us.

People often say that ‘Life is a lottery’, and when you look at your life you may judge you have had good luck or bad luck or a mixture of the two. But what St Paul says is  ‘ We know that all things work together^[r] for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose’ ( Romans 8.28). Where you are now, in the circumstances you are in now, there is a creative response to be made as we seek to discern and respond to the creative purpose of God.

What does it mean in practical terms to live creatively? First, simply being more aware of the present moment, being fully in it, all that the modern world means by mindfulness. In fact of course Christian teachers have long taught mindfulness. Pierre de Caussade called it ‘The sacrament of the present moment’. In this moment, in every moment God is present and his will is to be discerned. Some lines of T. S. Eliot at the end of Little Gidding put it wonderfully well:

Here now, here, now, always

A condition of complete simplicity

(costing not less than everything)

Living creatively is quite compatible with routine. I love routine, I could not live without it, indeed my motto is ‘Find a good rut and get stuck in it’. But a routine can be a dreary trudge you struggle to get through -  or an alert creative response to life at that moment, whether it is doing the washing up or sweeping a room. Routine can be the vehicle for a heightened awareness of what one is doing and for a more creative, loving response to life at that moment.

Yet perhaps sometimes we are called to do something new, something differently and Lent, which begins on Wednesday, is a good time for asking that question. God does not let sleeping Christians lie. This life is for a process of growth. Made in the image of God we are called to grow into his likeness. Born to pursue our own interests we are called to grow into an awareness of others and their concerns, and into the knowledge of the Supreme Other. There may something new we want to do, not as a burden but as a creative response to life in accord with God’s good purpose.

The late Malcolm Muggeridge once made a film with Mother Teresa of Calcutta. Before they began she said to him ‘Now let us do something beautiful for God.’ It is a good motto for the start of Lent as, through grace. we are shaped into God’s work of art.

Second Sunday before Lent

St Mary’s, Barnes, 8 am

Matthew 6. 25-end

Anxiety is part of life, and there is no one who has not felt anxious about someone or something. We get anxious about our own health or that of someone we love; Children -  and their parents -  get anxious about exams. We get anxious about arriving on time, or about going to a special event. Today’s reading from the Sermon on the Mount, one of the most famous passages in the bible, addresses the issue directly.

When the gospel writers came to put their material together they often clustered several sayings on the same theme in one passage, even though they might have had different original contexts. So in this passage there are a couple of pieces of  what we might call worldly practical wisdom included.

One is ‘Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit to his stature’. In short there are some things you simply cannot change and you have to put up with. There is no point in being anxious. You  simply have to  accept that things are as they are.

The other worldly advice is:

‘Take therefore no thought for the morrow…sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.’ In short, concentrate on the present and stop worrying about the future.

The heart of the message however is much more positive and theological than these two sayings. Jesus tells us to look around and see God’s providence at work in nature. As we walk about  Barnes we see the berries ripe and red for the birds winter feed. They have their food . You are of more worth than the birds, says Jesus. Then we are brought up short by great sheets of crocuses coming up on the green or in Church Road. Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. They are glorious even though they last such a short time -  so how much more will God clothe you. He knows what you need. And so Jesus comes to the heart of the matter. ‘Seek ye first the kingdom of God’ or as the Revised English Bible puts its:

Set your mind on God’s kingdom and his justice before everything else, and all the rest will come to you as well.

It is a saying that asks us to look at the priorities of our life. Get that right and be trustful, not anxious.

Yet all get anxious at times, and some people suffer from hyper anxiety. What practically can we do at such times? Many have found the prayer of St Teresa of Avila helpful.

Let nothing disturb you,
Let nothing frighten you,
All things are passing away:
God never changes.
Patience obtains all things.
Whoever has God lacks nothing;
God alone suffices.

Said slowly in times of anxiety this prayer is of proven value.

Mothering Sunday

St Mary’s, Barnes, 8 am

Luke 2.33-35

‘Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also’. Words of Simeon to Mary when she and Joseph brought the child Jesus to the temple, which we have just heard read. As a modern translation puts it ‘This child is destined to be a sign that will be rejected; and you too will be pierced to the heart’. Later as Mary stood by the cross watching her son dying in agony that saying came all too true.

And today mothers all over the world, Ukrainian and Russian, Iranian, Lebanese and  Sudanese, Palestinian and Israeli are being pierced to the heart as their children are killed on the battlefield or by bombs.

Even apart from that however, those who have children know that anxiety and pain for them is inseparable from parenthood. To have children is to bring into being those who have lives of their own and to love them is to be affected by what happens to them.

People today are much more cautious about having children than they were 80 years ago. Sometimes they wonder if they should bring children into a world like ours, with so many risks and dangers. Yet on the whole most people in a position to do so continue to have children, albeit many fewer than the past. They take the risk and because they love their children many is the time when they are pierced to the heart.

What we see in the relationship of mothers and children is a reflection of what happens in the relationship of God and humanity. As Julian of Norwich put it ‘As truly as God is our father, so truly God is our mother;’ and so truly is God pierced to the heart

In creating us God takes a huge risk and as we look at the world we cannot help feeling that things have gone terribly wrong. Was God justified in bringing into being a world in which such things would happen? The Christian faith is that God knew what he was doing. Eternal wisdom combined with perfect love and supreme power could achieve what he set out to do, bring into being creatures who would grow into his likeness through grappling with the vicissitudes of human existence. And growing in that likeness would have a life that death could not destroy. So Julian

'the mother may allow the child to fall sometimes and be hurt in various ways for its own benefit, but because of her love she can never allow any kind of danger to befall the child. And even though our earthly mother may let her child perish, our heavenly mother Jesus may not allow us who are his children to perish.'

Taken into relationship with God our mother we have a life that cannot perish.  

The Conversion of St Paul

St Mary’s, Barnes, 10 am

Acts 9.1-22; Matthew 19.27-end

If you were asked to say who were the three most influential people in shaping the mentality and values of Western Civilization, I wonder whom you would select? Leaving aside Our Lord, the three I would choose would be Aristotle, Augustine and Paul - Paul for a number of reasons. But a book that came out in 2014 by Larry Siedentop, called  Inventing the Individual, particularly stressed what that title suggests, the importance and value of each unique individual. He argued this is primarily due to St Paul. And think how we now take this for granted. We are all equal before the law. Every one has one vote, not more, not less. The State has to treat everyone equally, as do all those in the business of providing of public goods and services. This value is rooted in the great truth that we are all of equal value in the eyes of God. More recently Tom Holland in his book Dominion, has reinforced how much of what we value in Western Society is due to the Christian faith.

None of this would have happened without that dramatic happening on the road to Damascus which we heard read in today’s first reading. Paul, in his letters, describes how he practised as a very devout Jew, indeed so serious was he about his faith that he wanted to get rid of the new breakaway group of followers of Jesus. He was one of those who watched the stoning of Stephen to death and approved of it, and who was on the road to Damascus to round up other followers. On that road he saw a great light and heard a voice saying ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? Paul asked who he was and heard the words ‘I am Jesus whom you are persecuting’. You may know the wonderful painting of this scene by Caravaggio with Paul lying on the ground and his white horse rearing up above him. This conversion  is described twice in the Acts of the Apostles. In his letter to the Corinthians Paul says about the Resurrection of Christ ‘Last of all he appeared to me too; it was like a sudden, abnormal birth. For I am the least of the apostles, indeed not fit to be called an apostle, because I had persecuted the church of God’( 1 Cor. 15.8/9) Then in his letter to the Galatians  he wrote that though he savagely persecuted the church of God and tried to destroy it,  ‘God chose to reveal his Son in and through me’ (Galatians 1.15/16).

It is impossible to overestimate the importance and influence of what happened to St Paul on that road to Damascus.

Reading Paul’s letters you do not always feel he was an easy person to be with. After all, he started off as a religious fanatic. But in the end you come not just to admire but to love him because what comes across more than anything is the fact that he cared. He cared deeply about the small Christian communities he was planting round the Mediterranean. You feel his agonising for them as he yearns for them to grow in the life of Christ. He was temperamentally an extremist who came to be an extremist in his love for his Christian sisters and brothers. That is why he remains before us as someone in whom and through whom we see Christ; someone who can shows up our indifference, our lack of care, and who draws us to emulate him in the depth of our commitment.

But let us also reflect briefly this morning on the point with which I started, the influence of the Chrisian faith, and Paul in particular, on our society and culture, our laws, our institution, our values, our art and literature. This is, as we know, now a hot topic because it has been politicised. So let us try to think about it Christianly. First, it is good that we have been reminded that ours is indeed a nation and culture that has been decisively shaped by the Christian faith, in the way I have described. We are a Christian nation and culture in that sense, and this is expressed by daily prayers in Parliament, by the crowning of the monarch in Westminster Abbey, and by national services, like Remembrance taking a predominantly Christian form, as well as  the Christian faith being taught in schools, though that seems to be very thin at the moment. This is a glorious heritage, not to be arrogant or superior about, but to be grateful for -and also one to ask a question about to to our very secular contemporaries. If you cherish the institutions and values of our society, you might like to look at where it is all springs from and ask whether if  what you value can survive in the long run without its Christian underpinning.

Now in the past, and still in too many countries in the world today, a religious heritage has been understood in exclusive terms. We have only to think of our own history in the 16^th Century when Catholics were killed under Protestant rulers and Catholics killed under Protestant ones. It took a long struggle to allow first non-conformists, then Catholics to live on equal terms with Anglicans. Today, I am glad to say the Church of England sees its role in the country, not as excluding others, but making space for them. An important speech by the late Queen in 2012 put it well when she said that the Church of England

 certainly provides an identity and spiritual dimension for its own many adherents. But also, gently and assuredly, the Church of England has created an environment for other faith communities and indeed people of no faith to live freely. Woven into the fabric of this country, the Church has helped to build a better society – more and more in active co-operation for the common good with those of other faiths.

The practical success of this has been proved a number of times in recent years, when there has been communal strife in a particular city the fact that the local bishop had created good relations with other faith leaders enabled joint action to be taken to calm the situation.

What I have to say should not be taken to imply anything about our present immigration policy. Every country needs an immigration policy and Christians may have different views about it. What I am saying is that we should  affirm the Christian character of our nation but this  should not be politicised or used as a way to make immigrants or Muslims unwelcome. Affirming the Chrisian character of our country means among other things, following St Paul in never losing sight of the value of each unique individual.

The Holy Innocents

St Mary’s, Barnes, 8am

Matthew 2.13-18

When considering any account of the past, whether in the Bible or secular history, you can ask two questions. Did it happen as described? And, What was the writer trying to convey in his account of events? Let us consider the second question in relation to the story of the innocents, for Matthew is quite clear in what he is trying to say. In a dream Joseph is told to flee to Egypt. Egypt was first of all the place where another Joseph was miraculously protected by God and allowed to prosper in a way that saved the whole family. More especially Egypt was from where Moses delivered the people from the oppression of Pharoah and he himself had been saved as a young child when Pharoah ordered all the young male children to be killed. Matthew sees what happened to the child Jesus as a focus and summing up of the history of the people of Israel in their deliverance from Egypt, but this time not just for one people but for the whole world. So he quotes words from one of the prophets. ‘Out of Egypt have I called my son.’ The people of Israel as a whole were called to live in a filial relationship to God. That call is focussed and summed up now, in a single person, Jesus, that it may spread out from there to every person.

The deliverance from Egypt however was not the only time the people was Israel had to be rescued. In the 8^th century before Christ the people in the North of the Kingdom were taken into captivity by Assyria and in the 6^th century most of the people were taken into captivity and exile in Babylon. It is in relation to these times of suffering that Mattew quotes another prophet

In Ramah there was a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning. Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.

Once again, with Herod’s slaughter of the innocents, mothers would not be comforted.

But Matthew tells this story not to highlight the cruelty of human rulers but to proclaim that in a cruel world where such things happen there is still a providence at work, first in revealing his purpose in a particular people, and then to bring that purpose to a head in a particular person, the long expected messiah, a universal saviour, God’s own eternally begotten son.

Sadly we still live in a world where innocence is violated, where daily  children are hurt and killed. In which Rachel is weeping for her children and will not be comforted because they are not.  And it is surely an obligation on all of us to do all we can to protect children from the multiple harms that assail them. At the same time we have faith that there is a providence at work, that the God who came amongst us in Jesus, still works his purpose out now through those who put their trust in him.  

Third Sunday of Advent

St Mary’s, Barnes, 10 am

Isaiah 35.1-10; Matthew 11.2-11

The world contains multiple religions, especially the great world religions, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism  and Sikhism. What, from a Christian point of view are we to make of them? Some say they are all equally valid ways to God. But this is to ignore the real differences between them. Buddhism, for example does not believe in a creator God, whilst Islam and Judaism both reject the central claim of Christianity. Honesty demands that we recognise and acknowledge those differences. Others argue that they are all equally false. But would a God of love, who loves every human being, leave most of the world without any awareness of his presence in however a limited form? When St Paul was in Athens surrounded by idols he could still appeal to their own culture when he told them  that:

They were to seek God in the hope that, groping after him, they might find him; though indeed he is not far from each one of us, for in him we live and move and have our being; as some of your own poets have said , “We are also his offspring”. (Acts 17.27/8)

The practical implication of this is that the only way to understand other religions  is to enter, trustingly,  into relationship and dialogue  with those of a different faith to our own, leaving aside stereotypes -   and see what emerges. My own experience is that this is mutually enriching.

Against that background the Christian claim is that God has entered into a special relationship with a particular people, the Jews, and that this has come to a focus in Jesus. All people have some capacity to know God in their hearts, but God has chosen to reveal himself definitively in a particular segment of human history. This does not mean he loves those within that tradition  more than others, but that it is the nature of revelation that it must be particular as well as general. We might think of someone will three children at the sea side. A large wave suddenly sweeps away one of them and the parent dives in and rescues them. This does not mean she loves that child more than the others, but in that act she reveals her love in a special way. What she does for one is revelatory of a love she has for all.

So God has chosen a particular people  and within it raised up particular individuals to recall them time and again to their special vocation. One of them was Isaiah whom we heard in the first lesson. He lived in the 8^th century before Christ at a time when Assyria was threatening the existence of Israel. He not only called the people to be faithful, he looked forward to a time when the world would be radically different-the wilderness would blossom, the sick would be healed, all would be at peace, sorrow and sighing would flee away, joy and gladness would abound and the glory of God would shine through all things.

It is this passage amongst others that Matthew has in mind in todays Gospel. John the Baptist in prison sends to ask if Jesus is the long expected one or was he to wait for another. Jesus sends his disciples back with the message that the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the leper are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead raised and the poor have good news brought to them. He then tells the crowd that John is not just a prophet, but more than a prophet. ‘See I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you. If you go into an Orthodox Church at the centre of the Iconostasis there is a large Icon of Christ in the middle with on one side Mary holding out her hand and pointing to Christ, and on the other, John the Baptist doing the same. It symbolises that the long period of preparation has come to its focus and climax.

But the majority of Jews did not accept this, and Judaism continues today as a separate religion, vital and valid in its own right. Sadly this led the church into the most pernicious views about Jews, what has been called the teaching of contempt, which prepared the way for the 19^th century antisemitism culminating in the holocaust. Since then, thank God the churches have radically revised their teaching about Judaism. Instead of saying that God has discarded his ancient people and is punishing them,  the emphasis now is on the words of St Paul in his letter to the Romans  that God’s gifts and his calling to the Jewish people ‘are irrevocable’ (Romans 11.29). This pre-Christmas period  is also the Jewish feast of Chanukah, and it is sad to relate that antisemitism, always  a light sleeper, is still virulent, There were more than 2000 anti semitic incidents in 2024 and more than 1500 in the first half of 2025. For the avoidance of misunderstanding I should stress that criticism of the present policies of the Israeli government is not antisemitism. That said, Christians have a particular responsibility to oppose antisemitism wherever it lurks.

The continued existence of Judaism as a living religion poses a theological challenge to Christians, which has no easy answer. We can but trust that all is in the hands of God. But the readings for this Sunday take us into the heart of a faith which is shared by both Jews and Christians -  That there is a wise and loving power behind the universe who has a purpose for every person. And in order to make that purpose clear he has chosen a particular people and through the vicissitudes of their history disclosed his heart and mind.

As Christians we believe this has come to a climax and focus in Jesus crucified, risen and living in us through his Holy Spirit. When the sun shines through a magnifying glass it concentrates the sunlight to a focal point which can set alight any paper on which it falls. God’s light shines in every heart but in Christ it comes to a focal point. We are the paper, if you like, to be set alight There is a fine collect today which well fits our readings

O Lord Jesus Christ, who at your first coming sent your messenger to prepare your way before you: grant that the ministers and stewards of your mysteries may likewise so prepare and make ready your way.

 We are all ministers and stewards of the mysteries, like John the Baptist preparing the way for God’s spirit to touch the hearts of those with whom we have to do.

Christ the King

St Mary’s Barnes, 8 am

Luke 23.33-43; Colossians 1.11-20

The theme for this Sunday is Christ the King. Interestingly this is a modern innovation, and encouragingly, one which is shared by many mainline churches, including Roman Catholics.

Today’s Gospel pictures the image in a way which is at once provocative and ironic. Jesus is on the cross and above him are written the words ‘This is the King of the Jews’. What could be more absurd or provocative. This abject, condemned nobody a King? But what for an early believer could be more ironical? For Luke who wrote the Gospel and those who read it deeply believed what those words proclaimed, believed indeed that he was not just King of the Jews but King of the Cosmos. So it is that we have todays amazing wonderful passage from the letter to the Colossians. Amazing that within a few decades someone could write of this victim of Roman power that he was ‘the image of the invisible God’ and that ‘ all things were created by him, and for him…the first born from the dead; that in all things he might have the pre-eminence.’

Someone recently sent me a link to a lecture by Tom Holland on why he has become a Christian.[1] He said that when he was a child he loved dinosaurs because they were so large. And when he grew up he still loved large powerful things and was drawn to write his best selling books on Roman imperial power. Then he came up against this totally humiliated, excruciatingly tortured figure and how Paul was totally gripped by him and how it turned upside down all that we normally think of as great and powerful.

So it is that when we think of Christ as King we think of his just and gentle rule, his servant kingship, and of the ultimate triumph of suffering love over the forces of darkness and chaos.

When we look at the world today with its wars, crimes  and cruelties it is difficult to think that Christ is really King of all this turmoil. Clearly his Kingship is not yet fully manifest. So it is that daily we pray ‘Your kingdom Come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven’. But what we know as Christians is that we are already subjects of that kingdom. We already live in the divine milieu. As the epistle put it ‘God has brought us into the Kingdom of his dear Son.’ So it is that we pray not just ‘Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven but your will be done in me and through me, done in the spirit and after the pattern of Christ’s love for us.

Third Sunday before Advent

St Mary’s, Barnes, 8 am

Luke 20.27-38

I love today’s gospel. I love I because it gets to the heart of the matter:  to a central belief  Jesus and therefore of our faith in God.

The Sadducees were the ruling elite at the time, controlling the temple and much of the finance. They took a very conservative view of scripture and because the Torah said little or nothing about life after death they rejected a belief in the resurrection of the dead. This belief had come into Judaism comparatively late, in the previous two centuries, and was held by the Pharisees and most of the population. The Sadducees, trying to show up the absurdity of the belief asked Jesus about the custom of levirate marriage, whereby if a man died childless his brother had to marry the widow to ensure there were legitimate offspring. So they posed the situation of a woman seven times widowed by different brothers. Whose wife would she be in the afterlife? Jesus simply rejects their crude literalism. The next world is of a totally different order. There they ‘neither marry, nor are given in marriage.’ They cannot die any more, and they are like the angels.

Then he directs them to the verses in the scriptures where God is addressed as ‘The God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.’ He is a God who cared for them, guided them, and promised them a future and they continue to live in him and in relation to him ‘For he is not a God of the dead, but of the living: for all live unto him’

So today we have no need of a crude literalism. When we say in the creed that we believe in the resurrection of the body we are not to think in terms of a Stanley Spencer painting with everyone climbing out of their graves, great those these paintings are. What this means is that in the next life we will be fully and truly ourselves. In the same way that the same tune can be played on different instruments,  on a piano or a violin, so the tune which is you and me, played here in flesh and blood will be played in the stuff of glory, in a form appropriate to an eternal  existence, which of course we cannot imagine now. The poet Emily Dickinson put it well when she wrote

 I believe we shall be in some manner cherished by our Maker-that the one who gave us this remarkable earth has the power still to further surprise that which he caused. Beyond that all is silence.

Then as the Gospel makes clear our belief in the eternal is utterly dependent on God. It is not that some whispy bit of us lives on, but that who were are, known to God and lodged by Christ in his loving heart, is given a future in his eternity. As this life is a gift, so is whatever likes beyond.

And of course on this Remembrance Sunday, we think especially of those who had their lives cut short in the service of their country. We trust that they know now another King, another country.

This belief in a glorious future is not meant to distract us from our daily tasks in this world. But it does underpin them and assure us that what we do now is worthwhile. As Paul put it, our labour in the Lord is not in vain. What we do out of love has a future, as do we in the love that holds us in being and directs our ways.

15^th Sunday after Trinity

St Mary’s, Barnes, 10 am

From time to time in your life you will have heard good news-when you passed an exam, when a child was born or a grandchild got into university. At such times we are delighted, thrilled. From the first the Christian faith was announced as good news. St Mark’s Gospel begins with the words ‘The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.’ The Greek word for good news, Euangelion, which could also be translated as evangel or Gospel, occurs many other places in the New Testament. So let us reflect for a few minutes this morning on how and why the Christian faith is good news.

First, it means that there is a meaning and purpose to life. We can all go through periods when life seems futile and meaningless.  As Shakespeare put it so memorably sometimes it feels nothing but

 …  a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

In contrast to that we affirm that at the heart of the universe there is a wise and loving purpose. We affirm that creation did not begin with the evolution of life on earth or the big bang some thirteen  and a half billion years ago but in the mind of God. There, before time, we had our origin. The prophet Jeremiah heard the words

Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,

And before you were born I consecrated you.

The author of Psalm 139 cries out

My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
    intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
¹⁶ Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.
In your book were written
    all the days that were formed for me,
    when none of them as yet existed.

So there is a meaning and purpose for existence and to know this is good news indeed. A meaning and purpose for our personal being.

Dag Hammarskjold was an outstanding UN secretary General working 20 hours a day at the heart of a series of international crises at the height of the cold war. When he died his spiritual notebook was found in which he had written the words ‘

 at some moment  I  answered Yes to Someone — or Something — and from that hour I was certain that existence is meaningful and that, therefore, my life, in self-surrender, had a goal.

 Our lives in self-surrender have a goal.

Secondly, this purpose, conceived before time, lodged in the mind, of God, is a purpose for us in and through Christ. The incarnation was not an emergency reaction to things on earth having gone wrong. It was God’s purpose to unite his divine life with humanity from the beginning and join our life with his. Our humanity is not just a result of evolution, though it is that, it is a humanity in Christ the second person of the Trinity. God is in solidarity with us from without beginning as Julian of Norwich liked to put it. As she wrote

For I saw that God never began to love mankind.. mankind has been known and loved in God’s foresight, from without beginning in his righteous intent. And by the endless assent of the whole Trinity in full accord, the Mid-Person would be the foundation and head of this human nature, he from whom we have all come, in whom we are all enclosed, into whom we shall all return; finding in him our full heaven in everlasting joy through the foreseeing purpose of the whole blessed Trinity from without beginning. (Chapter 53.p119)

Thirdly Christ came amongst us to search us out and draw us into himself and in so doing overcame all obstacles and blockages to our union with him. Suffering the consequences of a disordered and sinful world he lived a life of perfect union with the father, and now, risen, ascended, glorified and present with us through his Holy Spirit he unites our life with his. The good news is that nothing can separate us from that life. He holds onto us through thick and thin, through life and through death.

Then, fourthly, this life opens out to eternity. Christians seem to have become rather shy of mentioning what was once so central to Christian faith. But it is good news that God has something even better ahead; that in him there is a glorious future which we cannot now conceive. As Paul put it ‘For now we see dimly, as in a mirror, but then we shall see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been known fully. (1 Corinthians 13.12)

We are led to expect that the name of a new Archbishop of Canterbury will be announced soon. It is not easy to have confidence in the Church of England at the present time. The new Archbishop will take on the leadership of a church that has never been weaker in a society in which professed Christians are now in a minority, particularly amongst the young. But our confidence is not in the church as a human institution but in Christ and in the church as his mystical body against which, as Jesus told Peter, the gates of hell will not prevail. ((Matthew 16.18).

Nevertheless, we have to face the fact that for so many in our society now Christianity is a foreign language and what goes on in church is strange, if not alien. But let us face this. Christianity is strange as the great 17^th century mathematician, scientist and philosopher Pascal said. Far from throwing us this should help us see its truth, for the fact is that life itself is strange. It is extraordinary that anything should exist at all. The mind boggles that we exist. Anything that was less strange than life itself could hardly be true. And Christianity is very strange indeed, for it says that God himself came amongst us, was killed and rose again in order to unite out lives with him for ever. You couldn’t make it up. It is just not the story you would set out to tell about a god. Its strange because it goes against the grain of so many of the things we think important. But this strangeness is good news to those who are sensitive to both the horror and the glory of life.

So the Church may be in a weak position and the times unpropitious but our confidence is not in ourselves but in God and his good purpose. We are blessed to believe the good news, to know that our lives have a purpose and meaning, that we are united to Christ and that the future opens out into God our endless day, the end which is no end. May the Holy Spirit  so touch the hearts of all in Barnes that they too may come to hear and welcome the good news.

4^th Sunday after Trinity

St Mary’s Barnes, 8 am

Luke 10.25-37

If you had to sum up the essence of religion in two sentences, I wonder what you would say? We know what Jesus said: love God with all that you are and love your neighbour as yourself. Both these directives appear in the Old Testament (Deuteronomy 6.5 and Leviticus 19.18) but separately. The New Testament is the earliest  evidence we have of them being linked. It may have been Jesus who first put the two together, or rabbis in his time, as reflected in today’s gospel, where Jesus affirms the answer of the religious teacher who was questioning him.

In any case there we have the essence of the matter, as we are reminded at the beginning of the 8 am service every Sunday. We are to love God with every fibre of our being, with heart and soul and strength and mind; and our neighbour as ourself.

Then the teacher asks: ‘ But who is my neighbour?’ and in reply Jesus  gives one of the most famous stories in history, the parable of the good Samaritan. The  crucial point to note is that Jesus does not answer the question. Instead  he asks a different question. The first question was the wrong one. It implied that that you could draw a line  and say this group of people, say, fellow Israelites were neighbours, and others, say gentiles were not. You had obligations to some but not others. So Jesus asked a different question: Who acted as a neighbour? Instead of being an interesting theoretical question it becomes an existential one, a summons to personal responsibility. Am I acting as a neighbour to those who have a claim on my attention?

We are to love that person as ourselves. If we were in that situation how would I want to be treated. We put ourselves in their shoes. So we have the golden rule, common to a number of religions and religious texts and also found in the teaching of Jesus: treat others as you would want them to treat you. (Mathew 7. 12 and Luke 6. 31)

The modern world likes to affirm the second directive about loving our neighbour   and set aside the first about loving God. And the New Testament is indeed clear that we cannot love God if we don’t love our neighbour. But the two are closely linked in a way the world does not like to recognise. First any attempt to love God with all that we are carries with it the need to love our neighbour as a daily bench mark. Secondly, it can bring home to us how we might be failing in this regard and thirdly it can motivate and strengthen us to do better. We often fail as Christians but we know we need to fail again and fail better, to echo Samuel Beckett. And in this process God is with us all the way.