Catholic Contextual urban Theology, Mimetic Theory, Contemplative Prayer. And other random ramblings.

Sunday 16 August 2015

Sermon at Parish Mass The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary 2015

Ethiopian migrants pray before an icon of the Blessed Virgin in their tent church at Calais. 
Photo credit: Fr Giles Fraser.

Revelation 11:19-12:6,10
Galatians 4:4-7
Luke 1:46-55

Our readings this morning began with an extract from a book we don’t hear much of at Mass on Sundays, the Book of Revelation, also known as the Apocalypse.
Apocalypse is a Greek word. We might think that it means “disaster”, as that’s the use it has come to have in modern English. But in fact it means “unveiling”; apocalypse in the Bible is about unmasking the real spiritual powers at work in the world. It’s about seeing what is really going on behind the façade of events.
The Book of Revelation begins with the Apostle John, in exile on the Greek prison island of Patmos, where he has been sent by the Roman authorities for preaching Jesus. He has got off lightly, as many of his fellow Christians had been executed for their faith in the first brutal wave of persecution under the emperor Nero.
But John’s vision is opened, and he sees the spiritual realities and powers at work in the events of his day. The Roman Empire is revealed in nightmare-like images as a fearsome beast, demanding that everyone worship its image, as a reeling prostitute drunk on the blood of the saints, and as the terrifying dragon in today’s reading. Its power comes from the Devil, and it seeks to destroy those who are faithful to Jesus.
But John sees a higher and greater reality. A slaughtered Lamb, an image of Jesus, is seen on the throne of God in heaven. The souls of millions who have been murdered for their faith are gathered around him. The holy angels of God make war on the dragon and defeat him. And the sign for their victory is the appearance of the Woman clothed with the sun, whose Son is to replace the dragon as the true ruler of the world.
For Christians in the first century, as for many in the world today, following Jesus is not a soft option. It means a radical choice, taken at the risk of everything, to reject the violence of the world and to follow the Lamb who was slain. It means identifying with Jesus the outcast, the victim, the one whom the world slaughtered. It means faith in Jesus even in the face of death, because he is the Risen One and therefore the world and its violence are not the last word or the final reality. It means faith that the world of sin, which puts the innocent to death, will be redeemed.
This cannot come about by any slight adjustment to the way the world runs, but only by total change. The violent and the rich are in power, but God is on the side of the poor and the peace makers. The world is stood on its head, and needs to be turned the right way up. But unlike every other revolution in human history, this one is God’s doing, not ours.
So when the fullness of time had come, says St Paul in Galatians, “God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law”. It is in the coming of Jesus that the great reversal begins. It is through his incarnation, his death and resurrection that the upside-down world is at last being turned the right way up.
And in today’s Gospel reading, Mary, the Woman whose appearing heralds the victory of the Lamb, sings in triumph:
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
   and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
   and sent the rich away empty.
Her spirit rejoices in God her saviour who has done great things for her, and through her, for the world.
Consider for a moment who is singing this triumph song. This is no seasoned warrior or hardened general. This is a young woman, perhaps fourteen years of age. Newly pregnant, she has travelled in haste to her cousin Elizabeth in the wild hill country. Apparently, according to Luke’s Gospel, on her own. Unheard of! But here she is. Her will is God’s will, and no hardship or obstacle will daunt her.
Through Mary’s childbearing God will overturn the order of the world; but as far as the world is concerned she is a marginal figure, of no consequence. She is only from the obscure backwater of Nazareth, after all. She is Mary the migrant, relocated from her home to Bethlehem while heavily pregnant because the bureaucrats in Rome demanded it. She is Mary the refugee, forced to flee with her family from Herod who wanted to kill her son. She is Mary the foreigner, taking refuge in Egypt, dependent on the kindness of strangers. She is Mary the Mother of Sorrows, who will watch at the foot of the cross and receive her dead Son’s body in her arms.
Yet today she sings God’s great reversal, the defeat of the powers that be and the triumph of her Son. She is indeed the Woman clothed with the sun, the great cosmic Sign that the empire of this world does not see, though her appearance spells its doom.
The Apostle John and the Mother of Jesus both today tell us to open our eyes and see what is going on. It is no co-incidence that these were the two who were closest to the cross, the eye witnesses of the death of Jesus. The sign of the Woman clothed with the sun, and Mary’s triumph song, tell us to look behind the façade of events to the spiritual powers at work in the world. We are not to believe the headlines, the propaganda of the world, which tell us that the powerful must stay in power and the marginal must stay on the margins.
Look around us in the world today, and what do we see? We see millions of Christians persecuted for their faith, murdered or fleeing for their lives. We see great powers of violence at work in the world. We see exiles crowding Greek islands. We see migrants, refugees, the desperate and the poor, seeking safety and a new life. This is what the Apostle John saw two millennia ago. But, with him, we need to see the truth, and with Mary we need to proclaim it. God is turning the world the right way up.  God is on the side of the victim, and is bringing the margins into the centre.
As in the Apostle John’s day, this is not what the empire of the world wants us to see. The coverage of the migrant crisis in some parts of the press, and the comments of some of our political leaders, have been disgraceful; all about obscuring the human faces and not hearing the real stories. This is not to say that migration is a simple problem, or has a simple solution, but any consideration of it has to be founded in compassion and a recognition of our common humanity. Anything less is a turning away from the human and therefore a turning away from the will of God for the flourishing of all, and especially for the poor and marginalised.
This evening at 5pm Songs of Praise will include coverage from the migrant camp at Calais, where many of the people seeking refuge are Christians who have fled from persecution. This has been furiously condemned, for example by the Express, whose proprietor made his fortune selling pornography, and by the Mail, which is registered in Bermuda to avoid paying tax in the UK.

So for once, even if it’s not your regular Sunday viewing, may I commend Songs of Praise to you. It will I hope be a useful corrective to the narrative of exclusion that we are being fed all the time, a bit of apocalypse, an unveiling, an unmasking of the powers at work behind the façade of the world, and a singing of God’s praise from the margins, the place of the powerless and the excluded, where Mary sang her song of praise because God was at last turning the world the right way up.

Sunday 9 August 2015

Sermon at Parish Mass Trinity 10 2015


1 Kings 19.4-8
Ephesians 4.25-5.2
John 6.35,41-58 (incorporating next week's section as next week is the Assumption)

Before I was ordained I was a server at a church in the West End of London. We had to do duty at quite a few weddings – I was at Letitia Dean’s, with most of the cast of East Enders sitting in the church and the photographers from Hello Magazine snapping away – my one claim to fame!
But I recall one wedding which was a nuptial Mass. Afterwards one of the guests, a lady in a posh frock and very smart hat, interrogated me about the service.  “I suppose you would call this ‘High Church’?”
I agreed that was one thing it could be called.
“It’s very like the Catholic Church, in some ways.”
I said that, yes, there were many similarities, and we had much in common.
“But, of course, you don’t believe that the bread and wine really become the body and blood of Christ.”
“Actually”, I said, “yes, we do.”
“No you don’t!”, she answered, clearly taken aback.
“But we do. That is what Jesus said, and we take him at his word.”
“I thought the Church of England regarded it as just symbolic.”
I assured her this was not the case, but the conversation didn’t go on much longer, and I fear I didn’t persuade her. She quickly moved on to someone less troublesome, probably aghast at the survival of mediaeval superstition in 21st Century London.
But of course it’s not mediaeval superstition. It’s exactly the same question, the same challenge to faith, that was made in Jesus’ day. “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” This has been a persistent question down the ages.
Today we continue reading John Chapter six. We have seen in previous weeks that Jesus goes to the people and feeds them where they are, but then expects them to follow him where he is going, and that is on a journey of faith. He wants to give them, not material food, but the food that endures to eternal life. But faith is needed to follow on this journey and receive this gift.
God is in truth the Bread of Life, the food that will satisfy us eternally and change us into himself.  But how can we eat God? So God adapts himself to our need. He emptied himself to take our human nature in Jesus. But to feed us Jesus empties himself still further, giving us his body and blood, his soul and divinity, under the sacramental forms of food and drink. The Bread of God, Jesus himself, is given to us, in very truth and not as a symbol, in the Eucharistic bread and wine.
God in Jesus makes himself human to meet us where we are. Even more, we are bodily beings, not angels, and he gives himself to us as bodily food. But the crowd listening to Jesus is incredulous at this. There are two causes for scandal here. One is lack of faith that God could do such a thing. The other is a shrinking back from God coming too close to us – we do not think that God should do such a thing. We prefer to keep God at a distance, to be called upon according to our wishes only. A God who makes himself edible is all too mixed up in the stuff of human life for our liking.
But in truth we only exist by participation. God alone exists absolutely, in himself. In him we live and move and have our being; he is our supreme good, our worship, our beginning and our end, our rest, our centre and our circumference, the source and secret of our true self. God is the eternal “I AM” in which we must participate moment by moment, or else fall into nothingness.
But lest this seem too vast and overwhelming, God, in his infinite lovingkindness, accommodates himself to our need and our capacity to receive. He gives himself to us under the form of ordinary food, so that we will not fear to draw near to him.
The great Anglican Divine Jeremy Taylor (I mean the Bishop in the time of Charles I, whose feast day is this week), said this:
“The Bread, when it is consecrated and made sacramental, is the Body of our Lord… if we be offended at it, because it is alive [that is, living flesh], and therefore less apt to become food, we are invited to it because it is bread; and if the sacrament to others seem less mysterious, because it is bread, we are heightened in our faith and reverence because it is life. The Bread of the Sacrament is the life of our soul, and the Body of our Lord is now conveyed to us by being the Bread of the Sacrament.”[1]
In the Eucharist Jesus gives to each what each has the capacity to receive. But we can receive more if we prepare ourselves for this gift. We need to dispose ourselves, to open our hearts so that Jesus can fill them.
Frequent communion is a good thing. Its restoration was one of the great revivals of the last century. Nevertheless it is not compulsory. The Church of England only requires that we receive three times a year. We don’t have to receive every time we come to Mass, and everyone should be guided by their own conscience in this matter.
If we don’t receive the sacrament itself we can always make an act of spiritual communion, asking Jesus to unite himself to us spiritually in our souls. This is a good practice, for example, for those who are not yet baptized or confirmed, or who for a good reason can’t come to Sunday Mass. It is efficacious and fruitful, a real spiritual participation at the Eucharist.
But whether we receive frequently or not, we will receive more from Jesus if we come with the right disposition. He gives himself to all, to the lukewarm and the fervent, but not equally. We receive what we make room for in our hearts. And a casual or thoughtless approach to the sacrament is a poor return for such a great gift. So it is very commendable to spend some time in prayer before receiving the sacrament, perhaps early on Sunday morning when it is quiet, or on Saturday night.
Firstly, to consider the greatness of the gift and the love that Jesus lavishes on us in the Eucharist. Archbishop Fulton J Sheen once said, “The greatest love story of all time is contained in a tiny white Host.”
Secondly, to examine our consciences, to ask the Lord for pardon for our sins and the grace of amendment of life. That way we can come better prepared to the short confession and absolution at the beginning of Mass.
Thirdly, to call to mind any particular intentions and needs to offer with the Eucharist. This sacrament is Christ’s offering of himself to the Father, made present and effective for us. It is the most powerful intercession that we have, for it is Christ’s own prayer, and our prayers joined to his are offered to the Father by his own hand.
And finally, afterwards, let us not forget thanksgiving. We have received the greatest gift there is, our God himself, and by the grace of the sacrament are actually united to him. Let us not go away heedless, but in the intimacy of this holy union offer him our thanks for all the blessings he showers on us, and above all for giving us himself, in Jesus, in the Eucharist.





[1] Jeremy Taylor, “The Life of Christ”, Discourse XIX, Of the Institution and Reception of the Holy Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper.

Sunday 2 August 2015

Sermon at Parish Mass Trinity 9 2015


Exodus 16.2-4,9-15
Ephesians 4.1-16
John 6.24-35

Now I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “this is the year of Mark, why are we having all these readings from John’s Gospel?” Well possibly there are other questions that may occur to you at this hour on a Sunday, "have I put the oven on", "did I feed the cat"…  But it is at least a question that can be asked.
Mark is the shortest of the Gospels so half way though his year we take a detour for a few weeks to John Chapter 6, a very important passage, central to John’s story, that we wouldn’t otherwise have a chance to think about at Sunday Mass.
Last week we had the first part of John 6: the feeding of the five thousand and Jesus walking on the water. The feeding of the multitude exposed how the disciples were failing to understand Jesus – they wanted to send the hungry people away to solve what they thought was a problem, when Jesus wanted to feed them right there and then. Jesus is where the people are, and that is where the Church needs to be, too.
This week we continue reading John 6 and the problem is reversed. Now the people want to stay in the place where they were fed with physical food, while Jesus wants to lead them on to something greater. They are fixated on the food that feeds only the body and does not satisfy eternally. They have had their fill a few hours before and now they are demanding more. This is a “giving that famishes the craving” as TS Eliot put it; desire that feeds on itself and is never satisfied.
The crowd cite the manna in the wilderness as a sign from God; they want something like that. But that was an ambiguous gift, as we heard in today’s reading from Exodus. Given in response to the craving of the Israelites, they ended up eating it for forty years until they were utterly weary of it to learn that what they craved would never satisfy them.
The only thing that ultimately will satisfy us is God, for whom we were created. “You made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in you”, as Saint Augustine said.
God is what we most deeply desire, though we may not realise that beneath the endless loud demands of our famished cravings. God is what we were made for. But how can we receive God so as to be satisfied by Him? How can we attain to God, who is wholly other than the creation, and infinitely above anything we can grasp?
Well it is beyond our power go to God. So God, who wants to satisfy us with himself, came to us. In Jesus the Word was made flesh. The Word is God’s expression and reaching out of himself, which in Jesus joined himself to a human nature like ours. We could not go to God, so God came to us.
In Jesus God emptied himself, as St Paul puts it, adapting himself to our need and our capacity to receive. Even more than we could have imagined or hoped. God has not come simply to meet us in Jesus. He has come to unite us to himself. By baptism we are adopted by grace into the human nature of Christ, and so share in his Divine nature. But that gift is received as a seed to be grown and nurtured. We need to be fed.
In this Gospel passage Jesus introduces himself as the bread of life. He will go on to develop this into the promise of the Eucharist that we will read in the rest of John chapter 6, over the next few weeks.
As he unfolds that teaching what also develops is the scandal and the rejection of the crowd. They are stuck in their famished cravings and unable to move on to where Jesus wants to lead them. They desire only material bread which does not satisfy; they are unwilling to accept that Jesus himself is the bread they must eat to be satisfied eternally.
God wants to satisfy us with himself in Jesus. God wants to discover himself to us as our deepest desire. But for us to discover that we need to believe in the one he has sent, in Jesus Christ. Because it is in Jesus Christ that God has come to meet us where we are, and it is in Jesus Christ that our desire for God will be satisfied.
Faith is needed. The Crowd asks, ‘What must we do to perform the works of God?’ Jesus answered them, ‘This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.’ The Crowd thinks that the works of God (plural) are about things that will not satisfy such as material food, like the manna in the desert. But Jesus wants them to believe that the work of God (singular) is not what they do but what God is doing in him.
Jesus has come to the people. But the people need to come to Jesus. They need to believe so that they can receive, in Jesus, God’s own self, his divine nature and substance. This is the bread which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. 
Faith, as the Baptism service says, is the gift of God to his people. Today’s gospel passage tells us how indispensible faith is. It is faith that enables us to go to Jesus and receive in him God himself, who satisfies our deepest and eternal desire. It will be faith that enables us to follow Jesus as he unfolds the teaching and promise of the Eucharist, which scandalizes so many.
The way of faith is the way of trust: trust in the truth of things that we know by nature, and trust in the truth of God that we know by revelation.  
Faith does not of course enable us to say that we know everything. In fact the opposite is true. The further we advance along the way of faith the more we will realise what we do not know. The great Anglican theologian Austin Farrar once said “the opposite of faith is not doubt but certainty”.
Not knowing, but continuing to journey in trust anyway, is absolutely part of the way of faith. It is quite different from the spirit of skepticism, of private judgement, which refuses to follow where the truth leads because we want to stay where we are. That is not faith. That is to prefer the food that perishes, because we can grasp it in our hands, to the food that will satisfy us eternally, for which we have to let go of what we cling to and follow Jesus.
Faith is a gift of God, so let us never cease to ask God for that gift: to establish in us the faith we have, to deepen and strengthen it, to lead us along the way of faith to the fullness of truth, to God himself, who gives himself to us in Jesus to satisfy us eternally.

“Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For it is on him that God the Father has set his seal.”