Greetings favoured one - The Lord is with you.

The annunciation, the scene where the Angel Gabriel appears to Mary to announce that she is to bear a son is surely one of the best know iconic scenes in the New Testament – or so you’d have thought.

I remember being on a bus in Israel – I’d been a Christian for about a year I suppose and was part of a group leader’s recce to the Holy Land, so the bus was full of clerics.

One of them turned to me and said how excited he was to be going to Nazareth to see the place where the annunciation took place. And I said “What’s that?”

He said “You’re joking” but it was almost immediately apparent that I wasn’t joking and this stunned high churchman just slumped back into his seat.

To be fair, my church was more concerned with discipleship, charismatic renewal and the book of Acts and we certainly never mentioned Mary unless we absolutely had to, like on Christmas day but I suppose  that is a testimony to the fact that you can be a Christian and yet have a vastly different  cultural hinterland to another Christian.

As you know I stepped out of my churchmanship comfort zone and trained at a monastery to specifically gain an insight into catholic form and belief and there I was plunged into a very different scenario where Mary was not only mentioned an awful lot, but “venerated” and the “Hail Mary” was said every day. But more than that some of the more extreme Anglo-catholic students worshipped her and gave her a title of co-redemptrix – a term which means that not only Jesus redeemed the world but Mary does too.

I remember all too well being at a service to celebrate a Marian feast where I was almost physically sick at the sight of all this Marian devotion. If I’d had more of a backbone I’d have walked out of the service I experienced such dis-ease with this anti-Christ display.

So I have experienced both ends of the spectrum with regards to Mary. I think a healthy and theologically correct and true representation of Mary which is in accordance with the Biblical evidence is this;

Mary is two things to me. First, in the annunciation she is the recipient of pure Grace and secondly in her very being she is a symbol of Christian discipleship. I’ll explain both.

In the gospel story the overriding theme is one of God’s sovereign action. God chose Mary. Mary had to say yer but the fact is God chose Mary. Why did he choose Mary and not someone else. Was it because she was better or more pure than anyone else – no. That is the point.

“Greetings favoured one, the Lord is with you”

Mary did not deserve to be the mother of God’s son any more than any other woman. Luke describes her simply as  a young girl who was engaged to be married. Luke says more about Joseph than he does Mary. Even in the case of John the baptist’s parents, Luke says they were righteous and blamesless, and they kept God’s commandments and they prayed to God (1:6-7,13), but not a word about the virtues of Mary.

Essentially this is not a story of virtue rewarded but of God’s sovereign Grace. God chooses who God chooses. So the annunciation is primarily about Grace – unmerited love.

But it is in the response of Mary that I say she is a symbol of Christian discipleship.

Mary simply says “Yes, let it be to me according to your word”

There is no quenching of the Spirit here even though saying yes could plunge her into disgrace in the eyes of her community.

Mary did not fully understand what was going on but she treasured them and pondered on what their meaning might be in her heart, but even though she did not fully understand or know where this might lead her she said yes anyway.

This is the first step in Christian discipleship. Saying yes to God and giving Him sovereignty in your life.

And after saying yes to God and allowing the Holy Spirit into her life over a period of time, nine months to be exact she eventually gave birth to Jesus physically.

When we say yes to God after a period of time, a gestation period that may take perhaps a lifetime, we are called to metaphorically give birth to Jesus in and through our life by being Christ for others.

Mary is a powerful icon, an icon of Grace received and fearlessly acted upon. She allowed herself to be used as a vessel of God’s action in the world with is the vocation of every Christian. 

Two ways to live.

In common with the other epistles in Advent Paul is here concerned with the demand for faithful living. It is apparent that there are two ways to live. One according to the ways of the world and one according to the gospel

In Paul’s first ever letter that he wrote he is unequivocal in his instructions.

Here the demands are direct, no ifs and no buts. The assumption is that the things Paul says will be a state of affairs that suffuses our entire lives and is not reserved for Sunday mornings.

“Rejoice always” he says. Rejoice about what? Rejoice that God has made himself known to us and revealed his love and forgiveness and through Christ wants us in a personal relationship with him – for ever, which is eternal life. In John 17 Jesus says  “Now this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” So If you know and accept Christ you have the eternal life of the Father.  Our lives have meaning and purpose and we are instruments of God in the world. That is special and is something to rejoice about is it not?

This is the light that John the Baptist was testifying to in the gospel reading.

Paul then says “Pray without ceasing”. Well we can’t spend every minute of every day on our knees in a church so what can he mean by that? This points to an existence that is permanently oriented towards God, our life becomes a prayer, an existence that sees and recognises the presence of God in every situation of our lives. If prayer is an ongoing relationship, an ongoing conversation with God then prayer is not simply us talking it is us listening and trying to discern God in the everyday things of our life. .

The next instruction is "Give thanks in all circumstances". This is probably the most problematic one of all especially if you are pain, or faced with unemployment, or bereavement or any other terrible circumstance. There, I would suggest that even while you will not feel able to give thanks for those particular sets of circumstances, you may still be able to give thanks for other aspects of your life or for the knowledge of God's saving love for you even in the midst of your pain. 

And as someone who has been down to the depths of anguish, as many of you have been also, in hindsight we can acknowledge that out of the darkness light eventually did shine. You can come through these things a changed person with a depth of insight that you couldn’t have acquired any other way. That is not to say that God engineered these situations, but He can use them regardless.

“Do not quench the Spirit” and “do not despise the words of prophets” are related in my mind. The Spirit can be quenched so remaining open and listening as well as talking in our prayers for the prompting of the Spirit is vital. We should also listen to those people who say they have interpreted the word of God or been given special insight. Listen but don’t just blindly accept what they say. Test what they say in the arena of your personal circumstances, in the light of scripture and in discussions with other Christians. We need to be wise and discerning.  As Jesus said elsewhere we need to be as innocent as doves and as wise as serpents

Then right at the end in Verses 23 and 24 Paul asks that God may "sanctify us". "Holiness" is a scary word for many of us, as I wrote during the week and it conjures up images of monks and nuns or extremely strict versions of Christianity. Whilst Holiness does actually infer "separation" in the context of what Paul has already said it describes this new orientation of our life taking root and growing and tells us not to be yoked to materialism and the powers and addictions of this world. There are two ways to live, one in darkness and one in the light.

Comfort my people

With the Lord one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years are like one day.

This is a poetic way of saying that God lies outside of time – a difficult enough concept at the best of times. God is also the Alpha and the Omega – both the beginning and the end of existence and the beginning and the end of time.

We come from God and will return to God. The Christian Advent hope is that one day there will be a reckoning when there will be no more tears and no more pain and all the good will be rewarded and all the evil dealt with.

In Peter’s second letter he asks the question, as this is going to happen one day in our future what sort of person are you going to be in the meantime?

He writes “While you are waiting for these things, strive to be found by him at peace without spot or blemish.

The first order question for anyone who purports to be a Christian is then to ask ourselves that question – are we at peace with God?

If not, he says strive to be at peace with God without spot or blemish.

I looked up the word and found these two definitions of the verb “to strive”;

“To make great efforts to achieve or gain something” and

“to struggle or fight vigourously”

Both of these descriptions attest to the fact that discipleship – becoming a following of Christ and therefore trying to follow in his way is not easy and doesn’t come without great effort.

The struggle against our self interest over and above what might be God’s interests, the struggle to build Christian virtues into our lives, defined by the Catholic church as prudence, justice, restraint, courage, faith, hope and charity is a struggle and needs diligent attention.

We try and fail often. It is then good to remember that we are not Saints (in the common understanding of the word) but forgiven sinners.

We strive and fail and repent, we strive and fail and repent on a continual cycle and it is a good job that God is forgiving of all those who truly repent. Peter says that God doesn’t want anyone to perish and wants all to come to repentance but within that there is an implicit warning there to those who just presume on God’s forgiveness without true contrition and take liberties with his love, cheapening and demeaning the self-sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

He knows we all fail. Remember the woman caught in adultery. Jesus famously said “He who is without sin, let them cast the first stone. Yes we all fall short we know that. But the woman wasn’t allowed to just walk away. Jesus said to her was “Go and sin no more”. Just continuing in her lifestyle was not an option that Jesus left open to her.

The question posed by Peter to all of us today is “How hard are you trying to follow Jesus in the way?”   Are we striving, coasting or going backwards?

We aren’t on our own you know. God sent us a helper to strengthen us on our journey.

In Mark’s gospel account of John the Baptist preparing the way of the Lord, he records John saying this;

“I have baptised you with water, but he – Jesus - will baptise you with the Holy Spirit”.

To baptise means to immerse so we are to be immersed in the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is referred to as the “Comforter” amongst other things which means literally to strengthen us.

The Holy Spirit gives us strength to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and get back on the road when we get tired and jaded or just fall over, or more often metaphorically knocked off the road by some person or circumstance.

There are many different ways in which the Trinity can be approached but one of them is how it directly meets human need and I recently read this in a book written by Nicky Gumbel and the author of the Alpha course;

We need a point of reference. Who we are and where we came from and where we are going. That is God the Father.

Secondly we need a role model who shows us how a life in all its fullness can be lived. This is Jesus Christ.

Thirdly we need a facilitator, a strengthener, to help us to get there. This is the Holy Spirit.

All three are essential and a depleted understanding of the Holy Spirit leads to a depleted understanding of the Christian faith.

It is the Holy Spirit who gives life to the people of God.

It is by the Holy Spirit that Jesus becomes present in our heart.

It is the Holy Spirit I invoke at the Eucharist to transform bread and wine and ourselves into objects that can be used by God to enrich and feed us.

It is the Holy Spirit that will enliven us, strengthen us and help us to strive for that peace that transcends all understanding.   

Come, Lord Jesus.

Advent is a season of expectant excitement and hope.

A church that obviously lived in that Spirit of expectancy and hope was the church in Corinth to which St. Paul addresses his letter. What was the cause of this vibrancy and how may we learn from it? 

First of all Paul addresses his letter to the Corinthians “My brothers and sisters” and assures them of the Fathers’ Grace and peace, leaving them in no doubt that whatever differences they have they are family – children of God and adopted  brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ.

In the same way we gather around the banquet table of God as his valued and wanted guests all members of the same family.

The faith of the Corinthian church had seen their lives enriched but this didn’t happen by accident - it only happened because the testimony of Christ had been strengthened in them. They hadn’t slackened off, their zeal had not abated. They were a vibrant noisy church with plenty of conflict – but as a Bishop in Canterbury once said when called in to settle differences in a large charismatic church there – I’d rather have problems caused by growth rather than problems caused by decline.

For the Corinthian church the good news of their salvation has been received, read about, studied, debated, prayed about – they worshipped noisily and fervently - and as a result the gifts and fruit of the Holy Spirit have grown in them, building them up into a strong vibrant church.

Here then today’s church has a template for its own growth in depth and evangelical zeal.

Paul reminds them that the Father himself called them all personally.

If we feel jaded and at times our faith flags we need to remind ourselves that it is God the Father himself who has called you personally, by name, to be here.

He calls us all by name and you, whoever you are, are wanted and needed right here and right now in this place.

We wouldn’t be the same church if any single person were missing. No-one is surplus to requirements. To be called by God is a privilege and a great responsibility.

God wants us here. He wants us to grow into a faithful enriched community that can enrich the lives of others.

If we don’t feel up to it, he will strengthen us. Because If the light goes out in our eyes we can’t give light and hope to others so we need to pray for strength and we need to nurture and support each other. After Alex died that happened to me. The light dimmed – but God is faithful and my own faith is now renewed.

God is faithful and will answer our prayers. As a community we can grow, we can change and we can reach others and allow them too to flourish. We need that confidence in ourselves that is born out of a confidence in God.

Advent is above all a season of anticipation and hope. Hope for the healing of the whole world but in the immediate future hope invested in the power of God to work and empower, enliven our communities with His Spirit.

In particular – this community – our community.

We are to be a community of hope and belief – belief in the transforming Spirit of God. The same Spirit that indwelt Jesus, the same Spirit that we hope will transform the world is the same Spirit that will guide and strengthen and enrich us here.

This I believe is Advent hope. The Spirit breaking through into our lives, church, community and nation.

God is here so what is left for us to do is to commit our lives, and respond to the gracious God who is always calling us, always bidding us to draw near to him. Advent is an ideal opportunity to hope not just for the eventual transformation of the whole world, it is the time to hope and pray for the strengthening, the transformation and the enrichment  of ourselves and our church.

Jesus saves!

The  parable of the sheep and the goats is about salvation but let’s backtrack a little and start at the beginning.

 First of all God wants us to be sure of one thing as Christians. There is life after death. Ours is a resurrection faith, based on the fact that God raised Jesus to a new transformed mode of existence. Jesus, when debating life after death with people who did not believe in it said “You are quite wrong, you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God”

Secondly  We also know that we are all sinful to some degree and need to repent of our sins and if we do then we are absolutely  assured of forgiveness. Of this fact a Christian should be secure. We believe in a merciful and forgiving God.

Thirdly, regarding the wider purposes of God We also know (Ezekiel 18:23 & 27) that God desireth not the death of any wicked but that he should turn from his ways and live”

The eternal message of God as enshrined for us most potently in the parable of the prodigal son is “Draw near to God and he will draw near to you” no matter how estranged and distant from God and his righteousness we have strayed. Jesus himself said “I come not to judge the world but to save it so the disposition of God is absolutely clear. He doesn’t want to condemn anyone so it stands to reason that people condemn themselves.

That much is clear. We are secure. We are saved and like the penitent thief on the cross we can be sure that when we die Jesus will say “This day you shall be with me in paradise”

But that still leaves a vast ocean of people. What about people who never knew anything about Jesus, or whose exposure to Christianity was so poor that the message never had a chance to settle in their souls?

Here too, our default position is that we have to believe that God is a perfect judge – a God of Justice willing to forgive, not wanting anyone at all to perish.

This is where the parable of the sheep and the goats comes in. By what criteria are people like that conceivably judged? The answer is by by their acts of goodness and mercy

There is also of course evil people committing evil acts with the question hanging over them “So what happens to them?” What about people and systems whose unrepentant crimes are worn as a badge of honour – what happens to them? Well by the same token, by their fruits.

Simply because he is currently in the news I will ask us to consider the fate of “Jihadi John”. In our Christian worldview, what happens to him if he does not repent?

From all the Biblical evidence we can muster, I can say with confidence that he will pay for his crimes and he will suffer for the evil he has done.

And this is what I interpret the parable of the sheep and the goats to actually say to us.

We have already heard in our first reading that God’s redemptive scope is cosmic and that his presence is all in all. So in this way, our actions towards others can legitimately also be seen as actions towards Jesus himself because Christ is in all things.

“Just as you did it to the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me”(25: 40)

When Jihadi John decapitated Peter Kassig, a man completely under his power he was in a real Christian sense doing that to Jesus himself.

Yet the impulse of God is still to forgive John. Remember on the cross Jesus said “Father forgive them, they know not what they do”

As an act of faith I believe that in the end as Peter Kassig’s parents said, eventually there will be a healing of the whole world and our merciful God the perfect judge will transform all things and set things right and we have to believe that it is at least possible that a repentant and transformed John will have a part to play in that new heaven and new earth.

But until then I think that without wanting to second guess God the Biblical record is pretty clear that unrepentant sinners of that magnitude will experience much torment, punishment and wailing and gnashing of teeth. This punishment will not be physical of course because the physical body will have died but their soul, the essential part of them that makes them “them” and not someone else, will be separated from God, not by God himself, who desires not the death of a sinner, but condemned by their own hand – their own actions.

The final comment on this for ourselves is this; Life after death means that what we do now has eternal consequences so what we build in our life, in the shape of good deeds matters. St. Paul as ever says it much better 

Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— each one's work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.(2 Corinthians 3:12-15)

We have a gospel to proclaim

When I was a fresh faced young curate my training vicar took this parable very literally and every year on a certain day everyone who wanted one came to the front of the service to receive a £1 coin. The idea being that they take that coin, putting it together with other money do something novel with it to make it grow and six months later bring the money that had been made back to church in a special service.

Now I have to admire his pluck and entrepreneurial spirit but actually that is about as far away from the meaning of the parable of the talents as you can get unless you continue to use the money as a metaphor for something else.

It is admittedly a very strange parable and difficult to interpret without prior knowledge of the context and the wider Biblical canon but suffice to say here that the subject of this parable are the Pharisees. In particular the hapless third servant who hid his talent in the ground who had even what he had taken away from him.

The way of the Pharisees had resulted in a spiritual exclusivity that had resulted in the light and goodness of God that had been entrusted to them being hoarded so what had been meant as a gift for the whole of mankind lay withering on the vine.

So you can see how Jesus equated this attitude resulting in God making metaphorically "no interest on his capital". It was tantamount to defrauding God. Through their very zeal for the purity of their religion they had inadvertently sterilized it and kept God’s light from the people.  

That may have been the original context but as I noted in my weekly email the gospel only ever comes alive when we ask the question - what does God want me to hear through this passage today? 

Well once we understand the original intent it becomes rather obvious.  it means that our faith in God is to be shared and not hoarded.

As we sometimes sing “We have a gospel to proclaim” But do we? Do we, when we look honestly at our manner of life and in what we say and do proclaim the gospel to others?

I think that when all of us, myself included, ask ourselves that question and seek to answer it honestly we might be a bit embarrassed by the truth of the matter.

It is at those times that I am glad that when I became a Christian I didn’t become a Saint, I became a forgiven sinner.

We have a gospel for the whole world, not just for people who happen to come to church. God’s salvation is for all people. As St. Paul wrote "As in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive" (1 Corinthians 15: 22). We have a responsibility to share the good news and the spiritual treasure that we have been given to enrich the lives of others.

We have to sow seeds. I seem to remember a parable about that somewhere! Of course not all or even most of what we sow will result in a good crop as that parable informs us but we don’t sow anything at all then we guarantee that nothing will grow.

The parable of the talents is not about money or “talents” as we understand the word in modern English, it is about having an open evangelical heart, unashamed of  God and willing to share what we have known and experienced and believed about Him. If we don’t the church of England will certainly die.

We will remember them.

This is an act of remembrance. “Remembrance” in the Christian tradition means far more than a simple recollection of past historical events - it means to make those events present  to us by immersing ourselves in those events and the people and their experiences  in order that they may have an impact on us today – to move us, to challenge us, to affect us emotionally and to inform and change us.

An act of remembrance such as today involves engaging with the events that took place around a hundred years ago and make them present in our hearts for a purpose.

That is a tall order, because the magnitude of those events is so huge. Trying to connect fully with the pain, suffering and sacrifice, the fear and the loss, broken bodies and broken hearts is a huge task.

And that is before we also engage with the heroism, nobility, self-sacrifice and bravery. All those are huge concepts and they can only really be engaged with when they become personal.

When all those names carved into cold stone on that war memorial have flesh put on them and they become real people with real and remarkable tales to tell. An awful lot of work has gone into the task of investigating the real lives of all those names on our war memorial and eventually I trust that all that research will soon provide a permanent exhibition of their lives here in St. Mary’s.

In a personal trip to France this Summer we visited the grave of a relative of my wife, a certain Corporal Thomas Brook who died aged 21 on 12^th September 1916. His grave had as far as we know never been visited by a member of the family in all these years so it felt like a very special moment laying flowers on his grave in a beautiful little Commonwealth war cemetery near Albert on the Somme.

As we did so I couldn’t but help remember those famous words “A corner of a foreign field that is forever England.”

Standing amongst those rows and rows of tombstones  is a haunting experience – an immersiion in the enormity of it all – much like the display of poppies at the Tower of London – and is deeply affecting

Where does this act of remembrance lead us I wonder?

It leads some to pacifism. I respect their decision but the Christian church has never gone down that path.  To use what might sound like an old fashioned term to many, humanity is sinful, we know that evil exists – evil people with evil motives and so regrettably but inevitably there will be wars and there will be occasions when it will be necessary to fight to defend ourselves, our civilisation and protect all that we hold dear. 

I believe the maxim -All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. When evil raises its head it must be confronted. And when we do - that is when we turn to the brave, heroic, sacrificial service of the men and women in our armed forces.

What our remembrance tells me is that when we ask our young men and women to risk their lives on our behalf we must be sure that the cause is just, and that our reasons for going to war are not trivial or governed by vanity and that all reasonable attempts to avert war have been taken, and if despite all those precautions we are taken into war we go regardless we go with heavy hearts but with heads held high, well trained, motivated and well equipped for the fight.

We have to go with our eyes wide open and will be saddened but not be surprised at the death and destruction that will inevitably result.  Our remembrance if it tells us nothing else tells us there is no such thing as a clean war without loss and heartache. They are inevitable.

Waste of young life, Grief, hatred and recrimination will all be there. We know that. But so will honour, nobility and bravery and mercy.

And let us not entertain for a moment the notion that this nation of ours is not worth fighting for. Our nation, our people, freedom, democracy and culture is worth defending, worth fighting for and ultimately worth dying for.

This act of remembrance should bring us face to face with the reality of war and its consequences. We should allow the reality of the sacrifice of all those names read out outside to affect us. We know that war is brutal and costly. But we also know that their backbone and resolve, their bravery and sacrifices made by countless men and women to confront the evils that we face in this dangerous world is something to be proud of and seek to emulate.