St Clement 26^th June 2022         Galatian 5:22   The Fruit of the Spirit

By Dr Pat Lock

My computer is driving me up the wall. Last weekend when we returned from holiday it decided not to let me in.  So despite numerous passwords and waiting nothing much happened. Eventually it came up with a message “ We are currently checking if you are human, please wait a minute”.  Despite waiting, every time I pressed a key, a similar message kept appearing. Eventually it came up with “Are you a robot?”.  I was very tempted to put yes just to see what happened next. However, next question was “Are you human?”.   At this point any fruit of the spirit that I may have had was linked to self-control and patience – both  of course in a negative way.  But if a technical machine like a laptop could tip me over the edge what chance was there when dealing with people?

The Fruit of the Spirit is something that I have always done in assembly as it can be so visual, and the children all knew the song that helped them to remember – even now I run through the song in my head to reel them off in order.   I never forget the day when a 5 year old stopped me in the corridor and reeled off all nine – and then added  “ but you don’t do patience do you”.  Are you growing it?

The Fruit of the Spirit should not be confused with the Gifts of the Spirit that are listed in Corinthians. The gifts are given by God to equip us for mission and we are unlikely to have them all.   The Fruit is something we all have.  Fruit is a sign of the Christian life and the Spirit within us and we would all be at various stages in growing it.

St Paul emphasises the Fruit and not the fruits with an “s”.  The Fruit is one.  Imagine it as segments of an orange or fruit salad mixed up in one bowl.  Fruit takes time to mature and this could be a lifelong process. Fruit trees in the garden can take years to grow and produce fruit – they have to be watered, pruned and cared for. And as an apple tree produces only apples so the fruit of the spirit produces symbols of the spirit – love, joy, peace etc.   There is only one type of fruit on the spiritual tree but it is made up of different characteristics.  But if you look at them, you will see they intertwine – they cannot stand alone. For example gentleness and self-control go with patience; kindness and goodness flow from love and peace.

You cannot pick and choose which part of the fruit you have at any point in time for we are given all of the fruit freely.

 The expectation is that all Christians who claim the spirit within them will grow them all. We are not alone in this journey as the spirit will lead us to all truth,  but we need to want to be changed – for that is what will happen.  We too, can consciously recognise a lapse in  ourselves and work on that one aspect and give time for maturity. Fruit does not appear overnight!

It is all very simple but also very complicated. Those who are in Christ are distinguished from unbelievers in that they have been gifted with the Holy Spirit, enabling them to bear fruit. Its as if the roots of the tree are the Gifts of the Spirit and the branches bear the Fruit of the Spirit.  I could go through each of the elements individually but they are self explanatory – and that would be more boring than what I am saying now.  The whole thing to me is wondrous – that if you are willing, the Spirit will help you with the growth of any and/or all of these characteristics. As you yield your life to God and seek Him in prayer and praise and worship and Bible study, The Holy Spirit teaches you, leads you and guides you. The Holy Spirit transforms you from glory to glory. It is the presence of God residing in you that changes you: godly fruit develops as you are in the presence of God. . And the fruit he wants is the fruit of Christian character.

The fruit emanates or proceeds from the Holy Spirit and reveals what the Holy Spirit is like. These are the Holy Spirit’s character traits. And because the Holy Spirit is a Person of the Most Holy Trinity, and because the three Persons are one, the fruit reveals something of what God is like. The grace and power of the Holy Spirit gives increase to these fruits. If we cooperate with this grace, and with growth in holiness, these fruits expand and intensify.  We have a view of God himself. And what a marvellous view it is.

And St Paul adds “Against such things there is no law.”  When the life of the believer expresses these qualities, there is no need for the law. Those who “live by the Spirit” (Gal 5:16) produce fruit reflecting the character of God that the law could not. There is no law – God does not make a law against the nine-fold fruit of the Spirit for these are the very virtues that God desires believers to supernaturally manifest in a Christ-like walk. The Fruit is above the law and greater than the law ever can be, for it is the work of God himself.

In verse 13 of the Galatians reading we read “ You were called to be free – serve one another in love.  The entire law is summed up in a single commandment “Love your neighbour as yourself”.  Easier said than done.  The fact is we live in a community with other people.  We may not share their political view, even their social views, but we are still expected to portray the highest standards that God has given us.  And there are times when it falls apart. Why?  Because, yes computer, I am human and not a robot and I therefore have feelings that can be hurt or can cry out in anger.  You see it in  children.  I can remember the day that I threw my brother’s rabbit out of the bedroom window into the path of an oncoming car  that dutifully squashed it flat ( it was only a soft toy, not a real rabbit).  But my feelings changed rapidly when my father found out.

And so it is with God.  He wants to bring us back to the Fruit – patience, gentleness, self-control.   So often it is because we want things done our way but in the process someone else is drawn in and hurt.  That is not resolved until resolution has been reached with both parties and it should not happen again. You cannot just walk back in as if nothing has happened. But I do think there is a place for righteous anger (such as Jesus overturning the tables in the temple) but who am I to judge?   Some segments of the fruit are easier than others and we all have our strengths and weaknesses.

Go home and look up the Fruit of the Spirit carefully and prayerfully and see where your strengths and weaknesses lie.  Ask other people who know you well – do they see you as you see yourself? Then find a way to move forward – to work on those harder attributes  that you reflect  being a Christian so that others can see, to the glory of God.

We are given the Fruit as it is a reflection of the Spirit within us, all we have to do is nurture it to maturity.  But we do have a lifetime and beyond.  God promises that He will complete the work he has begun.

St Paul says “ You were called to be free – live by the Spirit”

“And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind.“  (Acts 2.2)

(Whit Sunday, 5^th June 2022, St. Clement’s, Hastings)

I begin with a Roman Catholic joke told to me by a Roman Catholic friend.  The context is that of the Second Vatican Council which began in 1962.  This was the Council that modernised the Roman Catholic Church by, for example, having services in everyday languages instead of Latin.  The reforms were driven by Pope John XXIII and they were highly unpopular with many Roman Catholics.  The joke runs as follows.

Pope John XXIII dies and goes to the pearly gates where he meets St. Peter holding the key.  “Hello,” says St. Peter.  “Who are you?”.  “I’m Pope John XXIII,” comes the reply.  “Supreme Pontiff, Vicar of Christ, Bishop of Rome, your successor.”  “Well, you’re not on my list,” says St. Peter, “I had better check with the Holy Spirit.”

So off he goes to see the Holy Spirit.  St. Peter knocks on the door and is allowed entry.  “I’ve got this man at the gate who’s not on my list,” says St Peter, “but he claims to be Pope John XXIII.”   “Oh, dear,” says, the Holy Spirit, getting into a real flap with his wings.  “This is all so embarrassing.  You see, he invited me to a conference at the Vatican in 1962.   But I never went.”

I have yet to break this news to Fr. Eamonn at St. Mary Star of the Sea.

The point is, of course, that we tend to assume, don’t we, that when we invoke the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit will come.  Yet we cannot control the Holy Spirit even though we like to think that we do. “The wind blows where it wills,” said Jesus, “and you hear the sound of it but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.”

The Greek word for ‘wind’ here (pneuma) also translates as ‘spirit’.  The Spirit does indeed blow where it wills.  And that wind is not necessarily gentle despite our attempts to domesticate the Holy Spirit.  The Orthodox Churches have a much stronger doctrine of the freedom and sovereignty of the Holy Spirit which features far more prominently in its liturgy and sacraments.  In the Church of England and other western churches, the Holy Spirit sometimes seems to be more of an added extra than intrinsically essential like the Father and the Son.  But listen carefully to the eucharistic prayer this morning and the words of consecration: “Grant that by the power of your Holy Spirit, and according to your holy will, these gifts of bread and wine may be to us the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

“And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind.”  A violent wind, not a gentle breeze.  We think of Jesus being led gently into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit and yet the Greek word usually translated as ‘led’ is actually very forceful – ekballein – to force, to drive out.  We get our word ‘ballistic’ from it.

This shouldn’t surprise because we talk about praying in the power of the Spirit and we will call upon the power of the Holy Spirit in the words of consecration. We sometimes pray at the end our service for God to “send us out in the power of your Spirit to live and work to your praise and glory.”The word ‘power’ occurs twice in our reading from Acts this morning. Those who spoke in tongues spoke of God’s deeds of power.  Jesus was attested by signs of power, says St. Peter in his address.

It’s not easy to discern that the power of the Holy Spirit, gentle breeze or violent wind, is much in evidence in the Church of England today.  The Church’s power is more like that exercised by a suburban golf club; behind the scenes, nods and winks, who you know.  And that’s quite apart from the institutional bullying of parishes and individuals.  Let’s pray hard that the Holy Spirit really does turn up to the Lambeth Conference later this summer when Anglican bishops from around the world gather in Canterbury.  Otherwise Father Eamonn may be telling a revised joke to me.

What we cannot doubt is the presence of the Holy Spirit at Her Majesty’s Coronation in Westminster Abbey on 2^nd June 1953.  We do not doubt it because we can discern its fruits in seventy years of duty and service to our nation and Commonwealth. The Queen’s Christian faith remains an example and inspiration and Her Majesty has served the Church of England with devotion in her capacity as Supreme Governor.  By the Grace of God the Holy Spirit Her Majesty has remained faithful to her calling and duty.

Here is one of the prayers said in Westminster Abbey on that rainy June day:

Strengthen her, O Lord, with the Holy Ghost the Comforter;
Confirm and stablish her with thy free and princely Spirit,
the Spirit of wisdom and government,
the Spirit of counsel and ghostly strength,
the Spirit of knowledge and true godliness,
and fill her, O Lord, with the Spirit of thy holy fear,
now and for ever;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Do we not all say ‘Amen’ to that?

Her Majesty speaks openly about her faith and its importance in enabling her to fulfill her Accession and Coronation promises, relying upon the power and authority that comes from God.

So as we give thanks today for seventy years of the Queen’s Christian service and witness, let us also pray for our parish, for our service and our witness, and the operation of the Holy Spirit within our lives.  What we need to remember this Whit Sunday is that we can continue to progress as a church, not because we have any power or authority intrinsic to ourselves but because God can show his power, gentle breeze or violent wind, through us.  And that involves using whatever gifts we have to the very best of our ability and leaving the rest to God the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is sovereign and blows where it wills.  We must not take the Spirit for granted, lest we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.  So may our truly fervent prayer on this Whit Sunday be that the Holy Spirit may be active in our lives of service and witness:

Come down, O Love divine,

Seek thou this soul of mine,

And visit it with thine own ardour glowing;

O Comforter, draw near,

Within my heart appear,

And kindle it, thy holy flame bestowing.”

© Paul Hunt 2022

“He and his entire family were baptised without delay.” (Acts 16.33)

(The Sunday after the Ascension, 29^th May 2022, All Saints, Hastings.)

Which is the odd one out?

Which of the following clergy is the odd one out in terms of their earlier ministries?

1. The Venerable Edward Dowler, B. the Reverend Paul Hunt, C. the Reverend David Hill and D. the Rt. Reverend Dr. Martin Warner, Lord Bishop of Chichester?

Which of the following books of the Bible is the odd one out?

1. Mark B Daniel C Luke D. James

Which of the following bishops is the odd one out?

1. George Bell Cosmo Gordon Lang C. Michael Ramsey D. Robert Runcie?

Which of the following characters in Acts 16 is the odd one out?

1. Lydia B. the Slave Girl the Gaoler  D. The households of Lydia and the Gaoler.

The answer to the fourth question is the slave-girl.  Why?  Because she is not invited to be baptised by St. Paul.

Let’s just think about that because it’s a point easily missed.  The nameless slave-girl earned a lot of money for her owners by her fortune telling.  She is possessed by a spirit of divination and for many days she cries out to Paul and Silas “These men are slaves of the Most High God who proclaim to you a way of salvation.”  And she is, of course, correct.  St. Paul describes himself as a slave of Jesus Christ in the very first verse of his letter to the Romans and, let us also note, in his later letter to the Church at Philippi.

Yet Luke tells us that St Paul was very much annoyed.  The spirit of divination is exorcised and the slave girl simply disappears from the narrative and from Christian history.  The recognition that Paul and Silas proclaim a way of salvation does not lead to proclamation of the Gospel and to baptism.

The verses immediately before today’s extract from Acts tell us that Lydia is baptised with all her household.  The frightened gaoler is likewise baptised with all his household.  But the slave girl? Why do Paul and Silas not tell her what she must do to be saved?  Unlike the gaoler, she is already part-way there in her recognition of Paul and Silas as emissaries of the Most High God.  Did not St Paul write that in Christ there is neither Greek nor Jew, male nor female, slave or freeman?  Yet the female Gentile slave is not baptised into Christ Jesus.

We do not know, fairly obviously, what was going through Paul’s mind in relation to the slave-girl other than his great annoyance.  But perhaps we have stumbled across a blind spot in St. Paul.  That his annoyance obscured his primary task to proclaim and baptise.  It is, in a sense, an unconverted part of St Paul’s character.

There is a possibly disturbing question here for us.  Are there not aspects of our own Christian character that are not yet fully converted?  Perhaps the universal appeal of the Gospel to which we all subscribe can be less than universal with people, fellow Christians included, whom we find to be different from ourselves or, dare I say it, even socially uncongenial?  Do we truly welcome everyone equally into what the Prayer Book calls “the fellowship of Christ’s religion”?

I think that Paul’s ministry in Philippi as described by St Luke in the Acts of the Apostles is challenging.  Many years ago I visited Philippi and sat by the river where Paul and Silas spoke to the women and where Lydia and all her household, family and servants, were baptised.  I sat outside the traditional site of Paul’s imprisonment and read of the conversion and baptism of the gaoler and all his household.  But I don’t recall thinking very much about the slave-girl other than to sideline her as an irritation to Paul and Silas.

The disturbing question “What about the slave-girl?” ought to make us reflect upon the unsaved aspects of our Christian character, our spiritual blind-spots and perhaps our misjudgements of fellow Christians, not least in our own congregation.  St. Paul was annoyed by the slave-girl and that seems to have affected his judgement. Because, let’s be honest, are we not sometimes annoyed by our brothers and sisters and make judgements about one another.

St Luke concludes the narrative in Philippi by writing that, after leaving the prison on their own terms, St. Paul and Silas went to Lydia’s home to encourage the brothers and sisters.

I wonder what the slave-girl was doing.

© Paul Hunt 2022

“It is not for you to know the times or seasons.” Acts 1.7

(All Saints, Hastings, Ascension Day, 26^th May 2022)

Waiting.  We spend much of our lives in waiting.  Waiting for a bus or train.  Waiting for a medical appointment.  Waiting for a delivery.  Waiting, perhaps like Mr Macawber in David Copperfield for something to turn up in an act of  unwarranted optimism.

The eleven apostles are told to wait too in response to their question of whether the time had come for the messianic age.  “It is not for you to know the times or seasons that the Father has set by his own authority,” is Jesus’ reply.

The reply sounds rather abrupt.  Surely, it is natural human curiosity to want to know when something will happen, especially something of genuine importance.  Attempts by Jehovah’s Witnesses to predict the end of the world and the start of the messianic age are understandable but do not respect those stern words of Jesus.  “It is not for you to know the times or seasons.”

Theologically and liturgically, we are in a season of waiting between the Ascension and Whit Sunday and the coming of the Holy Spirit.  For what was it that Jesus said? It is not for us to know the times or seasons but to wait for the Holy Spirit and be his witnesses to the ends of the earth.  We are not told to stand gazing up into heaven but to preach the Kingdom and the promise of Jesus’ return in Glory.

As disciples, this season of waiting is not one of ungrounded optimism like that of Mr Macawber just waiting for something to turn up.  Our faith that Jesus will return in Glory and establish His rule is grounded in the Resurrection and the Easter promise.  It is not an idle, passive waiting but an active waiting that underpins all our activity in this parish.  It may not always be a glamorous waiting but it is nevertheless a waiting of witness in our part of God’s earth.

The great protestant theologian Karl Barth once wrote as follows about our time of waiting:

“The conclusion of Christ’s work is not an opportunity given to the Apostles for idleness, but it is their being sent out into the world.  Here there is no rest possible; here there is rather running and racing; here is the start of the mission, the sending of the Church into the world and for the world.”

We live in a time for preaching and proclaiming, for repenting and believing, for listening and comprehending, for running and racing, all in Christ’s name.  It is the time of Jesus Christ who stands outside of the doors of men and women and knocks.  If we have faith, we will hear him from within our room and open that door which can only be unlocked from within.

A time of waiting is rarely easy.  We may be anxious about what is to come and look back to the security, real or imagined, of the years that are past.  That is very much the mark of our society today with its cult of nostalgia and anniversaries. As Christians we also look to the past and do we not sometimes, perhaps secretly like the woman with the haemorhage, wish that we could reach out and touch the hem of his garment in the days of his flesh?  As Christians, do we not also yearn for that future day when Christ shall indeed be revealed in His Glory and our endeavours in the faith are vindicated?  Do we not sometimes ask in our hearts: “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?”

But it is not for us to know the times or seasons.  It is in the faith that Christ reigns this very day seated at the right hand of the Father that we wait in active hope and expectation for the Resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.  We wait not for another time or season but for that which is eternal.

© Paul Hunt 2022

DO YOU WANT TO BE MADE WELL?  Sermon by Sandra Bentall 22.5.2022. John 5:1-9

Our 2 sons were just like other little boys and sometimes came off their trikes, tumbled over in the garden, scraped knees, fingers or elbows. They’d frequently come running up to Ken or me saying “Eina, eina” wanting us to kiss it and make it better.  Eina was the Afrikaans word for “Ouch” but used by all children in South African English as well.    Sometimes the “eina”, the “ouch”,  was so minor that by the time they got to us they might have forgotten which finger it was that got knocked. But the thrill for us  was that either one would come to us believing that we could help them and make it better.

In my life I’ve also had many an  eina, an ouch – a broken arm was the first I remember when I fell off roller skates;  also big bruises, cuts, and being a housewife burns from an oven shelf, and so on.

If all of us here sat around and swapped stories of our personal-wars  we’d probably discover that in each of our lives there have been many times where we have been “wounded” to some extent or another.

Someone once said that “Time heals all wounds”.  If I were to look back at physical battle scars I’ve managed to get  over the years, and how they’ve become little more than memories, and many I’ve forgotten about,  I might be inclined to think that statement is true.

But does time really heal all wounds?  I’ve heard that   all my life, as you probably have . . . but it isn’t really true, is it? Time does not heal all wounds. There are wounds deep down inside some people that still hurt when they are touched . . .aggrieved  that someone offended us but never apologised. . .   hurts that still cause pain  . . . a wounded spirit that continually reminds us that we are not whole.

How do we cope with life when our spirits are sore? How can we handle life when that part of us that is the very source of our energy and strength   is wounded and just won’t heal?

In the Gospel reading this morning (John 14:23-29) Jesus promises He would give His disciples peace. There are many examples of this in St John’s Gospel and today I would like us to think about the lame man at the Pool of Beth-zatha (also known as Bethesda in some translations). You will recall the story. He had been ill for 38 years and believed that to be healed he had to be the first person into the Pool when the waters stirred up. After all this time the man’s problems had become a way of life. He didn’t know anything different but how he’d always lived, lying in his comfort zone on his mat in one of the Pool’s porticoes alongside many others, and waited and waited for the chance to be healed. But because of his infirmities he could never get into the Pool first to be healed.  We might say that on the face of it this was the story of a physical healing – and has little to do with a wounded spirit I was just talking about. So not much we can learn from this story – right?  Well, let’s see!

What disables a person?  Broken body? Defeated mind?
After all those years perhaps this man’s emotional wounds were as crippling as his physical infirmity . . . his sense of helplessness . . .feelings of being abandoned . .  of worthlessness . . and shame.

Remember, he had likely believed that sickness and infirmity was God’s doing – punishment for his sins. What else did this man have to do  but lie there and think – and wait – dwell on his condition – and watch as others got to the waters first. Here is a man who really has all kinds of wounds.

But one day something different happens – Jesus comes along and brings him peace. Let’s look at how.

Amidst all the infirm people he was the one Jesus approached. But what does Jesus do? He does NOT help the man into the pool, but asks him a most meaningful question – “DO YOU WANT TO BE MADE WELL?”

Do I want to be made well? DO I want to be made well? 
That seems about as useless a question as asking the owner of a clock shop if he knows the time.

But the question was not for Jesus’ information. It was for the sick man himself and his answer may have helped his healing. What if the man hadn’t ever seriously considered this question of whether he actually wanted to be healed.   Had he thought about the responsibility of being whole in body, then having to take responsibility for himself which he wasn’t used to   as all the time he’d been ill he had relied on others to make his way in life. To be made well would mean he’d have to change –  and give up his old way of life he was used to.
So maybe the question “Do you want to be made well?” wasn’t such a strange question at all.

And what about us? As Jesus looks at us – crippled by problems, crippled by circumstance, crippled by sin, what does He say to us? Could it be that Jesus asks us the same question “Do you want to be made well?”

Maybe we should ask ourselves – Do you want Jesus to heal the parts of your life where you’ve been damaged  – or is it easier to hold on to the hurt? Is it easier to let bitterness fester, and to wallow in the hurt and betrayal, licking old wounds?  Often we hold on tightly to things that paralyse us spiritually.
Jesus can help heal things like that but when He does  we will be left without excuse for our lives and the choices we make.  We will no longer be able to cry “My life isn’t my fault, others are to blame”

So what about us today? When Jesus asks “do you want to be made well” what is our response?
When Jesus asks “do you want to be healed from your past hurts?”- do we reply “you don’t know how bad they hurt me”?
When Jesus asks “do you want to be loosed from the chains of your sin you keep secret?” – do we answer “I just can’t control myself”?
When Jesus says to the addict, “do you want to overcome?” – is the answer “I have an addiction, it’s a disease and it’s not my fault”?
When Jesus asks, “do you want to be saved, with Me in your life?” – will you excuse yourself with “I’m not nearly as bad as other people I know.”
At the Pool Jesus asked the crippled man, “Do you want to be made well?” And he just complained “I have no-one to put me into the Pool.”  No, he didn’t answer the question, did he? And Jesus ignored the lame man’s sorry excuse that he didn’t have anybody.  
But we know that for us – In Jesus we have somebody.  Jesus knows that old wounds are tender to the touch – and sometimes we’d rather pretend that all’s well, and deny our hurts  than to have them taken away.

To all of us who need His healing touch in any part of our life, Jesus asks “Do you WANT to be made well?”  and we should answer “Yes, Lord, I am ready to put the past behind me; help me to change what is needed. 
To receive the healing He has for our lives, we must put away our sorry excuses, but desire to be changed and believe He can help us.
The lame man’s excuse that he had no-one to help him was his response to explain his terrible plight. As with many of us  it was a way to rationalise why we haven’t sought healing of our wounds for ourselves.   And this often means finding SOMEONE ELSE TO BLAME.  We make excuses.

He’d learned to live with his disability and that was his way of life, probably told himself to just live with it. His situation seemed hopeless. Could anything change after all this time? 
But then Jesus came along with THAT BIG QUESTION – “Do you want to be made well?” He didn’t say “Oh yes” did he? He avoided the question. Had he given up on himself so made an excuse?

What about you? Has there been a time when you may have given up on yourself? Jesus asks each one of us if we want to be made well – but we may miss the chance for wholeness by trying to cover up ourselves from His concern.  But no matter how trapped a person feels in their infirmities, God can minister to their deepest needs. Don’t let a problem or hardship cause you to avoid listening for God – He may have special work for you to do in spite of a condition, or even because of it. Many have ministered effectively to hurting people because they have triumphed over their own hurts.

Back to the story. We are told that Jesus came to the man and commanded “Stand up, take your mat and walk”.
After all this time of no change, no improvement, something did happen. Jesus did not end with “Stand up”.   He told the man “Take your mat and walk”. He was not healed just to stand there. Notice that the man does not leave his mat behind, it goes with him. His circumstances are real. The difference is he now carries them.

What are the burdens and barriers in our lives? Ask yourself – do I want to overcome them? Start by asking yourself – What do I need to be healed of? What’s my impediment?   Is it self-imposed?   What’s standing in the way?   What sort of things do I need to change in my life?   Am I holding on hurt or anger or perhaps a destructive habit, wanting to be healthy and whole but not willing to stop smoking or drinking or eating troubles away or just sitting around.

Nothing is stronger than a habit and it takes strength to break it. Pray for that strength and act upon it. Rather than seeing a murky pool of disappointments, it’s wiser to see a pool filled with hope and opportunity. Then DO something – jump in.

Could we step outside of our comfort zone and take a leap in faith? Like Linus and his blanket, if we’re determined to hold on to what we’re used to, we may well be closing the door to possibilities God has in store for us, perhaps with special work for Him.  Listen for His voice!

You may be one of those who can help someone else. Perhaps try phoning someone worse off than you and brightening their day by chatting with them.

God’s work in our lives is accomplished by His grace. To experience it we must reach out in faith and co-operate with Him.        

Are you still sitting on your mat?
Are you still looking wistfully over your Pool of Beth-zatha?
When life puts you in tough situations do you say “Why always me?” instead of “Why not me?”  
Do you ask in defeat “Why me?”  instead of saying in defiance “Try ME”

    
Amen

Sandra Bentall, Authorised Lay Minister for Old Town Parish of St Clement & All Saints, Hastings.

A Sermon by Keith Leech, Authorised Lay Minister

I have been told that attempting to preach about The Messiah is going where angels fear to tread. Yet this is today’s Gospel so let’s grasp the nettle.

Until His trial Jesus never explicitly used the words ‘I am the Messiah’. It would have been considered to be blasphemous. Those who were out to get Him wanted Him to say it so that they would have an excuse to arrest Him; but He never did. Instead He said ‘I told you but you do not believe’. He goes on to explain ‘The works that I do in my Father’s name testify to me’.

There are various accounts of the trial of Jesus. In Matthew, Luke and John He is asked by Pilate ‘Are you the King of the Jews?’ His reply is ‘So you say’.  In John He also says ‘My Kingdom is not an earthly kingdom’. Only in Mark does He actually say that He is the Messiah. ‘Again the high priest asked him, “Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?  “I am,” said Jesus. “And you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven….”  He says I am the Messiah and also The Son of Man. These are both significant statements.

The Old Testament Prophets Ezekiel, Isaiah (particularly chapter 35) and Zechariah predicted the Messiah. The Messiah means the anointed one of God, God’s chosen one.  In Greek it translates as The Christ.  Just in case anybody thinks otherwise Jesus full name was Yhesuah ben Yoseph.  Jesus son of Joseph.  We now call him Jesus Christ. Jesus the anointed one of God.., Jesus the Messiah.

There were many different interpretations at that time as to what the Messiah would be. There was the official version from the Pharisee and Sadducee religious thinkers, (who didn’t even always agree amongst themselves)… but also many other interpretations.  It could be considered to be similar to the myriad of ideas that can be found throughout Christianity about the nature of Christ today.

The ideas changed over the years and when the Roman occupation came the Messiah popularly became a liberator.  

The last book of the Old Testament was written 300 years before Christ yet there were new writings still appearing with new ideas about the Messiah, including the Dead Sea Scrolls. These writings were still being written right up until the time of Jesus.  The Messiah was to do and be a number of things. He would be priest, prophet, hidden, slain and warrior, he would …

Build the Third Temple  ‘ (Ezekiel).

He would gather all Jews back to the Land of Israel ’ (Isaiah).

He would usher in an era of world peace, and end all hatred, oppression, suffering and disease. “Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall man learn war anymore.” (Isaiah)

He would spread universal knowledge of the God of Israel, which will unite humanity as one.: “God will be King over all the world – on that day, God will be One and His Name will be One” (Zechariah).

He also would completely uphold all the law and any interpretation of it

Jesus says in Matthew  ‘Do not think that I have come to abolish Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfil them’.   He was however considered to be a law breaker. Quite frequently and openly, Jesus broke traditional Jewish interpretation of the religious laws. He was accused of breaking laws concerning the Sabbath on multiple occasions, but Jesus didn’t actually break any Old Testament command. He violated the interpretations religious leaders had developed around the biblical commands of keeping the Sabbath day holy. He was actually showing leadership and discipleship.

Jesus refers to Himself as ‘The Son of Man’ in today’s reading and throughout the Gospels. One of the texts between the old and new testament is the Book of Enoch. It was written just over 100 years before the birth of Jesus.  It was a well-known text at the time and is mentioned in Luke, the Epistle to the Hebrews and Jude.  It makes reference to the ‘Son on Man’ as a pre-existing entity (that is a He was present at the creation) and as another way of describing The Messiah. One who will come in judgement to destroy the wicked of the Earth. ‘The Son of Man’ is very much a post Old Testament idea from the time between the last book of the Old Testament and the time of Jesus.

So when asked if he was the Messiah Jesus says in today’s Gospel  ‘My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. What my Father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father’s hand. The Father and I are one.’ The last sentence is quite something. ‘The Father and I are one’ here we have Jesus saying He is one with God. He finishes by saying ‘The works that I do in my Father’s name testify to me’. He just points to the signs and works as sufficient evidence in themselves.

The issue as to whether Jesus was the Messiah is more to do with literal interpretation of the prophecies, than seeing that there is metaphor and deeper meaning. It is in expecting a man to be the Messiah as opposed to the Son of God; Himself part of the one indivisible God.

I sometimes wonder if the second coming was today and Jesus chose to come as he did before whether we would ourselves recognise Him… or would we not because our expectations were different to what we were seeing, or our own religious dogma prevented us from seeing Him  even  if He was standing in front of us?

How relevant is Jesus as the Messiah, The Christ, to us today?

Jesus asks in Matthew, Mark and Luke. Who do men say I am? …..Who do you say I am?

‘My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me’.

Amen

Keith Leech ALM May 2022

“David danced before the Lord with all his might.” 2 Samuel 6.4

(Morris Festival Eucharist, 1^st May 2022, All Saints, Hastings)

I begin with a question: Where did the frisbee go to dance?  The answer? To a disc-o.

It’s a long time since I’ve been to a disco.  I do remember a disco on the lower floor of what is now Fagins Diner at the High Street end of George Street.  It was 1978 and it was peak time for the Bee Gees and John Travolta.  I was still an undergraduate and was teaching Sixth Form Italian students in St Mary Star of the Sea during the Long Vacation.  So there I was, not quite twenty-one, at the farewell disco with some delightful Italian girls.  For me, it was certainly a case of Saturday Night Fever and early proof of the existence of heaven. 

But dance is more than gyratory perambulations at a disco and comes in so many forms.  These days I prefer to watch ballet, a truly great and expressive art form.  An expressive art form might also be one way in which to describe belly dancing.  Ballroom dancing has retained its popularity or, strictly speaking, has increased it and on this May Day we celebrate Morris Dancing with its long tradition and different patterns of dance.

We can also find dance in the Bible.  As we heard in our first lesson, King David danced in worship with all his might ahead of the Ark of the Covenant returning to Jerusalem.  He is even despised by Saul’s daughter for “leaping and dancing before the Lord” in his joy at the Ark’s return.

After the exodus from Egypt, Aaron’s sister Miriam and other women dance and play the tambourine. (Exod. 15.20)

The prophet Jeremiah speaks of dancing as part of the rejoicing when the Jews return to Judah after their exile in Bablyon. (Jer.31.13)

Psalm 149 calls upon us to praise God’s name with dancing.

Psalm 150 calls upon us likewise.

There are many other positive references to dance.

And in today’s Gospel, Jesus refers to those who do not accept him as being like those who refuse to dance.

Historically, dance has been part of the church’s unofficial liturgy but it disappeared sometime after the Middle Ages.  The Puritans, a tad unfairly, usually get a bad press in this respect.

Theologically, true worship of God involves our mind, spirit and body.  We express our worship in bodily actions such as kneeling, bowing or making the sign of the cross and dancing for and to the Lord is no different in principle.

Dancing is also trinitarian in shape: We have the music, we have the leader in the dance and we have the dancers who follow.  At its highest level, it is one perfect action, three in one and one in three.

Life is also like a dance.  I’ve often thought of life as being rather like the formal dances such as the cottilion or quadrille we come across at the Netherfield Ball in Pride and Prejudice and in costume dramas.  We may say farewell to one person or place at an early stage in the dance of life and then, as we move through life, find ourselves re-united at a later stage.  That’s certainly been my experience with key people and places coming in and out of my life, often unexpectedly, at different stages and, looking back on six decades, I discern a pattern and the divine dance leader leading me on.  To use the title of a painting by Poussin and of a series of novels by Anthony Powell, our lives are very much A Dance to the music of time.

So here we are at our Morris Festival Eucharist, literally our Morris Festival Thanksgiving, on this May Day.  Let us reflect on how we live our lives and see whether we can discern in them something of the music of time, conscious that our time should be enjoyed but also that our time, like all dance sequences, will one day draw to its conclusion.

I rather like the fact that the word for ‘dance’ in Aramaic, chada, the form of Hebrew spoken by Jesus, is also the word for joy.  So let our dancing at this joyful Eastertide be joyful dancing.

Let us hear Jesus’ invitation to us to dance so that we may, like King David, dance before the Lord will all our might as God seeks to lead us through the dance of life.

Dance, then, wherever you may be,

I am the Lord of the Dance, said he.

And I’ll lead you all wherever you may be,

And I’ll lead you all in the Dance, said he.

© Paul Hunt 2022

“Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb, also went in and he saw and believed.” (John 20.8)

(All Saints, Hastings, Easter Day, 17^th April 2022)

Is seeing believing?  Judy Cubison kindly gave me a lift home a couple of weeks ago and when we got to St. Leonards, where all the best people live, we saw two men crossing Norman Road.  There was nothing strange about that in itself – I have myself crossed Norman Road hundreds of times – but these two men were dressed as trees.  After a slight initial hestitation, we believed what we saw. We were, after all, in St. Leonards.  If you visit the George Street shop Turn the Tide, you will see two prints for sale in the window.  One reads “Keep Hastings Weird.”  The second reads “Keep St Leonards Weirder.”

How often, I wonder, do we jump to conclusions when we see something?  Now those conclusions are sometimes correct but sometimes they are not.  I used to attend a church with a much loved vicar.  But I will never forget his service of institution.  At the moment when he was presented to his new congregation, a loud voice came from one of the women in the pews: “That’s not him, is it?”  She had jumped to a premature conclusion on the basis of an initial physical sighting.  She was later to see her new vicar in a much deeper, and consequently, far more positive way.

There are three different ways of seeing in St. John’s narrative of the visits of Mary Magdelene, Peter and John, the Beloved Disciple, to the empty tomb.

First, we have Mary Magdelene.  She arrives at the tomb while it is still dark and finds that the stone has been rolled away from the entrance. Her conclusion, based on what she can see in the darkness, is that the body of Jesus has been moved, possibly even stolen.  “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him,” are her words to Peter and John.

So Peter and John run to the tomb.  Although it is John who arrives first and who looks inside the tomb, it is Peter who enters first.  And what does he see?  He sees the linen burial cloths and, rolled up by itself, the head cloth.  He realises that the body has not been stolen because the robbers would not have bothered to take off the the burial cloths and leave them tidily.  But he doesn’t know what else to make of the situation.  St Luke tells us that Peter returned home perplexed – as well as he might have been.

And then thirdly we have St. John, the Beloved Disciple.  John sees the same physical evidence as Mary Magdelene and Peter: the missing body, the linen burial cloths and the rolled up head cloth.  But John begins to grasp the significance of this evidence.  “He saw and believed.”

But what exactly does he see?  At one level, he sees nothing more – or less – than what Mary and Peter have seen.   Yet at a deep level John begins to grasp the meaning of Jesus’ hints about “the third day”, about the need for the Messiah to suffer before coming into His Glory.

Inside the empty tomb, John begins to see the deeper significance of those burial cloths and intuits the correct conclusion.  By contrast, Mary and Peter and, yes, we too, look for confirmation.  For them and us, and certainly shortly afterwards for Thomas, seeing is believing.  But what was it that Jesus said to Thomas?  “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.”

Just think about the story of our own lives for a moment.  Is it not the case that we can often see the true significance or importance of something after an event, frequently years after it.  We may even see such an event as life changing or life defining.  Perhaps it was the moment we first met someone or the acceptance of a new job and subsequent relocation or even a chance conversation.  We look back and see that event in a way laden with a meaning and significance that it didn’t have at the time.

Earlier in his Gospel, St. John writes of the disciples that “When he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he said these things and they believed the word which Jesus had spoken.”

Seeing.  In this story of the first Easter morning, St. John uses three different verbs for “seeing”.  When the Beloved Disciple reaches the tomb he bends down and looks in.  The Greek verb here is Blepo, I see, I glance at something.  This is what Judy and I did when we saw the two men dressed as trees. 

Peter then goes inside the tomb and the Greek verb here is theoreo, to notice carefully, to take in the detail.  Our English ‘theory’ comes from this.  Peter notices the separation of the burial cloth and head cloth and that the latter is neatly rolled up.

John then enters the tomb and he also sees but this time in a different way from when he had bent down to peer in.  The Greek verb here is horao, a way of seeing that goes beyond the immediately visible to the significance and meaning of what is seen.

So early on that first Easter morning, we have three ways of seeing: the eye that glances, the eye for detail and the eye of understanding.

Is it always true that seeing is believing?  Or is it sometimes the case that believing is truly seeing?   On this Easter Day may we too believe that we may also truly see.

© Paul Hunt 2022

“Then they all shouted out together, ‘Away with this fellow! Release Barabbas for us!’” (Luke 23.18)

(Palm Sunday, 10^th April 2022, All Saints, Hastings)

Does anyone remember the Hollywood actor Anthony Quinn?  I see blank looks on the faces of younger members of the congregation.  I ask simply because he played the title role in the 1961 epic film Barabbas.  Looking back, I think that it was early exposure to those Hollywood biblical epics of the late 1950s and early 1960s that encouraged my then unarticulated interest in religion.  My favourite film was Solomon and Sheba starring Yul Brynner and Gina Lollobrigida – remember them? The film was in what was called “cinemascope” and I remember a great battle scene screened on what seems (in my memory) to have been almost three sides of the cinema.  And who can forget Ben Hur with Charlton Heston, the Jewish charioteer who becomes a Christian?

But back to Barabbas in 1961.  Released by Pilate, Barabbas returns to his friends and asks for his lover Rachel whom he discovers has become a Christian.  Barabbas watches the crucifixion and the sealing of Jesus’ tomb.  Rachel then finds herself stoned to death for preaching the Resurrection and Barabbas, realising that he is indirectly responsible for her death, returns to his criminal ways.  Convicted after a robbery, Barabbas is sentenced by Pilate to twenty years in the sulphur mines of Sicily and there he is chained to another prisoner who is a Christian.  Cutting a long film short, they both escape and end up as gladiators (as one always does in these films) in Nero’s Rome.  By now Barabbas has also become a follower of the man crucified in his place and he too perishes on a cross along with other Christians blamed by Nero for the Great Fire of Rome.

The film is an interesting weave of biblical narrative, historical fact and generous imagination.

What of the real Barabbas in so far as we know anything at all?  He is described by St John as a robber and St. Luke describes him as having been imprisoned for murder and involvement in an insurrection in Jerusalem.  St. Mark links the murder directly to the insurrection and mentions that Barabbas was in prison with other rebels.  St. Matthew simply says that Barabbas was a notorious prisoner.

It is occasionally suggested that Barabbas may have been a one of the zealots, religious extremists who fought against Roman rule, but the scholarly consensus is that he was simply a criminal of the lowest type, a violent thief who didn’t stop at murder.  

The film imagines Barabbas as a witness to the crucifixion which, when you think about it, is not such a fanciful thought.  After all, would we not be tempted by morbid curiosity to see who was dying on the cross instead of us? 

We have our palm crosses this morning.  They remind us of the triumphal entry on Palm Sunday and the cross to which it led.  Hopefully, we shall display them in our homes until Ash Wednesday as a sign and reminder of our faith. 

But of what faith?  Is it a faith that remembers and celebrates the triumphs of Palm Sunday and Easter Day, by-passing the humiliation of the Good Friday Cross?  I ask that question in all earnestness and ask everyone to appear in church at least once in the period between today and Easter Day.  I ask particularly for observance on Good Friday and I’m glad that our Procession of Witness will take place after a three year absence.  Why am I asking this?  Because to go straight from Palm Sunday to Easter Day simply does not tread the path of Jesus.  Nor is it a true reflection of our lives as Christians; do we not all experience our own Good Fridays?  The relentlessly upbeat nature of some brands of Christianity is simply not in accord with my own experience as a Christian. 

So let’s go with Hollywood and imagine the presence of Barabbas at the Crucifixion.  You can find the scene on You Tube.  Having returned to the house of his friends after his release by Pilate, Barabbas has fallen asleep next to Rachel.  He wakes up and momentarily thinks that he has gone blind; such is the darkness, literal and metaphorical, at the time of the Crucifixion.  Barabbas leaves the house to witness the Crucifixion for himself and is overcome with a sense of awe, although the full meaning of that awe will only become apparent many years later.  Perhaps the most striking moment in this Hollywood re-imagining comes after the dead body of Jesus has been taken down from the Cross.  Mary, the mother of Jesus, leaves Golgotha and, as she does so, looks straight at Barabbas and holds her gaze.  Just reflect on that for a moment.  The mother of Jesus looks upon the man who was saved by the crowd instead of her son.  Barabbas cannot meet Mary’s gaze and can only turn his face away.  It is a poignant moment.

It is only many years later, after years in the sulphur mines and as a gladiator, that Barabbas has come to understand that moment and rejoice in the Resurrection of that first Easter Day.  But he was there on that first Good Friday. 

Perhaps Barabbas speaks to us on this Palm Sunday:

“Were you there when they crucified my Lord?

Were you there when they crucified my Lord?

Oh, sometimes it causes me to tremble,

Tremble, tremble;

Were you there when they crucified my Lord?”

© Paul Hunt 2022

A Sermon by Dr Pat Lock, Reader

Readings:  Phillippians 3 4-14

                  John 12 1-8

Martha and Mary

 I like Martha.  I can empathise with Martha.  Busy, busy busy.  Go from one thing to another, work all hours and things get done.  And everyone knows that if you need something done you ask a busy person. They thrive on busyness and late nights – in fact you would be depriving them if you did not ask then for just one thing more.  But Mary – well, a bit too sedate for me. But maybe not for you. But look closer, for they both have so much to offer and to teach us.

When Jesus went to the house in Bethany, he was wrestling with his forthcoming execution. He was about 6 or 7 days away from his entry into Jerusalem. Everyone knew that Lazarus had died, long enough that his body would have started to decompose. And now, here he was walking around, a living sign of Jesus’ power over life and death. It stirred up the Jesus frenzy even more. The chief priests and other religious leaders were worried. If the enthusiasm for Jesus went on unchecked, the delicate equilibrium between their Jewish religion and the Roman authorities would be destroyed. Something had to be done! So, they plotted that Jesus had to die. Nothing short of his death would do. And they waited to arrest him.

This is the atmosphere on the evening of the dinner in Jesus’ honour. Outside, the air was pungent with tension and impending doom. But inside the house in Bethany, the atmosphere was different. The three siblings put on a lavish meal for Jesus. Martha serves, as she so wonderfully does. We get the sense that nobody cooks or serves up a dinner like Martha can.

 It is logical to think that Jesus went to a friend’s house hoping for hospitality and a rest.  That he had someone who would understand his anguish and he could talk and be listened to.  Maybe if Martha had sent out for a takeaway – a McMalachi or something, and had then given him time, it might have been different. What Jesus needed was understanding and comfort.  The presence of a friend – not someone bustling about making a perfect 6 course meal.  But we too often wrongly contrast these two sisters, as though each Christian should make a choice to be either a worshipper like Mary or a worker like Martha.  But I think we miss the point.  God wants each of us to imitate Mary in our worship and Martha in our work, and to achieve balance in both.  Martha was obviously a great hostess and said to herself  “ what a great privilege to prepare a meal for the master” and Mary would have said  “ What a great privilege to sit at the feet of the master”.  None is wrong.  Duty and devotion are both necessary.   

And so, Martha carries on being the hostess with the mostess and before long she notices that she’s doing all the work.  There’s a difference between doing everything after someone has offered to help and you’ve turned them down, and doing everything and no-one has offered. And it was clear that Mary had just sat herself down at Jesus feet and become totally engrossed in what Jesus was saying.  If you think for a moment, you can almost see Martha standing there, tea towel over one shoulder, flour on her nose and hands on her hips. And she lost it to the degree that she turned on Jesus and all but blames him, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone”.   We live in a blame culture now.  When things go wrong, it has to be because of someone else.  No one accepts responsibility for their own actions – or their own omissions.  But Jesus responds with tenderness. He does not rebuke Martha for her attempt to serve him nor did he tell her to stop and come and join them in their devotions. He recognised that we all have our gifts and choices. It was bad enough Judas having a go.   But she was so caught up in serving that she didn’t take the time to speak to Jesus.  I expect many of us here are guilty of the same. 

What distracts you from getting to know Jesus better?   Jesus is showing us very clearly the balance that is needed in our lives.  There is a balance between service and worship.  A balance between doing and listening.  A balance between our faith being active in live and our faith being made stronger by the word of God.  Jesus is pointing out that in each situation it is the responsibility of each one of us to decide what to do.  Martha had decided that service was more important than worship, or listening or prayer.  But she had misunderstood the situation.  Jesus at that point would have done with cheese and crackers, for what he was seeking was someone to listen, someone to pay heed, someone to share with him in the suffering that was going to come in Jerusalem  He needed to say his goodbye to his friends.  And prayer and worship are the food that gives us the strength for service.  If we do not meet with our Lord then we are not serving in his name.  They are but two sides of the same coin. We cannot fully worship unless we have been serving and we cannot fully serve unless we have been worshipping.  But we must be sensitive to the needs of  hose we serve and respond in an appropriate way.  We want to offer God the very best. And Mary did just that.  Overcome with emotion and passion for Christ, and in a gesture of pure extravagance, she brings out an outrageously expensive perfumed oil contained in an  alabaster jar or a small vial. It was called nard and it was a light-reddish colour, derived from the spikenard plant. It was very expensive because it was grown in India in the Himalayan mountains. Traders would bring it and sell it.  We are told it cost about a year’s wages.  It was mostly reserved however for burial. In order to help with the smell of the deceased, nard and other spices would be applied to the body. Some of it may well have been used on Lazarus’ body but obviously not all of it. Mary breaks the vial to access the oil and she poured some of the contents of the bottle onto Jesus’ head, to anoint him. He was her king. Most of it however she saved for the feet of Jesus. She pours the expensive perfume all over Jesus’ feet and the whole house is filled with its scent. John’s words are so evocative we can practically smell the perfume ourselves as he describes the moment. Mary pours out the perfume, and it’s all gone. Her great offering is complete. She then takes down her hair. All Jewish woman kept their hair up when they were out in public. The only time you ever let your hair down was in the privacy of your own home amongst immediate family. It’s a scene of remarkable intimacy. A woman would not have let down her hair in front of men, and she certainly would not touch a man, let alone his feet. But Mary wants to express her deep love for Jesus – her king and her Lord. Not only had Jesus resurrected her dear brother Lazarus, but he has saved the future of Mary and her sister. Without their brother, their future would have been doomed. Jesus hasn’t only saved Lazarus’ life; he’s saved hers.

And as a church we must do the same – we must sit, and listen and pray and then serve, and serve effectively, knowing that we have heard the will of God, for prayer without serving is powerless. Serving without prayer is directionless.  And sometimes we won’t get it quite right. And that is why we need both the Martha’s and the Marys – to give us balance and to help each other.  For that is the way God made us to be.

What do you have that is costly to give to our Lord?  How costly is your worship and your service? We too may serve Jesus in many ways.  But in our busy schedule, let us not forget to spend time sitting at His feet for that should be our priority. That is the place of spiritual rest and peace.

Jesus is about to break open the precious vial of his life. He will pour himself out on the cross. He’ll completely expend all that he has, all that he is. There’s no turning back. The bottle of perfume has already been broken open, and soon, very soon, Jesus will be broken, too. What has been poured out cannot be returned. Jesus is going to break himself open and pour out his life. He is on a path to the cross. He’s about to make an extravagant sacrifice. It’s the most precious thing he has, the gift of his life.

“Unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.”  (Luke 13. 3,5)

(The Third Sunday of Lent, 20^th March 2022, All Saints, Hastings)

Should we leave church feeling disturbed and unsettled?  In my former parish I used to half-joke that this should occasionally be the case.  And so I raise the question today.  Why are we in church this morning? We attend church to be encouraged in our faith, to learn about it, to share fellowship in it, to experience the joy of it, to be challenged by it.  But to be disturbed and unsettled by it?

I am more than challenged by today’s Gospel reading.  I am disturbed and unsettled by it.  Was I alone in that uncomfortable feeling when it was being read?  Like the Galileans who had been killed in Jerusalem and whose blood had run together with that of the sacrificed animals, like the eighteen people killed when a building collapsed on them, we will perish, says Jesus, unless we repent.  This is a stern and disturbing Jesus.  This is not the gentle Jesus, meek and mild, beloved of the sentimental approach to Christian faith.

So how on earth if not in heaven are we to understand this passage from St. Luke?

The immediate point is it asks us to take the concept of sin seriously.  Sin is a serious business.  It literally means to “miss the mark”.  In other words to fall short of the moral standard set by God. 

What we need to remember in order to understand this harsh passage is that sin and suffering – whether massacred by Pilate or crushed by a collapsed tower – were connected.  In Jewish theology suffering was a direct punishment for sin.   It is extraordinary how that view remains today, expressed most recently by those who have seen Covid as God’s punishment on sinners.  If true, then those of us who have escaped infection thus far may be numbered amongst the righteous…..I don’t think so.

This view – that suffering is a punishment for sin, is challenged within the Bible itself.  First by Job’s sufferings which transpire not to be a punishment for sin despite the conventional theology of sin and suffering expressed by Job’s so-called comforters. It is also challenged and dismissed by Jesus himself in John Chapter Nine in the story of the man born blind.  Whose sin was responsible for the blindness, ask the disciples.  The man himself or his parents?  Neither said Jesus.  He also makes an implicit challenge to this traditional view within today’s passage: Those who died because the tower collapsed were no worse than all the others living in Jerusalem, he says.

But we need to grasp the theology of the bystanders as they hear of the Galileans and the eighteen people killed by the collapsing tower.  They believe that those people had suffered because of their sin.

Jesus is saying that his hearers who are not currently suffering should not rest in the security of their self-righteous comfort.  That they are not suffering is not a sign of their moral well-being. They still need to repent while there is time before the judgement.

“Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them – do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem.  No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.”

We can sometimes have a skewed view of judgement, that somehow it is inconsistent with God’s character as the God of love.  But hatred of sin is the consequence of God’s holiness.  Toleration of sin is inconsistent with a holy God.  And a holy and loving God invites us to repentence:

“God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that all that believe in him should not perish but have everlasting life.” (John 3.16)  

Martin Luther described that wonderful and comforting verse as “the Gospel in miniature”.  We do not have to perish, to be alienated from God for eternity, but can enter into the fullness of God’s presence for evermore.  God turns no-one away; we can only turn ourselves.

The real unkindness, a false Christianity, is not to talk about sin or judgement and to peddle the lie that whatever we do, however we live our lives, it will all be alright on Judgement night.  It is to offer what Bonhoeffer called “a cheap covering for the world’s sin.”  Our forebears in this Church knew better – just look at our Doom painting above the entrance to the chancel.  On the left as you face it you can just about see the walls of the heavenly Jerusalem and on the right is the medieval mind’s concept of alienation from God in the form of devils and the gallows.  In the middle Christ sits in judgement.

We are not bystanders hearing today’s Gospel and feeling sorry for the Galileans and the eighteen fatalities of the tower of Siloam.  Jesus addresses us this Lent, calling upon us to be conscious of our sin and to repent, literally to turn ourselves around.  Or will we remain in the false comfort of our own self-righteousness?

If we think of this passage as only referring to the lives of others we have not truly heard it.  Jesus’ words are disturbing.  They are unsettling.  But there is still time to hear the Gospel in miniature and for what the Prayer Book calls “amendment of life” – and that is truly comforting.

© Paul Hunt 2022

“At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.” (Luke 13.31)

(The Second Sunday in Lent, 13^th March, 2022, All Saints, Hastings)

What strikes you about this verse from Luke?  That Jesus is in danger because Herod wants to kill him?  Yes.  But what struck me for the very first time when I began to think about today’s sermon was this: The warning comes from some Pharisees.  They don’t want Jesus to be killed by Herod.

The Pharisees nearly always get a bad press.  We think of them as the opponents of Jesus, together with their rivals the Sadducees.

Here is some of that press from four novelists, a Gospel and a website:

Charlotte Bronte: “Self-righteousness is not religion…To pluck the mask from the face of the pharisee is not to lift an impious hand to the Crown of Thorns.”  (Jane Eyre)

George Eliot referred to the smug and hypocritical moralism exhibited by some of her characters as “the religion of the pharisees”. (The Mill on the Floss, Middlemarch)

Francois Mauriac wrote about a woman whose main goal in life seems to be that of pointing out the sins and failures of other people.  The title of the novel?  The Woman of the Pharisees.

Boris Pasternak: “All drowns in the Pharisees’ hypocrisy.” (Dr Zhivago)

Matthew 23.23: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!  For you tithe mint, dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith….You blind guides!  You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.”

That denunciation, ascribed to Jesus, is but one of a series in Matthew chapter twenty-three.

And looking at the website of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church last week, I found an article entitled Five Signs of a Modern Pharisee. These were listed as arrogance, theatricality, grovelling to superiors, boasting and formalism.

As I said, they do not get a good press.

So who exactly were the Pharisees at the time of Jesus?

The term Pharisee means “separated one” and they placed great emphasis on the observance of Jewish religious law, both written and oral, separating themselves from anything deemed to be ritually unclean.  They were supported by the majority of ordinary folk, especially in the synagogues of Galilee, unlike the more exclusive and priestly Sadduccees who focused on the Temple cult in Jerusalem.

So what do we make of these Pharisees?

Simon the Pharisee who invited Jesus to dine with him.

Nicodemus the Pharisee, who came to Jesus by night, eager to learn more.  “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God” are his opening words to Jesus.

Joseph of Arimathea the Pharisee, who asked Pilate for Jesus’ body and buried it in a new tomb and who was, St Luke tells us, a “good and righteous man waiting expectantly for the Kingdom of God.”

Gamaliel the Pharisee, described by Luke as “respected by all the people” spoke in defence of the apostles at a meeting of the Sanhedrin, the Jewish Council in Acts chapter five.

And in Philippians chapter three, St. Paul, a former pupil of Gamaliel, describes himself as a pharisee.  Before the Sanhedrin, the Jewish Council, Paul the Pharisee said, “I am a pharisee, a son of pharisees.”

“At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.”

Today’s text should cause us to be more careful how we think about the pharisees in the first century.  It is dangerous, not least in fuelling antisemitism, to picture all of the pharisees as being hypocritical opponents of Jesus.  They were not.

Like the worst of the Pharisees encountered by Jesus, we can all be guilty of the five sins of the modern pharisee: spiritual arrogance, theatricality in displaying our devotion in front of others, being yes-men and women to those in authority, boasting of our achievements and virtues, and formalism in keeping to the letter of our religion but ignoring its spirit.

But like the best of them, like Nicodemus, we can want to know Jesus better and seek to discern, like Gamaliel, what comes from God and what does not.  Like Joseph of Arimathea, we can show courage in demonstrating our faith publically.

And by extension perhaps we need to remind ourselves that ascribing the same characteristics to an entire group of people, be they Russians, refugees, immigrants, bankers, politicians, pharisees or whoever is not only nonsense but desecrates their God-given individuality. 

“Understand a man by his deeds and words,” it says in the Talmud, that great collection of Jewish Wisdom compiled by Pharisees.  “The impressions of others leads to false judgement.”

© Paul Hunt 2022

 ‘TEMPTATIONS’ for LENT 1. 6^th March 2022 Luke 4.1-13, Psalm 91.  From Sandra Bentall.

Temptations?   What about a recent time you were tempted?  Hold it in your mind. Was it physical, emotional or spiritual? Were you tempted by just a bit more time on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram..? Just one more screen game before breakfast? An extra biscuit? I’ll cut my walk short. It won’t matter. Perhaps you made a resolution in January that became more difficult as the days went by.  Were you tempted to break it?. . oh well, just once won’t matter?
Here’s a story about a man called Don. Don wasn’t making much headway with his diet. He was one of those people who could resist most things – but temptation. One day he came into the office with a whole box of freshly baked doughnuts. When his friends questioned him about his diet, he explained that really he wouldn’t have got the doughnuts if it hadn’t been for God.   “WHAT? What do you mean”? one of his friends asked.  “Well”, Don said, “as I was about to drive past the bakery I could smell the wonderful aromas and prayed that if it was God’s will for me to have doughnuts today  I would be able to find a parking place in front of the shop.  
And do you know what?  Sure enough I found a space right in front – on the 8^th time around the block”

Most of us have a tougher time with temptation than we like to think.
We try to tell ourselves that the things we do – the little things that hurt others or ourselves, aren’t really all that important or all that harmful – or that someone else is really to blame for them – because something they did or said made us react like we did. We don’t like to think that maybe,  just maybe,  even when we’ve been provoked, while we think our reaction is justifiable, maybe our behaviour is not.

Now it is interesting to note the meaning of the word TO TEMPT.  In English it means to entice someone to do wrong, to persuade someone to take the wrong way into sin.  But the word used in Greek PEIRAZEIN (peer A zeen) means
TO TEST far more than it means to tempt in our sense of the word.  I think that what we call temptation is not meant to make us sin; it is meant to test us and enable us to conquer sin. It is not meant to make us bad, it is meant to make us good. It is not meant to weaken us, it is meant to make us emerge stronger from the ordeal. So perhaps we might consider the temptations of Jesus as the testing of Jesus.

Remember, Jesus had just been confirmed by God as his Son, at his baptism, but before he could embark on his ministry, he had to consider the task ahead and HOW he was going to do it. Full of the Holy Spirit he was led by the Spirit into the wilderness for a long time, eating nothing and being completely alone.  With Jesus in this very vulnerable state he was tempted to take easy ways out to get people to follow him.
I believe it is also significant that this is the most sacred of stories, for it can have come only from Jesus himself as he had been alone. So at some time he must have described to his disciples this most personal experience, of his own spiritual struggles.

Now imagine what was called the wilderness. Between the inhabited part of Judaea and the Dead Sea stretched a vast terrible wilderness, 35 miles by 15 miles, called Jeshimmon in the Old Testament, which means The Devastation.
Doesn’t that say it all–hills like dust heaps, rocks bare and jagged, the ground glowed with heat like a vast furnace.

I see it as significant that this was the first of several times in the gospels where Jesus withdrew to a quiet place, to be alone, to pray.  Here he was trying to sort out how he could attempt the task God had given him to do.  Before he could approach starting his mission he had to get things straightened out in his mind. So he would be alone for a while; this was quite a long while.     Perhaps we go wrong sometimes simply because we don’t try to be alone. We don’t give ourselves a chance to be alone with God, and to pray about something.  If any person has a vision the immediate problem is how to turn that vision into fact, to find some way to turn the dream into reality. Jesus faced the problem of how to lead people to God. How was he to do it? Was he to adopt the method of a mighty conqueror, or was he to adopt the method of patient, sacrificial love? The WHAT-to-do task had been committed into his hands. Now he pondered HOW-to-do it. Wrestling with his thoughts in the wilderness Jesus was crashing from the high of his baptism down to where his resistance was very very low, being extremely hungry,

Last Wednesday as we marked a very important day, the beginning of Lent, our Ash Wednesday service commenced with that very descriptive hymn, “40 days and 40 nights, thou was fasting in the wild; 40 days and 40 nights tempted, and yet undefiled. Sunbeams scorching all the day; chilly dewdrops nightly shed; prowling beasts along the way; stones thy pillow, earth thy bed.”

Could there be easy ways for his mission?  But these would not be the right way!
The tempter skilfully chose the time to attack Jesus, but Jesus trusted in God and put his apparently good grounding of Scripture to good use. These struggles went on in his heart and soul but he was able to retaliate by reassurance of God’s Word.  The testing he faced were physical, emotional, and spiritual.

We ourselves face situations every day, some of them relatively trivial, and some of major consequence, in which the choice is not between good and evil, but between what is hard and what is easy.

The PHYSICAL test must have been very tempting to Jesus, famished as he was. It was like –‘You’re hungry Jesus – IF you are the Son of God – do what comes naturally to you – turn these rocks into bread. Use your advantage to your advantage – it won’t hurt anyone’.  The wilderness was littered with stones shaped like the daily little loaves familiar in every household.  What a test. Being able to show people sensational abilities would surely win them over to follow him. Could he persuade people to follow him by giving them food?
But Jesus retaliated with “One does not live by bread alone”, quoting from Deuteronomy.  (8v3)   No, he was not prepared to bribe people to follow him for the sake of what they could get out of it.
Likewise God calls us to a life of service and giving of ourselves, not of getting. The only way to true satisfaction is the way which has complete dependence on God.  Trusting in the Lord.

EMOTIONAL testing was his next challenge.  Sort of ‘Hey Jesus, you want to change the world – to make a difference – to see justice done – to help the poor – to set your people free – all you have to do is simply bow down right now and worship me. ‘  Temptation to indulge one’s feelings, one’s ego, to make oneself the centre of all things, to receive all glory and all praise and all power.   But Jesus stood firm, recalling Scripture  – “It is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him’ ”. (Deuteronomy 6:13, 10:20)

Then SPIRITUAL testing – on the pinnacle of the temple.   The devil tried hard – “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written – ‘He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you’.  And ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’  That’s from Psalm 91, the psalm set for today though we don’t read it in our Eucharist service.  What was the devil trying to put in Jesus’ mind?  – ‘Hey Jesus, you know God loves you. Your plan will sell a lot easier if people see that you are special to God. Throw yourself over the edge and let God save you from certain disaster – let his angels carry you up from the ground in the presence of the priests and teachers from the temple. You won’t have to go around from home to home then, preaching and healing people. You won’t have to work to convince people to follow your way – they’ll line up for miles just for a chance to see you.’
What an easy way!    But not the right way!     Was Jesus really being tempted to test God – to dare God to prove his love – to get God to use magic powers on his behalf that others would be impressed – that he may show to others his favoured status in the eyes of God?
Unfortunately I think the devil misinterpreted Psalm 91. The intention of Psalm 91 is not to incite people to use God’s power for sensational or foolish displays if they put themselves at risk, but to show God’s protection of his people. And to trust in him.
Jesus again retaliated with Scripture from Deuteronomy – “Do not put the Lord your God to the test” (6:16).

We will do well to be specially on our guard after every time we experience the highs in life, for it is then that we are in danger of the depths. It is in our deepest thoughts and desires that the tempter comes to test us too.
The very power of the devil is that he breaches our defences and attacks us from within, in our inmost thoughts. Jesus had to fight his battle – that is why he can help us to fight ours. So have faith and trust in him.

We know from the Gospels that this time of Jesus’ testing he endured   was not a one-off.  Our Gospel reading today foretells of that, it concludes “When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him, until an opportune time”.  Until an opportune time.

Temptation is a natural thing. It appeals to our natural impulses – both good and for bad. Temptation is also an easy thing – that’s a major part of its attraction. There is only one retaliation for it – that is focus – of faith and trust.
So we must keep aware.  Christ showed us the way – by rebuffing things that tempted him, with his focus on God; but as we know from our lives rebuffing temptation is not easy. So uphold faith, and trust in the Lord.

Timothy Dudley-Smith, retired Bishop of Thetford now aged 95, wrote over 400 hymns. We’ll be singing one of his hymns next which reminds us of this. Every verse is so meaningful  and I would encourage you to use the words of this hymn in your daily prayers during Lent. They are really strengthening words based on Psalms 57, 63, and 91, but especially Psalm 91 that I just talked about in the third temptation. (Ps 57:1, 63:6-7, 91:11-12).  “Safe in the shadow of the Lord…I trust in him, I trust in him, my fortress and my tower”.  Amen

Sandra Bentall, an Authorised Lay Minister for this Parish.

“Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground” (Jn 8.6)

(Ash Wednesday, 2^nd March 2022, All Saints, Hastings)

What did Jesus write in the dust of the ground? The immediate and obvious answer is that we do not know.  One suggestion is that Jesus was following the Roman custom of first writing down a sentence before pronouncing it.  In this interpretation Jesus was writing a sentence in the dust which could be then be wiped out.  Others have suggested that Jesus may have written a verse or verses from the Hebrew Scripture.

Exodus 23.7 is one such suggestion:

“Keep far from a false charge, and do not kill the innocent or those in the right, for I will not aquit the guilty.”

A lot of academic ink has been used in discussion the question of what it was that Jesus wrote in the dust but the immediate and obvious answer still stands: We do not know.

I have written in this month’s edition of the Parish Magazine about the significance of dust.  Perhaps the importance of Jesus writing or doodling in the dust is to be found not in his words or his doodle but in the dust itself.  His response to the accusers who have tried to trap him into denying the Law of Moses is that his fingers are in the dust and it is to the dust that we shall all return, accused and accusers alike.

Jesus insists that the accusers should only thow stones at the woman if they are themselves without sin.  Jesus again writes in the dust. None of them can make the declaration that they are without sin and they walk away.  “Dust thou art and to dust thou shalt return.”

The accused woman is then left alone with Jesus.  Just picture the scene and imagine, if you will, what it would have been like to stand there facing Jesus and awaiting his judgement.  Just two people are left, the Lord and the sinner.

Notice that the unnamed women has not denied the charge that she has had committed adultery and for which the punishment was death by stoning.  And notice too that that Jesus does not give a formal acquittal.  He simply refuses to judge.  Those with sin were only too swift to judge; He who was without sin and who is entitled to condemn does not judge.  But nor does he condone.

“Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.”  Imagine looking into the face of Jesus as he spoke those words.

On this first day of Lent, let us imagine ourselves standing before Jesus, conscious of our own sin and perhaps also of the way in which we are swift to judge and condemn others.

“Dust thou art and to dust shalt thou return.  Turn away from sin and be faithful to Christ.”

© Paul Hunt 2022

“And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image.” (2 Corinthians 3.19)

(The Sunday Next before Lent, 27^th February 2022, All Saints, Hastings.)

It is Christmas Eve and the worshippers are singing “Silent Night, Holy Night” by candlelight.  That might not seem anything unusual.

But the carol is being sung in Japanese and the haunting colour footage of Christmas Eve 1945 shows our Japanese brothers and sisters worshipping in the bombed out ruins of their cathedral in Nagasaki.  Centuries of fierce persecution in Japan have culminated in the destruction of their cathedral, finally completed in 1925, by the Christian West.

This morning’s Gospel reading tells of the Transfiguration which share its feast day of 6^th August with the date of the dropping of the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima.  In Matthew’s version, Jesus’ face shines like the sun and his garments become white as the light.  Just like those caught in the nuclear flashes in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The irony of the first atomic bomb being dropped on the feast day of the Transfiguration is beyond exquisite and I have commented on that before.  The test to split the atom by those Manhatten Project scientists in the Nevada desert was called the Trinity Test and, as the mushroom cloud rose at 5.30 a.m. on the 16^th July 1945, some of the scientists were physically sick.   They knew what they had done.  “Scientists have now known sin and this is a knowledge they cannot lose,” said the lead physicist Robert Oppenheimer.

Last Sunday’s Old Testament reading told of Adam and Eve and their fall from Grace, in other words the breaking of their relationship with God.  Humanity in its pride tries to make itself as God and the biting of the apple is an anticipation of the decision to split the atom, becoming like God knowing good and evil.  It is the same story re-enacted for our times.

But St Paul in today’s epistle gives us an extraordinary and astonishing hope. 

“And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image.” (2 Corinthians 3.19)

Paul writes that we too shall be transfigured, that we too shall grow and be transformed into the likeness of Christ through our experience of suffering and forgiveness.  Each day we progress or regress in our growing and transformation.  How do we respond to suffering within ourselves and to the suffering of others?  Do we nurture the spirit of forgiveness within us or do we use the language of forgiveness but inwardly nurture the spirit of resentment.  Shall we, like Moses on Mount Sinai, gaze upon the Lord with unveiled and unmasked faces and see God face-to-face?

As I have said on a previous occasion, we need to think of the Transfiguration of Christ as being like the trailer for a film.  It is an anticipation of what is to come.  The disciples cannot grasp that Jesus will suffer before He enters into His Glory, that indeed the suffering is itself essential to His Glorification, such is the moral grandeur of the act of redemption.

“And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image.”

Are our faces veiled or unveiled?  Are our minds hardened like those Israelites to whom Moses spoke?  Or do we take the Christian hope of our future transfiguration seriously and act with what st Paul calls real boldness:

“Since, then, we have such a hope, we act with great boldness,” St. Paul tells the Corinthian Christians.

Or do we remain veiled in our stubborness and human pride trusting, ultimately, in our own judgement, just like Adam and Eve and those scientists in the Nevada desert.

The Christians of Japan can teach us about suffering and the capacity for forgiveness.

On the shining faces of those Nagasaki Christians, illuminated by the candlelight on that Christmas Eve in 1945, what do we see?

• The sinfulness of humanity?
• Or the bold and hopeful anticipation of the Glory that is to come?

“Fulfiller of the past,

  Promise of things to be,

  We hail thy body glorified,

  And our redemption see.”

© Paul Hunt 2022

A Sermon by Keith Leech, Authorised Lay Minister

I remember when I became a lay minister. My daughter sent me a message to be like Jesus. It said ‘be humble, look after the poor, give glory to God and fall asleep in boats’. So I can’t now listen to this morning’s gospel reading without laughing.

The Bible is not a book as such; it is a library of sixty-six books including histories, stories, visions, prophecies and songs collected over a period of around 1500 years. In today’s readings we have a story from Genesis, an historical account from Luke, and a vision from Revelation; with Genesis being written about 950 BC, Luke about 85 AD and Revelation about 90 AD.  The three readings knit together quite well showing us firstly(Genesis) that we have responsibility for our actions, secondly (St Luke) we should not be afraid because Jesus will always look after us and keep us safe and thirdly (Revelation) we should give praise to God the most high the most holy and be thankful now and forever.  

That the books of the Bible are not all the same type, (stories, histories, prophecies etc) doesn’t diminish them. It enhances the whole Bible. What we need to do is drill down into the meaning of what the author of each book has written. The books were all inspired by the Holy Spirit. We do however need to discern what God is saying to us through them and that is where Bible study, discussion, theology (and sermons) come in.

Genesis was traditionally written by Moses, except Moses cannot be the author (or certainly not the sole author and most no longer say he did).  This is because Genesis describes some things written after his death. It refers to The Chaldeans who were some years later and the City of Dan that was not even built. One thing we can say for sure is that the forbidden fruit is not an apple. The legend of it being an apple came from St Jerome who in the vulgate Latin version of the Bible translates the Hebrew Peri to the Latin for Apple Malus. Malus also meaning evil in Latin and therefore St Jerome was embellishing his translation or simply playing with the words.

 We know the Book of Luke was written by Saint Luke, a companion of St Paul and possibly written in prison in Malta. You can visit it still where there is a cave under a church in Rabat just outside the walls of Medina.

Revelation is the account of a vision by somebody who is called John on the island of Patmos. This John is almost certainly not the same John as wrote the Gospel or Epistle with the same name.

I will briefly look at each reading today in turn.

In Genesis the tree of knowledge of good and evil is a parable about free will. Without it we would not be human. We are the only living thing that is able to discern between good and evil, other living things act purely on biology and instinct. A lion has no compassion for its prey; it has an instinct to eat and simply sees food. Although we might think of covid as evil a covid virus doesn’t even know it exists, let alone have evil intent. This is what sets us above other living things and makes us special in God’s sight. We have been given knowledge, the special privilege to be able to see what is right and wrong, to have love, compassion, humility; the ability to act on things. We have been given responsibility and therefore also the knowledge that our actions have consequences. This is where the teachings of the Bible point us towards which things have good consequences and which bad. The Bible is God’s roadmap.

I know many women who get upset about the story of being formed from Adam’s rib. In Jewish teaching (particularly of that time) the heart was considered to be the centre of the body and the rib is the closest part of the body to the heart. Therefore God choosing a rib, from near to the heart, not the head or the foot it is not a sign of inferiority but a sign of female equality to the male being taken from the most important part of the body.

In Luke we have an account of an event, Jesus is asleep. He is awoken by the disciples and is either annoyed or sad that they felt they had to waken Him because they were so afraid of the sea and had insufficient faith that He would protect them. He told the wind and waves to stop; one of the miracles. This shows us that even if we think that Jesus is asleep He is looking after us

Moving to Revelation everything in heaven is singing constantly Holy Holy Holy Lord who was, who is, and is to become. That is praise to God the Trinity (three Holys) for all eternity past, present and future. 

The message is everything should praise God for eternity for without His creation there is nothing.   Many Christians have worship at the core of their services. I am often struck when I visit other denominations by how many hymns they have, sometimes three in a row. This is not our style (and that is fine) but should we not perhaps consider a greater worship focus in what we personally do?  Not collectively but personally. Worship is there in the liturgy but how do we as individuals approach it?  Some of us bow when we say the words ‘Jesus Christ’, some bow to the altar or genuflect to the presence after the consecration of the elements, some raise their hands to give glory to God…something I personally find difficult to do.

Perhaps we should consider how we are personally worshipping God not only in this place but everywhere at all times. Don’t worry about what other people think. If you feel moved to bow, to genuflect to raise your hands to heaven or simply shout ‘Glory to God’ then do it.  It’s between you and God.  We bring our bodies as well as our minds into our worship.

In summary our actions have consequences (Genesis), trust God to look after you (Luke) and praise Him as often as you can. (Revelation)

Holy Holy Holy Lord God Almighty who was, who is, and is to become’

Ok I’m off to have a sleep in a boat.

Amen

If Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain.  (I Cor. 15.14)

(Third Sunday before Lent, 13^th February 2022, All Saints, Hastings)

“On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures..”

“Revealed the resurrection by rising to new life..”

“Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.”

“Rejoicing in his mighty resurrection..”

These are all proclamations from our service on this and every Sunday morning.  Indeed, the Lord’s Resurrection is the very reason we meet on this first day of the week.

The question I would like us to consider this morning is this: How seriously do we make our proclamation?  I ask this because I sometimes detect a degree of embarrassment amongst Christians when they mention the Resurrection (or indeed anything supernatural) to non-Christians, assuming they mention the supernatural at all.

Judging from the pages of the Church Times, our bishops are forever making statements on everything from dangerous cladding on buildings to the Government’s levelling up agenda.  Churches are featured that seem to justify their existence in terms of their food bank operation or work with the homeless.  Please don’t misunderstand me here.  Christianity is an incarnational religion with an imperative in the Bible to help the poor.  So all these things are right and proper and Christian.  As St. James reminds us, “Faith without works is dead.”  But Christian faith is not simply a call to be a voluntary branch of the Social Services dressed in a light religious veneer.

There was hesitation about belief in the Resurrection amongst some of the Corinthian Christians:

“Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead?” St. Paul asks them.

Do read the verses in chapter fifteen immediately before today’s lectionary selection.  St. Paul is writing only some twenty years or so after the Resurrection of Jesus – about the same distance in time as between us and the start of the century – and he cites various resurrection appearances of Jesus.  Some of the witnesses are still alive, says St. Paul.  In other words, “if you don’t believe me, ask them!”  And he also uses a particularly significant Greek word to indicate the careful passing down of tradition.  Don’t forget that St. Paul is writing before the Gospels were written in the form we now have them.

Now it would be easy at this point to simply list reasons why we should believe the New Testament witness to the Resurrection.  We might say, for example, that it is noticeable that none of the writers actually describe the moment of the Resurrection, resisting the temptation of later writers.  We might say that it makes no psychological sense for disciples like James and John and Peter to allow themselves to be put to death for something that they knew was untrue.  And if the first Christians really were trying to cook the books, why are there significant discrepencies between the Gospel accounts?

In terms of modern writers we might refer to the journalist Frank Morrison who set out to disprove the Resurrection narratives in the Gospels.  By the time he finished his book, he had turned from atheist to believer.  His classic book Who Moved The Stone? remains in print ninety years after its publication in 1930.

Or we might think of the Hungarian Jewish scholar Pinchas Lapide who is his 1984 book The Resurrection of Jesus: A Jewish Perspective would have none of the watering down sometimes found in radical Christian writing.  He does not accept that Jesus was a divine messiah but he accepts that God raised one of his prophets from the dead.

The very great German theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg has defended the historicity of the Resurrection with immense vigour, challenging the unspoken and usually unrecognised secular notions that define what is and is not possible.

Just think for a moment about the academic tools of the historian which are designed to analyse and understand the workings of our everyday natural world – Why did William win the Battle of Hastings? for example.  Just suppose that the Resurrection did take place.  If so, are those academic tools equipped to analyse and understand something that by definition is beyond the natural order of things?  And, if they were able to do so, would that event really be supernatural?

My sermon is in danger of turning into an academic lecture.  I’m simply trying to make the point that we can all too easily adjust our way of thinking about what is and is not possible without realising that we are uncritically accepting a whole host of philosophical assumptions about the way in which the world works.  And as a wise Dominican monk once said to me: Once you accept the very idea of God, then surely everything else is possible.

Now, I’m not suggesting that we become a church of snake handlers and weekly healing miracles like some churches in the deep south of the Untied States and doubtless elsewhere.  But I am saying that as a church we must remain open to the supernatural, not least the Resurrection of Jesus, in a way that smacks of conviction rather than embarrassment.   The Resurrection is not just for Easter Day!

We are surrounded by Memorials to the dead, both here at All Saints and in St. Clement’s.

 St. Paul again: “If Christ has not been raised…then those who have died in Christ have perished.  If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.”

 “But”, he continues, ”Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died.”

So let our proclamation be at one with that of St John of Damascus in the eighth century:

“The day of resurrection!

Earth tell it out abroad;

The Passover of gladness,

The Passover of God,

From death to life eternal,

From earth unto the sky,

Our God hath brought us over

With hymns of victory.

Now let the heavens be joyful,

And earth her song begin,

The round world keep high triumph,

And all that is therein;

Let all things seen and unseen

Their notes of gladness blend,

For Christ the Lord is risen,

Our joy that hath no end.”

© Paul Hunt 2022

The Seventieth Anniversary of the Accession of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

“But I am among you as one who serves” (Luke 22.27)

(All Saints, Hastings, 6^th February 2022)

1952. Seventy years ago. Mr Churchill was the Prime Minister again.  British troops were in Korea. The first TV detector van made its appearance as did Sooty and Sweep and the Flower Pot Men.  Tea rationing was ended after thirteen years.  The first performance of The Mousetrap was given.  And, most regrettably, Newcastle beat Arsenal 1-0 in the FA Cup Final.

1952 is a very long time ago and I would ask you to reflect just how very different the UK and the world were.  At the very least, we will need to be approaching eighty to remember the death of George VI at the age of fifty-six and the Coronation in the following year. And we need to be over eighty to recall Her Majesty’s words in a radio broadcast on the twenty-first birthday of the then Princess Elizabeth, delivered from South Africa in 1947:

“I declare before you all that my whole life whether it be long or short shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong.  But I shall not have strength to carry out this resolution alone unless you join in it with me, as I now invite you to do: I know that your support will be unfailingly given. God help me to make good my vow, and God bless all of you who are willing to share in it.”

How magnificently has that declaration and promise been kept, following the example of Jesus who declared that he was among us as one who serves.

Her Majesty takes the words of Jesus Christ very seriously and we have seen this many times in her Christmas broadcasts in which she is never embarrassed to express her Christian faith.  It is has been my privilege and that of Canon Keith Pound also of this parish to have served the Queen as priests.  The main advice that I was given upon becoming what is called a Priest-in-Ordinary was simple: “Remember,” said the sub-Dean, “that it is Mam as in jam and never Marm as in smarm.”  Her Majesty is, of course, the Supreme Governor of the Church of England – not the Head as is mindlessly repeated in the media – and Her Majesty takes this duty seriously.

As a liturgical traditionalist, I am pleased to report that the Queen prefers the traditional worship of the Book of Common Prayer and Her Majesty also has a preference for Mattins which remains the choral service on most Sundays in the Chapels Royal.

Today’s Gospel reading speaks to us of duty and service, two concepts that have lost their resonance for many people in a society that encourages adulation of the Self.

Duty and Service.  Jesus reminds his hearers – both 2,000 years ago and this morning -that some people in authority like to lord it over others.   And this attitude also infects the church which ought to know better.  Elsewhere in the Gospels, James and John, who also really ought to know better, ask Jesus for places of the highest possible honour in the Kingdom of God.

Let’s think about public service today and the attitude towards it.  For a minority there is the temptation to exploit public service for private gain, be it financial or in terms of power and self-promotion.

But service and duty are not dirty words to be associated with those whose chief aim is self-serving.

Her Majesty has seen hundreds of government ministers come and go, including (according to my calculation) fourteen Prime Ministers from Mr Churchill to Mr Johnson.  And I would say this: Politics is an honourable calling despite the reluctance of a small minority who seek to lord it over others and whose duty and service is only to themselves.

At local level, we know that a good councillor is one whose sense of duty is to the community that he or she serves and not to self-advancement.  And during the pandemic we have, hopefully, become far more aware of the strong sense of duty and service, often in the most difficult of circumstances, of those we now call ‘key workers’.

Duty and service is something to which we are all called.

Duty and service are powerful ways in which to challenge and change a world that all too often disdains or does not recognise those virtues.

Duty and service.  We have representatives of diverse community groups present this morning.  Much of this community service will be voluntary and perhaps at unsocial hours.  And I would say this.  You may sometimes feel unappreciated, exhausted and taken for granted.  You are in a sense the true “Secret Service”.  Duty towards God and our communities, the love and service offered to our neighbours, is the highest of callings in imitation of Jesus Christ.  To be a servant is not degrading in a Downton Abbey kind of way.

Lord Kerslake, the former Head of the Civil Service – note the name of the organisation – said these words recently in the context of the current investigations into events in Downing Street:

“In my experience the vast majority of civil servants desperately want to do the right thing and follow the rules. They take pride in public service and strive to live by the values of the civil service of honesty, integrity, objectivity and impartiality. This doesn’t make them perfect but standards do matter.”

“Pride in public service.”  “Standards do matter.”

The leader must become like one who serves said Jesus.  “I am among you as one who serves.”

On this platinum anniversary of Her Majesty’s Accession, let us give thanks for her seventy years of exemplary and faithful duty and service to our nation in fulfilment of that vow made by that twenty-one year old princess  in South Africa.

Let us reflect on the call of the young Princess Elizabeth for us to join her in a life of duty and service.

Let us also reflect on our duty to our families, neighbours and communities and pledge ourselves to the true service of others in the footsteps, not only of Her Majesty the Queen, but of Jesus Christ who came not to be served but to serve and who gave his life as a ransom for many.

©Paul Hunt 2022

A Sermon by Mrs Sandra Bentall, Authorised Lay Minister

Two weeks ago we were celebrating the birth of the Christ child;   last week we recalled the visit of the wise men, and today we celebrate Christ’s baptism. But this was not the baptism of a baby as 30 years have passed to today’s Gospel reading and we encounter Jesus as he begins his ministry. Apart from a brief passage in Luke’s Gospel telling of Jesus’ visit to Jerusalem at the age of 12, we know nothing at all about the intervening years.
Now, Jesus’ baptism as a man  leads us to realise that 90% of his life was not spent in the limelight. But those mostly missing 30 years years   seem to be just as important to us as the three years we know more about, because they bring home to us that Jesus does indeed know what it’s like to walk in the ordinariness of daily life.  God is with us in our often humdrum reality of everyday.

As we heard in the Gospel of Luke,

 “in the wilderness John proclaimed a baptism of repentance” – Repent means ‘to turn’ implying a change in behaviour, and so turning from sin toward God. 

Jesus chose to be baptised in the waters of the River Jordan by his cousin John, joining with those people who were repenting for forgiveness of their sin.  We recall this in our baptism liturgies.

What happened next?  After Jesus had been baptised by John, Luke’s Gospel tells us that   as Jesus was praying “the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.”
This is one of the places in Scripture where all 3 persons of the Trinity are present and active – God the Father speaks, God the Son is baptised, and God the Holy Spirit descends on Jesus.

That Jesus is God’s divine Son is the foundation for all we read about in the 4 Gospels.   We see the ministry of Jesus begin with an act – and with a sign.
An act of love and a sign of God’s compassion.  The baptism of Christ is the act which begins his ministry – the event which commences the process of proclaiming the good news of salvation, the start of a career of ministry which ends in our redemption.

Our own public baptism is similarly our sacramental recognition of entry into a new life   in and with Christ   and to follow him.  

Do you remember anything about your baptism?  The chances are NO.  Most of us were baptised as babies and our parents and godparents made promises and set the scene for our own Christian journey, which we then confirmed for ourselves at our own Confirmation. Baptism is a great gift from God to us. Baptism is God’s doing, not ours. It is God who causes us to be born anew  in a new life in Christ. It is God who fills us with his Spirit, as he did Jesus coming up out of the river water. God is the Light of the World who ignites the light of love in our hearts. At Baptisms now, a lighted candle is presented with the words  “.. receive this light. God has delivered us from the dominion of darkness and has given us a place with the saints in light. You have received the light of Christ; walk in this light all the days of your life. Shine as a light in the world to the glory of God the Father ”

So most of us, if not all of us, would not remember anything about our baptism. Jesus would not have forgotten his baptism and the affirmation that he was the Messiah.  

As you entered church this morning, most of you by the main South door as you do every Sunday, what did you walk past?    Anyone?    You walked by the Font.   It’s not just for those BEING baptised when the congregation says  “We welcome you”.   It is a constant reminder both of the dignity of Christian baptism as a Gospel Sacrament, and of our own entry into the Church, in whichever church building it was, through baptism, when first we were received into the worldwide congregation of Christ’s flock.   Even though most of us would not be able to remember our own baptism,   let walking past the font in both of our churches,   provoke us to continue to walk in the newness of life.

I would encourage you to make that weekly walk a deliberate act of walking past the font, and so part of your regular spirituality.  Let it remind us of Christ’s baptism; Jesus would not have forgotten it. 
Let the font remind us that we have been given the Spirit of holiness, and that we can re-flect the Light of Christ.

Which brings us to today’s celebration with Christingles, and a reminder of so many imageries.

Thanks to Maggie and Rose and anyone else who was there, for making the Christingles yesterday though some of us could not assist as we were at a service in Chichester Cathedral.

So what are Christingles?
Primarily as a visual reminder that Christ is the Light who came into the world. It is suggested your Christingle is placed on your dining table as you remember, every mealtime,  what it means to you, and the sharing of God’s love around the world.  As The Children’s Society encourages Christingles as a worldwide project promoting its work amongst children and young people, remember them and their work at every mealtime and try and put a coin or two into the Children’s Society envelope for the next couple of weeks or so. Some of you were given a Children’s Society donation envelope or cardboard candle last week, and some this week, and we shall be grateful to receive these back in the Offertory Plate today or in the next two weeks.

Shall we look more closely at a Christingle to help us remember its significance?

First of all the ORANGE – it is round like the world we live in. It means that God’s love is for everybody, everywhere.

The RED RIBBON  goes all around the world. It is a symbol of Jesus’ blood he shed when he died for us, a reminder that he died for the people of the world.

The CANDLE stands tall and straight and symbolises Jesus as the Light of the World. He talked about himself as light coming into a dark place. He brought people God’s love into the world in a new way. “I am the Light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” (John 8 v12)

The FOUR STICKS point in all directions representing North, South, East, and West, another symbol that God’s love is for everyone. They also represent the four seasons, each playing its part in providing the food and sustenance we need to live.  Some people think of the four sticks representing the four Gospels from which we read every week and follow Christ’s teachings.

The DRIED FRUIT AND SWEETS remind us of the fruits of the earth, representing God’s gifts to the world including kindness and love.

But what about THE FOIL?  Is it there just to catch the drips as they fall away from the candle?
Perhaps it can remind us that WE are here to catch any people who might be wavering away from Christ, and we can encourage them back into the fold.
That foil has another function too – it reflects the candle light. Just as we are called to reflect the light of Christ.  
If the foil was flat like a mirror then it  – would reflect the light perfectly.  But it’s not, is it?
The foil is a bit crumpled, perhaps like us sometimes, and the image we reflect may not always be perfect in the way that we’d wish. But we are created in God’s image and we reflect the glory of his Son, Jesus.

And so, may we be as candles and shine out, and may others see the light of Christ in us – in what we say and do – and so be drawn to Him, to follow Christ the Light of the World. Amen

A Sermon by Dr Pat Lock

Epiphany 2^nd January 2022 St Clement

Before I retired I worked as a headteacher in Primary schools and I have either produced or watched endless Nativity plays.  I know all the jokes, have seen the comedy of errors – the innkeeper who says yes, those who have fallen asleep on stage, those who have picked their noses in the middle of the angels singing, and Mary who hit Joseph with the baby Jesus.  But the Kings surpass them all – one gift left behind, one King in the toilet, another tripping over his cloak, crowns askew and of course – Frankenstein, not Frankincense.

One of the best, but more unusual ones came from the second King in one play.  The task was simple: come out on stage, place your gift at the foot of the manger, turn to the audience, and tell them the name of their gift. One word. There was a pause, as this second child wasn’t sure of his cue.  He looked terrified, and slowly made his way on stage.  He placed his gift at the foot of the manger, turned  around, braced himself, and remembering all the rehearsal instructions about speaking loud and clear, he said, “Frank sent this”.  

Epiphany marks the manifestation of the light of God’s revelation in the Incarnation. The whole word is Biblically set and there were different manifestations of Christ’s glory and divinity celebrated throughout history. In the past faithful saints reflected on Christ’s baptism, the miracle at Cana, the Nativity, and of course the visit of the Magi.  The Magi was, after all, an astral, star-led quest. It fulfilled Numbers 24:17, “A Star shall come out of Jacob; A Sceptre shall rise out of Israel.”

The word, “Epiphany” is found in the Greek New Testament and It means “give light, shine on” or “be manifested, appear.   So what has this got to do with me and my world today?  Everything. We are starting off a New Year and it is time to bring Epiphany into our daily lives.

The persons here denoted were philosophers, priests, or astronomers. They lived chiefly in Persia and Arabia. They were the learned men of the Eastern nations. Devoted to astronomy, to religion, and to medicine. They were held in high esteem by the Persian court and were admitted as counsellors, and advisors. These men were not Jews, but they knew about the Jewish Messiah to be born.  We don’t get any details about the wise men’s trip, but they arrive together at their destination.  And to arrive together, they had to be committed to discerning the path , to sticking together, and to wait and listen to each other.  

The first thing we hear about them is their question upon arriving in Jerusalem, “Where is he that is born King of the Jews?”  And they say that men never ask for directions!  Well wise men do!   The wise men are not deluded by any exaggerated sense of their own intelligence.  Their journey represents the searching, the longing and desire of all people, looking for something more, longing for a better world, seeking to know.  Wise men and women ask and seek and knock.  They bring with them, first of all, not gifts, but a question.  The questions of our hearts and minds, the quests of our lives, these are the first things we all have and bring, and these find their answer in the Word of God, and in the Word made flesh. 

These Magi, these Great ones,  were overwhelmed, and overcome, by the grace and dignity of this humble child born of common parents.  They found Jesus in the humblest of circumstances, but even in this infant, they recognised something royal and divine .  As odd as it may have been for Shepherds to be looking around in barns and mangers for Christ the Lord, it was odder still for these noble wise men to seek for a King in a backwater Jewish town, born to humble parents of a conquered and oppressed people.  

The Magi recognised the Messiah King by the light of a star while Herod missed it completely. A babe in a manger. God stripped away all his power and pyrotechnics, and made His message as simple and low-tech as possible so we couldn’t miss the meaning: Jesus is God made. And God’s message of salvation was intended for all people

The wise men were on a journey – a journey with a purpose. A journey that led them to Jesus. We too are on a journey – a journey throughout our lifetime that leads us to Jesus and our real Epiphany will be at the end of our earthly lives when we come face to face with the Son of God.  That will be an Epiphany with fireworks! But we all also have leading stars in our own personal lives – people, experiences, nudges, and wake-up calls, that God has used to lead us on the right path. And when we look on these and recognise in them the providence of God, we, too, will rejoice with exceeding joy.   For these Wise men, this was the most important journey they would ever take. Nobody …. nothing was going to stand between them and following that star. They made a dramatic commitment of time to search for this new king. There is a wonderful message here for us. They put feet to their faith, …. and commenced a journey.  When God presents us with a new opportunity, …. are we willing to get up ….. and begin a journey of faith?  The story of the Wise Kings helps us to see that there is something special …. something remarkable ….. that awaits us at the end of the journey.

Matthew gives us three main verbs to describe the activity of the wise men: they came, they saw, they worshipped. And I hope and pray that that is the story of the journey of your life today.   How, then, can we be wise men and wise women? The first way is to ask for directions, to ask and seek and knock. The second way is to search the Scriptures, for in them we find God’s answers to our quests and questions.  Finally, the wise men worshipped.  They found what they had been looking for in Jesus Christ.  For all human desire and aspiration has its end in the knowledge and love of God in Jesus.

Let’s note, first off, that they give Jesus the very best.  Too often, what we offer to God is the leftovers, but these wise people give him their very best. And so should we. We offer the gold of our money, the incense of our prayers, and the myrrh of our sins, to our King and God and Saviour. More generally, we may think of the Gold of Obedience, the Incense of Worship, and the Myrrh of the Saviour, which we all have and can offer to Jesus our King and God and Saviour. Saint Paul writes about the unsearchable riches of Christ.  The wise men brought their expensive gifts, their treasures,  but they recognised in Jesus the most valuable thing in the world. They saw and knew and honoured and worshipped in him their King and God and Saviour.  In Jesus, they recognised the King of Kings, the Prince of Peace and the Saviour who would die for them and for many, for the forgiveness of sins.  

In the end, it is not so much about what they offered Jesus, but what they knew that Jesus offered to them and to all the world, the Salvation and Kingdom of God.  

How do we live in a wisemen’s world when we are surrounded by suffering in the world? How do we believe in the power and presence of Jesus Christ when so much godless and sinful activity surrounds us and brings pain and suffering into our lives? We continue to follow the star that always leads to Christ and we repeatably come back to the manger.

Epiphany is that change of vision that turns us into wise men: the realisation that what you thought needed to be silenced is the voice you most need to hear.

Epiphany is realising that when Christ broke the bread on the last night it was because his death was not a failure but a triumph, the overcoming of the very fear that was putting him to death.

Epiphany is when you realise that your fears were misplaced, and the things that seemed to threaten the way of life you held dear are actually the things that are most to be valued.

Epiphany is when you realise that all the rest of the world has got it wrong and is away focussed on other tasks at the time they most needed to be aware of the starlight.

Epiphany is when the light of God shines, so where others see failure we see wonder. Where they see something to hate we see something to love. Where they see human degradation we see the incarnation, the ultimate sacrifice, the Christ who shares our life and death in pain and sorrow

Epiphany leads us to look for the star glowing, even where others cannot see it. He is in the stable, where the homeless are giving birth in misery. He is in the boats where the refugees are trying to cross the sea to safety. He is in the mothers’ arms as they cradle their babies running from forest fires and floods. He is in the queue at the food bank. He is outside the school gate, being sent home with the wrong uniform. He is at the hospital desk where he cannot be seen. He is in the areas of our world where children beg for food.

Let us be people of the Epiphany. Let us live in a world lit up by the star,  by hearing that message of salvation. We must see with the eyes of faith. We must live in the Epiphany. We will be changed, travelling another way, transformed by our encounter with Jesus.  

The manger is for life . We too need to rise up and follow the star wherever God takes us.

Come and bring whatever gift you have for your simple gift is like gold to God.  In return he will give you the crown of life. There is no greater gift than the Prince of Peace, the son of God himself. The word made flesh. And that is our Epiphany.

St. Stephen’s Day

(St. Clement’s, Hastings, 26^th December 2021)

When I was a child I spoke like a child and I thought like a child and I reasoned like a child and so I thought that Boxing Day was so called because I once saw a boxing match on the television on that day.  It was many years later that I discovered that the 26^th December took its popular name because it was on this day that the poor boxes were opened in church and the money distributed to the poor.  However, for most people today will be about relatives, cold turkey (in a gastronomic sense) and perhaps an afternoon walk or even a visit to the pantomime.  In that connection I note that the University of Staffordshire has launched a Masters degree in Pantomime Studies.  On no, they haven’t.  Oh, yes they have!

But today is St. Stephen’s Day and I rather fear that he is always rather left out liturgically.  However, as readers of Going to Church in Medieval England will know, it was a very popular saint’s day in the Middle Ages, not least because of the opening of the poor boxes.  Together with St. John’s Day (tomorrow) and Holy Innocents’ Day on the 28^th, St. Stephen’s Day was a major festival and good King Wenceslas might well have looked out.

Therefore, Christian men, be sure
Wealth or rank possessing
Ye, who now will bless the poor
Shall yourselves find blessing.

Indeed, the whole period from Christmas Day to Epiphany was one long celebration.  Alas, Boxing Day can be a bit of an anti-climax and St. Stephen barely gets a look in.  And I suspect that even some churches will not be holding a service today and some of those that are holding a service will be keeping it as the First Sunday after Christmas rather than as the Feast of Stephen.

So let’s think this morning about St. Stephen and make amends of sorts for the way in which he is neglected.  In our reading from Acts were heard of Stephen’s martyrdom when he became the first martyr of the Christian Church.  We also heard that Saul, better known as St. Paul, was one of the instigators and approved of the stoning.  Who knows, but perhaps in retrospect Stephen’s witness began Paul’s process of conversion in advance of his experience on the Damascus Road.  It only occurred to me when writing this sermon that Paul never refers directly to the death of Stephen in his letters; perhaps he was too ashamed.  After all, we all have aspects of our past that we would prefer to forget.

Less well remembered than his martyrdom is Stephen’s ministry as a deacon.  He was one of the first seven deacons to be appointed by the Apostles and their work was to distribute food and other necessities to the poor.  This was to allow the apostles to be able to spend more time praying and preaching.  I presume that Stephen’s ministry to the poor is the reason why the poor boxes were opened on his feast day.

“Then the twelve called the multitude of the disciples unto them, and said, It is not reasonable that we should leave the word of God, and serve tables.

Wherefore, brethren, look ye out among you seven men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom, whom we may appoint over this business.

But we will give ourselves continually to prayer, and to the ministry of the word.

 And the saying pleased the whole multitude: and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Ghost, and Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Parmenas, and Nicolas a proselyte of Antioch:

Whom they set before the apostles: and when they had prayed, they laid their hands on them. (Acts 6.2-6)

The apostles are remembered but the deacons are not.

Much of our Christian work is unglamorous and unseen by our brothers and sisters.  I like to think of St. Stephen as the patron saint of unremembered Christians: Unremembered, that is, by their fellow Christians.  For, like Stephen, they are remembered by God.

© Paul Hunt 2021

“Do not be afraid; behold, I bring you news of great joy.”

(Luke 2.10)

(Christmas, St Clement’s Hastings 2021)

What is your earliest memory of Christmas?  I think that mine comes from when I was five or six and Christmas Eve was being spent in an unfamiliar house where I was put to bed.  Someone kept coming into the bedroom and telling me stories about Father Christmas who, so I was assured, would be coming into the room that night.

Now even at that young age I knew that Santa Claus didn’t really exist.  I knew that he was really the school caretaker, having made the connection between ‘S’ and ‘C’ for ‘School Caretaker’ and ‘S’ and ‘C’ in Santa Claus.  It was so obvious that I couldn’t really understand why nobody else made the connection.  But I didn’t like the idea of the school caretaker coming into my bedroom and so I started crying.

So in an attempt to keep me quiet, the teller of tales promised to bring me some of my presents from under the tree.  The first present turned out to be a handkerchief – and so I continued crying.  Next up was a pair of socks.  Realising by this time that I was on to a good thing, I continued crying.  The third gift turned out to be a pop-up Nativity book.  I stopped crying and read it avidly, thus begining an interest in theology and probably why I am standing here today!

Now we will all be able to recall particular Christmases, good or bad, happy and unhappy.  There is a certain nostalgia about Christmas and we try to recapture something of the magic of Christmas past, especially those of our childhood.  Perhaps some of the occasional disappointment of Christmas – if we are honest with ourselves – is to be found in our failure to do so.

We think too of that first Christmas in Bethlehem two thousand years ago.

But the meaning of that first Christmas is as much about the future as it is about the past.  The Nativity we celebrate was only the beginning.

The infant who was laid in the manger was later to be nailed to a cross and laid in a tomb.  And part of the promise of Christmas, all too easily forgotten, is that this same Jesus will come again as judge and king.

“Do not be afraid; behold, I bring you news of great joy.” On that first Christmas night, the shepherds rejoiced, not simply because they had seen a babe lying in a manger, but because they had glimpsed something of the future in the angels’ song – peace on earth, goodwill amongst men.  Hope for the future.

“Do not be afraid; behold, I bring you news of great joy.”  On that first Christmas night, Mary pondered these things in her heart, not because she could see into the future, but because she sensed that the birth of her son was to be the turning point in the future of humanity.

“Do not be afraid; behold, I bring you news of great joy.”  As a society we are fearful of the future: Climate change, pandemic, wars and rumours of wars.  And so we seek refuge in the past, in nostalgia when everything seemed secure and happy, dare I say like a small child at Christmas?

But on that first Christmas night, God entered into human history in the person of Jesus Christ.  In Jesus Christ, God takes humanity to Himself, the good and the bad, the happy and the unhappy, our hopes and fears.

“O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie!
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by.
Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting Light;
The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.

That is why as Christians we should face the future with confidence.  Christmas is about the future more than it is about the past.

“Do not be afraid; behold, I bring you news of great joy.”

So as we raise our glasses this Christmas, let us indeed raise our glass to Christmas past, to the remembrance of those whom we still love but see no longer, and especially to that first Christmas two thousand years ago.  But let us also raise our glasses to the future.  That is the test of real Christmas faith and Christmas joy.

© Paul Hunt 2021

A Sermon by Keith Leech, Authorised Lay Minister

My soul doth magnify the Lord.

In today’s gospel from Luke we have a real treat. The Magnificat. The Song of Mary.  or the Canticle of Mary, in the eastern tradition, the Ode of the Theotokos .  Theotokos meaning in Greek literally the God bearer.

 I remember as a boy chorister singing The Magnificat every week at sung evensong.  The Magnificat was put into evensong by Thomas Cranmer, when he put together the Book of Common Prayer. This has made this great hymn a part of the Anglican tradition.  It is one of the most ancient hymns of praise we have. I must admit that liberal moderniser that I am I find the modern language from today’s passage lacking compared to the translation in the King James Bible.

It is loaded with meaning and in it Mary shows a depth of knowledge of scripture one wouldn’t expect from one so young. So much so that some say it would have been impossible for Mary to write it herself. Others feel that this diminishes Mary and that God would have chosen somebody who knew the scriptures well to carry His son.  She wasn’t just any young woman, she had all the qualities required for such an important task.  Theotokos…The God Bearer.   Nothing less than bearing and bringing the Saviour of the world into being.  She was the instrument of the incarnation which we will be celebrating later this week at Christmas, and affirm every week in the words of the Creed.  For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven, was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and was made man. You may notice some of us bow at this point this is to acknowledge the incarnation, not bowing to Mary as some may think.

The word Christmas by the way comes from the Saxon interpretation of the Greek and Latin Cristes-messe. The mass of Christ. The Messiah’s Eucharist. The great meeting  of thanksgiving for the Messiah. Most other languages simply refer to The Nativity. In Greek it is literally translated as Christ Birth.  It gives us an indication of the importance given to Christmas by our forebears and may in part explain why it has become such a big festival in English speaking nations for both the Church and the secular world.

Elsewhere Luke also tells us of The Annunciation, the words of which are used in that great ancient prayer The Angelus (sadly not used so often these days).

The Annunciation starts with the words of the Angel Gabriel to Mary …in the King James version. “Hail Mary full of grace”.  In the new International version more simply “Greetings Mary you are highly favoured”. The angel goes on to say. “Do not be afraid; you have found favour with God.  You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus.  He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.”

“How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”  This echoes Isaiah 7.14 Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: A young woman will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Emmanuel.

The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.  Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month.  For no word from God will ever fail.”

“I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled.”  In the King James version she says she is the ‘handmaid of the Lord’.  A handmaid was a very lowly servant who in that society could be used to bear the seed of the master as Hagar did for Abraham and Sara.

By the door in this church is a copy of Rossetti’s  Ecce Ancilla Domini. The Annunciation. Here his brother William represents the Angel Gabriel and the part of Mary is played by his sister Christina who wrote In the Bleak Midwinter. It is worth noting that in this depiction Mary is just getting up, not at prayer as is often seen in illustrations, showing us that the Holy Spirit can visit us at any time. Rossetti was married here and there is a long association of this church with the Rossetti family.

A couple of months after The Annunciation we have Mary visiting her cousin Elizabeth to share the joys of their pregnancies. Elizabeth recognises instantly what has happened and exclaims ‘Blessed are you among women’.  You are so lucky. This is no ordinary baby.  So what does Mary do? Is she running around shouting look I am that important I have God’s son?  Not at all…she says

My soul doth magnify the Lord.

And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.

For he hath regarded: the lowliness of his handmaiden: For behold, from henceforth: all generations shall call me blessed.

Showing humility and trust in God just as she did when the angel came when she said’ I am the Lord’s servant’. She isn’t puffed up with her own importance… she is grateful that God should choose her, one so lowly, not a princess, an ordinary Galilean young woman. She recognises that she will become famous and that all generations will call her blessed but again says that God has done this for her and goes to praise Him again. She can see that it is all about God and His plan. Not about her, she is just the instrument that God is using. She will suffer pain because of this devotion to God, the pain of having a baby so young and ultimately watching Him be crucified.

She then goes on to give a prophecy of the Messiah

And his mercy is on them that fear him: throughout all generations.

He hath shewed strength with his arm: he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.

He hath put down the mighty from their seat: and hath exalted the humble and meek.

He hath filled the hungry with good things: and the rich he hath sent empty away.

Here she shows that she knows what is going to happen and what her Son is destined to do.

Finally she shows the fulfilment of the prophecy in Genesis. Now the Lord said to Abram, …I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

Mary says

He remembering his mercy hath holpen his servant Israel:

As he promised to our forefathers, Abraham and his seed for ever.

What does this say to us here today? It shows us that Mary was a woman of great humility who saw herself not as a chosen one but as an instrument of God. She was willing to give up everything to serve God because she loved God.  She heard and heeded God’s call to her without even flinching. Her soul magnified the Lord.

So today we should strive to be like Mary, we may not be as fortunate to get a visitation from an angel but we should be open to what the Holy Spirit is asking us to do, (and remember the Holy Spirit can visit us at any time). To recognise that we are all instruments of God, and we should serve Him with praise and without fear.  

How do you serve God and why do you serve God? Is it to get praise from others? …What a good sermon…or is it to serve God?  Yes we are all human and who wouldn’t like to hear they have done a good job? It is right that we should encourage each other in our service to God.  If however our prime motivation is to gather praise and good standing with others rather than to serve God then we may have to reset out motivational compass.

What is God asking you to do for him this Christmas?  When you do things for God do them not for praise from others, only to give praise to God.  In this way we may ourselves through God’s grace also become blessed among women (and men)

Hail Mary full of grace, The Lord is with you, blessed are you among women and blessed be the fruit of thy womb Jesus.

Amen

“I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.” (Luke 3.16)

(The Third Sunday in Advent, 12^th December 2021, St. Clement’s, Hastings)

Do you remember the £1 note?  It used to be a lot of money and it was possible to buy quite a lot with it.  I ask that question because I remember a woman in our congregation who used to put £1 into the collection every week.  When the collection bag came round, she raised her right hand in the air with the £1 note for all to see and with a rather splendid flourish placed the note into the bag.  And in so doing she pointed to her own generosity .  I think that she had rather missed Jesus’ words in Matthew Chapter Six: “But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right is doing, so that your alms may be done in secret.”

Today’s focus is on John the Baptist.  We’ve lit our Advent candle, the Collect makes reference to him and we’ve heard something of his preaching, both encouraging and disturbing, in today’s Gospel.

But should we be thinking about John at all?  What would he make of today’s focus?  For John’s entire ministry points away from himself to Jesus Christ. “He must increase,” said John.  “I must decrease.”  “I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal”, the action of a slave.

Such humility cannot have come to John easily.  Just consider:

• He is Jesus’ cousin, virtually the same age.
• He has his own followers, even into the twentieth century amongst the marsh arabs in Iraq.
• He has his own ministry of preaching and baptism.
• He has even baptised Jesus who came to him.
• Some people considered that he, John, might be the promised Christ, the Messiah.

Given what we know and our experience of human nature and the history of self-appointed messiahs, both religious and political, was there not a temptation for John?

Yet John remains firm to his vocation as a forerunner, preparing people for the advent of the Christ and all the time pointing away from himself to Jesus the Christ.

And as such John is the model for us, a reminder that we should always point away from ourselves to Jesus Christ.  We cannot be like the woman with the £1 note whom I remember more than fifty years later.

I am conscious of the astonishing number of hours of voluntary service – and I use the word service deliberately – that is given so willingly by so many in this parish.  God knows what you do even if it’s not always recognised by those around you.  But do we preach or sing in the choir or serve at the altar or read the lesson or lead the prayers or contact the sick or clean the brass or welcome visitors to point to Christ or point to ourselves?

And if we do serve Him faithfully, there can be disappointments and discouragement; just think of John the Baptist and those who didn’t accept his preaching, who doubted his authenticity, who wanted him dead.  One of the most difficult tasks I have had in my ministry was when I was the Warden of Readers in the London Diocese and had to break the news face to face with candidates who had not been accepted to train as a Reader.  And on a personal note, I’ve certainly had disappointments and discouragement in my own ministry.

Like John the Baptist, we are called to be faithful to the tasks to which God has called us, whatever that may be and however disappointed or discouraged we might feel at times.

The vocation of all the baptised is to point to Jesus Christ.  Are we worthy enough to untie the thong of his sandal?  To what extent do we join with the Baptist in saying, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world”?

“Should we be thinking about John at all?” was my earlier question.  Well, we have been thinking about John and in so doing I hope that we have also been thinking about ourselves.

© Paul Hunt 2021

“The Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple” (Malachi 3.1)

Many years ago when I taught at Brighton College we had a sixth former who rarely turned up to lessons and rarely handed in any work.  In fact he was very rarely in school at all, prefering to play truant in a local amusement arcade.  “I don’t think that he is really suited for the Sixth Form,” I said to a colleague.  Her reply was, “Don’t you think you’re being rather judgemental?”

“Rather judgemental.”  We now live in a culture in which the concept of judgement when applied to people has gone out of fashion.  The difference between right and wrong is now a matter for subjective individual judgement and rather than pass judgement on someone we seek excuses for bad behaviour and try and shift the responsibility for it elsewhere.

The concept of judgement has rather gone out of fashion in Church life too.  Every week we recite in the Creed that Jesus will come to judge the living and the dead but do we really give this much thought?  After all, we do not recite “He will come and act as our facilitator in group therapy sessions via Zoom”.

As Pat reminded us last Sunday, judgement is one of the four traditional themes of Advent, together with heaven and hell and death.  We tend to use Advent as a time of preparation for the coming of Jesus as a babe born in a manger but Advent is also about our readiness for Jesus’ coming at the end of earthly time, that last day, as the Advent collect reminds us, “when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead.”  This is the Day of the Lord of which the prophets spoke.

So when will this be?  Jehovah’s Witnesses, of course, have predicted the actual year several times: 1914 and 1925 have come and gone and I failed to notice the end of the world in 1975.  The next predicted date is 2034.  It’s easy to make fun of all this but at least the Jehovah’s Witnesses take the concept of the end of history and the final consummation and judgement with an earnestness lost to the mainstream churches.  It’s as though we acknowledge this as a belief but without it having any real effect on our daily living and spirituality.  We’ve rather replaced the concept of Jesus as judge with the more comforting idea of Jesus as our best mate who will find us a parking space, although I suspect that even he would struggle to find one for us in the Old Town.  But have we not just sung the following words in our Gradual hymn?

“As judge, on clouds of light,

  He soon will come again,

  And his true members all unite

  With him in heaven to reign.”

But I’m not convinced by the word “soon”.  The first generation of Christians did indeed expect Jesus to return soon within their lifetimes.  But at the conclusion of his earthly ministry, Jesus told the Apostles that it was not for them to know the times and seasons.

The emphasis in the New Testament is more on ‘sudden’ rather than necessarily ‘soon’.   Think of the Parable of the Ten Bridesmaids in Matthew chapter twenty-five.  Five were foolish and five were wise.  The wise bridesmaids took flasks of oil for their lamps and were able to trim their lamps when the bridegroom appeared suddenly and unexpectedly at midnight.  “Keep awake,” said Jesus at the parable’s conclusion, “for you know neither the day nor the hour.”  Jesus coming might be in 2034 or it might be tonight.

We have many images of Jesus, all of them important and valid and precious.  We think of Him as Shepherd, as King, as Servant.  But in this Advent time let us not forget that he is also our judge.

Here are two representations of Jesus as our judge and ruler of the world.  One is a sixth century representation from St Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai and the other is by El Greco in the early seventeenth century.  In the first Jesus holds the Gospel Book in his left hand and blesses with his right.  In the second he holds the world in his left hand and blesses with the other.

The season of Advent is a sharp reminder – or at least it should be a sharp reminder – that we need to be ready for his coming as judge and ruler of the world “now in the time of this mortal life” In the words of the Advent Sunday Collect.  “Who can endure the day of his coming?” asked the prophet Malachi.  “Who can stand when he appears?”  “The night is far gone,” wrote St. Paul to the Christians in Rome, “the day is near.  Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armour of light.”

Are we unprepared and asleep like the foolish bridesmaids?  Or are we ready and able to trim our lamps and rejoice?

Wake, O wake! With tidings thrilling
the watchmen all the air are filling,
arise, Jerusalem, arise!
Midnight strikes! No more delaying,
‘The hour has come!’ we hear them saying,
‘where are ye all, ye virgins wise?
The Bridegroom comes in sight,
raise high your torches bright!’
Alleluia!
The wedding song swells loud and strong:
go forth and join the festal throng. 

© Paul Hunt 2021

“The Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple” (Malachi 3.1)

Many years ago when I taught at Brighton College we had a sixth former who rarely turned up to lessons and rarely handed in any work.  In fact he was very rarely in school at all, prefering to play truant in a local amusement arcade.  “I don’t think that he is really suited for the Sixth Form,” I said to a colleague.  Her reply was, “Don’t you think you’re being rather judgemental?”

“Rather judgemental.”  We now live in a culture in which the concept of judgement when applied to people has gone out of fashion.  The difference between right and wrong is now a matter for subjective individual judgement and rather than pass judgement on someone we seek excuses for bad behaviour and try and shift the responsibility for it elsewhere.

The concept of judgement has rather gone out of fashion in Church life too.  Every week we recite in the Creed that Jesus will come to judge the living and the dead but do we really give this much thought?  After all, we do not recite “He will come and act as our facilitator in group therapy sessions via Zoom”.

As Pat reminded us last Sunday, judgement is one of the four traditional themes of Advent, together with heaven and hell and death.  We tend to use Advent as a time of preparation for the coming of Jesus as a babe born in a manger but Advent is also about our readiness for Jesus’ coming at the end of earthly time, that last day, as the Advent collect reminds us, “when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead.”  This is the Day of the Lord of which the prophets spoke.

So when will this be?  Jehovah’s Witnesses, of course, have predicted the actual year several times: 1914 and 1925 have come and gone and I failed to notice the end of the world in 1975.  The next predicted date is 2034.  It’s easy to make fun of all this but at least the Jehovah’s Witnesses take the concept of the end of history and the final consummation and judgement with an earnestness lost to the mainstream churches.  It’s as though we acknowledge this as a belief but without it having any real effect on our daily living and spirituality.  We’ve rather replaced the concept of Jesus as judge with the more comforting idea of Jesus as our best mate who will find us a parking space, although I suspect that even he would struggle to find one for us in the Old Town.  But have we not just sung the following words in our Gradual hymn?

“As judge, on clouds of light,

  He soon will come again,

  And his true members all unite

  With him in heaven to reign.”

But I’m not convinced by the word “soon”.  The first generation of Christians did indeed expect Jesus to return soon within their lifetimes.  But at the conclusion of his earthly ministry, Jesus told the Apostles that it was not for them to know the times and seasons.

The emphasis in the New Testament is more on ‘sudden’ rather than necessarily ‘soon’.   Think of the Parable of the Ten Bridesmaids in Matthew chapter twenty-five.  Five were foolish and five were wise.  The wise bridesmaids took flasks of oil for their lamps and were able to trim their lamps when the bridegroom appeared suddenly and unexpectedly at midnight.  “Keep awake,” said Jesus at the parable’s conclusion, “for you know neither the day nor the hour.”  Jesus coming might be in 2034 or it might be tonight.

We have many images of Jesus, all of them important and valid and precious.  We think of Him as Shepherd, as King, as Servant.  But in this Advent time let us not forget that he is also our judge.

Here are two representations of Jesus as our judge and ruler of the world.  One is a sixth century representation from St Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai and the other is by El Greco in the early seventeenth century.  In the first Jesus holds the Gospel Book in his left hand and blesses with his right.  In the second he holds the world in his left hand and blesses with the other.

The season of Advent is a sharp reminder – or at least it should be a sharp reminder – that we need to be ready for his coming as judge and ruler of the world “now in the time of this mortal life” In the words of the Advent Sunday Collect.  “Who can endure the day of his coming?” asked the prophet Malachi.  “Who can stand when he appears?”  “The night is far gone,” wrote St. Paul to the Christians in Rome, “the day is near.  Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armour of light.”

Are we unprepared and asleep like the foolish bridesmaids?  Or are we ready and able to trim our lamps and rejoice?

Wake, O wake! With tidings thrilling
the watchmen all the air are filling,
arise, Jerusalem, arise!
Midnight strikes! No more delaying,
‘The hour has come!’ we hear them saying,
‘where are ye all, ye virgins wise?
The Bridegroom comes in sight,
raise high your torches bright!’
Alleluia!
The wedding song swells loud and strong:
go forth and join the festal throng. 

© Paul Hunt 2021

Advent Sunday 28^th November 2021

A sermon by Dr. Pat Lock

I suppose I should start the sermon this morning by wishing you all ’Happy New Year.’  Today is Advent Sunday, the new year in the Church’s calendar, it’s the beginning of the Church year.  Look at our colours this morning! While the rest of the country is starting to deck itself out in the Christmas colours of green and red, we have moved to the other end of the ecclesiastical colour spectrum – donning purple, the colour of sombre reflection.

Advent Sunday is different from any other day in the church calendar, because the church year does not start with an event, such as Jesus’s birth, or death, or resurrection, or ascension.   No: instead, the new church year starts with a strange darkness and even emptiness, a real sense of mystery, and a rather tense, almost spine-tingling, feeling of expectation.  It is a curious mixture of both dread and delight.  Dread, because the themes the church has historically focused on in this season are rather forbidding – the ‘four last things’: heaven, hell, death and judgement.   Delight, because Advent does look forward to the promise of the Incarnation: Immanuel, God entering into the arena of our humanity and – astonishingly – sharing our human experience with us. And so today we observe the ritual of the lighting of our first Advent candle.  So we seek to find our way in this mysterious darkness which marks the beginning of the season – waiting, wondering, daring to hope that the mystery might be revealed.  Advent Sunday calls us to remain alert and to keep watch, but also to be still and grow in holiness.

Early Christians lived with the expectation the world would end at any time. They waited expectantly for Christ to return. They lived each day as it came. As one prophet cried out, ‘How long, O Lord, how long?’And today, we too don’t know when the end of the world will come but we have a responsibility to live each day for God whilst waiting expectantly for the end to come. And still we wait.

But no sooner has Advent got under way than we’re headlong into all those interminable carol services, so that by the time it gets to the point when we should sing carols, we’re all carolled out. And I think we are the poorer for not remembering Advent. Advent isn’t Christmas, and nor is Advent about preparing for Christmas. Advent is a time of waiting, a time of preparation for celebrating the coming of God into the world in human form in the person of Jesus his Son and looking to His return in glory. It is a period of waiting and preparation, with a sense of emptiness and wondering. But I think it’s right because if we don’t go through this season of Advent waiting and watching and preparing then we don’t really have anything to celebrate.

We are not used to waiting these days! The incessant pace and demand of life, especially through electronic media makes us increasingly impatient and intolerant of having to wait. I am not happy if my computer screen does not instantly spring into life on demand! Advent is about watching and waiting for the coming of God to complete his work, but doing so in activity and hope. On this Advent Sunday we who are Christian disciples are reminded by our scriptures that, though the world seems bleak and broken at times, God is going to complete the job he started in Bethlehem on that first Christmas, and continued in Jesus’ loving death and mighty resurrection at Easter. Advent is about the sure and certain hope that God will finish what he has started, that justice and right will triumph in the end.

What are your hopes and dreams at present – for yourself, your family, our church? Our lives are full of hopes: worldly, natural hopes, important and trivial. People in some other parts of the world hope for no more war, that there will be food and clean water tomorrow, that they simply get safely to the end of the day. Advent Sunday calls us back to our hopes and dreams in Christ. In the Gospels  Jesus says “Be alert; you do not know when the time will come “ And again “What I say to you, I say to all: keep awake!” Are we complacent in our spiritual waiting, or active in pushing forward the boundaries of the Kingdom of God as his disciples? So here we are on Advent Sunday 2021 called to renew our hope in the God who still comes to us now, every minute, every moment, calling us to watch and wait and join in with his work in the world. Waiting in Advent hope is not about inertia and leaving it all to God. As this season of Advent

progresses God says to his church, “you can’t just sit there! Now is the time. I am here – do something!” Advent is a wake-up call to the Church to watch and pray, but not to stop there, rather to see what God is doing and join in.   So what is God calling you to do between now and Christmas? We are not called to be sleepily religious, but to be faithful and adventurous for and with Jesus. Always remember that God has double vision for you: he sees you as you are and as you can or should be. The challenge of Advent is to live an authentic Christian life: You are writing a Gospel, a chapter each day by the deeds that you do, and the things that you say, be it faithful and true. What are you waiting for?

Nonetheless, there’s still more than enough distress and misery to go round, as we see pictures of human suffering on an immense scale – people and nations ravaged by war or terrorist attacks, lives blighted by poverty, drought, starvation or disease.  Tragically, we have become used to seeing people with no light in their eyes, no hope for tomorrow, nothing to live for.  Where is God in this? The questions about the whereabouts of God are, of course, as old as time.  And they’ve been hurled at the sky as much by people of faith as by anyone else. We hear them asked repeatedly and urgently in Scripture, by individuals and by the Hebrew people in general.   Somehow, even though it can be hard, we have to hang on even when God seems to be absent. Beware any religion that promises perpetual bliss or constant joy.

Advent Sunday reminds us that we wait for God like night watchmen wait for the morning. In the darkness we yearn for the light. But the candle we light today is tentative and vulnerable; its flame flickers at the slightest draught.  Sometimes the darkness almost overwhelms us, yet here’s the good news.  Jesus says, it’s at just such a time that we are to

expect a sense of the presence of God.  ‘The Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour’, says the Gospel.  The darkness will be pierced, God’s promise will be fulfilled, a child will

be born.  Advent places us perpetually on the eve of God’s coming among us.  So – stay alert, let the flickering light of the candle into your darkness, look for even the smallest signs of God’s presence breaking through.  We don’t know when the darkness will be penetrated, but the urgent prophetic message of Advent is that we must remain alert to the glimpses of light that come our way.  We must constantly be ready to meet the divine clothed in our very humanity, in the course of our ordinary everyday lives.  Advent urges us to expect that encounter at any moment and in any number of surprising ways.  And once it has happened, things can never be the same again. 

We are already in the presence of something eternal, the living Word of God who is Jesus himself. The kingdom of God is near.  What you would want to be found doing if Jesus suddenly appeared on the scene?  If one day you hear the loud sound of trumpets from the heavens – I suggest at the very least you bow before Him in awe and wonder.