There are rules that we need, and ones that we do not need, and ones that we do not always need, so can be ignored or waived from time to time. If you give me a grouse, I will cook it for 14 minutes in a hot oven and eat it with game chips, bread sauce and port gravy. If I were to use it for sushi or a lasagna, you would be at liberty to phone the emergency services. There are rules of engagement as well – we don’t go up to people we do not know and invite them to go on holiday with us, and there are speed limits, which can be useful guidelines for some people. Rules can and do matter only because people matter. Rules may make us uncomfortable, but should we change them simply to put people at ease? Things that make us uncomfortable lead to a choice: between listening to others or to ourselves.In John’s Gospel many are uncomfortable with Jesus’s teaching. They cannot accept that Jesus is the Bread from heaven, and many who had previously followed him cease doing so. Jesus interrogates his disciples, whether they also want to leave. Peter answers,Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life; and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God. (John 6.68-69)Jesus responds by calling one of his apostles (Judas) ‘a devil’.This is similar to the Gospel we hear today. Jesus interrogates his disciples, ‘But who do you say that I am?’ and Peter responds with a confession of faith, ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.’ Jesus then calls one of his apostles (Peter) ‘Satan’.In John’s Gospel the reason for Peter’s faith is that Jesus has ‘the words of eternal life,’ and in Matthew’s account because Jesus’s Father has revealed this to Peter. In both Peter has faith in God’s saving revelation of himself. By contrast Judas is called ‘a devil’ (slanderer) because he rejects faith and life offered in Jesus, and Peter is called ‘Satan’ (adversary) because he is ‘not on the side of God, but of men’.The context of these choices, between faith and one’s own will, is an uncomfortable disquiet. The disciples do not understand Jesus’s words or who he is, but they must choose. Peter puts his trust in Jesus. Following Peter’s confession of faith, Jesus makes his own choice. ‘Upon this Rock I will build my Church,’ Christ says. But what is this Rock?The Bible gives three identities for the Rock, and all three are true.First, the Rock is Jesus himself (1 Corinthians 10.4). The Church is built on apostles, with Christ as chief cornerstone (Ephesians 2.20), such that there is no other foundation but Christ (1 Corinthians 3.10-11).Secondly, the Church in her liturgy, unhesitatingly affirms that the ‘Rock’ is Peter’s confession of faith. Thirdly, the ‘Rock’ is Peter himself. Jesus says to Simon Peter, ‘You are Rock and on this Rock I will build my Church’. This is the plain literal sense of the text. Peter, shifting and fickle as sand, is made to be a Rock by Jesus. By grace Peter receives that stability and role that is Christ’s by nature, and we share that as well if we accept Jesus as the Lord and share that confession of faith. Furthermore, Jesus uses a plural here – ‘on rocks I will build my church’, living stones, like you. By the Father’s gift the Church remains faithful, confessing through the Spirit that ‘Jesus is Lord’. Some people want, and get, a church that changes its rules to suit people. But if any church should prefer human ways over God’s or unbelief over faith, changing doctrine to suit people, then she is ‘Satan’ and ‘a devil’, the adversary and slanderer of Christ. Our rules are not guidelines, they show how we follow Christ because that is the only journey that really matters. The church then is a gift to the world, because we exist simply to point the way to eternal life and hope, and to the source of all love and no trend or fashion has ever loved and cared for his people more than God himself. We find Him in the Bible and we find Him in our community, together, because we are, completely, in this together and it is Him we listen to, Him we worship, Him we model our lives on, and Him we want to be with forever, and the choice is to be with the slanderer, the adversary, who speaks so well in the voice of our times, but whose every word is a lie.
I am generally quite uncurious about details, whether it be reading the fifty page contracts you are emailed to buy a phone or lists of allergens on labels – I have little interest in them. When I am asked the usual question now ‘do you have any allergies’, I generally answer ‘yes, I have an allergy to small portions and inflated prices’ – but this can sometimes confuse the limited number of brain cells of the staff member, so I just say ‘no’. It’s easier. The same with people – some people ask you every detail of your life, but I have never felt that way inclined, people present as who they are, and I have only a limited memory anyway, and once divulged, people can get upset if you forget what they have told you. What do we need to know about each other though? We can know quite a lot about an individual, and not know them. This is true, for both individuals and people often in the news. And we’ve all found ourselves saying something like: I’ve heard so much about you, and now I am looking forward to getting to know you. No amount of knowledge about someone can be the same as knowing them, but knowing certain things as true about someone can make us want to know them or to know them better. Facts can attract. They help us find people like us – and unless you are a vegan, people are unlikely to know much about you, for it is only vegans who define themselves by their peculiar aversion to natural food and reliance on concocted food shaped items. This kind of ordinary, everyday questioning could be a good starting point in celebrating the Assumption of Mary, Our Lady. To know that Mary was assumed into heaven cannot remain as just one more fact that we know about her. Knowing this truth about Mary, affects how we relate to her, and it is an invitation to relate to her more deeply and with even greater joy. What do we know about Mary? Was she a Vegan? Did she have an allergy to celery? We believe that Mary, the immaculate Mother of God, is assumed body and soul, that her whole person is in heaven together with Jesus Christ. All this means that we are invited to a unique kind of relationship with her of the kind not possible with any other saint in heaven. This is what we know about her. It is not that Mary is around 2000 years old in earthly time, but invisibly and without feeling her age. In a God-granted, gracious way Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory. This relates her to Jesus Christ in a special way, as she did in becoming his mother. Mary’s bond to Christ is without parallel, physically and spiritually, in body and soul. Jesus did not have a biological father, he did not become one flesh with a woman in marriage, he had no children. His is a unique bodily bond to his mother. She also related to him uniquely in her soul, spiritually in faith and immaculately without sin and full of grace. Details do not matter, as I keep on assuring our Finance committee. What matters is our relationship to God, through Mary and each other. What we know is that there is salvation. What we do not know is how we will pay the builders. Some things matter, some do not. As Mary relates to Christ in a uniquely glorious way, she draws us closer to him and to each other. She draws us closer to Christ because the two of them are so close, and we can hardly know Mary without knowing her Son and God. A devotion to Mary that does not lead us to Christ or fails to make us aware of our common dependence on him cannot be a full devotion. The centre of our Christian hope is not so much that our souls will be in heaven, though that will be a great joy in itself. Our God-given hope is that we will be resurrected bodily. The liturgy makes us attentive to these realities, and this attentiveness spills over into our personal prayer life and our behaviour towards others. Our deepest hope is shaped by what has happened to Mary. We know this about Mary, so therefore we know it of ourselves – that there is hope, that there is love, that there is life everlasting. Christian hope does not only point to the kind of future awaiting us but also affects how we live and behave now. Hope is not cosmic fantasy or wishful thinking. It is for real, for real people in a real world. Grace is given to us for struggle, the struggle against all that diminishes our humanity and that of others. Importantly therefore grace is given us to struggle against sin and against death. The more we relate to Mary assumed by God body and soul into heavenly glory, the greater will be our commitment to resisting all the ways that here on earth bodies and souls can be disfigured. The closer we are to her, the closer we are to Her Son, and the closer we are to Him, the closer we are to heaven.
It is our great happiness this week to invite the Bishop of Blackburn to come and Confirm our candidates in the faith of the Church. Confirmation is a sacrament conferred less frequently than Baptism. Indeed it may be seen that Baptism is the most ‘popular’ sacrament in terms of numbers, followed by Holy Communion, and then numbers tend to dip rather towards Confirmation and even further to Marriage and to an all time low for Ordination, picking up again for the Last Rites – thus it is that people so often call on the church at the beginning and end of life on earth and somewhat conveniently forget about it in the middle, only returning occasionally to complain when something changes or when ‘their’ church is closed – may it never be so for us! Confirmation is often a time in our life when we make the full and conscious decision to follow Christ, and indeed to realise that He is with us. As Christ died on the cross, he called out ‘my God, my God, why have you forsaken me’ – and that has been seen in some quarters as an acknowledgement of His presumed abandonment by the Father – but if so, then why is He still talking to him? Even an anguished cry to Heaven is an acceptance of the will and power of God, and today we make not an anguished cry, but a joyful, full hearted one – My God, my God, I know that you will never forsake me’ and with that confession of faith, the Bishop then confers the sacrament of the Holy Spirit in the heart of the disciples who stand before us today. May they never leave the Church, and may the Church flourish because they are with us. Cyprian of Carthage is one of the Church Fathers, and he said this about Confirmation;“It is necessary for him that has been baptised also to be anointed, so that by his having received chrism, that is, the anointing, he can be the anointed of God and have in him the grace of Christ” (Letters 7:2 [A.D. 253]).“Some say in regard to those who were baptised in Samaria that when the apostles Peter and John came there only hands were imposed on them so that they might receive the Holy Spirit, and that they were not re-baptised. But we see, dearest brother, that this situation in no way pertains to the present case. Those in Samaria who had believed had believed in the true faith, and it was by the deacon Philip, whom those same apostles had sent there, that they had been baptised inside—in the Church. . . . Since, then, they had already received a legitimate and ecclesiastical baptism, it was not necessary to baptise them again. Rather, that only which was lacking was done by Peter and John. The prayer having been made over them and hands having been imposed upon them, the Holy Spirit was invoked and was poured out upon them. This is even now the practice among us, so that those who are baptised in the Church then are brought to the prelates of the Church; through our prayer and the imposition of hands, they receive the Holy Spirit and are perfected with the seal of the Lord” (ibid., 73[72]:9).So we see here that the ancient practice is continued in our church today. We also have candidates to present next year, on our centenary, so we give thanks to God that, today, He adds to our number and that His call has bene audible over the noise and clamour of this world. May God bless our candidates and each one of us as we continue in our Christian Pilgrimage of faith, knowing that we are following Christ and that he walks with us.
Much of our life, in one way or another, revolves around food. Some of our happiest memories gather around tables, Sunday dinners, birthday cakes, fish and chips by the sea, the smell of fresh bread, the comfort of a meal lovingly prepared. Even our entertainment reflects this fascination, like many people, I rather enjoy programmes such as The Great British Bake Off. There is something joyful and reassuring about watching flour, butter, sugar, and skill become something beautiful and shared. I still smile when I remember the old song from Oliver! “Food, glorious food!”Yet our relationship with food is often complicated, we live in a society where some struggle with obesity and unhealthy habits, while others struggle simply to afford enough to eat at all. Across our towns and cities, foodbanks quietly and faithfully serve those facing impossible choices between heating and eating. I am old enough to remember the debates around school meals and Jamie Oliver’s campaign to improve them, encouraging us to think more deeply about what truly nourishes human. Many of us remember turkey twizzlers becoming strangely symbolic of a wider conversation about what we eat. And if I am honest, I am no different from anyone else. I enjoy pizza rather more than I should, I have a sweet tooth. Like many people, I know perfectly well the gap between knowing what is good for me and actually choosing it consistently.The Scriptures today invite us beyond physical hunger toward something deeper still, spiritual hunger. The prophet Isaiah cries out: “Come to the water all you who are thirsty… come, buy and eat.” Isaiah asks a striking question, “Why spend your money for what is not bread, your wages for what fails to satisfy?” This question feels especially modern.We live in an age of endless appetite, endless scrolling, endless consumption, advertisements, algorithms, notifications, entertainment available twenty-four hours a day. We are constantly invited to desire more, buy more, watch more, become more. Yet beneath much of this lies a restlessness, perhaps a hunger we struggle to name. A hunger for meaning, peace reassurance. Sometimes we attempt to fill that hunger with possessions, distractions, noise, yet so often we remain unsatisfied.It was this deeper human hunger that Saint Augustine recognised in his own life. After years spent searching for happiness he came to understand that no earthly thing could finally satisfy the longing of the human heart. In the opening pages of his Confessions, he addresses God with words that have carried through the centuries: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” His insight remains remarkably contemporary. We live surrounded by opportunities, possessions, and endless choices, yet many people still experience a quiet restlessness beneath the surface. The heart ultimately longs for communion with God who created it.In today’s Gospel, the crowds follow Jesus into a deserted place. Matthew deliberately emphasises the setting and the problem... they only have “Five loaves and two fish.”. Not enough, and yet in Christ’s hands, scarcity becomes abundance, he sees their need, feeds them and “they all ate and were satisfied.”The feeding of the five thousand is not merely a miracle about bread it is a sign pointing toward the deeper reality of who Christ is. He himself becomes the bread given for the life of the world. In him, God feeds humanity not only physically but spiritually, this miracle quietly anticipating the Eucharist itself. And there is something profoundly moving in the actions Jesus takes, “He took… blessed… broke… and gave.” The very rhythm we hear in the Mass.This is one of the reasons why the Eucharist continues to speak so powerfully to people across centuries. Week by week we come carrying our own hungers, grief, exhaustion, anxiety, hope, gratitude, longing. And here Christ continues to feeds us. There is something deeply healing in simply hearing those familiar Eucharistic words, “Take this, all of you, and eat of it.” In the Eucharist we discover something the world often forgets, we are made for communion, for relationship with God and one another. Saint Paul, in today’s Epistle, speaker powerfully, “Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”The hymn “Feed me, Lamb of God.” captures all this beautifully, feed not just my body, but my soul, my hope, my heart, that part of me that endlessly hungers for meaning and peace. Amidst the noise and haste of modern life, the endless demands upon our attention, the scrolling, striving, worrying, and consuming, Scripture is gently inviting you and me to pause here for a while, just as those crowds once gathered around Christ in the wilderness. Remembering Christ did not send them away empty. He took what seemed insufficient, blessed it, broke it, gave it and they were fed and satisfied, here is the deeper invitation of Mass today. To bring before God not only our strengths, but our hunger. The parts of our lives that feel tired or empty, the anxieties we carry quietly. The deep human desire to know that we are loved and held securely within something greater than ourselves.Just think of the generations of Christians have continued to gather Sunday by Sunday, century after century, often carrying burdens invisible to everyone else, because somewhere deep within the human heart remains a deeper truth, we do not live by bread alone. This week, may Christ, who fed the crowds in the wilderness, feed us again with the bread of life until, by his grace, our restless hearts are finally satisfied in him.
