Reflection – Thursday 7th May 2020One of the great joys of the Easter season in which we are now in, is that we are reminded time and time again, through the Scriptures, that the Resurrection of Jesus does not merely concern an historical individual living some 2000 years ago in a far-flung province of the Roman Empire. Rather, it has an incredible impact on the lives of every human being who has come into this world since that time – and on all others, too.Jesus, by overcoming death and by rising to the Resurrection life, has enabled us also to be partakers of his Resurrection. No longer, since his self-sacrifice on the Cross, does the entire human race face the condemnation which is due to it because of sin and subsequent alienation from God. Rather, Jesus has opened wide the gates of Heaven for us! Yes, physical death remains still the consequence of the sinful nature of humanity, but the ‘second death’ of Hell and eternal separation from God need no longer to be feared – if only we repent of our sins and unite ourselves with Jesus through the ways he has appointed.First, we need to receive baptism. In this, we are mystically united with Jesus in a death like his (baptism is a sharing in the death, burial and rising again of Jesus), as Christ himself insists on. Then, we must endeavour to follow God’s commandments through our way of life. But, acknowledging that we are still prone to sin, we need to seek God’s gracious pardon through continuing repentance (which is why the Sacrament of Confession is so vital). We are given the immense privilege and joy of becoming like Christ through the eating and drinking of Christ’s own Body and Blood, which we receive in order that these gifts transform us into being participants in his life. John’s Gospel, Chapter 6, is a stupendous declaration and reflection of this great truth and is truly part of the very heart of the Gospel in its entirety. Giving ourselves to God in his service, we seek to live our lives in his shadow, knowing that we fail in so many and so serious ways, yet trusting in Christ’s sacrifice for us, until at last we enter into the Kingdom and receive the fulness of the vision of God.It is an amazing fact that we, frail creatures of flesh and blood though we are, are called to become, by adoption, sons and daughters of the living God! The Apostle Paul reminds us time and time again that we are called to be saints, that is, holy ones. Holy, that is, not through our own power and sanctity, but through the almighty power and gift of the Triune God. This is what it means to be a saint – a sharer in the divine nature, which is to be ours through the grace of God! What a tremendous calling! Even the angels themselves, great and powerful though they undoubtedly are, can never receive this gift!However, it is always possible to reject the call of God, to repudiate his love and forgiveness. God forces nobody. That is the great wonder – and terror – of Free Will. We remain entirely free to reject him. We can (and so often do!) reject him and put all our faith and hope in the things of this world, finally turning our backs completely on him – which leads to the ultimate loss of God, which we term ‘Hell’. Yet we cannot complain, for God owes us nothing and, should we choose to reject his love and free pardon, we reap only what we are due. In accepting God’s offer, though, we gain not a reward for good behaviour, but his free gift of eternal life with him. This is an offer which always remains open to all, whilst we are in this world and should provide us with the impetus not only to live the Christian life ourselves but also, especially, through mission seek to make it a reality for all others, too.Christianity is a missionary religion precisely because we want other people to know the joy of life in Christ, to know God’s loving forgiveness and to share in Christ’s Resurrection life both here and in heaven. It would be a really great thing if we would commit ourselves anew, as the Church, to spreading the Gospel story and to inviting others to enter our life and to, ultimately, become – yes saints in the Kingdom of God.Father David
Reflection – 4th May 2020In the Calendar of Saints which we use in our Benefice, today is the Feast of the English Martyrs, in which we commemorate those who died for the Faith over the centuries, particularly in the period following the so-called ‘Reformation’ in the 16th and 17th Centuries, It is, of course, right that we laud their memory and deeds, whilst not forgetting to pray for the souls of those who inflicted terrible suffering and torments on them, often for the sake of political or economic gain.A ‘martyr’ is, of course, properly speaking, a ‘witness’; someone who witnesses to the Truth through their voluntary suffering and death. It is very important to note that martyrdom is an act of witness to the Truth – not to any perceived ‘truth’ but to the Truth. What is this Truth? It is nothing other than Jesus Christ, who stated that he is ‘the Way, the Truth and the Life’ (John 14:6) and who has confirmed his words through his Resurrection.Yet in our own times it is often held that there is no such thing as the truth, but only a multiplicity of perceived truths. There is my truth, there is your truth and any number of other truths. Truth itself thus becomes something which is entirely subjective and it does not matter if these ‘truths’ contradict each other, so long as they are ‘true’ for the one who holds each!This, of course, is nonsense on stilts! The ‘principle of non-contradiction’ is a basic rule of thinking clearly: something cannot be both black and white at the same time. Two plus two does equal four. It does not equal five merely because you would like it to! So, with regard to martyrdom, it is to be seen as such only if it is a witness to the Truth, which is to be found only in Christ. One cannot, properly speaking, be a witness to something that is false, something that is opposed to Christ. Otherwise, one could properly talk of Nazi war criminals, for instance, as being ‘martyrs’ – for, after all, were they not prepared to die for their Nazi ‘faith’? If one holds that all ‘truths’ are valid, then one must hold that the ‘truth’ of the Nazis was valid and true for them!Martyrdom is to be praised and honoured only if it is true martyrdom only if it is martyrdom for Christ. To die for a falsehood is a tragic error. To be sure, we may respect the courage of one who is prepared to die for their belief, even though it is false (provided we respect the courage of all those who die for their beliefs, however evil they may be) but in doing so we are not honouring ‘martyrs’ but actually are honouring the concept and act of courage itself.True martyrdom is the self-offering of oneself, one’s very life, for the sake of Jesus Christ our true God, the one who is Truth itself. By taking up our cross and following him (Matt. 16:24) we become truly ‘witnesses’ for God. Today, therefore, we rightly honour those men and women of the past who have, in laying down their lives for Christ, received the crown of eternal life.Father David
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Fourth Sunday of Easter 3 May 2020 Gospel St John 10.1-10 Jesus replied to the Pharisees ‘Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.’Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them. So again Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.’ HomilyEvery year on the fourth Sunday of Easter we contemplate the Risen Lord as the shepherd of his Church, and ourselves as his sheep. It is one of the main images of St John’s gospel, and so rich in meaning in relation to the rest of scripture that it is divided up for reading in the Eucharist over three years [vv.1-10 in year A, 11- 18 in year B, and the reprise of the theme at vv.25-30 in year C]. This year we are not dwelling on the image of the Good Shepherd, but instead on the door to the sheepfold. Jesus declares, ‘I am the Door!’ (v.9) through which each disciple must pass. He is our spiritual pathway: listening to him, following him, and knowing him (vv. 3-4). The image of a door has strong resonances at the moment while we are housebound due to the pandemic. In normal circumstances our front doors are signs that we do not live in prisons – as well as being to those who are abused at home a sign that in fact they do! They are signs of our freedom: that we can come and go as we please. Our front doors protect our intimacy, but they also open out to freedom, to society, and to relationships and responsibilities beyond; and they enable others to enter our homes and be our guests. But for many at the moment our front doors have come to mark a rather worrying boundary, through which it is almost taboo to pass. If there’s an easing of the lockdown, many they say will be fearful to venture out. Something of the same feeling, in reverse, is being felt by the Church. Although the preservation of life and the common good undoubtedly requires it, Christians inevitably feel sharply their exclusion from their churches, like being locked out of your own home. Our churches are true symbols; but they are also, more simply, our Christian family homes – God’s house where with brothers and sisters we gather around Christ, to offer the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, and to receive afresh from him the Spirit who enables us to pass back out of the church doors again to live and die with Christ, and to find new brothers and sisters in the world of men and women. In through those doors we come to be baptized and enter eternal life; and if we are blessed in this life our faith will carry us back out through them to eternal rest. When Christ applies to himself the symbol of the door of the sheepfold—through which the sheep come and go—he reminds us of the Christian’s job of living daily by following him. We each recognize his voice, and he ours; and he both leads us and feeds us. This truth also implies a judgment: ‘Whoever does not enter the sheepfold through the door, but gets in some other way,’ says Jesus, ‘is a thief and a brigand’ (v.1). This much Jesus says in parable. But because his hearers prove to be a bit dim-witted, after verse 7 he begins to be explicit, explaining his parable by speaking about himself: ‘I am the door of the sheepfold’, he says. False prophets, false messiahs even, come ‘only to steal, to kill and to destroy’ (v.10a). In other words, they are interested only in their own gain and glory. I am not interested in my own glory, only the Father’s glory, and my way of life, a way of death-to-self so that my Father’s love may reveal itself. It is a way of life for all Christ’s disciples, but because it is Christ’s way it leaves particular responsibility on the pastors of the Church. Not because they are more elevated: quite the opposite. Because there is no such thing as leadership in the Church which is not first follower-ship. Jesus alone is the absolute sacrament of the Divine Shepherd (Ez 34.1), which was something well understood by St Ignatius of Antioch (one of the earliest martyrs after the generation of the apostles, and may be what we could call a spiritual grandchild of St John himself). ‘Christ’, he wrote, ‘is the Father’s door, through which Abraham, Isaac and Jacob enter, the prophets, the apostles and the whole church’ (in his letter to the Philadelphians 9.1). Jesus is, we could say, the door between the worlds by whom we make our own safe passage through death into life. If our Gospel passage contains a judgment on a false teachers, it also gives us an encouragement for the majority of disciples. As the sheep are able to pass freely in and out of the sheepfold through the door, they come to know, to recognize and to trust the voice of their shepherd. Conversely, they learn to know to run from the stranger whose voice they do not know, or recognize, or trust. In other words they come to discern the true pastor, and true teaching. Pope Francis talks of the smell of the sheep, emphasizing that that is what the shepherds needs to know; but we can also speak of the sheep’s intuition of shepherd. An ancient Christian text, just a bit earlier than St Ignatius whom we heard from just now, affirms that a true teacher can be distinguished from a false one because he will ‘have the behaviour of the Lord. From their behaviour the false prophet and the true prophet shall be distinguished.’ (Didaché 11.8). The sheep have this discernment about their teachers and what is being taught. This intuition is gained by Christians both by being taught by the Good Shepherd, whose word and behaviour they know from the Gospel and trust; and also by the continuous effort of their discipleship as they follow their master, observing, and listening to, and imitating, what their master is saying and doing – much as Jesus himself claims to see, and hear, and imitate what his Father is saying and doing. It is something developed patiently, over time, and sometimes learned the hard way. But it always comes with that relationship, and with a disciple’s daily task of conversion to the master. Whatever claims are made for various kinds of technical, scientific or artistic knowledge – important as those things are – they don’t actually substitute for the kind of knowledge and discernment that builds faith and expands hope and deepens love, which take time and are built on relationship with Christ and Christ’s body. This is the relationship that we are used to sharing by leaving our homes and gathering together in church as God calls us to be guests in his house: to pray, to listen to his word, and to celebrate the Eucharist. We pray that it will not be long before we can begin to resume our life together and our service in the community. But in the meanwhile we must all (not just the Christians, but everyone who is currently living behind closed doors) get used to another idea: that the Lord comes to our house; comes to knock on the door of our life; comes to meet us in the places and times of our frustrated or frightened daily existence; comes to offer us, or to strengthen, a bond of friendship. He says, ‘Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.’ But he knocks because he wants us to cross the threshold, to share in his time, his life, his eternity. Prayer Almighty God, who through your only-begotten Son Jesus Christ have overcome death and opened to us the gate of everlasting life: grant that, as by your grace going before us you put into our minds good desires, so by your continual help we may bring them to good effect; through Jesus Christ our risen Lord. Amen.
