Homily for Holy Communion, Wednesday 14 October 2026

Galatians 5:18-25

In step with the Spirit.

Today’s first reading reminded us of an important passage of Holy Scripture: the fruits of the Spirit. Let us remind ourselves again of them: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. It is a series of attitudes, or spiritual postures, that we ought to always have in our minds.

There are, however, two ways of viewing them, one far less helpful than the other. For while we all, I think, would like to see more of this fruit in our lives, if we approach them as a “to-do list”, we won’t get very far. Note how St Paul frames it: he gives us “works”, as in, “things to do” – but they are all sin; “works of the flesh”. By contrast, that which is spiritual is “fruit”, as in, things that grow out naturally from a healthy plant. So, instead of focusing on the fruit, let us look instead to the plant that bears them.

To push this analogy further, let us remember the words of our Lord himself, who spoke about how he is the true vine, and we are the branches. (John 15) If the Spirit is dwelling in us, then the fruit will grow. And the Spirit directs us to Christ, and joins us to him, and is our experience of him this side of eternity. Therefore, the closer we get to Christ, the more fruit of the Spirit we will see in our lives.

Consider how St Paul really drives home the difference between Spirit and flesh, between life and death (vv. 24-25):

And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit.

That which contributes to the “works of the flesh” is dead and crucified. That which bears fruit is living, growing out of our new life in Christ, sustained by the Holy Spirit. This is wonderful news for those of us struggling in our pursuit of personal holiness! If we wish to see in ourselves more of the fruit of the Spirit; more joy, peace, patience, and so on; then we need not try and force those things in ourselves. Instead, we are to flee to Christ, to rest in him more deeply and more often, and that fruit will grow as a natural result.

It can be difficult to reconcile this approach to ourselves. We would very much like to have a to-do list to help us in our religion. But that is not what God desires. God desires our hearts: our affections, our wills, our love. Seek him first and foremost, and all the other things will grow out of that relationship. Build that relationship with Christ up over time, and over time the fruit of his Spirit will grow in you too. In the fruit of the Spirit we see the nature of Christ himself, as the One who is the source of perfect love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Rest in him, discover those qualities in him, and they will grow in us as well.

Homily for Tuesday, October 13, 2026

Galatians 5:1-6

Luke 11:37-41

Faith working through love.

There is a phrase that I have found floating around various English-speaking divines throughout history, which describes both the goal and the experience of the Christian faith: “true happiness”, or “true contentment”. It is worth keeping around in our spiritual pocket, to pull out and remind ourselves about regularly.

The Christian’s true contentment comes about in a spiritual manner. It is not when we have lots of things or stuff, or when we are surrounded by people who cheer us up. It is something deeper, or higher – just plain bigger. It is when we consider our standing before God, and how we are loved beyond reckoning because we stand there “in Christ Jesus”.

St Paul is writing to the church in Galatia because there are certain people trying to wreck their true contentment. They are coming in and saying that if you want to be right before God, you must get circumcised, just like Abraham did. Since St Paul is full of love for the Galatians, he writes to them and explains that Abraham was content in his faith, and God loved Abraham for his faith. The circumcision came afterwards (and anyway, it was a sign pointing to Christ, but that is a story for another time).

He writes triumphantly that circumcision – whether you have or not – counts for nothing. In Christ Jesus, only faith working through love counts. And this is our true contentment. Do you place your faith in Christ Jesus to make you right? Do you express that faith through your love? Then that is what counts; that is the source of your true contentment.

In our Gospel reading, we heard Jesus speak along much the same lines, but in a different context. He didn’t go through the big song and dance of the pre-dinner ceremonial washing. In response to his critics, he turns the tables on them. They “clean the outside of the cup” (they do the big ritual) but “inside” they are full of greed and wickedness (their hearts are not right before God). Not only are they condemned as hypocrites, they have no true contentment, for God sees into the heart. Their clean hands count for nothing.

And so let us consider our own true contentment – that we are in Christ Jesus by faith. And let us prove this to ourselves by working that faith through love. Perhaps there is a gap in your love towards God – look to doing something about it, not through fear, but to prove your faith. Whatever it is, you will not experience a loss, but rather a gain, since the joy of working your faith through your love can only add to that sense of “a Christian’s true happiness”.

Sermon for Sunday, October 11, 2026

Matthew 22:1-14

The wedding feast is ready.

Today’s Gospel may have seemed a bit difficult to try and unpick. I must admit, I found so as well. “The Parable of the Wedding Feast”, as it has been titled by the Church, has some wonderful moments and yet, dotted throughout, are lines here and there that are “classic Jesus”. That is to say, he draws us in close with some achingly beautiful imagery, and then leads us into a barbed-wire fence that we are forced to try and step our way through. So let us do that today.

First of all, where are we in Jesus’ career? He is in the temple in Jerusalem. He has done most of the big things out in the regions, he has ridden into the holy city on his donkey, and he has gone into the temple, flipping the tables and driving out the merchants in order to make one final proclamation of the kingdom of heaven before his arrest and crucifixion.

He begins by giving three parables: the parable of the two sons; the parable of the tenants; and now the parable of the wedding feast. We have heard each of them in order over the past three weeks, and they all have one main theme: God is calling. Will you answer?

This, the final of the three, begins with a king, who has prepared a wedding feast for his son. He has sent his servants to call those who were invited, but they would not come. Again, the king sends out more servants, and now those who were invited make excuses why they cannot come, and some treat the servants shamefully, even killing them.

Jesus is walking into the Jewish temple and telling the Jews to their face: this is you. You are God’s chosen people; and your entire history in one big tragedy of God calling and you denying.

The parable continues: the king was angry, and he sent his troops and destroyed those murderers and burned their city. Jesus’ audience knows exactly what is going on. If you read the Bible’s accounts of the invasion of the Assyrians and Babylonians, it is explicit in explaining that those armies were God’s judgement against his rebellious people.

Then the king said to his servants, ‘The wedding feast is ready, but those invited were not worthy. Go therefore to the main roads and invite to the wedding feast as many as you find’. This is our salvation. This is what St Paul spoke of in his letter to the Romans, when he said that we are like wild branches that have been grafted into the tree, while the rebellious branches have been broken off. God has set the wedding feast, and just because those who were invited refused to come, it doesn’t mean the party is off. He’ll just find others who are actually ready for a good time, and get them in.

But when the king came in to look at the guests, he saw there a man who had no wedding garment. And he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding garment?’ And he was speechless. Then the king said to the attendants, ‘Bind him hand and foot and cast him out into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’

This is what I meant by “classic Jesus”. We have this wonderful story about God’s free love, throwing open the doors to the party to whoever will come. But Jesus never lets us sit comfortably. He wants us to understand the gravity of this invitation.

What is this about a wedding garment? And being thrown out into the outer darkness? It helps us to think about what we might wear to a wedding. Following a dress code shows that we understand the situation we are in. If we were invited to a wedding, we would wear our best clothes. We would understand how important a wedding is, and dress accordingly. If you wore boardies and a singlet to a wedding and everyone else was wearing suits and cocktail dresses, what would that say to the host? To the father of the groom?

There is a party. And everyone is invited. But how is this invitation offered? It is through Jesus, bleeding and dying on the cross for us and for our salvation. The king is inviting us purely out of his own goodness. He has this wonderful party, and he says to you, come – what have you done to earn the invitation? Nothing. It is the son’s party. He has come to this earth as one of us, bled and died for us, and now calls us to repent and believe in him. The wedding garment of which Christ speaks is a humble and contrite heart. “Nothing in my hands I bring, simply to the cross I cling.” This is the wedding garment – a complete surrender of our own self-righteousness, and a complete acceptance of Christ’s imputed righteousness. The apostle speaks of “putting on Christ”; we come to the wedding not in the dirty rags of our own self-righteousness, but in the beautiful robes of Christ’s perfect righteousness. It is by his grace that he calls us his own, it is by his grace that he calls us to the feast, it his by his grace that he dresses us in fine clothes and sets us in the seat of honour and it is by his grace that he lays the feast of heaven before us.

Let us hear the cry of Christ the evangelist: come to him, all who labour and are heavy laden, and he will give us rest. Let us lay aside the burdens of our own self-righteousness, and take in exchange his perfect righteousness before God. It is an all-or-nothing invitation: which will you choose? The feast of his grace, or the famine of your own deeds? The feast of heaven is set before you. And soon we shall celebrate the sacrament of that feast – the holy communion – which is our chance to renew our vows to the Lord Jesus as Lord of our hearts. I have tried here to awake your hearts by God’s grace. My own words are woefully insufficient for the task. I know of no better call than the ancient words of our prayer book, with which I will finish. It remains then for the Holy Spirit to awaken you to the greatness of Christ’s love for you, and the wonderful, incredible nature of the invitation he offers.

Dearly beloved brethren, I intend, by God's grace, to celebrate the Lord's Supper: unto which, in God's behalf, I bid you all that are here present; and beseech you, for the Lord Jesus Christ's sake, that ye will not refuse to come thereto, being so lovingly called and bidden by God himself.

Ye know how grievous and unkind a thing it is, when a man hath prepared a rich feast, decked his table with all kind of provision, so that there lacketh nothing but the guests to sit down; and yet they who are called (without any cause) most unthankfully refuse to come. Which of you in such a case would not be moved? Who would not think a great injury and wrong done unto him? Wherefore, most dearly beloved in Christ, take ye good heed, lest ye, withdrawing yourselves from this holy Supper, provoke God's indignation against you.

It is an easy matter for a man to say, I will not communicate, because I am otherwise hindered with worldly business. But such excuses are not so easily accepted and allowed before God.

If any man say, I am a grievous sinner, and therefore am afraid to come: wherefore then do ye not repent and amend? When God calleth you, are ye not ashamed to say ye will not come? When ye should return to God, will ye excuse yourselves, and say ye are not ready?

Consider earnestly with yourselves how little such feigned excuses will avail before God. They that refused the feast in the Gospel, because they had bought a farm, or would try their yokes of oxen, or because they were married, were not so excused, but counted unworthy of the heavenly feast.

I, for my part, shall be ready; and, according to mine Office, I bid you in the Name of God, I call you in Christ's behalf, I exhort you, as ye love your own salvation, that ye will be partakers of this holy Communion.

And as the Son of God did vouchsafe to yield up his soul by death upon the Cross for your salvation; so it is your duty to receive the Communion, in remembrance of the sacrifice of his death, as he himself hath commanded: which if ye shall neglect to do, consider with yourselves how great injury ye do unto God, and how sore punishment hangeth over your heads for the same; when ye wilfully abstain from the Lord's Table, and separate from your brethren, who come to feed on the banquet of that most heavenly food.

These things if ye earnestly consider, ye will by God's grace return to a better mind: for the obtaining whereof we shall not cease to make our humble petitions unto Almighty God our heavenly Father.

Homily for Solemn Evensong, Thursday 8 October 2026

Matthew 12:9-21

A bruised reed he will not break.

Tonight we have heard some words from the prophet Isaiah (which in the King James Version is rendered as “Esaias”) that we should all take and inscribe on our memories in big, bold letters:

A bruised reed shall he not break, and smoking flax shall he not quench.

For the prophet, it was a vision of the coming Messiah. God was to send someone who would be mighty, destroying all his enemies, and building a great kingdom; and yet this same someone would be, in a word, gentle.

To St Matthew, and to us his readers, all on this side of Calvary, we see that the prophet was speaking of Jesus of Nazareth. This man, who was powerful enough to take on all the powers of hell and banish them with nothing more than a word, and was strong enough to bear the weight of the sins of the world and come out the other side risen and glorified, is also gentle.

There are two parts to the gentleness of Jesus we hear of in this prophecy. First is the great comfort he gives: a bruised reed shall he not break.

Humans are fragile creatures, and we all require “handling with care”. I was at the hospital this morning, and there was a painted rock on the pathway to the palliative care ward with the words “compassion begins by recognising we all struggle”. A wise rock, I thought. We all have problems to deal with. We are all like reeds, slim and fragile blades of grass growing by the river, and we are bruised: bent and damaged in some way. Enter Jesus: a bruised reed he will not break.

When you turn to God in the name of Jesus, there is such warm comfort and relief that proves this Scripture to be true. He never turns us away; indeed, he reaches out and holds us gently and securely. Some of us may want to bluster and harden our way over and against this description as “bruised reeds”, but the truth is, every heart knows what it means to be bruised, and we all benefit from the gentle care of our Lord. I would therefore encourage you to take more time in your life to turn to him in prayer, to set aside time so that you may know more of the truth of what it means that “a bruised reed shall he not break”.

There is another side to Jesus’ gentleness, which is the second half: “smoking flax shall he not quench”. To get an idea of what the prophet meant, think about those old cartoons, where you would have a big wooden barrel filled with gunpowder, and a line of fuse sticking out of it. It would look like a bit of old rope. That is flax. It is nothing more than a smouldering wick; just a low, slow burn that never bursts into a proper flame.

So often we hear about the “fire” of the Holy Spirit. And yet how often do we miss out on that fire, and only feel like a bit of smoking flax? This is the other side of Jesus’ gentleness: encouragement. In fact, I would say it is more than encouragement; he really truly imparts the divine fire of God the Holy Spirit into our hearts, fanning the smoking flax into a blazing heart filled with the love of God.

In both respects – the bruised reed and smoking flax – we must recognise the truth of the poverty of our own nature. If we do not recognise that we are bruised reeds and smoking flax, then we will not comprehend the gentleness of Jesus. But if we come before God with the worship he desires, then we will experience the awesome power of Jesus’ gentleness. Psalm 51 teaches us true worship. Happily, our order for Evening Prayer is filled with references to this Psalm, in order to prepare our hearts for the gentleness of Jesus. Psalm 51 is a prayer of humble confession to God, a confession alongside a plea for divine mercy:

1 Have mercy upon me, O God, after thy great goodness : according to the multitude of thy mercies do away mine offences.

2 Wash me throughly from my wickedness : and cleanse me from my sin.

3 For I acknowledge my faults : and my sin is ever before me.

These are the opening verses. Further down we read about what God desires:

15 Thou shalt open my lips, O Lord : and my mouth shall shew thy praise.

16 For thou desirest no sacrifice, else would I give it thee : but thou delightest not in burnt-offerings.

17 The sacrifice of God is a troubled spirit : a broken and contrite heart, O God, shalt thou not despise.

God does not desire we bring him “things” and “stuff” (“For thou desirest no sacrifice, else would I give it thee”), but rather “a broken and contrite heart”. This is the God of David, who wrote that Psalm, it is the God of Isaiah, who prophesied of the coming Messiah, and it is the same God revealed to be Jesus of Nazareth, in whom the Psalm and the prophecy converge.

So come to the Lord Jesus as a bruised reed and smoking flax. Come to the Lord Jesus in humble contrition. Don’t bring anything with you; he is God, he’s not interested in anything less than your heart. For you are his greatest creation, and your heart is his greatest desire. He cares greatly for you, will treat you with all gentleness, and he will fill you with the celestial fire of the Spirit of Almighty God.

Homily for Wednesday, 7 October 2026

Luke 11:1-4

Lord, teach us to pray.

Prayer is a funny thing. It is on the one hand very easy to define: talking with and listening to God. On the other hand it is very difficult to pin down precisely what prayer is, and how. We must remember to thank St Luke for including this question from the disciples in his Gospel: “Lord, teach us to pray”.

In response, Jesus teaches them what we now call the Lord’s Prayer. If you thought it was a bit shorter than the version in our prayer book, that is because we use the version which is recorded in St Matthew’s Gospel, chapter 6. What is most interesting is that there, the Lord’s Prayer is part of our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount. Here in St Luke, Jesus has been travelling around doing various things, and has gone to a certain place to pray. The disciples must have heard him praying and been impressed, because the way Christ prays is what spurs them to ask this question. And so our Lord has taught this prayer at least twice on two different occasions – he thinks it is pretty good, as far as prayers go!

I want to suggest two ways we can use the Lord’s Prayer to upgrade our own prayer lives. One is to use it as a template. Take each line, and think of it as a header, or category. Then pray your own prayers along that theme. For example, start with the first word: “Father”. How wonderful that we can call God our Father! He is a good and loving Father, who wants the best for us, and is intimately involved with our upbringing. You could spend an hour just on that first word alone!

The other way to use it is if we consider the context. Specifically, the question that led up to it: “Lord, teach us to pray”. God will teach us how and what to pray for, if we ask him. St Paul writes about this in his letter to the Romans, when he says:

8:26 Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. 27 And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

The Holy Spirit is praying on our behalf already. If we do not have the words to pray, which happens more often than we would like, then we can rest assured that the Holy Spirit is there for us. He is “interceding” for us; that is, he is standing between us and all that is not-God that would seek to do us harm.

And so the Lord’s Prayer is God’s gift to us. It gives us a wonderful outline to meditate on in prayer; it gives us specific words to say to God; and it teaches us that God will teach us how to pray and what to pray for. And so let us be people of confident prayer; maybe not always praying confidently, but rather praying with confidence, that God is always pleased to hear our prayers, and in our prayers, drawing us closer to him.

Homily for Tuesday, 6/10/26

Luke 10:38-42

One thing is necessary.

The story of Martha and Mary is, I am sure, a well-known one to many Christians. Our Lord has come to their house, and Martha (which we assume to be the responsible one) welcomes him in. But in her responsibility, Martha is distracted with much serving – she is busy washing dishes and running plates in and out of the kitchen. Her sister Mary, meanwhile, is taking a load off, and sitting at Jesus’ feet, listening to his teaching. “Tell her to get to work and help me!” Martha asks him, to which he responds with the words, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary.”

It is a helpful reminder that for us as Christians, we can be anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. There are so many things to be anxious and troubled about! Whether we are more focused on our home life, like Martha, or on the problems of society, there is always going to be cause for anxiety and troubled thoughts. But one thing is necessary.

At the end of the day, what are we looking for? Are we looking for a great job, well done, for which we can pat ourselves on the back? Or are we looking for Christ, and to sit at his feet, and to hear what he has to say to us?

I think there is a call to arms to join the quest for humility in this account. We know that our Lord liked to spend time with good company, always going into people’s homes to share a meal and hang out. And he wants to come into the home of our soul, into our hearts, and spend time with us, too. But if we are always busy, trying to “cook up a storm” as it were, trying to put on a good show for this most special of special guests, we can find ourselves looking into the mirror, and not into the face of God.

Jesus does not want to come over so that he can be given a great meal. He wants to come over because he loves us so much that he just wants to hang out. Spending all our time sweeping the floor and running plates misses the point of his visit.

Renovating our soul can lead us into the same problem. Spending so much time trying to make our hearts ready for him misses the point – he is the one who makes our hearts ready. He is the Host, and he is the Meal. Our task is to open the door of a humble and contrite heart, ready to sit at his feet and listen. He will do the rest.

If you are currently feeling like Jesus doesn’t want to come over and visit, that you have to do something to get yourself ready, then consider – are you being a bit like Martha? Are you anxious and troubled about many things? Then sit at the feet of Jesus and listen. He is your Lord and your Saviour, he will make all things well. Put down the tools, stop putting so much work on yourself, and let him do what he wants to do in you. For he wants to; indeed, it his delight to be with you.

Sermon for Sunday, October 4, 2026

Philippians 3

The surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.

There once was a certain man who had it all. He was at the top of his field and respected by all his peers. He had the full support of his superiors, and was given license to travel and do his work wherever and whenever he saw fit. Everyone who was important knew who he was, and he was everywhere the important things were happening.

One day he had a terrible road accident. He fell off his horse and even went blind because of it for a little while. People say that he was never the same afterwards. Soon after, he chucked it all in. He gave up his old job. He started bagging out his old bosses. He was selling arts and crafts in markets just to make ends meet. He was attacked by mobs, chucked out of towns, thrown overboard sinking ships, and eventually locked up in prison.

But the strange thing was that when he was in prison, he found he had never been happier.

Why is this letter – St Paul’s letter to the Philippians – so filled with rejoicing?

The key part of today’s passage, the third chapter, is found in verse 8:

I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.

It is a passage that challenges all our assumptions about “the good life”. St Paul is saying to his church family back in Philippi, and to us on the other side of the world 2,000 years later, “I’ve seen it all. And if you want to know Jesus, follow in his footsteps”.

There is a great tendency amongst us humans to think that a blessing from God is something material. Say I had a scale up here on a whiteboard. On one end is a big bucket of money. On the other end is a broken leg. If I asked you to think of “blessing”, which end would you point to? I don’t know if anyone would point to the broken leg!

Yet St Paul is saying here that for all the good he had – a member of God’s covenant community from birth, of a godly family, doing all the right things, and indeed zealous in wanting to do the right things, too – it was all loss for the sake of knowing Christ. There was no value in it. It was worthless; it was garbage. He even warns the Philippians: watch out for those people who place value in material things. He doesn’t hold back:

Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things.

The true blessing is knowing Christ Jesus. Being blessed is being able to sing the old hymn:

And He walks with me, and He talks with me,
And He tells me I am His own,
And the joy we share as we tarry there,
None other has ever known.

St Paul is teaching us how God gives us this blessing: it is by leading us on the same path Jesus walked.

Hopefully you remember a little of last weeks’ reading from Philippians, when the apostle wrote about Christ in these words:

6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

The path of Jesus is one where he had it all, and chucked it all away so that he could walk the path of suffering in this life. In doing so, Christ defeated the power of suffering, and has opened the gate to everlasting life to all who place their faith in him.

It is not a very sexy appeal to the faith: Christianity is to follow Jesus through suffering into glory. Yet that is what we are doing. And the apostle recognises that in his own life, and he is rejoicing! And he is encouraging his brothers in the church to rejoice, too! Indeed, so flush is he with this heavenly joy that he says that to tell them to rejoice “is no trouble to me”.

This can be hard for us to wrap our heads around. But there are a few reflections I want to share with you that might help.

First, consider the broad strokes of the general pattern that St Paul is pointing to, and see if it lines up with your lived experience: you were in a good place materially, but then you had to sacrifice it for the good of something else. Maybe you have or had a loved one that required all of your attention; you had to “empty yourself” for the sake of sacrificial love, just like Jesus did for you. Maybe there was a moment or a season where you were surrounded with strong anti-Christian sentiment and you had to sacrifice your good social standing for the sake of your Lord? You had something – and you gave it up for the sake of someone else, either a fellow human, or Jesus himself.

I say these things because it can be difficult to know if our suffering is the same as Christ's. I would hate to think that I am hard done by because of my own silly fault, and not because I am following my Lord. But I have come to think that if I do have that worry, it is more likely than not that I am actually following my Lord and sharing in his sufferings. And this is a great comfort and security to me, and, I pray, for you. If we think we have been silly, have we actually been silly? Or is it only in the eyes of the world that we have been silly, when in fact we have been faithful, and God is with us?

This is the first reflection: that while our sufferings might not line up perfectly with those of Christ’s, they follow the same general themes and patterns, and so we can be assured we are sharing in those of his. Secondly, there is the promise that they lead to something far better, and this is where St Paul takes us at the end of this chapter.

Talking about sharing in the suffering of Christ so that he may gain the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus, St Paul writes:

For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him … that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

Suffering is not the end result of our faith in Christ. It is merely the gate through which we pass; the gate to something far greater than all the wealth of this world. When we speak of the resurrection of the dead, we speak of something so vastly incredible and gloriously mysterious we cannot even properly conceive it. The resurrection – a literal, bodily resurrection to a glorious and perfect body that will never fade and is free from all sin, a body that does not need faith to see God because it can see him perfectly – is the great promise of God to us and our great hope in him. This is the goal to which St Paul is directing all his efforts:

But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

It may not be very trendy in our modern, enlightened age. But the resurrection is the doctrine to which we must hold, especially in times of suffering. Christ’s resurrection from the dead shows us that our sufferings in this world prove that we are following him. And if we are following him, the resurrection is the place he is leading us.

And so as we continue our pilgrim journey through this life, with its attendant suffering and glimmering trinkets, let us continually recall the words of the suffering apostle: rejoice in the Lord! Let us continually recall “the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him”, to walk with him and to talk with him and to hear him call me his own. Let us “press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus”, the resurrection to eternal life, to eternal bliss with God and his saints in the glorified bodies he has promised to us. In all things, remember where God is leading you, and the priceless treasure of his Son he has given to you. It is no trouble to me and is safe for you for me to continually say: rejoice in the Lord!

Homily for Solemn Evensong 1/10/26

Psalms 75; 76

1 Maccabees 4:37-61

Matthew 10:1-15

The Great Evangelical Adventure

I had been reminded of an adventure series recently, and I wonder if you remember it from your own childhood – Deltora Quest. It was a big deal for Australian children of the 90s and 00s, and apparently it even broke overseas a little bit. Deltora Quest was the classic dark fantasy adventure, set in a world completely overcome by evil, and the only hope for restoration being a young child with absolutely no discernible skills suitable for the task.

I bring this up because it is difficult to read the Bible and not see the seed of all adventure stories buried within its pages. And so perhaps we could contrast the story of Judas Maccabeus, the great Jewish saviour against the evil Greek Seleucids, to that of the apostles, and their task set by their Master and ours, the Lord Jesus.

The Maccabean revolt sits in a funny place thematically. It blends a couple of different ideas about honour and duty, which is apposite for the Apocrypha – books that are not inspired by the Holy Spirit, and yet helpful for our Christian formation. On the one hand, you have quite obviously pagan ideals of honour, in that there is a great and commendable zeal by the protagonists for the freedom of their people. The Maccabees are the family who led the Jewish uprising against their Greek oppressors. Mixed into this is the ancient Jewish religion, which we inherit as Christians, and you can see it in their great devotion to Almighty God, and their willingness to die as martyrs rather than apostatise and live. It is a jolly good adventure, made even better by being real historical fact, and it is perhaps a great pity that Christopher Nolan chose the Odyssey rather than the Maccabean revolt to turn into a movie.

Contrast this with what I am calling “The Great Evangelical Adventure” of the apostles, which we heard in our second lesson.

You have the somewhat mystical great leader, Jesus, calling twelve men to himself. It is almost frustrating when this happens in the fictional adventures – if there is a mighty power of good behind all things, why does he not just step in and take over? But if he did, where would be the adventure? It would not be a very good story.

Fortunately for us, the Lord Jesus does not sit back and let us try and struggle through on our own. To be a Christian is to know Christ, and to be with him constantly in prayer and deed. He is living, and he is living in us in his Spirit. So while there is a sense that he is “up there”, sending us “over there”, there is also the sense that he is pointing to the destination, and then taking us by the hand and leading us.

He then gives the adventurers a gift, or a tool, to take with them on their quest: “authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every disease and every affliction”. It feels maybe a little frustrating, like in The Lord Of The Rings, when Frodo is given a star in a bottle by the Elf Queen. Considering the number of Orcs between him and his goal, maybe a machine gun might have been more helpful? But death is not Frodo’s quest; and so he is given light. Our quest too is not a quest of death to the enemy, but life to the world. And so our tools are not great skills at public speaking, or physical attractiveness, or anything else that might appeal to the flesh. Christ gives us the power of the Holy Spirit to overcome sin and lies, and to repent and be healed. Frustrating at first as it may be, it is much better overall and in the long-term, and we can be thankful that our Lord is much wiser than us in these matters.

From here we get a list of specific names. And while lists of names in the Bible might appear dreary, let us take two notes from this: first, it defines this moment as historical fact. These are real men, given real authority, sent to do real things. Our Great Evangelical Adventure is not made “up in the mind”; it is out here in the real world, with real people, with real challenges that we overcome with real victories.

We also get a sense of tension in the last name listed: “Judas, who betrayed him”. No adventure story would be worth telling without a sense of tension. But, like I say to my four year old son when we watch a movie and he gets worried about the outcome, “the good guys always win”. If we were to flick to the end of the book, we would discover what the outcome of Judas’ betrayal would be: the salvation of the world when Jesus hung on the cross, and his victory over the grave when he rose from the dead. Let us also remember this truism in our own moments of tension: the good guys always win. Or, in the words of St Paul,  “we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28)

Having been called, gifted and named, they are sent out with a mission, and look at the words used: proclaim, heal, raise, cleanse, and cast out. Proclaim the gospel, heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, and cast out demons. There is no overthrow of unjust systems; there is no revolt against Seleucids, or Romans, or anything like that; the only thing that even comes close is the casting out of demons. This is all about individual people and their relationship with God. Let us take this to heart: for how much brain-space do we allow to be taken up with the problems of the world over which we have no control? And we have no control over them because we have not been given the authority. But look at what we have been given authority over: the salvation of human souls from sin, death, and the powers of the demonic.

I have referenced Tolkien; perhaps it is worth pointing out something that both he and his fellow story-writer C. S. Lewis did often in their books. During moments of peace and joy, the scenes were always happily domestic. There was a roaring fireplace, a cup of hot cocoa, and hot, plain, food like roast beef, fresh bread and butter, and pudding. Both men were Christians, and I believe it was their reading of the Bible that led to this being their view of heaven on earth. Let us conform our view to the same: we are not looking for bright lights and the big city, worldly fame, or success in the eyes of men; we are looking for the blessed domestic. The Lord Jesus did the same: he was always in people’s homes in small villages, sharing meals, and having such a good time while doing so he was accused of being a glutton and a drunkard.

I have spoken long enough now on what I believe is “The Great Evangelical Adventure”. We heard tonight the original template, the sending of the twelve by our Lord. And we have committed to a life of following Jesus, which means this is the template for our lives, too. We have the great leader and source of all good, not just working behind the scenes, but alongside us. We have the gifts and tools necessary for success on our adventure. It is an adventure that is “real life”; indeed, our life is made real because it is this type of adventure. We know that the good guys always win, and in moments of tension and crisis we remember the blessed words that “God works for the good of those who love him”. And our task is not nearly as impossible as we would think, and while not as glamorous as some would like, far more fulfilling: it is the blessing and restoration of a happy life lived with family and friends in the bonds of divine peace and love.

So I task you, beloved, with the task our Lord has given us all: go with Christ, proclaiming, healing, raising, cleansing, and casting out. Seek the kingdom of God in all things. And live peaceably with all, in the love of Christ that binds us all together in all joy and peace in believing.

Homily for Wednesday, 30/9/26

Luke 9:57-62

Don’t Look Back!

One of the great tropes in ancient story-telling is the warning “don’t look back!” It appears everywhere: in the Bible, Lot and his family were warned not to look back when they were escaping the destruction of Sodom. In ancient Greece, Orpheus was warned not to look back when he was leading his wife Eurydice out of the underworld. I have even heard of a Korean folk tale where the moral of the story is “don’t look back!”

In today’s Gospel, our Lord is telling people that, if they want to follow him, they need to remember: “don’t look back!” Let us get into the moment. We are at the hinge moment of Jesus’ earthly ministry. He has done all his big works of healing and feeding, gained a big following, and has now told his disciples that, as the Christ, he must go to Jerusalem to suffer, die and rise again. It is “crunch time”; the main purpose of his incarnation, the cross, is at hand. We read that he has “set his face to go to Jerusalem”, so much does this loom in his mind and fix itself in his will and purpose.

And so, marching to Jerusalem to die, he is gathering more and more people to his company. St Luke has recorded three such interactions, and I believe he has done so because they capture in broad strokes the main themes of his responses. One declares, with commendable courage, “I will follow you wherever you go”, to which our Lord replies about the fact that while wild animals have homes, the Messiah has no home here.

Can we remember a time when we weren’t so serious about following Jesus? A time “before”? Were our thoughts not on how to make as comfy a home as possible? And yet as we continue to follow Jesus, we find that this is not our home; our home is elsewhere. We have “nowhere to lay our head”, as it were. The more time we spend following Jesus, and the closer we get to him, the less we find we are able to worry about this world and its comforts. Think also of the warning in his words: if you find yourself comfortable in this world, are you really following the Son of Man? He has no place to lay his head; if you have, are you still with him? Don’t look back to that comfy bed – set your face to Jesus.

To another, Jesus commands “follow me”. This man wants to go home to bury his father, and our Lord’s response is to “let the dead bury their own”. If the first statement was about the material comforts of this world, this one is about the friendly relationships with the culture around us. There are two cultures competing for dominance: the culture of death, as per Jesus’ words, and the Kingdom of God, which is the culture of life. When Jesus speaks those words to us, when he says “follow me”, don’t look back at the culture you have left behind. What does Jesus tell us to do instead? “As for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God”. Have no time with the culture of death, the culture of the kingdom of this world. Proclaim the kingdom of God, the culture of life. Leave the dead to bury their dead; don’t look back.

Twice now Jesus has spoken in the negative; he has said what not to do. Don’t look back. Now he confirms the movement forwards we are to have. The third person wants to go home and say goodbye to everyone. Jesus said to him, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” Don’t look back – because we have put our hand to the plow. The field is before us; the oxen are strapped up and ready to work; we have stepped up onto the plow and grabbed the handle; and now you would look back? No – press on, press forward, keep going. You have gotten this far; don’t turn back now!

This may all seem like nothing less than an enormous discomfort. Why bother going through this at all? It is because of the glorious wonder and excitement that is the kingdom of God. The pleasures of this world – material comforts, the applause of the culture, slowing down and fading into obscurity – are nothing compared to communion with and enjoyment of the eternal and almighty God. On the face of it, following Jesus may seem tough. But it is only because we have no understanding of the incredible joy of following him. Follow him long enough and you will see that having a comfy bed or high cultural standing is not a sacrifice to make, but rather something that is entirely worthless, and you will gladly exchange it for a closer walk with Jesus!

Ultimately, all that stuff is, as the apostle says elsewhere, “garbage”. Don’t look back at it. It’s not worth your time. Look instead to Jesus, and his infinite worth, and his infinite love and joy.

Homily for Tuesday 29/9/26 - St Michael and All Angels

Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14

Psalm 138

Revelation 12:7-12a

John 1:45-51

In the premier work of Anglican theology – the Chronicles of Narnia – there is a scene where our adventurers land on an island far out in the uncharted ocean. They meet a certain figure who introduces themselves as a retired star. “In our world, stars are a huge ball of flaming gas”, remarks one of the children. “Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is but only what it is made of” comes the reply.

Chesterton, that other pillar of English Christian enchantment, commented once that “fairy tales say that apples were golden only to refresh the forgotten moment when we found out they were green. They make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run with water.”

There is a sense that we may have lost some of the enchantment of the human experience in our current age. We look at a thing and decide we know enough and then stop thinking about it. Thomas Goodwin, a Puritan writer, wrote a little pamphlet on our thoughts and how to sanctify them. He makes the point that the holy thinker will look at the world around himself and always be drawn to thoughts of God, even at things and situations that might otherwise seem banal.

When we turn our minds to the radically supernatural – of St Michael and the angels of heaven – we may find it easy to “switch off”. Christianity is the most materialist religion, or so someone once said. We say that the invisible God who is spirit entered into his material creation so as to resurrect it. Our Lord gives us stories of the world behind the world using parables involving dirt, plants, animals and mountains. And yet all this is only to help us see the world behind the world. We humans are incarnate spirits, who can only grasp at the true and full reality in bits and pieces because of our sin that blinds us.

And so on this day in which we praise God in St Michael and all his angels, let us endeavour to live re-enchanted lives. Let us look to the Son of Man as Daniel saw him, rising above all things and receiving power and dominion and glory because of his death, passion and resurrection. Let us look to the armies of angels, whom God has sent forth to conquer the demonic forces of evil in his name. Let us look at the world around us with resurrected, sanctified, holy eyes, and look at how all things sing of the glory of the God who made them. For the word we use for “angel” comes from the ancient word for “messenger” – so let us look keenly for the messages God is sending us, the most wonderful message of all being that he became like one of us, so that he may re-enchant us, and see him clearly for who he is.

Homily for Sunday 27/9/26

Exodus 17:1-17

Philippians 2:1-13

It has been a big week for milestones – it started with a wedding on Monday, a birthday on Thursday, and a funeral on Friday. All through it I have heard conversations about “what is important in life”, and the answer has always been “people”. I think we can all agree that people are more important than work, and stuff; but it was also noticeable that people are more important also than places and experiences. Weddings – people coming together. Birthdays – people around us. Funerals – people we miss. Every time people spoke about other people. Everyone, Christian or not, puts people as the most important thing in life.

As we continue our readings through Exodus (the book of grumbling) and Philippians (the book of joy), we should keep our spiritual ears and eyes open for lessons on our relationships with other people. For, as we recall every time we worship, the two great commandments of our Lord are to love upwards, and love across: love God, and love one another.

Both books describe a time of contextual trials – Exodus is about people wandering through the wilderness, and Philippians was written while St Paul was locked up in a dingy ancient Roman prison. Exodus is almost more believable, since it is filled with “grumbling” and, according to today’s reading, “testing” and “quarrelling”. These sound like natural responses to a trial. But they are not good for relationships with other people.

St Paul, meanwhile, certainly has plenty of cause to grumble, test and quarrel with God. And yet he does not; in fact, this letter is positively dripping with joy. In the depth of a prison cell, his eyes see a glorious picture of a beautiful human existence. Look at the words he uses at the start of this chapter: encouragement, comfort, love, affection, sympathy, and joy.

So while the tribes in the Exodus were grumbling about being thirsty, St Paul was waxing poetic about the best humanity has to offer. What was the difference? And where can we set our hearts, so that we may see what the apostle sees?

St Paul always gives a core doctrinal reason to base his specific instructions for living. He always says “here is what you should do in a certain situation, because God in the big picture is like this”. And so in the midst of trials and dangers, he says the Church should be seeking all those wonderful things: encouragement, comfort, love, affection, sympathy, and joy, because there is something about God’s character that drives us towards it. It is like when you are walking down the main drag and you smell a delicious bakery – follow your nose and you will discover the source.

1 So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, 2 complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. 3 Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. 4 Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.

The reason why St Paul can sit in this picture of heaven on earth while physically sitting in the opposite is because of his humility – and he is being humble, because Christ was humble. He “followed his nose” to the source:

5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.

Here is where his mind went. He thought to himself “who am I to grumble, test and quarrel? My Lord did none of those things. While I, Paul, went from being a tent-making missionary to a Roman prison, Christ Jesus went from heaven to the grave!”

One way of looking at this is to think “Jesus had it worse than me, so what do I have to complain about?” But I want to push it even further: it is not that we need to just “put up with it”, but rather we rejoice in it, because we are following Jesus’ footsteps. Do you want to be like Jesus? Jesus came all the way from heaven to the grave – our trials are a small taste of what he went through, yes. But what grace that we may share a little of his journey! What joy that God would conform us after the pattern of his Son! We read elsewhere that, after the first Pentecost, when the disciples were locked up for preaching about the Lord Jesus, they rejoiced for being counted worthy to suffer for his sake. It is the scandal of the cross, the foolishness of our preaching, that there is glory when we suffer for doing the right thing according to God’s Law and the cause of Christ.

And this scandal (scandalous according to this world, but glorious according to God in heaven) makes us humble. St Paul continues talking about Jesus,

8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Our salvation came about by Christ’s humility. By not grasping or snatching at his heavenly glory, by reason of his great humility, Christ was able to die on the cross and win for us everlasting life. More than that; it is not only for our sake that Christ died, but for the glory of himself:

9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

We are talking about people and relationships; we are talking about rejoicing instead of grumbling; we are talking about how we approach God and one another. And the key to it all is to be humble. Nothing ought to make us more humble than this passage about Jesus and his humility.

Why did he die on the cross? Was it for our salvation? Yes. Was it because God so loved the world – out of his great love for us? Yes. But what was the ultimate reason? Did Jesus die on the cross for us, or for God? Look at the passage: Christ humbled himself, came to earth, died on the cross, therefore – and St Paul loves a good therefore – therefore every knee will bow in heaven and on earth and acknowledge Jesus as Lord, to the glory of God the Father. The ultimate purpose of Christ’s humility is to the glory of God. All benefits we receive come out of that.

You may have been listening to this reading earlier and heard a phrase that stuck out: “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling”. After all this talk about love and humility, where does fear and trembling come in? It is because God’s great work in our salvation is to his glory. The love he shows us, the grace and mercy he bestows upon us, is not because we are so wonderful. It is because it serves the glory of God to love us and show us his grace and mercy. Christ did not have to die for us – but he is glorified in doing so. Let us remain humble – let us work out our salvation in fear and trembling. We may assume God’s love, for the Bible teaches it is guaranteed to us. But let us never be presumptuous about God’s love, for it comes from his glory, not ours. God does not have to love us – he chooses to, and has chosen to love us eternally, from a great bottomless wellspring of love that never ends. And this love for us comes about because it glorifies God the Son as Lord of all, the crucified, humble Lord who gave himself for our sake and for his glory.

Let us therefore live in the type of love that does not presume, but is humble. God’s love does not depend on us – because we are not dependable – but rather on God and his eternal glory. Let us remain humble, of one mind in this one great purpose – the glory of Christ as Lord of all. It is not about us, it is about him: but by his great loving mercy he has brought us into himself, and so we may rest in him securely as we humble ourselves and glorify him as Lord.

Homily for Wednesday, 23/9/26

Proverbs 30:5-9

Psalm 119:97-104

Luke 9:1-6

“Enough”.

What does it “feel” like to have enough?

We heard a prayer for “enough” today in the first reading from Proverbs:

7 Two things I ask of you;
    deny them not to me before I die:
8 Remove far from me falsehood and lying;
    give me neither poverty nor riches;
    feed me with the food that is needful for me,
9 lest I be full and deny you
    and say, “Who is the Lord?”
or lest I be poor and steal
    and profane the name of my God.

It is a good prayer! If you have too much, then you get a fat head, and say “Who is the Lord? Maybe I am!” Whereas if you have too little, you may driven to theft just to survive, and this reflects poorly on the One who bled and died for you. To have enough, just so and no more, seems a good place to be. But what it feel like to have enough?

In our Gospel reading we heard Jesus sending out the disciples to do some on-the-job ministry training. He gave them work to do, and the authority to do it. He also instructed them on their working conditions – and I think the trade unions might have had something to say about this bit (v. 3b):

“Take nothing for your journey, no staff, nor bag, nor bread, nor money; and do not have two tunics.”

Our Lord has given his disciples enough already. He has given them “power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases” (v. 1b). What more could they need? If they had all that power and authority as well as a bunch of luxuries, where do you think their souls might focus on? Using their power and authority for the good of others? Or the luxuries that their job afforded them? And so what does it “feel” like to have enough? How can we enjoy that same feeling?

If we were to have kept going further in our first reading we would have heard about a leech who has two daughters: “Give, and Give”. That is to say, there is a sense that not feeling like you have enough is to be like a leech that just sits on the skin constantly sucking out blood and getting fatter and fatter and still crying out for more.

Our current career-led culture seems much the same. Wake up, go to work, come home and buy a bunch of stuff, sleep, wake up again – and then retire and do nothing all day. When thinking of a way of describing this, it is hard not to think of a small rodent on a treadmill, until it gets so old it just falls off and lies in the sawdust.

The way of wisdom, by contrast, is to follow God’s Law (as we heard in the poetry of today’s Psalm), that which is sweeter than honey in the mouth. And I think something we don’t do very well when it comes to following God’s Law is to rest.

Rest is commanded explicitly, but it is also a great theme of God’s work in creation and redemption. Rest is the key to experiencing the “feeling” of enough. Consider when God created the world and everything in it: on the seventh day we read he “rested”. Or in Psalm 95, the song about coming out of the wilderness and into the Promised Land, with the final stanza where it compares it to “entering into God’s rest”. Or our Lord, after he had done the great work of redemption of suffering the punishment for our sins on the cross so that we may be forgiven, rested in the tomb before his resurrection.

I think this is where we find the feeling of enough. Activity must be followed by rest. Rest gives us time to think back on things. It allows our experiences to settle into our brains and our souls. Rest gives us the physical restoration as well as the spiritual restoration we need to keep going.

I do not think this cycle of activity and rest is like the career-led treadmill. It is more like the tide coming in and out. We move – the tide comes in. We rest – the tide goes out. Gentle and rolling.

And so I would encourage you to look for times of proper rest. It takes effort. You need to set aside time in your life to do it. And you need to actually commit to it when it happens. It doesn’t need to be extra sleep (but it can be). It just needs to be time you set aside where you can let your soul exhale, and chew on your recent experiences. And when you do, you will hopefully discover that feeling of having enough.

Sermon for Sunday, 20/9/26

Exodus 16:2-15

Philippians 1

Matthew 20:1-16

Of all the jobs I’ve had in my life, the one I have worked the most would have to be in the chicken and chips industry. When they talk about the “perks of the job”, I reckon that one had the best. Because if I was on the closing shift (which usually happened), we would always end up with plenty of leftovers. For about a decade of my life, I more often than not enjoyed having a fridge stocked with chicken and chips – fried, grilled, spicy, original – and the abundance was glorious.

In our first reading we heard of God’s miracle of chicken and chips. Over the past few weeks we have been following their suffering under slavery, God’s miraculous delivery through the waters, and now they are tramping through the wilderness on their way to the Promised Land. And they start grumbling. God is generous beyond reckoning, and so one morning they wake up to find that the land is covered with manna, a flaky white substance that is basically easy-to-make bread; simply “add water and stir”. On top of that, they find the ground also covered with quail – the tastiest of all birds, as well as being small and easy to catch and cook up. Manna and quail – chicken and chips.

Now, with all that generosity from God on display, what do you think their response was? God is the same back then as he is now, and so is his generosity. What is your response to his generosity to you?

In our second reading we heard St Paul begin his letter to the church in Philippi. He is locked up in prison, simply for being a Christian. All he wants is to be is with his church family. So what does God do? God makes a church family for him amongst the prison guards!

The apostle’s response was thankful rejoicing. In the midst of your adversity, God is making provision through his generosity for you, too. Can you see it? What is God giving you, that you may join with St Paul in thankful rejoicing?

Then we had the Gospel reading. Our Lord is teaching us in a parable. A master has a field, and he needs people to work on it. So he sends for workers at the start of the day. The day goes on, and he still needs workers, so he brings more in. On this goes, until just before dusk, and he is still bringing in people to work. Then the sun falls, and it is payday. A whole denarius, just for one day? And so everyone gets a big payout. But those who worked from dawn are grumbling. Look at how Jesus finishes the parable, with the words of the master as he is handing out the money: “Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity?” Just as the fictional master in this parable is generous, so too is God.

But the thing is, God is generous all over the place. And when we compare ourselves to others, we risk getting a chip on our shoulder. And this is what Jesus is warning us about: if you awaken yourself to God’s generosity, you’ll start seeing it all over the place. So don’t get a chip on your shoulder about it; rather, listen to the master: “Take what belongs to you and go. I choose to give to this last worker as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity?” Let us never begrudge God’s generosity to others.

I want you to reflect on God’s generosity to you. This is the first step. Can you see it? Can you recognise it when you see it? We had two real-life examples, and one parable. The freed Hebrew slaves had been given so much: their freedom! And on top of that, chicken and chips, direct from heaven! Then we had St Paul, who, even though he was locked up in prison, was given a church family out of thin air (at least, that must have been how it seemed when his Roman guards starting becoming Christians). Then there was the parable about how everyone gets a big spiritual payday, no matter how much or how little you deserve it. Can you see God’s generosity to you? Can you recognise it when you see it?

There is an appropriate response to God’s generosity – and that is our liturgy. It is how we worship here in church. We call this service the “Holy Eucharist”, and it’s all in the name. The word “eucharist” comes from a Greek word which literally means “thanksgiving”. That is to say, our worship service is a service of thanksgiving to God. We receive God’s generous goodness to us, and we respond with thanksgiving.

Consider the beginning: we start with a renewal of God’s generous covenant promise to us. We hear the words of our Lord, which is his way of summing up “all the Law and the prophets”. We respond by asking the Holy Spirit to “write this Law in our hearts”. Then, because we do not keep God’s covenant very well, we immediately ask for forgiveness for when we have failed – and receive that forgiveness for which we have asked! The service flows naturally on from there to hear God speaking to us in his Word – and surely this is another blessing of God’s generosity, that he would leave us with this Holy Bible, this collection of sacred writings that speak of himself and his love for us, and how we may learn more of him and his love for us. God’s generosity then flows just as freely as we pray for his world. How generous is our God, that we may come before him prayer, and ask him directly about our concerns! From our prayers, we move to his table, to his feast, to the presence of Christ himself in the sacrament. We gather as his people, as his body, sharing his peace, and hearing again that wonderful story of how he gave himself for us in that moment in history. And then we enter into that moment in history, as he really gives himself to us in the bread and wine. What abundant generosity of God in his goodness to us! Surely there is no other word for what we do than “thanksgiving” – Eucharist.

This liturgy is also designed to shape our whole lives. We celebrate a holy thanksgiving here, and then go out to live lives of holy thanksgiving. Just as God is abundantly generous to us every time we gather around his table, he is abundantly generous to us in our daily lives as we pass through the week.

I spoke about the perks of the job of working in chicken and chips. The thing about always having a fridge full of chicken and chips, is that you always have mates who want to come over and share them with you. But I wonder – we have something better than chicken and chips. We have something better even than manna from heaven and fresh quail. We have the bread of life, and the cup of eternal salvation. If you have seen God’s generosity, and you want others to see it in their lives too, why not ask them to start here at his table? If you want to see God’s generosity in your life, why not start here, at his table?

Homily for Wednesday 16/9/26

1 Corinthians 13

Psalm 33:1-5

I have three weddings coming up before the end of this year, and so this passage from our first reading has been following me in every spare moment of thought I have. It is the great wedding passage. Not in the least because you get to tell everyone what love actually means without lecturing them about it – the apostle lists all the attributes of true love for us. It is patient and kind; it does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude, it bears, believes, hopes and endures all things. More helpful marriage advice cannot be found anywhere else.

But I think it is also a great funeral passage. For look at how St Paul ends – we are looking in a mirror dimly (that is to say, through a glass, or through a window-pane). “Then” we shall see clearly. Once this race is run, and we are taken to the Lord, faith, hope and love will remain, the greatest of them being love.

I think he’s also giving us a way of seeing heaven in this life. St Paul is always thinking about heaven – you cannot read more than a few sentences in any of his letters until you run into something about it. While he loved this life, because it meant doing the Lord’s work, he also loved the promise of future glory.

So when we are considering love, and in particular what the Psalmist said about the earth being filled with the loving-kindness of the Lord, we might find it easy to point out how difficult it is to find that love. And you wouldn’t be wrong! There are plenty of situations in this world where love is absent. But let us consider our own lives, for that is what we have most influence over.

The kingdom of heaven is described as having being inaugurated by Jesus at his first coming, but not being consummated until his return. It has begun, but it is not yet complete. Heaven on earth is pulling up at the station, but it has not completely stopped and the doors have not yet been opened. That is to say, we can see heaven here and now, in spite of all its opposition. We see it, as the apostle says, through a glass dimly. And we see it when we see the type of love he describes in this passage. So if you are looking for heaven on earth, look for the love that is patient, humble, courteous, and so on. Then you can say you have found heaven on earth.

Not only that – the Lord has given us the means to participate in bringing about heaven on earth. When we show the love described in this passage, we are bringing heaven to earth. We are fulfilling our mission as Christ’s soldiers, breaking down the gates of hell.

And finally, it is the type of love that God has lavished upon us in Jesus Christ. Here is a man who is both perfectly honest and yet wonderfully loving. He is a roaring lion to those who would hurt us, and a gentle lamb to those he loves. He is patient with his disciples. He does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices at the truth. He bears all things; indeed, he bore our sins on the cross. He endured all things: he endured the wrath of God against sinners to its completion, so that we can say with full confidence that there is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus. When all is said and done, we place our faith in him, we place our hope in him, but greatest of all is our love for him, and his love for us.

Homily for Tuesday, 15/9/26

1 Corinthians 12:12-31a

St Paul is teaching the church in Corinth about how they need to accept the fact that every single person in the church is necessary for a full spiritual expression of the joy of God in Christ. The fact that he even needs to do so in the first place is apparent when we consider the pagan culture of the ancient world – a culture not so dissimilar from our own.

We are all familiar with the idea of the “Renaissance Man”, if not with the term itself. It is the idea that we all have within ourselves the means to do anything (or perhaps better, to do everything). And the fact that it is a Renaissance movement should reinforce this idea that it comes from the ancient world, since that is what the Renaissance was all about. If we can each be great philosophers, natural scientists, artists, poets, engineers, architects, political scientists, and great romantics, why bother with other people at all?

And so St Paul, speaking to this culture, teaches them one of his favourite illustrations: that the Church is like a body. Each body part needs every other body part to function to its best.

I think this idea, that every Christian is needed to make the Church the best it can be, is not so revolutionary to us after 2,000 years of Christendom. But I think it might be helpful if we look at the apostle’s philosophy of body parts.

22 “...the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, 23 and on those parts of the body that we think less honourable we bestow the greater honour, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, 24 which our more presentable parts do not require.”

The weaker parts are indispensable, and the less honourable parts are bestowed the greater honour.

In Brave Two Zero, a book about a British SAS solider and a mission he went on in Gulf War One, he talks about the midnight helicopter ride behind enemy lines. The men were given body armour, which only covered the chest down to the waist. There was some discussion about whether they should wear it as intended, or if they should wear it around their legs – they were thinking about the “indispensable weaker parts” of their body!

So what does this mean for us in the church?

Consider those who seem less honourable, or weaker. Those who cannot “do” as much as others. The harmless weirdo. The one with non-marketable skills. The one wracked with spiritual distress. They are given greater honour, and are treated as indispensable by the Lord. There are no Renaissance Men in the church.

And consider yourself. You may consider yourself weaker, or less honourable. There are those “super Christians” who seem to have it all together, and do so much more than you for the Church. And yet Christ died for you just as much as he did for them. Christ considers you indispensable. Christ has showered you with greater honour. Whatever makes them special makes you just as special, too.

Christ has died for his body, the Church, and we are all weak, and yet all indispensable. He has drawn us all together for a specific purpose, a purpose we discover when we work together. As long as no-one is left out, his mission proceeds as planned. So let us remind ourselves in those dark moments of melancholy: he died for me, he has made me indispensable, he has given me greater honour. I can glorify Christ; the Church needs me, too.

Sermon for Sunday 13/0/26

Exodus 14:19-31

Romans 14:1-14

Matthew 18:21-35

“Remember when God…”

We have recently re-populated our fish tank at home. As it turns out, the life expectancy of small fish reduces drastically when they share a home with two cats and a small child (not that I’m accusing anyone of illegal fishing, it just seems an odd coincidence). We had five, then one, and now we have several again. What was striking was that as soon as the extra fish were added, the lonely survivor knew what to do: he was immediately back to swimming in perfect harmony with his new school.

And so this makes me think that maybe it is unfair to talk of a short memory as being like a “goldfish”. Because this little fish was back to being a normal fish after weeks of confusing isolation. Perhaps we should call it “human” memory, since we are the ones who are so easily distracted?

Today’s readings cover very different topics across different authors, audiences, and eras of human history. And yet they all have something in common: that we benefit from them when we remember them. Consider your own life, when God has done something. “Remember when God.” Is that not important to your faith? Does that not change your behaviour for the better?

In the first reading, we heard the event from which the book gets its title: the Exodus. This was the great defining moment of the ancient people of Israel. Their whole identity as a people came from this moment, when they escaped through the dry land, while their slave-masters drowned in the water behind them. It is of utmost importance to the spiritual health of God’s people that they “remember when God saved us”. The unfortunate news is that they did not remember. Over the generations, they didn’t so much forget, as stop remembering. The prophets, one after another, reminded them to turn back to the God that saved them from slavery in Egypt – and yet they would not let the memory of this change their behaviour. And this is why I think it is important we “remember when God”. Because it changes us for the better.

In our second reading, the Apostle gives some instructions on specific questions which don’t have any clear answer in Holy Scripture. He reminds us of some basic principles, which if we are to remember them, we will be able to figure out how we ought to live. Remember to whom you will have to give an account of your actions. Remember when God will bring you to his nearer presence and you will speak to him face-to-face. By remembering what is important, our behaviour changes for the better.

Then we come to our Gospel reading. I preached last week on the importance of forgiveness; this week, our reading continues with our Lord giving The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant to reinforce the point. Here, we have a servant who owed the king an impossibly large sum. Yet, when he begs for mercy, the king forgives him completely. No sooner as he has tasted his freedom, he finds one of his fellow servants who owes him a pittance, and demands immediate repayment. Upon hearing this, the king recalls the forgiven servant, and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?’

If that servant had remembered what the king had done for him, and allowed it to change his behaviour, he would have forgiven his fellow. Not only does our Lord instruct us on the importance of forgiving one another, but also how our remembrance of God’s forgiveness ought to influence our behaviour for the better. Remember when God forgave you; remember how God has forgiven your fellow Christian.

Finally, I want to mention a place where remembrance is most striking: the Holy Eucharist. Here, we have an act of “remembering”. Remember when God incarnate, the Lord Jesus Christ, gave himself in a meal to his friends, on the night he was betrayed, after which he gave himself on the cross for our redemption, and rose on the third day. “Do this in remembrance of me”, he said, and I say, every time we share this holy meal. When you go out to your week, I want you to remember when God did something, every day. But today, at this table, we “remember when God” in an even more powerful and mysterious way.

When we pray to God and remember before him what he has done for us and how that remembrance might change us, we experience something of God’s grace working through our prayers. But when we come to this table, we experience something of God’s grace to such a degree that it becomes unspeakable in its glorious mystery. For here the act of remembrance is more than just an act of the memory, or the intellect. Indeed, you do not even need a working intellect for God’s grace to work through this type of remembrance. At this table, time and space fold, and we are brought through the veil to the eternal places of the heavenly kingdom, really worshipping at the throne with the saints and angels. Christ is really present here in this meal, and he is really working through the bread and wine. By doing this “in remembrance of”, we experience God’s grace in the most powerful way this side of eternity. Allow God to work through this remembrance to change you for the better.

And so I would encourage you to spend this week “remembering when God”. Remember when God brought you out of slavery, and what your response to him ought to be. Remember when God will bring you to his immediate presence, and therefore what your priorities in this life should be. Remember when God forgave you, and therefore how you should treat those who are in debt to you. And remember when Christ gave himself for you on the cross, remember when he rose from the dead so that you too may live eternally, and how he gives himself to you so freely and so often in the bread and wine of the Eucharist. Remember when God – and let that remembering change you for the better.

Homily for Holy Communion Wednesday 9/9/26

1 Corinthians 7:25-31

Psalms 45:10-15

Luke 6:20-26

In his first letter to the Corinthians, St Paul sounds like a bit of a fun-killer. More than that; he seems like he is contradicting a twice-given commandment from God.

The commandment to “be fruitful and multiply” is given directly from God to humanity on two occasions: first, at our creation, to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden; and secondly, to Noah and his family, at the moment of re-creation at the subsiding of the Great Flood. To marry and be married, and to have children, to come together as families and multiply is the original blessing. And yet the apostle is telling us: no, don’t bother about that one. So what gives?

Perhaps we can think of who he was writing to. The church in Corinth was running the very great risk of turning into a swinger’s club. When reading both of his letters to them one after another, we get a sense that these Christians were very concerned about parties, and not so much about holy love. And so I think St Paul is trying to get them to snap out of it: for the way of Christ is not in the flesh, or the material, but in the spiritual and eternal. St Paul’s instruction to them can be relevant to us if we look at his reason why: that this world is passing away.

And that is our point of consistency between St Paul and the Lord Jesus. This world is passing away. For all its great wonders and delights, and all its terrible tragedies and losses, God has appointed a time when the final whistle will be blown and it will be full time. Our concern, as Christians, is to be less worried about what will be swept away, and more focused on what will remain afterwards.

The Lord Jesus teaches us much the same thing in our Gospel reading. He points to one group of people: those without. Those who are poor, who are hungry, who weep, who are scorned for being Christian. Keep your eyes up, he says: all this pain is temporary, and you are blessed. Then he points to a second group: those with. If this world has given you wealth, food, laughter and praise from others, then beware: for that will be swept away, too.

If we, today, keep our eyes looking to that which is permanent, then we have great perspective, and, I think, will be better settled in our spirits. We can rejoice when God gives us material wealth, food, times of laughter, and respect from our peers, as long as we don’t think that that is the main goal. For it is only temporary. And on the flip side, when we find ourselves poor, hungry, sorrowful and scorned, we can rejoice through it all, because that too is only temporary.

So much for what will pass. But what will remain? What should we be looking to gather to ourselves, and seeking for others, knowing that it won’t be a waste of time? Let’s flick towards the end of St Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, to chapter 13. It is his great manifesto on love. You have probably heard it a million times, and still not felt like it is enough. But he continues the theme of what is permanent and what is temporary even here. After going through several things that are only worthwhile if they are done lovingly, he concludes triumphantly with these words:

8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

The partial will pass away. The desires of the flesh, the allure of the material, the sorrow and trials of this world, will all pass away. But some things will remain, and amongst them faith, hope and love. And the greatest of these, that which we should keep our main focus on, and that which helps us keep our perspective on all other things, is love: specifically, the love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord.

Sermon for the 15th Sunday after Pentecost, 6/9/26

Matthew 18:10-20

The last couple of weeks have found us leaning pretty heavily on one of my favourite movies to watch with my son: The Lord of the Rings. Today, I want to move to another of my favourites. Both are wonderful Christian movies, with all those grand themes of sin, forgiveness, redemption, good triumphing over evil, resurrection, and so on. And so let me talk to you about The Blues Brothers. In one of their songs, they sing about how “everybody needs somebody to love”. I found myself thinking about this song, because I was thinking about our Lord’s story of the one lost sheep, and what it must be like to be that sheep.

Let’s just assume for a moment that we all accept the idea that human beings need to love and to be loved. We need to be loved by others, and we need others to show love to. That is the great fulfilment of the human experience. But to be that lost sheep, all out alone and lost with no-one around them, means that they have neither.

Our Lord talks about this lost sheep so that we can recognise straight away something of what we have felt, or maybe feel right now. We might have one, and not the other, or neither. We might have someone to love, but they don’t love us; or someone loves us, but we just cannot find the way to love them back. Maybe we don’t think we have the ability or means to show them any love. Christ’s parable of the lost sheep speaks so deeply because we know what this is like, and he wants us to sense the joy of when that problem is fixed. To love and to be loved; that is the answer.

He moves on to another lesson, this time about two people who have a problem with each other. This is how his church is to treat one another: seek out the love. Pursue the path that leads to being loved, and being able to love.

All of us are good friends with righteous displeasure. We all know someone (or someones) who have said or done something that is just not right. And we all know what it is like to have those imaginary conversations with them where we give them a piece of our mind. For many of us, those conversations might not have been imaginary: we might have actually decided “enough is enough” and gone and told them exactly what we think of them.

And yet our Lord gives us a pattern of behaviour that doesn’t push people down, but builds them up. Try it one-on-one; try and build them back up to a place where you can love each other. If that doesn’t work, keep trying with a few more people. If that still doesn’t work, get the whole church, the whole family of love, to try and bring back the love.

Finally, if that still doesn’t work, treat that person as if they were, quote, “a Gentile or a publican”.

Now, if you were listening closely, this last line probably stuck out to you. A thinking person would hear all that stuff about love, find it all very agreeable, and then get to this last line and hear a contradiction. Is Jesus saying that there is a point at which we stop trying to love people, and just kick them out?

If you are thinking that, then I think you are right in finding a problem there. We had a consistent theme, and then a sudden handbrake turn in the opposite direction. But what if Jesus wasn’t talking about kicking people out? He merely said to treat that person as “a Gentile or a publican”. Let us therefore ask the question, how did Jesus treat Gentiles and publicans?

First of all, we know what he thought about publicans: he loved hanging out with them! Many times he is criticised for eating with publicans, prostitutes, and (worst of all) tax collectors. Indeed, these are the people he came for! He came for the lost sheep – the people who were not loved, and had no-one to love. He invited them to dinner. He brought them back into the flock.

Second, what about Gentiles? Well, we don’t have to look very far for an answer to that one: look in the mirror! He loves Gentiles so much that he would die for them.

And this is the ultimate reason why we should be so zealous for the cause of bringing people back together. In the search for the one lost sheep, and the instruction on how to reconcile personal differences, we see the cross of Christ foreshadowed.

Think of the two people in disagreement in Jesus’ second lesson. One of them is you; the other is God. You have sinned; God is offended. If God were to come up to you and give you a piece of his mind, he would be perfectly in the right. You are the offending party; he is completely innocent. More than that; you are a human, his creature, and he is your God, your creator. You have a conscience implanted in you; God’s very nature is the source of that conscience. His holiness is supreme; his righteousness is perfect. It is perfectly just for you to bear the punishment for your offenses against him.

Yet – God did not choose this path. Instead, our heavenly Father sent his only-begotten Son, whom he loved very much, to become incarnate as a human being and be our representative. The Lord Jesus, the Word of the Father became flesh and blood so that he might stand in our place. When he hung on the cross, he not only died a physical death, but a cosmic death. God’s perfect judgement on human sin was poured out on him on the cross.

The cross of Christ teaches us two very important reasons as to why we must always seek to reconcile our differences and build each other up.

First, the cross of Christ teaches us that we must seek to reconcile our differences because we are not, in fact, the centre of the universe. How dare we look at a fellow human and take the moral high ground? We all are brought low before God’s standard; it is only by his gracious love that we even have breath. And the same is for the person who has offended us; they are equally condemned by God’s standard, and equally forgiven by Christ’s death and resurrection. Whatever problems we have with one another fade into irrelevance when we consider the problems we had with God. God was able to forgive and forget; so must we.

Secondly, it is because it is God’s nature to reconcile and love. When we offended God, he did not punish us, but died for us, so that we may be reconciled with him and brought into his love. We must do the same to one another. When Jesus speaks of the shepherd seeking the lost sheep, he is talking about himself. And in the context of the past couple of weeks, about the Church he is building, he is talking about us, his body. We are acting on behalf of the Great Shepherd, seeking out his lost sheep, reconciling and building up.

And so while the bard sang “everybody needs somebody to love”, he was reflecting the great love of Christ for us, in bringing us back into fellowship with him, so that we may love him and one another. Let us be a church known not for “speaking our mind”, but for always seeking out a way to build each other up; to find a resolution that leads to love. And when we gather before the Lord’s Table, I want you to exhale deeply in sweet relief, knowing that because Christ has died for you, God will never be angry with you, he will never punish you, but only ever build you up in his love.

Homily for Solemn Evensong, 3/9/26, St Gregory of Rome (d. 604)

Ps 10

Judith 8:4-27

Acts 25:1-12

Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation. In the name of the holy Scripture we do understand those Canonical Books of the Old and New Testament, of whose authority was never any doubt in the Church… And the other Books (as Hierome saith) the Church doth read for example of life and instruction of manners; but yet doth it not apply them to establish any doctrine.

Tonight we heard from the book of Judith in our First Lesson. If it left you scratching your head (and I hope you didn’t try looking for it in a pew Bible), then that is OK – it is part of a collection of writings the Church calls “The Apocrypha”, or the “deutero-canonical books”. That is to say, they are not part of the “canon” (the standard of Holy Scripture), but “canon-adjacent”, if you like. They have always been floating around God’s people (they are all pre-New Testament), but the Church has not held them to be of the same category of writing as the books we have in our Bibles. I read out a part of Article 6 of the 39 Articles of Religion just now, which is part of our Anglican formularies, to try and give you some idea of how Tradition views these works, and so I hope you can appreciate the generous yet firm approach the Church has towards these writings.

But what sets Holy Scripture apart from any other scripture? What makes the Holy Bible “holy”, and all other “bibles” (which just means “book”) not-holy? Perhaps we can take a look at how St Paul describes it:

All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: (2 Tim 3:16, KJV)

Here the word is “inspired”. Since we are celebrating Evensong according to the old rite, I thought I’d start with the old translation. That is from the KJV. In my modern ESV, it says that scripture is “breathed out by God”, which much better captures the literal phrase: theopneustos, literally “God-breathed.”

I think this is helpful, because there are many other ways that God inspires his people to do his will. In Exodus 36 we read about the tradesmen who God tells Moses to hire to help build the tabernacle and all the utensils needed to start the sacrificial worship system:

36:1 Then wrought Bezaleel and Aholiab, and every wise hearted man, in whom the Lord put wisdom and understanding to know how to work all manner of work for the service of the sanctuary, according to all that the Lord had commanded.

2 And Moses called Bezaleel and Aholiab, and every wise hearted man, in whose heart the Lord had put wisdom, even every one whose heart stirred him up to come unto the work to do it:

So in some sense, God “inspires” people to have certain talents and skills.

I would like to commend this idea to you: that our talents and skills are a gift from God, that he has given them to us in order to use for his glory and for the blessing of the people around us. And I would encourage you to reflect on what God has given you? If you don’t think you are good at anything, think about the circumstances of your life: who around you could use the blessing of your efforts? How would you do that? And would that perhaps be a talent or skill God has given you?

Let’s return to the inspiration of Scripture according to St Paul. He tells us something about the inspiration that led to the writing of Scripture: that it be “profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.” I think that naturally cuts out a lot of other writing. Consider what I just said about talents and skills. Say someone has a talent for creative writing. If that creative writing is not profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, then I would say it is not “inspired” in the way that the Apostle is describing.

Here we move away from spiritual reflection and into doctrine. Specifically, the doctrine of revelation. The theologians (or the good ones, at least) talk about two types of revelation: special revelation and general revelation. So let’s pull it apart: revelation simply means “revealing”. God is “revealing” something about himself to us. In general revelation he reveals to us the fact that we are made, that he is powerful, and that he is moral. As St Paul says elsewhere, everyone knows this, and those who deny God are without excuse (Romans 1). Yet we cannot discover Christ and his redeeming work on the cross in general revelation. And so God has inspired the writers of Holy Scripture to record for us the books of the New Testament so that we may read, hear, and understand of the great love and justice of Jesus of Nazareth and his passion, death and resurrection.

But what about the Old Testament? Here we have to think about why we have one in the first place. Since I am running out of preaching time, I will be brief, and leave it to you to reflect on further. St Augustine said it best when he wrote that “The New Testament is in the Old Testament concealed, the Old Testament is in the New Testament revealed."

Since the very beginning, the Church has understood Christ to be foreshadowed in the Old Testament: some facet of the brilliant diamond that is the Messiah is lying on every single page, revealed in the light of the writings of the New Testament. Therefore we can say confidently that Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation.

Homily for Wednesday, 2/9/26

Martyrs of New Guinea (d. 1942)

John 12:20-32

Sir, we wish to see Jesus.

Today we remember the martyrs of New Guinea. I understand that local RSL clubs are also remembering “The Battle For Australia”. It is good to see that our church life is tied so closely to that of our community. For in World War 2, as in any war, we must remember that everyone, not just the front-line soldiers, are called up to give their lives for those they love.

There is a sense both in the military as well as in the spiritual life that there is a “call” that we must “answer”. Perhaps you are familiar with the old World War 1 recruitment poster, of an Australian soldier standing astride the continent of Europe, calling out “coo-ee” to his countrymen back home to come and join him. The sense that there is a call we must answer is so strong and universal I think it proves that there is something transcendent and spiritual about it.

As Christians we recognise that God is calling us, and he is waiting expectantly for our answer. He is calling us to place our trust and love in his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, and to follow him as his disciples. The question that follows (at least in my mind) is how can we know we are following Jesus? And how can we know that we are placing our trust and love in him as he truly is?

Today’s Gospel reading recalled for us an occasion in which some Greeks had heard about our Lord, and approached his disciples, asking to see him. Going to the Master, he replies with words describing his death and resurrection: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” (v. 24) Let me put the two statements together: “Sir, we would see Jesus”; “then look to his sacrificial death and the fruit of the resurrection to find him”.

The martyrs of New Guinea, as with all martyrs, heard the call from Christ and realised it meant they must follow him in his public death – and I think they knew that they had to do this, because it would lead to his glorification and their resurrection. Listen to the words of the missionary bishop Philip Strong, on 30 January 1942:

I have, from the first, felt that we must endeavour to carry on our work in all circumstances, no matter what the cost may ultimately be to any of us individually. God expects this of us. The Church at home, which sent us out, expects this of us. The Universal Church expects it. The tradition and history of missions requires it of us. Missionaries who have been faithful to the uttermost and are now at rest are surely expecting it of us. The people whom we serve expect it of us. Our own consciences expect it of us. We would never hold up our faces again, if, for our own safety, we all forsook him and fled when the shadows of the passion began to gather round him in his Spiritual and Mystical Body, the Church in Papua.

I am certain it did not seem like a particularly glamorous martyrdom to those men and women. There is nothing glamorous about death: it is ugly and pathetic and the great enemy which Christ came to destroy for us. Yet in their God-glorifying death, the church in Papua New Guinea welcomed in more missionaries after the war. And fast forward to our time to see the fruit of their sacrifice.

Parliament has today (12.03.25) voted to allow the Constitution of PNG to declare its affinity to and identity as a Christian country with these words to appear in the preamble of the Constitution, “(we) acknowledge and declare God, the Father; Jesus Christ, the Son; and Holy Spirit, as our Creator and Sustainer of the entire universe and the source of our powers and authorities, delegated to the people and all persons within the geographical jurisdiction of Papua New Guinea.”

Parliament voted 80 to 4 in favour of the bill so the Preamble of the Constitution can bear this declaration; and for Christianity to be reflected as part of the PNG Ways in the Fifth Goal, which is also in the Preamble; and similar identification to be made in section 1; and the Bible to be declared as one of the national symbols in section 3 of the Constitution. (Department of Prime Minister and National Executive Council [Papua New Guinea])

You and I may not be called up by the Lord to give our lives in the same way as the famous martyrs of history. Yet Jesus says that if we want to see him, then we should look to the love that gives itself even to death. For in this type of death a seed is planted, and that seed grows to bear much fruit. So in our day to day, let us listen for the call to give sacrificially in love, seeking to plant seeds along our path. We will not necessarily see the fruit; but it will grow, and God will be glorified, and we will have answered his call.