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July 13, 2014 5:34 pm

God the Father

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A few weeks back, it was Trinity Sunday, also known as the occasion for heretical analogies. It is extremely difficult to grasp, intellectually, how one God can be three persons, and all the analogies that I know are flawed in some respect. This hilarious video points some of them out. Before going any further into the topic of the Trinity, I should point out that, in matters such as this (the mysteries of faith), we shouldn’t ever expect to fully understand; however, this does not mean we should not keep contemplating it. Indeed, as we do, we get closer and closer to God, in our understanding and in our lives. But as we do, we should not try to explain the Trinity, as though it were something we can grasp fully; rather, we should try to describe it.

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Painting in the public domain (full image on Wikimedia)

There are three persons (three “hypostases”): the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. A lot of our worship focuses on the Son (with the help of the Holy Spirit), and it is Christ we’re following. And so we focus more on the Son, and end up neglecting the other persons of the Trinity. While we tend to be aware that we don’t know that well how to picture the Holy Spirit, the same does not necessarily hold for God the Father. Yet, who is He?

There are three things to know about God the Father:

1. He is indescribable. Saying it right off the bat actually relieves the pressure, as we know we can’t reach the perfect description. He is greater than all of creation, and even if we had measured the mountains and the seas, we could not describe Him.

2. He cares for us, even though we are nothing before Him. This, in turn, implies two things: as our actions are naught too before Him, that this caring love is not dependent on what we do. Secondly, that His promise is greater than anything we could achieve ourselves. He will make us soar on wings like eagles.

3. We are called to be His children and to behave as such. This call to action is not one of obligation, but a mere expression of our identity as loved children of God the Father.

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You can listen to the sermon, which (like the above summarising points) is based on Isaiah 40 and Matthew 28, by using the player below, or you can download the audio or read the sermon notes.

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April 20, 2014 10:10 pm

Liturgy Month: Peace be with you

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My strongest memory of a Catholic church I once visited was the sharing of The Peace. At the time, it was the warmth and the sense of community that exuded from it that struck me. In that one moment, church stopped being a bunch of individuals following the pulpit, and it became an assembly that cared visibly for one another, including the rather uninterested visitor that I was. As I then went to more charismatic churches, it was a long time until I followed any traditional liturgy, but I still reminisced upon that Sharing of The Peace fondly. I was very pleased when I found it again in an Anglican church, but, unbeknownst to me, it wasn’t done “properly”: The Peace was shared right at the end of the service, before tea and coffee; and so it felt just like a greeting.

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Photo: Charles Clegg, reused under CC License

There is definitely a social function to the Sharing of The Peace; and it would be a mistake to downplay it. Through it, we are bonding with one another, using the strongest bond possible: the Peace of Christ (which, as we know, passes all understanding). And that is true regardless of where in the service this handshaking happens. For that reason, all forms of greeting are appropriate: it does not have to be a handshake; it can most definitely be a hug. Hugs are cool.

But, normally, the Sharing of The Peace happens right before communion – in preparation towards it. Obviously, this reduces the social function, as it is not quite as easy to remain chatting then as it would at the end of the service; so why put it there? Is it somehow necessary to be at peace before receiving communion? In that case, the sharing of the peace is making us worthy to approach the table… er… yeah, maybe not. As, even when we approach it, we are not worthy to do so in our own strength, regardless of our feeling the peace of God.

Therefore, the Sharing of The Peace is gearing towards the same thing as communion. It is (at least symbolically) an expiatory moment, linked with the recognition and conviction of our own sins before our acceptance at Christ’s table, not as people who are worthy of coming into His presence, yet as people who can do so without hiding their baggage.

When we say to others “Peace be with you”, at least in the context of communion, it’s  not merely a greeting: it is a prayer that, much like Zacchaeus or the woman at the well, we would find our eyes open to our own sin and be ready to confront them, dismiss them and find peace.

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This time, the recorded sermon below is not a perfect match with the “summary” above, although there is significant overlap.

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Download link (right click, hit download) – Notes

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March 23, 2014 9:31 pm

Liturgy month: Have mercy on us

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God’s mercy is something that we seek, often, in our prayers. It is etched within traditional liturgy, between the kyries and the misereres. We seek it when we confess our sins (“have mercy on us”), we rely on it in intercessionary prayers (“in your mercy”).

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Photo: Charles Clegg, reused under CC license

These small words of liturgy have always been slightly difficult to me, because they reeked of false humility, and of false repentance. It felt like we were forcing ourselves to feel sorry and small, in that very very short window of time in the service; and that introspection itself was cut short by the prayer of absolution.

Worse than that, it seemed that I was only pretending that God’s mercy was something I didn’t deserve, because I knew that absolution was to come.

And I was doing it all wrong. The fact that the kyries jarred for me is, I believe, down to the wrong perspective I was adopting. That the confession was about me. About my sins.

While it’s not hard to understand why I could think in that way (after all, we are invited to recollect our sins during that confession time); it’s also easy to realise that this perspective is not consistent with our attitude during the rest of the service – of turning to God.

God who knows us (and thereby knows our sins, too), but God who is merciful, too. During the time of confession, we should not as much be focusing on our selves as we should be focusing on God’s mercy. The only point of recollecting our sins is that they are collected, wrapped up in God’s mercy.

Therefore, confession is not as much a matter of purging of sins (against some sort of virtual tally) as it is a matter of adoration and of turning to God. Therefore, it is not about humility, false repentance, or feeling sorry; and the feeling of inadequacy is uncalled for in this particular context.

When you seek God’s mercy, know that God is merciful and that you can expect it. This will change your act of contrition into an act of worship.

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Listen to the sermon on the topic here:

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Download link (right click, hit download) – Notes

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March 16, 2014 8:46 pm

Liturgy Month: the Prayer of Preparation

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This month, at Ed’s Slipper, we’re celebrating liturgy. This is because it is a rich part of both the Catholic and the Anglican heritage – and probably other denominations too, I’m just not quite as acquainted with them! Liturgy, which means literally “public worship”, refers to the way services are ordered. It includes vestments, structure, but, in a more restricted sense, means the set of prayers we read in worship.

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Photo: Charles Clegg, reused under CC License

The first prayer in the Anglican communion service is called the prayer of preparation. It goes like this:

Almighty Father,
to whom all hearts are open, all desires known,
and from whom no secrets are hidden
Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts
by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit
That we may perfectly love you
and worthily magnify your holy name
through Christ our Lord

This prayer is designed to put us in the right mindset for worship: with clean thoughts in our hearts. But while cleansing is the only petition in this prayer, a lot more happens, especially in the first three lines.

In them, we are coming into the presence of God: we are describing him as almighty – as someone greater than all of us. We are also abandoning all pretense at making ourselves look righteous, because we describe God as all-knowing. Yet this description is not one that is cold and objective: we don’t say “Almighty and all-knowing God”. No, we are saying, in this, that God knows all desires – and through this, that he cares for them. That he cares for us.

In three lines, we have expressed the amazing fact that God who is so powerful, so much greater than all of us, is also someone who cares for us, in whose presence we can enter. We have made this theoretical fact personal – at least if we meant the words behind the prayer and did more than consider them a mere introduction to the apparent meat of the prayer, the petition itself. This is, I believe, one of the purposes of all the liturgy: to help us to make those truths about God and about our relationship with Him deeply personal and heartfelt, rather than just known intellectually.

Therefore, the meat of the prayer of preparation is not the petition. Still, this petition is important too: it is a declaration of our willingness to become pure in our thoughts and a recognition of due reverence to God. More than that, though, it is asking God to cleanse us, recognising that we cannot (or at list will not) do it in our own strength. This completes the revelation from the first three lines that we cannot hide our sinful condition from God.

Finally, the prayer of preparation is completed by looking back up towards God. The aim here is not to be selective in what we are allowed to pray for, but to lift our hearts back up to God. In this, we are truly prepared for worship.

Below, you will find a sermon I preached on the topic.

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Audio download link (right click, hit download) – sermon notes

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Other posts on specific pieces of liturgy

For us and for our salvation

Go in peace to love and serve the Lord. In the name of Christ, amen!

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April 7, 2013 2:27 pm

Four steps to discipleship

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Today was my second sermon ever. I mentioned last week how I found I was struggling more than with my first sermon. Before going out to preach, I still wasn’t 100% happy with it; but after having said it, I am actually finding it better than my first sermon. Anyway, here, you can listen to it, read it (although I did ad lib a bit). But as it is long, I’ll provide a summary too.

sermon2

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Sometimes, we are locked in the cage of our own worries: fear of failure, or of what others might think, stop us from acting. And so we try to shut out that fear, going on with our lives as though there was no way to go out of that cage. That’s where the disciples are at the start of the Gospel reading, before Christ appears to them: fear-stricken, behind locked doors. And then something happens that transforms them into the bold apostles who stand up before the Sanhedrin, saying “We must obey God rather than any human authority“.

The transformation happens in this house, in this upper room, when Jesus appears to the disciples. And it has four steps:

1. Receive the risen Christ – and lean on him in all that we do. I cannot stress enough that he is already there, in our midst, even behind locked doors – no matter how many times we go back and lock the doors again. Our part in it is to recognise his presence. And that can be done through pausing, looking around us, praying, drawing near for communion, seeing Christ in our friends. But Christ needs to be the unquenchable source of our discipleship: because if we follow something else, that something will run out.

2. Receive his peace. That follows naturally from step one – as we know that Christ who defeated death is on our side; although sometimes it doesn’t feel quite like that. Again, pause, and make sure you receive Christ’s peace before rushing out. I think that in giving us his peace, Christ unlocks the door – if we run out too fast, we might hurt ourselves quite a bit.

3. Receive and embrace his command, which is simple: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you”. We are to model Christ in our discipleship – be real imitators of him, and that means doing everything out of our love for God and for others, and in a spirit of submission – even when our will goes against what is asked of us.

4. Receive the Holy Spirit: we are not alone in this action!

I think that we each tend to focus on one step rather than all four. But they are equally important, and sequential. You can’t embrace God’s command without first receiving Christ and his peace – that would not be a race of perseverance.

If we follow all four, though, we will run that race to the end, with boldness and with peace. That’s why the liturgy goes: “Go in peace to love and serve the Lord”. We are to go beyond the church’s confines, but we are to be assured of that peace. And the response grounds this action in Christ: “in the name of Christ, amen.”

Peace be with you.

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