Dear friends,
Welcome this week’s update, including the sermon I preached yesterday in Lealholm and Castleton.
For full details of all our upcoming meetings, events and services, please check out the calendar on our website at this link:
Middle ESK Moor - Services and Events Calendar
In the next few days we’ve got:
Tuesday 10-12 Community Cafe at Goathland Village Hall
Wednesday 9-9:45 Holy Communion at The Bield, Beckhole Lane, Goathland
Thursday 10:30-3 Vi's Community Cafe in Grosmont at St Matthew's including 1:30-2:30 Play Space
And a reminder about our two very special services on:
Ash Wednesday, 14 February, 10 am Goathland; 6 pm Grosmont ‘Meditation on the Seven Last Words’
Do email me back if there’s anything i can help you with.
Go well this week, with blessings and all good wishes,
Anthony
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Sermon: a powerful language of faith!
Please follow this link for the Readings and Prayers.
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts together be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our rock, and redeemer. Amen.
It’s wonderful to be here with you all this morning!
In the Church of England, we’re back in what we call ‘ordinary time’ today, a time that takes up the majority of the year in the gaps between Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter and Pentecost. It’s a time when our readings help to show us how to live out our Christian faith, day-by-day. Ordinary time is ‘green’ – a sign of growth, new shoots, new life. Rather like seeing the shoots of the daffodils starting to push up through the snowdrops. Hence, my green stole today.
Most denominations of the Church around the world follow the readings in what we call the ‘revised common lectionary,’ but the Church of England is an unusual exception this week. Our Roman Catholic, Baptist and Methodist friends will be continuing with the theme of Epiphany today. My counterparts will still be wearing white stoles, and they’ll be reading and learning from Mark’s gospel about more amazing miracles and Jesus’ healing power. Instead, the Church of England has chosen a different focus; to dip back into ordinary time and focus on the new shoots, and new life, a little earlier than our friends in other denominations.
So, here in this place, we have quite a unique opportunity this morning, and if we focus on our gospel reading, it’s an emphasis that, on the face of it, seems to take us back to Christmas again. But all the readings set for today, I think, are there to help us reflect on very complex matters of faith. Our readings speak of the creation of the universe, at the very beginning of time, far beyond the capacity of our human brains to imagine and comprehend. Our readings speak of an infinite God in Christ; and an intimate incarnate God in Jesus. Christ Jesus, fully God and fully human: the Creator of the universe somehow living a human life among us. And this, for me, marks out the unique distinctiveness of our Christian faith. Through Christ Jesus, Jesus Christ, we can each have a personal intimate relationship with the infinite creator of the universe.
And how amazing is that: Jesus Christ, fully man as Jesus, fully God as Christ!
Jesus Christ, the one that chose to enter our three dimensions of space and one dimension of time, choosing to be with us. Jesus Christ, the intimate essence of God that becomes part of humanity: one of the Three Persons of The Trinity:
The Father, the essence of an eternal and infinite God that exists outside our comprehension of space and time, outside our comprehension of the universe.
The Son, Jesus Christ, the essence of an infinite and intimate God: Immanuel, God with us in the universe and in our hearts.
The Holy Spirit, the essence of God that continues to bring us infinite and intimate power.
That’s all potentially quite confusing for us to explain to others exploring the Christian faith. And that’s because the language of faith is probably always going to be confusing. Those that have gone before us in the Church have tried to explain The Trinity and the natures and essences of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And, for some of us, language and explanation and rational thought are ways into being able to comprehend elements of the incomprehensible.
We’ve been running a fortnightly discussion group in Egton and Grosmont we’ve called ‘sharing space’ – a place to talk and think about the language we use to describe faith. We’ve had some fascinating, lengthy and incredibly valuable discussions about all sorts of interconnected infinite and intimate elements: faith, truth, religion, science, energy, waves, and the nature of good and evil: all very big topics! Different perspectives are incredibly valuable. Discussions help us to point ourselves towards the greater infinite reality that we and the universe exist within. Different opinions and perspectives reflect the creativity of a God that creates all people equal, yet completely unique, with our own passions and perspectives. But how can we take those perspectives, write them down and synthesise them for others to read? How can we convey the essence and nature of the faith we have in Jesus Christ? How can we speak of such matters?
Well, the biblical writers know that really only the language of poetry will suffice. And we see poetic words woven into and through all our readings this morning. The objective prose, one language of faith, soon gets tangled in its own logic. Scientific language reaches its limits. Only poetry can really convey the immense mystery of these enormous ideas.
So, the opening part of the Gospel of John, that we’ve read, uses imagery to convey its message: The Word became flesh; the light shines in the darkness; we have seen his glory. The poetry is magnificent, and this passage deserves its fame for its poetry alone. But the point John is making is of the most deep and profound significance. John uses the term "Word" for the one who became incarnate, echoing the Wisdom language of the Old Testament. By doing so, John reinforces his point, that the one who became human and lives among us, is none other than the one who was present at the foundation of the world. Jesus Christ: fully human and fully God.
The author echoes the language we have in the book of Proverbs, which describes wisdom as being alongside God when he laid the foundations of the earth. And John also echoes the language of Genesis, which begins with the phrase, "In the beginning.’ John makes connections between God, the Father’s, eternal actions in the beginning and God, the Son’s, infinite actions in Christ. Jesus Christ, the Word who became flesh, "was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him." The one who brought the very first light out of the dark wastes, described in Genesis, is the hope who now shines in the darkness. And all this poetry seeks to describe the indescribable. A poetic language of faith, written in today’s readings for this unique week of ‘ordinary time,’ in the Church of England.
How can those readings help us to speak of such deep matters of faith into the communities we serve? Well, firstly, the poetic imagery of today’s readings reminds us of the eternal and infinite stability of God. Jesus Christ doesn’t appear from nowhere as a kind of random teacher and miracle worker. Jesus isn’t just a prophet. John's Gospel asserts that the incarnation of Jesus Christ, the Word, was all part of God's action in the universe and plan from the very beginning.
Creation and Re-Creation belong together.
We can trust God, because it was God who formed us and our world. It was God who cared enough for our world to come and live in it. The God we worship today is that same creator God, known to us through the teachings of Jesus Christ, and the ongoing action of the Holy Spirit.
What else do our poetic readings today tell us? Well, order in the universe is asserted: we’re not an accident and our world isn’t either. And, the creation of the world has purpose, and so does its re-creation.
The world began when God spoke his Word, and it will not end until he says so. And we live in the here and now, in the midst of the world’s re-creation. From the Greek for "word" we get our word "logic". And we could say there’s a logic to the universe: but it’s God's own logic, God’s purposes being worked out. Purposes that we cannot imagine or comprehend. The world out there may seem like a dark, dangerous and meaningless place sometimes, but we’re assured that "the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it."
It may be difficult at times to see God's purposes as more than a flickering candle in the dark. But the incarnation of the Word means we’ve seen those purposes in our own shape, intimately in the person of Jesus: we’re given a glimpse of God's purposes in human form, to help us live in the here and now, in the midst of the world’s re-creation. Jesus Christ, fully man as Jesus, fully God as Christ: our role model. And, words of stability, order and purpose, are spoken to us through today’s readings as we begin ‘ordinary time,’ spoken to us in the Church of England in this place at this time, spoken to us through poetry, a powerful language of faith:
“The Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory."
That’s enough for me.
Amen.
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The Reverend Anthony Bennett
Interim Minister – the Benefice of Middle ESK Moor
middleESKmoor.org
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These two books, edited by Jane Williams, are continuing to be very helpful with planning my sermon writing:
Williams, J (2009), Ed., ‘Lost for Words, A Sermon Resource for the Anglican Three Year Cycle,’ Redemptorist Publications, Chawton, UK.
Williams, J (2011), Ed., ‘Lectionary Reflections, Years A, B and C.’ Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, London, UK.