The most important sermon of all time - every week!

The preacher ought to preach the good news of the Lord Jesus every week. 

Yet his sermons should avoid being same-y. 

He should live with the Bible text or texts for a week or more and seek to get them into his bones. He wants his own heart and mind and will to be moved, and he wants to do the same in his hearers. 

We don't want to hear from a preacher who has a moderately important message to which you probably ought to pay due regard. 

Some preachers will be really good at preaching the passage to themselves and will be moved to feel that this Bible text is the most important thing ever. We may get exited by new things we have seen in the text. 

So every week we get more exciting new discoveries and most important things ever! 

In addition to all the most important things we had last week. 

It could all be a bit exhausting and overwhelming. 

There are weightier matters of the law. Some things are more central and more important and clearer than others. Sometimes it will be right to deal with things that are, in the grand scheme of things, not of absolutely central earth-shattering importance but which still matter and are meaningful to us. For example, God's care for the cattle is perhaps not in the top three Biblical truths, but as part of the larger Biblical whole, it is something probably worth touching upon in the course of a fifty year ministry. 

Over time, ideally, we want all Bible truth in Biblical proportions from all the Scriptures, which are all profitable and necessary. And we want them in Christ through the lens of the gospel, applied to us and our circumstances. 

And indeed we want these things with an appropriate mood and atmosphere. Sometimes joy, sorrow, exulting, rebuke, correction, encouragement and so on. We need to know ourselves and our people: what are we tempted to see or feel or overlook? And what do they need?

All of which is to say that the preacher has a great and weighty task which requires lots of wisdom, skill, prayer and grace. We look to the Spirit to help us do this as well as we can alongside all our other responsibilities, always knowing that there are no perfect preachers and no perfect sermons but that God is powerful and gracious and can use mightily even our most week and feeble efforts. 

The danger of a quiet week

 Earlier this year I had a couple of quieter weeks. I could catch up on some of the long and never finished to do list. I could think a bit more about the sermon. And read. If I were more godly, I could have prayed more. 

But it is tempting to think, "Oh, I have a bit of spare capacity." Maybe I should launch a new initiative. Or I could take on a new commitment. 

Now it is Lent, which comes with an extra course. I have two funerals in the works. I am going to see two couples about baptisms. There are various other meetings in the diary. Easter is looming. And suddenly the next couple of months look pretty busy. 

And nobody wants a frazzled stressed pastor. 

It is just not possible to say, "I'm sorry, your relative may be dying, but the diary is full and I am tired so I might be able to see her in two weeks on Tuesday at 4pm". 

This is all by way of stating the obvious that there are ebbs and flows for most of us in what we have to do when. You need a bit of slack in the system at times. And you need to be flexible. 

A diary too full of important urgent things is a recipe for stress. Take on too much and you might do none of it well. You and others will be frustrated. We want to know what is essential and to make sure we don't neglect that for the sake of the many other good and attractive options.  

And neither do you want to be chronically under occupied or engaged. 

Wise not to take on too much and to have a couple of things in the background that one might do one day if one has a moment. 

A blessing and a curse of ministerial life is that there is always more one could do better, and we have to make our peace with that.  

Ash Wednesday Sermon 2024

 

Ash Wednesday 2024

St Valentine’s Day

14^th February

 

Readings:

1 John 4:7-end (p1227)

Matthew 22:34-40 (page 991)

 

In the name of the Father…

 

So here we are again for Ash Wednesday on St Valentine’s Day.

I hope you’ll forgive me a little calendar geekery.

The Ash-Valentine’s mash up is pretty rare.   

It last happened in 2018 and it will happen again for the final time this century in 2029.

Similarly it happened only three times in the 20^th Century.

So we ought to make the most of it!

Well done for being here and not in some wonderful restaurant.

As it happens we do have candles and a meal to look forward to!

 

In fact, according to the C of E, Ash Wednesday is a Principal Holy Day, so it trumps all other celebrations which might come on the same day.

You could have saved on the flowers and chocolates this year, perhaps, if you were brave.

 

But the day does give us an opportunity to think about love and lent, love and holiness – not, perhaps, things which we usually associate together.

 

If we allowed ourselves to caricature for a moment:

Love, well, that’s lovely.

All kind of fluffy and nice and kind.

Ah!

Who could be against love?

 

And holiness, well, we know that’s good and necessary, but it’s a bit like eating your greens.

Maybe it’s a little bit other worldly and spiritual – a kind of far away look in the eye.

Or maybe in its Lent iteration its very austere and frugal:

Self-denial, which may seem hard or strange when we’re so often told by our society that we ought to love ourselves.

 

Does anyone love lent?

 

But for God and for us, love and holiness ought to go together.

Maybe getting love and holiness together could refine and expand our vision of both.

We could seek a lent which is both loving and holy, holy and loving.

 

Let’s think, then, about God and then about ourselves in relation to holiness and love.

 

God is holy, holy, holy.

The most holy: the holiest, supremely superlatively super holy.

God is holy indeed and the source of all holiness.

 

The basic idea of holiness is separation, specialness, distinctness.

God is set apart.

He is unique.

And in particular he is set apart from all evil and wickedness.

He is perfectly good and entirely holy.

His eyes are too pure to look upon wrongdoing.

 

But God’s holiness is not only separateness but also expansiveness.

It is a spreading holiness:

A holiness that can make holy.

The Holy God is light.

God’s holiness shines forth.

It scatters the darkness.

 

God is love.

He is the loving fellowship of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

He made us from love, in love, for love.

God loves and loves and loves.

He is an inexhaustible fountain of love.

He is love all the way down.

 

God is rich, overflowing, abundant, generous love.

The Bible is a love story:

God is the husband; we are the church he pursues to be his bride.

Jesus our champion kills the dragon and gets the girl.

 

God’s love is holy:

He loves what is good and right and pure and healthy.

 

And God’s holiness is loving.

God’s holiness is not a cold light but a warm light:

A fire which both purifies and welcomes us in.

The light not only of the operating theatre but of the family hearth.  

 

So as the people of God we are called to be godly, to be like God in our own creaturely way.

As children of a loving and holy Father, we are to bear something of the family likeness.

God says to us, “be holy as I am holy.”

And he also says, “love one another as I have loved you.”

 

Holiness was at the heart of the Old Testament law.

But that holiness of the law is truly summarised by the first commandment to love God and the second, which is like it, which is to love our neighbours.  

 

Jesus will ask the repentant Peter three times: “do you love me?”

That’s the great question!

 

Love is the greatest virtue:

The bond of all the virtues:

The more excellent way.

There could be no true holiness without love; no true love which is not holy.

 

Holiness, it seems, is not only separate from evil, it reaches out to the world in love.

 

The two or three historical Valentines, and indeed all the martyrs, give us a picture of holy love.

They have a love stronger than death.

They love something even more than their own lives.

Theirs is a holy love which warns against contamination and compromise.

They tell us that love and holiness are worth living and dying for.

That there is a sense in which we cannot both love the world and love God:

We must choose love.  

 

If we want to know what a holy and loving life looks like for a human being, of course, we must look above all to the Lord Jesus Christ.

His love and holiness were often misunderstood and maligned.

He ate with sinners in a way that scandalised the holiness police.

He didn’t keep the sabbath rules in the way that the church wanted, so who knows what he might or might not have done during Lent if it had been invented then.

 

But Jesus wasn’t just in to love and neglectful of holiness.

He said that his followers would need a righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and the pharisees:

A holiness not only of appearances, but of the heart.

Jesus would have us tithe our herbs, but also attend to justice, mercy and faith.

We need not only to white-wash the outside but to let the light into the murky depths of our souls.

 

Jesus calls us to a real and deep repentance – to turn from sin back to love.

 

Jesus shows us what true love and holiness mean and look like.

 

This is love:

Not flowers and chocolates and bad verse, but that Jesus loved us and gave his life for us, an unholy people, to make us holy.

Greater love has no man than this, that he lays down his life for his friends.

Indeed, Jesus goes further: he dies for his enemies, for the unlovely to make them lovely.

 

Love did not simply overlook sin: it was too holy for that.
Love required atonement – at one ment.

Sin estranges us.

It harms love and holiness.

It pollutes.  

We needed to be reconciled to God and God to us.

God the Son was the atoning sacrifice, the propitiation for our sins.

God Himself absorbed and spent his holy anger, his wrath, which is itself an aspect of his love, that we might enjoy his holy love.

 

May God grant us a loving holiness and a holy love.

Let us pray this Lent for a more perfect love which drives out fear that we might love God and love our neighbour with the love which comes from the God who is Love.   

 

And so to God the Father…  

 

* * *

 

https://marclloyd.blogspot.com/2018/02/a-homily-on-love-and-duty.html

 

Simon Vibert - https://metamorphe.wordpress.com/2024/01/31/asceticism-or-amore/?fbclid=IwAR3ahUV6-qRgkflPi8yLHAfmVip3IRbBUUaARK2W4hOLWH8SKYOm6JQbfQ0

An All Age Talk on Jumpers for the Diocesan Year of the New Testament

 

Old and New Testament Jumpers and Key Gospel Truths

Old Testament jumpers – no mixed fibres, holiness, separateness

Leviticus 19:19 - “You shall keep my statutes…. You shall not you wear a garment of cloth made of two kinds of material.

Deuteronomy 22:11 - “You shall not wear cloth of wool and linen mixed together.”

 

The basic idea of holiness is separation, distinctness, to be set apart as special, separate from all sin

 

It was never about jumpers that God was principally concerned!

 

The clothing is a picture of the people of God.

 

The holiness and purity of the people of God.

 

New Testament jumpers

 

New Testament: ceremonial law abolished (Jesus declared all foods clean, for example. The curtain in the temple torn in two by God, the temple destroyed in AD 70 etc.)

 

Of course the church must continue to be distinct and holy (salt etc.)

 

But your jumper can now contain mixed fibres!

 

And likewise the church contains people of every tribe and language and people and nation made one by faith in Christ and set apart from the world.

 

In the New Testament there is a new welcome, a new radical inclusion in Christ who makes us holy and overcomes our divisions. This multicoloured, variegated church of black and white, rich and poor, educated and uneducated, etc. etc. displays the manifold wisdom of God.

 

https://nuakh.uk/2024/02/05/mixed-fibres/

 

On Asylum Seekers and Christianity

 

 

The controversy about asylum seekers claiming to be Christians is fascinating in a number of ways.

 

(Readers might also recall a relevant West Wing episode!)

 

On why one might claim to be a Christian

 

The pendulum has swung on this throughout church history. From persecuted and misunderstood minority, Constantine took Christianity mainstream. A profession may be advantageous. For some roles it was required. But the long death of Christianity has seen the social cache of the church decline. Observant nominalism is probably pretty rare these days, perhaps except among the elderly. Nowadays, bible believing Christians might again be seen as weird, foolish or even bad. So the asylum seeker may have unusual and particular motives.

 

On what is a Christian

 

And how one might be recognised. And who is to judge?

 

By their fruits shall ye know them. But is this really a matter for the courts?

 

Normally, we would expect a certain amount of knowledge, of intellectual commitment, of heartfelt trust, of changed life.

 

1 John might give tests of doctrine, conduct and love.

 

A Christian is one who trusts in Jesus and Lord and Saviour. But so many are unclear on this.

 

How many professing Christians would pass these tests with flying colours?

 

As the old poster put it, “If you were arrested for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict?”

 

We can easily try to apply faulty criteria. It is tempting to give asylum seekers a quiz on the names of the Apostles or the books of the New Testament, but this tells us little about the heart of the matter, which is a matter of the heart.

 

On baptism policy

 

In the C of E, anyone living in the parish has a right to be baptised after suitable preparation and other things being equal. It is ultimately for the candidate to make the promises and declarations and for the priest to exhort them to do so thoughtfully and sincerely. There is no theology exam.

 

It now seems that some sections of the press would like the clergy to make jolly sure that asylum seekers pass the ten-week Christianity Explored course with flying colours and serve on the coffee rota for a few months. I wonder if they feel the same when their grandchild is up for baptism in the pretty parish church.

 

On the relationship between state and church

 

The C of E has rightly pointed out that it is not its job to police asylum claims.

 

The church can too easily be claimed to be the reactionary traditional conservative Tory Party at prayer and to have been captured by Guardian reading prelates. Whilst being responsible citizens, the church must absolutely live by the standards and values of a different Kingdom.

Essentialism: The One Necessary Thing

 

I have been reading a business book by Greg McKeown, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less (Virgin Books / Ebury Publishing / Penguin Random House, 2014). McKeown describes two experiences that caused him to rethink how he was living. As a young man, he sat down with a blank sheet of paper and brainstormed for twenty minutes about what he might like to do with his life. He had filled the paper. But he noticed that nowhere did it say “Go to Law School.” Which he says was awkward, as he was currently pursing legal studies.

 

Second, he tells of an email which he received from his boss while his wife was pregnant. It said, “1-2pm on Friday would be really bad time to have this baby.” He sort of assumed it was a joke. But sure enough the baby was born on Friday. After being with his wife in the hospital, McKeown headed off to the supposedly crucial client meeting. His boss claimed the client admired him for being there at such a time, but he wasn’t sure he did. And in fact nothing ever came of the meeting, even though McKeown had managed to upset his wife by going to it.

 

McKeown points out that for 500 years the English word “priority” was only ever used in the singular. It meant the prior, the first, thing. But since 1900 we can speak of “priorities”. He describes working for a company which listed its ten top priorities. Of course, if we are trying to focus on ten first things, it is very hard to do any of them really well.

 

We would each do well, perhaps, to pause and ask what few things really matter to us the most.

 

Jesus in fact once said that only one thing was needful. Martha was busy and distracted, anxious about many things, serving, working hard, getting things ready. Her sister, Mary, sat at Jesus’ feet listening to him, in the classic position of a disciple (a learner or apprentice) attending to a Master-Teacher (a Rabbi). Jesus says only a “few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”

 

Whatever else we do, may we take the time and space we need to listen to Jesus, to receive his words and to put them into practice.   

Prayer as Sacrament

According to 'Practicing the Way', John Mark Comer, the Jesuit spiritual director Jean-Pierre de Caussade called prayer "the sacrament of the present moment".

Parish Magazine Item for The Diocesan Years Of...

 

From The Rectory

 

In 2023, the Diocese of Chichester focused on the Old Testament. This year we are thinking about the New Testament. And 2024 will be a Year of Faith to mark 1700 years since The Council of Nicaea and 950 years of Christian mission based in Chichester, the home of our diocesan cathedral.

 

The relationship between Old and New Testaments and Christian doctrine is often misunderstood. Clearly there are differences between them, but what is much more remarkable is the unity of Testaments and Christian confession.

 

It is quite common to hear someone say that they are more of a New Testament Christian than an Old Testament person. They mean they are nice and kind and not keen on war etc. But, if I may say so, this involves rather misleading caricatures about the Bible.  

 

It is very hard to make any sense of the New Testament without the Old. As Christians have often said, the New is in the Old concealed and the Old is in the New revealed. But actually the Old Testament is often pretty obviously looking for a New Testament fulfilment. Jesus’ identity as Israel’s Messiah (the Christ, the Anointed One, the long-promised rescuer king) is only comprehensible based on expectations going back to the book of Genesis itself and the promise of a Serpent-Crusher who will defeat evil and undo the curse on sin. We could wax lyrical about all the patterns and pictures which Jesus, the prophet, priest and king fulfils.  

 

Arguably, the Trinity, atonement, resurrection and many other Christian themes are all clearly present in the Old Testament. They are not hiding if we have eyes to see them.

 

The commands to love God and neighbour come in the Old Testament. Old Testament religion was a matter of love.

 

When the New Testament itself comes to sum up the teaching of the Old Testament prophets and the New Testament apostles, it does so in almost the opposite way that we might expect. According to Saint Peter in Acts chapter 10, “All the [Old Testament] prophets testify about him [Jesus] that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.” Whereas the New Testament apostles proclaim a message of coming judgement: that he, the risen Lord Jesus, “is the one whom God appointed as judge of the living and the dead.” The Old Testament speaks of forgiveness; the New Testament speaks of judgement. Old Testament bad and horrible; New Testament nice and lovely obviously misses the mark.

 

Christian teaching is not merely a repetition of what the Bible says, but the Bible remains true, clear, necessary and sufficient. All that we need to know for salvation and godliness is taught well enough in the Bible, if we will only seek to understand it prayerfully together. The task of Christian doctrine is to study more deeply what the Bible teaches and to articulate it afresh in each generation, applying it to new situations using all the help which tradition, reason and experience can give. In a sense it might be claimed that The Nicene Creed is just an attempt to summarise what the Bible teaches and what all Christians everywhere has always believed, even if it uses some technical terms not found in the Bible itself. It aims to expound and apply, to show the meaning and implications of the Bible, not to pour in alien ideas.

 

Over this three-year period, let’s pray for a deeper appreciation of the Bible and the Christian faith. And in particular, let us pray that we get beyond an academic interest in these things or a merely intellectual understanding. We aim not only to stuff our heads with more understanding but we ask that God might move our hearts, wills and hands with these great truths: that we might see what they mean for us and how they make a difference on a rainy Wednesday afternoon.    

 

The Revd Marc Lloyd

The Newness of the New Testament

 

I am attempting to preach two sermons for the Diocesan Year of the New Testament in these couple of weeks before Lent.

 

I have one on the nature and purpose of the New Testament in which I try to say something about the historical reliability of the gospels, Jesus’ identity as Lord, the truth and authority of the Bible and the goal that we might meet Jesus there, hear his voice, believe in him and have new life in his name. It deserves a whole sermon series, I know!

 

I am also thinking of saying something about the newness (or otherwise) of the New Testament / Covenant. All the time seeking to proclaim and apply the good news of Jesus, not just to give an academic lecture.

 

So perhaps you can help me on content and implications. Much of the New Testament actually wrestles with issues related to this (how will Jew and Gentile relate in the church, what of the Law of Moses etc.), but perhaps few of our people are tempted to live as Old Testament Jews, so we need to work out where the rub is for us.

 

Continuity

 

The same Triune God!

 

The unity of Scripture: God’s big picture – The Old Testament the Word of God not the Word of God Emeritus

 

Love in the Old Testament; wrath in the New Testament

 

One work of creation and redemption – one plan of salvation – The Covenant of Grace (in Old and New Testament administrations)

 

Salvation always only by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, to the glory of God alone

 

The Newness of the New Testament

 

Here is Jesus come in the flesh!

 

The incarnation, life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus

 

The Old Testament not abolished but fulfilled – from shadows to substance

 

Something of an internalising and intensification of the Law in the teaching of Jesus? (Though this obviously wasn’t absent in the Old Testament).

 

(To say the NT goes from physical to spiritual etc. would probably be overstating it and misleading?)

 

All foods declared clean

 

The temple and the sacrificial system, Jesus and the church – the torn curtain, the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70

 

The people of God no longer infants under the tutelage of the Law – a mature learning from the wisdom of the Law, an internalising of its message of love

 

The New Testament itself, of course!

 

New sacraments

 

Pentecost: The outpouring of the Spirit to permanently indwell all God’s people

 

The gospel going to all the nations and the radical inclusion and equality of the people of God as those who have faith in Jesus

 

Looking forward not to the coming of Christ but to his Second Coming

 

A new and better glory!

 

Applications?

 

Read your New Testament (and Old Testament), obviously!

 

Delight in and stick with this Jesus and his gospel

 

Share this Jesus and his gospel with all the nations

 

* * *

 

Right? What else and so what? How would you aim to communicate some of this engagingly on a Sunday morning?

 

Again, this is probably far too much for one sermon so what main thing or things would you want to communicate?