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THE REVD JONATHAN AITKEN ASH WEDNESDAY HOMILY WEDNESDAY 26 FEBRUARY AT 6.30pm ST MATTHEW’S WESTMINSTER “Be reconciled to God” declared St Paul in our first reading. With passionate eloquence the great apostle devoted the next fourteen verses of his second letter to the Corinthians with specific exhortations on how to achieve this reconciliation:
And Jesus was also specific in our Gospel reading, giving important commands on the Sermon on the Mount about
So let’s leave the specifics to be pondered on and prayed over privately during the next six weeks of Lent. But how do they relate to the traditionally reflective and penitential Service of our Ash Wednesday liturgy. * * * A few months ago, I presided over my first funeral as a newly ordained priest. It concluded in a beautiful Cotswold churchyard in Bibury Oxfordshire. As the body of my old friend and school contemporary was lowered into the grave, the Book of Common Prayers office of the burial of the dead required me to cast handfuls of dusty earth on to his coffin Saying the words:
It is the same thought and almost the same words that form the centrepiece of our Ash Wednesday liturgy. In a few moments we will be using language which derives from the story of the Fall in Genesis 3:19 when God tells Adam: “Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return”. Now on the other 364 days in the year, most of us tend not to do much thinking about our return to dust – our death. But this is the day when perhaps we should harken to our liturgy and the lessons to be learned from it. We should pause in our daily pressures as creatures of earthly time and pray about our prospects for heavenly eternity. * * * A few days ago, I had a cup of coffee in Cambridge with former Archbishop Rowan Williams. He was packing up his books and furniture for his move to retire to Wales. I asked him what he was going to do in his so-called retirement. Unexpectedly he replied “Amongst other things I am going to prepare for a good Christian death”. That’s a profound thought for this evening. An Ash Wednesday Service gives us a space to reflect on our own mortality, our sinfulness and our need to repent. Repentance, like the happiness that flows from it, is an inside job. It is a paradox that while marking our faces with the external ashes of penitence, we truly need to go away to start work on the internal effort of metanoia the Greek word for repentance which translates as: “Changing your heart and mind”. And this is a process as Jesus reminded us on the Sermon on the Mount which is best done in secret in the privacy in our hearts and minds and prayers. The traditional Old Testament reading for Ash Wednesday comes from the Book of Joel and begins with these magnificent words: “Rend your heart and not your garments Return to the Lord your God For he is gracious and merciful Slow to anger and abounding in love”. We will inevitably one day return from ashes to ashes and from dust to dust But right here and now let us resolve to return first to the Lord our God To reconcile ourselves to him And to experience the joy of his forgiveness and in love. This is a journey which can begin today on this Ash Wednesday at the start of Lent
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THE REVD JONATHAN AITKEN SERMON Sunday 9 February 2020 ST MATTHEW’S WESTMINSTER Matthew 5 13:20 Our Gospel reading today challenges us to reflect on the theme of Spiritual Light. In all its Glory Its Strengths Its Subtlety and Its Surprising Paradoxes Which Jesus highlighted with unfamiliar metaphors about Bushels Lampstands Hills, Cities and Darkness Last Sunday here at St Matthew’s we were enjoying the comforting reassuring light of Candlemas. Amidst beautiful music and flickering candles we listened to the prophecy of Simeon that the baby Jesus he was holding in his arms would be “a light to lighten the Gentiles”. It almost sounded as though we could stay passively in our comfort zone of light leaving God to get on with the work of illuminating the Gentiles. However, today we are put on our mettle by the much more challenging words of Jesus from the Sermon on the Mount: “Let your light so shine before men” he exhorts us. “So that they may see your good works and give glory to your father in heaven” So, our Gospel readings on successive Sundays have been a contrast between active and passive illumination of our faith. Now this is a familiar ambivalence among believers. Do we prefer to practice our faith in twilight? Or to get out into the uncomfortable heat of the day to do the heavy lifting of discipleship in sunlight? Are we the contemplative church reticent? Or the church militant, fighting the good fight in the floodlights of modern Evangelism. And let’s face it there are times when we just don’t feel like being shining lights. There can even be times when, to quote Simon & Garfunkel we prefer to say: “Hello Darkness My Old Friend”. So, there are paradoxes here. * * * Culturally and geographically I grew up in the comparative darkness and austerity of post War East Anglia. In the counties of “silly Suffolk” and “normal for Norfolk”; local worthies speaking with their traditional accents pronounced the opposite of darkness to be “loight”. Top of the hit parade in those days was a pop song from The Singing Postman of Norwich “Hev Yew Gotta Loight Boy?” And there was a joke doing the rounds in the pubs which sold Cobbold Ales or Tollys Bitter which went like this: A young man comes into the pub carrying a large lamp. An old yokel in the pub asks him: Hey bor where are yew a goin’ with that there loight? Young Man: I’m a goin’ a courtin’ Old Man (scornfully): In mine yung daze the last thing yew want’ed when you was goin’ a courtin’ was to take a loight with you.. Young Man: Well, when’s I look at yours old missus, oi think you wuda dun a darn sight betta if yew ‘ad taken a loight! * * * Jesus clearly thought that his disciples and followers should take a light with them and shine it brightly. He was following in the footsteps of the Old Testament Law and the prophets. After all the first verse of the first chapter of the Book of Genesis declares “And God said let there be light and there was light.” The Psalms contain many references to light. For instance, Psalm 119 teaches: “Let your word word be a lantern to my feet” And the prophesies of Isaiah are full of memorable verses on this theme such as: “The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light”. This tradition continues into our liturgy our hymnody and into contemporary worship songs such as one of the favourite repetitive choruses in charismatic Evangelical Churches “Shine Jesus Shine”. But let’s go deeper today and ask how in the 21st century we should honour this teaching of Jesus. “Let your light shine before men”. I suggest there are three key steps towards this: PREPARATION ILLUMINATION GLORIFICATION * * * In the world of movies, a big box office hit right now showing in cinemas is The Lighthouse and one of its subthemes is how thoroughly Lighthouse keepers have to
The imperative need to prepare before we can transmit applies also to the light of our Christian faith. This can be demonstrated by a couple of examples here in this church today. All this week Father Philip has been away at a retreat for Senior Priests conducted by former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams. I am sure that the kind of prayerful contemplative teaching at this retreat will help Father Philip prepare to shine many a light in his sermons to us in the coming seasons of Lent and Easter. Also on this theme of theological preparation may I say a warm word of welcome to St Matthew’s today to a good friend of ours who is visiting from the USA, Peter McDonald. Peter is Chairman of his family charity the McDonald Agape Foundation, which has a unique record of supporting Christian Scholars, theologians, teaching institutions and innovative ministries on both sides of the Atlantic. In the UK McDonald Foundation beneficiaries range from Rowan Williams who has just completed a three year spell as Visiting McDonald Professor of Theology at St Mellitus College to the Anselm Community at Lambeth Palace to the McDonald Centre of Theology, Ethics and Public Life at Oxford University and to individual scholarships and projects which now stretch through five universities and theological colleges and even include a new outreach mission to Christian civil servants in Whitehall. That’s a fine record of preparing God’s servants to shine their light into the darkness of our secular world. Yet good preparation is not enough. It has to be matched by good illumination. Jesus has some telling words to say about this in today’s Gospel reading, with his command, strange to our contemporary ears “Do not hide your light under a bushel” Now the word bushel here refers to a measuring basket big enough to cover a lamp. He is describing a light not snuffed out but covered up. The light is not extinguished, but it is ineffective. Because it is seen by far too few people. Mainly by people already inside the cover of the bushel. Isn’t the description “inside the cover of the bushel/basket” something of a metaphor for too many inward-looking churches? Jesus did not want his followers to be clandestine Christians, hunkering down in their private spiritual bunkers. St Matthew’s is certainly not such an introspective bunker. We know that telling the good news is our duty and our joy. But we do need to keep asking are we doing everything we can to shine as a Christian community? Could it be for example, that failing to use the most up to date methods of communication on social media about our ministry, our services – is the 21st century equivalent of hiding our light under a bushel? By all means let’s stick to the ancient paths as the prophet Jeremiah advised his followers but finding new ways to lighten our darkness along those paths must surely be a good way to glorify our Father who is in heaven. And so finally to glorification. There are a multitude of ways to glorify God – privately, corporately, and publicly. Inner lights of the soul can be just as important as outer lights directed to the world. Good works are among these lights, provided we remember that they are not our good works, but God’s good works manifesting themselves through us. Individual examples of kindness, if they are inspired by him, Glorify God. Individual people who with the help of their private prayerful faith turn away from wrong paths like sin or drug addiction glorify God Holy celebration of Mass glorifies God. And beautiful church music glorifies God. On Tuesday here we had a wonderful example of this with a spectacular Choral Evensong. No less than 42 singers brought here by a brilliant one woman social media drive by Jessica Stewart, came here to sing a traditional Book of Common Prayer evensong in a do-it-yourself choir of remarkable quality. They were supported by a further congregation of about 20. Most of the 60 plus people here on Tuesday were young and had never been to St Matthew’s Westminster before. So, this was a musical way of letting our light shine. I hope we will have many more such Choral Evensongs bringing light and life into our Church in the year ahead. * * * The Sermon on the Mount is full of challenges. But the gauntlet thrown down by today’s Gospel reading, “Let your light so shine before men” is one which as individuals and as a Church we can surely take up and honour. Amen The Revd Jonathan Aitken Sermon for Sunday 19 January 2020 St Matthew’s Westminster, 20 Great Peter Street
THE REVD JONATHAN AITKEN SERMON Sunday 19 January 2020 ST MATTHEW’S WESTMINSTER Isaiah 49 1-7 1 Corinthians 1: 1-9 John 1: 29 – 42 1 The Revd Jonathan Aitken Sermon for Sunday 19 January 2020 St Matthew’s Westminster, 20 Great Peter Street “Here is the Lamb of God!” These six words were pivotal to the start of the Ministry of Jesus on the banks of the River Jordan some twenty-one centuries ago. They bestowed on Our Lord an unforgettable title which has become indelibly woven into the language and liturgy of devotion. In a few minutes time we will hear them today as the familiar invitation to our Eucharist. What did they mean to the first Disciples? 2 The Revd Jonathan Aitken Sermon for Sunday 19 January 2020 St Matthew’s Westminster, 20 Great Peter Street What do they mean to us? Fasten your theological seat belts! The complexities of Johannine Christology do not produce many humorous witticisms, but one from the 19th century said that the opening chapters of the fourth Gospel are like a pool in which a child may paddle, or an elephant may swim. If we go down the elephantine route beloved of learned theologians we will soon be getting out of our depths if we analyse the conundrums of Lambology such as: Was John referring to the Passover Lamb? Or to the victim lamb portrayed in the prophetic visions of Isaiah and Jeremiah. Let’s forget these arcane academic controversies which have preoccupied many scholars in their ivory towers but produced few answers. Instead let’s take the child-friendly paddling route because this Gospel reading becomes easier to understand if we simply concentrate on the human reactions to the key words in this passage. In real life, responses to an invitation, a call, a speech or even to a sermon can be just as important as the original words of the message. 3 The Revd Jonathan Aitken Sermon for Sunday 19 January 2020 St Matthew’s Westminster, 20 Great Peter Street The ancient world understood this. The two greatest orators of their age were Cicero and Demosthenes. The difference between them was that when Cicero finished a speech everyone reacted by applauding and saying: “How well he spoke!” When Demosthenes finished his peroration, his hearers rose up shouting: “Let us march!” But in today’s Gospel reading the first reactions to the words of John the Baptist and then to the words of Jesus were far more profoundly life changing. These reactions were produced not by oratory, or by argument, or by persuasion but by the loving gentleness of three key phrases: 1. “Here is the Lamb of God” 2. “Who takes away the sin of the world” -from John the Baptist 3. “Come and See” - from Jesus Two Millenia ago in rural Israel the symbolism of shepherds, sheep and lambs were well understood. Some of that symbolism came from the Scriptures of the Old Testament such as the 23rd Psalm. Or the Lamb provided by God to Abraham for sacrifice in place of Isaac in Genesis. 4 The Revd Jonathan Aitken Sermon for Sunday 19 January 2020 St Matthew’s Westminster, 20 Great Peter Street Or the lamb that is led to the slaughter in the suffering servant songs of Isaiah. But I doubt whether this imagery would have made anything like as much impact as it did on the banks of the river Jordan if John the Baptist had not linked together his first phrase ‘the lamb of God’ to his second phrase ‘who takes away the sin of the world’. The combination of these two phrases ushered in the revolution of the New Testament. Now the forgiveness of sin by God was not unknown as a concept for the ancient people of Israel. Their Old Testament God, Jahweh, could and did take away sin by divine judgement, but often by imposing sentences which required punishment, atonement or even scapegoating while leaving whole generations unforgiven for the sins of their fathers. What was revolutionary at the start of the New Testament, in John the Baptist’s words, was the clear implication that Jesus was willing to sacrifice himself like a lamb in order that everyone’s sins could be forgiven. The magnitude and universality of that generosity seems to have been grasped by two of John’s Disciples. For they immediately left their Master, John himself, and began to follow Jesus. 5 The Revd Jonathan Aitken Sermon for Sunday 19 January 2020 St Matthew’s Westminster, 20 Great Peter Street That surely must have been a huge heart-wrenching decision for them. Think in our own time of changing from one denomination or church or religion to another. If anyone was thinking of leaving St Matthew’s to start worshipping at Holy Trinity Brompton. Of going over to Rome. Or even converting to Islam. That is not the kind of decision to be taken lightly or quickly. Yet John the Baptist clearly did approve of the immediate and momentous decision taken by his Disciples. Of course, he was not any sort of competitor with Jesus. John had been supernaturally guided to be the first recogniser, the proclaimer, the baptizer of the Lamb of God. Later on in the gospel, John is recorded as saying of Jesus: “He will become greater. I must become less” That is an important example of humility for all of us who seek to follow Jesus. We have to lessen our egos and diminish our personal priorities in order to give the greater commitment in our lives to Him. 6 The Revd Jonathan Aitken Sermon for Sunday 19 January 2020 St Matthew’s Westminster, 20 Great Peter Street *** Returning to the scene described in our reading, It was not just those two disciples of John whose lives were changed by the events described in today’s Gospel. The baptism of Jesus had just taken place at which the Holy Spirit had descended from heaven like a dove. And the next day two curious Galilean fishermen who had heard John’s words approached this mysterious Jesus figure – the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world – and asked him the mundane question: “Where are you staying?” And Jesus replied, “Come and See?” Come and See what? We can be sure that this was not a superficial invitation to the fishermen to come and take a look at his Air B n B accommodation. But we should note at this early stage in his ministry Jesus was completely unknown. He had not preached the Sermon on the Mount. He had not healed anyone who was sick. He had not fed the five thousand, walked on the water, changed water into wine or carried out any other signs or miracles. So, “Come and See” was not on the face of it all that exciting an invitation. 7 The Revd Jonathan Aitken Sermon for Sunday 19 January 2020 St Matthew’s Westminster, 20 Great Peter Street Yet, the simple words, “Come and See” must have had their own mystical and powerful attraction. For Andrew and his brother Simon Peter did come and see. They spent several hours with Jesus. It seems that his personality embodied what he was soon to proclaim. For they became his first disciples. When Jesus invites us, will we come? And if so what will we become? Most of us will come to his altar in a few minutes time in response to the words “Behold the Lamb of God. Many are called to his supper”. That invitation was made in similar gentle, subtle forms by Jesus several times during his ministry, often to sinners and social outcasts no-one else wanted to invite to supper. My favourite example of Jesus’s style of inviting is recorded in an evocative verse from the Book of Revelation illustrated by a wonderful painting. The painting is by the Victorian artist Holman Hunt. It depicts Jesus knocking on the door of a dilapidated ramshackle old cottage which is covered in thorns and briars. And the verse from Revelation 3: 13 quotes Jesus saying: “Behold I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door 8 The Revd Jonathan Aitken Sermon for Sunday 19 January 2020 St Matthew’s Westminster, 20 Great Peter Street I will come in and have supper with him, and he with me”. It’s a longer variation of “Come and See”. The Holman Hunt painting brilliantly highlights a detail in the portrayal of that rusty ramshackled old door. The detail is that there is no door handle. So, this is a door that cannot be opened from the outside. It is the artist’s reminder that Jesus’s invitations can only be accepted if we open the door of our hearts to him. That is the journey of faith which runs all the way from the banks of the River Jordan 21 centuries ago to the altar of St Matthew’s today. The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, and all our most personal and private sins too, is inviting us to Come and See, to Come and have supper with him. May we like those first disciples, accept his invitation with joyful, grateful hearts. Amen 9 2 Corinthians 4. 1-16, St Matthew 9. 9-13
It is a truth, not universally acknowledged, that Christianity flourished in these islands long before Augustine came to Canterbury and Milletus came to London. Just one year after Augustine landed near Canterbury a devout monk and scribe became Bishop of Lindisfarne Before that he had spent several years in the monastery scripting and decorating the most treasured of Anglo Saxon documents, now in the British Library. In the Lindisfarne Gospels the monk spent as much time meditating as writing and his reflection on the character of St Mathew is rendered at the beginning of the gospel by the magnificent letters M, A. The painting is an icon in itself. The main letter is made of two great bows and five animal heads are introduced, two of them combined to form a single face. It is as if the personality of Matthew intercedes into the wild surroundings of the coast of Northumbria. So let dear Matthew intercede in and for today’s wilderness of Westminster. In his memoirs stretching to 16 chapters he refers to himself only twice and then very briefly. He writes about himself in the third person. There is no self- justification, no excruciating apologies and no criticism of others. Just fact - and we are left at the end with an assessment and portrait - of - someone else. But his story begins with Matthew with his head down, preoccupied with his accounts and the safety of the money he is collecting. The people who come to him are grudging, not only because he is collecting taxes but because he is the representative of an occupying power. In provincial Galilee they see very little spent on public amenities and more on the soldiers who keep them supressed. These grudging tax payers also suspect, probably correctly, that Matthew is taking his percentage from what they resentfully give him. It is a world full of blame, relentless conflict, entrenched attitudes, secrecy and lies. Of course it couldn’t happen in today’s enlightened parliamentary democracies. Matthew endures it because it’s his livelihood and because he is obsessed by his calculations and profits. He keeps his head down. In fact Matthew’s very existence is inseparable from his table. And then, as he momentarily looks up to his next reluctant face, he catches the eyes of a passer-by. Jesus is always passing by. That divine movement of the earth’s creator is walking in the dusts and amongst the tax payers of Galilee. It is at once ultimate and intimate. But for that glance which passed between these two we would not have this gospel, this very Jewish and provincial take on the life of God amongst us. What was it about that moment which triggered a spontaneous call from Jesus ? What was it that caused Matthew’s immediate response and provoked a radical change on his life purpose ? We only know that a flash of insight can open up new horizons of thought and action. With a piece of art when we see something we had never seen before, when we are touched by Mozart or Britten to which we have been treated this morning, when a bible reading is seen from a different angle, when a hungry person is fed or a homeless person is given a welcome, we receive a glance from the One who delights in us. God can do a lot with a glance as Matthew knew and as Peter also knew. We know that a glance can mean a thousand words. That mutual trust can arise from the meeting of eyes. It reminds us that God is the principal of life’s principles. That he is always present and ready to intervene. In the words of Thomas Aquinas ‘ God is pure act’. In Matthews’s case he tells this story with detachment as if he is speaking about another person in the past. We contrast the old Matthew preoccupied with worldly gains, working for the extortion of non-roman citizens and a shady character on the fringes of society. We contrast that with the other Matthew who commits himself to the service of the disenfranchised, working for the people he has once exploited. Then we move to the scene where Matthew exchanges the table of discord for the table of hospitality. The table of disputes and contracts for the table of generosity and freedom and trust. Jesus is round Matthews’s table lying down propped by one elbow as was the custom. Instead of avoiding eye contact, the guests glance around with welcoming faces to fellow guests. Instead of head bowed in defence of their obsessions, their heads are facing upwards in a position of vulnerability, sharing and acceptance of the others around the table. The scene demonstrates that the deepest meaning of Christian discipleship is not the work done for Jesus but what is enjoyed in his company. So today we gather round the table at St Matthews thankful to him for inviting Jesus to preside here and offering us this place of divine hospitality. We leave all our negotiations around other tables behind. When we hear others asking ‘ what do these people think they are doing ? They do not conform to our view of modern society. ‘ , we are relaxed to hear Jesus saying ‘I have not come to call righteous, but sinners’ What a relief. Thank you Matthew. Thank you Jesus. Another monk from the north east – Bede of Jarrow who bridged the Celtic and Catholic traditions – wrote in his homily for this day ‘ Matthew could understand that Christ, who was summoning him away from earthly possessions, had incorruptible treasures of heaven in his gift ‘. So be it this day and for ever. Sources Jane Austen – Pride and prejudice Janet Backhouse – The Lindisfarne Gospels, p60 Father Simeon – Fire and Mercy, p 419f Thomas Aquinas – Wis 7.26f Bede – Hom. 21 CCL 122, 149-151 The Revd Jonathan Aitken Advent 2 Sermon for Sunday 8 December St Matthew’s Westminster, 20 Great Peter Street
We are in the early stages of the holy season of Advent and in the final stages – thank heavens – of the General Election Campaign. So it may be timely to ask this question: Do the ancient spiritual messages of Advent have any relevance to the secular shambles of our modern Parliamentary democracy? Now this is my first Advent sermon as an ordained priest. But “my previous” as we call it at Pentonville included fighting seven general election campaigns as a Parliamentary candidate. And if any voter had ever asked me on the hustings the question that I’ve just asked you in this church today, I would have thought that I was dealing with a religious nutter. In the years of “my previous” I would probably have dodged the question or brushed it away with a touch of mockery. But a journey from politics to priesthood makes one look at life differently. So I now think if we ponder carefully on all three of our readings we can find intriguing clues that the First Advent and the words of John the Baptist do offer significant sign posts for this weeks General Election and what may follow it. For example, high on the list of grievances that have been frequently voiced in all parts of today’s electorate are “that the system isn’t working” and that “we don’t trust our leaders”. 2 The Revd Jonathan Aitken Advent 2 Sermon for Sunday 8 December St Matthew’s Westminster, 20 Great Peter Street Well, the system and the leaders weren’t working in ancient Israel either. The tyranny of Herod; The occupation of the Romans; And the uselessness of the political leaders described in our reading as “you brood of vipers” all made the Judeans a restless, unhappy people who had lost trust in their system. Until suddenly out of nowhere arrives this strange figure of John the Baptist, drawing crowds in the desert with a message far more profound than “Get Brexit done” or “Let’s have a second Referendum.” John the Baptist had a straightforward uncompromising message: – Repent. Now Repentance sounds a hard sell to our secular society. This is partly an English Language problem. The word in our native tongue, never adequately defined, vaguely conjures up a picture of: ─ sayingsorryoverandoveragain, ─ standinginthecorner, ─ writingout100lines, ─ doingpenance, ─ orinoldentimes,wearingsackclothandashes. Not much voter appeal there! But in the Greek language in which the Gospels were originally written the word for repentance is Metanoia. And Metanoia literally means: Meta – a change Noia – of mind 3 The Revd Jonathan Aitken Advent 2 Sermon for Sunday 8 December St Matthew’s Westminster, 20 Great Peter Street More richly translated as “A change of heart and mind”. Now that was a much more understandable proposition to the people of Israel. They knew their system was broken. They understood the symbolism of a voice crying from the wilderness of the desert. And we can grasp it too. For in our personal lives we all have our crossings of the desert. Spiritually we can discover that the desert is the place where we meet God. Moses, David and Jesus himself all found that the barren desert can paradoxically be fertile ground for testing and transformation. It was from the desert that John the Baptist turned up the volume of his call to repentance by quoting the words of the Prophet Isaiah: “Make straight in the desert A highway for our God” These words had a symbolism too. In ancient Israel there were almost no roads let alone highways – only a few rural sun baked tracks. However, the Roman historian Josephus tells us that by royal command King Solomon did build certain causeways or highways of black stone on the 4 The Revd Jonathan Aitken Advent 2 Sermon for Sunday 8 December St Matthew’s Westminster, 20 Great Peter Street approaches to Jerusalem in order to give new routes of access to pilgrims coming to pray in the temple. *** So, what new highways or bridges do we need to build in our Parliamentary democracy today? Let’s start in the unexpected territory of religion. Last Saturday The Financial Times had a prominent feature article headlined “Religion has returned to the political stage”. The opening line of the article said “Religion has been discussed during this election more than in any election in living memory”. That’s true. Who could believe that the Chief Rabbi, courageously supported by Archbishop Justin would have felt the need to intervene so powerfully to warn against the scourge of antisemitism. Or who would have expected, until it was re-ignited by the recent terrorism on London Bridge, that Islamophobia would be rising on the agenda of some far-right groups. New highways of tolerance and understanding away from both these hateful prejudices need building up in our modern politics. Our reading from Isaiah is a helpful signpost here. 5 The Revd Jonathan Aitken Advent 2 Sermon for Sunday 8 December St Matthew’s Westminster, 20 Great Peter Street The prophets vision of a holy mountain where wolves and lions live peacefully alongside lambs and goats has a message for our increasingly polarised society, too often embittered by extreme statements on social media. Isaiah’s message is reinforced in our reading from Romans where St Paul declared: “May the God of steadfastness and encouragement grant you to live in harmony with one another”. Harmony has been in noticeably short supply at Westminster in the past year or two. So, let’s hope and pray that the new House of Commons will contain fewer MPs convulsed with the roarings of mad Brexit disease – in either direction. Instead let’s pray for a fresh intake of new legislators who will lower their voices, and deliver their election promises: MPs who will cooperate with more cross party statesmanship on national issues like expanding social care for the elderly and who will work without Brexit bitterness for the common good under impartial Parliamentary chairmanship. These fruits of Westminster repentance, if they happen, will not be revolutionary innovations. These are the paths of trust that have served our Parliamentarians well in the past. Until recently every daily session of the Lords and Commons commenced with the reading of what was known as the Prayer for Parliament. Father Philip will 6 The Revd Jonathan Aitken Advent 2 Sermon for Sunday 8 December St Matthew’s Westminster, 20 Great Peter Street know it by heart because he often reads the prayers in the House of Commons when the Speaker’s Chaplain is unavailable. This prayer was written in 1661 after the civil war and the restoration of the monarchy and it calls upon all Parliamentarians “to lay aside all private interests, prejudices and partial affections” and to strive for “the uniting and knitting together of all persons ...in true Christian love and charity towards one another”. The mission statement of that 17th century prayer for Parliament is not all that far from the opening statements of John the Baptist in the 1st century. After telling his desert audience to repent, John added the command: “Bear fruit worthy of repentance”. Then he proclaimed the power of the greater one who was coming after him and declared: “He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and with fire”. Now this is where the Advent message of John the Baptist becomes more uncomfortable. For he shifted, as our reading records, to the agricultural and almost apocalyptic imagery of the threshing floor, the winnowing fork and the burning of chaff “with unquenchable fire”. What is the meaning of these puzzling words to our modern world? I don’t suppose many of us would recognise a winnowing fork or a threshing floor if we saw one. 7 The Revd Jonathan Aitken Advent 2 Sermon for Sunday 8 December St Matthew’s Westminster, 20 Great Peter Street And what exactly is chaff? When I was a young newspaper reporter in old Fleet Street there was a joke doing the rounds: Question: What does the Editor do? Answer: The Editor separates the wheat from the chaff – and then prints the chaff. Still true today perhaps, to judge by the volume of irrelevant chaff in the news reporting of the election. But God, much more seriously, does want us to separate our spiritual grains of wheat form the unsatisfying husks of chaff in our own lives. This call for separating the good from the bad, which was made in the First Advent by John the Baptist, was repeated over and over again by Jesus in his parables. He called for the separation of the sheep from the goats. He called for the separation of the wheat from the tares or weeds. He called in the parable of the net for the separating the good fish from the bad fish. Perhaps it is one of the more neglected Advent messages that we should try to make this separation of wheat and chaff in our own lives. 8 The Revd Jonathan Aitken Advent 2 Sermon for Sunday 8 December St Matthew’s Westminster, 20 Great Peter Street Advent can be the ideal time to do this. A time when we quieten our souls. Intensify our prayers. And wait for the mystical murmurings and knockings which can be the harbingers of the coming of Christ in our hearts. *** Clearing away the irrelevant chaff in our busy self-centred lives is difficult. For Advent is also the season of proliferating seasonal distractions such as: Christmas shopping life; Christmas party life; Christmas Commercial life; And family gatherings at Christmas can all be full of chaff. Even church life is not always immune from chaff. To give an unexpected example of the separation challenges think even in carol services of the difference between the agreeable musical chaff of the lyrics in “Ding Dong Merrily on High” compared to the holy wheat of the mystery of the incantation so powerfully captured in Charles Wesley’s immortal lines: “Veiled in flesh the Godhead see Hail the Incarnate Deity”. *** 9 The Revd Jonathan Aitken Advent 2 Sermon for Sunday 8 December St Matthew’s Westminster, 20 Great Peter Street For a few more days we will probably be distracted from the coming of the Incarnate Deity by the cacophony and chaff of electioneering. But as we move closer to the coming of the word made flesh, may we put aside the distractions of the outside world of politics or anything else. Instead, may we quietly concentrate on growing the spiritual wheat in our souls so that in the words of our Gospel Reading: “They may bear the fruit of our repentance”. May we rise to the challenge of John the Baptist’s call to us this Advent. Amen Isaiah 43: 16-21
Phillipians 3: 4-14 John 12: 1-8 We have spent these five Sundays of Lent reflecting on our challenging but perhaps slightly too imaginative theme of “Dancing in the Desert”. From my one and only experience of spending an unbearably long week in Rub’ al Khali, the vast Empty Quarter of the Arabian desert, I would say that having any sort of fun there, like dancing, would be an extremely improbable activity Sermon for the first Sunday in Lent 2019: part of the series 'Dancing in the desert: exploring faith in the wilderness'
Genesis 15. 1-12, 17-18 Philippians 3.17 – 4.1 St Luke 13. 31-end When I heard the title of our Lent series I was puzzled – where had they got that from?, what did it mean? So what did I do? I googled it. Google came up with a progressive metal anthem. Not my scene at all: the music was a wild discordant cacophony, the lyrics, bellowed by the performers mostly nonsense. There was a sort of refrain: “Everybody’s going to a party, have a real good time/Dancing in the desert blowing up the sunshine.” That was the one part of the whole thing that made a least a little sense. The rest seemed to be a mass of disjointed fragments some of which made sense on their own but collectively…? I could only assume it was an incoherent cry of protest against the nihilism of our world today. Sermon for the first Sunday in Lent 2019: part of the series 'Dancing in the desert: exploring faith in the wilderness'
Deuteronomy 26. 1-11 Romans 10. 8b-13 St Luke 4. 1-13 The Gospel reading today relates the desert experience to end all desert experiences. As we hear: 'Christ was led by the Holy Spirit in the wilderness, where, for forty days he was tempted by the devil'. We may have different images of a desert: endless sand dunes, constantly shifting; flat and featureless, stretching for miles; the blistering heat, or the freezing cold at night, perhaps. But the desert into which our Lord entered was stony and rocky and full of temptation. Maybe that is closer to the deserts of our lives. Jeremiah 33: 14-16
Thessalonians 3: 9 to end Luke 21: 29-36 Before I first joined this congregation at St Matthew’s 21 years ago I used to think that Advent was just another season of the Church - although a rather jolly one with: pop up calendars at Sunday School; cheerful Carols like Ding Dong Merrily on High; mince pies for us choir boys; while the grown-ups were given a glass of sherry with the Rector after Matins. This time last year at extremely short notice, I was asked to preach on Remembrance Sunday in Brixton Prison.
This was quite a challenge because there had been no Christian Chaplain in Brixton for several months. That was why I got a rather panicky telephone call from the Governor’s office 24 hours before Remembrance Sunday 2017 asking me, even though I was not ordained at the time, if I could come in and lead the service as a layman. For good measure, this military sounding voice on the line said rather firmly “And the Governor does want a proper, formal Remembrance Day Service with a full two-minute silence”. Aye, Aye Sir, I more or less replied but with some anxiety. |
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