Ordination of Priests, 24th June 2018, St Mary’s, Tottenham. Bishop Jonathan Baker.

Words from our first reading, the 49thchapter of the prophecy of Isaiah: “The Lord called me before I was born.”

Today is the Solemnity of the Nativity, or Birthday, of St John the Baptist, for centuries a day of feasting across eastern and western Europe, with celebrations often marked by fire. Breton fishermen would, on this day, attach baskets of old clothes to the masts of their fishing boats and set fire to them – the clothes, that is, not the boats – and still on this date there is a vast annual firework display on the banks of the Arno in Florence, that peerless city whose patron is John the Baptist. But aside from all this midsummer merrymaking, I want to suggest to our ordinands, and to all of you, that this day is a very fitting one on which to receive the gift, and the privilege, of ordination to the sacred priesthood. For St John the Baptist was born to be a priest, a priest of the household and lineage of Aaron, like his father Zechariah, whose speech is restored, in the Gospel reading we have just heard, when he confirms his wife St Elizabeth’s insistence that their son shall be called John, a name which means, ‘the grace of God.’
Zechariah is the first person to whom we are introduced in St Luke’s Gospel, and his account of Zechariah, Elizabeth and the birth of John is fundamental to St Luke’s conception of the story of our salvation, to his sense of the architecture of the saving purposes of God. Crucially, by placing of Zechariah and his priestly ministry in the Temple in Jerusalem at the beginning of his Gospel, St Luke teaches us that there are not two religions, that of Judaism and that of Christianity, but one revelation of God in two testaments or two covenants, which we now call the Old and the New. The Old Covenant always points forward to, and is fulfilled by, the New: that is why we can only make sense of reading the Old Testament in our Bibles by understanding it as speaking about Christ. So, in our passage from Isaiah this evening, we can understand verse 2 – ‘He made my mouth a sharp sword’ – as speaking of the Christ who St Matthew calls the one who comes not to ‘bring peace, but a sword,’ while some of the early Fathers of the Church understood the ‘sharpened arrow’ of Isaiah’s prophecy to stand for the divinity of Our Lord, hidden in the ‘quiver’ which is his humanity.

Zechariah was a priest of the Old Covenant, a descendent of Aaron of the division of Abijah; one of perhaps 18,000 priests in the Palestine of Our Lord’s time. For most of the time, those priests would have lived in the towns and villages beyond Jerusalem with their families; but for two weeks in each year, by rotation, each would come to the great city of David to carry out their priestly duties, and to play their part in the cultic life of the Temple, the epicentre of the worship of the God of Israel on earth. By lot, one such priest would be chosen to enter the Holy Place, that second but last chamber of the Temple which led to the Holy of Holies, and which also contained some of its most sacred artefacts: the seven-branched candlestick, the Table of Shewbread, and the golden Altar of Incense (You might like to think about the equivalent things to these in the worship we offer now in the Mass.) A priest might be chosen to burn incense in the Holy Place only once in his entire lifetime, and sometimes never: but it was there, to the right of side of that altar, that Zechariah saw an angel while he was about his priestly task; rewarded, because of his righteous living, by a glimpse of the angelic liturgy offered ceaselessly, but invisibly, in the Temple, day and night.

Not two faiths, Judaism and Christianity, but one revelation of God in two testaments or covenants. The priesthood of the Old Covenant had one aim, one purpose: to bridge the gap between creature and Creator. Whether by means of the offering of incense or by the offering of slaughtered animals – and the chief work of the priest was to be a butcher, to shed the blood of living things – the Temple priesthood was dedicated to reconciling humanity with God by means of sacrifice. The aim was praiseworthy but in and of its self impossible to achieve. But then the priesthood of the Old Covenant was never intended by God to be the means of achieving that longed-for reconciliation. It was only ever to be a pointer, a foreshadowing, of an infinitely greater priesthood: of the only true priesthood the universe ever would or ever could know, that of Jesus Christ, the very Word Incarnate, the sinless only Son of the one heavenly Father.

I said that each member of the Jewish priesthood would come to Jerusalem for just two weeks in every year. But there was one annual occurrence, additionally, when all the priests would come – all 18,000 of them – to assist with the sacrifice of perhaps a quarter of a million lambs in the Temple precincts. That occasion was the Jewish feast of Passover, when those lambs would be killed in commemoration of the deliverance of the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt, and the beginning of their journey through the wilderness of Sinai to freedom in the Promised Land. It was of course at the time of the Passover that Our Lord consummated his perfect and eternal priesthood by his sacrificial death on the Cross of Calvary, giving up his life for the salvation of the world even as (according to St John’s account) all those Temple priests filled the courtyards, and covered themselves no doubt, with the blood of slaughtered lambs. Perhaps we can dare to imagine that, one year, Zechariah took his young son John with him to Jerusalem for the Passover; that John witnessed the slaughter of the lambs and the shedding of so much blood; and that seeing Jesus at the beginning of his ministry and understanding who he truly was, he reached for that memory when, pointing at the Saviour, he said, ‘Behold, the Lamb of God.’

It was on the night before the Passover, Jesus had supper with his disciples, took bread and blessed and broke it, and shared a chalice of wine, and said, ‘Do this as a memorial of me.’ (The name Zechariah – a lovely hint to us which this Feast offers almost as an aside – means, ‘God remembers.’) One revelation of God in two testaments. As the priesthood of the Old Covenant, with its many offerings repeated day by day and year by year, is fulfilled in the one, unrepeatable, perfect offering of the Jesus Christ, the great High Priest of our religion, so the priesthood of the New Covenant – to which Deacon Matthew Topham and Deacon Nigel Palmer are about to be ordained – is dependant, wholly, upon the priesthood of Jesus Christ; it flows from it, it is rooted and grounded in it. Unrepeatable, I called the sacrifice of Calvary, and of course it was and it is. But the living memorial of that sacrifice is offered under sacramental signs every time a priest of the New Covenant, a priest of the Catholic Church, speaks the words which Jesus spoke and does the things which Jesus did at the Supper which both anticipated the Cross and was its first memorial.

From this day onwards, Father Palmer and Father Topham are called to be ministers of sacrifice; not sacrifices which will leave them literally covered in blood, like the priests of the Temple of old, but ministers of the one perfect sacrifice of Jesus Christ, in the unbloody sacrifice and memorial of the altar. As the priests of the old Covenant were called to consecrate all Israel as a priestly nation, sacred to the Lord, so these two men now to be ordained are called to be priests of Jesus Christ. They are called to this office so that the whole people of God – in Tottenham, in Kentish Town, wherever their ministry takes them – may become more truly a priestly people, offering a sacrifice of praise to God and becoming fellows workers (by His grace) in the work of reconciliation and the building up of the Kingdom on earth as in heaven.

Priests of Jesus Christ; priests of His Church; ministers of His sacraments. Matthew, Nigel: God has called you for this moment, called you from before you were born. At the altar, after you have spoken the words which Jesus spoke, you will speak the words of John: ‘Behold the Lamb of God.’ May God grant you grace, through this sacrament of ordination, to show Jesus to His world by all that you are and all that you do, until your lives end. Amen.

St Mary’s Lansdowne Road
Eleventh Sunday of the Year (Fathers’ Day) 17th June 2018

The Archdeacon came to see me the other day. He’s a senior priest who helps the bishop and does a lot of the administrative tasks for the bishop. Fr Hawkins, our Archdeacon, came to preach here two years ago as some of you may remember. Now, if you promise not to tell anyone, when he came on Saturday I didn’t really want to see him. First, it was Saturday and that’s normally my day off so I was annoyed about that. Secondly, he and I were going to something I didn’t really want to go to anyway. So, I was a bit annoyed. We strolled across the Vicarage Garden and I thought I would try and cheer us up and get us off work by pointing out the roses and so I said, “Oh, look, Father! Aren’t the roses looking beautiful?” Trying to be jolly and happy. And do you know what he said? He said, “Well, Father, looks like they need a bit of dead-heading to me.” I nearly struck the man down there and then!

Today, as we celebrate Fathers’ Day, it could almost be Harvest Festival with the readings we have! In Ezekiel 17 we heard how on top of the mount of Israel a tree will be planted. It must be peaceful there or you wouldn’t plant a tree as it would get destroyed. It must have some water and some earth, though one of the great things about a cedar tree is that it doesn’t need lots of soil to grow. And this is a tree where many birds will find rest. It will be of benefit to others. This same analogy is used in Psalm 91, as we heard where the “just will flourish will the palm tree,” that is those who recognise God’s laws and live their life by those standards, those whom the Lord looks favourably upon and has filled with His grace: they will flourish. It is because of the action of God’s power that the mustard seed, “the smallest of the seeds on earth” can grow into the “biggest shrub of them all.” We are to be part of the one vine of Christ, my friends, and know that there we are to be the human beings God created us to be.

Three little thoughts about what this tree analogy teaches us for our discipleship:

First, notice how it doesn’t matter where the trees are planted, even up a rocky mountainside, like the cedar of Ezekiel’s vision. All too often we blame our context for not being able to bear fruit: it’s tough at work; we live in Tottenham; the flat isn’t right etc etc. One of my favourite saints is St Theresa Benedicta, or Edith Stein as she was called before she became a Carmelite nun. She was in her late forties when World War II broke out. She was of Jewish heritage, living in Germany. Her life was under threat and she was also quite properly concerned that her presence as a non-Aryan, “not a proper German”, would threaten the life of her fellow sisters. She was sent to the concentration camps eventually and there she died. Never once did she complain about the circumstances of her day and say that if only things were different she’d be a better Christian. Never once and she had it much harder than we did. That image of light and darkness in chapter one of St John’s Gospel comes to mind: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it” (John 1:5). Powerful stuff.

Secondly, this is the case because it is God’s action. In the Psalm we heard the beautiful image of the people of God being planted in the house of Lord. Imagine yourselves now maybe with your feet in compost. Wiggle your toes as you sit here in the house of the Lord and think of the nutrition you’re receiving by being here, the grace of the Sacrament of the Mass, filling you, imbibing you, giving you all the grace you need to surrender yourself to the will of God. The power of God is sufficient for us, we just need to co-operate with it, participate in it, choosing His ways rather than the ways of darkness or greyness or my way or their way.

Thirdly we will be judged on what fruit we will bear. I was quite pleased with the roses in the garden, though undoubtedly some dead-heading was needed but clearly they weren’t good enough for the Archdeacon! The only judgement that matters, of course, is what St Paul referred to in our second reading as, “the law-court” of Christ. What fruit do you bear? Not, “What might you have done if things were different?” But “each of us will get what he deserves for the things he did in the body, good or bad.” Yes, this judgement awaits us both an immediate judgement on the day we die and a later judgement on the Day of Judgement, on That Day.

Having celebrated the wonderful Feast of Pentecost just under a month ago we might properly consider which fruits of the Spirit we produce. These are different to the seven gifts of the Spirit of wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety and fear of the Lord (Isaiah 11:2-3). For these gifts the Bishop prays over candidates for Confirmation. So, there are twelve fruits of the Spirit, fruits which if evident in our life show we are indeed with the Spirit on the path to Heaven: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, generosity, gentleness, faithfulness, modesty, self-control, chastity, as listed as nine fruits in Galatians 5:22-23.

Here’s a few examples from the Scriptures:

• Think of the love Ruth shows her mother-in-law, Naomi, whose two sons have just died. Ruth stays with Naomi in a foreign land, not thinking of her own happiness but of the needs of this poor woman before her (Ruth 1:16).
• Think of the joy Paul shows in the midst of problems, when he is in prison in Rome but encouraging the Philippians to “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice!” (Philippians 4:4).
• Are you a peace maker, not skirting round difficult issues and sweeping them under the carpet, but trying to enable others to overcome differences on important issues? Think for example, of Paul and Barnabas and Peter and Mark rubbing along despite differences at the end of Acts 15.
• Are you patient, able not to snap at incidents, such as we see in our Lord Himself, who utters, “My hour has not yet come,” and knows He must bear insults and patiently go to His death (I Peter 2:22-23).
• How about faithfulness? King Saul became jealous of David’s military success, you may recall (I Samuel 18:8) and the relationship deteriorated. David gets a chance to end it all and to kill his enemy, Saul, but he doesn’t because Saul is still the King: “I refused to stretch out my hand against the Lord’s anointed” (I Samuel 26:23). He remains loyal, faithful.
• Gentleness is surely what St James and St John, the sons of Zebedee lack, when they are angry at not being granted access to the Samaritan village. In response, they cry out, “Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from Heaven and consume them?” (Luke 9:54)  Our Lord, who is Himself “gentle and humble in heart” (Matthew 11:29).
• The prophet Daniel exercises self-control in difficult circumstances. He’s in a land which does not recognise God and there he could have given in to the practices of the world. It was illegal to pray to anyone other than the wicked King and Daniel did not give in to this. So much of the food was forbidden by the religion of the Jews but he did not give in. He exercised self-control when it would have been easier to conform to the world’s way of doing things.

We, my friends, by being here today, in the wondrous and sacramental presence of God have been, as our Psalmist said, “planted in the House of the Lord.” Let us, whether we’re dads or not, bear fruit, the fruits of the Spirit: modesty, self-control, chastity, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, generosity, gentleness, faithfulness.

St Mary’s, Lansdowne Road
10th June 2018   The Tenth Sunday of the Year

My dad’s dad died when I was fourteen years old. For the last couple of months of his life he was in hospital in Eastbourne and we as a family would drive down from Kent to see him. He’d fallen over and broken something, he was 88 years old and in pain and discomfort; his wife had died a couple of months earlier and he had taken care of her for years as she struggled with Alzheimer’s: he had achieved everything he wanted to in life. Amid all the noise and discomfort and invasion of privacy that you have to endure while in hospital, he would only complain about one thing, which was that he hated the nurses calling him “darling.” “I’m not your darling!” he would retort. He didn’t really like that sort of familiarity. He’d lived next door to the same person for sixty years and it was only in the last months of his life that he’d ever dreamed of calling her by her Christian name, and it was only then that she had called him by his Christian name, Vernon.

Levels of familiarity change with society’s expectations of what is and is not acceptable.  When we read the opening chapters of the Book of Genesis we ought to be amazed with how intimate, how familiar the first man and woman are with God Almighty. God is walking through the Garden: imagine the scent of the flowers, imagine the afternoon breeze after the heat of the day. God had created the world to be enjoyed and He had given to Adam and to Eve instructions about how to look after it, and specifically not to eat the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden. These instructions were given to humankind face-to-face by God. We were programmed to have this sort of communion with God.

You and I are created wonderfully, more wonderfully than just to be flesh and blood: the soul we have now is to endure unto the life to come, but we are to have a different body in Heaven. As we heard St Paul say in our second reading: “when the tent that we live in on earth is folded up, there is a house built by God for us, an everlasting home”. We will have a new body in Heaven, made by God, and one which we need not ever worry about failing us or letting us down or aching or experiencing pain or ageing, because it is eternal, made to last for ever. This eternity makes it beautiful. I could never use words sufficient to describe the beauty of Heaven. Our end goal is to have a communion with God even stronger than that which was enjoyed by Adam and Eve in Eden.

By the time of our first reading, the original innocence of humanity had already been lost: God is walking in the Garden and Man and Woman are nowhere to be found: “Where are you?” God asked. Where indeed! Adam has hidden, cut Himself off from God. This is what we do whenever we sin: we cut ourselves off from the Lord. For us to realise this in our spiritual lives it is important that we take into account our sins of omission. Sins of commission are when we proactively do something wrong: steal, have wicked thoughts, be angry, take the Lord’s name in vein, lie etc. Sins of omission are easier for us to gloss over but no less deadly to our souls, suffocating them, smashing out the image of God within us.

As an example of these sins of omission, it might be that we say our prayers, that we attend Mass, but we do it with less care, less concentration then we used to, or we’re getting later and later in arriving. A different sin of omission would be to fail to show care for people we could care for, like those who passed by the man attacked on the road to Jericho who had been beaten and for whom the Good Samaritan cared. Sins of omission include not using gifts we have been given; cutting ourselves off from the world and staying at home; “minding our own business.” Other types of sins of omission are not telling the truth. We all know that to lie is sinful; but it is also wrong not to tell the truth, to be silent about something or to omit something.

The sins of omission might not always have deadly effects on others and might seem because of that less significant than actually doing something wrong, but the effects on our soul can be no less serious. The failing to do things eats away at us, leads us to become despondent: “Oh, it doesn’t matter whether you go to Mass or not … Go when you can.” We can end up being critical of people who are holier than we are, wishing to chip away at their lives and their acts of piety through criticism or ridicule.  We become dried up in our spiritual lives very quickly without realising what has happened.

These sins of omissions will be forgiven us when we say sorry to God for them. This promise of forgiveness is given in the Gospel: “all men’s sins will be forgiven, and all their blasphemies.“ This is won for us on the Cross by Christ as we come every Good Friday in thanksgiving for: indeed that is why it is called Good Friday because such great mercy is revealed, the sort of mercy sung about by the Psalmist: “With the Lord there is mercy and fullness of redemption.” But our Saviour goes on in what he said and the next passage is a little puzzling perhaps: “But let anyone blaspheme against the Holy Spirit and he will never have forgiveness: he is guilty of an eternal sin.” All sin is forgivable or sin would be stronger than God, which it isn’t, so even the worse sins are forgivable. But we have to confess them before our death.

So what is this blasphemy against the Holy Spirit? Blasphemy is a way of way of life many live out by failing to give glory and honour to God. The ultimate blasphemy is by us failing to repent of our sins. The sin against the Holy Spirit is therefore failing to ask for forgiveness, We do this when we think “Oh, God knows I’m sorry, I don’t need to tell Him.” Similarly, when we believe a sin is greater than God’s mercy and despair of your salvation, this too is to blaspheme against the Holy Spirit, to deny God some of His glory.

When we sin, we are inserting yet further nails is to the bloody and sweaty body of our Saviour. We proclaim that death when we come to the altar. When we come here to be washed in the blood of the Lamb, as we’ll sing in one of our hymns later on, we cry out with the crowds who stood at the foot of the Cross, “His blood be on us and on our children” (Matthew 27:25). And here too at this Mass we have intimate communion with God. We’re invited to kneel in His presence, knowing He is here, not far from us. The intimacy is such that we will receive His Flesh and His Blood. But in Heaven we will also see Him, see our Saviour, and that will be truly wonderful. Amen.