Homily / Sermon for Trinity Sunday

There’s a slightly irreverent line in the song American Pie by Don MacLean: ‘The three men I admire the most, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, they were leaving for the coast, the day the music died.’

Well its not blasphemous, though it is a bit irreverent and it is certainly wrong. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are not ‘three men’ not even ‘three people’, though we do say they are three persons and we often tend to think of them as if they were different individuals.

You know sometimes we might have the idea that the Father is the God of the Old Testament, Jesus God in the New and the Spirit lives in the Church - wrong. Sometimes we might think that the Father did the creation of the world, the Son redeemed the world and its the Spirit who is about today. Children, when they write prayers, often speak about ‘God and Jesus’, as if they are two different people. When the Trinity is taught, the images used often emphasise the differences between the Three - such as ice, water and steam - or one person having three different jobs. All wrong - well at least, not good enough.

And the problem with these kinds of ideas is that they seem to suggest that when one person of the Trinity acts, he acts on his own. And this confuses us. We ask silly questions like ‘When Jesus was on earth who was looking after heaven?’ and ‘Was there a Holy Spirit before Pentecost?’ And we might also wonder why only three - why not four - or seven or nine - after all, God has so many things to do, why not.

The truth of our Faith is rather different.

The Church teaches that God is one Nature, in three persons, and while the language may be complicated, it makes two very important points.

First, no one person of the Trinity acts alone. When one acts, all act together, because God is one. At the creation, the Father spoke his Divine Word and created through the power of the Spirit. The Father breathed his Spirit into Man to make him in his own image. The Spirit spoke God’s word through the prophets. The Angel visited Mary with the message of the Father so that she conceived the Word by the power of the Spirit. St John tells us ‘the Word (with God from the beginning) became flesh and dwelt amongst us’. At his Baptism, the Spirit descends on Jesus like a dove as the Father speaks from heaven. At his Crucifixion, the Son says ‘Father, into your hands I commend my Spirit’. And when the Son ascends to the Father he sends the Spirit, the Advocate, the Paraclete, to lead us into all truth. We pray to the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit. At Mass, we pray to the Father that he send the Spirit on the bread and wine that they become the body and blood of his Son. Again and again and again it is Father, Son and Spirit who move together, who operate together.

And notice that in all these examples I give, and in many others, the movement of the Trinity is about entering into the created world, about reaching to humanity. It is about involvement, action. It what is called Grace. The Trinity is about drawing human beings into the life of God, in creation, in redemption, in prayer, in sacraments. The best description of this Grace is of course love - because love always involves another, and God is love because he lives love in himself, and extends his loving hand, his loving word, his loving Spirit, to embrace all humanity.

Homily for Ascension Day

Go out to the whole world - proclaim the Good News!

(First Draft - to be updated)

As I think a lot of you know, I am a great fan of technology. It’s not just the gadgets I like, but its what they can do. I listen to podcasts and audiobooks while I walk the dog. I don’t buy a newspaper, but I read the news on my phone or my computer. !’m on facebook, my space, friendfeed, plurk, ping and meebo (or is it beebo?) I use email rather than postage stamps. I tap appointments onto the screen which I carry in my pocket. I’ve made podcasts. I put together websites. I write a blog. I use twitter. (In fact on twitter I have the second most followers of any clergyman of any form of Christianity in the whole of England!)

Does this make me a better person? Not really.
Does all my technology make me efficient and reliable? Oops, not necessarily.
So is it just a hobby and all a waste of time?

Well, of course not.

It’s not that everybody has to use email or surf the web, any more, I suppose, than everyone ought to drive a car or have a telephone. And its not that all these gadgets and gizmos will be here for years to come. Some may last, others will fade away like the quill, the comptometer, the abacus, the telegram and the K-tel Egg Slicer, and live only in the corridors of museums.

The point of course is not the gadgets, the technology, however interesting or annoying they may or may not be. What is important is what we do with them.

These are all ways of communication. (And today is a day of prayer for the Church's work in the social media). And just as the first Christians used the methods of their own day - standing at the street corners and in the market places, speaking before Kings and rulers, sending letters along the roads of the Roman Empire, travelling by horse by mule by foot - so in our own way we do the same today, by email, by website, by video and by audio, by blog and by twitter, because we are called to spread the word, to teach the faith, to proclaim the Gospel.

It is a divine command, and whatever the means, the methods or the technology we are sent to do it: proclaim the Good News!

Homily / Sermon for Easter Six

Love one another, as I have loved you

Love is a word widely used, and widely abused. It refers to a rush of emotion. A stirring of urges. A blinding of reason and a driving passion. Love is powerful, and it is dangerous. It can drive people to madness, or murder. It inspires jealousy. It too often leads to heartache and tears.

Well, so you would think from watching popular dramas, or reading literature. So you would think from reading inside the newspaper where the more interesting human stories are told.

But of course, this is not the love which Jesus speaks of.

Why not? Well it is not because Christian love is unrealistic or idealised. Quite the opposite: it is the idealised, one-sided kind of love which leads to pain and anguish.

The love of God is real, realistic, because it is not one-sided, or deluded, but because it is mutual, it is shared - love one another as I have loved you. It is not the obsession or infatuation of one person for another, but a sharing of lives, of commitment. It is giving and receiving. It is not about choosing, but about being chosen. This is the love that bears fruit - because this is the love that will last.

And in this month of May, we celebrate the one who loved Christ into the world, and in the world. The one who loved him before the world ever knew him. The one who fed him and nursed him and hugged him and gave him up, to embrace him again in his death and resurrection. We celebrate she who in loving him, loves us too, and cares for us, and prays for us as our Mother.

When we sing our praises of Mary, we sing the praises of the Love that chose her, to go out and bear fruit, the fruit of her womb, fruit that lasts for eternity.