A few days ago I was on Facebook looking for the result of a speedway meeting that took place on Boxing Day in Australia and in the process came across a few speedway videos. But as I was scrolling through them, I came across another video of a priest giving an interview and speaking about prayer, so I decided to watch that too.

I don’t know if it was a genuine interview with a real priest or a clip from a film, but what the priest said about prayer was very good indeed. He said,

“I asked the Lord for strength, and he gave me burdens to carry. I asked for wisdom, and he gave me problems to solve. I asked for courage, and he gave me difficulties to overcome. I asked for love, and he gave me needy people to care for. So yes, I would say my prayers were answered.”

And I thought that was a wonderful way to look at prayer and a wonderful insight into the way God very often does seem to answer prayer.

I think that when people pray for something, very often, what they really want is for God to do something about the particular problem they’re praying about, and by that I mean that they want God to solve the problem for them. That does happen. As Christians we believe that God can and will do miraculous things in answer to prayer, but that doesn’t happen very often does it? And when it doesn’t, people can be very tempted to think that their prayers haven’t been answered. But, as the priest in that video said, our prayers can be answered through God giving us the gifts and abilities to sort our problems out for ourselves. I touched on this in my sermon last Sunday morning when I spoke about our belief that God doesn’t give us problems that suit our talents, but rather he gives us the talents we need to deal with the problems we’re faced with. God does this in answer to prayer, and this is the way prayer is most often answered. I think the reason we don’t see this, is that we very often don’t think things through as we should. Or to put that another way, and in a way it’s often put in scripture, we don’t ponder things in our heart.

This is something we read a number of times about Mary isn’t it? Mary only appears as a central character in the first two chapters of St Luke’s Gospel, but  in half of the scenes in which she appears, St Luke tells us that Mary treasured or pondered things in her heart. She pondered what Gabriel’s message might mean. She treasured and pondered in her heart the words of the shepherds.

And later, when she and Joseph found the 12-year-old Jesus debating with the teachers in the temple, and notwithstanding Jesus’ strange and even abrupt response to their worries, she treasured all these things in her heart.

From these things, we get an image of Mary as someone who thought very deeply about things and perhaps it’s because she was this kind of person that she was able to stay close to Jesus throughout his ministry. She must have found him, and what he was doing, difficult to understand at times because St Mark tells us that his family tried to take him away from the crowds because people thought he was out of his mind. She must have been worried about him as his ministry brought him into conflict with the authorities, because she must have known what had happened to her kinswoman Elizabeth’s son, John, when he came into conflict with Herod. What did she think, I wonder, as Jesus made his final journey to Jerusalem? Had she heard him speak, as he often did, about the betrayal, scourging and death that awaited him there? Whatever Mary knew or had heard she must have known that what her son was doing was very dangerous. We often think of the sword that pierced Mary’s soul, that we heard Simeon prophesy in this morning’s Gospel, as watching Jesus die on the Cross. But there were many swords that must have pierced Mary’s soul before that final one.

Nevertheless, Mary wasn’t someone to make knee-jerk reactions to things. She was someone who treasured things in her heart and pondered them there, looking for meaning and understanding.

The angel had told Mary that she had found God’s favour. Elizabeth had told her that she was blessed among women. She herself had confessed her belief in these things and said that God had done great things for her. I wonder, how many of us would consider ourselves favoured by God, blessed, and that God had done great things for us if we had to endure even a few of the things that Mary went through? How many of us would give up because we thought that God wasn’t listening, or didn’t care, or perhaps wasn’t even there? Because many people do lose their faith in the face of difficulties don’t they? They pray but, when their prayers aren’t answered in the way they’d like, nor in the timescale they’d like, they decide that prayer and faith are a waste of time and simply give up.

I think one of the problems many people have with prayer is that they expect, or at least want, their prayers to be answered in a way that makes things better or easier for them in some way. In effect, they’re saying to God,

“Do this for me because it will make my life better, or easier”.

And if their lives aren’t made better or easier, they think that their prayer has gone unanswered. But just because our prayers aren’t answered in the way we’d like them to be, nor in the timescale we want them to be, that doesn’t mean they won’t be answered or even haven’t been answered already. So far from being times to lose hope and faith and give up, these are the times when we have to treasure and ponder things in our hearts. These are the times when we have to look for meaning and understanding through what’s happening to us and in our lives, even if what’s happening is hard and even unpleasant. It might well be that a sword, or several swords might have to pierce our souls before we can understand that we’ve found God’s favour, that God has blessed us and has done, or is doing, great things for us, or through us.

We know from scripture that this was Mary’s experience, and it’s her example. But it’s an experience and example that we can share if we can treasure and ponder things in our hearts as she did because it’s also the experience and example of the priest in that video I watched a few days ago. And if we’re ever tempted to lose hope in prayer, faith in God and give up because it seems as though God isn’t listening and our prayers aren’t being answered, we could do much worse than try to remember some words from St John Henry Newman’s

Meditations and Devotions.

In his meditation Hope in God – Creator, he writes,

God knows what is my greatest happiness, but I do not. There is no rule about what is happy and good; what suits one would not suit another. And the ways by which perfection is reached vary very much; the medicines necessary for our souls are very different from each other. Thus God leads us by strange ways; we know He wills our happiness, but we neither know what our happiness is, nor the way. We are blind; left to ourselves we should take the wrong way; we must leave it to Him.

Therefore I will trust Him. Whatever, wherever I am, I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him; in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him; if I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him. My sickness, or perplexity, or sorrow may be necessary causes of some great end, which is quite beyond us. He does nothing in vain; He may prolong my life, He may shorten it; He knows what He is about. He may take away my friends, He may throw me among strangers, He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide the future from me—still He knows what He is about.  

God knows what he is about far better than we do. So if God chooses to answer our prayers in ways that we don’t expect, we shouldn’t think they haven’t been answered. We should rather treasure what’s happening and ponder it in our hearts in the hope that, in the end we will understand and see how favoured and blessed we are and what great things God is trying to do for us and through us.

Amen.   

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Propers for The Holy Family (Christmas 1) 31st December 2023

Entrance Antiphon
The shepherds hastened to Bethlehem, where they found Mary and Joseph,
and the baby lying in a manger.

The Collect
Almighty God,
who wonderfully created us in your own image,
and yet more wonderfully restored us through your Son Jesus Christ:
grant that, as he came to share in our humanity,
so we may share the life of his divinity;
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.

The Readings
Missal (St Mark’s)        
Genesis 15:1-6, 21:1-3                                      
Psalm 105:1-6, 8-9
Hebrews 11:8, 11-12, 17-19
Luke 2:22-40

RCL (St Gabriel’s)          
Isaiah 61:10-62:3                                      
Psalm 148
Galatians 4:4-7
Luke 2:22-40

One of the great traditions of our Christmas celebrations is the singing of Christmas Carols. It’s a tradition that most people I know thoroughly enjoy and in fact, over the years I’ve met more than one person who feels that it isn’t really Christmas until they’ve heard and sung Christmas Carols. And because it such a great and well-loved tradition, many Christmas Carols are very well-known. So well-known in fact that many people seem to know them off by heart. Or do they?

One of the things I’ve noticed over the  years is just how wrong people can get Christmas Carols, they can get the tune wrong, and they can get the words and punctuation wrong and in doing so, they can completely change the meaning of the words and of the carol itself. And they can do this with some of the best-loved and most well-known carols.

Take O come, all ye faithful, for example. People get the tune of this carol wrong so often it’s actually a surprise when anyone sings it as the music is written. In the last line of the verses, in the last bar, there are only two notes, F and D. But for some reason people insist on singing an E in between them. So, in the first verse when we sing ‘born the king of angels’, the word ‘angels’ should be sung on a descending F and D, an-gels. But people almost always sing it on a descending F – E – D, a-an-gels. Why do people sing this phantom note that isn’t really there? I do remember very well a choir practice at Mirfield when the pianist was almost apoplectic with rage because of the choir’s insistence on singing this phantom note, he was thumping the piano with all his might and singing himself at the top of his voice in an attempt to get the choir to sing the carol correctly. Actually, I think he just made things worse because the angrier he got the louder the choir sang the phantom note just to wind him up even further.

But perhaps it is only an organist, pianist or professional singer who would take such annoyance at something like that. For the most part, I think the far greater problem with people’s singing of Christmas Carols is getting the words and punctuation wrong.

For example, in another well-known carol, God rest ye merry, gentlemen, people do insist on getting the comma in the wrong place in the first line and instead of singing ’God rest ye merry, gentlemen’, they sing ‘God rest ye, merry gentlemen’. But that changes the meaning of the words.

What this carol is actually saying is that gentlemen should rest and be merry because of the birth of Jesus Christ. But what people actually sing implies that gentlemen who are already merry, should rest because of Christ’s birth.

But when it come to changing the meaning of a well-known carol by getting it wrong, to me, the best, or perhaps that should be worst, example is people getting the words at the end of In the bleak mid-winter wrong.

Those who know this carol will know that the last verse goes,

What can I give Him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
If I were a wise man, I would do my part;
Yet what can I give Him: give my heart.

Except that it doesn’t. The last line doesn’t say ‘Yet what can I give him; give my heart’, it actually says ‘Yet what I can I give him; give my heart’. But when they sing this carol, people almost invariably miss out the first ‘I’ in that line and that completely changes the meaning of what’s being said. Missing out the first ‘I’ makes that line a question of what we could give Jesus, but what it’s actually meant to be is a statement of what we will give him, a pledge that we will give Jesus our heart. Missing out that first ‘I’ makes that line a matter of what we could or might give to Jesus should we choose to, rather than a promise that we will give Jesus our all, our love, our deepest, most profound commitment, a promise that we will put Jesus above all else. What we’re  really saying in this Christmas Carol is almost identical to what we say in one of the best-loved and most well-known Passiontide hymns, When I survey the wondrous cross where, again in the last verse, we sing,

Were the whole realm of nature mine
That were an offering far too small
Love so amazing, so divine
Demands my soul, my life, my all.

I think that the way we can get the tunes, words and punctuation of carols so wrong though is a symptom of a blasé attitude towards them. And we can be, and often are, very blasé about these things because we’ve sung them so often before and think we know them so well that we don’t really pay proper attention to what we’re singing, nor what we’re supposed to be saying through what we sing.

And I think that in itself is a symptom of a blasé attitude towards Christmas itself. And by that I don’t mean that we don’t love Christmas, but we don’t pay proper attention to it; we don’t give proper attention to what it means and how important it is. 

We think we know the Christmas story so well don’t we? We’ve heard it so many times before that we don’t need to think about it too much. And yet, I once set a Christmas Quiz for a parish and the questions were about the Christmas story as it appears in the Bible.

Not the popular understanding of Christmas with all its accumulated traditions and frippery, but the pure biblical story. We held the quiz at a social night so people couldn’t take the quiz home and consult their Bibles to get the answers, it was a test of just how well Christians did know the Christmas story. As I recall there were 12 questions in the quiz and the winning score was —- 7.  The person who knew the biblical Christmas story best, only knew just over half of it. And it wasn’t the vicar. He got 5 out of 12 questions right. And really, as one person commented at the time, it was shameful.

Christmas Carols, the Christmas story itself, we think we know these things so well. We think we know these things so well that we become blasé about them, and we don’t pay proper attention to what were doing and saying, nor to Christmas itself. And for Christians, that is shameful. Christmas is one of the most wonderful things that has ever happened. If we were to make a list of the most wonderful events in history, Christmas would be second only to Easter. It’s an event and a story that should demand our full attention no matter how many times we’ve heard it before. It’s a story so important that it demands our full attention every time we hear it just in case we missed something in the past or have forgotten something since last time. In a time for giving, as we like to call Christmas, the greatest gift of all is God’s gift to us of his Son, the very Word of God come to earth and made flesh in the babe of Bethlehem. It’s something so wonderful and so important that we should never tire of hearing about it or celebrating it, nor become blasé about hearing it and celebrating it.

At the start of our Christmas Carol service, we heard these words;

‘Through Scripture and silence, prayer and song, let us hear again the wonderful story of our redemption; and, hearing, let us rejoice and respond with lively faith.’

So, as we celebrate once again the birth of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, let’s give the story our full attention so that we really do hear it. And, hearing, let’s rejoice in the full measure befitting such a wonderful event and story. And let’s respond to the wonder of Christmas with lively faith. Not a faith that  simply asks us to consider how we might respond to the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, but with a faith that urges us to pledge our heart to Jesus, as the Carol says.

Amen.

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Propers for the Nativity of the Lord, 24th and 25th December 2023

Entrance Antiphon: Midnight Mass
Let us rejoice in the Lord, for our Saviour is born to the world.
True peace has descended from heaven.

The Collect: Midnight Mass
Eternal God,
who made this most holy night to shine with the brightness of your one true light:
bring us, who have known the revelation of that light on earth,
to see the radiance of your heavenly glory;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.

The Readings: Midnight Mass
RCL (St Gabriel’s)          
Isaiah 9:2-7                                      
Psalm 96
Titus 2:11-14
Luke 2:1-14

Entrance Antiphon: Christmas Day
A child is born for us, a son given to us; dominion is laid on his shoulder,
and he shall be called Wonderful Counsellor.

The Collect: Christmas Day
Almighty God,
you have given us your only-begotten Son to take our nature upon him,
and as at this time to be born of a pure virgin:
grant that we, who have been born again and made your children by adoption and grace,
may daily be renewed by your Holy Spirit;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.

The Readings: Christmas Day
Missal (St Mark’s)       
Isaiah 52:7-10                                      
Psalm 97:1-6
Hebrews 1:1-6
John 1:1-18

Although it often has been, and still can be controversial, for many reasons, no one can really doubt that, for most of the past 2,000 years, the Church, and individual Christians have had a very great love of the Blessed Virgin Mary and a great devotion to her. Much of that love and devotion stems from the fact that Mary is the mother of our Lord Jesus Christ and the great tradition in many faiths of the mothers of holy men being revered; we only have to read the Scriptures to understand that‘s so in our own Judeo-Christian tradition. And so this morning’s Gospel, the story of the Annunciation, the story of the archangel Gabriel’s visit to Mary to announce to her that she’d been chosen by God to be the mother of his Son, has had a great part to play in the Church’s devotion to Mary.

Another cause of the Church’s devotion to Mary and veneration of Mary though is due to her example of faith and obedience. In fact, Mary is sometimes given the title, The Example of Christians. This is due in part to the fact that Mary followed Jesus during his ministry, that she was one of the few who didn’t desert him at the time of his death, and she was with the disciples when the Holy Spirit came on the day of Pentecost. But again, a large part of the Church’s image of Mary as an example to Christians comes from this morning’s Gospel and what’s often referred to as her ‘Yes’ to God, her willingness to obey God’s call to be the mother of his Son regardless of the difficulties and even danger that posed for her personally.

So Mary has been, and is, revered by the Church for many reasons. But this morning I want to say something about how Mary can inspire us in ways that are perhaps slightly different to the ways we usually think of. What I want to do is to say something about Mary herself, and how understanding her, as a young 1^st Century Jewish woman, can inspire us to follow her example of obedience and faith.

When we see an image of this morning’s Gospel, we almost invariably see Mary either kneeling in prayer or sat, reading a scroll or book, which we tend to think of as an image of Mary reading Scripture. But Luke doesn’t say anything about what Mary was doing when the angel appeared to her. And that’s in marked contrast to the story of Jesus’ Presentation in the Temple when Luke mentions quite specifically that Anna, the daughter of Phanuel,  was a prophetess who,

‘…did not depart from the temple, worshipping with fasting and prayer night and day.’

We would think that if Mary had been similarly devout, Luke would certainly have mentioned it in the story of the Annunciation, but he doesn’t. In fact, he says nothing at all about Mary’s faith or religious practices.

But that’s perhaps not so surprising. At that time, Jewish education was primarily concerned with teaching the Scriptures and the Law, but it was usually only boys who received any formal education. In a village like Nazareth, a young girl like Mary would probably have been educated at home, by her mother, and mainly in how to be a good wife and homemaker. So it’s highly unlikely that Mary held any kind of official or formally recognised religious position or role among the people of Nazareth, or that she was any more knowledgeable of or righteous in observing the Law than anyone else.

Actually, if we take what the Scriptures say about Mary at face value, the image we get of Mary is of a young woman who was nothing special at all. She was among the weakest and most powerless people in her society. She was a woman in a very patriarchal society, that existed in a world ruled by men. She was young in a society that valued age and experience. And, as we know from the story of Jesus’ Presentation in the Temple, she was poor, and so was her husband to be, Joseph.

And if Mary’s standing in the religious and social structures of her day didn’t mark her out as special in any way, we also have another problem with her choice as the mother of God’s Son. Specifically, the Messiah was to be of David’s line, but Luke tells us that it was Joseph who was of the House of David, not Mary. And it’s noticeable, as we read the Nativity stories in the Gospels, that St Matthew does emphasise Joseph’s role in the birth of Christ, over Mary’s, and no doubt for this very reason.

So who and what was Mary that she should have found such favour with God? Who and what was she that she, among all women, should be so blessed as to be chosen as the mother of God’s Son, the mother of the Saviour of the world?

To be honest, I think if we take what the Scriptures say about Mary at face value, it’s actually very hard to find a good reason why she was chosen to be the mother of God’s Son. By any human reasoning, Mary was a very strange and even foolish choice to be the mother of God’s Son. In fact, I’m sure that if we, or any other human being, had to choose someone for such a great and awesome role and responsibility, we’d choose someone very different to Mary. But Mary wasn’t chosen by any human reasoning and, as I quoted in my sermon last week, God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom. So who and what was Mary that she should be the mother of God’s Son? Quite simply, Mary was who and what God, in his infinite wisdom, chose. And that tells us something very important about God and about ourselves. 

Something we hear very often in the Church is that people don’t think they’re capable of doing things. There are so many people in the Church who think that all they can do is to come to church on a Sunday morning and nothing more, because they think they aren’t capable of doing any more, they don’t think that they have the skills, the knowledge or the intelligence to do any more than that (and that’s not the same thing as using these things as excuse for not doing more because we don’t want to do more). But what God’s choice of Mary tells us is that anyone can be chosen by God to carry out his will. It doesn’t matter who we are or what we are, God can still choose us to do something for him. It might be something small, or it might be something far grander, but whatever it is, if God has chosen us, it’s because God knows that we are capable of doing that thing, whatever it might be. What we need to do is to learn this lesson from Mary’s call to be the mother of God’s Son and listen to what God is asking us to do and then follow Mary’s example of saying ‘Yes’ to God and doing what it is he’s asking of us.

Of course, we might have doubts about what we’re being asked to do, and doubts about our ability to do it, but so did Mary. She was ‘greatly troubled’ by what she was asked to do, and she had the quite understandable doubt about how she could do this thing because she was, after all, ‘a virgin.’ But the answer Mary received is the same answer we’ll receive if only we’re willing to listen and accept it; the Holy Spirit will come upon us and the power of the Most High will overshadow us. We might find that hard to believe but don’t we often say the very same thing but in a different way when we express our belief that God doesn’t give us problems that suit our talents, but rather he gives us the talents we need to deal with the problems we’re faced with? 

Mary’s part in the story of our salvation is, of course, an unrepeatable one; when Christ comes again he will not be born of a woman but will come in glory. Nevertheless, whoever and whatever we are, we all have our part to play in the ongoing story of salvation until that time when Christ comes again.

And whoever and whatever we are, God will choose us to play our own part in that story. So let’s learn from Mary and be ready and willing to play our part. Ready and willing to listen for God’s call to us. Ready and willing to respond positively to God’s call when it comes. And in preparation for God’s call and to respond positively to God’s call when it comes, ready and willing to accept that whoever and whatever we are, God’s call to us, will come.

Amen.  

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Propers for Advent 4 24th December 2023

Entrance Antiphon
Let the clouds rain down the Just One, and the earth bring forth a Saviour.

The Collect
God our redeemer,
who prepared the Blessed Virgin Mary to be the mother of your Son:
grant that, as she looked for his coming as our saviour,
so we may be ready to greet him when he comes again as our judge;
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.

The Readings
Missal (St Mark’s)        
2 Samuel 7:1-5, 8-12, 14                                      
Psalm 89:2-5, 27, 29
Romans 16:25-27
Luke 1:26-38

RCL (St Gabriel’s)          
2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16                                      
Psalm 89:1-4, 19-26
Romans 16:25-27
Luke 1:26-38