I’m sure that we must all know from personal experience how difficult it can be to learn something new, and that the more difficult the thing we’re trying to learn is, the longer it takes to learn, the more difficult it is to become truly proficient in that activity and the harder we have to work to become proficient at it. And if we want to be good at this thing we’re learning we know that we have to learn from someone who’s already mastered that particular activity. We can be self-taught, of course, but that usually takes longer and there’s always a danger that we don’t pick up on small errors in what we’re doing and then those faults become ingrained in us, and they stop us from becoming as good at something as we could be. 

For example, I’m sure some of us here will have learned or at least tried to learn to play a musical instrument at one time. So we’ll know that when we do that, we start with simple things; we learn where the notes are on the instrument, and we usually learn how to read music so that we know what note to play when we see it on the music score. And once we’ve done that, we start to play tunes, simple tunes at first and then, as our ability improves, more difficult tunes until, if we work hard enough and for long enough, we can become good enough to play really difficult pieces, perhaps even good enough to play anything, no matter how difficult it might be.

And whatever we learn to do, we usually follow that pattern, we start simply, learn the basics and then practice, practice, practice, usually under the guidance of  a teacher or coach, so that we can become better and better at what we’re doing. And if we want to become better, we have to constantly push ourselves and test our ability. If we’re learning a musical instrument, for example, we do that by playing progressively harder and harder pieces of music. If we’re learning a game or a sport, we do it by competing against people who are better than we are at that game or sport, we test ourselves and our ability against harder opposition. And no matter how good we become at something, nevertheless we still have to work hard at what we’re doing. If we want to keep our performance up to the high level we’ve reached, we still have to practice, practice, practice; we have to play the instrument or the game regularly if we don’t want our ability to perform slip back.

For example,  I remember once watching a TV programme in which a concert pianist was speaking about his need to practice regularly when he wasn’t performing, even though he was such an outstanding pianist. He said,

“If I don’t play for a day, I notice. If I don’t play for two or three days, my family and friends notice. If I don’t play for a week, everybody notices.”

Something else we all need too when we’re serious about some activity is a teacher or coach. And that’s true regardless of how good we are at something. We need that in the early days, to teach us what to do and how to do it but, as we progress, we still need that guiding hand to fine tune our skills and to stop any bad habits we might be developing from becoming ingrained in us. Even people who are experts at what they’re doing still have coaches, not so much to teach them new skills or improve the skills they already have, but to pick up on and point out those little errors that, if they’re not picked up on and put right, can become bad habits, things that stop us performing to the best of our ability time and time again.

Something else that’s very often important to us when we’re learning something new is a role model, someone who’s already very good at this thing, and whom we want to emulate. We very often hear, do we not, people who’ve become very good at something saying that they were first inspired to take up the things they’ve become successful at by hearing or seeing someone perform and wanting to be able to do that themselves.

So when we want to learn some new activity or skill, all these things play a part, especially if we’re serious about wanting to learn and become good at what we’re doing. And the same thing applies when it comes to the practice of being a Christian (and being a Christian is a practice, it’s not simply something we think about and believe, it’s something we have to actually do). And we can see all these things I’ve spoken about in the Transfiguration of the Lord.

In the Transfiguration, we see what we want to be. We see Jesus in glory and ultimately, that’s our goal, to be so good at being a Christian that, when we come to the end of our earthly lives, we enter into glory with Jesus. So Jesus is our role model. He’s the one we want to emulate. We hear his words, we see what he did, and we want to be just like him, well I hope we do anyway. But we know that we’re not at his level. So we have to start simply and then work our way towards being more like him. As St Paul puts it in his Second Letter to the Corinthians,

‘And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit’

But if want to do that, we have to practice, practice, practice. We can’t really afford to take time off from trying to be like Jesus because then we’ll just slip back and have to start again from farther back on the road to glory.

We know what we need to do if we want to be like Jesus, both now in our earthly lives and then, after, like him in glory. We know because we’re told what to do in the story of Jesus’ Transfiguration. We have to listen to Jesus. In other words, we have to listen to what Jesus said, and then we have to put his words into practice. As I said earlier, being a Christian is something we do, so listening to Jesus and agreeing with what he said but leaving it at that isn’t enough; that simply will not get us anywhere along the road to glory. But, for want of a better phrase, Jesus is the best there is and so we can’t simply go from where we are to his level of performance in one step. That would be like having a few  piano lessons and then picking up a copy of one of Beethoven’s sonata and trying to play that. So we have to take it step by step and that’s where the Apostles come in.

As we know, Jesus spent three years teaching his disciples how to progress along the road to glory, and he chose some of them to take those lessons out into the world to teach other people how to progress along that road too. We hear about that in this morning’s reading from the Second Letter of Peter. So the Apostles were the first coaches, if you like, they were the first to teach people how to listen to Jesus and so, as well as listening to Jesus, we should listen to them too.

Of course the Apostles are no longer with us, they joined Jesus in glory long ago, but not before they appointed teaches to carry on that work that Jesus had entrusted to them. And that’s a process that’s gone on throughout the history of the Church. We still have teachers today. Ideally, the master teachers are the bishops, that’s one of their primary roles in the Church, but there are other teachers too. Priests are called to teach the faith. We have Spiritual Directors to fine tune our skill at the practice of Christianity. Some people might think the Spiritual Directors are simply there to hear confessions but whilst they do that, just as importantly, they’re there to offer spiritual counsel and advice, to point out little faults in the way we’re practicing our faith so that we can put these things right before they become bad habits that we can’t shake off. And we can have role models in addition to Jesus too; saints whose lives and example have inspired us in some way, or even other Christians whom we can look up to because they’ve progressed further along the road to glory than we have. We have all these people to help us to listen to Jesus more attentively so that we can progress in the practice of our faith; so that we can improve as Christians and take that next step towards Jesus on the road to glory.

But we have to use these people. We have to be willing to let them help us, and that seems to be something that so many people seem to be reluctant to do. Many people today won’t listen to bishops because they think the bishops are far too concerned with politics and financial matters. But that shouldn’t detract from what they say about the practice of the Christian faith. Many people only listen to priests up to a point, and that point is reached when the priest says something they either don’t understand or don’t agree with. As I said in my sermon a couple of weeks ago, whenever a priest says something that someone doesn’t agree with, it’s always the priest that’s got it wrong. I know very few people in the Church who have a Spiritual Director. How many of us have one? I’ve also mentioned, recently, the practice of people moving from church to church and denomination to denomination. There may be good reasons for that at times, but how often does that happen because people aren’t really looking to progress in the practice of their faith but simply looking for somewhere or someone who’ll confirm them in their own belief that they’re already well on the way to glory and don’t really need to change or do anything more or differently? How many are looking for affirmation rather than the truth that will help them be better Christians? 

We all know what we need to do to be like Jesus both in this life and to join him in glory when this life comes to an end – we have to listen to Jesus and put his words into practice. We all want to emulate Jesus, but we know that we’re only ever going to be able to do that fleetingly at best. We know we’re never going to be as good as Jesus. So no matter how long we’ve been coming to church, no matter how long we’ve considered ourselves to be Christians, we’re all still learning, and we always will be. So let’s keep our eyes on Jesus because he is our role model, but let’s also make use of the tools we have available to us to help us to be better Christians. The teachers of the faith, the bishops and priests of the Church. Spiritual Directors, those coaches who can help us fine tune the practice of our faith. And those lesser but still important role models, the saints and our fellow Christians whose ability to put Jesus words into practice can so often be better than ours. Let’s make use of all these things and above all, listen to Jesus and then practice, practice, practice.

Amen.

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Propers for the Transfiguration of the Lord 6th August 2023

Entrance Antiphon
In the shining cloud the Spirit is seen; from it the voice of the Father is heard:
This is my Son, my beloved, in whom is my delight. Listen to him.

The Collect
Father in heaven,
whose Son Jesus Christ was wonderfully transfigured before chosen witnesses upon the holy mountain,
and spoke of the exodus he would accomplish at Jerusalem:
give us strength so to hear his voice and bear our cross,
that in the world to come we may see him as he is;
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)        
Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14
Psalm 97:1-2, 5-6, 9
2 Peter 1:16-19
Matthew 17:1-9

RCL (St Gabriel’s)          
Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14
Psalm 97
2 Peter 1:16-19
Luke 9:28-36

In recent sermons, I’ve spoken on a number of occasions about the problems that can be caused in the Church, and in parish congregations and for parish churches, when people have unrealistic expectations of others in the Church and the congregation. I’ve spoken about the Donatist Controversy which raged in the Church in the 4^th Century.  That was focussed on whether or not the personal qualities of a minister affected the validity of the sacraments they administered, but in more general terms, it was about the holiness and perfection, or otherwise, of Church members. And I’ve also spoken about the problems churches and parishes can have when people leave the Church because of what they see as the un-Christian and hypocritical behaviour of other members of the Church.

In many ways, those people who today, leave the Church because of the behaviour of other people in the Church, are modern day Donatists. They’re people who expect the Church and all members of the Church to be perfect and  holy. They also, it must be said, see themselves as, if not perfect, then at least much better and much more Christian than other people in the Church and especially than those they criticise. Well, I think those people, before they say another word or take another step away from the Church or their parish church should take some time for honest self-reflection. And they’d do a lot worse than start by reading this morning’s Gospel.

In the Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds, Jesus makes it quite clear that, in the world, good people and bad people, saints and sinners if you like, although by our own admission we’re all sinners, live side by side. And that’s just how the world is. Jesus also makes it clear that it’s not up to us to sort this situation out. We might be called to proclaim the Gospel, to teach other people the things that Jesus said and did, and encourage them to do the same, but it’s not our job to weed out the sinners from amongst us, nor to condemn them, nor to throw them out or away. How could we anyway? As sinners ourselves we’d have to condemn ourselves along with them. No. To weed out the good from the bad, the saints from the sinners is his job, and it’s something he won’t do until he comes again in glory.

In the parable, Jesus is speaking about the world, but this parable applies to the Church too. Perhaps it shouldn’t because if the kingdom exists anywhere on earth, it should exist in the Church. But because the Church is in the world, it’s made up of saints and sinners too. How could be any other way? There’s something of the saint and the sinner mixed up in each and every one of us, and we make up the Church. So the Church simply mirrors it’s members, and it mirrors the world. And it’s this understanding of the Church that St Augustine of Hippo used to counter the ‘holier than thou’ pretentions of the Donatists.

Augustine said that the Church, as it exists in the world, mirrors the world. He said the Church is a ‘Corpus permixtum’, a ‘mixed body’, something that’s made up of both wheat and weeds, saints and sinners, and that is just how it is and how it will be until Christ himself separates the two at the end of time. He said that whilst the Church is called to be holy, the holiness of the Church is something that can only ever be partial in the world and that the Church’s holiness will only be, and can only be, fully realised in heaven.

As well as using the Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds to counter the Donatists, Augustine also made great use of the fact that the Donatists themselves didn’t live up to their own high expectations of others. Among the Donatists, for example, there was a group known as the ‘Circumcellions’ The name comes from the Latin for ‘to go around’ because these people did go around, in gangs, causing trouble. To be fair, in part they were social reformers who condemned poverty and slavery, but they were also thugs who used to beat people up with clubs which were known as ‘Israelites’ because they were used for smiting the foe, which they did to cries of “Laudate Deum” (“Praise God”). And their motive for this seems to have had less to do with their desire to see an end to poverty and slavery than with provoking their victims into killing them so that they could die a martyr’s death and be taken straight to heaven. For the same reason, they’d also interrupt courts of law and provoke judges into condemning them to death, which was a common punishment for contempt of court at that time. So despite their expectation, and demand, of holiness and perfection in others, the Donatists were far from perfect and holy themselves.

When I say that people who leave the Church today because of the behaviour of others, particularly when people’s behaviour doesn’t live up to their own high expectations and demands, are modern day Donatists, I don’t mean that they’re modern day Circumcellions. I don’t know that there any of those. What I do mean is that the Donatists condemned people, they tried to have people thrown out of the Church, especially bishops and priests, who they saw as less than perfect and holy. In fact, they consecrated their own bishops and split the Church because of this. And they did all this because, despite what Jesus says in the Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds, they wanted the Church to be perfect and holy in the world. But despite their own far from perfect and holy behaviour, they saw themselves as perfect and holy. They saw themselves as the wheat and anyone who didn’t agree with them as the weeds. And because they saw themselves in this way, themselves as saints and everyone else as sinners, they also believed that they were capable of sorting the wheat from the weeds and justified in throwing the weeds away. And there are so many people in the Church today who are like this, that I’m sure we’ve all met at least one of them and probably more than one.

How many times have we come across a situation in which one member of the Church has disagreed and fallen out with another? And when they’ve spoken to us about it, how many times has the one making the complaint claimed that it’s all the other person’s fault? How often have we come across a situation in which someone, or perhaps more than one, has taken a dislike to another Church member and said something like, “We don’t want (or need) their sort here”? Aren’t these examples of people thinking they’re wheat and those who disagree with them are weeds? How many times have people done things like this, not got the support they want and so they’ve left the Church, or at least that congregation, saying something like, “That lot are all the same”? All the same of course meaning wrong whilst they’re right. I’ve lost count of the number of times people have told me that I’m wrong because I’ve said or done something that they don’t agree with, or when I haven’t backed them up in a dispute with another member of the Church. There are very few occasions when I’ve been able to convince that person to consider the fact that it might be them who’s got something wrong, let alone accept that. I’ve lost count too, of the number of times other priests have told me that they’ve had the same experience. Well, I’m sorry, we’re parish priests, not private chaplains, we have to do what’s right and best for the parish even if that does mean that, at times, someone gets upset because they can’t have their own way. But when this happens, it’s not unusual for a person to leave the Church or a congregation and blame the vicar. All these things are Donatistic because they all stem from a belief that if anything happens that ‘I’ don’t like, it must be wrong and it must be someone else’s fault because ‘I’ am a good person and a good Christian so therefore it can’t be my fault.

What this really shows, in most cases, is a lack of real self-awareness, an inability to do something that’s absolutely essential to us as Christians; the ability to see ourselves as we really are, to see ourselves as God sees us. It also shows a great  disconnect between what we say in church and what we actually believe. We all admit, do we not, each and every time we come to church to worship the Lord, that we’re sinners and that we have sinned against both God and our neighbour, in thought and word and deed, in what we’ve done and what we’ve failed to do? So how can we, on the one hand, admit that we are amongst the weeds, and on the other, claim that we’re amongst the wheat? And if we accept that we’re counted among the weeds, how can we possibly claim that we’re better than others or believe that we’re in any position to sort the weeds from the wheat and throw the weeds away? And even when we are right in a dispute with another member of the Church, it’s not for us to stand in judgement on the other person or people involved. We’re neither perfect, nor perfectly holy ourselves so we have no right to judge others nor especially to condemn them. Sorting the weeds from the wheat is Jesus’ job and it’s up to him to decide what to do with them after he has done the sorting.

As St Augustine said, the Church on earth is a mixture of saints and sinners, and because we, in ourselves are a mixture of the saint and the sinner, the Church on earth can’t be anything else. That might not be the ideal, it might not be the way we want it to be, but that’s the reality. So those who expect the Church and parish congregations to be perfect examples of the kingdom of heaven, or who expect individual members of the Church to be perfect examples of holiness, simply have unrealistic expectations of both the Church and its members. They’re making unrealistic demands of the Church and its members. What’s more, these are  unrealistic expectations and demands that those who have and make them are incapable of living up to themselves because they’re no more perfect and holy than anyone else. What people who do this are really looking for is heaven on earth. This is why so many people who do these things are constantly moving around from church to church and denomination to denomination. They’re never happy in any church because they can’t find what they’re looking for, and they never will because what they’re looking for doesn’t exist in the Church on earth. And so in the end, they stop looking and stop going to church completely, full of bitterness quite often, because they blame other people for not being the perfect, holy people that they expect them to be but which no one, including they themselves, ever were, or are, or ever can be until and unless Christ decrees otherwise when he sorts out the weeds from the wheat.

Amen.

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Propers for the 16th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Trinity 7) 23rd July 2023

Entrance Antiphon
God himself is my help.
The Lord upholds my life.
I will offer you a willing sacrifice;
I will praise your name, O Lord, for its goodness.

The Collect
Lord of all power and might,
the author and giver of all good things:
graft in our hearts the love of your name,
increase in us true religion,
nourish us with all goodness,
and of your great mercy keep us in the same;
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
Missal (St Mark’s)        
Wisdom 12:13, 16-19
Psalm 86:5-6, 9-10, 15-16
Romans 8:26-27
Matthew 13:24-43

RCL (St Gabriel’s)          
Wisdom 12:13, 16-19
Psalm 86:11-17
Romans 8:12-25
Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43