Seven Good Joys of Mary

Here's the homily that I shared tonight in the Beauchamps High School Carol Service held at St Catherine's Wickford:

‘Seven Good Joys’ is a traditional carol about Mary's happiness at moments in the life of Jesus, probably inspired by the Seven Joys of the Virgin in the devotional literature and art of Medieval Europe. I came across this carol through its inclusion on Kate Rusby’s excellent Christmas album While Mortals Sleep.

The carol has a simple, repetitive but beautiful structure:

“The first good joy that Mary had,
It was the joy of one
To see her blessed Jesus
When He was first her Son.
When He was Her first Son, Good Lord;
And happy may we be,
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost
To all eternity”

That structure is repeated for all seven joys. There are different British and US versions of the carol which taken together give more than seven joys but the basic joys of Mary of which the carol speaks are to see her own Son Jesus: suck at her breast bone; make the lame to go; make the blind to see; read the Bible o'er; bring the dead alive; upon the crucifix; and wear the crown of heaven.

These seven joys take us from the nativity of Christ (suck at her breast bone) through his ministry (make the lame to go; make the blind to see; read the Bible o'er; bring the dead alive) to his death (upon the crucifix), and on to his resurrection and ascension (wear the crown of heaven).

Part of the reason this carol resonates, besides its beauty, is that it links Christmas with Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. It even dares to list the Crucifixion as one of Mary’s joys, an incomprehensible idea unless viewed with the eyes of faith.

So the singing of a carol like this can help us more fully explain the meaning of Christmas and save it from mere sentimentality because, as the carol describes, Christ is born into our world to save us by his life, death, and resurrection. That is the ultimate lesson of every true Christmas tradition and the source of all our joys as Christians, as well as those of Mary. May that be our experience this Christmas as we sing carols and hear, once again, the Christmas story told.

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Fine Lads feat. Randy Matthews - Seven Joys of Mary.

Rest from inner conflict

Here's my homily from the 8.00am service at St Martin-in-the-Fields:

Jesus calls us to be 100% for God in our lives. In his summary of the Law he says, Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind (Mark 12. 30 - 31). When we fail to do so, we experience internal division. It is, for example, why Jesus insists that we cannot love God and Mammon (Luke 16. 13).

St Paul describes this state of internal conflict when he writes in the Letter to the Romans: 'I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. 19 For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me.

So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!' (Romans 7. 19 - 25)

In our Gospel passage (Luke 11.14-28) this internal dialogue, debate and division is described in the language of demon possession. We don’t find rest or peace from this internal conflict until we finally and fully surrender to God. Once that surrender has occurred, then we need to nurture and protect it in order that we do not revert back to the state of internal chaos and conflict but instead remain in the peace and rest of being given over to God.

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Pärt, Glass and Martynov 's Silencio.

One shall tell another

Here is my homily from yesterday's lunchtime Eucharist at St Martin-in-the-Fields:

‘One shall tell another
And he shall tell his friend
Husbands, wives and children
Shall come following on
From house to house in families
Shall more be gathered in
And lights will shine in every street
So warm and welcoming

Come on in and taste the new wine
The wine of the kingdom
The wine of the kingdom of God’

One Shall Tell Another (The wine of the Kingdom) is a hymn by Graham Kendrick from the 1980's, but one which accurately describes what happens in today's Gospel reading (John 1. 35 - 42).

John the Baptist tells Andrew and another disciple that Jesus is the coming Messiah. The two disciples spend the day with Jesus and then Andrew tells his brother Peter that Jesus is the Messiah. John tells Andrew and his fellow disciple, Andrew tells Peter, and so it goes on. One shall tell another and he shall tell his friend. This is how the Good News spreads. In our day and time, we call it gossiping the Gospel.

But what is it that we tell? What is it that we pass on? What is it that we gossip? There are times in our journey as Christians when he don't share our faith with others - perhaps because we are afraid to do so in what seems a hostile culture or, perhaps, because we are afraid of saying the wrong thing. In some churches courses are run to encourage people to share their faith and to know the right thing to say. But that is not what we see happening here. These disciples simply pass on the news that Jesus is the expected Messiah. They point others to him and tell others what they have experienced in meeting him.

The missiologist Lesslie Newbigin says that this is the mark of a true witness; “the function of a witness is not to develop conclusions out of already known data, but simply to point to, report, affirm” the new reality that the witness has seen and heard. This is also what John’s Gospel, as a whole, sets out to do and what it wants those who read it, like us, to become. Newbigin writes: “[John] points his hearers to Jesus (e.g., 1:29ff., 36ff.; 3:27ff.); Jesus draws his hearers to himself. But these hearers will in turn become witnesses through whom others may believe (15:27; 17:20; 20:31), for the purpose is that not some but all … may come to faith.”

So we are to be witnesses like the writer of the Gospel, like John the Baptist, like Andrew, like Peter, this is our calling as Christians. And this is essentially a simple task. We are not asked to become fluent in all the doctrines of the Christian faith or to have an answer for every question that people ask about Christianity. We don’t have to understand or be able to explain the key doctrines of the Christian faith. We don’t have to be able to tell people the two ways to live or to have memorized the sinner’s prayer or to have tracts to be able to hand out in order to be witnesses to Jesus. All we need to do is to tell our story.

We are to be witnesses to what we have seen and heard about Jesus; to be “a witness to the living God, traces of whose presence and actions have been granted in the events which are recounted.” Witnesses are those who have seen or experienced a particular event or sign or happening and who then tell the story of what they have seen or heard as testimony to others.

That is what Jesus calls us to do; to tell our stories of encountering him to others. No more, no less. The focus is not on us and our lives but on him and what we know of him and have experienced of him in our lives. So instead of needing to memorize a Gospel presentation, all we need to do to be a witness is to tell our story; this is how I came to know Jesus and this is what he has come to mean to me.

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Larry Norman - Sweet Song Of Salvation.

Consuming Christ

Here is my homily from the lunchtime Eucharist at which I presided today at St Lawrence Jewry (John 6. 52 - 59):

“We hear that you are all cannibals.” That statement comes from a document written in the late 2nd century A.D. called The Octavius of Minicius Felix which describes a debate between a Christian and a pagan at the Roman port of Ostia. The Early Church was fairly consistently accused of cannibalism. While this wasn’t an unusual accusation made against groups that were in some sense alien in the society of the time and therefore perceived as being a threat, we can also see how the celebration of the Eucharist - a meal in which Christians consume the body and blood of Christ – may have contributed to this accusation.

The idea that, through bread and wine, we consume the body and blood of Christ is, of course, central to the Eucharist and our faith. Much of that centrality derives from the association of this act with the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ: “The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” (1 Corinthians 11. 23 – 26)

However, we can also think of the significance of the Eucharist in terms of the benefits to our bodies of eating and drinking. When we consume food and drink it is broken down into simple molecules and carried around our bodies in order to provide the energy we need for life. In a similar way, Jesus is the food and drink – the bread of life and water of life – which gives us the energy we need to live the Christian life. Just as our bodies need a regular supply of food and drink, so we need to regularly consume Jesus - taking him into our lives through the Eucharist, bible study, prayer and social action – in order that we are fed by him and have all we need to live out the Christian life. May we feed fully on him today. Amen.

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Adrian Snell - The Last Supper.