The time is now

Here's the sermon that I shared at St Catherine's Wickford this evening:

The famous passage from Ecclesiastes that we have just heard read (Ecclesiastes 3. 1 - 15) is often understood as meaning that God orders our time and allots particular events to particular times and seasons. However, it can also be understood in terms of one of those phrases like ‘stuff happens’, ‘life happens’ which mean simply that what happens happens. The reality it says is that all our lives will contain enough time for births and deaths, tears and laughter, mourning and dancing, conflict and peace to occur. There is time enough in each of our lifetimes for all these things and it is inevitable that we will experience them.

While it is inevitable that the highs and lows of life will occur over the course of our lives, we don’t know when these things will occur or how long our lives themselves will be, and so inevitability is combined with uncertainty. We often respond to this by trying to impose order either by detailed planning on our own part or by asking that God will order our days. When we do so, we can end up preoccupied with the future, instead of experiencing the present.

As we don’t know how much time we have, it is imperative that we must use the time we currently have wisely. We do so by savouring and appreciating the time we have whether that is: time at home - growing together as a family; time at work – completing tasks and supporting colleagues; time at church - in worship, fellowship and prayer; or time alone with God - praying and reading the Bible.

Van Morrison sings that ‘These are the days, the time is now … There's only here, there's only now.’ Similarly, Simon Small has written, ‘There is always only now. It is the only place that God can be found.’ Each moment we are alive is unique and unrepeatable. As singer-songwriter, Victoria Williams, has put it, ‘This moment will never come again / I know it because it has never been before.’ We live in the present and can only encounter God in this moment, in the here and now, today.

We can only live in the here and now. In Deuteronomy 30. 11 - 20 we read of Moses saying to the Israelites, “today … I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses” and exhorting them to “choose life.” Similarly, in Hebrews 3. 7 - 19, the writer of that letter says, ‘Today, if you hear his [God’s] voice, do not harden your hearts …’ The emphasis of these passages is that now is the moment to encounter God, now is the moment to live.

Ecclesiastes 3.1-11 tells us that there is time, if we use the time that is available to us. All too often we do not take the time we have to be with those that are important to us. All too often we distract ourselves with unimportant tasks and fail to do the things that are truly of importance to us. Ecclesiastes 3.1-11 encourages us to use the time that we have. So, as we often pray during funerals, grant us, Lord, the wisdom and the grace to use aright the time that is left to us on earth. Let us use that time to know others more completely, appreciate them more fully, love them more deeply, and, in that knowing, know ourselves more intimately. For to know and appreciate and love and enjoy each other in that way is heaven.

How much time have we got? We don’t know, so we must use it all wisely. The past is behind us, the future is yet to come, so now is the only moment in which we can live and move and have our being. This means that now is always the moment in which to encounter God, now is always the moment in which to truly come alive and truly live, now is always the moment in which we can give of ourselves in thanks for all that God has given to us. There's only here, there's only now. This moment is unique and unrepeatable. It will never come again because it has never been before. So, these are the days for encounter, for living and loving and for giving. The time is now.

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Van Morrison - These Are The Days.

Poem: Paying Attention

Attend, attend, pay attention, contemplate.
Open eyes of faith to days, minutes,
moments of miracle and marvel; there is wildness
and wonder wherever you go, present
in moments that never repeat, running free,
never coming again. Savour, savour the present –
small things, dull moments, dry prayers –
sacraments of presence, sense of wonder,
daily divine depth in the here and now.
There’s only here, there’s only now,
these are the days, this is the fiery vision,
awe and wildness, miracle and flame. Take off
your shoes, stand in the holy fire; sacrament
of the burning, always consumed, never repeating
present moment, knowing the time is now.

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Victoria Williams - This Moment.

Start:Stop - The Sacrament of the Present Moment

Bible reading

"… as the Holy Spirit says, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, as on the day of testing in the wilderness, where your ancestors put me to the test, though they had seen my works for forty years. Therefore I was angry with that generation, and I said, ‘They always go astray in their hearts, and they have not known my ways.’ As in my anger I swore, ‘They will not enter my rest.’”

Take care, brothers and sisters, that none of you may have an evil, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” so that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have become partners of Christ, if only we hold our first confidence firm to the end. As it is said, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.” (Hebrews 3. 7 – 15)

Meditation

In Deuteronomy 30 we read of Moses saying to the Israelites, “today … I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses” and exhorting them to “choose life.” Similarly, in our reading from Hebrews we have heard that, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts …” Later on in Hebrews we read that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” but the emphasis here is on today.

One reason for this emphasis is that, as Simon Small has written, “There is always only now. It is the only place that God can be found.” Each moment we are alive is unique and unrepeatable. As songwriter, VictoriaWilliams, has put it: “This moment will never come again / I know it because it has never been before.” We live in the present. Therefore, we can only encounter God in this moment, in the here and now, today.

Jean Pierre de Caussade was a French Jesuit priest and writer known for his work Abandonment to Divine Providence and his work with Nuns of the Visitation in Nancy, France. De Caussade coined a phrase to describe what we have just been talking about. He called it ‘The Sacrament of the Present Moment,' which “refers to God's coming to us at each moment, as really and truly as God is present in the Sacraments of the Church ... In other words, in each moment of our lives God is present under the signs of what is ordinary and mundane. Only those who are spiritually aware and alert discover God's presence in what can seem like nothing at all. This keeps us from thinking and behaving as if only grand deeds and high flown sentiments are 'Godly'. Rather, God is equally present in the small things of life as in the great. God is there in life's daily routine, in dull moments, in dry prayers ... There is nothing that happens to us in which God cannot be found. What we need are the eyes of faith to discern God as God comes at each moment - truly present, truly living, truly attentive to the needs of each one.” (Elizabeth Ruth Obbard, Life in God's NOW, New City, 2012)

Simon Small has noted, however, that “Our minds find paying full attention to now very difficult. This is because our minds live in time. Our thoughts are preoccupied with past and future, and the present moment is missed.” He goes on to say that, ‘To pay profound attention to reality is prayer, because to enter the depths of this moment is to encounter God ... Contemplative prayer is the art of paying attention to what is’ (Simon Small, 'From the Bottom of the Pond', O Books, 2007). In saying this, he echoes de Caussade’s idea of the sacrament of the present moment and the thinking of SimoneWeil who said that, ‘absolute unmixed attention is prayer.’ All these confirm the thought in Hebrews that today is the moment for encounter with God.

Prayer

Lord God, our thoughts are often preoccupied with past and future, meaning that we miss the present moment. Enable us to realise the uniqueness of each passing moment which is unrepeatable. Enable us to live in the sacrament of the present moment by giving absolute unmixed attention to the reality of what is in the here and now. Today, may we hear your voice in the sacrament of the present moment.

Lord God, give us the eyes of faith to discern you as you come at each moment - truly present, truly living, truly attentive to the needs of each one. May we discern you in what is ordinary and mundane, in the small things of life as in the great, in life's daily routine, in dull moments, and in dry prayers. Today, may we hear your voice in the sacrament of the present moment.

Lord God, keep us from thinking and behaving as if only grand deeds and high flown sentiments are 'Godly'. Teach us to value the doing of small, mundane actions recognising that you are equally present in the small things of life as in the great. Enable us to show your love through our actions as we do our common business wholly for the love of you.  Today, may we hear your voice in the sacrament of the present moment.

Blessing

Realising the uniqueness of each passing moment, hearing God’s voice today, living in the present moment, discovering God’s presence in the here and now. May those blessings of God almighty, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, rest upon you and remain with you always. Amen. 

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The Velvet Underground - Sunday Morning.

Practising the presence of God in the sacrament of the present moment

All babies look like Winston Churchill! The story goes that a friend once remarked to Churchill, "Winston! How wonderfully your new grandson resembles you!" and Churchill immediately replied, "All babies look like me. But then, I look like all babies."

Whether a true story or not, the phrase “all babies look like Winston Churchill” entered popular culture as a way of saying that, although we naturally look to see the characteristic features of both parents’ families in the face of a new born child, all newborn babies look very similar because at that stage the distinctive characteristics of their face have yet to develop fully.

Think about that in relation to the story from Luke’s Gospel (Luke 2: 22-40) that we have heard read this morning when Simeon and Anna both knew that the six week old baby in Mary’s arms was God’s Messiah, the one who would bring salvation to all peoples. Now, at that time all six week old babies had to be brought to the Temple in Jerusalem. So there would have been other babies there on the same day and Simeon and Anna seem to have both been regular visitors to the Temple looking out for God’s Messiah. They might have seen thousands of six week old babies over the years that they had spent in the Temple. How did Simeon and Anna know that baby Jesus was different from all the other babies that they had seen brought into the Temple?

It was the Holy Spirit that led Simeon into the Temple on that day so that he could encounter Jesus and it was the Holy Spirit that had assured him that he would not die before he had seen the Lord’s promised Messiah. In addition, Simeon was waiting – looking out, praying for, expecting – Israel to be saved. He was expecting God to reveal the Messiah to him before he died and so he would have been constantly looking for signs of the Messiah. So, we have a combination of the Holy Spirit’s revelation and Simeon’s expectation – his active looking - that reveal the Messiah to him in a six week old baby boy.

Often God’s work in the world and in other people is not easy to spot. God works in and through the ordinary and everyday, through the people and things around us and we need to be looking out for signs of his activity and presence. We need to be listening for his Holy Spirit to prompt us to look at some ordinary thing or ordinary person in order to see God at work.

In the film American Beauty, Ricky shows Jane a blurry video of a plastic bag blowing in the wind among autumn leaves. As they watch he explains that "this bag was, like, dancing with me. Like a little kid begging me to play with it. . . . And that’s the day I knew there was this entire life behind things, and this incredibly benevolent force, that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid. Ever." "Sometimes,” he says, “there’s so much beauty in the world I feel like I can’t take it, like my heart’s going to cave in.” To encounter God as that incredibly benevolent force that wants us to know that there is no reason to ever feel afraid, we need to pay attention to the beauty of the ordinary, overlooked things in life, like a plastic bag being blown by the wind. As Saint Augustine said, “How many common things are trodden underfoot which, if examined carefully, awaken our astonishment.”

Jean Pierre de Caussade was a French Jesuit priest and writer known for his work Abandonment toDivine Providence and his work with Nuns of the Visitation in Nancy, France. De Caussade coined a phrase to describe what we have just been talking about. He called it 'The Sacrament of the Present Moment,' which ‘refers to God's coming to us at each moment, as really and truly as God is present in the Sacraments of the Church ... In other words, in each moment of our lives God is present under the signs of what is ordinary and mundane. Only those who are spiritually aware and alert discover God's presence in what can seem like nothing at all. This keeps us from thinking and behaving as if only grand deeds and high flown sentiments are 'Godly'. Rather, God is equally present in the small things of life as in the great. God is there in life's daily routine, in dull moments, in dry prayers ... There is nothing that happens to us in which God cannot be found. What we need are the eyes of faith to discern God as God comes at each moment - truly present, truly living, truly attentive to the needs of each one.’ (Elizabeth Ruth Obbard, Life in God's NOW, New City, 2012)

‘To pay profound attention to reality is prayer, because to enter the depths of this moment is to encounter God. There is always only now. It is the only place that God can be found.’ So, 'Contemplative prayer is the art of paying attention to what is.’ (Simon Small, 'From the Bottom of the Pond', O Books, 2007)

Brother Lawrence was a member of the Carmelite Order in France during the 17th Century. He spent most of his life in the kitchen or mending shoes, but became a great spiritual guide. He saw God in the mundane tasks he carried out in the priory kitchen. Daily life for him was an ongoing conversation with God. He wrote: “we need only to recognize God intimately present with us, to address ourselves to Him every moment.”

As a result, "The time of action does not differ from that of prayer. I possess God as peacefully in the bustle of my kitchen, where sometimes several people are asking me for different things at the same time, as I do upon my knees before the Holy Sacrament.”

“It is not needful to have great things to do. I turn my little omelette in the pan for the love of God. When it is finished, if I have nothing to do, I prostrate myself on the ground and worship my God, who gave me the grace to make it, after which I arise happier than a king. When I can do nothing else, it is enough to have picked up a straw for the love of God.”

“We ought not to be weary of doing little things for the love of God, who regards not the greatness of the work, but the love with which it is performed.”

This sort of spirituality - the sense of the presence of God in all things, and the possibility of honouring God in every action is also found in our hymn books. We sing:

‘Teach me, my God and King,

In all things thee to see,

And what I do in any thing,

          To do it as for thee:’

George Herbert’s hymn, originally a poem called ‘The Elixir,’ ends with these words:

‘A servant with this clause

          Makes drudgery divine:

Who sweeps a room, as for thy laws,

          Makes that and the action fine.

          This is the famous stone

          That turneth all to gold:

For that which God doth touch and own

          Cannot for less be told.’

If we practising the presence of God in the sacrament of the present moment, as Brother Lawrence and Jean Pierre de Caussade teach us, then we will be like Simeon and Anna, able to signs of God’s activity and presence all around us. Because, as Bill Fay sings, when our eyes are open and our hearts are expectant:

‘There are miracles,

In the strangest of places

There are miracles,

Everywhere you go

I see fathers,

Hold a little child's hand

I see mothers,

Holding a little child's hand

I see trees, trees,

Blowing in the wind

I see seeds,

Being sown by the wind

It's a cosmic concerto,

and it stirs my soul.

I see grandmas,

Blowing kisses into a pram

I see grandpas,

Scratching their head in amazement

It's a cosmic concerto,

and it stirs my soul

It's a cosmic concerto,

and it stirs my soul.’

Let us pray: Help me become attentive to this moment which will never come again. May I know you in the sacrament of the present moment seeing that you are there in life's daily routine, in dull moments, in dry prayers. More than that, that all is in you, all is held in the palms of your hands. May I see the present moment as though I were walking on my hands, seeing the world hanging upside to know dependence and rest in the Maker’s hands. Amen.

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Bill Fay - Cosmic Concerto (Life Is People).

Spiritual Life column

Here is my Spiritual Life column from today's Ilford Recorder:

'Bill Fay sings that “There are miracles / Everywhere you go.” What we might not then expect is for the song to continue, “I see fathers / Hold a little child's hand.” What Bill Fay celebrates in this song entitled ‘Cosmic Concerto (Life Is People)’ is the wonder of everyday life if we can but see it - seeds being sown by the wind to grow into trees; grandmas and grandpas blowing kisses into a pram; the infinite variation in the space of a human face.

Each moment we are alive is unique and unrepeatable. As another songwriter, Victoria Williams, puts it: “This moment will never come again / I know it because it has never been before.”

Simon Small has written that “Our minds find paying full attention to now very difficult. This is because our minds live in time. Our thoughts are preoccupied with past and future, and the present moment is missed.”

Jean Pierre de Caussade spoke about the Sacrament of the Present Moment. He meant by this God present in what is ordinary and mundane; there in life's daily routine. Simon Small has also written that “to pay profound attention to reality is prayer because to enter the depths of this moment is to encounter God.”

Regardless of whether we see God in the miracle of human existence, we can perhaps agree that, even though life also contains great suffering, there is real wonder, beauty and mystery to be found in everyday life.'

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Iona - Today.

Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now

“Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.” Matthew 6. 34 (Text for 2013 - St John's Seven Kings)

Simon Small writes in ‘From the Bottom of the Pond’ that: “Our minds find paying full attention to now very difficult. This is because our minds live in time. Our thoughts are preoccupied with past and future, and the present moment is missed.”

But, he says, “Contemplative prayer is the art of paying attention to what is”: “To pay profound attention to reality is prayer, because to enter the depths of this moment is to encounter God. There is always only now. It is the only place that God can be found.”

This is very much what Jesus seems to be saying to us in our Text for 2013 (Matthew 6. 34) and in his teaching on worry and anxiety found in Matthew 6. 24 -34. 

When we are preoccupied with what might happen in the future, we are not living fully in the present and may well misunderstand or misinterpret what is actually going on. Jesus encourages us to live fully in the present because, as Simon Small says, that is where we encounter God.

When we genuinely encounter God in the here and now we know that his love and forgiveness surround us and that his Spirit fills us. As Jesus prayed in John 17, he is in us and we are in him. When we know this in our hearts in the here and now, we can relax because whatever happens to us we are accepted, forgiven, loved and gifted by the God who created all things and who will bring all things to their rightful end. We are held in the palm of his hands and, as Julian of Norwich put it, “all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well”.

Even in the difficult times, we can still know that this is true because, as our Text for 2013 puts it, God will help us deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.

Jesus is saying that the more we live in the present and the more we encounter God’s love in the here and now, the less we will be anxious or worried. Prayer is able to help us do both things and therefore helps us to reduce our sense of anxiety or worry. Not because we have listed all our worries to God and believe that he will solve them all for us, but instead because, through prayer, we have encountered more of God’s love and, as a result, trust that he will be with us whatever comes our way.   

This is important because so much of our sense of dissatisfaction with our lives and the complaining we do about other people stems from our own worries and anxieties rather than what may or may not have happened or what others may or may not have done. Instead of focusing on other people and what we think they should or should not do or have done, we need to begin with ourselves and our relationship with God by giving our entire attention to what God is doing right now, and not getting worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. Then God is able to help us deal with whatever comes up, whether hard things or blessings, when the time comes.

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The Killers - Be Still.