Good Friday 2019 – Second of three Sermons preached by the Revd. Canon Colin Williams – ex Archdeacon of the Diocese in Europe

Jack was aged about seven years old.  He loved going to school.  He had lots of friends there.  If you went past the school you could see him playing together with his friends in the school yard at playtime.

But his parents were worried,  Because he had so many friends, most weeks once or twice he was invited round to  one of his friends’ house to play and to have a meal with them and their family.  But he never invited any of his friends back to his house to come and play and eat. His parents noticed that.  And they got more and more worried.

Finally one day Jack’s dad took him to one side. ‘Son me and your mum have noticed that you never ask any of your friends back to come and visit you here and to have their tea. Is it because of your mum’s hands?  Jack looked a bit sheepish and just nodded.

You see Jack’s mum’s hands looked horrible.  They were black and scarred and misshapen.  And Jack had obviously worked out in his mind that if his friends came and ate with him and his mum and dad, then they were bound to see his mum’s hands. It couldn’t be avoided.  And so he never asked anyone to come.

It all went quiet for a few seconds.  And then Jack’s dad said well son I need to tell you how your mum’s hands got to be like that.  You see when you were a baby in the house we were living in we used to have a log fire.  And one day when your mum was busy she put you down in front of the fire whilst she was doing the ironing.  But she put you too close.  And a spark came out of the fire and it reached you and your clothes started burning.  And your mum didn’t think twice.  She ran up to you and put the fire out with her hands. And that’s how your mum’s hands got to be like that.

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Palm Sunday 2019 (Lent Series on the Liturgy – 5. The Sacrament of Mission)

Sermon preached by the Revd. Canon Leonard Doolan.

Over these weeks in Lent I will be offering 5 sermons based on the Liturgy – the weekly offering of the church in which God’s glory in Christ, and in us, is celebrated. This is the last in the series.

Each week the subject will be preceded by the word ‘sacrament’. I am using this word in its loosest sense because I do not want to confuse what we are doing with the 7 formally recognized Sacraments of the church. This ‘looseness’ of the word ‘sacrament’ I discovered recently when reading a book on the Eucharist by the great Orthodox theologian, Father Alexander Schmemann.

I am working with the basic meaning of ‘sacrament’, namely ‘the outward visible sign of a hidden invisible grace’. In other words, a mystery revealed.

To recap – in the first week we thought about the nature of the church focusing on the image of the ‘household’ and then into thinking about the Sacrament of the Gathering of the household of faith, and the immediate need for repentance, Kyrie eleison, followed by the outburst of Gloria (except in Lent and Advent). In week 2 we reflected on the Sacrament of the Word, balancing the word of God in scripture, and God in Christ as the Word made flesh. We  considered the Sacrament of Prayer, looking at 5 points in the Liturgy when prayer is the task of the household of God. Last week we reflected on the Sacrament of Offering, ending with a quote from Dom Gregory Dix.      (full text in previous sermon).

The Dom Gregory Dix quote from last week is a good starting point for us today as we think of the Sacrament of Mission. His was a reflection on the dominical words in the great Thanksgiving Prayer, ‘Do this in memory of me’. These words are recorded in the three synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke. The words constitute one of the two ‘great commands of Jesus’. Dix ends his reflection with the words, ‘Was ever another command so obeyed?’

The other ‘great command’ of our Lord is to be found at the end of St. Matthew’s gospel (Matthew 28, 19). In this he commands his followers to ‘go out’ to all the nations πάντα τά έθνη and to do to all peoples what he has done in the mystery of his death and resurrection, namely the creation of the household of faith. The household is created, not through birth right, so quite distinct from Judaism, but by baptism in the name of the divine Trinity. One bishop I once knew used to say that ‘you can be born in a garage, but it doesn’t make you a mechanic’. Christians are not born, they are adopted by the grace of baptism into the household of faith, and Our Lord clearly links baptism with that command to ‘Go out’.

So if, as I suggested last week, the Liturgy revolves around the great offering or anaphora, so the consequence of the Liturgy is to be found in the Sacrament of Mission.

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