Bishop Joseph Barber Lightfoot (1828-1889)

IN this morning’s reading (Mk 12:35-13:14), Jesus promises to his disciples not world peace and seamless social justice, but constant persecution and betrayal.

FOR nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom… the brother shall betray the brother to death, and the father the son; and children shall rise up against their parents, and shall cause them to be put to death. And ye shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake: but he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.

Jesus never promised a Utopia. “Not peace, but a sword” was his prediction (Jn 14:27). And yet as Bishop Joseph Barber Lightfoot (1828-1889) reminded us, Jesus left with his Apostles a peace which no other creed, no commerce or politics, can begin to approach.

IF you would learn how Christ fulfils His promise to His true disciples, if you would test the value of this peace which He has left as His parting gift, do not seek it in the heat of controversy, in the wrangling of theological disputants, or in the strifes of religious parties: but go rather to the true disciples of Christ, to the lowly and the poor in spirit, to the suffering and oppressed, to the sorrowful and bereaved, to the sick and dying.

Watch the wife cruelly outraged in her deepest feelings by the desertion, or worse than desertion, of a husband, for whose love she has given up all; or the mother wounded at heart by the base ingratitude of a child, for whose advancement she has sacrificed all the comforts, and was ready to sacrifice even the necessities of life.

See how, notwithstanding the bitterness of her trial, a deep calm broods over the sufferer, lulling her sharpest pangs, and enabling her to forget her own sorrow, while she ministers to the less poignant sufferings of others. Go to the wretched hovel of the pauper, worn out with age, helpless, unfriended and alone, destitute of everything which could make the burden of life tolerable, and yet cheerful and contented, drawing from an unseen source never-failing draughts of comfort and hope.

Go and stand by the bed of the dying man; watch his last agonies, as the soul struggles to set itself free; see how amid his paroxysms the gleam of joy lights up his features, flushing them with the consciousness of an invisible Presence, and the faint smile and the pressure of the hand bear witness to this inward peace, triumphant over pain, triumphant over death. Go and visit these scenes, and then say, whether Christ is slack to fulfil His promise, whether the peace of the Gospel is a delusion or not.

Sermons In St Paul’s Sermon X: Christ’s Gift Of Peace.

More by Bishop Lightfoot here.

Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667)

IN our second reading at Evensong tonight (Mk 12:13-34), we hear the Summary of the Law:

AND Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.

The recitation of all Ten Commandments in the Administration Of The Lord’s Supper (here) has gradually fallen into disuse, but Bishop Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667) shows us how they should be creatively and positively seen.

They are indeed not a legal imposition. They are a sacrifice upon the altar of the heart.

O ETERNAL GOD, who dwellest not in Temples made with hands, the Heaven of Heavens is not able to contain thee; and yet thou art pleased to manifest thy presence amongst the sons of men with special issues of thy favour and benediction; make my body and soul to be a temple pure and holy; apt for the entertainments of the holy JESUS; and for the habitation of the holy Spirit.

LORD be pleased with thy rod of paternal discipline to cast out all impure lusts, all worldly affections, all covetous desires from this thy Temple, that it may be a place of prayer and meditation, of holy appetites and chast thoughts, of pure intentions, and zealous desires of pleasing thee, that I may become also a Sacrifice as well as a Temple, eaten up with the zeal of thy glory, and consumed with the fire of love, that not one thought may be entertained by me but such as may be like perfume, breathing from the altar of incense; and not a word may passe from me, but may have the accent of heaven upon it, and sound pleasantly in thy ears.

Dearest GOD, fill every faculty of my soul with impresses, dispositions, capacities and aptnesses  of religion, and do thou hallow my soul, that I may be possessed with zeal and religious affections, loving thee above all things in the world, worshiping thee with the humblest adorations and frequent addresses, continually feeding upon the apprehension of thy divine sweetness, and consideration of thy infinite excellencies, and observations of thy righteous commandments, and the seal of a holy Conscience as an antepast of eternity, and consignation to the joyes of Heaven, through JESUS CHRIST our Lord. Amen.

The Great Exemplar. Section XI: Of The Religion Of Holy Places.

See also the hymn O Thou Who Camest From Above. More prayers by Jeremy Taylor here.

St Augustine (354-430), Bishop Of Hippo Regius

AS dozens of Fathers and mystics confirm, to find God, we must go inward to the mind. Charles Wesley (1707-1788) wrote:

OPEN, Lord, my inward ear,
And bid my heart rejoice;
Bid my quiet spirit hear
Thy comfortable voice;

Never in the whirlwind found,
Or where earthquakes rock the place,
Still and silent is the sound,
The whisper of thy grace.

In Book X of the Confessions, St Augustine searched for God in the things of the outward, visible world, but did not find him.

FOR behold, Thou wert within, and I without, and there did I seek Thee; I, unlovely, rushed heedlessly among the things of beauty Thou madest.

Augustine realised that he must go inward, deep into his own mind and memory. Not in the sense of images of the past – even animals can do that. “In calling Thee to mind, I soared beyond those parts of it which the beasts also possess”. Nor do we merely lose ourselves in our own minds. Memory has no parts: it is a mystical openness to something infinite.

BUT why do I now seek in what part of it Thou dwellest, as if truly there were places in it? Thou dost dwell in it assuredly, since I have remembered Thee from the time I learned Thee, and I find Thee in it when I call Thee to mind.

No, when we celebrate the Eucharist “in remembrance” of the Passion of Christ we do not merely remember past events, images or stories. Nor is it a spiritual introversion, isolation. That is not “remembrance” in this context.

The eye of the mind learns from the outward signs to look inward, but only to burst through the shadows and espy the Courts of the Morning which encompass us, to watch (as Bede might say) the night of this world passing into everlasting Day.

This is “to have in remembrance”. We “lift up our hearts” and enter inwardly by faith a real and heavenly sanctuary through, in and yet above the mind, guests together at the marriage supper of the Lamb.

Our Prayer Book is a liturgy of spartan, even monkish simplicity, yet also one of awed reverence in the presence of the angels which surround the throne of grace. We gather beneath the invisible firmament in which the Sun of Righteousness has risen,

LIGHT and life to all He brings,
Ris’n with healing in His wings.

Shaped as he was by Augustine’s Christian Platonism, Thomas Cranmer did not reject Transubstantiation because he wanted something less real. He already had something which – I must emphasise, given his philosophical assumptions – he thought was more real, more immediate. In the words of Wesley’s Victim Divine,

WE need not now go up to heaven,
To bring the long-sought Saviour down:
Thou art to all already given,
Thou dost even now thy banquet crown:
To every faithful soul appear,
And show thy real presence here!

Bishop Thomas Ken (1637-1711)

IN a Sermon preached at King James II’s chapel in Whitehall, Bishop Thomas Ken (1637-1711) offered some remarks on Lent and on the discipline of fasting.

His subject was the prophet Daniel, who made appeal to God over the Exile of the Jews under Babylonian rule (597 -539 BC) by “prayer and supplications, with fasting, and sackcloth, and ashes” (Dan 9:3), and who “ate no pleasant bread, neither came flesh nor wine into his mouth” (see Dan 10:2).

In keeping with the Reformers, Ken recommended that those who fast in Lent should not cherry-pick things to “go without”, but should adopt a general simplicity of fare – always in keeping with our health and situation, and without becoming legalistic about it.

NOTHING is more plain than this, that Daniel did not think the bare abstaining from flesh to be fasting, when in the mean time we indulge ourselves in all the most palatable wines, all the delicacies of fish, and all the luxury of banquets. This is a licentious notion, which rose by the decay of christian piety. When he fasted, his diet was afflicting, and such as became a mourner; not to humour, but to chastise nature; not to pamper his appetite, but merely to appease it.

The ancient Christians knew no such distinction between fish and flesh; their lenten-fare was bread and water and salt; and their first meal on fasting days, was not till the evening.

I mention this example, to show you what the ancients thought fasting, and how they kept Lent; I do not exhort you to follow them any further, than either our climate, and our constitutions will bear; but we may easily follow Daniel, in abstaining from wine, and from the more pleasurable meats, and such an abstinence as this, with such a mourning for our own sins, and the sins of others, is the proper exercise of a primitive spirit, during all the weeks of Lent.

Prose Works Of Thomas Ken. A Sermon Preached At The King’s Chapel In Whitehall, 1685.

More by Thomas Ken here. He also wrote many prayers, and a preparation for Holy Communion.

Reginald Heber (1783-1826), Bishop of Calcutta

OUR Gospel reading today is St John’s account of the Feeding of the Five Thousand in today’s Gospel (John 6:1-14).

Bishop Reginald Heber (1783-1826) reassured us that just as Jesus’s blessing made the meagre provisions of five loaves and two fish far exceed anything we would expect, so too even the smallest gestures of charity – even those which do not involve money or material goods – can be life-changing.

A SINGLE warm and comfortable meal given to a poor neighbour, in a time of distress, may, by its consequences, be the means of saving a family. It may seem strange; but what if this man were, even then, almost worn out with want and toil, and if such timely nourishment have prevented his falling sick, and preserved him in a capacity to labour; — are not then his own and his family’s lives sustained by it? or what, if such a small relief came at a moment, when his heart was growing hard with distress; and when he was tempted to take to bad courses, for support; — may not a soul have been saved for ever, by our means?

Oh, it will be a glorious sight, hereafter, when the books of Providence are laid open before our eyes; — to see by what secret springs, what humble exertions, what meek and modest charities, the happiness of families, the support of nations, the great machine of the world itself, have been regulated and influenced: — to witness how God’s Providence may have given power and energy to the feeble alms of a widow; or to the silent prayers of those, who had prayers only to bestow; or how a cup of cold water given in the name of Christ, shall, in nowise, lose its reward!

Sermons On The Lessons, The Gospel Or Epistle, For Every Sunday. The Fourth Sunday In Lent.

It would be very satisfying, to win back charity from distant and wasteful governments, and from those who are more interested in the pain it brings to the rich than the relief it gives to the poor.

Heber shows just how very powerful charity is when it is given in kind, in person, and in constant attentive gestures – and above all, when it is given with Jesus’s blessing.

More by Reginald Heber here, and on Charity here. Heber also wrote some well-known hymns.

The Revd Mark Frank (1613-1664)

FOR his Sermon on the Fourth Sunday in Lent (which falls today), Mark Frank (1613-1664) drew on a sporting metaphor.

Unthinkingly “doing your disciplines” in training of itself produces only workaday professionals who rarely win anything. Frank’s sermon is an appeal both for effort and for intelligence during Lent and Passiontide.

In Frank’s words, “all pains and labour, every ‘running’, will not serve; it must be ούτως, so and so after a certain way, rightly ordered so as to ‘obtain’; such as is fit and proportionable to the end we aim at”.

AY, but how may we obtain to run so? Why, do as the runners in races do: (1.) Diet our bodies; (2.) Exercise ourselves before; (3.) Consider, and contrive how we had best to run; and (4.) strip ourselves of all incumbrances that may hinder us in our speed; and, indeed, these may well go into the ούτως, belong at least to the “so running” as has annexed to it the obtaining.

In other words, fasting, daily prayer, thoughtful reflection, and a life uncluttered by distractions: but only when allied to running the Christian race according to the rules of that particular athletic event.

THIS “so to run,” is … lawfully, according to the laws and rules of the race we are to run; “we are not crowned else,” says our Apostle 2 Tim. ii 5. Now, the laws of the Christian race are God’s commandments, according to which we are diligently to direct our steps; yet three laws there are more particular and proper to it—the law of faith, the law of hope, and the law of charity.

This is a wonderful metaphor for today: a context in which people of all ages understand and respect the rules of the game, and the need for self-discipline and doing “boring” things at unsociable hours. We accept these things because they are worth it in the end, for the title, the crown of glory.

LOOK we carefully to our feet, apply we ourselves diligently to our course, to run the ways of righteousness and peace, of holiness and salvation. Let us often look up to heaven, and the “crown of glory laid up” there, to add wings and spirit to us; and look we also down sometimes to the dangers by the way, and fear ourselves, and mark our steps, lest we chance to stumble, and fall, to grow faint or weary; but that we may run lawfully, carefully, speedily, cheerfully, stoutly, patiently, and constantly to the end; that, so running, we may obtain the end of our hopes, the crown of our joy, the salvation of our souls, and the redemption of our bodies, everlasting life, and eternal glory.

Sermon For the Christian Year. Sermon For The Fourth Sunday In Lent

Crown Of Thorns, by Carl Heinrich Bloch (1834-1890)

THE WAY OF THE CROSS (Latin Via Crucis) is a series of fourteen meditations on the Passion and Crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth.

The devotion has its roots in ancient pilgrimages to the Holy Land, but was popularised as a chapel prayer by Francis of Assisi (?1182-1226) and the Order he founded.

Today, it is followed chiefly during Lent and Passiontide, as Christians attempt to come to terms with the significance of the death of the incarnate Son of God.

This is something we can never adequately understand or appreciate, something which always bursts the boundaries of imagination or emotion. All that is left is to tell the story again and again.

TELL ME the old, old story of unseen things above,
Of Jesus and His glory, of Jesus and His love.
Tell me the story simply, as to a little child,
For I am weak and weary, and helpless and defiled.

Tell me the old, old story, tell me the old, old story,
Tell me the old, old story, of Jesus and His love.

Tell me the story slowly, that I may take it in,
That wonderful redemption, God’s remedy for sin.
Tell me the story often, for I forget so soon;
The early dew of morning has passed away at noon.

Tell me the old, old story, tell me the old, old story,
Tell me the old, old story, of Jesus and His love.

Read all…

The theme of the Way Of The Cross is simple: “taking up our cross” (see Mt 16:24), that is, imitating Jesus’s self-denial both for the sake of others and for the sake of our own everlasting life.

PROPOUND to your eyes and heart the example of the holy Jesus upon the cross; he endured more for thee, than thou canst either for thyself or him: and remember, that if we put to suffer, and do suffer in a good cause, or in a good manner, so that in any sense your sufferings be conformable to his sufferings, or can be capable of being united to his, we shall reign together with him. The high way of the cross, which – the King of sufferings hath trodden before us, is – the way to ease, to a kingdom, and to felicity.

Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667). Holy Living. Chapter II, Section V: Against Impatience.

I have prepared my own version, using the list of wholly Scriptural “stations” proposed by Pope Benedict XVI in 2007 (here). For each one, there are some prayers taken from the Book of Common Prayer, a suitable passage of Scripture, and a hymn.

Lest there be any doubt, there is not one word of this devotion which offends against Scripture or the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England. No images are venerated, and no saint is invoked.

The Revd Dr John Wesley (1703-1791)

MINGLING our Christian life with the ways of other religions or the secular world may seem harmless enough, but it risks losing everything.

Writing on 2 Cor 6:17-18 – last night’s reading from 1 Cor 5:9-13 would have done just as well – John Wesley (1703-1791) warned us:

IT is probable, it will not immediately have any apparent, visible ill consequences. It is hardly to be expected, that it will immediately lead us into any outward sin. Perhaps it may not presently occasion our neglect of any outward duty. It will first sap the foundations of religion: it will, by little and little, damp our zeal for God; it will gently cool that fervency of spirit, which attended our first love. If they do not openly oppose any thing we say or do, yet their very spirit will, by insensible degrees, affect our spirit, and transfuse into it the same lukewarmness and indifference towards God and the things of God. It will weaken all the springs of our soul; destroy the vigour of our spirit; and cause us more and more to slacken our pace, in running the race that is set before us.

Nonetheless, we do not have recourse to such drastic measures as Phineas in our reading this morning (Num 25), who ran an Israelite and his Midianite wife through with a single thrust of his spear! Therein lies the difference between law and gospel – something Christians seem to forget at times.

Wesley pleaded with us not to withdraw from society and trade, or treat non-Christians with anything less than perfect courtesy and respect, regardless of their chosen way of life. But then he urged us to choose our intimate companions much more carefully.

WHAT is it then which the apostle forbids? First, the conversing with ungodly men, when there is no necessity, no providential call, no business, that requires it: secondly, the conversing with them more frequently than business necessarily requires: thirdly, the spending more time in their company than is necessary to finish our business: above all, fourthly, the choosing ungodly persons, however ingenious or agreeable, to be our ordinary companions; or to be our familiar friends.

Sermons, Vol II. Sermon LXXXVI: On Leaving The World.

More by John Wesley here.

William Wilberforce MP (1759-1833)

OUR second reading at Mattins this morning (Mk 10:32-52) urges us not to seek power and influence, but a life of neighbourly service.

In his wide-ranging critique of Christianity in Britain, William Wilberforce MP (1759-1833) assured us that a truly Christian society is not characterised by a timid withdrawal from the world, nor by grandiose utopian politics and the quest for greater state power.

CHRISTIANITY indeed will not favor that vehement and inordinate ardor in the pursuit of temporal objects, which tends to the acquisition of immense wealth, or of widely spread renown: nor is it calculated to gratify the extravagant views of those mistaken politicians, the chief object of whose admiration, and the main scope of whose endeavors for their country, are extended dominion, and commanding power, and unrivaled affluence, rather than the more solid advantages of peace, and comfort, and security.

These men would barter comfort for greatness. In their vain reveries they forget that a nation consists of individuals, and that true national prosperity is no other than the multiplication of particular happiness.

Rather, it is marked by noble aspirations and a confident vigour among private individuals and their immediate families, lent to them by trust in God’s providence and love for their neighbours.

IF any country were indeed filled with men, each thus diligently discharging the duties of his own station without breaking in upon the rights of others, but on the contrary endeavoring, so far as he might be able, to forward their views and promote their happiness, all would be active and harmonious in the goodly frame of human society. There would be no jarrings, no discord. The whole machine of civil life would work without obstruction or disorder.

A Practical View &c. Chapter VI: Brief Inquiry Into The State Of Christianity In This Country.

Longer extract here. More by William Wilberforce here.

Pope St Gregory the Great (?540-604)

THE story of Balaam, which we’re hearing at Evensong at present (Num 22:20-40), caused a lot of problems for Anglicans in the 18th century. The tale of a talking donkey was a soft target for rationalists keen to prove that the Christian Scriptures were fanciful myths.

But the story is of course replete with spiritual insight. The donkey saw an angel which Balaam did not, turning Balaam aside from a journey which he was undertaking with his own ideas of what should happen, rather than God’s.

Pope Gregory the Great (?540-604) used this as an illustration of how our bodies sometimes perceive things our minds do not, falling sick to recall our self-absorbed minds to God’s service (cf. 2 Cor 12:7-10).

THE sick are to be admonished to consider how great health of the heart is in bodily affliction, which recalls the mind to knowledge of itself, and renews the memory of infirmity which health for the most part casts away, so that the spirit, which is carried out of itself into elation, may be reminded by the smitten flesh from which it suffers to what condition it is subject.  Which thing is rightly signified to Balaam (had he but been willing to follow obediently the voice of God) in the very retardation of his journey.

For Balaam is on his way to attain his purpose; but the animal which is under him thwarts his desire.  The ass, stopped by the prohibition, sees an angel which the human mind sees not; because for the most part the flesh, slow through afflictions, indicates to the mind from the scourge which it endures the God whom the mind itself which has the flesh under it did not see, in such sort as to impede the eagerness of the spirit which desires to advance in this world as though proceeding on a journey, until it makes known to it the invisible one who stands in its way.

Whence also it is well said through Peter, He had the dumb beast of burden for a rebuke of his madness, which speaking with a man’s voice forbade the foolishness of the prophet (2 Pet. ii. 16).  For indeed a man is rebuked as mad by a dumb beast of burden, when an elated mind is reminded by the afflicted flesh of the good of humility which it ought to retain.

Pastoral Rule, Chapter 12.