THE BLOOMSBURY FESTIVAL 2020

WE ARE HIGHLIGHTING THE FOLLOWING CONCERT:

'ROSSINI AND FRIENDS'

DIRECTOR ; MR JONATHAN LOUTH

SATURDAY 17TH OCTOBER 2020 AT 7 30 PM

WE EXPEVCT A SMALL AUDIENCE - THIS CONCERT WILL BE LIVE STREAMED.

TICKETS AVAILABLE FROM THE BLOOMSBURY FESTIVAL WEBSITE.

Sermon for the Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity Year A

Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God which passes all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Philippians 4.5,6

It is a commonplace for us to hear of ‘St Pauls’ Letter to the Philippians’ or to the Colossians or the Corinthians. The second Reading of the Parish Eucharist is often called the ‘Epistle’ or ‘Letter’. We have to imagine St Paul communicating to the far flung early Christian community as he dictates long letters via a secretary, companion or scribe like Timothy.  His letters contain formal teaching, warning, moral instruction. They contain exhortation and greeting. We read Paul’s letters, even after two thousand years and their words leap out of the pages with passion and love. He begins his letter with a greeting : ‘My brothers and sisters, whom I love and long for’. It is so interesting that the kind and intimate letter greeting ‘Dear so and so’ has now been replaced with the impersonal and screechy ‘Hi!’ ‘Yours Faithfully’ with an emoji. Paul is ready always to convey the sense the there is such a thing as the Christian character, whose stamp and mark is mutual love, both of God and neighbour, and perseverance and bravery in the commitment to the life of Christian faith.

With the advent of the PC and the laptop, of Emails and of countless other instant message types, all characterised by their brevity, it has become a rare joy to receive a hand written letter. I remember our Post Office when I was a boy. It was a large modern and airy building, but along one bank of its long walls lay a whole row of ink pots set into the wipe-able Formica surfaces upon which were large framed mats of neat blotting paper. People would patiently dip pen to ink many times before a few lines had been written, but here was a kind of patient ceremony which is now lost to us.

I have here my grandmother’ Parker Pen. The fountain pen is at least 60 years old and it was used to write countless neat letters written in real ink on thick laid paper. The letter of course had to be stamped, enveloped and then hand posted. On applying for a university place, our headmaster gave us two pieces of advice – “Always write your letters in ink and not biro, and when at interview, always thank you interviewers for taking the time to see you! The giving and receiving of letters becomes an important part of the plot in old films and novels, and somehow an Email doesn’t quite measure up in terms of the quality and the beauty of these former communications. It is so pleasing to see a hand written letter as it raises its head above the junk mail.

St Paul’s letters are known for their beautiful greetings, which in this morning’s letter take up 29 lines of prose. From his letters we get a very real sense of St Paul as communicator and we realise that only twenty or so years after the death and resurrection of Christ, Paul’s Church is one in which mutual love abounds, in which there is a sense of real joy and confidence in believing, but equally the struggle and the determination to prevail. There is, too an abiding sense of the reality of God in Jesus Christ, and that he is ‘very near’. Then there is Paul’s fearless and powerful self-confidence and strength of leadership as he urges his followers to cast all worries aside and instead to offer prayers and supplications to God. This is echoed in the words of Teresa of Avila, whose saint’s day we commemorate today:

Let nothing disturb you,

Let nothing frighten you,

All things are passing away:

God never changes.

Patience obtains all things

Whoever has God lacks nothing;

God alone suffices.

The same intimate connection with St Paul’s followers is to be the intimate connection they are to maintain with their God. This is to be their strength. Above all they are to persevere and to prevail in and with what he calls ‘the peace of God which passes all understanding’, that strong inner peace which is the evidence of their personal connectedness with God rather than with the ‘passing’ things of this ‘fleeting’ world.

Of course it only human to find yourself preoccupied or worried about things. We are sometimes confronted with what seem like strong tests to our usual feeling that everything is more or less OK. This coronavirus has tested us very much and last week’s mental health week was all the more significant for the realities that coronavirus has brought, not least the strain it has placed on our capacity to cope. Shakespeare termed the famous phrase ‘the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to’, which is the legacy of pain and worry, whether by reason of ill health, loss, the disappointment of our hopes or the painful challenge to our complacencies, or of past sorrows. To all this we may admit, but for Paul’s corresponding call to ‘the higher Way’ where God is the peace which ‘passes  human understanding’. The move away from our own anxiety and into God’s peace. It’s all very tough, and not easy or consoling. But our correspondent Paul has been through it; is going through it in his cell in Philippi. His letter is known as a letter of exhortation, urging us all on to find our security in that which has already been established in us, the love of God, meted out through his humanity and the gathered church. In his gentle and beautiful cadences, every bit as mellifluous as Shakespeare’s, Paul’s final words of our letter section from Philippians reach their moving crescendo:

Finally, my beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is  pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and is there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of Peace be with you.

So much better than the very English ‘Yours sincerely!’

A similar prayer was gifted to me by an old Australian priest friend, long since dead and former Director of the Anglican Centre in Rome. It is simply a prayer to the loveliness and awesomeness of God. God is, in this prayer, as God is in the Letters of Paul, our truest and most loving correspondent.

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O MYSTERY MOST BLESSED MOST HOLY

MOST MERCIFUL MOST LOVING MOST MIGHTY

MOST TRUE MOST HONOURABLE MOST BEAUTIFUL

UNFATHOMABLE ABYSS OF PEACE

UNUTTERABLE OCEAN OF LOVE

FOUNT OF BLESSING

GIVER OF AFFECTION

HOLY JOY

FATHER SON HOLY GHOST

ONE GOD IN THREE PERSONS

EVER TO BE WORSHIPPED AND ADORED

BE THOU TO US

RECTITUDE FORTITUDE BEATITUDE

REFRESHMENT LIGHT PEACE

THROUGH JESUS CHRIST OUR LORD.

AMEN.

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