Dear People of God
Grace and peace to you.
Once again we play with the Calendar: the Feast of the Transfiguration was actually yesterday, but since calendars are merely a way of measuring the lapse of time and we are people of eternity, well …..
My thanks to the Quilters’ Group for the lovely Prayer Quilt with which they presented me last Sunday. I was genuinely taken by surprise! When Alva told me before the service that there was a quilt to bless (for those who don’t know, the group makes quilts which are blessed and presented to people who are in hospital or confined to home due to illess) I asked for whom it was intended. Alva said “for a gentleman”, and I said “So I’ll just bless it for “Alva’s Gentleman Friend”, OK?” I indeed blessed it “for whom it is intended” and was very surprised when Alva turned it over and said “See, there’s his name on the back: it’s for you!” (I had indeed been rather ill for a couple of weeks). When it is not being used to warm me these last few nights we put it across the back of the settee: one of my daughters and her family were visiting last Sunday afternoon and greatly admired it.
Lessons from Lambeth: Once again everything seems to come down to “winners” and “losers” with voting contentious issues only serving to deepen the divide threatening to engulf the whole of the Anglican Communion. It doesn’t matter at which level divisions of opinion happen: when we differ, perhaps even strongly, we MUST learn to speak civilly to the other, try to reach an accommodation and then get on with the business of being the Community of Christ. Even the apostles had their differences of opinion and in the first century Church there were some serious issues once the Gentiles came into the equation. The Jewish party started by wanting Gentile converts to observe the whole Jewish law but the end result was “it seems good to the Holy Spirit and to us that they should refrain from blood and what has been sacrificed to idols”. I have known managers, and unfortunately worked under the management of some, who took their cues from the ancient Chinese text “The Art of War”, and made life a misery for everyone on the organisation. A more preferable approach is “The Art of Compromise” which provides a base for everyone to learn to understand their difference and work through them.
A REMINDER: Trivia afternoon next Saturday in Beresfield hall. PLUS the next Thornton Market Day is coming up on the first Saturday in September. We need to have a visible parish profile at what is a good opportunity to present ourselves to the wider community.
Any ideas for a special parish service? Grandchildren Day? Fathers’ Day? Let me know.
Grace and peace
Fr George
0410 586 119 gmainprize@bigpond.com
See you in church
PROPERS for TRANSFIGURATION
Sentence
It is the God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. (2 Cor 4:6)
Collect
Eternal God, our glorious King, whose Son Jesus Christ was transfigured on the holy mountain and seen in splendour by his chosen witnesses” give us, his followers, faith to perceive his glory, to listen to him, and to walk in his way, that we may be changed into his likeness from glory to glory; for he lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Readings
Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14 The vision of “one like a human being” before God
Psalm 97 The greatness and glory of God
2 Peter 1:16-19, 20-21 Witnesses to the Transfiguration
Mark 9:2-10 The apostles terrified at the vision of Jesus in glory
Sermon (Fr George)
There’s a rather splendid hymn for the Transfiguration whose last verse reads “and minds that learn to scan/creation like a book/know nothing lives outside their plan/so never look/O lord of hidden light/forgive us who despise/the things that lie beyond our sight/and give us eyes. (full text at the end of this text)
You may have noticed that one of my continuing themes is to do with a perceived conflict between “science” and “religion”. I continue to maintain that there is no conflict because, as I have said more than once before, at its simplest science says “how” and religion says “why”. When we get so caught up with having to have a logical explanation for everything we start to lose a grasp of the idea of “mystery”, and mystery lies at the very heart of what it means to be fully human. Rather than pushing back the boundaries of mystery, it seems to me that the more we learn about the nature of things, the more profound the mystery of God becomes, and we are invited into that mystery.
Consider the astrophysicists delight at the pictures being transmitted by the new James Webb Deep Space telescope: you probably saw something of them on the various television newscasts. On and ABC TV program “The Drum” (week nights at 6pm, since you ask) Julia Baird, herself no mean theologian, was interviewing a panel of astrophysicists and astronomers, one of whom said “we’ll shortly be able to see back to the Big Bang, the beginning of all things” and Julia Baird had the last word , saying “and what if there is no beginning?”
God invites us into the mystery of “his” being. We believe in a god who is beyond time: Creation exists within God, not God within Creation. I’m quite open to the notion that even when Creation as we increasingly know it eventually ceases to be (Laws of Thermodynamics: all heat dissipates and heat is the driving force of creation. That’s called “entropy” – Physics 101) then it is entirely within the economy of God that another “Big Bang” is called into being and the cycle begins again. God, who called Creation into being out of nothing, is not limited by the Laws of Thermodynamics which are, after all, a part of the created order.
Am I giving you mental indigestion?
So the inner band of three apostles, Peter, James and John, witness the vision of Jesus in company with Moses and Elijah, who are the symbols of the whole of Judaism, namely the Law and the Prophets. The apostles are, to use a little-known theological term, “gobsmacked”, and Peter starts babbling. They catch a glimpse of Jesus in the glory which lies at the heart of his very being as the Incarnate Word. Of course they want to stay there: don’t you want to prolong profound experiences in your life? But it’s those events, called to mind time and again, that give us some of the pleasure and energy to continue with our daily routines.
There’s another hymn “How good, Lord, to be here” whose last verse says “how good Lord to be here/but we may not remain/ but since you bid us leave the mount/come with us to the plain” (It’s in our hymnal: look it up, but not right now!)
We are daily invited to go deeper into the mystery of God and to experience his transforming presence in our lives. There is mystery at the very heart of the Eucharist when we believe that Christ is truly present with us under the forms of bread and wine, transfigured by the Spirit into the very body and blood, the real presence, of Christ. If we strip away the sense of mystery our faith is impoverished: it can become no more than a sort of looking back and thinking “what a good event that was”, instead of seeking to experience the transforming presence of God in our daily lives. We call to mind Jesus promise to the disciples, in some of his last words prior to the Ascension “and I am with you always, even to the end of time”.
What we do here today invited us into an ever-deepening relationship with the One who, from before the beginning of all things and who will be after the end of all things, eternally creating, redeeming and sanctifying, call us to belong to him, to whom he glory for ever. Amen
Once upon a mountain top Yet men have lived and died
there stood three startled men and found of him no trace.
who saw the wheels of nature stop “Thou art a God” the prophet said
and heaven break in. who hides thy face”.
Their friend of every day The earth lies all explored
the face they knew for his the heavens are ours to climb,
they saw for one half-hour the way and still no man has seen his God
he always is at any time
and minds that learn to scan
Creation like a book
know nothing lies outside their plan
so never look.
O Lord of hidden light,
forgive us who despise
the things that lie beyond our sight
and give us eyes.
Intercessions (Dawn Holland)
Loving Father we humbly come to you in prayer for your world today. We are saddened at the many problems we see damaging and destroying so much of the beautiful planet you have given us. We see wars, inhumanity in treatment of country on country, cruel treatment of person to person and destruction of habitation of our creatures and further destroying of rain forest. Please forgive our mismanagement and disrespect for each other. We your children ask you to guide us in care for this world. We pray for wisdom for world leaders and for harmony between nations. We pray especially for our own leaders, our Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, his cabinet and all in leadership roles in Australia that they may have wisdom, fairness and justice for all people.
Loving Heavenly Father in your mercy HEAR OUR PRAYER.
As we remember the anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, we pray, Father, that you will save us from our warring madness. Breath your peace over this world: Ukraine and Russia, China and its territorial ambitions, Israel and Palestine, the internal strife of Yemen, Lebanon, Thailand, Myanmar and all places of injustice, oppression and violence. Prosper the peacemakers.
Loving heavenly Father, in your mercy HEAR OUR PRAYER
We pray for the world Church especially for our sister Diocese of Guadalcanal, the Church of North India, the Religious Society of Friends and in Australia for the Bishop to Aboriginal People.
In our own Diocese we pray for our Bishops Peter, Charlie and Sonia. We pray for Lakes Grammar Anglican School, and for the parishes of Dungog and Gresford Paterson.
In our Parish we pray for our Priest-in-Charge George, our Deacon Gail and their families and for our Op shop volunteers, our families, and Tarro Uniting Church. May we be a faithful representative of Jesus in our community and wherever we are.
Loving Heavenly Father in your mercy HEAR OUR PRAYER.
We pray for our community, for Mr T’s Gourmet Takeaway, Beresfield Newsagency and for Beresford Avenue Medical Centre. We pray for those in need in our community, the aged and infirm, the poor, the homeless and those who are sick in body or mind and for those who have asked for our prayers,
Les, Lynn, Betty, Didi and for those on our regular prayer list and for those known only to ourselves or to you alone.
Loving Heavenly Father in your mercy HEAR OUR PRAYER.
We give thanks that you have called us into that great fellowship which none can number, whose hope was in the Word made Flesh, with our patron Paul; the Blessed Mother, and those whom we commemorate this week: Dominc, Mary Sumner, Lawrence, John Henry Newman, Jeremy Taylor and Florence Nightingale. Receive into your glory Arthur Malcom, bishop, who has died. We remember before you those whom we have loved and see no more, and those whose anniversary of death falls this week: Melvie Phillips, Ella Fenly, Grace Avard, Ena Bridge and Joan Davies. May they rest in peace and rise in glory.
Saints and Commemorations of the Week to 13 August
8 Dominic, priest and friar (1221) founded the Dominican, properly known as the Order of Preachers, whose ministry was, by study and reflection, to preach the orthodox (right) Gospel to counter heresies which were rife. One notable member of the Order was Thomas Aquinas, the philosopher.
9 Mary Sumner, founder of the Mothers’ Union (1921) from a small beginning in an English country Rectory, Mary Sumner’s vision was that mothers across all social classes might be able to support one another in raising children. It has become a world-wide organisation which undertakes development work in family and child care, encouraging women in the ministry of raising families.
10 Lawrence, deacon and martyr in Rome (258) when the Emperor Valerian sought to get his hands on the supposed riches of the church and commanded Lawrence to assemble and hand them over Lawrence assembled a great company of the poor and marginalised and announced that “these are trues riches of the Church”. Valerian ordered him killed slowly and he was roasted alive on a gridiron (which is now his symbol).
11 Clare of Assisi (1252) after renouncing a life of privilege and luxury she gathered a group of like-minded women and established an enclosed order under the care of Francis of Assisi, dedicated to serving the poor and ill from the monastery at San Damiano. The Second Order of Franciscans, the Community of St Clare, established the monastery at Stroud in this Diocese: the other side of the property also serves as the Hermitage of the Brothers of the Society of St Francis
John Henry Newman cardinal and theologian (1890) was, as an Anglican priest, one of the founders of the Oxford Movement for Catholic Renewal in the Church of England. An excellent theologian he felt finally unable to continue in the Anglican Church and was received into the Roman Church where his profound influence as a theologian paved the way for the ground-breaking Second Vatican Council.
13 Jeremy Taylor, bishop and writer (1667) an accomplished scholar and academic he was favoured by Charles 1 but had to keep a low profile under the Commonwealth of Oliver Cromwell. After the Restoration of the monarchy he was appointed Bishop of an Ulster diocese, where he continued his prodigious output of religious works.
Florence Nightingale, nurse, social reformer (1910) felt a divine call to minister as a nurse, a vocation which had no respectability and was not approved of by her family. Nonetheless her passion for social reform and commitment to establishing nursing as a profession based on sound medical and scientific principles still stands as an example of devotion and principle.
And a last word….
There’s a sort of an obscene image reflected in the two observations on 7 August. On one hand the Church commemorates the Transfiguration when Jesus appeared in brightness “whiter than any fuller on earth could make” and the glory of God is made manifest in Jesus: on the other hand, a bomb whose explosion was “brighter than a thousand suns” was dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 and whose deadly effects were felt from one generation to another. Without going into any argument as to whether this event hastened the end of the war in the Pacific, it signals the start of the age of a new level of terror in human affairs. Theologians have discussed the conditions under which a war may be considered just, but violence is never a solution to differences. The cycle of violence continues at new levels throughout post-War history: Korea, Vietnam, the Middle East, ………
How do we become a “people of peace “. Perhaps a small start is for us to make a daily prayer of the Prayer of St Francis:
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace: where there is hatred, let me sow love: where there is injury, pardon: where there is doubt, faith: where there is despair, hope: where there is darkness, light: where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine master, grant that I may not so much as seek to be consoled, as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved , as to love. For it is in giving that we receive, in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life. Amen
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