May it be given to me to speak in the name of the father and of the son and of the holy ghost. Amen.
Please be seated.
What are the things that tend to keep us far from God
And what are the remedies
Off course the natural answer to this first question is sin.
Sin is a pattern of thinking, speaking or behaving which is counter to God’s will for our lives
Patterns which are always characterised if not sooner by than later by hurt to the self, hurt to others and hurt to the world.
Sin distances us from God because it’s the choice to do harm to someone that God loves, ourselves or someone else or both.
And we can't both love God and love hurting those whom he loves.
And so any decision which causes harm distances us from God.
Being conscious of sin as Christians is useful.
So long as we don't let that consciousness control us.
Every human being, whether they know Jesus Christ or not,
struggles with the temptation to act in sinful ways.
Because we all have desires which will directly or indirectly hurt someone.
We of course find ways to persuade ourselves that our decisions won't in fact hurt anyone
when we know that they're selfish.
Or that the harm is justified because our rights to our desires supersede the rights of those
whom we're going to hurt.
But sin is sin because and when we know deep down that our course of action is going to take goodness out of the world by our free choice.
As Christians we live in a state of now and not yet.
We are followers of Jesus Christ because we freely proclaimed that we believe that Jesus of Nazareth
who was born of the Virgin Mary was and is God the Son made a human being.
We've allowed him to take responsibility for our sinful hurtful decisions.
We've allowed him to die in our place on the cross as their consequence.
The consequence of walking away from the love and life of God is necessarily dying.
And our actions must have consequences if they are to be free.
So the Christian life is the choice to allow Jesus to meet the consequence of death which is the natural result of our chosen actions to hurt ourselves, the world or someone else.
Allowing him to choose that death instead of us.
In Jesus' resurrection from the dead Jesus has won for us a new existence.
A life in which we are welcome to be most truly and fully ourselves in which we will be able freely to choose 100% of the time to live according to God's love.
But this is a reality towards which we walk not one that we achieve by the simple decision to become a Christian.
The Christian life is the life of a student, a disciple walking the way that Jesus walked, growing in his wisdom, making mistakes,
repenting and trying again.
We're in a liminal space, a space between places where we move from slavery to our selfish incarnations to the freedom of love for God ourselves and others.
But as we know that liminal space is our lives, it's the duration of our lives.
No matter how long we've been a Christian, all of us in this room are still students.
It will only be when we see Jesus face to face that we know fully the reality of the resurrection which he won for us.
And so, although it can be challenging, a consciousness of sin is a part of our education.
That's why we offer confession every week when we meet together as a community.
It's our opportunity to reflect on the past week, on our recent challenges, any mistakes that we've made.
Giving them to God, letting them be part of the past and allowing them to be learning opportunities.
We hear God's absolution and then we're given a fresh start to go out of those doors and try again.
Having learned from the mistakes we made last week.
But sometimes, like all students, we can get stuck in a particular problem, patterns of behaviour in our lives which we know are sinful,
but which we just can't seem to shake, even totally want to shake.
For these struggles, the Eucharist is given as our balm.
At the Eucharist, we come to the communion rail and we are as intimately present with Jesus as we can be before seeing him face to face.
As we heard him teach in our Gospel reading from John 6,
those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me and I in them.
This is the bread which came down from heaven, the one who eats this bread will live forever.
As bread and wine become the miracle of Jesus' presence at the altar, Jesus is placed into our hands, his flesh to be eaten,
pressed to our lips, his blood to be drunk.
He, the willing sacrifice who died that we might live, places himself back into our hands.
And as we eat and drink, his sacrifices made present for us all over again, made present in our lives.
Jesus is in the Eucharist wholly present to us and we to him.
And as he taught in Matthew 11, we are invited to come to him, we who are weary and heavy burdened, that he might give us his rest.
Many years ago, I asked a mentor how I should deal with the anger and unforgiveness that I was feeling
against a couple of people who'd exercised power over me as an ordination student and who would really hurt me in the process.
Drown them in the chalice was the answer I received and it was one of the most useful pieces of advice I've ever been given.
His advice was to bring those feelings of unforgiveness, of hurt, of powerlessness and give them to Jesus as I received him at the Eucharist.
And it was something that I had to do again and again for a long time as I knelt at the rail giving over feelings which built up a fresh every week
until eventually I reached the bottom of the well and worked through all of those feelings and they passed.
And as I reflected kneeling at the rail week after week, I realised that it wasn't just sin that I was giving away.
We know that unforgiveness is a sin as Jesus taught, but it wasn't just the unforgiveness that I was giving away.
My unforgiveness was based on hurt, on words and actions which I was carrying like a wound which wouldn't heal.
What I needed to move on was for Jesus to carry those burdens, that hurt, those words before I could forgive and become back to myself.
In our reading from Ephesians chapter 6, St Paul writes,
For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness.
In his teaching, St Paul explains that there is more to our Christian journey than what we see, powers, rulers, authorities.
These are the unseen forces in our lives which draw us away from God.
On his letter, St Paul was talking specifically about darknesses of the spiritual world, about which we know very little.
Although, of course, we would be foolish to dismiss his warnings simply because we don't totally understand them.
But as I knelt at that communion rail all those weeks, I realised it isn't just external spiritual powers which draw us away from God.
It would be really convenient, in fact, sort of comforting if we could turn Christianity into a series of conscious decisions, good and bad.
Even if recognising that our bad decisions cause harm to the world or to others or to ourselves is a painful reality check,
if Christianity is just about being a good person and choosing to do the right thing, then Christianity is in our control.
But it isn't that simple because we're not that simple. Human beings are complex with deep, rich emotional lives, only part of which we have conscious access to.
We are the product of millions of moments of relationship, of different events and people in our lives who each make their impact,
building up the complex maze of our inner world.
Many psychologists believe that the foundations of our emotional baseline are formed by the relationships which take place between birth and 18 months old.
That means that our inner lives are built on foundations to which we have almost no conscious access.
Every day, for the rest of our lives, we make decisions based in reasoning which is decades old.
That means that sin, which keeps us from God and from each other, which we need to offer to him, can't be treated in isolation.
We need to realise that few people, if any, make the wrong choice because it's wrong, actually because it's wrong.
Wrong choices, as well as right ones, are taken to meet desires and needs.
And the reality of our needs, the context of their formation, has to be understood alongside the actual decisions that we bring to confession.
So that phrase, drown them or drown it in the chalice, can't just refer to the actual choices that we make.
A proportionate understanding of our struggle with sinfulness is helpful as a disciple.
But sinful choices aren't the only thing that keeps us from God because sin doesn't exist in isolation.
Bad choices, like all choices, are the product of the complexity of our lives.
The great miracle of the Eucharist is that Jesus gives everything of himself to us when we come to receive him.
No questions asked.
In return, we're invited to give everything back.
And that doesn't just mean admitting our faults, but also our weaknesses, our hurts, the wounds which we're carrying,
which motivate us in a million little different ways through our lives.
Now, if it sounds to you like I'm advocating for a dereliction of responsibility, in fact, it's the opposite.
Our context, the context of our lives, doesn't rob us of responsibility for our choices.
But it does make us who and what we are.
It can't be separated from us.
Our context informs our choices.
It is simple and easy to keep coming to church, to every week admit the mistakes we've made and go out and try again.
But more often than not, we will fall back into the same sinful patterns of living, however hard we try,
because we're not dealing with the root problem.
The wise student takes the harder path of getting to know themselves, understanding their weaknesses,
bringing their wounds to Jesus.
The wise disciple will understand that treating the root problem, not just the symptoms, is worth the effort of holiness.
And so this sermon is a call to self-compassion for all of you, but it's also a call to hard work.
Be compassionate, especially if you're struggling.
If there's something in your life which you just can't seem to get past, there's a reason.
You might not be able to understand it, but there is a reason and it's okay to ask for help.
It's wise to ask for help.
But also, do the hard work of getting to know yourself.
Understand your context. Explore your wounds.
Bring your totality to Jesus at the altar rail.
At the Eucharist, Jesus wants to meet you.
Not just the bits that you're proud of, not even just the bits that you're ashamed of,
but the bits that you hide from everyone.
Bring the whole of yourself and you will really grow and develop in him.
And you will find healing.
Amen.