The St Anselm, Hayes Sermon Podcast

Your are loved entirely

Mark 1:40-45 [https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark+1%3A40-45&version=NIV] There is no situation in this world where you are not loved entirely, deeply, profoundly, awesomely, by Jesus Christ. In the name of the father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen I’ve got an account here of of leprosy and its symptoms. I want to read them to you. There are three kinds of leprosy. The first is called Nodular Leprosy. It begins with unaccountable lethargy and pains in the joints. Then there appears on the body, especially on the back, symmetrical, discoloured patches of little nodules. At first pink and then turning brown. The skin is thickened. The nodules gather, especially in the folds of the cheek, the nose, the lips and the forehead. The whole appearance of the face is changed until the afflicted person loses all human appearance and looks. The nodules grow larger and larger. They ulcerate, and from them comes a foul discharge. The eyebrows fall out, the eyes become staring, the voice becomes hoarse, and the breath wheezes because of the ulceration of the vocal cords, the hands and the feet also ulcerate. Slowly, the sufferer becomes a mass of ulcerated growth. The average course of the disease is nine years and in the end it leads to mental decay, to coma and then death. Those suffering from this type of leprosy become utterly repulsive both to themselves and to others.  The second kind of leprosy is called anaesthetic leprosy, and this is where you start to lose feeling, all your nerves stop working. The most common form of leprosy is where you get both of those sets of symptoms. So you have the physical distress, you have the physical ailments, you have the mental ailment and you also have the loss of feeling that of course, is what leads to people losing limbs. Why have I read out these horrible descriptions on a gentle Sunday morning in February when you’re all dreaming of your Sunday lunch?   It’s physically absolutely horrible. I want you to understand the sheer disgust that the vast majority of the population held these lepers in. Lepers were sent to leper colonies, they were sent to special hospitals called lazars, where they had to hide away, they weren’t allowed to look outside except through something called a leper’s slot where they could peer outside and see the outside world. They weren’t allowed to approach anybody. They weren’t allowed to talk to anybody.  They were visually disgusting and to the whole of society.  I tell you all of this because I want you to understand how outrageous, how absolutely outrageous it was that this leper should approach Jesus. It’s beyond comprehension. It’s beyond understanding,  How this leper got near Jesus in the first place?  That’s the first thing to think about. What that suggests to me is that the disciples are finally starting to understand that to Jesus, nobody is beyond the pale. Nobody is too far gone for redemption. Nobody is unapproachable in his eyes. To Jesus we are all approachable, more importantly all may approach Him. We are all wonderful in creation. It doesn’t matter what we’ve done or what we suffer with how unacceptable we may be to the rest of society. We can go to Jesus, and when we feel like that, when we think that perhaps we’ve done something that’s just unbelievably unacceptable, that we can’t even approach Jesus, scripture tells us, this gospel tells us, you can approach Jesus.  It’s all very well saying you can approach Jesus, but how will you feel when you do approach Jesus? Will Jesus even want me? I’m so unworthy, I’ve done all of these things wrong. Society hates me, I hate me! Yes, Jesus wants you. Yes, Jesus wants to heal you.  You can almost hear the reproach in Jesus’ voice when he says, of course I want to heal you. The un-muttered next line. Why wouldn’t I? Why wouldn’t I want to heal you?  Of course I want to heal you, and Jesus reaches out and heals the leper immediately. And what does Jesus tell him? The same thing He tells all those people that he’s healed. Don’t go tell people, don’t go showing off about this. Don’t go boasting about this boast only in the Lord. But go now, go to the temple and be made clean. That’s an interesting instruction. It’s worth understanding it. If you suffered from leprosy, in fact, if you suffered from any kind of skin condition that might even slightly look like leprosy, you were declared dead to wider society. There was a service that happened where the priest would pray your funeral over you. You were a dead man walking. And so if you were healed of leprosy there was a complex ritual you had to go to through become alive again in the eyes of wider society. Now, Jesus didn’t say don’t go do that. All of that is tosh, what Jesus said was, go and do that. And his message remains clear today. We have to engage with the human world if we’ve done something so terrible and so wrong that we don’t think that Jesus will heal us and then we come to Jesus and are healed we must face up to the consequences of those things that we’ve done in society and deal with the human world to be accepted once again.  But you’re not doing it on your own. This time you’re doing it healed by the love of Jesus Christ. And in this one short gospel, Jesus shows us His compassion, His power and His wisdom. There is nothing for which you cannot turn to Jesus and seek to be healed. There is no situation in which Jesus will not reach out to you and heal you. There is no situation in this world where you are not loved entirely, deeply, profoundly, awesomely, by Jesus Christ. Approach Jesus in this mass at the altar, be healed, be sent out, be alive once more in the world around you.  Amen

Light in the Drudgery

Job 7:1-4,6-7 [https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Job+7%3A1-4%2C6-7&version=ESVUK] | 1 Corinthians 9:16-19,22-23 [https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Corinthians+9%3A16-19%2C22-23&version=ESVUK] | Mark 1:29-39 [https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark+1%3A29-39&version=ESVUK] Go throughout Hayes Town as Jesus went throughout Galilee, preaching the good word of Jesus Christ, not by screaming about how happy he makes you, but by showing you how he helps you and reveals the light of God, little bit by little bit, amongst the darkness. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen. Please sit. Oh, my gosh. Hasn’t it been a long winter? I don’t know about you, but I am sick to the back teeth of dark mornings and of dark evenings. It has felt like drudgery. I love that word, drudgery. It’s why I enjoy the book of Job. Because I think job speaks to what it’s really like to be a Christian. Sometimes, day in, day out, it is drudgery. And it’s okay to feel like that. Sometimes you feel like, well, if I’m a Christian, I should have sufficient faith that I am joyful in the Lord. That’s the word. Joyful in the Lord. Now, to be joyful in the Lord doesn’t mean that you have to be saccharine. You have to be happy. You have to be jolly. You don’t have to try and emulate me all of the time. No. Being joyful in the Lord means understanding that even when things are hard, even when you’re not feeling happy, you can take inner joy in knowing that God is walking with you. That’s what job teaches us, even though his life is one of drudgery. And doesn’t he use such wonderful language to express that drudgery? When will it be day? Lying in bed wondering when it will be day. We’ve all led in bed, not able to sleep with worries and concerns on our heart. When will it be day? And then when we do get up, what do we think? Oh, how slowly evening comes. Those worries and those concerns and the work that we’re doing. It feels like we’re not getting anywhere. That drudgery walks through the day with us. But Job had that joy in God. He was able to walk that path of drudgery. He was able to walk that path of hardship and carry them because he knew, he absolutely knew that God was doing it with him. The thing is, of course, that that doesn’t actually make you feel any better, does it? It doesn’t put an extra skip in your step. It doesn’t make you smile. And nor should you expect it to. Because we are human beings that experience happiness and experience sadness. And that drudgery is something that we should embrace. Not to change. Not to say, I want to change this drudgery, not to say I want to do something different, but to say, okay, this is what it is like living this life now. Because I know that I will be with God in eternity. My faith. I will keep my faith because eternity is more important, if we think about that, as I started with winter, what are we starting to see now? I’m sick to the back teeth of the dark mornings and the dark nights and of the cold and of the wet. But what are we seeing now? We are seeing the shift to spring. And each morning I wake up, it’s a little bit brighter. And each morning, each evening, each morning I go back to bed. Each evening I go back to bed, it’s a little bit lighter. And that is what our faith in God does when we are walking in drudgery. When we are walking in difficulty, that faith makes things a little bit brighter each day a little bit better. Now, the trick, of course, and our duty as christians is to share that little bit that we’ve been given that little bit of light with people that we know. And that is exactly what Paul is talking about in our second reading. I do not boast of preaching the gospel since it is a duty which has been laid on me. I should be punished if I don’t preach it. Paul is telling us that that little bit of light, that little bit of encouragement is what will bring other people to faith. It is not being joyfully jumping up and down the street saying, I love Jesus, and he’s made absolutely everything wonderful. But it is how you behave as a Christian when you are in drudgery, when you are in difficulty and you are able to see that little bit of light, that is where people will be able to see your faith and go, there is something here, there is something worth following, because God is with me, not just when I am happy, but God is with me in the drudgery. He brings it out a little bit more. He says, for the weak, I made myself weak. I made my things to all men in order to save some at any cost. What he is talking about is sharing how God works in our lives in a way that other people can understand and other people can see. And the reality is most people walking around are not walking around high on Jesus. Most people are walking around, if we are honest, carrying a degree of drudgery. Now, we can either find that depressing and difficult and throw up our hands and go, well, then what’s the point? Or we can go, I shall keep my faith strong as job kept his faith, and I shall use that little bit of light to show others who are struggling that this is a good and wonderful path. That God, that Jesus is that extra two minutes of light at the end of every day is that extra two minutes of light every morning. That is what will move people’s hearts. Even Jesus. Even Jesus in our gospel faces drudgery. You can hear it speaking loud through that gospel, I think, can’t you? Jesus is, he heals. He goes to Simon and his mother in law of Simon is feeling ill, so he heals Simon’s mother in law. And then before he knows it, there is a crowd at the door demanding, wanting things. Do this, Jesus, do this. Do this for me. And Jesus heals all of the people. He brings life out of death. And what does he do at the end of that demanding time? People have demanded this power, this healing, all of this of Jesus. What does jesus do? He goes off somewhere quiet and he prays. And so jesus gives us the model of what to do when we feel like everything is just pushing on us and demanding everything of our time when we’re in that drudgery. Jesus says, by doing, take yourself off somewhere quiet and pray. He does it in the early morning, the quiet hours of the morning. And so he gives us a new model. A new model to what job was talking about. That’s the point of the new covenant with Jesus Christ over the old covenant in the Old Testament with job. He lies in bed going, when will it be day? But Jesus takes himself off and prays, there’s the answer to the drudgery. Pray. Call on Jesus and say, I can’t see the light, Lord. All I can see is the drudgery. Where is the extra two minutes at the start of the day? Where is the extra two minutes at the end of the day? Lord, show me. Pray that your eyes will be open to see that extra light. That’s the model that Jesus gives us. And then he says, of course it is time for us to move on. And I can’t help but that feeling very prescient as I prepare to move on. Jesus does the work in front of him and it is wonderful and it is good. And then he says, we’ve done this here, it’s time to move on. And that is what Jesus is telling us all. Because when we do the job of work in front of us, when we speak to people about that little bit of extra light, you have to keep going. You have to find the next person. You have to find the next thing that God is calling you to do. You have to go to the next thing that God wants you to do because it’s ever so easy to become very comfortable and to stop listening to what God is calling you to do. So I think a wonderful collection of readings this morning at this point in the year when we are sick of winter, when we are sick of drudgery, when we are wondering what on earth it is we are doing with our lives, when we are feeling depressed and down. A reminder that Jesus will not suddenly make us happy, but that Jesus will show us that extra little bit of light. And if we can’t see it, then we should pray to see it. We should find some rest, and we should see where God is calling us and what God is calling to us next. Go throughout Hayes Town as Jesus went throughout Galilee, preaching the good word of Jesus Christ, not by screaming about how happy he makes you, but by showing you how he helps you and reveals the light of God, little bit by little bit, amongst the darkness. Amen.

The Authority of God!

Mark 1:21-28 [https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark+1%3A21-28&version=ESVUK] So go home, get hold of your children who do not come to church. And tell them in Jesus name, come and help run the new boys brigade at St Anselm! [automatically transcribed] In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen. Please sit. And he taught them with authority. I said at the start of mass that I was going to ask you ladies, you mothers, you grandmothers, you aunties in the congregation to use your authority with those men in your life to get them to come and volunteer for boys brigade, and to come and send their children to boys brigade. When I say authority, though, what do I mean? Do I mean the authority that is, ‘you will do as you are told, otherwise you will get a thick ear’. That’s the kind of authority that my parents exercised over me. And it works up to a point, doesn’t it? You do as you were told because otherwise you’ll get a thick ear. You do as your parents tell you to do because they know better than you. But Jesus speaks with a different authority. He speaks with the authority of God that commands all creation. That is what we hear in the gospel. And so we as christians are also able to speak with that same authority. So when I tell you to go home and to tell your sons and your nephews and your grandchildren to come and help run boys brigade to send their children to boys brigade, I’m not telling you to tell them using the authority of do as I say or I will give you a clip around the year I am doing you to do it using Jesus authority, using the authority that you have as christians, because Jesus grants you that authority in his name, because your children will respond to you when you speak to them using that authority far better than they will when threatened with a clip across the ear. Because children, just like all of us, recognise the authority of God. We recognise the purity of it. It is authority that does not require a threat to be carried out and for obedience. It is an authority that simply requires a love and respect and honour that Jesus gives us. So go home, get hold of your children who do not come to church. And tell them in Jesus name, come and help run the new boys brigade at St Anselm. Tell them in Jesus name. Bring your children to the new boys brigade at St Anselm. Tell them with the authority of God that if they come and be part of this, they will know him better. Amen.

Be Fishers of Men

Mark 1:14-20 [https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark+1%3A14-20&version=ESVUK] We are ordinary people who go about our daily tasks. We are ordinary people who are called to love Jesus Christ. And now we are asked by him to go out into the world in his name and to bring others into that love as well. [automatically transcribed] The name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. This is a very short, but very interesting gospel, because it teaches us about the way that Jesus calls us, about the model that God uses to call us. Now, if we look at how other teachers and other rabbis over the time called disciples to them, well, they didn’t really do that. They didn’t say to people, follow me. Become my disciple. They’d set themselves up as a teacher, as a rabbi, and they would go into the synagogue, and they would go into the marketplaces, and they would teach. And people were listening to what they said. And if they agreed with them, if they went to the synagogue, marketplace and they heard the teacher and they agreed with them, then they would follow that teacher. The followers would go and listen to different teachers, and then they would choose who they might follow based on what they were teaching. It’s a very greek way of doing it. It’s argument. If I can persuade you through argument, through reason, to follow me, then that’s how it worked. It’s an exercise of intellect and of reason, and that’s how they would get people to follow them. That was very much the model of gathering disciples and of gathering follows. People would listen. They would think. They’d reason, and then they would decide to follow. They’d go away. They’d think about it. But Jesus does something different. Jesus comes and asks people to follow him. Jesus issues us an invitation. God comes to us and asks us to follow him. And who does God choose to follow him? Well, the teachers and the rabbis of the time would attempt to persuade politicians and important people, people with money, to follow them. Because if those people with money, if those people with influence followed them, then their star would rise. They would chart those political waters. So they would go to the markets where rich people shopped. They would go to the synagogues where the great Pharisees were who could help them in their political career. But Jesus, who does Jesus choose to call to him? Well, of course we know that Jesus did the same thing, didn’t he? He always went to the important people. He went to the rich. Oh, no, no. Definitely didn’t. I’ve got that wrong, haven’t I? Jesus didn’t do that. Jesus called straightforward, ordinary, normal, everyday people, to follow him. He didn’t try to find people with influence, with money, with power. He didn’t try to chart those political waters. He wasn’t very clever about those earthly things, if you like. He wasn’t sneaky. He wasn’t political in that way. He just asked ordinary people to follow him. And he asked people who were doing their everyday work. He asked fishermen who were about their work. They were casting their nets, just getting on with the everyday task of living. They weren’t trying to engage in any political uprising. They weren’t trying to engage in becoming more important in the community that they were living in. They weren’t trying to do things. They were just doing their job. And this is how Jesus continues to call us today. He calls us in our everyday life. He calls us to follow him, believe it or not, when we’re doing our shopping in Iceland, and I don’t know about you, but I’ve been in Iceland, in Hayes Town, I don’t know how many times, and called on God, that’s for sure. God calls us to follow him when we’re sat at our desk. God calls us to follow him when we’re loading the washing machine. God calls us in our everyday life and in our everyday tasks. And so, as much as we know that God talks to us through scripture and through sacrament here in church, he also speaks to us, calls to us, as we do the shopping, as we sit at our computers, as we load the washing machine, as we live our lives. But we must be alert to how and when Jesus does call, because it’s very easy to shut Jesus out when you’re getting on with the task of living your life. It’s very easy to be open to jesus when you come to church. But you must be open to that call all of the time. And one of the ways that you can do that is by being aware of how Jesus calls us. He does it with love. Not like the teachers and the rabbis who try to reason with you, not like a politician who tries to know, if you follow me, then I will give you this. It’s not a deal. Jesus talks to you through love. He doesn’t give you a list of reasons to follow him. He doesn’t try to persuade you. Jesus asks people to follow him. The way you know it’s right is because he will then immediately ask you to call others to him. That is the model that Jesus gives us, particularly apparent in today’s gospel. He says, follow me and I will love you. You will know the greatest love there has ever been. And that is how Jesus continues to call us a day through love, through grace, through hope. And then, and maybe only then, may we start to go through the reasons. We may start to apply our analytical thinking to it. But Jesus calls us from deep within us to follow him. This week I did an assembly at Dr. Triplets. I love going to Dr. Triplets. I love speaking with the children. And unlike some of the other people who come and do assemblies, I don’t do wizzy powerpoints and I don’t do songs. I just talk. And this week I was asked to talk about calling. How does God call us? And that’s a very hard thing to talk about with children who are four, five, six, right the way up to eleven. How do you explain calling? So I had come up with a good way of explaining how God talks to us with all of the examples in scripture of how God talks to different people, right the way from Moses all the way to Our Lady and to St. Joseph. How does he talk to people? But when I got to the school, the headmistress, Mrs. Anderson, and Mrs. Byles, said to me, Father, will you tell the children of how you were called to be a priest? I said, I haven’t prepared that. And that’s a story. I’m not sure the children. “No, no, please tell that story now.” Fortunately, Edmund’s no longer. My son is no longer in Dr. Triplet’s, so I could tell the story. Gavin, were you there for the assembly? I won’t ask you to remember what I said. That’s really unfair. But Gavin was there and I told the story of how God called me in the delivery room at the John Radcliffe hospital in Oxford. After my son was born, Catherine had had to go off to surgery and I was left in this windowless delivery room holding Edmund for 5 hours. I really thought something had gone very badly wrong with Catherine. And I didn’t want to leave the room, I didn’t want to change anything. I just held onto Edmund for 5 hours and I prayed like I had never prayed before. And in amongst that prayer, I recognised the love that I had for my son as I held him, the deep love that I had never experienced before. And I heard Jesus say to me, if this is the love you have for your son, imagine the love that God has for you. And I went right back to this piece of gospel. How did those men respond? They stopped what they were doing and they followed him, which is exactly how I responded. It was an act of love. It was not an act of reasoned, analytical thinking that came next. When I went to the vicar the following Sunday and said, God has spoken to me. God has called me. Now what? And then started a ten year journey to ordination. Just so you know, Catherine was absolutely fine. She’d had a very normal thing. She was out of surgery in an hour or two, they’d just forgotten about me in the basement of the John Radcliffe. It was only when the nurses changed shift that they discovered that there was some bloke and his baby sitting in a delivery room. I got taken up to the ward and given a cup of tea and a biscuit. Even Catherine hadn’t been offered a cup of tea and a biscuit! At that point, Jesus says, follow me and I will love you. Follow me and then call others to me. I will make you fishers of men. I believe very, very strongly that every single one of us has that spark of God within us, even people who are not christian. We had a school group in church this week from the De’Salis college. And those children, there was one christian child amongst them and he was russian orthodox. He was great because he answered all of my questions. But all of the other children were Muslim, they were Sikh, they were Hindu, and they had no understanding of who we call God. And for an hour I told them what it meant to be a Christian. And I saw in each and every single one of those children that spark of God in their heart. And I tried to communicate the love that Jesus had for them and why we believe that Jesus was the son of God and why we believe the Holy Spirit is active in our lives. For an hour they sat and they listened. These children who were between eleven and 14 year olds, and those of you who have or know children who are of that age know, they do not sit and listen for an hour to some bloke at the front of church where they’ve got to do their schoolwork and answer some questions. But they listened for an hour and you could hear a pin drop because I talked of the love that Jesus had for them and how Jesus called them. And at the end of that lesson, one of the muslim children came up to me and asked if I had a Bible, because I’d been teaching about the Bible, how it was made up, where it came from, how it speaks to us. And I said, yes, of course I’ve got a Bible. And he asked me if he could have one. So I gave him a Bible. And in my pocket, as ever, I had a rosary. So I took the rosary out and I blessed it and I gave it to him. And then another child and then another child and another child and another child. And before you knew it, 35 of those children had come forward and had asked for a Bible and had asked for a rosary. The fire of God’s love inside them was ignited from that spark because I had told them about the love that Jesus had for them. How Jesus calls to that spark, calls to God inside all of us. But then what? Once you’ve done that, once you’ve accepted that Jesus is the son of God, once you have turned towards him. And remember that is what the word repent means. It means turn in the right direction to turn towards God. The first thing that Jesus calls us to is repentance. That means to turn towards God. Once we’ve done that, then what? What is the first instruction jesus gives to the disciples? He says, follow me and I will make you fishers of men. He calls us to repentance, to turn towards God. And he calls us to bring others to his son. What does he offer the disciples who are on one hand giving up everything to follow him? What does Jesus continue to ask us to do today? Repent and to preach the good news. That’s the task. That’s what we are called to do. There’s no difference 2000 years later between those disciples at the edge of the sea of Galilee and us and how we respond to that call. And listen. He doesn’t call us to elevate us. He doesn’t call us to make us special. He doesn’t call us to make us rich and influential. He calls us to service. He calls us to serve the world, to serve one another in his name, in his love. He calls us to bring other people to that love. He calls us to do it through the food bank. He calls us to do it through being together on Sunday mornings. He calls us to do it through Thursday fun and fellowship. He calls us to do it through spanners and coffee. He calls us to do it when we say hello to somebody in the street. He even calls us to do it when we’re doing our shopping in Iceland. He calls us to do it through smiling at one another and encouraging one another in dark times. He calls us to service his name, to bring other people into that service. He calls us to give us everything. And all we have to do to receive it is say yes. To stop doing what we are doing and turn towards God and say yes. That’s all it takes. We are ordinary people who go about our daily tasks. We are ordinary people who are called to love Jesus Christ. And now we are asked by him to go out into the world in his name and to bring others into that love as well. So leave today and be like those disciples and say, yes, Jesus, and be fishers of men. Amen.

Listen to what Jesus whispers.

Matthew 2:1-12 [https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+2%3A1-12&version=ESVUK] …LISTEN, listen to what God tells you, listen to what Jesus whispers in your ear I love Epiphany. Things feel like they’ve settled down after the busyness of Christmas. The urgency of the day; the fight to get everything ready is over and we find ourselves a little more relaxed. I can see the parallels with the Holy Family. Gone is the urgency of the ride to Bethlehem. Gone is the urgency of finding a place to stay. Gone is the urgency and pain of childbirth in a less than ideal place.  Now…. Now there is peace. The Holy Family in the stable, surrounded by the animals keeping them warm. Wrapped up against the cold outside and simply being together.  I hope that over the last week or so you have found space and time to be with your families. Wrapped up against the world, warm and quietly eating through the last of the treats from Christmas.  Though I wonder how many of us are still doing that at Epiphany? We’ve almost certainly by this point turned our minds to the new year and new tasks. Perhaps the Christmas decorations have already come down and the Christmas cake is all gone.  Traditionally Christmas decorations will stay up until at least Epiphany – today – because it is a moment to remember that Christmas is not over, it continues in the way we live our lives and how we react to the news that Jesus Christ is born amongst us.  When I talk about Jesus Christ being born amongst us, I’m not just talking about that day two thousand years ago, but how Jesus Christ is born amongst us each time a new person comes to know Him or how Jesus Christ is born amongst us each time we renew our faith, or each time we remember we are His children and correct our behaviour to be more like him.  Jesus Christ is born amongst us over and over and over again.  It is how we respond to that realisation that defines what kind of Christian we are.  To my mind there are three ways to respond to the birth of Jesus Christ over and over again in our lives.  1 – Hatred and hostility. The reaction of Herod.  When we realise that Jesus is with us, that He is prompting us to live a better and different kind of life we can get caught up in the world around us and dismiss Him with anger. We can find ways to work around Jesus – what we know to be true – in order to kill Him within us. We will rationalise bad things in order to continue in our comfortable lives. We will find ways to destroy Jesus within us, whilst outwardly saying we want to worship Him. We come to church and show the outward signs of loving Him, but we ignore Him in our hearts and worse find a way to dismiss Him, to kill Him.  This is very dangerous. When you do this the devil will find a way to work within you. Evil will work away in the hypocrisy that exists within you.  When you find yourself hating what Jesus tells you to do, how to live, how to love, then it is time to fall to your knees in that stable and ask for the comfort and the prayers of the Holy Family.  There is a way back, a way to safety – it is the love and care of the family of Christians around you.  And fellow Christians – it is your job to see this happening in your brothers and sisters and to take care of them just as Mary and Joseph would have done in that stable as visitors knelt beside Jesus in his crib.  The second reaction –  Indifference.  This is the reaction of the scribes and the chief Priests that worked for Herod. The birth of Jesus made no difference at all in their lives. They were so engrossed in the life of the Temple – the Temple let’s not forget that Herod had built for them – that the prophecy of the birth of a King in Judea was utterly irrelevant to their daily lives.  There are many Christians who are so indifferent to the teaching of Jesus, to His active encouragement in their daily lives, that He could appear in front of them, and they’d dismiss Him without a second thought.  We just plod on, one foot in front of the other without looking for Jesus working in our lives. Without seeing Him working in the world around us. We must pull ourselves back to the wonder of the stable and the miracle of Jesus birth. To the awe of those who travelled so far to visit Him. And fellow Christians – it is your job to see this indifference in your brothers and sisters and to remind them of the wonder and awesomeness of Jesus work around us. To remind our brothers and sisters of the miracles that happen in His name each and every day! Finally, in Adoring worship. The reaction of the magi. The desire to lay at the feet of Jesus Christ and offer the greatest gifts we can muster.  Gold – the gift of a King. It does us great service to remember that Jesus is our King and that we must submit to Him before He can be our friend. We submit in our baptism, we submit to Him in prayer, we submit our lives to Him each day we wake when we say the Our Father. Then, and only then, are we able to see Him as friend, as counsellor, as the One who lifts and saves us. Frankincense, the gift of a Priest. The work of a Priest is to build a bridge between men and God. That’s what the word Priest means in Latin – Pontifex, bridge builder.  This is what Jesus did in being born amongst us and what He continues to do each time He is reborn inside and around us. He opens the way to God, he made – and continues to make it possible – to enter into the very presence of God.  Myrrh – the gift of one who is to die. Jesus came into the world to die. He came into the world to live for men and women and in the end to die for us and for our sins so that we may be saved in eternal life. Fellow Christians. It is our job to come before Jesus Christ in adoring worship. It is our job to bring before Him the greatest gifts we can give.  The gifts of submission, the gifts of bringing others across the bridge that He has built for us, the gift of understanding that our sins are forgiven, and that anyone we bring to Him will also be forgiven and given a place in heaven.  How do we react to the birth of Jesus Christ, not just in that stable two thousand years ago. But today and every day we wake? Leave here today asking that question. Perhaps write it down on a note next to your bed so you wake up each day and ask that question.  How do I react to Jesus Christ born in me today?  When you get angry and upset in the world, ask the question, how do I react to Jesus Christ born in me today? When you find yourself indifferent about coming to church or praying, ask the question, how do I react to Jesus Christ born in me today? When you come to church, to offer praise and worship, ask the question, how do I react to Jesus Christ born in me today?  Ask it just as you receive the body and blood of Christ at mass – then return to your seat and LISTEN, listen to what God tells you, listen to what Jesus whispers in your ear.  Amen.