Deuteronomy 4:7 “For what other great nation has a god so near to it as the Lord our God is whenever we call to him?”
When I was a teenager the church I went to after I became a Christian had a big statue like this one (point to the statue of the Sacred heart). Jesus with his arms outstretched and a great big pulsating heart
On the right hand side of the church there was a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and on the left hand side of the church was this giant statue of the Sacred heart.
It was very Victorian, by today’s standards - tacky. Tack-issimo!
And yet there was something about the outstretched arms of the loving Jesus that pulsed with my heart. I would come and light a candle before the statue and pray.
I think it resonated with my own story of how I had become a Christian through the Christian Union at School. Older boys who had left a few years before - 19, 20, 21, would come back and talk about their faith. They would talk about how Jesus loved me enough to die for me upon the cross. But it wasn’t so much the theology of what they said that made me become a Christian. It was what they had [grasp my heart] - they had something special and I wanted that, that relationship with Jesus, and so I gave my life for him.
Cardinal Basil Hume wrote “there comes a time in our relationship with God when we need to move from being Sunday acquaintances to being weekday friends” -That is what I experienced when I gave my life to Jesus - becoming God’s friend. Intimacy with God
“For what other great nation has a god so near to it as the Lord our God is whenever we call to him?”
There is a wonderful passage by the American pastor Rick Warren in which he writes -
“You were planned for God’s pleasure. The moment you were born into this world God was there as an unseen witness, smiling at you birth. God wanted you alive and your birth brought him great pleasure. God did not need to create you but he chose to create you for his own enjoyment…. If you are that important to God and he considers you valuable enough to keep with him for all eternity, what greater significance could you have? You are a child of God and you bring pleasure to him like nothing else he has ever created.”
Pastor Rick Warren, the purpose driven life, p.69
In the garden of Eden we were created for intimacy with God. Then Sin came into the world - and with Sin came barriers - those fig leaves through to the gates on gated communities - we are cut off from each other and cut off from God. We become lonelier and lonelier. That’s one of the biggest problems in today’s world. Loneliness.
God offers us a way out of loneliness. Relationship. Relationship with him and through that deeper relationship with each other.
Moses tells us that the thing that distinguishes our God from other gods is that he is near to us.
At Jesus’s death, the curtain in the Temple - the Curtain that cuts off the Holy of Holies from ordinary people - is torn in two from top to bottom.
When Jesus prays he prays “Abba” - the Aramaic word for dad, daddy. Listen to it “Abba” - it’s not a complicated word like “Father” [say in a very posh accent]
Abba is a simple little word like a baby can make.
I visited Sierra Leone about 12 years ago - in the local language, a blend of English and various African languages, they refer to God as “Papa God” “Papa God”
That’s the sort of thing that Jesus teaches us when he teaches us to say the Lord’s prayer.
“Our Father. Our Abba - dada. Our Papa God in Heaven.”
It’s a cry for when times are Good and for when times are difficult. Archbishop Rowan Williams writes
“The cry to God as Father in the New Testament is not a calm acknowledgement of a universal truth about God's abstract fatherhood. It is the child's cry out of a nightmare. It is the cry of out rage, fear, shrinking away, when faced with the horror of the world - yet not simply or exclusively protest, but trust as well. “Abba Father” all things are possible to thee.”
Moses in our reading warns us “But take care and watch yourselves closely, so as neither to forget the things that your eyes have seen nor to let them slip from your mind all the days of your life; make them known” (Deut 4:9)
So let me tell you a bit more of the things I have seen.
When I was 18, five years after I became a Christian, I saw an advert for an event. An Anglo-Catholic Charismatic Day of Renewal at St Magnus the Martyr church in central London. I went along. In the morning there was a mass - very like St Jo’s. Lively Modern music blended with sacrament and symbol. I had never experienced anything like it before and yet it was like coming home. In the afternoon there was teaching. And then it ended with a service of Benediction.
And as the sacrament was placed in front of us I had what you might call a Baptism in the Spirit experience. I was overwhelmed by the love of God. There were 100 people in that ancient church but it was like God and I were alone together. It was like there was no one else there. And I felt God’s love. And I just wanted to say “I love you God.” “I love you God”.
Later, on another similar occasion, I found myself speaking in tongues - saying words of praise that I had no idea what they meant - and yet I knew that they meant my love and praise towards God.
Over the years I have been a priest I have used to seeing people crying at the end of mass. Sometimes it because of a sense of release after something bad that has gone on in their lives. But more often than not, you’ll go up to them and they will say “I’m just so happy - I can’t help it” . They have been overwhelmed by the presence of God.
Other times, I have prayed for people in prayer ministry, and their bodies have relaxed and they flopped to the ground - overwhelmed by the presence of God. Resting in the spirit. Carpet time as some of our Pentecostal sisters and brothers call it.
As I said - my first intense experience, my “Baptism in the Holy Spirit”, happened during a service of Benediction.
Some of you may not know what Benediction is. So you know, in the mass, there’s the special bread which Jesus comes into. At the end of mass, we keep some of the bread aside as a physical presence of Jesus among us. At Benediction that bread is first placed on the altar. And then the blessing is given not by the human priest - but through Jesus in the blessed sacrament.
It’s like an extension of that moment when you are coming up to receive communion and you gaze on Jesus and you are filled with love for him.
Bishop Lindsay Urwin talk the culture of sun worship - how over this summer’s heat wave people will have got their swimming costumes out and lain on a beach sunbathing, getting every last ray of sunlight they could.
Benediction is about not “Sun - S.U.N.” but “Son - S.O.N.” bathing - just placing ourselves in the presence of the son of God to get every ray of his love.
The Cure D’ars found an old man sitting in church for hours just gazing at the blessed sacrament. “What are you doing?” he asked “well” said the old man “I looks at him, and he looks at me”
That’s what Benediction is - a loving gaze, where we looks at Jesus and Jesus looks at us.
Indeed everything about sacraments is about God’s intimacy with us.
“For what other great nation has a god so near to it as the Lord our God is whenever we call to him?”
If I want to tell my children I love them, I don’t do it like this {place hands rigidly at the side of my body and say in robotic voice “I love you”}
No, I put my arms around them, give them a hug and say “I love you”
God knows that we are physical beings - that’s how he made us. So to make himself “near to us” when “we call to him”- he makes himself physically present in the water of baptism and the bread and wine of communion. The sacraments are the hugs of the Papa God who loves you so much.
You can go to mass where the music is fantastic. You can go to mass where the music is dire. You can go to mass where the church is packed. You can go to mass when the church is empty. But whatever happens, and whatever is true of the rest of the service, the one thing you can be certain of is that as you receive that blessed bread into your mouth, God is putting his arms round you and embracing you with his love.
This is as Rowan Williams reminded us, for good times AND for hard times. Our bible reading comes just before the Israelites are about to enter the promised land. And Moses “But take care and watch yourselves closely, so as neither to forget the things that your eyes have seen nor to let them slip from your mind all the days of your life; make them known” - in the next few verses he will talk about Mt Horeb where God spoke through the flashes of fire and gave the ten commandments, remind them of how God fed them with manna, and indeed of how God rescued them from slavery in Egypt.
Our God is an intimate God.
It sometimes surprises me how reluctant Christians can be to pray out loud - as if other people will judge them for doing it wrong. Which might be fine if you thought God was some sort of sultan in the sky, who you had to approach with the correct court rituals or you would be in trouble. But God is not like that
The young teenage nun Therese of Lisieux wrote - “I do not have the courage to force myself to search out beautiful prayers in books. There are so many of them it really gives me a headache! and each prayer is more beautiful than the others. I cannot recite them all and not knowing which to choose, I do like children who do not know how to read, I say very simply to God what I wish to say, without composing beautiful sentences, and He always understands me. For me, prayer is an aspiration of the heart, it is a simple glance directed to heaven, it is a cry of gratitude and love in the midst of trial as well as joy; finally, it is something great, supernatural, which expands my soul and unites me to Jesus.”
That’s what our faith is about - the Abba Father is who so near to us when we pray.
Which brings me back to the sacred heart statue {hold up statue}
The one in my teenage church was five times as big. And yes it was cheesy. But that pulsating heart and those outstretched arms told me of the Jesus who looks on me smiling at my presence. And who values me … and you… so much that he wants to keep us with him for all eternity
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