Today’s homily

I am worried our hands might be wicked! Just consider what they reveal about us! Oh, we might applaud the loving caress, the hands at prayer or one offered in friendship, but these are outnumbered by hands that snatch, molest, shoot guns, pilfer, punch and steal. Hands are no good. Might we be better without them? Might we retrain them? Hands I want you to repent and believe! But of course, hands only do the bidding of their owners. Hence Jesus says it is our hearts, not hands, that are our downfall. For the heart is where righteousness is found. What lies in our soul is what motivates behaviour.

But we humans can struggle to comprehend that. Those who have been abused will often find it hard to stop washing. One sympathises with their desperate desire to be cleansed and yet washing all day long will not help. The cleansing they clearly need is spiritual, not physical. Once again the secret lies in the heart not the hands.

And in our Gospel, the Pharisees miss the point too, we find them making a great fuss because the disciples eat without ceremonially washing, a rite handed down from the tradition of elders, but disintersted in the things that really matter. So why does Jesus tell his followers to flout this tradition? Is religious custom not healthy? After all S. Barnabas is passionate about honouring holy tradition!

Understand, Jesus was not attacking the tradition that maintains holiness, promotes good practice and deepens faith. He was confronting that awful tradition that you can hide behind. A modern equivalent might be the priest who is terribly fussy about the length of lace on his alb, but who never bothers to pray. The skin deep charlatan, that’s whom Jesus condemns, whose doctrine does not match their practice. We traditional Anglo-Catholics, when gossiping over a gin, have a term for people who love the trappings of faith but refuse to live by the teaching of the Gospel: ‘All chasuble and no knickers!’ (seen here in a photograph of priest’s hailing Hitler!)

Or as Jesus says, hypocrites. They look holy on the outside, but inside there is no love of God. In Jesus’ day it was true of many Pharisees, today it is true of many priests and bishops, who entered church for all the wrong reasons. And it is not only clergy, many who claim to be Christian, have long since abandoned personal devotion, the offering of hearts to Jesus.

Jesus warns; such people are empty vessels who become deluded. Start thinking that they ARE the real thing. Believe themselves righteous simply because they go through the motions of faith. Following oral traditions back then, attending Mass in our time, Jesus hates dishonest worship. The sceptics who dress up in Godly clothing, but neither know or love him.

Now if you like pretending Jesus was all inclusive, plug your ears, becuase Jesus does not hold his punches when he says, “‘These people honour me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship in vain; their teachings but rules taught by men.’ Jesus condemns dishonest faith as utterly defunct. He does not commend a different approach, does not emphasis politeness to those who worship differently. He condems such worship as hopeless. Today he might say, ‘you can wear the prettiest vestments, say Mass every day …but if you don’t love me with your heart, it is worthless.’

But why is Jesus so unforgiving on those whose faith is insincere? Why does it anger him so much? Well hypocrisy does two things, one leading from the other. First it grants honour to God that is only pretence. Every prayer is a lie, every act of worship make-believe and this leads to the second downfall…Because love of God, no longer dwells in the hypocrite’s heart, they have no idea who God really is. Faithfulness becomes meaningless. God has ceased to exist for them, so there is no one to obey but themselves. So, little by little, God’s message is changed to better serve a human agenda. Welcome to the extreme liberalism of our day which threatens to destroy the Anglican communion.

Be warned when we stop praying, and start pretending, only one thing CAN happen, the flame of faith goes out. All we are left with are the devices and desires of our own hearts. How can the heart unplugged from Christ possibly hear his voice? Only the heart rooted to Jesus, in love and in prayer, will remain faithful to the end.

Today, many churches bear the name Christian, but its hard to find evidence. Scratch the surface, they seem more concerned with fair trade coffee and social justice (important things though they be) than saving souls for Christ. It is as if the flame of faith went out long ago, and a thirst for the Gospel has been replaced by a human agenda, the pursuit of the UN development goals. There is a crisis of faith today. It shows in that you may seemingly believe anything, it matters not what you preach.

Only this week on the blog I exposed a priest who calls communion disgusting, scripture unreliable, the creeds pointless, the miracles fake and S. Paul’s teaching repugnant. He even suggests God is not real, just a symbol for humanity. Some have felt shocked I would attack someone in public. Others have congratulated me for making a stand. Either way I make little apology for doing so. Why? Becuase I believe the statements of this man reveal an empty vessel. Priestly clothing on the outside but an atheist heart on the inside. The very hypocrite, whom Jesus condemns. I take no pleasure in stating that, it hurts me to have to share it, but we must wake up to real menace that such preaching presents to the Church. How can we allow people to preach a false Gospel that actually attacks faith in the real presence and the Word of God made flesh? How can we allow people to delude others that there is more than one way to be Christian? You show me where Jesus died to offer us a pluriform agenda!

The only thing that will save us is if our hearts, as well as our hands, engage in worship. We must understand that there are not various ways of being Christians but only one way. Evangelical, broad and Catholic must unite in believing the faith which God revealed in Jesus Christ! We must uphold the Creed, the living Gospel and the presence of Christ alive by prayer in our hearts and in the most holy sacrament of the altar. There is, in the end, only one way to be Christian- to love God with all your heart, with all your mind and with all your soul, trusting in his holy Word and feeding on him in his sacrament. This IS our faith, this IS the faith of the Church and we must be PROUD to profess it in Christ Jesus our Lord.