my thoughts are not your thoughts sermon catholic

#My thoughts are not your thoughts sermon catholic series

Today as you will know is the 25th Anniversary of the Hillsborough tragedy. It was a particular and moving experience for both of us to preside, in turns, at the Eucharist at each conference, to look around the room at those with whom we are called to share this ministry, and to be able to say: “Lift up your hearts”.

Those conferences were an immense privilege to lead.

#My thoughts are not your thoughts sermon catholic series

We lift up our broken, wounded and hurting hearts and place them into the gentle hands of our creator.īishop Peter and I have just finished a series of five residential clergy conferences at Whirlow Grange. We make the memorial of Christ and especially of his death and resurrection: his one full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world. It is no accident that these words stand at the head of the Eucharistic prayer. There are many layers of meaning woven through those scriptures but let me explore three of them this evening.įirst and foremost we lift our hearts to a God of compassion, who loves us, who stands with us, who cares for us in ways we cannot understand, whose Son died for us. What are we saying except: “Lift up your hearts”? And what is a priest, what is an evangelist, what is a Reader, what is a pastor except someone who is called to make that invitation in everything we do: in the structuring of worship, in prayers at the bedside, in teaching the faith to enquirers, in the ministry of welcome, in our care of little children. What is that we are lifting up? When I invite a congregation to lift up their hearts, I’m asking you to lift your very selves to God. The heart is the whole of who we are and how we are. The heart is the very centre of our inner life, our spiritual life, our emotions, our character and our will. In contemporary culture, the heart is the seat of the emotions and especially the place of romantic love. In the Hebrew Scriptures, the heart is much more than the physical organ which pumps blood round the body. Colossians 3 says this: “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth for your life is hidden with Christ in God” (3.2). There is perhaps an echo of Psalm 24: “Lift up your heads, O gates and be lifted up, O ancient doors” (24.7,9). In the Psalms: “To you O Lord I lift up my soul” (25.1 see also 86.4 and 143.8). In Lamentations we read: “Let us lift up our hearts as well as our hands to God in heaven” (3.41). The words are biblical, like so much of our liturgy, but they are not an exact quotation.

What does it mean to say “Lift up your hearts”? They are present in the rites of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches and all the churches of the Reformation as well as our own Church of England. They go back to the earliest descriptions of the Eucharist in the third century. This call and invitation goes right to the heart of our understanding of every kind of ministry. But others are called no less to invite God’s people to lift up their hearts in different ways: in the ministry of the word and in the prayers, in pastoral care, in evangelism, as we lead worship or work with children or young people. Some of us have the immense privilege as priests of summoning a whole community to lift up their hearts in the Eucharist. The focus of my sermon this evening is what it means to say those words and what it is to set those words at the heart of ministry. Because of that knowledge it has become more and more meaningful for me to say in many different congregations and contexts, “Lift up your hearts” and to hear the response back: “We lift them to the Lord”. The longer we are in a place, the better we know it. We learn to rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep. We see the world, a little more through one another’s eyes.

Through listening and shared experiences, through dialogue and sometimes disagreement, through mistakes made and forgiven, bonds of love are forged. This is one of the great mysteries and privileges of Christian ministry. We are strangers called by God to walk together and serve together in our different ministries.īut, with time, of course, strangers become friends. When a priest first comes to a parish or a bishop first comes to a diocese, when a lay minister is licensed or authorized, we do not know each other well. It’s a feature of all good Christian ministry that we get to know one another better over time.

Lift up your hearts We lift them to the LordĪbout two years ago, this particular phrase in the service of Holy Communion began to strike me afresh. Lift up your hearts A Sermon at the Chrism Eucharist 15th April, 2014.