GOOD MORNING GOD
NEW EVERY MORNING
Charles Wesley was an enthusiast. John Keble was a devout High Churchman of the old school; a Prayer Book man. The Book of Common prayer lies firmly in the contemplative tradition of Benedictine spirituality. So Kebles verse is contemplative and reflective. The tradition involves exposing each day to the scriptures. You can recognise an Anglican, said a witty American protestant, because he thinks the bible is a wonderful book - because it contains so many quotations from the Book of Common Prayer.
John Keble's book of poetry entitled "the Church's Year" was a best seller in his own day and went through numerous editions; popular because he helped churchgoers to think in an attractive way about what they believed and how they worshipped. So our hymn New every Morning is an exposition of the office of Matins or Morning Prayer as it is also known. John of course is more renowned for a sermon he preached at the Oxford Assizes in 1834 when he accused the nation of apostasy because it no longer accepted the church's authority in matters of belief and morals. I sometimes wonder if we are not in need of a John Keble for our own times. John was speaking at a time when the popular philosophy was what is called utilitarian. Meaning that public policy should be geared to the greatest good of the greatest number - a very secular attitude. Johns sermon caused at least as much stir as did Rowan Williams lecture on the law earlier this year. Country rectors all over the place read his speech in the Times and cried out "This is what we have been waiting for - its time the country took its national church more seriously" Thus grew what was called the Oxford Movement popularly called the High Church movement- but notice that High Church does not mean devoted to esoteric ceremonial - it simply means believing that the church is more than a gthering of like minded Christians as a matter of mutual convenience for worship and business. Rather a High Churchman believes that the Church is a divine institution that speaks with the authority of Christ;.
John had a brilliant mind - he got a double first at Oxford in Classics and chemistry - but he was not interested really in church politics and spent his ministry as the vicar of a little country living; and wrote poetry.
Let us see what his morning hymn may have to teach us. Every time you wake up it is a little miracle. If going to sleep is a little death then awakening is a resurrection. We are restored to three things - to life - our hearts are still beating; to Power - we can do things we can use our minds to think. This is the basic stuff of being alive.
The second stage that informs our new day are the gifts which John calls Mercies.
These are the things you become aware of as you lift up your hearts to God in prayer. Four things John recognises. New perils past. At my first school our headmaster would use the collect from morning prayer each day. These of course include first school the the words. "defend us today with thy mighty power and grant that we fall into no sin neither run into any kind of danger." And as a six year old I got hooked on this daily picture of the perils of being run over by a bus and being converted into strawberry jam But the words refer no doubt more to spiritual dangers. In more sensitive times folk were I think more aware of our tendency to be led into temptation. Today the easy going culture encourages us to widen our experiences - anything goes. A while back there was a discussion about pornographic films on TV. A sociologist affirmed that there was not scientific evidence that such material corrupted people. A priest chopped in "Well there may be no evidence that it corrupts other people - I do know it corrupts me !" I suspect that for most if not all people there is a secret life which we do not normally share with anyone even those close to us - for we are jealous of our public image. For some folk it is a secret department of life which they may try to hide from God. We are pleased for Christ to order our lives for the most part; but please Lord let me keep a little bit of my sin to enjoy. As the young Augustine is supposed to have prayed as a teenager "O God make me pure and chaste but not just yet ". Do you and I recognise these perils and when we fail to keep the divine law of love do we really want our sings forgiven. Sin is out these days - they are an outmoded idea Even Roman Catholic Christians are keeping away from the confessional to a degree unheard of fifty years ago. Church life is in that sense a very different one from a couple of generations back. We go to church and we pay lip service to the mercy of God as the general confession trips off our tongue. But when did we last experience that great joy which comes from knowing that we are ransomed healed restored forgiven
And I wonder how we relate to mercies three and four. New thoughts of God, new hopes of heaven.
The big killers of the inner life are not terrible bad sins. Most of us are too respectable for that. The big killer of the inner life are staleness and laziness. Its not something we cultivate deliberately; it is a habit we fall into. We don't really expect God to do very much anyway. A holy priest who was once my spiritual director put it beautifully when he wrote "I have lost my taste for God". I suspect this is more common that we would like to acknowledge. It is something to which those of us who are professional Christians are particularly prone. But scripture is wonderful at helping us to cope with this. You are reading the passage for the day and suddenly God is speaking to you in a way you had not been expecting.. This poem is praying for spiritual alertness.
If on our daily course our mind be set to hallow all we find.
John knows all about this; and that is why he implies a fresh start to our spiritual venture. I am reminded of the American word for dealing with the influence of insurgency movements in Iraq. We will make a surge - the y say. John is inviting us to make a surge at the beginning of the day. Our minds are to hallow all we find. Rather old fashioned language ; but it is reminding us that there is nothing that cannot be holy. How do we make our lives holy ? Not by being prissy, or moralistic; but simply by handing over all our life experiences as a gift. New treasures still of countless price God will provide for sacrifice. The essence of sacrifice is not that of giving up - that is negative - it is giving. Which is why prayer at the beginning of the day is so important. We receive the gift of a new day to be lived and we return it with gratitude to the donor. I sometimes think of something I have - my wrist watch perhaps. Is it my wrist watch ? Well it was given to me. But when I think about it I think of it as Sally's watch . She chose it and paid for it and then gave it to me. And every time I look at it I remember the giver. Is that not a little parable which applies to life itself ? Life is not a possession but a gift.
And so we come to the line everyone knows
"The trivial round the common task should furnish all we need to ask.
Room to deny ourselves - a road to bring us daily nearer God. "
If you have had a conversion experience earlier in your life you probably got quite romantic about serving Jesus If you perceive a call to ministry you may indulge in daydreams of great things you will do for the kingdom of Christ. Occasionally something exciting will happen. I believe the good Lord will give us enough encouragement to make us want to persevere; but not so much that we take him for granted. The truth is that for just about everyone the most part of our lives will be the everyday trivial round.
Many years ago now I heard a bishop speaking to a student audience. He told how from time to time young enthusiastic people approach him believing that God has called them to some sort of heroic ministry - as we used to put it - go out into the jungle and convert cannibals. When I meet then, he said I always counter them with the question "When you are at home do you make your own bed and do the washing up ?" When they are flummoxed by such a question I say "Go away and learn to be responsible for your own life; learn to do the everyday jobs your mother now does for you; And if in a years time you still feel the same about God come and see me again."
That is just another version of the tale about St Teresa of Avila . This wonderful nun whose experience of God was so real drew to herself many young ladies who wanted to be her novices. She is reputed to have typically said to them "You didn't come here to swoon about having mystical experiences; you are here to wash up and scrub floors."
John Keble is quite right - this is all we need. In everyday life there will be opportunities to say no to oneself. Self denial does not mean denying yourself things. It is saying no to that seat of desire that lives in everyone's hearts and soul. At the basis of any spiritual discipleship is the ability and willingness to say no to that part of your nature which if you indulge it will destroy your soul. The bible has a good word for it - concupiscence - which simply means that part of us which always wants more. Yet the common task, unlovely and uninspiring as it may seem is the normal road to God. If we can accept that then we are also ready to be thrilled when the God of surprises does something magical in your life.
Lastly: "only dear Lord in your great love
fit us for the life above".
Well no actually. Fit us for perfect rest. We instinctively shy away from perfect rest. How boring we say. Which we say because we think that rest means inactivity. An Australian priest engineer friend of mine used to say that the most restful thing he knew was the engine of a Rolls Royce car ticking over. All that power hiding behind the perfection of the engineering which made the powerful engine purr like a contented kitten..
So it was that Jesus himself calls to us and says Come unto me all you who are troubled and heavy laden and I will give you - what - another opportunity to serve you - a fresh vocation - a new meaning to your life ? No I will give you rest. In other words that is what you and I actually need even though we won't admit it. You have admitted it of course because you are here on retreat. Retreating into rest and silence is precisely what Jesus calls his disciples to do.. "Come ye apart and rest awhile" - he is said to have told the busy twelve apostles. Anyone who has tried will already know that under stress or pain or controversy or hyperactivity then Prayer is virtually impossible. I went to see my devout churchwarden who had just had an ileostomy - everything removed below the stomach. He was in tears "Owen, I can't pray" He was so immensely relieved when I said to him that I would not expect him to be able to pray in his state. I know now that I was right because five months ago I was suddenly taken very ill and was at deaths door for a fortnight with septicaemia. I was simply too weak to pray in any workaday sense of the word. But I was conscious that so many people all over the city the country and indeed all over the world were praying for me and that I was being carried along on that prayer. I was strangely content. Praying is not a work we practice to make ourselves good. It is living with God and the experience varies enormously according to circumstances.
There is a human instinct for those who are believers to want to be like Thomas the Tank engine and be really useful Christians They want to know what they can do for God. To reorder a famous phrase of President Kennedy "Do not ask what you can do for God; ask what God can do for you." And you can then take it from there.
Charles Wesley was an enthusiast. John Keble was a devout High Churchman of the old school; a Prayer Book man. The Book of Common prayer lies firmly in the contemplative tradition of Benedictine spirituality. So Kebles verse is contemplative and reflective. The tradition involves exposing each day to the scriptures. You can recognise an Anglican, said a witty American protestant, because he thinks the bible is a wonderful book - because it contains so many quotations from the Book of Common Prayer.
John Keble's book of poetry entitled "the Church's Year" was a best seller in his own day and went through numerous editions; popular because he helped churchgoers to think in an attractive way about what they believed and how they worshipped. So our hymn New every Morning is an exposition of the office of Matins or Morning Prayer as it is also known. John of course is more renowned for a sermon he preached at the Oxford Assizes in 1834 when he accused the nation of apostasy because it no longer accepted the church's authority in matters of belief and morals. I sometimes wonder if we are not in need of a John Keble for our own times. John was speaking at a time when the popular philosophy was what is called utilitarian. Meaning that public policy should be geared to the greatest good of the greatest number - a very secular attitude. Johns sermon caused at least as much stir as did Rowan Williams lecture on the law earlier this year. Country rectors all over the place read his speech in the Times and cried out "This is what we have been waiting for - its time the country took its national church more seriously" Thus grew what was called the Oxford Movement popularly called the High Church movement- but notice that High Church does not mean devoted to esoteric ceremonial - it simply means believing that the church is more than a gthering of like minded Christians as a matter of mutual convenience for worship and business. Rather a High Churchman believes that the Church is a divine institution that speaks with the authority of Christ;.
John had a brilliant mind - he got a double first at Oxford in Classics and chemistry - but he was not interested really in church politics and spent his ministry as the vicar of a little country living; and wrote poetry.
Let us see what his morning hymn may have to teach us. Every time you wake up it is a little miracle. If going to sleep is a little death then awakening is a resurrection. We are restored to three things - to life - our hearts are still beating; to Power - we can do things we can use our minds to think. This is the basic stuff of being alive.
The second stage that informs our new day are the gifts which John calls Mercies.
These are the things you become aware of as you lift up your hearts to God in prayer. Four things John recognises. New perils past. At my first school our headmaster would use the collect from morning prayer each day. These of course include first school the the words. "defend us today with thy mighty power and grant that we fall into no sin neither run into any kind of danger." And as a six year old I got hooked on this daily picture of the perils of being run over by a bus and being converted into strawberry jam But the words refer no doubt more to spiritual dangers. In more sensitive times folk were I think more aware of our tendency to be led into temptation. Today the easy going culture encourages us to widen our experiences - anything goes. A while back there was a discussion about pornographic films on TV. A sociologist affirmed that there was not scientific evidence that such material corrupted people. A priest chopped in "Well there may be no evidence that it corrupts other people - I do know it corrupts me !" I suspect that for most if not all people there is a secret life which we do not normally share with anyone even those close to us - for we are jealous of our public image. For some folk it is a secret department of life which they may try to hide from God. We are pleased for Christ to order our lives for the most part; but please Lord let me keep a little bit of my sin to enjoy. As the young Augustine is supposed to have prayed as a teenager "O God make me pure and chaste but not just yet ". Do you and I recognise these perils and when we fail to keep the divine law of love do we really want our sings forgiven. Sin is out these days - they are an outmoded idea Even Roman Catholic Christians are keeping away from the confessional to a degree unheard of fifty years ago. Church life is in that sense a very different one from a couple of generations back. We go to church and we pay lip service to the mercy of God as the general confession trips off our tongue. But when did we last experience that great joy which comes from knowing that we are ransomed healed restored forgiven
And I wonder how we relate to mercies three and four. New thoughts of God, new hopes of heaven.
The big killers of the inner life are not terrible bad sins. Most of us are too respectable for that. The big killer of the inner life are staleness and laziness. Its not something we cultivate deliberately; it is a habit we fall into. We don't really expect God to do very much anyway. A holy priest who was once my spiritual director put it beautifully when he wrote "I have lost my taste for God". I suspect this is more common that we would like to acknowledge. It is something to which those of us who are professional Christians are particularly prone. But scripture is wonderful at helping us to cope with this. You are reading the passage for the day and suddenly God is speaking to you in a way you had not been expecting.. This poem is praying for spiritual alertness.
If on our daily course our mind be set to hallow all we find.
John knows all about this; and that is why he implies a fresh start to our spiritual venture. I am reminded of the American word for dealing with the influence of insurgency movements in Iraq. We will make a surge - the y say. John is inviting us to make a surge at the beginning of the day. Our minds are to hallow all we find. Rather old fashioned language ; but it is reminding us that there is nothing that cannot be holy. How do we make our lives holy ? Not by being prissy, or moralistic; but simply by handing over all our life experiences as a gift. New treasures still of countless price God will provide for sacrifice. The essence of sacrifice is not that of giving up - that is negative - it is giving. Which is why prayer at the beginning of the day is so important. We receive the gift of a new day to be lived and we return it with gratitude to the donor. I sometimes think of something I have - my wrist watch perhaps. Is it my wrist watch ? Well it was given to me. But when I think about it I think of it as Sally's watch . She chose it and paid for it and then gave it to me. And every time I look at it I remember the giver. Is that not a little parable which applies to life itself ? Life is not a possession but a gift.
And so we come to the line everyone knows
"The trivial round the common task should furnish all we need to ask.
Room to deny ourselves - a road to bring us daily nearer God. "
If you have had a conversion experience earlier in your life you probably got quite romantic about serving Jesus If you perceive a call to ministry you may indulge in daydreams of great things you will do for the kingdom of Christ. Occasionally something exciting will happen. I believe the good Lord will give us enough encouragement to make us want to persevere; but not so much that we take him for granted. The truth is that for just about everyone the most part of our lives will be the everyday trivial round.
Many years ago now I heard a bishop speaking to a student audience. He told how from time to time young enthusiastic people approach him believing that God has called them to some sort of heroic ministry - as we used to put it - go out into the jungle and convert cannibals. When I meet then, he said I always counter them with the question "When you are at home do you make your own bed and do the washing up ?" When they are flummoxed by such a question I say "Go away and learn to be responsible for your own life; learn to do the everyday jobs your mother now does for you; And if in a years time you still feel the same about God come and see me again."
That is just another version of the tale about St Teresa of Avila . This wonderful nun whose experience of God was so real drew to herself many young ladies who wanted to be her novices. She is reputed to have typically said to them "You didn't come here to swoon about having mystical experiences; you are here to wash up and scrub floors."
John Keble is quite right - this is all we need. In everyday life there will be opportunities to say no to oneself. Self denial does not mean denying yourself things. It is saying no to that seat of desire that lives in everyone's hearts and soul. At the basis of any spiritual discipleship is the ability and willingness to say no to that part of your nature which if you indulge it will destroy your soul. The bible has a good word for it - concupiscence - which simply means that part of us which always wants more. Yet the common task, unlovely and uninspiring as it may seem is the normal road to God. If we can accept that then we are also ready to be thrilled when the God of surprises does something magical in your life.
Lastly: "only dear Lord in your great love
fit us for the life above".
Well no actually. Fit us for perfect rest. We instinctively shy away from perfect rest. How boring we say. Which we say because we think that rest means inactivity. An Australian priest engineer friend of mine used to say that the most restful thing he knew was the engine of a Rolls Royce car ticking over. All that power hiding behind the perfection of the engineering which made the powerful engine purr like a contented kitten..
So it was that Jesus himself calls to us and says Come unto me all you who are troubled and heavy laden and I will give you - what - another opportunity to serve you - a fresh vocation - a new meaning to your life ? No I will give you rest. In other words that is what you and I actually need even though we won't admit it. You have admitted it of course because you are here on retreat. Retreating into rest and silence is precisely what Jesus calls his disciples to do.. "Come ye apart and rest awhile" - he is said to have told the busy twelve apostles. Anyone who has tried will already know that under stress or pain or controversy or hyperactivity then Prayer is virtually impossible. I went to see my devout churchwarden who had just had an ileostomy - everything removed below the stomach. He was in tears "Owen, I can't pray" He was so immensely relieved when I said to him that I would not expect him to be able to pray in his state. I know now that I was right because five months ago I was suddenly taken very ill and was at deaths door for a fortnight with septicaemia. I was simply too weak to pray in any workaday sense of the word. But I was conscious that so many people all over the city the country and indeed all over the world were praying for me and that I was being carried along on that prayer. I was strangely content. Praying is not a work we practice to make ourselves good. It is living with God and the experience varies enormously according to circumstances.
There is a human instinct for those who are believers to want to be like Thomas the Tank engine and be really useful Christians They want to know what they can do for God. To reorder a famous phrase of President Kennedy "Do not ask what you can do for God; ask what God can do for you." And you can then take it from there.
Owen
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