21st June, 2020.
​
My dear friends,

This week Thursday 24th June is a very special day for all members of the Venerable Order of St John and St John Ambulance because it is the feast day of St John the Baptist, the saint after whom our Order is named. More precisely, it is the feast of the Birth of St John the Baptist. If you go through the Christian calendar, you will see that every day is the feast of some saint or other. Mostly, we remember the days on which these saints died. There are two exceptions. We remember the birthdays of the Blessed Virgin Mary and of St John the Baptist because they are each so central to the life of Jesus. Without Mary’s ‘yes’ to the Angel Gabriel at the Annunciation, Jesus Christ would not have become incarnate in her womb and been born at Bethlehem, to love us and save us.

St John the Baptist was the ‘fore-runner’ of the Lord. He was Jesus’ cousin. He was, in a sense, the last of the Old Testament prophets, straddling the worlds of the Old and of the New Testament. His task from God was to proclaim that the Messiah had arrived, though his identity was concealed, and that he would soon make himself known. In preparation for this, John urged people to repent of their sins and he baptised them in the river Jordan.

St John the Baptist is patron saint of our Order for a very curious reason. Just over a thousand years ago there was a large Benedictine monastery in Jerusalem, beside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (well worth a visit). Quite often, Christian pilgrims to the holy land would fall ill or suffer accidents on their journey there. Their fellow pilgrims usually ended up taking them to the Benedictine monastery, where the infirmarer (think of Brother Cadfael) would try to help them. Some time in the tenth century, a little group of these Benedictine monks pledged themselves to devote their lives to the care of sick pilgrims and all others who sought their medical help. They met to pray in a little chapel dedicated to St John the Baptist, whom they adopted as their patron saint. With the passage of time they evolved into the Order of St John.

So, on Thursday 24th June we celebrate our patron saint, St John the Baptist, the forerunner of the Lord and a crucial figure in the Christian story. We remember, too, that original little group of Benedictine monks caring for the sick a thousand years ago, and all who have been inspired to follow their example. Perhaps on Thursday we might pause for a moment and say a little prayer for the work of the Venerable Order of St John – and of our sister Roman Catholic and Protestant Orders of St John – and remember too all dealing with Coronavirus patients.

     May I wish you all a very happy St John’s Day.

     With continued prayers and kindest regards,

      The Rev. Dr ROBERT BEAKEN, County Chaplain
TRINITY 2 – 21st JUNE 2020.
​
Gospel: St Matthew, chapter 10, verses 24-39
Some words from today’s Gospel:
 
Nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known. What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops. Do not fear those who kill the body, but cannot kill the soul; but rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell ... whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.
 
I spent some time last week walking round and round, thinking about those words, and their relevance for us today. It strikes me that, in a nutshell, what Jesus means is that when we become Christians, we have to start to look at the world differently.

            Some people think that Christianity means churchgoing on Sunday, and that’s about it. Well, I’m hardly likely to speak against churchgoing: we go to church because Jesus wants us to. But there is more to being a Christian than simply that. Perhaps, to start off, we think of become a Christian as something like joining another society or organisation: we sort of add it on to all the other things in our life.

            But then, as the years pass, and – please God – our experience deepens, we find that there is far more to following Jesus than simply going to church for an hour on Sunday. We come to recognize that there is another world, in which we have a foot: God’s world, what we sometimes call the Kingdom of God, or the Kingdom of Heaven. God’s world has its own rules, its own scale of values; it is where things are how God wants them to be. There is no sin or pain in God’s world. We gain access to God’s world because of our faith and trust in Christ’s sacrificial death and resurrection.

            Having one foot in God’s world means we are always going to come into conflict with this world in which we live, planet earth, Great Britain in the 21st century; for here, things are not the way God wants them to be. There is much that is good, but also much that is flawed and messed up by sin and evil.

            Now, when I say that, people immediately start thinking of such subjects as marriage, sex, the protection of unborn life, etc. It is true that the Bible and the teachings of Christianity down the centuries uphold clear values about all these. But there are many other things, too, that Christians should think about. The Bible, for example, tells us that we should not lie, or steal; that we should not judge people or exploit them; that everyone should be treated fairly and with dignity; that we should care for the poor, vulnerable and suffering in our society; that our faith has a bearing upon our use of money and commercial dealings. Contemporary society may sometimes pay lip service to these Christian aims and values, but in truth it often praises and promotes ideas that are their very opposite.

            It is easy to understand why some Christians give up. Following Jesus Christ means, at times, that we shall find ourselves taking up positions that are contrary to the attitudes and world view of many of the people around us. Someone said to me last week that my views were going against the flow. I said I regretted this, but in the end, I had to be guided by the New Testament, even if parts of its teaching at times can be difficult, because I believe the New Testament tells us about God’s world and God’s ways, and in my life I must be guided by these.

            Tomorrow, 22nd June, is the feast of St Alban, the first Christian martyr in England. The details of St Alban’s life and martyrdom are somewhat sketchy. He is believed to have sheltered a Christian priest during a time of persecution. When the Roman soldiers tracked down the priest, Alban – who had been converted to Christianity by the priest – put on the priest’s cloak and pretended to be him, whilst the priest escaped. For this, he was sentenced to death by beheading, and, according to tradition, he converted his executioner. The ways of God’s world had reached out and touched his heart, and, given the choice, he chose God.

            And that is our challenge. We mustn’t, of course, go to the opposite extreme, and set ourselves up against the world, or roundly condemn everyone who takes a different view, for they are all children of God, and Christ died for each of them on the Cross. The doctrine of the Fatherhood of God, we might remember, means that all men and women – whatever their outlook, whatever they may have done or said – are our brothers and sisters.

            We might also recall that Jesus gave us two very contrasting images to guide and inspire us as we lead our Christian lives. He said we are to be both lights high on a distant hill, and also leaven in the lump. We are to bear witness to the word and works of Christ, to God’s ways and values. But we are also to live our lives enmeshed in the society around us. We are to be in the world, but not of it.

This means, I suggest, that when people come to services in our churches, what they experience there must strike them as different to the world outside, and help them to lift up their thoughts and lives to higher, nobler, sacred things. It is not good enough for our church services weakly to echo contemporary society and culture – church composers and musicians please take note – nor, though, is our worship to be merely entertainment with a few religious bits tacked on (a temptation for Christians of all tastes and churchmanships). Rather, true Christian worship focuses on the saving work of Jesus Christ, leads us to God Himself, and is a foretaste of the kingdom of Heaven.

​When people encounter Christians – and that means you and me – they should, please God, find us just a little bit different to other people. The only Bible they made read may be our faces. We are supposed to worship God not only with our lips, but also with our lives. The challenge to us, then, is to remember that we have one foot already in God’s kingdom, and then as we go through life to try to be ambassadors for God’s kingdom.