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Sermon preached by The Very Revd Catherine Ogle at Evensong

Isaiah 60: 9 – end Hebrews 6: 17 – 7.10

One of the things built into the fabric of this great place, Winchester Cathedral, is the sense of those who have gone before us. Coming into the cathedral always reminds me that the Christian faith is handed on, person to person, soul to soul, throughout the generations.

Buildings like this naturally causes us to look back in wonder and thanksgiving for all that is inherited from the past, and the riches and wisdom of this heritage.

However, something else happens as well. Because the faith that is preached here, the faith proclaimed in these very stones, is that God is always offering us something that is new, the gospel is ‘good news’.

In Christ we are offered new life. With him, daily life is renewed. Perhaps these contrasting aspects of faith are best summed up by St Augustine of Hippo who wrote ‘Late have I loved thee, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved thee’.

Here in this diocese two hundred years ago there was a very eminent priest, a leader of the Oxford Movement (a renewal movement within the C of England) who served for many years as Vicar of Hursley.

His name was John Keble. John was both priest and poet, and we still sing some of his poems as hymns including, ‘New every morning is the love’, perhaps you know it, ‘New every morning is the love our wakening and uprising prove’. It’s a hymn that reflects on our waking from sleep being a daily foretaste of resurrection.

God offers us a new day but more than this, new life. Being made and remade anew is at the very heart of faith.

The writer of the psalms sings a new song, and through the prophets God promises a new heaven and a new earth. Perhaps most amazingly, God promises through the prophet Ezekiel, ‘I will give you a new heart and put a new Spirit in you. I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh…’

But we’re not always open to new things, perhaps as we get older it gets harder, human nature is such that the past has the allure of familiarity and security. Even if it wasn’t really very good. We knew where we were. So do we really want something new?

The letter to the Hebrews, our second treading, contrasts the old and the new. It’s about Gods own self-revelation through time and in history, through prophets and patriarchs, culminating in the coming of Christ the supreme revelation, the fulfilment of every promise, both high priest and final sacrifice.

And the author is passionate that having been offered the full glorious splendour of God Christians mustn’t go back to the old ways and beliefs. So the letter contrasts the old and the new ways, begs Christians not to slip back, but to move forward, with Christ who offers eternal life both here and in the hereafter.

So the question that follows for us is ‘are we open to the new things of God?’ Are you and I open to the new thing that God wants to share with us? We pray for it in the Lord’s prayer, ‘give us this day our daily bread’, we’re asking for today’s fresh bread, not stale old bread from last week. Each day has fresh joys and possibilities, new challenges and of course, heart aches.

Now I realise that this message may seem very poorly timed, when lockdown days lack variety and we can’t work out what day of the week it is, or perhaps as you are at your wits end with endless demands at work, in your caring role. You may be carrying great sadness, anxiety, loss.

But what I want to say, and I only dare say it because I know this to be true, is that when we are at our lowest, when we know that we’re ‘poor in spirit’ that’s when we may be most open to receive a new gift from God.

When I’m up against it, with restrictions and sadness and things not as I would have them be, when I am ‘Poor in spirit’ and know my need of God, then I’m most open to receive his blessing and his new gift, and his grace, and joy.

So whatever your circumstances, but particularly if you’re up against it, poor in spirit, ask for fresh daily bread, ask for the new thing that God has to give you.

‘New every morning is the love’. Tomorrow as you wake, give thanks for the gift of a new day and dare to expect that God’s life can transform your daily living, even the trivial round, the common task, even lockdown. May you be blest with new life. Amen.

Let us pray:

Almighty God, in Christ you make all things new

Transform the poverty of our nature

By the riches of your grace,

And in the renewal of our lives

Make known your heavenly glory

Through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord. Amen