The life of Jesus reproduced in the midst of the life of the world

Here's the reflection I shared today in the lunchtime Eucharist for St Martin-in-the-Fields:

Stephen Verney begins his commentary on this passage (John 15. 1- 8) with a great evocation of the way in which vines are grown: “On a stony hillside above his house, where the thyme grows and the prickly pear, and a wild fig tree fights for its existence in a pocket of shallow soil, a farmer decides to plant a vine. In the autumn he clears a terrace, and brings top soil. He sets a post for the vine to climb, and fixes horizontal supports for its branches. Then in the spring he plants it and fences it against the goats; as it grows he trains it, and in the following autumn he prunes it back.

The vine depends for its life on the farmer, but equally the farmer depends on the vine. For the vine can do what the farmer cannot; it can take the rain that falls on the hillside and convert it into grapes, which the farmer can harvest and tread out in his wine-press, and pour the juice into his vat to ferment and bubble. The farmer and the vine are dependent on each other, and the purpose for which they work together is that water should be turned into wine.” Jesus is the vine, his Father is the farmer. They are dependent one on the other although their roles are different. Their shared purpose is that water is turned into wine; that the vine is fruitful and that its fruit becomes wine shared with others as the sign and symbol of Jesus’ blood. The process for achieving this can itself be painful; involving pruning and crushing.

We are part of this picture because there is one vine but many branches. Each one of us as we become Christians is grafted into the vine to become part of the vine itself. Verney writes: “I AM the vine, and you are the branches. Dwell in me, and I in you. Here is teaching both simple and profound, to move the human heart. If the branch dwells in the vine, then the life of the vine dwells in the branch. If the branch grows out of the stem, and out of the roots which are drawing up the goodness of the soil and the rain, then the sap of the vine flows into the branch, and the pattern of the vine’s life unfolds itself through each branch to produce bunches of grapes. So it will be, says Jesus, between you and me. If you do not dwell in me you cannot bear fruit …”

How do we dwell in Jesus? To keep our life dwelling in Christ’s, we must continually renew our decision that “what has been done once for all on the cross by Jesus shall the basis, the starting point, the context of all my thinking and deciding and doing,” writes Lesslie Newbigin. We feed this decision by protecting time for prayer, bible study and worship in our busy lives and schedules. As we do so, the sap of the vine, the life of Christ, flows into us and we produce fruit. The fruit of the vine is, as Newbigin again writes, “the life of Jesus reproduced in the midst of the life of the world, the pure love and obedience by which people will recognise the disciples of Jesus, the branches of the real vine.”

This fruit, the life of Jesus reproduced in our lives, is the real test of whether or not we are actually dwelling in the vine, in Jesus. In recent years, we have come to know much more about the spiritual life of Mother Teresa, someone whose face shone with the all-encompassing joy of one for whom “to live is Christ.” Everyone who knew her assumed that she was supported in her ministry through a deep and abiding sense of Christ’s presence with her.

Yet the opposite was true. Mother Teresa lived feeling as if she did not believe: “I have no faith” – “They say people in hell suffer eternal pain because of the loss of God … in my soul I feel just that terrible pain of loss – of God not being God – of God not really existing.” Her sense of feeling that there was no God has been revealed in letters that she wrote to her spiritual confidantes. Yet, as Sister Wendy Beckett has written, “this woman who felt that there was no God and lived in emotional anguish was also profoundly aware, intellectually, that God was her total life and that she lived only to love him.” This was what was apparent in her life and ministry and this fruit showed that whatever she felt about the absence of God in her life, she was still a live branch in the vine.

Ultimately, the fruit of our lives - the life of Jesus reproduced in our lives – is the sign of whether we are healthy branches dwelling in the vine. Prayer, bible study and worship are channels for the life of Christ to flow into our lives rather than the sign than his life is flowing into our own. As we are grafted into the vine, into Jesus, we receive his life flowing through us and take on his characteristics – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, humility, and self-control. These characteristics result in acts of love because love must act, as we saw in the life of Mother Teresa. While hate could be indifference or inaction, love is always active and must respond practically to the needs we see around us.

This Christian Aid week we can use our spheres of influence to give, act and pray, and in this way support the loving, sacrificial selflessness of Christian Aid partners who support and empower those they serve. We can choose active love over inactive indifference and, together with Christian Aid and others like them, create a powerful force for change which derives from the life of Christ flowing into us as we dwell in him and where our active love is the fruit of the vine - the life of Jesus reproduced in our lives.

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Belle and Sebastian - If You Find Yourself Caught In Love.

Installation of 150 baby grows

An installation of 150 baby grows is on display at St Martin-in-the-Fields until 18 May.

The display illustrates the stark reality that a woman is 150 times more likely to die in childbirth in Sierra Leone than in the UK.

The installation raises awareness of the shocking maternal death rate as part of Christian Aid Week (12-18 May 2019).

The baby grows have been donated by mums from all walks of life including MPs Luciana Berger, Jo Swinson, Seema Kennedy and Alison Thewliss, BBC broadcasters Emma Barnett and Kate Bottley, ITN newsreader Romilly Weeks and actress Jemma Powell.



Pre-loved baby grows on display as a symbol of solidarity with mums in Sierra Leone – the world's most dangerous place to give birth.

During Christian Aid Week supporters in churches across Britain and Ireland will volunteer their time, coming together to raise much-needed funds to provide much-needed healthcare in poor communities around the world.

Following the installation at St Martin’s the baby grows will be donated to a UK charity working with families in need.

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Ben & Ellen Harper - Born To Love You.

Christian Aid Week: Together we're stronger than storms

At this week’s Bread for the World Eucharist at St Martin-in-the-Fields, the International Committee shared resources and themes for Christian Aid Week including the story of Marcelin, who lost his home in 2016 when Hurricane Matthew tore through Haiti. Marcelin and his three teenage daughters are now living in a 2x2m block of concrete.

As part of considering how we respond in Christian Aid Week, we wrote prayers during the service which included the following:

• May God’s love surround and protect you. May you receive help from unexpected people and places. The love God will never leave you.
• Where there is life, there is always hope, so never give up on hope. The cross becomes a fruit-bearing tree for the whole human family.
• Your courage is amazing. May you know God’s love from the work of your brothers and sisters both near and far. We are all part of one body and we all need each other.
• Life is unfair; Jesus did not deserve to suffer. Neither do you! We can’t help everybody, but that is no reason not to help anybody.
• May you find safety, shelter and succour so that you can live your life in peace and thanksgiving.

For more than 70 years, with the help of their amazing supporters and partners, Christian Aid has been helping change the lives of people, of all faiths and none, living in poverty around the world. They tackle the root causes of poverty so that women, men and children the world over are strengthened against future knocks. And if disasters, like storms and hurricanes, happen, they get people the help they want straight away. This Christian Aid Week, they want to build homes that will last and help families, like those in Haiti facing regular hurricanes, to weather future storms.

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Nanci Griffith & Eric Taylor - Storms.

The life of Jesus reproduced in our lives

Here is my sermon for today's Choral Eucharist at St Martin-in-the-Fields:

Stephen Verney begins his commentary on this passage (John 15. 1 - 8) with a great evocation of the way in which vines are grown: “On a stony hillside above his house, where the thyme grows and the prickly pear, and a wild fig tree fights for its existence in a pocket of shallow soil, a farmer decides to plant a vine. In the autumn he clears a terrace, and brings top soil. He sets a post for the vine to climb, and fixes horizontal supports for its branches. Then in the spring he plants it and fences it against the goats; as it grows he trains it, and in the following autumn he prunes it back.

The vine depends for its life on the farmer, but equally the farmer depends on the vine. For the vine can do what the farmer cannot; it can take the rain that falls on the hillside and convert it into grapes, which the farmer can harvest and tread out in his wine-press, and pour the juice into his vat to ferment and bubble. The farmer and the vine are dependent on each other, and the purpose for which they work together is that water should be turned into wine.” Jesus is the vine, his Father is the farmer. They are dependent one on the other although their roles are different. Their shared purpose is that water is turned into wine; that the vine is fruitful and that its fruit becomes wine shared with others as the sign and symbol of Jesus’ blood. The process for achieving this can itself be painful; involving pruning and crushing.

We are part of this picture because there is one vine but many branches. Each one of us as we become Christians is grafted into the vine to become part of the vine itself. Verney writes: “I AM the vine, and you are the branches. Dwell in me, and I in you. Here is teaching both simple and profound, to move the human heart. If the branch dwells in the vine, then the life of the vine dwells in the branch. If the branch grows out of the stem, and out of the roots which are drawing up the goodness of the soil and the rain, then the sap of the vine flows into the branch, and the pattern of the vine’s life unfolds itself through each branch to produce bunches of grapes. So it will be, says Jesus, between you and me. If you do not dwell in me you cannot bear fruit …”

How do we dwell in Jesus? To keep our life dwelling in Christ’s, we must continually renew our decision that “what has been done once for all on the cross by Jesus shall the basis, the starting point, the context of all my thinking and deciding and doing,” writes Lesslie Newbigin. We feed this decision by protecting time for prayer, bible study and worship in our busy lives and schedules. As we do so, the sap of the vine, the life of Christ, flows into us and we produce fruit. The fruit of the vine is, as Newbigin again writes, “the life of Jesus reproduced in the midst of the life of the world, the pure love and obedience by which people will recognise the disciples of Jesus, the branches of the real vine.”

This fruit, the life of Jesus reproduced in our lives, is the real test of whether or not we are actually dwelling in the vine, in Jesus. In recent years, we have come to know much more about the spiritual life of Mother Teresa, someone whose face shone with the all-encompassing joy of one for whom “to live is Christ.” Everyone who knew her assumed that she was supported in her ministry through a deep and abiding sense of Christ’s presence with her.

Yet the opposite was true. Mother Teresa lived feeling as if she did not believe: “I have no faith” – “They say people in hell suffer eternal pain because of the loss of God … in my soul I feel just that terrible pain of loss – of God not being God – of God not really existing.” Her sense of feeling that there was no God has been revealed in letters that she wrote to her spiritual confidantes. Yet, as Sister Wendy Beckett has written, “this woman who felt that there was no God and lived in emotional anguish was also profoundly aware, intellectually, that God was her total life and that she lived only to love him.” This was what was apparent in her life and ministry and this fruit showed that whatever she felt about the absence of God in her life, she was still a live branch in the vine.

Ultimately, the fruit of our lives - the life of Jesus reproduced in our lives – is the sign of whether we are healthy branches dwelling in the vine. Prayer, bible study and worship are channels for the life of Christ to flow into our lives rather than the sign than his life is flowing into our own. As we are grafted into the vine, into Jesus, we receive his life flowing through us and take on his characteristics – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, humility, and self-control. These characteristics result in acts of love because love must act, as we saw in the life of Mother Teresa. While hate could be indifference or inaction, love is always active and must respond practically to the needs we see around us.

This Christian Aid week we can use our spheres of influence to give, act and pray, and in this way support the loving, sacrificial selflessness of Christian Aid partners who support and empower those they serve. We can choose active love over inactive indifference and, together with Christian Aid and others like them, create a powerful force for change which derives from the life of Christ flowing into us as we dwell in him and where our active love is the fruit of the vine - the life of Jesus reproduced in our lives.

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Gregory Porter & Beverley Knight - Mary Did You Know.

Exhibition, service, reception, concert & poetry evening

Today we hung Joe Machine's 'The Life & Legend of St Stephen' exhibition, which can be seen at St Stephen Walbrook until 27th May (weekdays 10.00am - 4.00pm, except Wednesdays 11.00am - 3.00pm).

Joe Machine's paintings combine Jewish and Christian iconography in a unique interpretation of the story of the first Christian martyr, who is our Patron Saint. Mysticism, humour, symbolism, narrative and stylized patterning are fused to form these ravishing and reflective icons.

Tomorrow we will explore the life and thought of St Stephen in our Discover & explore service with the Choral Scholars of St Martin-in-the-Fields. This service begins at 1.10pm and the reflection will be given by Clare Paine, London Church Coordinator at Christian Aid, who will speak, during Christian Aid Week, on contemporary persecution in the light of St Stephen's witness.

At 6.30pm tomorrow there will be an exhibition launch reception for Joe Machine's exhibition, to which all are welcome. The reception provides an opportunity to speak to Joe Machine about the exhibition.

On Wednesday, as part of our exhibition programme, the "amazing, daring and magnetic artist" Italian classical pianist Claudio Crismani will play Liszt, Skrjabin and Boulez. The music of Russian composer Alexander Scriabin has always been at the centre of Crismani’s artistic interests. The concert begins at 7.00pm, tickets cost £15.00 (with complimentary glass of wine) and are available via the Box Office at St Martin-in-the-Fields (Tel: 020 7766 1100, Web: www.smitf.org/the-prometheus-project) or on the door.

Finally, in our exhibition programme, we have a poetry evening arranged by The London Magazine and featuring Steven O’Brien, Joe Machine and Edward Lucie-Smith on Wednesday 25 May beginning at 7.00pm. Joe Machine and Steven O'Brien have collaborated on a soon to be published book, Britannia Stories, exploring twenty myths commonly associated with the British Isles. They worked closely in examining the origins of all the stories, and on determining the relevance of each to the 21st century, with Machine’s paintings influencing O’Brien’s writings, and vice versa.

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Michael McDermott - Carry Your Cross.

Christian Aid Week - coming soon!

For a growing number of people across the world, the horror of war is part of daily life. War tears lives apart. You can help put them back together. Christian Aid Week 2014 is an opportunity to give people a future without fear.

Tales of people from Colombia, South Sudan and Iraq feature in this year's appeal and bring to life some of the fantastic work we are supporting through Christian Aid.

The good news is that individuals, communities and churches like St John’s can make a real difference this Christian Aid Week. Last year, a magnificent 20,000 churches across the country helped raise £12m for Christian Aid Week. Thanks to our efforts and those of the other 19,999 churches involved, many more people can look forward to a future free from poverty.

You can make a real difference. That is the message when it comes to so much of church life. God says, ‘I made you with gifts and talents and what to empower you by my Spirit to use them to make a real difference.’ The Church says, ‘We need a new flowering of lay ministry in order to be a Transforming Presence in our parishes.’ Christian Aid says we can make a real difference to the lives of those in poverty around our world. In our Sophia Hub we train people to develop ideas and skills that will make a real difference in our local community. Many of you have for many years been making a real difference locally through your work (paid and voluntary) in particular through care for the elderly or homeless.

At our APCM I highlighted the fact that people who have joined St John’s in the last seven years are getting actively involved in our mission and ministry: on the PCC; among our Sunday School and Youth Group leaders; in our Mission Weekend planning group; on our All-Age Service planning group; assisting with our finances; servers and sidespeople; and assisting in the office.

This is a real encouragement. My sabbatical provides a further opportunity to see this in practice as (in addition to those clergy who will come and lead services) many of you will play your part in continuing the mission and ministry of St John’s during the time when I am away.

Sabbaticals, like interregnums, can be an opportunity for all to see that the Church is actually the whole people of God actively working together. As Christian Aid emphasise during Christian Aid, you can make a real difference.

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The Cars - Drive.

The vine and the branches

Stephen Verney begins his commentary on John 15. 1 - 8 with a great evocation of the way in which vines are grown:

“On a stony hillside above his house, where the thyme grows and the prickly pear, and a wild fig tree fights for its existence in a pocket of shallow soil, a farmer decides to plant a vine. In the autumn he clears a terrace, and brings top soil. He sets a post for the vine to climb, and fixes horizontal supports for its branches. Then in the spring he plants it and fences it against the goats; as it grows he trains it, and in the following autumn he prunes it back.

The vine depends for its life on the farmer, but equally the farmer depends on the vine. For the vine can do what the farmer cannot; it can take the rain that falls on the hillside and convert it into grapes, which the farmer can harvest and tread out in his wine-press, and pour the juice into his vat to ferment and bubble. The farmer and the vine are dependent on each other, and the purpose for which they work together is that water should be turned into wine.”

Jesus is the vine, his Father is the farmer. They are dependent one on the other although their roles are different. Their shared purpose is that water is turned into wine; that the vine is fruitful and that its fruit becomes wine shared with others as the sign and symbol of Jesus’ blood. The process for achieving this can itself be painful; involving pruning and crushing. 

We are part of this picture because there is one vine but many branches. Each one of us as we become Christians is grafted into the vine to become part of the vine itself. Verney writes:

“I AM the vine, and you are the branches. Dwell in me, and I in you. Here is teaching both simple and profound, to move the human heart. If the branch dwells in the vine, then the life of the vine dwells in the branch. If the branch grows out of the stem, and out of the roots which are drawing up the goodness of the soil and the rain, then the sap of the vine flows into the branch, and the pattern of the vine’s life unfolds itself through each branch to produce bunches of grapes. So it will be, says Jesus, between you and me. If you do not dwell in me you cannot bear fruit …”

How do we dwell in Jesus? To keep our life dwelling in Christ’s, we must continually renew our decision that “what has been done once for all on the cross by Jesus shall the basis, the starting point, the context of all my thinking and deciding and doing,” writes Lesslie Newbigin. We feed this decision by protecting time for prayer, bible study and worship in our busy lives and schedules.

As we do so, the sap of the vine, the life of Christ, flows into us and we produce fruit. The fruit of the vine is, as Newbigin again writes, “the life of Jesus reproduced in the midst of the life of the world, the pure love and obedience by which people will recognise the disciples of Jesus, the branches of the real vine.”

This fruit, the life of Jesus reproduced in our lives, is the real test of whether or not we are actually dwelling in the vine, in Jesus. In recent years, we have come to know much more about the spiritual life of Mother Teresa, someone whose face shone with the all-encompassing joy of one for whom “to live is Christ.” Everyone who knew her assumed that she was supported in her ministry through a deep and abiding sense of Christ’s presence with her.

Yet the opposite was true. Mother Teresa lived feeling as if she did not believe:

“I have no faith” – “They say people in hell suffer eternal pain because of the loss of God … in my soul I feel just that terrible pain of loss – of God not being God – of God not really existing.”

Her sense of feeling that there was no God has been revealed in letters that she wrote to her spiritual confidantes. Yet, as Sister Wendy Beckett has written, “this woman who felt that there was no God and lived in emotional anguish was also profoundly aware, intellectually, that God was her total life and that she lived only to love him.” This was what was apparent in her life and ministry and this fruit showed that whatever she felt about the absence of God in her life, she was still a live branch in the vine.

Ultimately, the fruit of our lives - the life of Jesus reproduced in our lives – is the sign of whether we are healthy branches dwelling in the vine. Prayer, bible study and worship are channels for the life of Christ to flow into our lives rather than the sign than his life is flowing into our own.

As we are grafted into the vine, into Jesus, we receive his life flowing through us and take on his characteristics – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, humility, and self-control. These characteristics result in acts of love because love must act, as we saw in the life of Mother Teresa. While hate could be indifference or inaction, love is always active and must respond practically to the needs we see around us.

Several years ago, Nadia Kabula’s father died and her family became desperately poor. She lives in Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo where family loss and poverty often lead to children being forced to live on the streets, where violence and prostitution can claim their future as well as their youth. This did not happen to Nadia because of help that she received from Humanitié Nouvelle, a Christian Aid partner in Kinshasa. Nadia took a sewing course with Humanitié Nouvelle which has given her back the chance of a full life. Her unique eye for style is already earning her commissions, and she hopes to open her own business.

Nadia is trusting God as she struggles towards this vision. A talented singer, she encourages others with songs of worship. She say, “Music is an important part of life here … When I sing I feel good – it is like food. My favourite song is ‘Lord I Lift Your Name On High’.” Nadia is also displaying extraordinary determination and selflessness as she sacrifices her time to care for her four younger siblings, and helps teach other young women to sew. Her life of love is an example to us all.

This Christian Aid week we can use our spheres of influence to give, act and pray, particularly by helping with the door-to-door collection, and in this way support the loving, sacrificial selflessness of people like Nadia and the Christian Aid partners who support and empower them. We can choose active love over inactive indifference and, together with Nadia, Humanitié Nouvelle, Christian Aid and others like them, create a powerful force for change which derives from the life of Christ flowing into us as we dwell in him and where our active love is the fruit of the vine - the life of Jesus reproduced in our lives.

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Gungor - Brother Moon.

Seed Ministries International

In the main morning service at St John's Seven Kings today we heard about Seed Ministries International, an inter-denominational organization that was established with an objective to take God’s Word in various languages to rural India.

The work of Seed Ministries International includes: 

• Bible distribution & Literature promotion - They distribute bibles at highly discounted prices. In Bangalore bibles have been distributed in four languages: Kannada, Tamil, Telugu and English. So far they have distributed about 500 bibles. Various books and booklets have also been promoted in various churches.
• Training programmes and seminars - They are also involved in various training programmes and seminars on leadership, relationship management, art of successful living, etc in churches, schools and colleges.
• Clothes distribution - They distribute clothes to the slum dwellers in and around Bangalore.

We also began providing information about Christian Aid Week by highlighting their Live below the Line campaign where thousands of people across the UK are living off just £1 a day for food and drink for Christian Aid to help raise money for some of the world's poorest communities.

In 2011, ten thousand people worldwide took the Live below the Line challenge raising over £1million and finding out more about what it’s like for the 1.4 billion people who have to live on £1 everyday for everything.

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Beverley Knight - Come As You Are.