A covenant of fruitfulness

Here's my last Sunday sermon for St Martin-in-the-Fields in my current role, for this morning's Mothering Sunday Eucharist: 

'Anna Tymchenko was scared. She had been in labour for hours, but her hometown was being bombed and her apartment was shaking. She and her husband were trapped with no electricity, running water or doctor. The small town of Bucha, 18 miles from Kyiv, had come under relentless bombardment since the start of the war. Twenty-one-year-old Anna, along with her husband and brother, had previously taken refuge in the basement of their block of flats. But when the electricity was cut off and the heating stopped working, the basement was plunged into darkness, and it was bitterly cold. Anna's husband Volodymyr was torn between remaining in Bucha or trying to flee. When they did finally try to escape by car, they had to turn back when they heard that a column of Russian military vehicles was heading their way.

They then decided to stay in the apartment and when Anna went into labour late on 7 March, she called her neighbours for help. Anna's neighbours had to deliver the baby themselves. Only one of them – Irina - had had any medical expertise. "When the baby's head came out, we got scared," Viktoria, one of the neighbours, said. "She was blue and we didn't know what to do. Then Irina gently turned the baby's head and she came out. She didn't cry at first … but then she cried and we all cheered." Volodymyr cried tears of relief for baby Alisa, who was born on 8 March - International Women's Day.'

The natural cycle of birth, with its inherent generativity and creativity, continues, even in the extreme circumstances of war, through the resilience of all involved in this story. Today is a day for celebrating both the vital role of mothers and the wider village needed through which we nurture and bring up children, the fruit of our fertility and creativity as humans.

The experience of childbearing and of childbirth is one that is used through the Bible as a metaphor for the creativity and generativity of God, who is also endlessly creative and fertile even in the most difficult of circumstances. In Isaiah 42:14 God is pictured as a woman in labour crying out, gasping and panting, as new things spring forth in our world. In Deuteronomy 32:18 we read of Israel as the people that God brought to birth, while in Isaiah 49:15 God is compared to a nursing mother and then in Psalm 131:2 to a mother who has weaned her child.

I have been at St Martin’s for seven years and today is the last sermon I will preach here on a Sunday, at least in my current role. In that time St Martin’s has seen God bring many new things to birth in and through us and so, on this day when we celebrate the ongoing generativity of God, Mother Church, human beings, and, especially, mothers themselves, I want to reflect on three things that have come to birth over that seven year period; one in me, one in this church, and one in the wider church.

So, beginning with myself, one of many blessings for me personally in being at St Martin’s over this period of time has been the involvement that I have had with the disability work that happens here through the Disability Advisory Group led by Fiona MacMillan. That includes the annual conference on Disability and Church organised through a partnership between St Martin’s and Inclusive Church and hosted, in more recent years, by HeartEdge. Although I had previous experience of being with disabled people in addressing access issues through my time as civil servant, I nevertheless found I had a huge amount to learn through being at St Martin’s. What has come to birth in me in this time is a greater understanding - not simply of access as joining in not just getting in - but of disability at the heart of God and as a key to understanding the nature of God and the incarnation.

God experiences brokenness on the cross, a brokenness that leaves physical scars on his body, but then, in the words of Donald Eadie, a disabled Methodist minister, his “world cracked open and life broke through.” It wasn’t just Jesus’ world that cracked open in that moment but ours as well, because as we follow him into that experience of brokenness leading to new life we also share in that same experience. Singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen encourages us to forget our ‘perfect offerings’ because there is ‘a crack in everything’ and ‘that's how the light gets in’. Jesus, the Disabled God, reveals the necessity of brokenness in order that life and light can be received and experienced.

Then, in regard to this church, another new thing to have come to birth in this time has been our artists’ and craftspeople’s group. This group is what its prosaic name describes: a group for any artists or craftspeople in the St Martin’s community. There are many such in our community but there wasn’t originally a forum in which the gifts of those people could be engaged and, more than that, the important programme of art commissions from artists outside the community had created a perception that the gifts of those within the community weren’t valued.

The artists’ and craftspeople’s group organizes a range of participatory activities and opportunities to make and create. These are open to participants of all abilities. There have been periodic opportunities for participants to show their work, including a monthly drawing group, art workshops in Advent and Lent, a monthly rota for displaying work, and an annual group exhibition. Significant creative energy has been released within our community as a result. Those with established creative gifts have been affirmed and those beginning to explore their gifts have been encouraged. Many have been blessed by the displays, exhibitions and installations that have resulted. God is the ultimate creator and this new creative energy that has been set free within St Martin’s is an expression of the image of God in our community.

Thirdly, the new thing that has come to birth in the wider church with which I have primarily been involved is HeartEdge. HeartEdge is an international, ecumenical movement galvanising churches to be at the heart of their communities whilst being with those on the edge. Its 1,500+ partners can be found on four different continents, but its growth was seeded here, and its development has been supported from here.

What is new about HeartEdge is not primarily its network of partners, but the new language being coined that is transforming discourse within the Church around mission. HeartEdge is expanding the imagination of a church captivated by scarcity and enabling churches to receive the abundance that God is continually sharing and thereby become fully alive. HeartEdge seeks to transform church and society through the 4 Cs of commerce, culture, compassion and congregational life which, through their interdependence, provide a model of what a renewed society might look like. The 4 Cs, as they inter-connect, create a new model of mission that sustains itself, is open to the gifts of strangers, and exhibits the life of faith.

God is the one who says: “Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert … I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people, the people whom I formed for myself so that they might declare my praise” (Isaiah 43.18-21). Then, in Jesus, God becomes the new thing that is brought to birth by Mary, the God-bearer and Mother of our Lord. God becomes both creator and created, the nurturer and the nurtured, the sower and the seed, the chicken and the egg.

It should come as no surprise then, that God longs to create communities that are fruitful and generative. Here at St Martin’s, we have a history of seeding new initiatives that are cultural, compassionate or commercial including St Martin’s School of Art, the Social Care Unit that has now become The Connection at St Martin-in-the-Fields, the Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields, St Martin-in-the-Fields Limited, Liberty, Shelter, Amnesty International, and The Big Issue.

As a result, it should also come as no surprise that in more recent years, in addition to HeartEdge, we have seen the creation of the Frontline Network, the Nazareth Community, the Companions of Nazareth, and the Being With Courses. God has created here a community that is consistently fruitful, creative and generative even in times of difficulty and challenge, as has also been the case during the pandemic. We called the book about our ministry during the pandemic ‘Finding Abundance in Scarcity’ because that was our experience as we looked together for the opportunities to find God’s abundance in the midst of the pandemic’s scarcity.

Our experience in that regard has been similar to that of Anna and Volodymyr in Bucha; that there is no let up in the flow of abundant creativity from God especially in times of trial and difficulty. It has been a privilege and pleasure for me to be a part of this community for the past seven years to learn more of God’s abundant goodness and to be, with you, a midwife in bringing some of these new initiatives to birth. Just as Anna and Volodymyr needed their neighbours to bring Alisa into the world, so HeartEdge, the Disability Advisory Group, the artists’ and craftspeople’s group, the Frontline Network, the Nazareth Community, the Companions of Nazareth, and the Being With Courses need the village that is this community to continue to nurture what has been brought to birth here.

On the day I was licensed here, Sam Wells said we were ‘looking to establish a covenant of fruitfulness with partners and friends all around the country and beyond.’ He said: ‘We could settle for enhancing our resources, developing our programmes, and deepening our common life. Those are all fine and demanding things, and most churches in the country would be overjoyed to have such an aspiration. But we’re being called beyond that. We’re being called to share our message and to influence the wider church and world. And right now the way we’re seeking to do that is by making mutually-enriching partnerships and working with other institutions to help them better realise their vocations. Why? Because we believe that’s God’s way. God in Christ didn’t shout from afar or keep a light hidden on a hill far away. God in Christ made relationships one by one, some close and constant, some occasional and passing, and came alongside people of all kinds, opening up their hearts, setting their souls on fire, and lifting from them the burden of oppression or pain or guilt. That’s what a covenant of fruitfulness looks like.’

That’s what we have seen and heard and experienced over the past seven years. That’s what God has brought to birth and to which we have been midwives. It’s what we can pray for the people of Ukraine and for Anna, Vlodymyr and their neighbours as they bring up Alisa in the midst of war. It’s also what we can celebrate together this Mothering Sunday as we celebrate the ongoing generativity of Mother God, Mother Church, human beings, and, especially, mothers themselves. It’s what we continue to be called to nurture, grow and develop both here at St Martin’s and also for me, shortly, in the Wickford and Runwell Team Ministry. I go to become one of the partners and friends that you have around the country and beyond, so this Covenant of Fruitfulness will remain a bond between us, a covenant in which we continue to share even as I leave the role I have had among you here. So, let us commit to pray for fruitfulness and new life, creativity and generativity, to characterise all our contacts, friendships and partnerships as we go from this place today. Amen.

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John Tavener - Mother Of God, Here I Stand.

Assets and abundance

This morning I preached at the Watling Valley Partnership's Annual Covenant Service held at All Saints Loughton. The Watling Valley Partnership are a Local Ecumenical Partnership of the United Reformed Church, Methodist Church, Church of England and Baptist Church, who are also HeartEdge partners.

Here is the sermon I preached:

The Royal Horticultural Society says that sowing seeds outdoors is very straight forward – just think of how many plants scatter their seeds and they grow where they land as soon as it is moist and warm. The secret to success when sowing seeds outside is to prepare a good seedbed, free of weeds and with a crumble-like soil-surface texture. Beds should be dug over in advance to allow time for the soil to settle. Cover the bed to suppress weeds then level the surface and create a crumble-like tilth picking off any remaining weeds and debris. Other problems to be addressed include pigeons and other birds which can be a pest.

Just as in the Parable of the Sower (Matthew 13. 1 – 23), the RHS guidance is that seeds are less likely to grow well where there are weeds, debris like rocks and stones, or where birds can eat the seeds. Seeds are likely to grow well in good, well-prepared soil. So far, so good; so far, so similar – the secrets of growing good crops were really no different in the time of Jesus from those of today. Given that as much was known then about sowing seeds as is known now, there is just one strange element to Jesus’ story and that is the fact that the sower deliberately sows seeds in the areas where seeds are less likely to grow, as well as in the prepared soil where the seeds are more likely to grow well. The sower is profligate with the seeds in a way that goes counter to the advice from the RHS which, as we have seen, is consonant with the understanding of sowing demonstrated by the parable. So why does the sower ignore good practice and deliberately sow seeds on the path, the rocky ground and among the thorn bushes? Does this strange aspect to the story tell us something significant about God?

The seed is the Word of the kingdom and the Word, John’s Gospel tells us, is Jesus himself. So, it is Jesus himself who is being scattered throughout the world as the seed being sown in this parable (perhaps in and through the Body of Christ, the Church). As the seed was sown indiscriminately, even recklessly, there was a breadth to what was going on here as the places that were known to be poor places for seed to grow were nevertheless given the opportunity for seeds to take root.

This suggests to us the indiscriminate and reckless nature of God’s love for all. It means that no part of our community or our world is off limits to Jesus or to us as the body of Christ. Within HeartEdge, the international, ecumenical movement for renewal within the broad church that has been initiated by St Martin-in-the-Fields and of which the Watling Valley Ecumenical Partnership is part, we express this in terms of churches seeking to be at the heart of their communities whilst also being with those who are on the margins or at the edge. By being at the heart and on the edge our mission and ministry will have something of the breadth with which the sower scatters the seed in this parable.

As we recommit to God in this service through the Covenant Prayer, may we commit to loving others in the way that God loves; at the heart and on the edge, with a reckless, indiscriminate love that welcomes all, including those who may not return that love and welcome.

The sower scatters the seed indiscriminately because the life of Jesus can spring up and flourish anywhere. This means that the life of Christ grows outside the church as well as within it. As a result, our task as Christians is not simply to take the love of Christ to all parts of our community and world but also to be actively looking to see where the seed of Jesus is taking root, growing and bearing independently of anything that the church has done. Another of the key concepts for HeartEdge is that God is continually sending gifts to the church of people who we don’t expect or recognise as being Jesus. The renewal of the Church has not come from those already within it, so instead it is likely to come from those who are currently outside of or on the edge of Church.

There are many people and organisations of good will in our communities with which we, as churches, are not yet engaging who nevertheless are well disposed towards the Church and will give some form of support, if the right connection can be made. Sam Wells, the Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields, tells a story of talking with a politician whose mother gave an annual donation to the Christmas Appeal at St Martin’s. When asked why someone who lived a long way from London would give regularly to St Martin’s, the answer came back that St Martin’s cares about what is important. The more we seek to be blessing to our wider community, the more we will find those locally who will support the church and partner with it, regardless of whether or not they are able or willing to attend.

There are also many people and organisations of good will in our communities with which we, as churches, are not yet engaging who nevertheless are acting in ways that bring Christ to others by giving food to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, welcoming the stranger, clothing the naked and visiting those in prison. We need to look for signs of God within our communities and then come alongside those people in solidarity and support for the ways in which they are bringing Christ to others.

The story of St Martin sharing his cloak with a beggar outside the gates of Tours has been an inspiration to us at St Martin’s. The story has inspired our congregations over the years to show compassion and care towards those in need, particularly those who are homeless or refugees. But the story has a twist, that night Christ appeared to Martin in a dream as the beggar to whom he had given half his cloak. Martin had thought he was the one sharing the love of Christ with the beggar. In reality, it was the one who was outside, on the edge, marginalised and in need, who showed the face of Christ to Martin. In the same way, we need to be alert to all those within our community who can show the face of Christ to us.

As we recommit to God in this service through the Covenant Prayer, may we commit to discerning where the Spirit is already at work within our local community in individuals and organisations becoming a blessing to the community by getting involved in the work that the Spirit has already begun and receiving a blessing as the face of Christ is shown to us in new ways.

The love of God as shown in the Gospels and in this parable is abundant, profligate, indiscriminate, and reckless. It is, as Jesus says elsewhere, pressed down, shaken together, poured out and overflowing. Jesus came to give us life in abundance, life in all its fullness, yet, within our churches we often operate with a mind-set of scarcity.

The church is getting smaller and becoming narrower. Those regularly attending worship are fewer. The church’s reputation and energy are becoming associated with initiatives that are introverted and often lack the full breadth of the gospel. In response we often focus on what our church doesn’t have, who isn’t there, and what problems it faces. In a deficit culture we begin with our hurts and our stereotypes, and find a hundred reasons why we can’t do things or certain kinds of people don’t belong. As churches we are often quick to attribute our plight to a hostile culture or an indifferent, distracted population or even a sinful generation; but much slower to recognise that our situation is significantly of our own making. In the imagery of this parable when we focus on our deficits, we are focusing on the path, the rocky ground and the thorn bushes.

By contrast, in HeartEdge, we believe that churches can do unbelievable things together by starting with one another’s assets, not our deficits. We believe churches and communities thrive when the gifts of all their members are released and they build one another’s assets. We are enough as local communities because God has given us what we need in each other. We also believe that God is giving the church everything it needs for the renewal of its life in the people who find themselves to be on the edge. Wisdom and faith are found in the places of exile and rejection. The rejected are to be sought out because they are the energy and the life-force that will transform us all. If you are looking for where the future church is coming from, look at what the church and society has so blithely rejected.

The life of the church is about constantly recognising the sin of how much we have rejected, and celebrating the grace that God gives us back what we once rejected to become the cornerstone of our lives. Thus is deficit turned to plenitude, threat turned to companionship, and fear turned to joy. This is the life of the kingdom. The life of the kingdom of God is found in recognising the abundance of the seed that is continually being sown. The life of the kingdom of God is found when we expect and look for the growth of that seed at the heart and on the edge, often in unanticipated ways, in surprising places and in unexpected people.

As we recommit to God in this service through the Covenant Prayer, may we commit to being a people who live out of the abundance of God, rather than our scarcity, by beginning with our assets, not our deficits; both those within our church and those without.

Let us pray: God of hope, in Jesus you made heaven visible to earth and earth visible to heaven: make your Church a community at the heart of your kingdom alongside those on the edge of society, that each day we may seek your glory, and embody your grace; through Christ our Lord. Amen

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Come, let us use the grace divine.

Sermon: The moment of transformation

This was my sermon for the Eucharist at St Vedast-alias-Foster this morning:

The writer of John’s Gospel says that this miracle is the first that Jesus performed but the word used for first also means that it is the key miracle, the one that unlocks and explains all the others (John 2: 1 – 11). So we need to ask ourselves what it is that we learn from this miracle that helps us to understand more fully what Jesus was doing through his ministry, death and resurrection.

The miracle is one of transformation; water being transformed into wine with this transformation bringing joy to the wedding guests. Dostoevsky, in The Brothers Karamasov, sees this miracle’s significance in the joy that Jesus brings to ordinary people: “It was not grief but men’s gladness that Jesus extolled when he worked his first miracle – he helped people to be happy … his heart was open … to the simple and artless joys of ignorant human beings, ignorant but not cunning, who had warmly bidden him to their poor wedding.” Later in John’s Gospel Jesus speaks himself about having come to bring life in all its fullness which must include this sense of joy and gladness in life. The filling of the water jars to the full also speaks of this sense of life being filled with goodness and gladness.

In Luke 6: 38 Jesus speaks again about fullness. Here he links our fullness to our giving: “Give to others, and God will give to you. Indeed, you will receive a full measure, a generous helping, poured out into your hands – all that you can hold.” This emphasis is important because the transformation of water into wine suggests that Jesus does not simply bless human life as it is but comes to transform it.

Water is essential to life. The human body is 75% water and needs a constant supply of water to function. The average person can only survive for about three days without any water at all. So, water is a basic need for all of us and speaks to us of the basic needs that we all need to be fulfilled in order that we can live and live comfortably.

But God wants something better for us than a life based just on the meeting of our basic needs and the turning of water into wine gives us a clue as to what that better thing is. Wine reminds us of the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. That moment when, out of love for all people, he lays down his own life in order to save us from all that is wrong with our lives and our world. So, wine is a reminder to us of the fact that the greatest love is shown through sacrifice.

This is the transformation that Jesus seeks to bring to human life. It is a change from human existence to human life; a change from the selfish experience of meeting our own basic needs to the spiritual experience of sharing what we have will others; a change from the evolutionary imperative of the survival of the fittest to the Christian imperative of sacrificial love.

This transformation is also symbolised in the pouring out of the wine from the water jars. It may even be that this is the moment of transformation just as what is drawn from the water jars to be shared with others is wine so as we give to others we are transformed from selfish to sacrificial. It may be that it is in the act of giving that our transformation comes.

There is also significance in the reference to the role of the water jars in ritual washing. The water jars can be seen as signifying the Jewish faith that require such ritual cleansing but from those jars and from that faith comes a new wine that must be poured out and shared with others. The new wine is for all; not just for the first but kept for the last as well. Wine symbolises the blood of Christ which is shed for all. God’s grace is no longer contained solely within the confine of the Jewish faith; coming to God no longer requires the meeting of the standards of the Law. This new wine bursts the old skins and is shared with all people of every nation, race, gender, age and sexuality.

So we see depicted a change from the old order, the old covenant, to the new. And this change extends the transformation to all. What is depicted then is not solely a change for us as individuals but a societal change no longer affecting one nation but all nations. What is depicted is a new way of life, a new way of being human, which can, perhaps, be summed up in the words of John 15: 13, “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends”. He looks at all of us, at all human beings, and says, “You are my friends”. Jesus allowed his own life to end so that all people could know what it is like to really live.

In 21st century Britain we live in a culture that is parched and dry and desperately in need of the water of life. I still remember a Guardian article outlining reasons why kindness has gone out of fashion in the age of the free market and the selfish gene. The writers noted that “for most of western history the dominant tradition of kindness has been Christianity” which “functioned as a cultural cement, binding individuals into society” until “the Christian rule ‘love thy neighbour as thyself’ came under increasing attack from competitive individualism.” Our society is parched of kindness and we need Jesus to bring transformation.

In Isaiah we read: “The poor and needy search for water, but there is none; their tongues are parched with thirst. But I the LORD will answer them; I, the God of Israel, will not forsake them. I will make rivers flow on barren heights, and springs within the valleys. I will turn the desert into pools of water, and the parched ground into springs.” (Isaiah 41. 17 & 18)

Our Psalm promised that we shall be satisfied with the abundance of God’s house; we shall drink from the river of God’s delights. For with God is the well of life and in his light shall we see light (Psalm 36).

Jesus is the river that flows in the desert of our selfish, self-centred existence because he shows us how to live in his new way of being human, loving God with all our being and loving our neighbours as ourselves. God wants us to look at Jesus and see how human life was originally intended to be lived before we chose the path of self-centredness. It is when we look at Jesus and begin to live life his way that transformation comes in our lives and our world. The water of our lives and our communities can become wine.

When that is so for us as individuals, as communities and even as a nation then, as we heard in our reading from Isaiah, we shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God. You shall no more be termed Forsaken, and your land shall no more be termed Desolate (Isaiah 62. 1 – 5).

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The Waterboys - My Love Is My Rock In The Weary Land.

Pallant House: David Jones, Edmund de Waal & Evelyn Dunbar

As if the prospect of a David Jones retrospective was not enough of a draw to Pallant House, the gallery supplements the Jones show with a new work by Edmund de Waal (whose new book The White Road has recently been published) and also has a remarkable collection of lost works by WW2 Official War Artist Evelyn Dunbar.

De Waal's "‘if we attend’ (2015), a white, wall-mounted vitrine with translucent glazing and 16 porcelain vessels, is a new piece produced especially for the David Jones exhibition. It references the calming slowing down effect of these words in the second line of Jones’s poem The Anathemata: ‘We already and first of all discern him making this thing other. His groping syntax, if we attend, already shapes…’. The work, displayed alongside two other porcelain works – ‘in the north north east’ (2014) and ‘thirteen circles’ (2014) - will be accompanied by a series of poems by David Jones, creating a contemplative space reflecting the nature of the work."

Evelyn Dunbar [was] "a Christian Scientist throughout her life, and the church’s influence suffuses all her work.

“She held her beliefs to be self-evident,” writes Campbell-Howes on his blog. “The only doubts she had concerned the readiness of humankind to play its part in the Covenant. The Covenant – my term, not Evelyn’s – as she conceived it, was the promise given by the creator to the human race of a fertile and eternally abundant land, in return for mankind’s promise to cherish it, to appreciate it and to care for it through intelligent and devoted husbandry.”

That explains, no doubt, why nature rarely appears untamed in her work. “She didn’t really do landscapes on a grand scale,” says Ro. “She was more interested in hen coops, worked fields, and the business of tending the land.”

Indeed, almost all the art at Pallant House shows her love for mankind’s nurturing of God’s creation." (The Guardian)

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Emmylou Harris - Every Grain Of Sand.

A covenant of fruitfulness

Today I was welcomed as the new Associate Vicar for Partnership Development at St Martin-in-the-Fields. As part of explaining the commission I have been given for this role by the Bishop of London I stated that: I understand partnership as a response to God’s endowing Spirit in which each party brings forth its unique gifts to make a relationship more than the sum of its parts. I understand development to mean working with all parties to advance partnerships at the pace and in the depth suitable to the relationship. I understand being an associate vicar to mean, as a priest, speaking to God for the people and for the people to God, and as a pastor helping the people of this place to grow in faith, holiness, ministry and mission.

In his sermon, the Revd Dr Sam Wells, Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields, said the following in setting out the significance of this new role for St Martins and St Stephen Walbrook:

"... like Abraham and Sarah we’ve been on a long journey. And we’ve made many precious and wondrous discoveries. And we’ve been called by God. And what we’ve been called to is a covenant of fruitfulness, which calls us both to be faithful to God and to bring forth fruit that heals the earth. We can’t do the second without the first. But we can’t be content with the first if we’re being offered the opportunity and we’re hearing the call to do the second.

And this brings us to the licensing of our new associate vicar for partnership development, and to the formal beginning of our partnership with St Stephen, Walbrook. If we were content to enhance our heritage, to strengthen our programmes, and to deepen our common life, we wouldn’t be hiring Jonathan and we wouldn’t be partnering with St Stephen’s. The reason we want today to mark the beginning of something special is because we’re exploring ways to convey our message and identifying how we can enhance our impact. St Stephen’s is an admirable church with faithful people and a glorious building; but by partnering with us, St Stephen’s is saying, ‘We want to walk a journey like the one you’ve been on, we want to find abundance in scarcity, we want to expand our programmes and deepen our common life so we too can be a blessing to communities beyond ourselves.’ And it’s the nature of partnership that at the same time St Martin’s will also grow and change and learn through what the people of St Stephen’s teach us about ministry and mission and faith.

Jonathan is here to walk with the people of St Stephen’s as they make this journey together. And Jonathan is among us to develop a range of partnerships with communities and communions near and far, of which St Stephen’s is, we hope, the first. With St Stephen’s we are making a covenant of fruitfulness inspired by the covenant God makes with Abraham. Our hope is not just that through this partnership St Stephen’s will develop its commercial, cultural, charitable and congregational life so as to become self-sustaining, but that before long it is partnering with other institutions to lead them on a similar path.

Over time we trust we will develop many such partnerships. In some we’ll offer services such as estate and HR oversight to institutions so they can concentrate attention on their programming and common life. In others we’ll walk alongside churches as they develop a model like ours of growing a commercial arm to galvanise their culture and make them sustainable. In others again we’ll be looking to bring our national profile alongside local initiative to enhance work around poverty and destitution. And in others again we hope to partner to help congregations grow in relation to disability issues or enhance other forms of inclusion like our Sunday International Group. In these and many other ways we’ll be looking to establish a covenant of fruitfulness with partners and friends all around the country and beyond.

We could settle for enhancing our resources, developing our programmes, and deepening our common life. Those are all fine and demanding things, and most churches in the country would be overjoyed to have such an aspiration. But we’re being called beyond that. We’re being called to share our message and to influence the wider church and world. And right now the way we’re seeking to do that is by making mutually-enriching partnerships and working with other institutions to help them better realise their vocations. Why? Because we believe that’s God’s way. God in Christ didn’t shout from afar or keep a light hidden on a hill far away. God in Christ made relationships one by one, some close and constant, some occasional and passing, and came alongside people of all kinds, opening up their hearts, setting their souls on fire, and lifting from them the burden of oppression or pain or guilt. That’s what a covenant of fruitfulness looks like. Today we cross that threshold and enter that covenant."

Listen to the full sermon by clicking here - http://www.stmartin-in-the-fields.org/podcasts/a-covenant-of-fruitfulness/.

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Choir of St Martin-in-the-Fields - Amazing Grace.

Heaven is union with God

God's ancient covenant with the Jewish people was, as Ezekiel wrote, that, “My dwelling place will be with them; I will be their God, and they will be my people" (Ezekiel 37: 26-27). At the end of Bible we find these words, “God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.” (Revelation 21: 3).

This covenant which God made with his people is fulfilled through Jesus. Jesus says that he dwells in God the Father and the Father dwells in him. In other words, he is united with God and lives out as a human being what God himself is like. When he says to his disciples that there are many dwelling places in his Father’s house, Jesus is letting his disciples know that it is not he alone who is to dwell with the Father but that there is room for all of them and many more (John 14. 1 - 7).

He then says to his disciples that he is about to leave them to prepare a dwelling place for them with God. He is speaking of his death, resurrection and ascension, as these enable his disciples to be united to him and, in him, with God, his Father. Heaven is experienced through our union with God. When we are united with God, we, like Jesus, dwell in God and God dwells in us. Through Jesus, we experience this unity with God in the here and now and it continues into our life with God after death.

Jesus is the way to unity with God. He is the way to God dwelling with us and our dwelling in God. 

Eugene Peterson has encapsulated Jesus’ point about being the way, truth and life by saying, “Only when we do the Jesus truth in the Jesus way do we get the Jesus life.” In many funeral services we pray for the wisdom and the grace to use aright the time that is left to us on earth. That wisdom and grace come to us as we ask ourselves, ‘Am I living the Jesus truth?’ ‘Am I living the Jesus way?’ ‘Am I living the Jesus life?’ We too can experience unity with God when we do the Jesus truth in the Jesus way to get the Jesus life.

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Madness - Our House.

Finding a Myth for the 21st Century

Alex Evans' presentation to Modern Church Annual Conference 2013 is well worth a read.

 

In it he tells the story of how he went from "working as a policy wonk, a special adviser in Tony Blair’s government", to "the belief that a 3,000 year old set of myths about covenant, atonement and renewal are actually profoundly relevant to our current moment of crisis and transition – and might even have the potential to succeed where our politics seem to be failing so miserably."

 

He draws on the work of Margaret Barker, in particular, to argue that the eternal covenant’s myths should be read symbolically to "offer remarkably clear explanations of social and ecological breakdown as the result of breaches in the creation covenant, and of atonement as the route towards restoration, in both the social and the environmental sense."

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U2 and Daniel Lanois - Falling At Your Feet. 

Covenant of Noah: Conditions for life

What legacy will we pass on to those we leave behind? In what way can we hand on the torch of faith to future generations? What does my life say to others and what do I want it to say? These are all questions from sermons preparing us for Lent and questions that will recur as we study our Lent course ‘Handing on the Torch’ together.

In 2008 the Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks gave some remarkable answers to questions of this sort in an address to the Lambeth Conference based, in large part, on today’s Old Testament reading (Genesis 9. 1 - 17). What he had to say has not been given sufficient attention although it unpacks a neglected part of the story told within the Bible and so I want to share with you today some of what he said.

He began by speaking about power and wealth. The state is about power, the market is about wealth, and they are two ways of getting people to do what we want them to do. One way is to force them to do it – the way of power; the other one is to pay them to – the way of wealth.

Imagine, for a moment, you have total power, and then, in a fit of craziness you decide to share it with nine other people. How much power do you have left?  You have 1/10 of what you began with. Suppose you have a thousand pounds and you decide to share it with nine other people. How much do you have left? 1/10 of what you had when you began.

But now suppose that you decide to share, not power or wealth, but love, or friendship, or influence, or even knowledge, with nine others. How much would you have left? Would you have less than when you began? No, you would have more; and why is that - because love, friendship and influence are things that only exist by virtue of sharing them with others? These are what we can call covenantal goods – covenantal goods are the goods that, the more I share, the more I have. And that makes covenant different from wealth and power.

In the short term wealth and power are zero-sum games. That means if I win, you lose. If you win, I lose. Covenantal goods are non-zero-sum games, meaning, we both win; the more I give away the more I have – we both win. And that has huge consequences.

Because you can see with wealth and power, economics and politics, the market and the state, they must be arenas of competition but covenantal goods are different because they are arenas of co-operation.

And the question is where will we find covenantal goods like love, like friendship, like trust, like influence? You won’t find them in the state, you won’t find them in the market, but you will find them in marriages, in families, in congregations, in communities – you will find them in society, so long as you remember that society is something different from the state. If we're searching for the big society, this is where we will find it.

Another way of thinking about this is to think about the difference between a contract and a covenant. A contract is an agreement between two or more individuals, each pursuing their own interest, and they come together to make an exchange for mutual benefit. So you get a commercial contract that creates the market, and you get the social contract that creates the state.

A covenant is something different. In a covenant, two or more individuals, each respecting the dignity and the integrity of the other, come together in a bond of love and trust, to share their interests, sometimes even to share their lives and, by pledging their faithfulness to one another, to do together what neither of them can do alone.

And that is not the same as a contract at all. A contract is a transaction but a covenant is a relationship or, to put it slightly differently, a contract is about interests but a covenant is about identity. And that is why contracts benefit, but covenants transform. Economics and politics are about the logic of competition, covenant is about the logic of co-operation.

Now let’s turn to our passage from Genesis 9. The world had been almost destroyed by a flood. All humankind, all life, excluding Noah's Ark, shared the same fate. God says to all those who survive, those who will build a new world: “I promise I will never again destroy the world. But I cannot promise that you will never destroy the world – because, you see, I gave you free will. All I can do is teach you how not to destroy the world.” 

How? Well, the answer is found in the covenant about which we read in Genesis 9. 1 – 17, a covenant of human solidarity, which is known as the covenant of Noah or the Noahide covenant.

The covenant of Noah has three essential dimensions. Number one: “If anyone takes human life, he will be punished ... [because] Human beings were made like God”; that is about the sanctity of human life. As creator, God is universal. We are all in God's image, formed in His likeness.

Number two: look carefully at Genesis 9 and you will see that there are five times in that one chapter emphasizing that the covenant of Noah is not merely with humanity alone, but with everything that lives on the face of earth. Five times; the covenant is not just with human beings but with all of nature. So the second element of the covenant of Noah is the integrity of the created world; what today we call the Environment. As human beings, we are fellow citizens of the world God made and entrusted to our care.

And number three: the sign of the covenant is a rainbow; the white light of God fragmented into all the colours of the spectrum  or as Sacks puts in the title of one of his books ‘The dignity of difference’. The miracle of monotheism is that unity up there creates diversity down here. 

And so these three elements - the sanctity of human life, the integrity of the environment and respect for diversity - are the three elements of the global covenant that God made with Noah and still makes with us.

All three elements of this global covenant are currently in danger. The sanctity of human life is being ravaged by political oppression and by terror. The integrity of creation is being threatened by environmental catastrophe. And respect for diversity is imperilled by what one writer has called a clash of civilisations. 

So Sacks says that the call of God in our times is to renew this global covenant, the covenant that began with Noah. We have to honour this covenant now, in our time, in order that future generations will be able to live. To come back to the questions with which we began, Sacks is saying that: we will not have a legacy to pass on to those who come after us; we will not be able to hand the torch of our faith on to others; our lives will not have anything to say to others, if the sanctity and diversity of life is not respected and if environmental catastrophe occurs. The covenant of Noah precedes the covenants made with Abraham and Moses and precedes the New Covenant made through Jesus. This covenant creates the conditions in which life and faith can flourish because before we can live any faith we have to be able to live and this covenant is about the fundamentals of life itself; the sanctity of life in all its diversity. 

Sacks is saying that there are fundamental moral truths that lie at the basis of God's covenant with humankind: that co-operation is as necessary as competition, that co-operation depends on trust, that trust requires justice, and that justice itself is incomplete without forgiveness. Morality is not simply what we choose it to be. It is part of the basic fabric of the universe, revealed to us by the universe's Creator, long ago.

He is also saying that the nature of covenant shows how to fulfil the covenant of Noah: respect for the dignity and the integrity of the other, coming together in bonds of love and trust, sharing our interests and our lives, pledging faithfulness to one another in order to do together what none of us can do alone.

What legacy will we pass on to those we leave behind? In what way can we hand on the torch of faith to future generations? What does my life say to others and what do I want it to say? When we pass on covenantal goods we fulfil the covenant of Noah.

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Peter Case - Put Down the Gun.

Becoming places of deep exchange

The churches of the Seven Kings Fellowship of Churches (SKFC) signed a new covenant tonight during our Unity Service for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. The new covenant was discussed and agreed by the church committees of Seven Kings Methodist Church, Seven Kings United Free Church, St John's Seven Kings, St Peter's Aldborough Hatch and St Teresa's Newbury Park during 2010. The covenant, which was originally the idea of Methodist minister Rev. Ken Nicholls, was signed by clergy and lay members of the five churches.

The Unity Service was hosted by St John's Seven Kings and attended by members of each of the five SKFC churches. The service was led by Revd. Geoff Eze and used materials prepared for this year's Week of Prayer for Christian Unity on the theme of All Things In Common. I preached using an excellent sermon prepared by Revd. Bob Fyffe, General Secretary of Churches Together in Britain and Ireland, in which he said:

"The starting point for our Christian witness is for the Church to become that expression of unity, that model of acceptance and welcome and hospitality that is rooted in God. Where these hopes and dreams are bound together, communities become places of deep exchange, where together we become all that God intends for us. To BE the whole people of God."

It is our hope that this new covenant will provide a foundation for our shared activity in future and will also take us further in our church communities becoming places of deep exchange, where together we become all that God intends for us. Our covenant reads as follows:

We, the Seven Kings Fellowship of Churches (SKFC), give thanks to God for the unity we experience among us in the Lord Jesus Christ. We acknowledge our common heritage in the faith and profess together our belief in the one God, the Father, Creator of heaven and earth; the Son who dwelt among us, was crucified for us, and was raised from the dead for our salvation and the Holy Spirit who leads his church into all truth.

We regret past misunderstandings between Church denominations and traditions, and recognise that each of our churches has its own distinctive witness and tradition. We honour these traditions standing before one another in charity and praying for a deeper understanding and reconciliation

We undertake to explore together our doctrinal differences and our understanding of the church in the light of existing dialogues at national and international level, so that we may understand one another better and make a contribution to the reconciliation of the churches at those levels

On the basis of our existing unity in Christ, we commit ourselves to one another in love and charity to promote common worship, fellowship, witness and service to the community of which we are a part

In particular we commit ourselves to:

1. To declare our unity as the people of God in this community in whatever practical ways possible.

2. To maintain our common practices of worshipping together, and to seek to develop them further

3. To begin a process of co-ordinating our individual activities, as far as possible.

4. To seek to grow in understanding of the grace and love of God, and of each others traditions. To develop joint prayer and study of each other’s traditions, as well as of our Christian faith and its applications in daily life.

5. To listen to the local community, to become aware of its needs and aspirations and to develop a co-ordinated programme of service and outreach to it.

6. Thoroughly to review our Christian resources of buildings, people, money and ministry, and to develop proposals for sharing them to the best advantage for the church and the community.

We, as SKFC members, undertake to review this covenant at an annual service and then to renew and review it in five years time

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Iona ~ Edge of the World.

Covenants of fate & faith

Ruth Gledhill reports that the Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks spoke powerfully at the Lambeth Conference last night and received a five-minute standing ovation. You can download his full text here and Ruth's report on the speech in The Times here.

I find the Chief Rabbi's interpretation of scripture extremely challenging and helpful. This speech is all that one could expect given the depth of his understanding of scripture. It is all the more powerful for being the first occasion a rabbi has addressed a plenary session of the Lambeth Conference and a speech that, rightly, refers to the time when "the word 'Christian' struck fear into Jewish hearts."

The Chief Rabbi spoke, as he had been asked to, about covenant and discovered in that word not only a transformative idea, one that changes us as we think of it, but also a way forward for faith in the 21st century. As a result, we find ourselves better able to answer the question: what is the role of religion in society, even in a secular society like Britain?

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Fiddler On The Roof - Sabbath Prayer.