The life of Jesus reproduced in our lives

Here's the sermon I preached at St Catherine’s Wickford this morning:

Stephen Verney begins his commentary on this passage 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 (John 15. 1-8). 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.

We can choose active love over inactive indifference and 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. May it be so for each one of us. Amen.

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Strawbs - Benedictus.

Weeds, Wheat, Fruitfulness and Messy Spirituality

Here's the sermon that I shared this morning at St Mary's Runwell: 

This story (Matthew 13. 24-30, 36-43) divides people into weeds and wheat. So, who are the weeds and who are the wheat? Our natural tendency as human beings is to want to know and to assume that we are in the wheat camp rather than the weeds camp.

More worryingly, our natural tendency as human beings is probably to try to identify those who are different from us and attempt to weed them out of our community. That is what we call scapegoating and, interestingly, it is a human tendency that the French cultural critic, Rene Girard, suggests is gradually unmasked and exposed by the Bible. Firstly, because the people of Israel sacrifice animals as scapegoats instead of other human beings (as happened in the nations around them at that time) and then as God himself, in Jesus, becomes the ultimate scapegoat bringing an end to the need for any further scapegoating. “Jesus’ ‘strategy’ as the ambassador from a loving, non-violent Father is to expose and render ineffective the scapegoat process so that the true face of God may be known … in the scapegoat, or Lamb of God, not the face of a persecuting deity.”

It’s not difficult to think of times and places in our society where scapegoating occurs. Whether it’s the scapegoating of refugees that characterises the Government’s Illegal Migration Law or the way we view travellers as different from us or, in the Church, the ways in which the LGBTQIA+ have historically been excluded from leadership and some sacraments. Whichever side of those issues we stand on, we need to beware of arguments often made by those at the extremes which would seek to rid us of those who don’t agree with their position because Jesus, in this story, says that it is not our job to pull up the weeds from the field.

It is not our job partly because, if we were to try, we would pull up the wheat with the weeds. In other words, we do not know, as we look around our church, the Anglican Communion, or our society, who are the wheat and who are the weeds. It is God who “searches every heart and understands every motive behind the thoughts” we are told in 1 Chronicles 28. 9 can see what goes on in our hearts, he knows “the secrets of our hearts,” says Psalm 44 and this is because it is God who created our inmost beings and formed us in our mothers’ wombs, as Psalm 139 tell us.

Therefore, it is for God, not us, to make that judgement in his way and in his time. Jesus warns us that it we judge others, we ourselves will be judged by the same measure we use on others (Matthew 7. 1&2). Again, he is saying that it is God’s place to judge, not ours, and, even, that we are likely to be surprised by the judgements that God makes at the end of time. Sometimes, Jesus says, as in Matthew 7. 21-23, that those who appear to be the most religious are actually those who are among the weeds.

So, it is not our job to judge, but God’s, and he will do so in his way and his time. What we need to do is to trust that that is so and we do this by allowing the weeds to grow together with the wheat. In other words, Jesus is commending here the aspect of Anglicanism that, it seems to me, has always been its great strength and glory; its holding together from its inception of ‘catholics’ (with a small ‘c’) and protestants and in more recent centuries its holding together of the diverse streams that have developed within those traditions – anglo-catholicism, evangelicalism, liberalism, the charismatic movement and so on. To hold these things together is, it seems to me, to show absolute trust in God’s ultimate judgement because we are allowing the wheat and the weeds to grow together.

Rowan Williams, in the opening session of the 2008 Lambeth Conference, encouraged the bishops and archbishops present to “find the trust in God and one another that will give us the energy to change in the way God wants us to change.” That is, he said, “the most important thing we can pray for, the energy to change as God wants us to change individually and as a Communion.” But it is trust in God and one another, he says, that will give us this energy.

Why is that? Well, if all our energy is going into pulling up what we think are weeds then our energies are not going into what makes for fruitfulness. Our responsibility is not to be monitors and judges of others but to allow our energies to flow into developing the fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. This won’t happen if we are forever distracted by try to spot and root out weeds but if we trust God to sort out the weeds in his way and time then we can focus on the things that contribute to fruitfulness.

This means that we need to accept what the author Mike Yaconelli called Messy Spirituality. This is the reality “that all of us are in some condition of not-togetherness, even those of us who are trying to be godly.” We’re all a mess, he says, “not only sinful messy, but inconsistent messy, up-and-down messy, in-and-out messy, now-I-believe-now-I-don’t messy, I-get-it-now-I-don’t-get-it messy, I-understand-uh-now-I-don’t understand messy.” Can you identify with that? I know I can.

Yaconelli goes on to claim that Christianity is a messy spirituality for people like us who lead messy lives: “What landed Jesus on the cross, was the preposterous idea that common, ordinary, broken, screwed-up people could be godly! What drove Jesus’ enemies’ crazy was his criticism of the ‘perfect’ religious people and his acceptance of the imperfect, non-religious people. The shocking implication of Jesus’ ministry is that anyone can be spiritual.” To prove his point, he suggests we look at the Bible where we will see that its “pages overflow with messy people” because “the biblical writers didn’t edit out the flaws of its heroes.”

Just look at today’s Old Testament reading (Genesis 28.10-22), where Jacob dreams of angels ascending and descending a ladder from earth to heaven. From the time of his birth, Jacob was associated with trickery and deception. His most notorious acts of trickery were committed against his twin brother Esau. Jacob offered his “famished” brother a bowl of soup in exchange for his birthright as the firstborn son, which was a double portion of his father Isaac’s inheritance. Moreover, Jacob robbed Esau of their father’s blessing, which had been Esau’s right to receive. Nevertheless, Jacob ends up receiving a vision of angels and heaven. That’s nothing if not very messy.

Those who follow God in the pages of scripture are not perfect, far from it, and yet they strive for the perfection of God the Father. We need to be the same, humbly recognising our own fallibilities and therefore bearing with the failings of others yet seeking to change ourselves and supporting others in the changes that they are also able to make. 

So, let us do what Rowan Williams has suggested and pray for the energy to change as God wants us to change, individually and as a church, even as the Anglican Communion: 

Pour down upon us, O God, the gifts of your Holy Spirit, that we may be filled with wisdom and understanding. May we know at work within us that creative energy and vision which belong to our humanity, made in your image and redeemed by your love, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

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M Ward - Epistemology.

Fruitfulness, and how to gain it

Here's the reflection I shared at St Andrew's Wickford this morning: 

The imagery of tree and fruit was regularly used by Jesus in his teaching. His followers were chosen and appointed to bear fruit. Fruitfulness is the overall aim and lack of fruitfulness, as here (Matthew 7.15-20), is to be challenged and is ultimately destructive.

The question, then, is how do we recognise fruitfulness and how do we become fruitful?

Fruitfulness is a consequence of being ‘in’ Christ, as Jesus makes clear in John 15.5, where he says: "I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.

Branches can only bud and grow because they are part of the vine as a whole receiving the sustenance that flows up into the vine from the roots. A vine roots in the soil but has most of its leaves in the brighter, exposed area, getting the best of both worlds. So, being rooted in Jesus is the way in which Christians can open to the light and bear fruit.

Rootedness could mean commitment to Christ or being embedded in Christ’s life and ministry or both. Psalm 1 uses the image of good fruit growing on a tree in order to say that good fruit grows in our lives when we delight in the law of the Lord and meditate of that law, day and night. Regular meditation on scripture feeds our ability to better integrate our words and actions.

What is fruitfulness? What is it that Jesus is aiming to see in his followers? One way of answering that question for Christians, because Christianity has been a missionary faith, has been to see fruit as souls saved but when Paul writes in Galatians 5 about the fruit of the Spirit he is writing about the character and actions of Christians as fruit, rather than the outcome of our actions:

22 the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control.

The originator of these behaviours in us is the Holy Spirit. The fruit are of the Spirit whenever and however they show up in our lives and actions. The Spirit is the Spirit of Jesus and the fruit which is grown in Christian’s lives is Christlikeness. Being rooted in Jesus enables the Spirit of Jesus to flow in and through a Christian enabling them to begin to become Christlike.

This kind of fruit is about behaviours leading to actions. Actions speak louder than words. That proverb can be traced at least as far back as a speech made by J. Pym in Parliament in 1628 in which he said: ‘A word spoken in season is like an Apple of Gold set in Pictures of Silver,’ and actions are more precious than words.’

The proverb is, however, ultimately based on Biblical ideas and phrases such as 1 John 3. 18 where we read: ‘let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth.’ This teaching probably then derives from Jesus’ words in Matthew 7. 15 – 21, where he argues that we are known by our fruits, meaning our actions, and that simply saying ‘Lord, Lord’ without then acting on that confession is not enough to guarantee our salvation.

In the Parable of the sheep and goats (Matthew 25.31-46) Jesus emphasises that it is actions, not words, that will count in the final judgement, when he says: ‘‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’ St Francis of Assisi summed up this aspect of Jesus’ teaching well, when he said: ‘Preach the gospel at all times. Use words if necessary.’ So, what kind of fruit is evident is our lives?

Finally, Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13 that such actions as faith, hope and love remain. The word he used for remain hints that such actions continue beyond the grave into eternity i.e. that we can take something with us when we die, that the fruit or acts of faith, hope and love grown in this life continue into, and continue to bear fruit in, the next. Jesus said we will know disciples and false prophets by their fruits. He said to his disciples, "I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit — fruit that will last" (John 15.16).

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Delirious? - Everything.

Bear fruit, fruit that will last

Here's the reflection I shared in today's Eucharist at St Andrew's Wickford:

The imagery of tree and fruit was regularly used by Jesus in his teaching and features in our Psalm (Psalm 1) and New Testament reading (Galatians 5.16-26) today. Jesus’ followers are chosen and appointed to bear fruit. Fruitfulness is the overall aim of the Christian life and lack of fruitfulness is to be challenged and is ultimately destructive.

Fruitfulness is a consequence of being ‘in’ Christ, as Jesus makes clear in John 15.5: "I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.

Branches can only bud and grow because they are part of the vine as a whole receiving the sustenance that flows up into the vine from the roots. Similarly, the tree by the water in Psalm 1. A vine roots in the soil but has most of its leaves in the brighter, exposed area, getting the best of both worlds. So, being rooted in Jesus is the way in which Christians can open to the light and bear fruit. Rootedness could mean commitment to Christ or being embedded in Christ’s life and ministry or both.

The Bible gives us at least two sources of help in being rooted. The first can be noted in the very first Psalm which uses the image of good fruit growing on a tree in order to say that good fruit grows in our lives when we delight in the law of the Lord and meditate of that law day and night. Regular meditation on scripture feeds our ability to better integrate our words and actions.

Our second source is found in Galatians 5 where the fruit that we are called to produce is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. The originator of these behaviours in us is the Holy Spirit. The fruit are of the Spirit whenever and however they show up in our lives and actions.

Being led by the Spirit and regularly meditating on the scripture are the two keys to rootedness - to being ‘in’ Christ - and to a close meshing of words and actions in our lives. The Spirit is the Spirit of Jesus and the fruit which is grown in Christian’s lives is Christlikeness. Being rooted in Jesus enables the Spirit of Jesus to flow in and through a Christian enabling them to begin to become Christlike.

So, what is fruitfulness? What is it that Jesus is aiming to see in his followers? One way of answering that question for Christians, because Christianity has been a missionary faith, has been to see fruit as souls saved but when Paul writes in Galatians 5 about the fruit of the Spirit he is writing about the character and actions of Christians as fruit, rather than the outcome of our actions: “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.”

This kind of fruit is about behaviours leading to actions. Actions speak louder than words. That proverb can be traced at least as far back as a speech made by J. Pym in Parliament in 1628 in which he said: ‘A word spoken in season is like an Apple of Gold set in Pictures of Silver,’ and actions are more precious than words.’

The proverb is, however, ultimately based on Biblical ideas and phrases such as 1 John 3. 18 where we read: ‘let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth.’ This teaching probably then derives from Jesus’ words in Matthew 7. 15 – 21, where he argues that we are known by our fruits, meaning our actions, and that simply saying ‘Lord, Lord’ without then acting on that confession is not enough to guarantee our salvation.

In the Parable of the sheep and goats (Matthew 25.31-46) Jesus emphasises that it is actions, not words, that will count in the final judgement, when he says: ‘‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’ St Francis of Assisi summed up this aspect of Jesus’ teaching well, when he said: ‘Preach the gospel at all times. Use words if necessary.’ So, what kind of fruit is evident is our lives?

Finally, Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13 that such actions as faith, hope and love remain. The word he used for remain hints that such actions continue beyond the grave into eternity i.e. that we can take something with us when we die, that the fruit or acts of faith, hope and love grown in this life continue into, and continue to bear fruit in, the next. Jesus said, "I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit — fruit that will last" (John 15.16).

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Ola Gjeilo - The Ground from ‘Sunrise Mass’.

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.

Tree and Fruit

Our local Scriptural Reasoning group had another fascinating and wide ranging discussion tonight as we used a text bundle on the theme of Tree and Fruit.

Here is what I said by way of introduction to the Christian text (John 15. 16):

The imagery of tree and fruit was regularly used by Jesus in his teaching. As stated here, his followers are chosen and appointed to bear fruit. Fruitfulness is the overall aim and lack of fruitfulness is to be challenged and is ultimately destructive. So he tells and enacts parables of fig trees which don’t bear fruit being given final opportunities to become fruitful before being destroyed if not (Luke 13):

6 "A man had a fig tree growing in his vineyard, and he went to look for fruit on it but did not find any. 7 So he said to the man who took care of the vineyard, ‘For three years now I’ve been coming to look for fruit on this fig tree and haven’t found any. Cut it down! Why should it use up the soil?’

8 "‘Sir,’ the man replied, ‘leave it alone for one more year, and I’ll dig around it and fertilize it. 9 If it bears fruit next year, fine! If not, then cut it down.’"

Fruitfulness is a consequence of being ‘in’ Christ (John 15):

5 "I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.

Branches can only bud and grow because they are part of the vine as a whole receiving the sustenance that flows up into the vine from the roots. A vine roots in the soil but has most of its leaves in the brighter, exposed area, getting the best of both worlds. So, being rooted in Jesus is the way in which Christians can open to the light and bear fruit. Rootedness could mean commitment to Christ or being embedded in Christ’s life and ministry or both.

What is fruitfulness? What is it that Jesus is aiming to see in his followers? One way of answering that question for Christians, because Christianity has been a missionary faith, has been to see fruit as souls saved but when Paul writes in Galatians 5 about the fruit of the Spirit he is writing about the character and actions of Christians as fruit, rather than the outcome of our actions:

22 the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control.

The Spirit is the Spirit of Jesus and the fruit which is grown in Christian’s lives is Christlikeness. Being rooted in Jesus enables the Spirit of Jesus to flow in and through a Christian enabling them to begin to become Christlike.

Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13 that such actions as faith, hope and love remain. The word he used for remain hints that such actions continue beyond the grave into eternity i.e. that we can take something with us when we die, that the fruit or acts of faith, hope and love grown in this life continue into, and continue to bear fruit in, the next. This brings us back to where we began, with Jesus' statement that "I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit — fruit that will last."

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Gravy Train - Think Of Life.