Shut the door

Here's the reflection I shared at today's Deanery Mothers' Union Service at St Catherine's Wickford:

From the mid-1920s onwards, Evelyn Underhill became highly-regarded as a retreat conductor and an influential spiritual director. Her first experience of a conducted retreat at the Pleshey retreat house in 1922 transformed her attitude toward church and vocation, and began the process of clarifying her own calling.

Born on 6th December 1875 in Wolverhampton, from an early age she described having mystical insights, and her deep interest in spiritual matters continued throughout her life. Between 1921 and 1924 her spiritual director was Baron Friedrich von Hűgel, who encouraged her to place Jesus Christ more centrally at the heart of her reflections. After his death in 1925 she began taking on a prominent role in the Church of England, leading retreats at Pleshey and elsewhere, and as a spiritual guide to many. Amongst the books she published are ‘Mysticism’ (in 1911) and ‘Worship’ (in 1936). She was one of the first women theologians to give public lectures at English universities, and was the first woman allowed officially to teach Church of England clergy.

Evelyn Underhill is one of the most important Christian mystics of the twentieth century and was one of the first important figures to champion the humility, ordinariness, and indeed “normalcy” of the mystical life. The subtitle of one of her best books, ‘Practical Mysticism’ is “A Little Book for Normal People.” She worked hard to dispel the notion that mysticism only belonged to the super-holy, the super-religious, the super-pious. On the contrary, the contemplative life is the ordinary state for Christian maturity. (http://evelynunderhill.org/three-evelyn-underhill-anthologies/)

In her book on The Fruits of The Spirit, she wrote about today's Gospel passage (Matthew 6.1-6, 16-18) in relation to retreats:

“Christ, who so seldom gave detailed instruction about anything, did give some detailed instruction of that … recollection which is the essential condition of real prayer, real communion with God.

"When you pray, go into a room by yourself - and shut the door." I think we can almost see the smile with which He said those three words, and those three words define what we have to try to do. Anyone can retire into a quiet place and have a thoroughly unquiet time in it - but that is not … the shutting of the door …

Shut the door. It is an extraordinarily difficult thing to do. Nearly everyone pulls it to and leaves it slightly ajar so that a whistling draught comes in from the outer world, with reminders of all the worries, interests, conflicts, joys and sorrows of daily life.

But Christ said shut and He meant shut. A complete barrier deliberately set up, with you on one side alone with God and everything else without exception on the other side. The voice of God is very gentle; we cannot hear it if we let other voices compete. It is no use at all to enter that room, that inner sanctuary, clutching the daily paper, the reports of all the societies you support, your engagement book and a large bundle of personal correspondence. All these must be left outside.

The object … is not intercession or self-exploration, but such communion with Him as shall afterwards make you more powerful in intercession; such self loss in Him as shall heal your wounds by new contact with His life and love.”

Evelyn Underhill was writing specifically for retreatants but Jesus’ words were not originally addressed to those on retreat. Instead, they were addressed to ordinary people going about their everyday lives, so his call to shut the door when praying was not once a year when we are on retreat but each time we pray. Likewise, seeking the opportunity of being alone with God and attending to God in order that we may do His will better in our everyday lives is not intended by Jesus as a once a year opportunity, rather as a regular experience.

The reward that God provides for our private prayers is the multiplication of all that we give, as St Paul says in our reading from 2 Corinthians 9: ‘He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness.’

That was the experience of Mary Sumner who, in 1876, wrote her own personal prayer which she then prayed every day for the rest of her life: ‘All this day, O Lord, let me touch as many lives as possible for thee; and every life I touch do thou by thy spirit quicken, whether through the word I speak, the prayer I breathe or the life I live. Amen.’

Later, Mary decided that a new organisation was needed in her parish and the first branch of Mothers' Union was begun. She was spurred into action when her eldest daughter gave birth to her first baby. Mary remembered her feelings of inadequacy as a young mother charged with the terrible responsibility for a new life. She believed that women from every class needed to understand that motherhood was a profession and be equipped to perform it. Motherhood involved more than providing for the physical needs of children. The primary responsibility of mothers was to raise their children in the love of God. Mothers could only do this, she believed, if their lives were firmly rooted in prayer.

Her plan for a new form of mothers’ meeting, bringing together mothers of all classes, did not start auspiciously. Having gathered the women of the parish in the Rectory, Mary could not present her ideas due to nerves. She had to call them together again a week later to explain the objects of the new society and to give out simple cards containing practical suggestions.

In 1885, Bishop Ernest Wilberforce of Newcastle called on Mary to speak to a women's meeting made up of 1000 poor and anxious women at the Portsmouth Church Congress. Despite her initial resistance, as at that time respectable women did not address public meetings, she agreed. Painting a picture of the low moral standards in the country, she asked what could be done to improve the national character. Her answer was that the power for change lay in the hands of mothers. If women united in prayer and committed themselves to a Christian life the nation could be transformed.

The meeting responded to her passion and conviction with a rousing ovation. It was on this wave of public enthusiasm that the Bishop of Winchester decided to make Mothers' Union a diocesan organisation. This decision was destined to change the lives of many far beyond the boundaries of the diocese of Winchester.

The global movement that is the Mothers’ Union began with personal prayer in a room with a shut door and grew as a result of the prayer that underpinned its growth. May our generation commit ourselves to prayer by following the examples of Jesus, Evelyn Underhill and Mary Sumner. Amen.

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Celebrating Evelyn Underhill at the Retreat House with Canon John Howden.

Unity, protection and sanctification

Here's my reflection from today's lunchtime Eucharist for St Martin-in-the-Fields:

Our Gospel reading today (John 17.11-19) is part of the prayer that Jesus prayed for his disciples on the night before he died. Chronologically this prayer comes before Jesus’ Ascension, but, in terms of its content, it is a post-Ascension prayer because his concern is for his disciples once he has left them. Many of his disciples had been on the road with him for three years and had sat at his feet as disciples listening to his teaching, observing his example and imbibing his spirit. Following his Ascension, he would leave them and they would have the challenge of continuing his ministry without him there. He knew that that experience would be challenging and therefore he prayed for them to be supported and strengthened in the challenges they would face. I want us to reflect on three aspects of this section of Jesus’ prayer; unity, protection and sanctification.

Jesus prays that his disciples may be one, as he is one with God the Father and God the Spirit. In other words, we have to understand the unity that is the Godhead, before we can understand the unity that Jesus wants for his disciples. As God is one and also three persons at one and the same time, there is a community at the heart of God with a constant exchange of love between the Father, the Son and the Spirit. That exchange is the very heartbeat of God and is the reason we are able to say that God is love. Everything that God is and does and says is the overflow of the exchange of love that is at the heart of the Godhead. Jesus invites us to enter into that relationship of love and to experience it for ourselves. That is his prayer, his teaching and also the purpose of his incarnation, death and resurrection.

Earlier in his farewell discourse, Jesus gave the command that we should love one another as we have been loved by God. It is in the sharing of love with each other that we experience unity and experience God. Unity, then, does not come from beliefs or propositions. It is not to do with statements or articles of faith. It does not involve us thinking or believing the same thing. Instead, unity is found in relationship, in the constant, continuing exchange of love with others within community; meaning that unity is actually found in diversity. Jesus prays that we will have that experience firstly by coming into relationship with a relational God and secondly by allowing the love that is at the heart of the Godhead to fill us and overflow from us to others, whilst also receiving the overflow of that love from others.

The second aspect of Jesus’ prayer is his prayer for our protection. Our need for protection is often physical and immediate. That is certainly the case for those who were featured in this year’s Christian Aid Week campaign affected, as so many are today, by Covid-19, but for them in the context of crippling poverty. Their need to be protected is one that can, to some extent, be met by aid and medical provision, underpinned by prayer. Similarly, there are many known to our community in need of tangible protection at this time. A member of our Sunday International Group, who gave his testimony in Sunday’s service, has said that St Martin’s has been a ‘shelter from the stormy blast’ for him.

In his prayer Jesus asks that we will be protected in a different way, by being protected in God’s name. God’s name has been given to him, he says, and he has then given that name to his disciples. In our day, we have lost much of the depth and richness that names held in more ancient cultures. Names in Jesus’ culture and earlier were signs or indicators of the essence of the thing named. When we read the story of Adam naming the animals in the Book of Genesis that is what was going on; Adam was identifying the distinctive essence of each creature brought before him and seeking a word to capture and articulate that essential characteristic. It is also why the name of God is so special in Judaism – so special that it cannot be spoken – as the name of God discloses God’s essence or core or the very heart of his being. Jesus prayed that we might be put in touch with, in contact with, in relationship with, the very essence of God’s being by knowing his name. That contact is what will protect us. If we are in contact with the essential love and goodness that is at the very heart of God then that will fill our hearts, our emotions, our words, our actions enabling us to live in love with others, instead of living selfishly in opposition to others. Jesus prays that the essential love which is at the heart of God will transform us in our essence, meaning that we are then protected from evil by being filled with love.

The third aspect of Jesus’ prayer is to do with sanctification. Sanctification is the process of becoming holy. Jesus prays that we will be sanctified in truth, with the truth being the word of God. The Prologue to John’s Gospel tells us that Jesus himself is the Word of God. Therefore Jesus’ prays for us to become holy in Him. It is as we live in relationship to him, following in the Way that he has established, that we are sanctified. This is what it means for us to know Jesus as the Way, the Truth and the Life. It is vital that we note that we are not sanctified by the Truth, meaning that sanctification is not about knowing and accepting truths that we are to believe. Instead, we are sanctified in the Truth, meaning that we are made holy as we inhabit, experience, practice and live out the Truth; with that truth being Jesus.

Knowing God is, therefore, like diving ever deeper into a bottomless ocean where there is always more to see and encounter. We are within that ocean – the truth of relationship with Jesus – and can always see and uncover and discover more of the love of God because the reality of God is of an infinite depth of love. God created all things and therefore all things exist in him and he is more than the sum of all things, so it is impossible for us with our finite minds to ever fully know or understand his love. However profound our experience of God has been, there is always more for us to discover because we live in and are surrounded by infinitude of love. St Augustine is reported to have described this reality in terms of God being a circle whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.

Jesus is constantly praying for a continual and continuing immersion in relationship with Him so that we will experience unity by sharing love, protection by experiencing the essence of God and holiness through living in Him. Because we are with God and in God and God in us, we can and, increasingly, will act in ways that are God-like and Godly. That happens because we are so immersed in God and in his love that his love necessarily overflows from us in ways that we cannot always anticipate or control. Essentially, we learn to improvise as Jesus did, because we are immersed in his ways and love. That is Jesus’ prayer for us. We pray Amen, may it be so.

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Peteris Vasks - Presence.

Crossing boundaries

Here is my sermon from today's Eucharist at St Stephen Walbrook:

Jesus was amazed or surprised. This is worthy of note because the Gospels only record that Jesus was surprised twice. He was firstly amazed that his own, hometown people rejected him, and secondly that this gentile officer accepted him (Matthew 8. 1 - 13).

There is much about this story and this officer that is surprising. We see his humility in that, although he is the local official of the ruling power, he says he is not worthy to have Jesus, an itinerant Jewish preacher, in his home. When the same story is told in Luke’s Gospel (Luke 7. 1 - 10), we find that the local Jewish elders testify to the officer’s love of the Jewish people, to the extent that he himself had built a synagogue for the locals in Capernaum. As a result, the Jewish elders are prepared to advocate on his behalf. Then we read that slave is ‘very dear’ to him. There is much about this man that is at odds with the general practice of those who have positions of power, particularly when the position of power held is that of an oppressive ruling elite.

So there is much about this man to which Jesus would respond. The officer cares about others and he does so regardless of nationality, religion and class. His love of others enables him to cross boundaries between people. There is even the possibility (in the Greek word used of the slave) of a same-sex relationship existing between the officer and his servant! The officer is an intercessor. He speaks on behalf of his servant and sends other intercessors (the Jewish elders) in his name who speak on his behalf. As a result, nothing is mentioned in the story about the servant who was healed having faith. It is the officer who had faith and stood in the gap for the servant by interceding for him.

His faith was seen in that he believed that Jesus would help his servant and in his realisation that Jesus didn’t need to come his home in order to do so. The Jewish elders didn’t think Jesus would help a gentile soldier unless they had proved that he was good to the Jews. Yet, in order to receive help from Jesus no good works are required. The Jewish elders wanted to prove to Jesus that the officer was worthy of Jesus’ help and yet the officer himself stated that he was not worthy. His faith was seen in his trust that Jesus was someone who would act with compassion and love, not that he saw himself as good enough to earn that love. Jesus showed in this story that the only thing he assesses is whether or not we have that kind of faith.

The officer understood Jesus’ ability to heal in terms of his being part of a chain of command in which he was able to issue orders and where what he ordered occurs. The fact that Jesus commended the officer’s faith doesn’t mean that we then have to accept that the officer was right about Jesus being part of this chain of command. The story can be understood in that way and often has been, but what Jesus commended was the officer’s faith, not the means or logic by which he arrived at that faith.

Jesus continually taught that true leadership is shown through service. He reversed our common expectations about the way in which power should be held and exercised. The Roman officer, by caring about others and doing so regardless of nationality, religion and class, was actually living out in practice what Jesus was teaching to others. As faith without deeds is dead, it may actually be the officer’s practice of servant leadership to which Jesus was referring when he said, “I tell you, I have never found faith like this, not even in Israel!”

Like Jesus then, if we allow ourselves, we will be surprised by this story. In it, the gentile, the pagan, the one who did not believe in the God of Israel, the one who was the representative of the oppressive ruling power, the enemy, was the one who crossed boundaries of race, religion, class (and possibly also sexuality), to show real faith in practice. Despite the differences between them, this man and Jesus recognized a commonality of practice in each other. The officer said to Jesus you seem to be my real commanding officer and Jesus said to the officer I see real faith lived out in practice in you. In the synergy that existed between them the servant recovered and was found to be well once again.

In a world where racist xenopobia is on the rise, we will do well to pay attention to the lessons of today’s Gospel reading. During Interfaith Week, it is vital to state that: “Alongside all of good will, we will work to tackle with renewed determination the challenges of poverty, ignorance, injustice, crime and violence, and social fragmentation and to help shape a society where all feel at home; all are valued and justly treated; and all have a chance to thrive.”

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Anthony - If It Be Your Will.

Prayer morning with labyrinth

A prayer morning is being organised at St John's Seven Kings for Saturday 1st February from 10.00am – 1.00pm. The morning will include a variety of prayer reflections and activities with input from different members of St John's. There will be a variety of inputs on prayer, various prayer exercises and styles of prayer plus an opportunity to use a prayer labyrinth. Do come along both to pray for St John's and the world and to grow in your own prayer life.

St John’s has been given a prayer labyrinth for our own use and to loan out to other churches. The labyrinth is on heavy duty canvas and comes in two parts connected by velcro. It can fit into a car boot and comes with a blue ground sheet and 36 glass bowls (for use with candles), plus ideas for use. It is painted in dark blue fabric paint but is not waterproof, so needs care if it is used outside. The pattern is a nine circuit Chartres labyrinth which is best used as a simple walking labyrinth.

Lana Miller, Campus Pastor at the Eastern Mennonite University, suggests that the labyrinth is a model or metaphor for life: "The Christian life is often described as a pilgrimage or journey with God, a journey in which we can grow closer in relationship with God, and in turn, closer to others.

In life, as in the labyrinth, we don’t know where the path will take us. We don’t foresee the twists and turns that the future holds, but we know that the path will eventually arrive at the centre, God. Sometimes the path leads inward toward the ultimate goal, only to lead outward again. We meet others along the path—some we meet face-to-face stepping aside to let them pass; some catch up to us and pass us from behind; others we pass along the way. At the centre we rest, watch others, pray. Sometimes we stay at the centre a long time; other times we leave quickly.

Ways to use the labyrinth:

1. Ask God a question upon entering and then listen for an answer. For example: Ask God what he wants to tell you and listen for an answer.

2. Pray for yourself on the way in, stop to experience God’s love in the center, and pray for others on the way out (or vice versa).

3. Recite the Lord’s Prayer as you walk. (Instead, you may recite some familiar scripture. Repeat it as you walk).

4. As you move toward the centre of the labyrinth, focus on letting go of distractions or worries that keep you from God. In the centre, spend time reflecting on your relationship with God. Be aware of God’s presence. Then, as you leave spend time giving thanks and praising God for all that he has done.

5. As you move toward the centre of the labyrinth, focus on letting go of distractions or worries that keep you from God. In the centre, spend time reflecting on your relationship with God. Be aware of God’s presence. Then, you will sense the need to move out into the world again. As you leave, walk with Jesus back into the places of ordinary life."

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Taize - Ubi Caritas.