Advent Meditation: The Prophets

Here's the meditation on The Prophets that I shared during Advent Night Prayer at St Andrew's Wickford this evening:

The prophets dreamed.
They dreamed of Bethlehem.
Of Bethlehem of Ephrathah, one of the little clans of Judah,
from whom shall come one who is to rule in Israel,
one whose origin is from of old, from ancient days.
When she who is in labour has brought forth,
then the rest of his kin shall return to the people of Israel
and he shall stand and feed his flock in the strength of the Lord,
in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God,
and they shall live secure, for now he shall be great
to the ends of the earth; and he shall be the one of peace.

The prophets dreamed.
They dreamed of a sign that the Lord himself would give.
The sign a young woman with child.
A young woman who shall bear a son.
A young woman who shall name that son, Immanuel.

The prophets dreamed.
They dreamed of a child.
A child born for us,
a son given to us;
authority rests upon his shoulders;
and he is named
Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
His authority grows continually,
and there shall be endless peace
for the throne of David and his kingdom
when he will establish and uphold it
with justice and with righteousness
from his time onwards and for evermore.

The prophets dreamed.
They dreamed of a shoot.
A shoot to come out from the stock of Jesse,
and a branch to grow out of his roots.
The spirit of the Lord would rest on that shoot,
the spirit of wisdom and understanding,
the spirit of counsel and might,
the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.
His delight would be in the fear of the Lord.
He would not judge by what his eyes see,
or decide by what his ears hear;
but with righteousness he would judge the poor,
and decide with equity for the meek of the earth;
he would strike the earth with the rod of his mouth,
and with the breath of his lips kill the wicked.
Righteousness would be the belt around his waist,
and faithfulness the belt around his loins.
The wolf shall live with the lamb,
the leopard lie down with the kid,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and the little child shall lead them.
The cow and the bear would graze,
their young would lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child would play over the hole of the asp,
and the weaned child put its hand on the adder’s den.
They will not hurt or destroy
on all God’s holy mountain;
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.

The prophets dreamed.
They dreamed of a star.
They saw him, but not then;
they beheld him, but not near.
They saw a star,
a star that would come out of Jacob,
and a sceptre that would rise out of Israel.

The prophets dreamed.
They dreamed of Egypt.
As, when Israel was a child, God loved him,
and out of Egypt he called his son.

The prophets dreamed.
They dreamed of the Temple.
The temple to which the Lord who is sought will suddenly come.
The messenger of the covenant in whom we delight,
the messenger is coming,
coming to be like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap;
to sit as a refiner and purifier of silver,
and to purify the descendants of Levi
and refine them like gold and silver,
until they present offerings to the Lord in righteousness.
Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord
as in the days of old and as in former years.

The prophets dreamed.
They dreamed of people,
people who walked in darkness
seeing a great light;
those who lived in a land of deep darkness—
on them light has shone.

The prophets dreamed.
They saw from a distance and greeted their dreams.
They died in faith without having received the promises.
We are those on whom light has shone;
those who know the story of Mary and Joseph travelling to Bethlehem,
a census requiring Jesus’ birth in Joseph’s home town.
We are those on whom light has shone;
those who know the story of the sign given
in the child Immanuel, God with us.
We are those on whom light has shone;
those who know the story of the child born for us,
the Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
We are those on whom light has shone;
those who know the story of the shoot
coming from the stock of Jesse
on whom the spirit of the Lord did rest.
We are those on whom light has shone;
those who know the story of the star,
the star that led the Magi to worship Israel’s star.
We are those on whom light has shone;
those who know the story of Egypt,
where our Saviour fled and from where he returned.
We are those on whom light has shone;
those who know the story of the Temple,
where Simeon and Anna see salvation
in the young Christ unexpectedly come.

Therefore, since we are surrounded
by so great a cloud of witnesses and prophets,
let us lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely,
and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us,
looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith,
the one from of old, from ancient days,
the son who is named Immanuel,
Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace,
the one on whom the spirit of the Lord rests,
the sceptre that rises out of Israel,
the one God calls his son,
the one who refines like gold and silver,
until we present offerings to the Lord in righteousness,
that our offerings will be pleasing to the Lord
as in the days of old and as in former years. Amen.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

G.F.Händel - The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light.

Being rooted deep within

Here's the sermon (adapted from https://biologos.org/articles/o-radix) that I shared at St Mary's Runwell and St Catherine's Wickford this morning: 

The season of Advent is a time when we are particularly attentive to images of Christ gleaned from the prophetic texts of the Old Testament, in addition to those that emerged from Jesus’ earthly ministry in Palestine. As poet, priest and musician Malcolm Guite notes, “In the first centuries the Church had a beautiful custom of praying seven great prayers calling afresh on Christ to come, calling him by the mysterious titles he has in Isaiah:” O Wisdom! O Lord! O Root! O Key! O Dayspring! O King! O Emmanuel! The hymn ‘O come, O come Emmanuel’, which we are signing today, preserves the tradition and these seven ancient, prophetic names' for the Christ.

Malcolm Guite has also given his own series of sonnets to accompany this sequence of antiphons still being used in the liturgical traditions, a litany of images that provide another way to extol Christ’s virtues and identity as Saviour week by week as we wait and remember His coming in Bethlehem. Today we look at one of those poems, “O Radix” or “O Root”, as a meditation on Christ via an image from His creation.

But first, let us hear the original O Antiphon for 19 December:

O Root of Jesse, standing
as a sign among the peoples;
before you kings will shut their mouths,
to you the nations will make their prayer:
Come and deliver us, and delay no longer

The texts from which the “root” image for Jesus derives are both from Isaiah 11 (today’s Old Testament reading), and the root image used encompasses the full flourishing of the plant, from its origins in the ground, through renewal of a seemingly-dead stump, and towards the fruitfulness of the restored vine. The most direct line naming Jesus as the root is in verse 10: “In that day the root of Jesse, who shall stand as a signal for the peoples—of him shall the nations inquire, and his resting place shall be glorious.”

It is this promise of the Messiah’s advent being for the rule and benefit of the gentiles that Paul picks up in chapter 15 of his letter to the Romans, as well. In both cases, though, the conflation of the “branch,” or “rod,” or “shoot,” mentioned earlier in Isaiah 11:1, with the “root” from which it springs suggests the way Jesus, though coming at a specific time in history, was at history’s beginnings and will be at its end: “There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse,? and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.?”

For Guite, the fact that the Radix image refers to the ‘tree of Jesse, the family tree which leads to David, and ultimately to Christ as the ‘son of David,” is important, but, he says, “the title radix, goes deeper, as a good root should. It goes deep down into the ground of our being, the good soil of creation.” In other words, it gets at both the truth of Jesus’ identity as the source of our life and salvation (He is the root, the stem, the fruit), but also as the author of the world to which we (and the Scriptures, themselves) turn to find ways of talking about and imagining our own connection, our own grafting-in to that vine. It subtly suggests that recognizing ourselves as contiguous with the world—though set apart from it by God’s grace and fellowship—begins our process of being re-connected to the King and His kingdom. Conversely, when we turn our backs on the knowledge He speaks forth through His creation, or shrink back from our call to know and cultivate the world as it is, we cut ourselves off from our roots, from each other, and even from the Lord. That we so often satisfy ourselves with the latter is one more reason to lament in this season of waiting, as we call to the coming Messiah, “Come, O Radix, come!”

O Radix

All of us sprung from one deep-hidden seed,
Rose from a root invisible to all.
We knew the virtues once of every weed,
But, severed from the roots of ritual,
We surf the surface of a wide-screen world
And find no virtue in the virtual.
We shrivel on the edges of a wood
Whose heart we once inhabited in love,
Now we have need of you, forgotten Root
The stock and stem of every living thing
Whom once we worshiped in the sacred grove,
For now is winter, now is withering
Unless we let you root us deep within,
Under the ground of being, graft us in.

Thinking about roots more specifically and “naturally” is worthwhile, too, as being attuned to functions as well as forms helps us reflect on the several ways in which Christ enables us to be connected to Him and each other. Spend time walking along a river, for instance, looking carefully at the trees that grow along its banks and you will discover that their roots have two principal functions: to take in nourishment from the water and to anchor the tree securely in place; on one hand, to seek out something that is supremely mysterious, mobile, and literally fluid, and, on the other hand, to take hold of something solid, secure and immovable. Indeed, they are complementary roles, for a tree fully exposed to the power of moving water is as likely to be washed away as to flourish—it must have a stronghold to stand in the presence of the flood. Likewise, to “take root” in the Scriptures and in the Lord Himself is thus to be always reaching out, yearning for more of His Spirit, even as we stay firmly planted in the strength and security of His steadfast embrace.

When he says that the spirit of the Lord would rest on that shoot, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord, Isaiah is showing us a Messiah who is rooted in the story of Israel and in God, through his Spirit. Like Jesus, we also need to be rooted in him and see his kingdom grow in us and in our world. This Advent, let us make it our desire to be more deeply rooted in Christ and to see his kingdom take root in our community. Amen.

For more on the O Antiphons and Guite's sonnets - click here.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Steve Bell - O come, O come Emmanuel (with Malcolm Guite).

Signs of the coming kingdom

Here's the sermon that I shared at St Catherine’s Wickford and St Gabeiel’s Pitsea this morning:

How many of the early signs of Christmas have you spotted? They begin in the shops with displays of Christmas gifts from early autumn while, at work, the Christmas meal or party is being booked. Into November, and the displays of Christmas decorations and foods begin appearing. Then the Christmas displays in shop windows go up and the Christmas lights are put up in Town Centres. Before long the first Christmas decorations go up in a home near you triggering the annual competition to see who can cover their house in the most lights or have the largest illuminated Snowman. Bets begin to be taken on whether we will have a white Christmas and you are given the name of a colleague to buy a Secret Santa present for. Before you know it there are children on your doorstep singing the one carol that they know and people start saying there only X number of days to go. These are some of the signs that Christmas is coming and we all recognise them, probably with dread!

In our gospel reading today (Luke 21. 5 – 9) Jesus told his disciples to watch out for the signs of their times. He wanted them to watch out for what God was doing in their world and it was of vital importance for them because it spelled disaster for Jerusalem as well as vindicating all that Jesus had said and done.

Jesus had told his disciples, the crowds following him and the religious leaders that the Temple in Jerusalem would be destroyed because the people of Israel had not fulfilled God’s plan for their lives. The kind of place that Jerusalem should have become had been set out in Isaiah 2; a place that all nations could come to to hear from God:

“Many nations will come streaming to it, and their people will say,
‘Let us go to up the hill of the Lord, to the Temple of Israel’s God.
He will teach us what he wants us to do;
we will walk in the paths he has chosen.
For the Lord’s teaching comes from Jerusalem;
from Zion he speaks to his people.”

Instead of that vision happening, the Temple had become a symbol of Jewish identity with all sorts of people excluded from worship at the Temple unless they conformed to the detailed requirements of the Mosaic Law. The Temple and the worship in it was actually preventing the free access to God’s word that God wanted to see for people of all nations. Therefore, Jesus prophesied that the Temple would be destroyed and told his disciples that they had to watch out and be ready for when this disaster would come about.

They had to be watchful and ready because Jesus did not tell them when this would happen, only that it was going to occur. They had to be watchful and ready because this act would vindicate Jesus; would be the final sign that in Jesus God had been acting to defeat evil and bring in his kingdom and rule. To those people who had not encountered the risen Christ, Jesus of Nazareth looked like just another failed would-be Messiah who had died a shameful death. The destruction of the Temple, however, would be the sign that Jesus had been right and that what he had said was true.

Tom Wright, a former Bishop of Durham has said that when they saw this sign, the vindication of Jesus, for themselves, they knew they were to get on with the task of implementing what Jesus had achieved. Jesus believed “that Israel functioned to the rest of the world as the hinge to the door” so “he envisaged his followers becoming … Isaianic heralds, lights to the world.”

As Christ’s followers today, we inherit that task of putting into practice what Jesus has achieved through his life, death and resurrection. We are the people today who are called to work towards that Isaianic vision of nations streaming to learn what Israel’s God wants them to do, settling disputes among the great nations, hammering swords into ploughshares and spears into pruning hooks, and never again preparing to go to war.

How can we do that? Well, here is a story of a father and a rock band who have tried to do just that:

“Gordon Wilson held his daughter’s hand as they lay trapped beneath a mountain of rubble. It was 1987, and he and Marie had been attending a peaceful memorial service in Enniskillen, when a terrorist bomb went off. By the end of the day, Marie and nine other civilians were dead, and sixty-three had been hospitalized for injuries.

Amazingly, Gordon refused to retaliate … He knew that the terrorists who took his daughter’s life were anything but remorseful, and he maintained that they should be punished and imprisoned … [but] he refused to take revenge.

‘Those who have to account for this deed will have to face a judgement of God, which is way beyond [my] forgiveness,’ he said. ‘It would be wrong for me to give any impression that gunmen and bombers should be allowed to walk the streets freely. But … whether or not they are judged here on earth by a court of law … I do my very best in human terms to show forgiveness … The last word rests with God.”

On the evening of the Enniskillen bombing, in Denver, Colorado, the Irish band U2 and playing a gig on their world tour. Their lead singer Bono asks, “Where’s the glory in bombing a remembrance day parade of old age pensioners, their medals taken out and polished up for the day? Where’s the glory in that? To leave them dying, or crippled for life, or dead, under the rubble of the revolution that the majority of the people in my country don't want.” And he leads the crowd in a shout of “NO MORE!” before launching into the song Sunday Bloody Sunday. This is a song which ends:

“The real battle just begun
To claim the victory Jesus won
On a Sunday bloody Sunday …”

Eleven years later, in 1998, U2 are playing another concert. This time it is in Belfast and it is a concert to draw support for the national vote on the Good Friday/Northern Ireland Peace Agreement four days later. In the concert, Bono is able to bring on stage David Trimble and John Hume, leaders of the traditionally opposing Ulster Unionist Party and Social Democratic and Labour Party, respectively. The political leaders stand on each side of Bono as he raises their arms together in a show of unity. Four days later, the Peace Agreement is approved overwhelmingly by voters in both the North and South.

We all know that there are still many difficulties in living with the legacy of terrorism in Ireland and of making and keeping peace. But these are two stories of Christians in very different situations who have been looking out for God at work in their world, looking for the signs of peace, and seeking to claim the victory that Jesus won.

Although we have waited two thousand years for the coming of God’s kingdom in full, there have always been clear signs of that coming kingdom throughout the years in the lives of committed Christians like Gordon Wilson and U2. Our job is to join them in being watchful and alert to the signs of God at work in our world and in implementing what Jesus has achieved, claiming the victory that Jesus won on a Sunday Bloody Sunday. May it be so for each one of us. Amen.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

U2 - Sunday Bloody Sunday.

Jubilee - The work of releasing others from sin and debt

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

When we have a General or Local Election, I wonder whether you read the manifestos of the candidates that you are able to vote for. I guess that most of us don’t. Often, they are quite wordy and many people don’t believe a word that is written in them.

The political parties know this, as is demonstrated by this quote from a post entitled Why manifestos still matter (even if nobody reads them) from Labour List:

“Given the amount of time and effort that goes into producing election manifestos, the number of people who actually read them is frighteningly small. Every campaign, parties make determined efforts to get them onto shelves but their sales hardly threaten JK Rowling or even the authors of well-known political diaries (still available in all good book shops) ….

But for the millions of voters who decide the election outcome … well for the overwhelming majority, life’s too short.” (http://labourlist.org/2013/02/why-manifestos-still-matter-even-if-nobody-reads-them/)

The passage that Jesus read in the synagogue at Nazareth the morning we have just heard about (Luke 4: 16 - 24) was the manifesto for his ministry and for the kingdom of God. We would do well not to ignore this manifesto because what Jesus spoke about here, he actually did in the course of his ministry. He did exactly what it says on the tin, as the advert goes.

Jesus’ manifesto is taken from Isaiah 61 and is all about release. Release from poverty, imprisonment, blindness and oppression. What Jesus is proclaiming would have been recognised by his hearers as the announcement of the Year of Jubilee – “the time when the Lord shall come to save his people.”

The word ‘jubilee’ stems from the Hebrew word ‘Yobel’, which refers to the ram or ram’s horn with which jubilee years were proclaimed. In Leviticus it states that such a horn or trumpet is to be blown on the tenth day of the seventh month after the lapse of ‘seven Sabbaths of years’ (49 years) as a proclamation of liberty throughout the land of the tribes of Israel. The year of jubilee was a consecrated year of ‘Sabbath-rest’ and liberty. During this year all debts were cancelled, lands were restored to their original owners and family members were restored to one another.

The people listening to Jesus knew about Jubilee but had never heard anything like his statement before. What Jesus was saying and how he was saying it was astonishing. They had heard teachers talk of the law before but this was something so amazing that they were in awe. Jesus was in another league because he claimed to be the fulfilment of Isaiah’s prophecy in Isaiah 61:1–2.

Jesus stated that he had come to ‘proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour’ (Luke 4:18–19). That is the year of jubilee and so Jesus proclaimed his coming and the coming of God’s kingdom as the time of Jubilee – a time of release for all people from those things that enslave us and trap us.

Each one of us is a slave to sin and blind to the truth about God because we have chosen to live selfish lives turning our backs on God and the way of life that he had created for human beings to live. In turning away from God’s ways, we do not do away with gods altogether instead our desires run riot and we become slaves to them worshipping other gods; whether they come in the form of money, sex, celebrity or whatever.

Jesus comes to free us from all of these enslavements and to open our eyes to the way in which God created human beings to live; loving God with all our being and loving our neighbours as ourselves.

This isn’t something that is just for us as individuals however. It is also something which can impact all of society. After all, the Old Testament Jubilee was intended for the nation of Israel, not simply individuals within it. A contemporary example of this happening in practice is Debt Justice, formerly the Jubilee Debt Campaign, which is part of a global movement demanding freedom from the slavery of unjust debts and a new financial system that puts people first. Originally inspired by the ancient concept of ‘jubilee’, Debt Justice works for a world where debt is no longer used as a form of power by which the rich exploit the poor. Freedom from debt slavery is a necessary step towards a world in which our common resources are used to realise equality, justice and human dignity.

We can see from all this that, in order to understand what our release means, we need to be people who know and understand the Bible. Chapter 4 of Luke’s gospel shows us clearly that Jesus was immersed in the Hebrew scriptures and saw them as speaking about himself. When he was tempted by the Devil at the beginning of Chapter 4, he defended himself by quoting from the Bible. In that passage he used the Bible to tell the Devil what he will not be like and here, in the synagogue, he used the Bible to tell everyone what he will be like. We can do the same if we read and understand what God is saying to us in the Bible both about those things from which our lives need to be freed and those things to which we need to dedicate our lives, talents and time.

The people who heard Jesus were, initially, impressed by what he said but as they realised that Jesus intended this Jubilee to be for all people they rejected him and tried to kill him. What will our response to Jesus’ manifesto be? Will it be the rejection that he experienced from the people of Nazareth? Will it be the apathy and disbelief that we accord to most political manifestos? Will it be the cynicism or distrust that some feel towards campaigns like Debt Justice? Or will it be acceptance of the release from slavery to sin that Jesus offers to us and involvement in his work of releasing others from sin and from debt? Amen.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bruce Cockburn - Call It Democracy.

Whoever welcomes a child in my name welcomes me

 

Here's the sermon I recorded as this Sunday's weekly sermon for the Diocese of Chelmsford (Mark 9:30-37):

The disciples had been arguing among themselves – nothing changes there, then, we might be tempted to think! They had been arguing about which of them was the greatest and thinking of what they could get out of the movement that Jesus began. What they wanted was prestige and power by being elevated over all the other disciples to what they thought of as the position of influence at the right hand of Christ. Jesus turned their thinking about what is important and about prestige and power on its head. In the kingdom of God, service; thinking of and care for others is what counts, not personal advancement, position or power. What can I do for you, not what can I do for me!

At a training weekend for new curates the then Bishop of Barking, David Hawkins, performed a handstand to demonstrate the way in which Jesus, through his teaching in the beatitudes, turns our understanding of life upside down. He was thinking of the way in which Jesus startles us as paradox, irony and surprise permeate his teachings flipping our expectations upside down: the least are the greatest; adults become like children; the religious miss the heavenly banquet; the immoral receive forgiveness and blessing. Bishop David's action turned our expectations, as curates, of Bishops and their behaviour upside-down at the same time that it perfectly illustrated his point.

Years before Jesus was born, the prophet Isaiah had promised a child born for us who would establish endless peace upheld with justice and righteousness. Isaiah described a time when the wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard would lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, with a little child leading them (Isaiah 11.1-9).

Isaiah's vision of the peaceable kingdom was centred on a child born to be the Prince of Peace. When that promised child came among us at Jesus, he said: ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs’; ‘Unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven’; ‘Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven’ and ‘Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.’ The child born for us calls us to welcome children and become like children. The most radical reversal in a culture where elders were revered is that “the greatest among you must become like the youngest.”

In 2022, several of Nicola Ravenscroft’s EarthAngel sculptures were exhibited at St Andrew’s in Wickford. These bronze sculptures are of children, simply dressed in soft silk tulle, who hesitate in time, leaning forward, hopeful, poised to dive into life, eyes closed, dreaming into their future, anticipating things unseen. Nicola says that her EarthAngels are youngling messengers of peace and healing, guardians of our future.

One reason why the promised child calls us to become like children is that children see the peaceable kingdom, until adults teach them otherwise. Children don’t argue amongst themselves for prestige and position until adults have taught them to do so. That is why the children are our future and can lead the way into a better future. We need, as Thomas Traherne wrote, to unlearn the dirty devices of this world in order to become, as it were, a little child again that we may enter into the Kingdom of God.

By telling his disciples that “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all”, Jesus turns the meaning of greatness and leadership upside down. No longer are they to be understood in terms of garnering wealth and power for oneself. Now they are understood to be about service; giving your life that others might live. Jesus, as the servant King, says to us, ‘I, your Lord and Teacher, have just washed your feet. You, then, should wash one another’s feet. I have set an example for you, so that you will do just what I have done for you.’

Michael Curry, the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, in his statement on the coronavirus outbreak reminded us that: ‘Jesus came among us in the first place, to show us … how to live not simply as collections of individual self-interest, but how to live as the human family of God. That’s why he said love the Lord your God, love your neighbor as yourself. Because in that is hope for all of us to be the human family of God.’

Through her EarthAngels, Nicola Ravenscroft extends this call and example to include our care for the earth and the creatures it supports. Her sculptures are “earth’s messenger-angels: silently calling us all to live in peace with nature”: “Earth’s children are life’s heartbeat: they are her hope, her future ... they are breath of Earth herself. Creative, inquisitive and trusting, children are Earth’s possibility thinkers. They seek out, and flourish in fellowship, in ‘oneness’, and being naturally open-hearted, and wide-eyed hungry for mystery, delight and wonder, they embrace diversity with the dignity of difference.”

These are the children we are called to welcome, the children we are to become, the children to whom the peaceable kingdom belongs. Nicola’s EarthAngels stand together, peacefully, as friends, vulnerable and strong, silently singing out their call to change. These little children lead with trusting feet, plump and bare. The Prince of Peace is with them and calls us to let them lead the way. Will you be among those who follow?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Raphael Ravenscroft - "... and a little child shall lead ..." Isaiah 11:6. 

Make our scars beautiful like your scars

Here's the sermon I shared at both St Mary Magdalene Great Burstead and St Mary the Virgin Little Burstead this morning:

Jesus said, “Look at my hands and feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see …” ( Luke 24. 36b – 48)

During my curacy I knew a lady called Mandy whose arms are a web of scars from having self-harmed for fourteen years from the age of fourteen. At one point she needed 300 internal and external stitches. Her scars, as you can imagine, are so extensive that there is no way she can completely hide or cover them up. Now that she no longer self-harms, she is encouraged and helped by the realisation that Jesus also bears scars on his resurrected body.

When Jesus says to his disciples, “Look at my hands and feet … Touch me and see”, it is the scars (from the nails that were driven into his hands and feet while on the cross and the spear that was thrust into his side) that he is asking his disciples to look at and touch. These scars are part of Christ’s resurrected body.

Why was this important to Mandy? For her this was about identification. She and Jesus are similar because both bear scars. She need not feel different or unusual or excluded because the marks that mark her out as being different from many other people are also borne by Jesus. She feels at one with him, included and accepted by him, because he bears similar marks on his body to those she also bears.

She has expressed it like this: “Having Jesus in my life now has made me look at things in a very different light. You see, to be an anybody, anywhere is to look into the eyes of someone who matters to you and know that they don't care what or who you are, where you have been or what you have achieved. To be an anybody, anywhere is to look into those eyes and know that if you see love there, then you have earned it. Not for being a walking achievement or an interesting case or a social inspiration or a charity case, but just for being you. That is the gift of the Lord Jesus Christ; a loving and understanding heart. Not someone that is looking at what you did, instead he looks at what you will become. I have now found the best friendship and a sense of belonging and the love that I have always longed for. The mask that I had hidden behind for so long has now gone and I am no longer a label but a child of God.”

Roy McCloughry writes that Jesus “has taken up the marks of disability into himself” and that “his body, in showing how he suffered, offers solidarity with all who remain disabled.” Similarly, Nancy Eiesland says, “Resurrection is not about the negation or erasure of our disabled bodies in hopes of perfect images, untouched by physical disability; rather Christ’s resurrection offers hope that our nonconventional, and sometimes difficult, bodies participate fully in the imago Dei …”

In some ways this is a surprising realisation because we tend to think of resurrection as being our entry into whatever we imagine perfection to be; including, perhaps, the thought that supposed imperfections, like our scars, are healed and removed. Reflecting on some of the reasons why Jesus’ risen body shows the scars of his crucifixion may help us to revise our ideas about resurrection.

Scars are about healing. The formation of a scar is a part of the healing process and where they remain on our bodies they are signs that significant healing has taken place. Christ’s resurrection is only achieved by way of the wounds he gained from the crucifixion. He is for us the risen Christ because he was firstly for us the crucified Christ. In a similar way our wounds inevitably form and shape us. We would not be who we are as we now are without having gone through or having endured those wounding experiences.

Jungian therapy suggests that it is only by being willing to face, consciously experience and go through our wounds that we will receive a blessing from them: ‘To go through our wound is to embrace, assent, and say “yes” to the mysteriously painful new place in ourselves where the wound is leading us. Going through our wound, we can allow ourselves to be re-created by the wound. Our wound is not a static entity, but rather a continually unfolding dynamic process that manifests, reveals and incarnates itself through us, which is to say that our wound is teaching us something about ourselves. Going through our wound means realizing we will never again be the same when we get to the other side of this initiatory process. Going through our wound is a genuine death experience, as our old self “dies” in the process, while a new, more expansive and empowered part of ourselves is potentially born’ (http://www.awakeninthedream.com/wordpress/the-wounded-healer-part-1/).

Scars are also about wounds. In Isaiah 53 we read: “Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering … and by his wounds we are healed.” Jesus saves us through his wounds. Jesus took bread, blessed it, broke it and gave it to his disciples at the last supper. Henri Nouwen, who is perhaps best known for applying Jungian thinking on the wounded healer to pastoral ministry, “interprets these acts as symbolising the way in which Jesus was taken by his father, blessed at his baptism, broken on the cross and then given to the world and that the same can be said of people (God’s beloved children according to Nouwen). This means that God reveals to people their chosenness and the blessing of being His beloved children; they are broken by life’s sorrows and the result of their brokenness is to be given to the world as a gift” (Philip Nolte).

That was Mandy’s experience as she shared her story with others and set up support groups which aimed to cut out the pain for those taking part. Mandy’s experience of acceptance in Christ in time led her to a place where she could talk openly about her experiences, particularly if by doing so she could help others cope with their traumas or move beyond the urge to self-harm. Those who are wounded often become wounded healers, with their experience of living with their wounds shaping their ministry to others facing similar experiences and circumstances.

So how could our resurrection lives and bodies not include what is both formative and loving in us, of us and about us? For that to be the case, however, we need to acknowledge that we are all wounded and scarred, to view the wounds we bear as being embraced by Christ, as formative in our lives and as opportunities which create potential in us to minister in future to others. An Easter Day Eucharistic Prayer includes these words, ‘make our scars beautiful like your scars’. May it be so for each one of us. Amen.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

John & Ross Harding - Yesterday Today Forever.

The Mark of the Cross

Here's my reflection from today's Eucharist at St Andrew's Wickford:

In Luke’s Gospel we read that Jesus, when the days drew near for him to be taken up, set his face to go to Jerusalem (Luke 9.51-62). In Isaiah 50, we read of God’s servant setting his face like flint and not turning backwards although he gives his back to those who struck him, and his cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; so, he did not hide his face from insult and spitting (Isaiah 50.4-11). That is an accurate description of what Jesus did and endured in Jerusalem on the way to the cross:

Your face, set like flint,
set towards Jerusalem,
bears the mark of the cross.
You carry the cross
in the resolution
written on
your features.
Death is the choice,
the decision,
the destiny,
revealed
in the blood,
sweat and tears
secreted from
your face
in prayerful questions,
prophetic grief,
pain-full acceptance,
then
imprinted on
Veronica’s veil.

Jesus bore the mark of the cross on his face as he was so determined to go to Jerusalem and to the cross. In Luke’s Gospel we read that he entered a village of the Samaritans but they did not receive him, because his face was set towards Jerusalem. The flint-like determination on his face was such that the Samaritan villagers could see what he was determined to do.

What does this determination, this decision, say to us about Jesus and his death? In our Lent Course on the Stations of the Cross, we asked ourselves what was it that held Jesus to the cross? Was it the nails, or Pilate’s judgement and decree, or the presence of the soldiers, or the size of the crowd? If Jesus was God, then legions of angels could have freed him so, if that was the case, what actually held him there?

We then reflected on these two poems:

What holds you here?
The cruel nails
driven into wrists and feet?
Armed guards
ringing the base of your cross?
The crowd
mocking your purpose and pain?
The exhaustion
of a battered and beaten victim?
A willed commitment
to a loving, reconciling purpose?

***

Blow after hammer blow holds your body
to the cross. Yet, if you had willed so,
you could have walked away. You did not so will,
your will held you crucified and dying.

As God, Jesus had the power to walk away from the Cross or be rescued from it by legions of angels. He chose not to do so. Ultimately, it was not the nails or soldiers or the crowd, or those who condemned him that held him to the cross. He was there because he chose to be. It was his will and his determination and his love that held him there. We first see that will and determination in the flint-like setting of his face to go to Jerusalem. The steely determination that can be seen in his face is the mark of the cross on his face and a sign of his love for each one of us. This Holy Week may we see that love afresh as we look on his face that is set like flint.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Adrian Snell - Golgotha.

Subverting the scapegoat mechanism

Here's the talk I gave this lunchtime at Billericay Methodist Church's Holy Week Midday Meditation Service: 

Isaiah speaks of new things declared before they spring forth (Isaiah 42:1-9). They involve God’s servant on whom God’s Spirit is put and who will faithfully bring forth justice. God’s servant is given as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations, to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners who sit in darkness in the dungeon. He will not grow faint or be crushed until he has established justice in the earth. Although originally spoken about Israel and its divine commission to be a light to the nations, Christians have often seen parallels with the incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, who saw his mission as that of fulfilling the commission originally given to Israel.

At the beginning of Holy Week, I hope to provide a big picture view of what it was that Jesus was doing as he walked towards the cross and the empty tomb. I want to suggest that the insights of the French anthropologist René Girard explain how Jesus achieves the things mentioned in Isaiah’s prophecy and then suggest a way of responding to all that Jesus has done, through our reading from John’s Gospel (John 12:1-11).

Girard suggested that, as human beings, we all act on the basis of mimetic desire leading to conflict and violence which we resolve by the expulsion or sacrifice of scapegoats [R. Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightening (NY: Orbis Books, 2001)]. Mimetic desire is basically a kind of jealousy, but with a twist as we learn what is desirable by observing what others find desirable. Having ‘caught’ our desires from others in a context of scarcity where everyone wants what only some can have (i.e. the survival of the fittest), this results in a struggle to obtain what we want. This, in turn, produces a generalised antagonism towards the individual or group that seems to be responsible for this disappointment. That person or group become our victim as the vicious riddance of the victim has the potential to reduce our eagerness for violence. The removal of the victim or victims – the lambs to the slaughter - gives a temporary re-assurance of the crisis disappearing, and the sensation of renewed possibility. This is a description of cheap solidarity and cheap hope.

Girard claims that, as a result, societies and cultures are originally based on founding murders where this victim or scapegoating mechanism is in operation. He points to Cain’s murder of Abel as being the Biblical story which reveals this basis to human culture: “What has happened since the foundation of the world, that is, since the violent foundations of the first culture, is a series of murders like the Crucifixion. These are murders founded on violent contagion, and consequently they are murders occurring because of the collective error regarding the victim, a misunderstanding caused by violent contagion” [R. Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightening (NY: Orbis Books, 2001), pp. 85 & 86].

The story of Cain and Abel reveals the way in which we consistently act, as human beings. We desire something that is possessed by someone else and become disturbed through our longing for what we don’t have. We resolve our disturbance by creating a scapegoat of the person or people who appear to have or prevent us from having what it is we desire. When the scapegoat is killed, we can gain what we desire and also release the sense of disturbance that we feel. Over time, Girard argues, this mimetic process is disciplined by ritual into sacrificial systems which repeat the founding murder. So, this pattern becomes expressed in religions involving human sacrifices as scapegoats to appease their gods. It is out of such religions that Abraham was called to form a people who do not sacrifice other human beings, but instead use animals as their scapegoats and sacrifices.

After the Fall, God wished to communicate his love to us, human beings intent on personal or group survival. As he had given us free will, he had to communicate in and through the social and cultural structures which we had now created (i.e. sacrificial systems Girard writes about) but, in order to reveal his loving self, had to do so in a way that engaged in an internal dialogue and critique of these same systems. Accordingly, he gave his chosen people, who had recent and personal experience of being scapegoats and victims, a founding story - the story of the sacrifice of Isaac (Genesis 22. 1-19) - in which human sacrifice is emphatically rejected in favour of animal sacrifice.

The legacy of the story of the sacrifice of Isaac, Girard suggests, is that Israel developed a system of animal sacrifice that continued until shortly after the crucifixion of Jesus. Jesus was later born into this people who had subverted the existing practice of scapegoating and he further subverts this practice because, as he is crucified, God becomes the scapegoat that is killed. Jesus’ crucifixion, Girard suggests, was both about God identifying himself with all victims – the scapegoats – who have been sacrificed down through the centuries and also, because in Jesus God himself was scapegoated and sacrificed, the ultimate demonstration of the reality that, as Hosea first stated and Jesus then repeated, God requires mercy, not sacrifice.

As a result, Girard traces a movement away from the dynamic of scapegoating through the Old into the New Testaments. This was something he identified through his anthropological and literary analysis of scapegoating in Judeo-Christian texts and it was this that contributed to his own conversion to the Christian faith. His analysis of the Bible led him to conclude that: Jesus is the final scapegoat; the New Testament is on the side of Jesus, the scapegoat; the scapegoat in the Gospels refuses to let death be the final word and rises again triumphant; and the followers of the scapegoat re-enact the seizing of the scapegoat and the scapegoat’s triumph over death in Eucharistic celebration. 

The Gospels are unusual as literature because they encourage people to see the world through the eyes of the scapegoat. The Bible can then be seen as the record of a conversation between God and a human race which has, as a whole, rejected this conversation but which, in a remnant (mainly Israel and the Church), continues to oscillate between dialogue and independent rejection. 

The life, death and resurrection of Jesus is so decisive, Girard writes, because “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.” So, at the Last Supper, Christ calls us to follow him in serving others, while his Crucifixion reveals the foolishness of scapegoating others and the necessity of concern for all who are victims.

The crucifixion is also the logical outcome of the incarnation. Sam Wells, Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields, has explored in his book ‘The Nazareth Manifesto’ that God is not simply 'for' victims. Instead, God is 'with' victims, because God is a victim. God is not simply 'for' the excluded. God is 'with' the excluded, because God is excluded. God is not simply 'for' those who are scapegoated. God is 'with' scapegoats, because God is a scapegoat. When God is scapegoated, there is no longer any god to appease and the necessity for scapegoating at all is superseded, subverted and eradicated.

This is the reality into which Christianity calls us to live; a world beyond scapegoating, beyond victimisation and beyond exclusion. A world in which the mechanisms for justifying and acting out our violent desires has been dismantled and rendered null and void. A world, as Barbara Brown Taylor has said, in which we ‘keep deciding not to hate the haters, … keep risking the fatal wound of love and teaching others to do the same — because that is how we prepare the ground around us to receive the seeds of heaven when they come.’

Girard has described this radical reversal in terms of God first taking the side of the victim and then, in Christ, becoming the victim: “The desire that lives through imitation almost always leads to conflict, and this conflict frequently leads to violence. The Bible unveils this process of imitative desire leading to conflict, and its distinctive narratives reveal at the same time that God takes the part of victims. In the Gospels the process of unveiling or revelation is radicalized: God himself, the Word become flesh in Jesus, becomes the victim … The New Testament Gospels are the starting point for a new science or knowledge of humanity. This new knowledge begins with faith in Christ the innocent victim, and it becomes the leaven that will work itself out and expand to the point that the concern for victims becomes the absolute value in all societies moulded or affected by the spread of Christianity” (J. G. Williams, ‘Foreword’ in R. Girard, I see Satan fall like lightning, Orbis Books, 2001).

So, "Girard brings our attention to three facts without which we will never make sense of our lives, our world or our faith, namely: the role violence has played in cultural life, the role mimesis plays in psychological and social life, and the role the Bible plays in revealing both of these things and showing us how to deal with them." Girard reveals how the developing dialogue and narrative of scripture can critique, deconstruct and expose societal norms such as the scapegoat mechanism. In this way, Girard's thesis gives us an understanding of the way in which the narrative of scripture can speak to our world today.

How should we respond to God’s dismantling of the scapegoating mechanism by taking the side of victims and by becoming a victim for us? I want to suggest that we should respond as Mary did in our Gospel reading. Mary poured ointment over Jesus’ feet and dried his feet with her hair. Giving in this way involved giving generously from her possessions because the ointment that she used was expensive (imported from countries such as India) and extravagant (half a litre was an enormous amount to use in this way). It also involved giving generously of herself as Jewish women traditionally kept their hair tied up in public and only unloosened their hair in the presence of their husbands. What Mary did in wiping Jesus’ feet with her hair was the ultimate sign of her love for and commitment to Jesus. She did all this, not with regret or out of a sense of duty, but gladly and generously.

Her gift to Jesus was also a response to the love that Jesus had shown towards her. She gave because Jesus had first given extravagantly and generously to her. That is the pattern that we see repeated in God’s dealings with human beings throughout scripture and which is summed up in the most famous verse of scripture, John 3: 16: “God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son.” God so loved, that he gave. Love is the reason for giving; not duty, not regret, but love. In Jesus’ life, death and resurrection God gave everything he had for us. Philippians 2 tells us that, of his own free will, Jesus “gave up all he had, and took the nature of a servant. He became like a human being and appeared in human likeness. He was humble and walked the path of obedience all the way to death – his death on the cross.” This is the extravagant nature of Jesus’ love for us that he would give up all he had in order to walk the path of obedience all the way to his death on the cross.

‘This is what Mary saw in Jesus and is why she responded by giving extravagantly and generously to him. Jesus then astonished the disciples by giving Mary the highest commendation anyone receives in the pages of the Gospels: “Leave her alone,” said Jesus. “Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want. But you will not always have me. She did what she could. She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial. Truly I tell you, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.” (Mark 14:6 -9)’

In reflecting on this story, the artist Makoto Fujimura has said that he prays that, “there will be a new aroma in the air: an aroma of Mary of Bethany, who in response to Jesus’ tears in John 11 and 12 brought her most precious belonging, her most gratuitous, expensive nard. I pray that in the days to come, this aroma will fill the air whenever the words of the Gospel are spoken, that outsiders to faith will sense this extravagant air and feel it, particularly for them. I pray that when our children speak of faith, this gratuitous, intuitive aroma of the love of Christ will be made manifest in their lives.” May that be our prayer this day and throughout our lives.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Julie Miller - How Could You Say No.

Raising up and tearing down

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

Picture a massive road building project cutting through hills and valleys to create a new straight, level road. The vision from Isaiah (Isaiah 40: 1-11) that John the Baptist quotes in our Gospel reading (Mark 1: 1-8) is one that seems to require bulldozers. It reads like the specification for a new motorway or by-pass. “Get the road ready … make a straight path for travel.” “Every valley must be filled up” and “every hill and mountain levelled off.”

John the Baptist uses this image to describe his role in preparing for the coming of Jesus. His aim is for the whole human race to see God’s coming salvation. The idea is that everything that would obscure or obstruct sight of God’s salvation would be torn down or raised up so that throughout the entire world there would be no obstacle able to prevent people from seeing God’s salvation. Everyone should be able to see Jesus because there would be nothing impeding our view; no mountains blocking our vision and no valleys from within which we would be unable to look out. The purpose of John the Baptist’s ministry was that everyone should clearly see who God is and what God does. Picture a vast flat expanse across which the light of Christ can be seen from wherever you stand and you will get the intended idea.

The purpose of this road building project – in other words, the purpose of John the Baptist’s ministry – is that Jesus, God’s salvation, should be plainly seen walking down the road towards us. Everyone is able to see him because there is nothing to block our view; no mountains blocking our vision of Jesus and no valleys from within which we are unable to look out. The purpose of John’s ministry then is that everyone should see Jesus clearly.

So it is worth asking, what are the mountains in our lives that could prevent us from seeing Jesus? John’s ministry was a call to repentance, turning away from all that is wrong in our lives in order to turn to Jesus. The mountains that need to be torn down are the sins that we cling onto, those things that we struggle to renounce or leave behind and which therefore stand in our lives in the place where only God should be; the centre. When we put something or someone at the centre of our lives then that thing or person becomes a barrier which prevents us from seeing God.

As individuals there could be many things which may obscure our vision of Jesus. There might be things in our lives that take precedence over seeking after God. We may have besetting sins; things that we know before God are wrong and yet we are unable to bring ourselves to actually give them up. We might worship our car or home or making money, for example, and our love of these things may prevent us from making our relationship with Jesus our priority. Our priorities may need changing particularly at Christmas when there is so much pressure on us all simply to consume without regard for the person who is actually central to the season.

What might these things be in our lives? Well, that is for us to decide individually, but, in Church history, people have sometimes talked in terms of the seven deadly sins; of wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony.

The words of Isaiah and John also speak about valleys. When we are in a valley we are low down, in a depression, and can’t see a way out; so can’t see God. Here we are not talking about sins which block our view of God, instead we are talking about fears, anxieties, hurts and depressions which bring us down so that we cannot look up and out and see God. What are the fears, anxieties, hurts and depressions in our lives at present? If we want to see God more clearly then we need to be raised up so that we are no longer looking at life from the depths of a depression.

For some of us it may be that instead of barriers between us and Jesus which need to be torn down there are depressions that need to be raised up. Many of us are prevented from seeing Jesus because we feel that we are not good enough to be found in his presence. As a teenager, that was very much how I felt and, for me, those feelings only changed after I felt God speak personally to me in some words from Romans 5: “While we were still sinners Christ died for us.” God’s love for us has nothing to do with how we act. None of us are good enough for God and yet he loves us and showed that love by dying for us. I found that love liberating and, for me, it raised me up so that I could begin to see the glory of God in Jesus for myself.

All this talk of tearing down and raising up is not something that is just for us as individuals though. It is also something that needs to go on in our society too and is part of the role that we can play as Christians in society. Think for yourselves for a moment about some of the barriers that need to come down if our society is to fully see the glory of God in Jesus. During my curacy in Barking & Dagenham I chose to get involved in setting up a Faith Forum because I was aware of the many people who equate religion with conflict and, for whom, this idea is a major barrier to their seeing truth in Christianity. To tear down that barrier it was necessary to demonstrate that people of different faiths could live and talk and work together peacefully.

In a similar way, there are many disadvantaged people within society that need to be raised up if they and others are to be able to see the glory of God in Jesus. We have seen this kind of activity before in the involvement of Christians in the abolition of slavery and in the struggle against apartheid. More recently it has been seen in campaigns to make poverty history, with which the Church has been intimately involved.

Tearing down barriers and raising up depressions leads in Isaiah’s vision to a flat land and a straight path. A similar contemporary phrase might be a level playing field; a phrase that comes from our contemporary concern with equality. It seems possible that Isaiah’s vision is suggesting to us that the glory of God can seen in the achievement of equality, as barriers to inequality are torn down and those who have been treated unequally are raised up.

Isaiah’s vision challenges us to look at ourselves and identify where we have barriers or depressions which prevent us from seeing Jesus which need to be dealt with. But his vision also challenges us to be active in our world to address the barriers and inequalities that prevent many from seeing for themselves the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. This Advent let us resolve to prepare for Christmas by tearing down barriers and raising up those who are down that we might prepare a level playing field on which all peoples can see the salvation of God. 

John preached a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. This is the construction project for our lives which enables us to see and receive God’s salvation in Jesus. As we turn away from the mountains of sin and the valleys of depression, we turn towards Jesus who stands ever ready to receive us with open arms.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Steve Bell & Malcolm Guite - O Come, O Come Emmanuel. 

A future in which every tear will be wiped away

A privilege to lead today's Aden memorial service at the Living Memorial, Rettendon. Lt.Co Hugh Toler spoke during the service about the Aden campaign. Rettendon Living Memorial is a memorial garden with several small museums and covered seating areas. The Living Garden was set up by the landowners Peter and Fran Theobald in 2009 and now contains dedicatory plaques to a number of post 1945 conflicts including Korea, Suez, Northern Ireland and Afghanistan.

Here is the Address that I shared during the service:

These words of the prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 2.1-4) were the inspiration for the well-known spiritual ‘Down by the riverside’ in which we sing: “Gonna lay down my sword and shield” and “I ain't gonna study war no more”.

There are two keys to understanding this passage. The first, is to notice that it is a vision of the future. In days to come, Isaiah prophesies, the nations “shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” The same vision is repeated at the end of the Bible in the Book of Revelation where the prophet John sees “a new heaven and a new earth,” and hears “a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! 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. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

When we are in midst of war, conflict, or any kind of difficulty, as many of you have been, this is a vision of the future to look forward to; a vision of peace and wellbeing to enable us to look up from the troubles of today and pray for the coming of God’s kingdom, as we do when we pray “Thy kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven.” It is also a picture of the peace which those we know who have already lost their lives now experience in the presence of God; and for that we can also give thanks.

The second key to understanding this passage is that it begins to be realised when many peoples say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.” Learning the ways of God and walking in his paths, that is the way to experiencing a taste in the here and now of the kingdom of God which is still to come. The Canadian singer-songwriter, Leonard Cohen, said that, “Of all the people who left their names behind, I don’t think there’s a figure of Christ’s moral stature. A man who declared himself to stand among the thieves, the prostitutes, the homeless. His position cannot be comprehended. It is an inhuman generosity … (which) would overthrow the world if it was embraced.” It is as we begin to embrace Christ and follow in his footsteps that the world changes and nations begin to lay down their swords and shields and not study war no more.

Until that day comes, we will continue to need and honour those, like yourselves, who are prepared to follow the example of Christ by laying down your lives for others, but we should never lose sight of the vision of God’s kingdom which calls us into a future in which every tear will be wiped away and there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Shona McGarty - Hallelujah.

Making decisions about future directions in life

Here's my sermon from today's Eucharist at St Catherine’s Wickford:

Am I in the right place? Following the right path? In the right work? What is God’s will for my life? What is my vocation? These are just some of the questions prompted by this passage (Matthew 4. 12-23), as we read of Jesus, those who heard him, and his first disciples all making key decisions about their future direction of travel. Hopefully, we shall see some of the factors which play a part in their decision making.

Jesus hears that John the Baptist is no longer able to continue his public ministry because he has been imprisoned. As John was his predecessor, the one who was preparing the way for Jesus' own ministry, Jesus judges that the time is now right for his ministry to begin. So circumstances seem to provide the trigger or opportunity for Jesus’ ministry to begin and can play a part in our lives too. Jesus seemed able to read circumstances well, we not always able to do that as well as he did and sometimes only understand what was happening to us at the time when we look back.

As a teenager, I didn’t get the grades needed to get into University and felt like dropping out of education altogether. I was persuaded to go through clearing however and got a place at Middlesex Polytechnic, so came to London instead of Leicester, where I’d been intending to study. As I was applying late, there was no accommodation available in Halls and so I had to find somewhere to live off site. Once I’d settled in, I started going to the parish Church which was where I met Christine, who became my wife. I thought at the time that doing less well in my A levels was a disaster, but without that happening I would not have had the marriage and family that I now have. I was being led through circumstances to something wonderful but had no idea that that was the case at the time.

While circumstances played a part, Jesus also allowed scripture to shape the form that his ministry would take. The Gospel writer includes a quote from Isaiah 9, a passage which is often read at Christmas, to explain what Jesus was doing. A key theme of the prophecies collected in Isaiah is that of Israel as God’s servant. Jesus takes this servant role assigned to Israel in prophecy as his ministry template or job description and so, guided by scripture, he chose to begin his ministry in Galilee.

We can also base our lives and ministry on a template or job description. Our template is Jesus himself - so, for example, the letter to the Philippians talks about knowing Christ in order to become like him. Christlikeness should be our goal as Christians; not that we ever attain in this life. Our job description is essentially Jesus’ own manifesto taken from the Book of Isaiah and read at Nazareth near the beginning of his ministry: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me to … bring good news to the poor … proclaim liberty to the captives … recovery of sight to the blind … set free the oppressed … and announce that the time for salvation has come.

Jesus’ message to those who listened to his preaching was that Israel was on the wrong path and must turn around and move in the opposite direction. Tom Wright writes that, “Jesus believed that his contemporaries were going in the wrong direction. They were bent on revolution of the standard kind: military resistance to occupying forces, leading to a takeover of power … The problem with all these movements was that they were fighting darkness with darkness, and Israel was called - and Jesus was called - to bring God’s light into the world. That’s why Matthew hooks up Jesus’ early preaching with the prophecy of Isaiah that spoke about people in the dark being dazzled by a sudden light … Jesus could see that the standard kind of revolution, fighting and killing in order to put an end to … fighting and killing, was a nonsense. Doing it in God’s name was a blasphemous nonsense.

But the trouble was that many of his contemporaries were eager to get on with the fight. His message of repentance was not, therefore, that they should feel sorry for personal and private sins (though he would of course want that as well), but that as a nation they should stop rushing towards the cliff edge of violent revolution, and instead go the other way, towards God’s kingdom of light and peace and healing and forgiveness, for themselves and for the world.”

What do we as a nation need to turn away from in order to turn towards God? Some years ago, William Butler, then chief economist at the investment banking giant Citigroup, was quoted as saying that we have lived beyond our means year after year and the nation collectively has to consume less while Janice Turner argued that consumerism has become like a religion to us leading us to believe that living standards would keep being upgraded like mobile phones. The cost of living crisis means that we can’t spend as we did and can’t live beyond our means any longer, but, can we, as a nation, stop rushing towards the cliff edge of consumerism, and instead go the other way, towards God’s kingdom of light and peace and healing and forgiveness?

Maybe, if we catch once again a vision of Jesus as he really is, we can. The integration of Jesus' message with his personality and actions was so attractive for his first disciples that they left their livelihoods to be with him doing the things that he did and becoming part of his mission bringing the rule of love in the kingdom of God. Why did they give up the security which they had to follow a wandering preacher? “The answer can only be in Jesus himself, and in the astonishing magnetism of his presence and personality. This can be known and felt today, as we meditate on the stories about him and pray to know him better, just as the first disciples knew and felt his presence 2,000 years ago.”

So, are we able to demonstrate in some way the kingdom of God where we work or live? Is what we do currently contributing to the coming of Jesus' revolution of love? Do we need to turn around and leave what we are currently engaged with in order that we might be engaged with the kingdom of God or do we need to listen to circumstances and scripture in order to understand how to live under the rule of love in the place where we are right now?

These are just some the questions which arise from the varying ways in which see Jesus, his disciples, and those who heard his preaching, making decisions about their future direction in life. Lead us, Lord, in your ways that we may live under your rule of love revealing your kingdom where we live and work.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Rev Simpkins - Sing Your Life.

And a little child shall lead them

Here's my sermon for Midnight Mass at St Martin-in-the-Fields: 

This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.

What does Christmas look like today? Artist Nicola Ravenscroft has given us a vivid portrayal in her installation ‘With the Heart of a Child.’ It's on display below us in our crypt. The crypt is currently closed, so I'm going to describe the sculpture to you. It shows us seven life-size bronze children - one from every continent on Earth. Each one is simply dressed in soft silk. Each is leaning forward hopefully as if poised to dive into the future. Their eyes are closed as if they are dreaming into their future, anticipating things unseen.

Nicola writes that, as mother, and artist, she has agonised at the sight of our fractured society, our impending climate catastrophe, and our collective fear. She sees a desperate need for creativity and togetherness to arrest this. Her belief is that children can quietly lead us into recognising the truth of our ‘universal ONENESS, our oneness with each other and our oneness with the Earth’. So, her response to the challenges we currently face, especially this Christmas, has been to create this international group of little leaders pointing us towards understanding and TOGETHERNESS. They are an encouragement ‘to do whatever it takes to find solutions, to heal our broken planet, and so, to save our future.’

The prophet Isaiah promised a child born for us who would establish endless peace upheld with justice and righteousness: ‘For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.’ Isaiah also told of a little child who shall lead. He described a time when the wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.

Isaiah's vision of the peaceable kingdom was centred on a child born to be the Prince of Peace. When that promised child came among us, he said: ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs’, ‘Unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven’, ‘Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven’ and ‘Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.’

So, the child born for us in Bethlehem leads us to become like children. Why is this so? I want to suggest two reasons. The first is about a vulnerability revealing the interdependence of which Nicola speaks and the second, a way of looking revealing our connection with creation.

First, vulnerability. The Christmas story is that the God we think of as an all-powerful protector chose to become wholly dependent on human beings for his own protection. As a human baby God was wholly dependent on other human beings, primarily Mary and Joseph, for his protection and, as we hear regularly on the news, human beings don’t actually have a very good track record when it comes to treating children well. God was willing to take the risk of coming into our world; a world in which genocides occur and in which innocent children are abused and die - as happened with the massacre of the innocents in Bethlehem and beyond, a world in which he, though innocent, was tortured as a criminal and strung up on a cross to die:

“And the word became … / Wordless / Flesh / A baby with no words / And the voice of the maker became a hungry voice / A cry for food / A cry for milk / The voice that made gravity cried out for fear of falling / The voice that made women cries for a woman’s breast and screams with disappointment when it is denied …

Then now God is this small thing / Is a baby / Is a baby that can be dropped or hurt or left unfed, left unchanged, left wet and smelly / Or be child-abused.” (‘Image of the Invisible,’ Late, Late Service)

That was the reality of the incarnation and of the Christmas story. That is what it meant for Jesus to be born. It is the ultimate identification. God became flesh and blood and moved into our neighbourhood with all that that involves, not just at the beginning of his life but throughout. Why does this matter? It is when we are vulnerable that we are most aware of our need of others; that intrinsic interdependence that Nicola suggests is revealed to us by our experience of birth and childhood.

The sense of vulnerability engendered by the pandemic originally brought us a sense of community like never before as neighbours left notes offering help to those in their streets, as food banks supplied those in need, as we stood on our streets to applaud NHS and care workers, and as those same workers give sacrificially to care for those in need. If we follow the little child who leads we will see more community connection because, if we develop the heart of a child, our sense of vulnerability will reveal our interdependence and need one of another.

The second path to connection through childlikeness is about looking. As a baby Jesus was wholly dependent on others, as a child he began to explore the world around him using his sight, because sight precedes speech. We know from his parables and teaching that his learning was firmly rooted in the natural cycles of sowing, growing and reaping combined with deep appreciation for the beauty of the natural world, including the lilies of the field, and the value of each creature, including sparrows that cannot fall without God knowing. This understanding and appreciation derived from the attention he paid as a child to the natural world around him.

Artist and nun Sister Corita Kent once described a child’s journey from the front of the house to the back to illustrate the way children see the world, the attention they pay to it, and the wonder that they find. That short journey would ‘be full of pauses, circling, touching and picking up in order to smell, shake, taste, rub, and scrape’, ‘every object along the path will be a new discovery’ because ‘the child treats the situation with the open curiosity and attention that it deserves.’

Sister Corita went on to argue that through practice adults can learn once again to see as children do. She suggested that the kind slow looking practised by children, like prayer and art, enables us to view life without being distracted and allows us to put all our attention on a special area for a time. As would have been the case for the child Jesus, when we slow ourselves and focus our attention in this way we begin to receive what the world around has to show us; we notice things that others don’t and come to see that ordinary things are wondrous. The art historian John Ruskin claimed that the power of seeing in this way is ‘the teaching of all things,’ and that ‘To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion – all in one.’

This is a form of prayer taking us to a place and space full of delight and wonder; prayer, poetry and prophecy. In this prayerful space and attitude we see the peaceable kingdom into which the child born in Bethlehem wishes to lead us. For many of us that was part of our original lockdown experience, as we walked in green spaces and, in the silence, heard the birds sing like never before.

Children naturally see that peaceable kingdom through the attention that they pay to the world around them, until we, as adults, teach them otherwise. That is why the children are our future and can lead the way into a better future. Like the poet Thomas Traherne, we need to unlearn the dirty devices of this world in order to become, as it were, a little child again that we may enter into the Kingdom of God.

Nicola Ravenscroft intuitively understands these truths and, as a maternal sculptor, creates children that through their connection to nature grant us a vision of the peaceable kingdom toward which they wish to lead us. In words taken from the novelist Joseph Conrad, her urgent prayer is that the children she has sculpted, ‘shall awaken in the hearts of the beholders, that feeling of unavoidable solidarity: of the solidarity in mysterious origin, in toil, in joy, in hope, in uncertain fate, which binds all to each other, and all humankind to the visible world.’

These are the children the adult Jesus called us to welcome, the children we are to become, the children to whom the peaceable kingdom belongs. They stand together peacefully in our Crypt as friends, vulnerable and strong, silently singing out their call to change. These little bronze children lead with trusting feet, plump and bare. The Prince of Peace is with them and calls us to let them lead the way saying the kingdom of heaven belongs to children, and anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it. 

Our world with its current catastrophes, fractures in society, and collective fears is crying out for change and hope. The baby born at Bethlehem remains the sign that we, too, need to be born again if our world is to know new life and fresh hope. That is the Christmas we need today and so, together with Nicola, my prayer is that we let the baby wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger lead us to become like children ourselves; open to vulnerability, embracing interdependence, paying prayerful attention to the world and thereby entering Christ’s peaceable kingdom.

I will be continuing to explore the themes of the sermon in a new series of posts called 'Seeing is receiving: The art of contemplation', the first of which will follow this post. Click here to read the first post in this new series.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Randall Thompson - The Peaceable Kingdom.