Christ made alive and fruitful in the world

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

At my first training weekend as a curate 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. His action turned our expectations, as curates, of Bishops and their behaviour upside-down at the same time that it perfectly illustrated his point.

The visual metaphor of Bishop David’s handstand can also be applied to the Magnificat, the song sung by Mary following her meeting with Elizabeth (about which we heard in today’s Gospel reading - Luke 1. 39 – 55) with all of the great reversals contained within it; ‘He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.’ Turning upside-down, as in a handstand, involves a revolution and, because of its great reversals, the Magnificat has been called ‘the most beautiful and revolutionary hymn in the world’; one that ‘is redolent of theologically and politically destabilizing realities.’

The Magnificat was sung by an obscure young Jewish girl who has become one of the most important figures in the global faith that is Christianity. This example of expectations being turned upside down is captured well by Malcolm Guite in his sonnet for the Feast of the Visitation:

Here is a meeting made of hidden joys
Of lightenings cloistered in a narrow place
From quiet hearts the sudden flame of praise
And in the womb the quickening kick of grace.
Two women on the very edge of things
Unnoticed and unknown to men of power
But in their flesh the hidden Spirit sings
And in their lives the buds of blessing flower.
And Mary stands with all we call ‘too young’,
Elizabeth with all called ‘past their prime’
They sing today for all the great unsung
Women who turned eternity to time
Favoured of heaven, outcast on the earth
Prophets who bring the best in us to birth.

Mary has been given many titles down the ages but ‘the earliest ‘title’, agreed throughout the church in the first centuries of our faith, before the divisions of East and West, Catholic and Protestant, was Theotokos, which means God-Bearer. Mary is the prime God-Bearer, bearing for us in time the One who was begotten in eternity, bringing Jesus to us and, therefore, as woman and mother, the one who has been closest to God. Every Christian after her should “seek to become in some small way a God-bearer, one whose ‘yes’ to God means that Christ is made alive and fruitful in the world through our flesh and our daily lives, is born and given to another.”

For Mary and Elizabeth to be caught up in events with such revolutionary implications - events which turn our understanding of societal norms upside down – was far from easy. W. David O. Taylor writes: “Behind Elizabeth and Zechariah's joy at the birth of their son John was the knowledge that they had lost an inconsolably long number of years to enjoy watching him grow up.” “At the edge of Gabriel's annunciation was the social stress that Mary would endure in a society where it was all about your embedded role in the community.” She was not believed, either by those closest to her and those who didn’t really know her. Engaged to Joseph when the annunciation occurred, as she was found to be with child before they lived together, Joseph planned to dismiss her quietly. He had his own meeting with Gabriel which changed that decision but, if the man to whom she was betrothed, could not believe her without angelic intervention, then it would be no surprise if disbelief and misunderstanding characterised the response to Mary wherever she went. And “lurking over Joseph's shoulder was the gossip that would nag him all his life, that he is merely the putative father of Jesus.” 

Bearing all this in mind, we can imagine how much Mary needed the moment of empathy and inspiration described in today’s Gospel reading because the experience of being the God-bearer involved such difficulty. We can imagine how important it was to her to be with a relative who not only believed her but was also partway through her own miraculous pregnancy. The relief that she would have felt at being believed and understood would have been immense and then there is the shared moment of divine inspiration when the Holy Spirit comes on them, the babe in Elizabeth’s womb leaps for joy, and as Elizabeth blesses Mary, Mary is inspired to sing the Magnificat. In the face of so much disbelief and lack of support, this confirmation that they were both following God’s will, would have been overwhelming.

We can learn much from Mary’s faith, trust and persistence in the face of disbelief, misunderstanding and probable insult. We can also learn from this moment when God gives her both human empathy through Elizabeth and divine inspiration through the Holy Spirit to be a support and strengthening in the difficulties which she faced as God-bearer. Our own experience in times of trouble and difficulty will be similar as, on the one hand, God asks to trust and preserve while, on the other, he will provide us with moments of support and strengthening.

Then, as we have already heard Malcolm Guite suggesting, every Christian after Mary should “seek to become in some small way a God-bearer, one whose ‘yes’ to God means that Christ is made alive and fruitful in the world through our flesh and our daily lives, is born and given to another.” Mary bore Jesus into the revolutions of her day and time; revolutions which began with her bearing of Jesus and continued in and through his ministry, death and resurrection. We are called to bear Jesus into the revolutions of our own day and time; even bearing him in such a way that new revolutions begin.

Christ is born in each one of us as we open our lives to him and we then bear, carry or take him to others as our daily lives reveal aspects of his character and love to others. As Teresa of Avila said: “Christ has no body but yours, / No hands, no feet on earth but yours, / Yours are the eyes with which he looks Compassion on this world, /Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good, / Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world. / Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, / Yours are the eyes, you are his body. / Christ has no body now but yours, / No hands, no feet on earth but yours, / Yours are the eyes with which he looks / compassion on this world. / Christ has no body now on earth but yours.” In this way, we bear him to others.

Malcolm Guite’s poem ‘Theotokos’ sums up some of the different ways in which Mary’s experience can speak to us and inspire us in the challenges we face as we go through life. In its final lines, it also suggests a possible response to those challenges and experiences:

You bore for me the One who came to bless
And bear for all and make the broken whole.
You heard His call and in your open ‘yes’
You spoke aloud for every living soul.
Oh gracious Lady, child of your own child,
Whose mother-love still calls the child in me,
Call me again, for I am lost, and wild
Waves surround me now. On this dark sea
Shine as a star and call me to the shore.
Open the door that all my sins would close
And hold me in your garden. Let me share
The prayer that folds the petals of the Rose.
Enfold me too in Love’s last mystery
And bring me to the One you bore for me.

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Steve Bell - Mary (Theotokos).

The two things that matter

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

The Jewish people to whom John the Baptist was speaking in today's Gospel reading (Luke 3.7-18) thought that they were God’s people because of their birth; because they were Abraham’s ancestors (v 8). John the Baptist tells them that that isn’t the case. If the people of Israel are like a tree, he says, then God can cut that tree down at its roots.

Many of us will have grown up in Christian families, just as all those to whom John was speaking had grown up as Jews. Like them we may well have attended services for the worship of God since we were children and we, like them, might think that that makes us a part of God’s family. John’s message is that that is not the case.

There are two things that matter says John. Two things that make all the difference and family roots and traditions are not included. The two things that matter, says John, are firstly how we respond to Jesus, the coming Messiah and secondly whether our response involves actions as well as words.

John pictures Jesus, the coming Messiah, with a winnowing shovel separating the wheat from the chaff. He is saying that the coming of Jesus will separate out the true people of God from the false and it is by our reaction to Jesus that this will become apparent. Isaiah speaks about God being like a stone over which people stumble and, in the New Testament, both Paul and Peter apply this image to Jesus. Jesus himself says that he did not bring peace but a sword and came to set sons against fathers, daughters against mothers and so on. What he is talking about is the reality that as the coming Messiah he would be a controversial figure about whom people would be divided, even in the same family.

It is by our reactions and responses to Jesus, John says, that we can see who are God’s people and who are not. The question for us this morning then is who do we believe Jesus to be. Is he the Messiah, the son of God and saviour of the world, or was he just a good man but a man nonetheless? What we believe is important because, John says, if we reject Jesus then we reject God.

But within our response to Jesus as God’s son, as the Messiah there is also a further level of consideration. Is our response to Jesus just about words that we speak and beliefs that we keep in mind or do those words and those beliefs change our lives; do they affect the way in which we live? Our actions reveal our true beliefs. Do those things that will show that you have turned from your sins, John says to the crowd in verse 8. Don’t just mouth meaningless words but put your money where your mouth is and do the things that will demonstrate that your life has been turned around by your encounter with Jesus.

What are we to do, the crowd, the tax collectors and the soldiers ask John in verses 10 – 14. His response is not actually that demanding; do your job well, do it fairly and honestly and be generous with what you have.

Working hard and well and being generous are signs that we have changed from people who are out for ourselves to people with a concern for God and for others. It is that change that God is looking for in our lives. It is that change that shows Him and other people that we have had a genuine encounter with Jesus Christ that has changed our heart and not just our mind or our words.

These then are the two things that John the Baptist says matter when we stand before God; our response to Jesus and a response that involves practical change in our lives to show that we have genuinely encountered Jesus and accepted him as God’s son, the Saviour of the World. May it be so for each one of us. Amen.

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Nirvana - Lord, Up Above.

Advent change

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

Get the road ready! Turn away from your sins! Bring the right kind of offerings!

These are cries and readings about the need for change because of dissatisfaction with the present. God’s coming does not involve comfort for the complacent but instead is a challenge to change.

Malachi (Malachi 3: 1 - 4) sets out a timetable or schedule for change; first a messenger will come to prepare the way for God himself to come, then the Lord himself will suddenly come to his Temple. Neither coming though will be easy or comfortable.

John the Baptist (Luke 3: 1 – 6) is the promised messenger and he comes preaching repentance and change as the necessary preparation for the coming of God himself. Turning away from sins and being baptized is the way to get the road ready along which God will come. He calls on the people of Israel to do this, so that the whole human race – all peoples everywhere – will be able to see God’s salvation when it comes in the person of Jesus.

But, as Malachi emphasises, the coming of Jesus is also about challenge and change: “He will be like strong soap, like a fire that refines metal. He will come to judge like one who refines and purifies silver.”

How was this aspect of Jesus expressed when he came? In John’s Gospel Jesus says to Nicodemus: “This is how the judgement works: the light has come into the world, but people love the darkness rather than the light, because their deeds are evil. Those who do evil things hate the light and will not come to the light, because they do not want their evil deeds to be shown up. But those who do what is true come to the light in order that the light may show that what they did was in obedience to God.”

In other words, the light of Christ is all about comparisons and transparency. Generally, when we compare ourselves with others, we compare ourselves with those we think are worse than or similar to ourselves. On the basis of these comparisons, we think we are ok; at least no better or worse than others, at best, better than many others around us. On the basis of these comparisons, we are comfortable with who we are and see no need to change. But Jesus, through his life and death, shows us the depth of love of which human beings are really capable and, on the basis of that comparison, we come up well short and are in real need of change. In the light of Jesus’ self-sacrifice, we see our inherent selfishness and recognise our need for change.

The light of Christ is also about transparency. When we think others cannot see what we are doing, our tendency is to try to get away with things we know are wrong and of which we would be ashamed were they public knowledge. We can see this tendency at work in all major public scandals such as phone hacking, libor-rate fixing, MPs expenses, and so on. When we think no one can see what we are doing, we try to get away with murder but when those things become public that is when we are then contrite. This is why campaigners call for transparency in business and politics and why their calls are often resisted.

Yet God does see all and Jesus, in his ministry, was able to shine a light on the deepest recesses of the human heart. The Samaritan woman said of him: “Come see the man who told me everything I have ever done.” With Jesus, nothing is hidden, everything is transparent; therefore, we need to change if we are to truly live in the light of his presence.

The Secret Chord, the book I have had published, was written with Peter Banks, the keyboard player in the rock band After The Fire. One of the best songs by After The Fire is called ‘Laser Love’ and it contains these lines:

“Your love is like a laser burning right into my life
You know my weaknesses, you cut me like a knife
You’re separating all the wrong things from the right
It’s like a laser, laser love.

Your love is like an X-ray there is nothing that can hide
You hold me to the light, you see what is inside
It’s all so clear when it’s there in black and white
Just like a laser, laser love.”

We might wonder what this kind of exposure has to do with love but it is a love which refuses to leave us in the dark and which does everything possible to bring light into our lives.

This is the light and love that we celebrate as coming into the world at Christmas. It is tough love and a searching light. When we light our Advent candles or our Christingles or sing carols by candlelight it is easy to think that what we are celebrating is traditional, pretty, unchanging and sweet. But the reality of Christ’s love and light is tough and searching because it is challenging and because it calls us to change.

At Christmas we often ask the question what will we give but before we can answer that question, we need to respond to the question posed by Advent which is, ‘How are we going to change?’ It is once we have been changed by God that we, then, have something good to give. So how will you respond to these Advent challenges to ‘Get the road ready!’ ‘Turn away from your sins!’ and ‘Bring the right kind of offerings!’ What will you change about yourself this Advent as you prepare to welcome the Christ who comes at Christmas?

One starting point in thinking this through might be to think of what you would want to change in others and then, as the saying goes, to realise that “When you point one finger, there are three fingers pointing back at you.” Alternatively, you could think of what you would like to see changed within the world and then take on board the challenge of Mahatma Gandhi to “Be the change you want to see in the world”

An inherent danger in thinking about change is our tendency to assume that change begins with someone else. It is so easy to believe that “we” are doing the right things and that it is “them” that need to change but, as Eric Jensen has said, “The reason things stay the same is because we stay the same. For things to change, we must change” or, as U2 once sang, “I can’t change the world but I can change the world in me.”

So, this year, instead of focusing on Christmas Cheer, let us think of Christmas Change. What will you change about yourself this Advent as you prepare to welcome the Christ who comes at Christmas?

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After The Fire - Laser Love.

Lord, disarm violence and begin with me

Here's the sermon I shared in the 9.30 am service at St Mary Magdalene Great Burstead:

In 2014, a poster for the children’s Horrible Histories stage tour attracted protests from parents. Horrible Histories, as many of you will know, describes itself as 'history with the nasty bits left in.' It is a series which has inspired millions of children to discover history because the books have ‘got ALL the yucky bits and foul facts that other books leave out.’

The posters, advertising the 'Barmy Britain' tour, featured a big picture of an executioner holding an axe and a bloody head and were labelled as being in 'shockingly bad taste' by furious parents in the wake of the beheading of Western hostages by ISIS militants. A father-of-two from Chelmsford, said: 'The posters are shocking in light of the recent events in the news and in really bad taste. The pictures are meant to be showing events in history, but sadly beheadings are still going on and are all too real.’ Neal Foster, director and producer of the show, said: 'It is unfortunate and we are sympathetic to anyone who is offended by the poster, but it was designed in July 2013, a long time before these recent incidents came to attention.’

These responses were interesting because they seem to suggest that as long as the nasty events of history are kept firmly in the past, we can enjoy history with all the foul facts left in but as soon as those same events feature in our present, we have a problem with showing and viewing them.

I wonder whether the same holds true for similarly violent Biblical stories such as today’s Gospel reading about the beheading of John the Baptist (Mark 6.14-29). How do we understand such passages? Should they be censored, as happened to the ‘Barmy Britain’ posters? Do we find the blood and gore attractive, repulsive, or are we immune to it?

The first thing I want to say in the light of all this is that the Bible does not give us a sanitised version of violence. If anything, the reverse is the case and the Bible can easily be seen, like the Horrible Histories, as full of blood and gore. There is realism in our Scriptures about nature, and human nature in particular, being red in tooth and claw. This realism sees each one of us as having the potential for violence, whether we ascribe that to sin or the survival of the fittest. As studies examining complicity in the Holocaust tend to show, those involved were not monsters, ‘beasts or aliens’ and the overwhelming brutality involved appeared to arise easily ‘in the context of 1930s Germany, with its background of economic depression, political disenchantment and frustrated nationalist sentiment’. This suggests that we are all actually at different points on the same continuum between peace and violence and the saying, 'there, but for the grace of God, go I' carries a profound truth about which we need to be honest and repentant.

Our complicity with violence often leads us to make God over in our own violent image. Bob Dylan described this tendency well in the song ‘With God on our Side’. We begin with the belief that the land that we live in has God on its side and from there we interpret every change and challenge in our history as indicating that God is truly on our side. This, as Dylan notes in the 5th verse, can lead to the confusions of changing sides in war and peace. So, during the Second World War we believed that the German nation did not have God on their side but once the War ended and there was reconstruction with the German nation becoming our allies that changed and they now had God on their side, despite all that had previously occurred during the war.

Our human tendency to believe that God is on our side pervades the Old Testament and can be described as the core testimony about God. As this core testimony sees God as being on our side, it legitimizes and justifies our national interests. In this way of thinking our enemies are God's enemies and we petition him in prayer to smite and destroy those who are our and, therefore, also his enemies.

Also found in the Old Testament, however, is a counter testimony which, at times, can seem overwhelmed or submerged by the core testimony but which is, nevertheless, a thread running throughout scripture. The counter testimony says that God, rather than being about power and rather than being on the side of those in power, is actually most concerned about those who are crushed by the power-mongers of this world; those who are victims, those who are poor, those who are powerless, those who are excluded, those who are scapegoats.

These two testimonies about God are both present throughout the Bible with the core testimony often appearing dominant. But, we believe, at a particular point in human history God himself entered human history in the person of Jesus in order to show us in actions and words just what God is actually like. In Jesus, the counter testimony becomes prominent as Jesus lives, teaches, dies and rises not only as an example of compassion toward those who are victims, excluded and scapegoated but also becomes a victim, becomes excluded, becomes a scapegoat himself. When God is revealed in human history it is as a victim of violence, not as a perpetrator of violence.

God's revelation in Jesus continues a subversion of the human story of violence that actually began in the Old Testament. René Girard suggests that 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.

That is what we see acted out in the story of Herodias and Salome. The privileges that Herodias and Salome enjoy seem to be threatened and they identify John the Baptist as the threat to their continued enjoyment of their desires. John is therefore scapegoated and killed to remove their sense of threat.

This pattern becomes expressed in religions involving human sacrifices as scapegoats to appease their gods. It is out of such religions that Abraham is called to form a people who do not sacrifice other human beings, but instead use animals as their scapegoats and sacrifices. Jesus is later born into this people who have subverted the existing practice of scapegoating and he further subverts this practice because, as he is crucified, God becomes the scapegoat that is killed.

The crucifixion is, therefore, the logical outcome of the incarnation. To use the language of Sam Well's, Nazareth Manifesto, God is not simply for victims. 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 is superceded, subverted and eradicated.

This is the reality in which Christianity calls us to live. A world beyond Horrible Histories, beyond scapegoating, beyond victimisation and beyond exclusion. A world in which the mechanisms for justifying and acting out our violent desires have 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’.

‘Violence did not surprise Jesus. He was prepared for it, and he tried to prepare his followers as well but few of them had ears to hear.’ ‘Even before the violent had come for him, he knew what had happened to God’s messengers in the past: silenced, exiled, outlawed, killed …Then King Herod threw John the Baptist in prison … and Jesus had to say it all over again: expect violence; prepare for it; never underestimate the harm it can do.’

Are we similarly prepared? Do we know ‘the power to resist the deadly force of violence’ by doing what Jesus taught and practised: ‘turn the cheek, pray for the persecutor, love the enemy, welcome the stranger. In everything do to others as you would have them do to you.’ Are we willing, like John the Baptist and Jesus, to be prophets who can see and name what does not belong with us and can shine the light of God’s truth in the night-time of fear and oppression?

If we do then our prayer must be: Lord, disarm violence and begin with me. As Barbara Brown Taylor has noted, ‘Sometimes [the power to resist the deadly force of violence] actually works to disarm the violence in others, which is why we know the names of Gandhi, Tutu, and King. But that is not its main purpose. Its main purpose is to disarm the violence in us, so that we do not join the other team.’

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Bruce Cockburn - Orders.

Who are you?

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

Who are you? That was the question that the priests and Levites asked John the Baptist in today’s Gospel reading (John 1. 6-8, 19-28). Think for a moment about the way in which you answer that question when someone asks it of you.

Often when we are asked who we are, we answer by saying what we do and tell the person asking about the job that we do. For many of us, our work seems to be the thing that we think is the most significant thing about us. If we don’t talk about our job, then we might talk about a role we have, perhaps being a parent, or we might talk about our family; so, I might say to someone who knows my family that I’m Phil and Pauline’s son or Rachel’s brother. Another tack might be to talk about our interests, so I might say that I’m a painter or a writer or an Oxford United fan. Whatever we say in answer to the question ‘Who are you?’ the answer usually involves saying something about ourselves.

So, it is surprising that when John the Baptist is asked who he is, he doesn’t say anything about himself at all. Firstly, he is asked whether he is one of the great figures of the Jewish religion; the Messiah, Elijah or Moses. We’ve probably all at some time pretended that we are one of our heroes, whether we’ve played at being our favourite pop star looking into our bedroom mirror and singing into our hair brush or have wanted to be Pele or Bobby Moore or Kevin Keegan or Ronaldo when we have been playing football with our mates. We all have delusions of grandeur! Even as Vicars, maybe wanting to be the next Billy Graham or Justin Welby or Tom Wright!

The temptation for John the Baptist to claim his place in the pantheon of Jewish heroes must have been strong but what he actually says is just ‘No, I am not.’ Nothing about who he is, just statements of what he is not. And yet these denials have huge significance.

On one level they are a way of saying that what he is part of, what he is pointing towards can’t be explained by the usual ways of understanding things. The priests and Levites were looking for a category that they could use to understand John, perhaps so that they could label him and file him away and forget about him. If we can fit someone into a neat category – he’s a Hammers fan, she’s single mother, he’s Irish or she’s a computer programmer - then we feel as though we’ve got them sussed and we know all about them. John doesn’t allow that to happen and by doing so says that what is going on here does fit any of your categories; it’s ‘outside the box’ and, if you’re going to understand then you’ve got to have your way of thinking about God expanded and changed.

On another level, his denials are also a subtle way of pointing to Jesus as God. Throughout John’s Gospel Jesus makes a series of I AM statements about himself. He says, ‘I AM the living water, the bread of life’ and so on. In doing so, Jesus is using the very name of God who responded to Moses by saying ‘I AM who I AM.’ John by contrast says, ‘I AM NOT.’ By framing his denial using the ‘I AM’ statement he is pointing his listeners to the one who will come after him who will be able to say ‘I AM,’ who will be God himself.

This is John the Baptist’s sole mission and purpose; not to point people to himself by saying look at me aren’t I wonderful? Instead, it is to point away from himself in order to point to Jesus. That is what the writer of this Gospel says in verses 6-9: “There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe. He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light. The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world.”

We see this also in what John the Baptist does say about himself. When he is asked, “What do you say about yourself?", his reply is to say ‘I’m not the significant person here, I’m actually only a voice calling out to prepare the way for the one who is to come. Don’t pay attention to who I am instead listen to my message and look for the coming of the Lord.

The same thing is there in what he says about baptism. John is asked why he baptizes but he doesn’t answer the question. Instead, he again points beyond what he is doing to the one who comes after him, the one who is so much greater that John feels unworthy even to untie the thongs of his sandals.

In his commentary of this passage Lesslie Newbigin says that this is the mark of a true witness; “the function of a witness is not to develop conclusions out of already known data, but simply to point to, report, affirm” the new reality that the witness has seen and heard. This is also what John’s Gospel sets out to do and what it wants those who read it, like us, to become. Newbigin writes:

“[John] points his hearers to Jesus (e.g., 1:29ff., 36ff.; 3:27ff.); Jesus draws his hearers to himself. But these hearers will in turn become witnesses through whom others may believe (15:27; 17:20; 20:31), for the purpose is that not some but all … may come to faith. This book in its final form is based upon the testimony of one of these witnesses (21:24), and its purpose is that it readers may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and believing may have life in his name.”

So, we are to be witnesses like John, this is our calling as Christians. And this is essentially a simple task. We are not asked to become fluent in all the doctrines of the Christian faith or to have an answer for every question that people ask about Christianity. Instead, like John we are to be witnesses to what we have seen and heard about Jesus. The focus is not on us and our lives but on him and what we know of him and have experienced of him in our lives. So instead of needing to memorize a Gospel presentation like ‘2 Ways to Live’, all we need to do to be a witness is to tell our story; this is how I came to know Jesus and this is what he has come to mean to me.

Christmas is a time for preparation and then for sharing. The example that John the Baptist sets is one of preparing people for the real Christmas gift; the coming of Jesus. Can we do the same this Christmas by sharing the best news of all, the good news, with those around us – our family, friends, neighbours, and work colleagues – simply by being witnesses and pointing others to Jesus by telling our story of knowing him ourselves? 

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Hail to the Lord's anointed!

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.

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

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.

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Rev Simpkins - Sing Your Life.

A moment of empathy and inspiration

Here's the Sermon I shared in the Eucharist at St Andrews today:

When Mary goes to visit her cousin Elizabeth (Luke 1.39-45), who was also against all expectations bearing a child, the child who would be John the Baptist, Luke tells us that the Holy Spirit came upon them, that the babe in Elizabeth’s womb ‘leaped for joy’ when he heard Mary’s voice, and it is as the older woman blesses the younger, that Mary gives voice to the Magnificat, the most beautiful and revolutionary hymn in the world.

Malcolm Guite describes their meeting like this in his Sonnet on the Feast of the Visitation:

Here is a meeting made of hidden joys
Of lightenings cloistered in a narrow place
From quiet hearts the sudden flame of praise
And in the womb the quickening kick of grace.
Two women on the very edge of things
Unnoticed and unknown to men of power
But in their flesh the hidden Spirit sings
And in their lives the buds of blessing flower.
And Mary stands with all we call ‘too young’,
Elizabeth with all called ‘past their prime’
They sing today for all the great unsung
Women who turned eternity to time
Favoured of heaven, outcast on the earth
Prophets who bring the best in us to birth.

Mary needed that moment of empathy and inspiration because the experience of being the Theotokos, the God-bearer, was a difficult one. Difficult, because she was not believed - both by those closest to her and those who didn’t really know her. Mary was engaged to Joseph when the annunciation occurred. As she was found to be with child before they lived together, Joseph planned to dismiss her quietly. He had his own meeting with Gabriel which changed that decision but, if the man to whom she was betrothed, could not believe her without angelic intervention, then it would be no surprise if disbelief and misunderstanding characterised the response to Mary wherever she went.

We can imagine, then, how important it was to her to be with a relative who not only believed her but was also partway through her own miraculous pregnancy. The relief that she would have felt at being believed and understood would have been immense and then there is the shared moment of divine inspiration when the Holy Spirit comes on them, the babe in Elizabeth’s womb leaps for joy, and as Elizabeth blesses Mary, she is inspired to sing the Magnificat. In the face of so much disbelief and lack of support, this confirmation that they were both following God’s will, would have been overwhelming.

We can learn much from Mary’s faith, trust and persistence in the face of disbelief, misunderstanding and probable insult. We can also learn from this moment when God gives her both human empathy through Elizabeth and divine inspiration through the Holy Spirit to be a support and strengthening in the difficulties which she faced as God-bearer. Our experience in times of trouble and difficulty will be similar as, on the one hand, God asks us to trust and preserve while, on the other, he will provide us with moments of support and strengthening.

Mary has been given many titles down the ages but ‘the earliest ‘title’, agreed throughout the church in the first centuries of our faith, before the divisions of East and West, Catholic and Protestant, was Theotokos, which means God-Bearer. She is the prime God-Bearer, bearing for us in time the One who was begotten in eternity, and every Christian after her seeks to become in some small way a God-bearer, one whose ‘yes’ to God means that Christ is made alive and fruitful in the world through our flesh and our daily lives, is born and given to another.’ In his poem ‘Theotokos’, Malcolm Guite suggests some ways in which Mary’s experience can speak to us and inspire us in the challenges we face as we go through life:

You bore for me the One who came to bless
And bear for all and make the broken whole.
You heard His call and in your open ‘yes’
You spoke aloud for every living soul.
Oh gracious Lady, child of your own child,
Whose mother-love still calls the child in me,
Call me again, for I am lost, and wild
Waves surround me now. On this dark sea
Shine as a star and call me to the shore.
Open the door that all my sins would close
And hold me in your garden. Let me share
The prayer that folds the petals of the Rose.
Enfold me too in Love’s last mystery
And bring me to the One you bore for me.

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Kate and Anna McGarrigle - Seven Joys Of Mary.

Sharing our doubts and supporting others in their doubts

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

One of the things that I love most about the Bible is its honesty. In particular, the way in which it is honest about the flaws and failings in all of the great heroes of faith. The great leaders of Israel from the Old Testament and the Apostles in the New Testament, none of them are portrayed as being super-human, instead we are told about their failures as well as their obedience.

Look at John the Baptist in Matthew 11: 2-11, for example. He’d had a great ministry. He’d gone from being a nobody to having the religious leaders of his day coming and asking whether he was the next Elijah. He had not only recognised Jesus as Israel’s Messiah but had baptised him as well. And as he had baptised Jesus, he had seen the heavens open and God’s Spirit coming down on Jesus and had heard God the Father saying to Jesus, “This is my own dear Son, with whom I am well pleased.”

He had had an incredible ministry which had included some incredible experiences of God. But at the end of his life, everything came to a crashing halt as he was imprisoned by Herod, until his life was cut short by Herodius asking for his head on a platter. How was he affected by his imprisonment and this sudden end to his ministry which had had such an impact?

Well, we get a clue from our gospel reading because John sent a message to Jesus to ask if Jesus was the one that they had been expecting or whether they should look out for someone else. In other words, as he sat in his prison cell, John the Baptist doubted what he had earlier been certain of. After he had baptised Jesus, John had seen the Spirit of God come down and stay on Jesus and therefore he had confidently told others that Jesus was the Son of God. Now though he wasn’t so sure and so he sent some of his disciples to Jesus with this question.

Now isn’t that similar to our experience as Christians? Don’t we often go through times when we experience a real sense of closeness to God when we feel absolutely certain of what we believe. Times when God feels so close to us that we could almost reach out and touch him. Times when we are so convinced of the truth of what we believe that we cannot understand how other people can be so dull that they can’t see it for themselves. But then there are other times when that kind of confidence and that awareness of God’s presence seem to be far away in the past and we wonder how we could ever have been so sure about what we believed. In these times we haven’t lost our faith, although we might wonder whether that is what is happening to us, but we don’t have that sense of assurance that we once had.

Does this mean that we have lost our faith or are not following God’s plan for our lives? Does it mean that we have failed or sinned or stopped trusting? The answer to all those questions is no. Think for a moment about the way in which Jesus replies to John’s question.

First, Jesus doesn’t criticise John. He doesn’t tell him to pull up his socks or to be more trusting or to have more faith or to repent for his sins. And then he tells the crowds that there has never been a man greater than John the Baptist. Jesus knows that doubt is part of the journey of faith. Even the greatest man who ever lived experienced periods of doubt. If John the Baptist did, then we should certainly expect to, too.

Jesus also welcomes the fact that John comes to him with his doubts and sends back a message of encouragement. John was isolated in his prison cell. He obviously had some contact with his disciples, but he was not free and his disciples would only have been able to see him at certain times. In his isolation, it would have been easy for him to retreat into himself with his doubts and allow them to grow and play on his mind without being answered. But that is not what John did, instead he shares his doubts with Jesus. In the same way, we need to share our doubts and difficulties with each other and with God himself. And when others share their doubts and difficulties with us, we need to be like Jesus and give encouragement.

In the message that Jesus sends to John, he asks him, firstly, to look again at himself, at Jesus. When we do this, when we honestly look at the Jesus who is revealed to us in the gospels, we see a man who is genuinely like God. We see a man who does and says the things that only God could do and say:

“the blind can see, the lame can walk, those who suffer from dreaded skin diseases are made clean, the deaf hear, the dead are brought back to life, and the Good News is preached to the poor.”

When we doubt our faith, as we all do at different times in our lives, one of the best things we can do is to remind ourselves of what Jesus is like. Could anyone do and say the things that Jesus did and said and not be God?

The message that Jesus sends to John also asks John to look at the signs of the kingdom that can be seen in Jesus’ ministry. Those things that Jesus said and did were the first signs that the rule and reign of God was coming about on earth. As John looked at these tangible signs of God’s kingdom, he could see the prophecies about God’s rule on earth coming true. Like John, we also need to look in our world for signs of God’s kingdom in changed lives and changed communities.

Sometimes as preachers we give the impression that the Christian life should be all highs and no lows. Sometimes preachers even deliberately preach that God’s plan is that we can all become champions, successful in all that we do. But that is to preach and read only a part of what the Bible says, not the whole.

God’s way for us often involves apparent failure and hardship. Look at John in this passage. Think of Paul reflecting on a ministry full of beatings, imprisonment and shipwrecks. Think ultimately of Jesus and the cross. When we experience hardship, failure and doubt in our faith and ministries we are often sharing in the suffering of Christ. A faith that survives the difficult times is longer lasting that a faith that only knows ease and comfort. It is in the testing times that our faith is stretched and grows.

Jesus understands our doubts, he encourages us to share our doubts with others and to support others in their doubts and difficulties. He points us to himself and to the signs of God’s kingdom in our lives and the lives of those around us as an encouragement to us to hold on in those difficult times and see our faith grow and develop as a result.

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On Jordan's bank, the Baptist's cry.

Supporting and encouraging others in their development and growth

Here's the reflection I shared during Evensong at St Catherine's Wickford this evening:

John the Baptist had been the hot prophet of his time in Israel. He had been the man of the moment with people flocking to him in the desert to be baptized but now there was competition. Jesus, his younger relative, was just down the track at another site where there was plenty of water for baptizing and now the people were flocking to him instead of to John (John 3: 22-36).

How would John react? Would he see it as a competition? Would he fight back or drop out and leave without seeing what his competitor would do? His disciples obviously felt aggrieved by what was going on. In verse 26, we read that “they went to John and said, ‘Teacher, you remember the man who was with you on the east side of the Jordan, the one you spoke about? Well, he is baptising now, and everyone is going to him!’.”

John’s reaction was a surprise to his disciples because he wasn’t devastated. Instead, he willingly recognises Jesus’ pre-eminence – describing Jesus as the bridegroom and himself as the best man - and says that Jesus “must become more important” while he, John, becomes “less important.” To John there is no competition, he encourages Jesus in developing his mission and ministry, he actively points Jesus out to others and contributes to the development of Jesus’ ministry and accepts that in the process his role, position and influence will decline.

In this way he gives us a wonderful example of how one generation can support, encourage and bring through a new generation. Each one of us has the opportunity in our homes, our workplaces, our communities and here in our church to support and encourage others in their development and growth as people and in their ministry for God. And, if those we encourage surpass our own achievements, then that is not a cause for resentment or for frustration but instead a cause for celebration and a sign of our success in effectively grooming those people for greatness.

In Isaiah 43 God says, “Do not cling to events of the past or dwell on what happened long ago. Watch for the new thing I am going to do.” By looking for the new thing that God was doing, John the Baptist saw God himself as a human being, uniting heaven and earth, speaks God’s words, full of God’s Spirit, and demonstrating God’s power. I wouldn’t have wanted to have missed that if I had been in John’s shoes but many of his contemporaries did because they were focused on the past instead of looking to the future.

God calls us to be John the Baptist’s, people who are looking out for the new thing that God is doing and then calling attention to it and helping it to emerge. What new initiatives, young people, changing attitudes and roles or social trends are part of the new thing that God is doing in our day and how can we be witnesses to them?

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Al Green - How Great Thou Art.

Fire and Fruit

‘Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— the work of each builder will become visible, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each has done. If what has been built on the foundation survives, the builder will receive a reward. If the work is burned up, the builder will suffer loss; the builder will be saved, but only as through fire.’ (1 Corinthians 3: 12-15)

‘the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things.’ (Galatians 5: 22-23)

Fire and fruit are images that run throughout the pages of scripture because they are images drawn from everyday experience and also because they are images that open up reflection on spiritual experience.

John the Baptist speaks in a period when the people of Israel felt confused (Luke 3:7-18). They believed they were the people of God having a special covenant relationship with God and yet they were also an oppressed people under the rule of the Romans and their appointed Kings. They were unable to make sense of both realities together and, as a result, had splintered with some fomenting rebellion against the Romans, some collaborating with the Romans and the majority seeking to live life the best way they could in the circumstances. All these were reflected in the crowd that came to listen to John, as we hear him speak specifically to the people, the tax collectors, and the Roman soldiers.

John talks primarily about the need for fruit in the lives of those that are God’s people, but he is also clear that there is ultimately no entitlement within God’s kingdom, and he talks about that through the image of fire.

As those having a special covenant relationship with God the people of Israel felt entitled. That was a key element to the confusion they felt. Why had God abandoned his God’s chosen people by allowing them to be invaded by an oppressing Empire? They thought the covenant made with God ensured protection for them from invasion and oppression.

John turns that sense of entitlement on its head by saying that the covenant depends on God’s people bearing fruit. What he says here is predicated on the understanding that God chooses to be in a special relationship with a particular group of people, not so much for their own sake, but in order that they become a blessing to all nations, drawing all people everywhere into relationship with God. Therefore, whenever, God’s people become entitled, thinking God is primarily theirs and theirs alone, God acts to break down that sense of entitlement in order that his blessings – the fruit of his people – can once again be available to all people.

John uses the language of horticulture to talk about the way in which God does this. In John 15 we also hear of Jesus talking in very similar terms. The gardeners among us today will be very familiar with pruning in which those parts of a plant, tree, or vine that are not necessary to growth or production or are injurious to the health or development of the plant, are removed or reduced. Pruning is essential to the flourishing of plants and the production of fruit. This is, in essence, what John says is going on in his own time. The current experience of God’s people is one of pruning for future growth and the way for them to approach the challenges of that situation constructively and effectively is to prioritise growth.

Before speaking about fruit, however, John throws out a challenge to his hearers because their sense of entitlement ultimately holds the seeds of disaster. Those who persist in thinking that God is just for them and who, as a result, do not bear from fruit by being a blessing to others will ultimately risk being disinherited by being cut out of the tree or seeing the tree cut down.

However, even here the language John uses – that of fire – holds within it the possibility of refining in order to restore. Experiences of tribulation and trial, including those of being pruned, even cut off and burned, may still be refining experiences that return those enduring them to right relationship with God and to becoming a blessing to others.

John has specific instructions for all those who respond to his message by asking, “What then should we do?” To the crowd he says, “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.” To the tax collectors, “Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you.” To the soldiers, “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages.”

John does not expect the same fruit to be produced by everyone. The fruit that can be grown by those in everyday life differs from the fruit that can be grown by tax collectors, as again from that which can be grown by soldiers. We know from Jesus’ teaching in the Parable of the Sower that seeds grow differently in different kinds of soil. So, also here. What it is possible or appropriate for a tax collector or a soldier to do in their circumstances to be a blessing to others might be very different from what an ordinary citizen can do. Yet, we know from the Gospels what an impact was made when tax collectors like Matthew and Zacchaeus or soldiers, including two centurions, responded to Jesus and acted in ways that accord with John’s teaching here.

The kind of fruit that God is seeking in those who become a blessing to others is the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. This is what God yearns to see in his people at all times and in all places. While there are times when we may experience considerable trial and tribulation, whatever our circumstances – in good times or in bad – God is seeking to cultivate the fruit of the Spirit in our lives in order that we bring his blessing to those who have yet to experience or receive it.

So, what can we learn from John’s teaching including his challenge made to Jews and Gentiles alike? To act as God’s people in God’s world, we need to be those who grow the fruit of the Spirit and who become a blessing to others by sharing that fruit as widely as possible. Each of us needs to look at our contexts and roles in order to work out with God how best to do that where we are. The business of growing fruit is not a franchise where one model is simply applied everywhere. There is a diversity of soils and a diversity of fruits. Fundamentally, however, becoming fruitful by being a blessing is the intent of all that John is saying. His talk of fruit is teaching for all times and all circumstances.

His talk of fire, by contrast, is teaching for situations of extremis, where God’s people resist fruitfulness principally by thinking and acting as though God is for them alone. In such circumstances, experiences of tribulation and trial become arenas for pruning and refining; opportunities for change, for reflection, for repentance, for turning and learning. God’s intent though, as St Paul makes clear in 1 Corinthians, is always that all should be saved, even if through fire.

Our task, like those responding to John the Baptist, is to continually ask, “What then should we do?” and to take the opportunities which are constantly in front of us to share what we have with those who have nothing, collect no more for ourselves than the amount prescribed, not to extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with what we have. In these and in many other ways, we can be a blessing to others and reveal the love of God through the body of his people. May it be so for each one of us. Amen.

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Salisbury Cathedral Choir - On Jordan's Bank, The Baptist's Cry.  

Preparing for the new thing God was doing

Here's my reflection for yesterday's lunchtime Eucharist for St Martin-in-the-Fields, on the Feast of the Birth of John the Baptist (Luke 1. 57-66, 80):

Our eldest daughter is expecting and she and her husband can’t agree on a name for their son. It’s not an unusual situation for the parents of a new born child. For Zechariah and Elizabeth it should have been relatively straightforward, as the culture of the time was for the child to be named after the grandfather.

Names were kept in the family and handed down from grandfather to grandson. This was part of a culture where the firstborn son inherited all that the family owned, whilst also being responsible for maintaining the family unit. That included the role or work undertaken by the father and grandfather before him, in this case as one of the priests at the Temple.

The naming of John was problematic because it signified something different was happening; a break with tradition. The name John was not in the family line and he would not become a priest like his father and grandfather before him; instead becoming a prophet preparing the way for the new thing that God was doing in the world in sending his Son to be one of us and save us from ourselves.

The new thing that God was doing in the world entailed a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit so, in the first chapter of Luke’s Gospel we read of Gabriel promising that John will be filled with the Holy Spirit from before his birth and of his growing up strong in the Spirit. The Spirit comes upon Mary at the Annunciation, Elizabeth is filled with the Spirit at Mary’s arrival (and blesses her as a result), and Zechariah is filled with the Holy Spirit at John’s circumcision, prophesying about John and Jesus.

This fresh move of the Holy Spirit comes after a period of over 400 years during which there was no revelation from God by the Spirit. That had fulfilled the prophecy of Micah: “Therefore it shall be night to you, without vision, and darkness to you, without revelation. The sun shall go down upon the prophets, and the day shall be black over them” (3:6). The new thing that God was about to do was not possible without the preparatory work of the Holy Spirit or without there being a working together of the principal characters with the Holy Spirit.

Preparation is also seen in the upbringing of John through his separation for God’s service which involved the rejection of wine and other strong drink and time spent in the wilderness, where he wore clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. His calling as the one preparing the way for Jesus involved a particular kind of preparation, which may or may not have been individual to John, but which was the right preparation for the calling on his life.

What can we take from these reflections on the early life of John the Baptist and how might they bite for us? First, we can reflect on the call on our lives. That is not so dissimilar to that of John. He was preparing others to encounter Jesus. We are essentially called to do the same. When I was a young Christian I read writers like Francis Schaeffer who talked about the importance of pre-Evangelism. This involves discussion of our worldviews and the extent we live according to our beliefs, whatever those beliefs may be. Exploring inconsistencies in our lifestyles or inadequacies in our beliefs opens people to the possibility of the Holy Spirit working in their lives. None of us are evangelists. It is only God the Spirit who can bring people back into relationship with God through Jesus. Yet, like John, we can prepare people to encounter Jesus for themselves.

Second, the Holy Spirit was moving in a new way through the birth of John and Jesus, and Elizabeth, Zechariah and Mary were among those who discerned it and responded. Like them, we can seek to discern what the Holy Spirit is doing and how the Spirit is moving within our own day and time. When Jesus opened the scriptures and read ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me’ that anointing was for the bringing of good news to the poor, release for captives, recovery of sight for those who were blind, freeing of the oppressed and proclamation of the Jubilee when land and property was returned to those in debt. Where we see these things happening today, we can discern the work of the Holy Spirit.

Third, John needed a specific form of preparation for his ministry which involved him making commitments, not generally made by others. That is the approach we use here within the Nazareth Community as its members commit themselves for a year at a time to silence, sacraments, study, sharing, service, Sabbath and staying with. This kind of commitment, whether the Nazareth rule of life or something different can be a helpful practice and discipline enabling us to live out and deepen the calling on our lives.

As we reflect on our calling, the needs of our world and our practices as Christians, it may well be that John the Baptist is the role model in the Gospels to whom we most need to turn.

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Godspell - Prepare Ye The Way Of The Lord.

Empathy and inspiration

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

‘The feast of the Visitation celebrates the lovely moment in Luke’s Gospel (1:41-56) when Mary goes to visit he cousin Elizabeth, who was also against all expectations bearing a child, the child who would be John the Baptist. Luke tells us that the Holy Spirit came upon them, that the babe in Elizabeth’s womb ‘leaped for joy’ when he heard Mary’s voice, and it is even as the older woman blesses the younger, that Mary gives voice to the Magnificat, the most beautiful and revolutionary hymn in the world.’

Malcolm Guite describes their meeting like this in his Sonnet on the Feast of the Visitation:

Here is a meeting made of hidden joys
Of lightenings cloistered in a narrow place
From quiet hearts the sudden flame of praise
And in the womb the quickening kick of grace.
Two women on the very edge of things
Unnoticed and unknown to men of power
But in their flesh the hidden Spirit sings
And in their lives the buds of blessing flower.
And Mary stands with all we call ‘too young’,
Elizabeth with all called ‘past their prime’
They sing today for all the great unsung
Women who turned eternity to time
Favoured of heaven, outcast on the earth
Prophets who bring the best in us to birth.

Mary needed that moment of empathy and inspiration because the experience of being the Theotokos, the God-bearer, was a difficult one. Difficult, because she was not believed - both by those closest to her and those who didn’t really know her. Mary was engaged to Joseph when the annunciation occurred. As she was found to be with child before they lived together, Joseph planned to dismiss her quietly. He had his own meeting with Gabriel which changed that decision but, if the man to whom she was betrothed, could not believe her without angelic intervention, then it would be no surprise if disbelief and misunderstanding characterised the response to Mary wherever she went.

We can imagine, then, how important it was to her to be with a relative who not only believed her but was also partway through her own miraculous pregnancy. The relief that she would have felt at being believed and understood would have been immense and then there is the shared moment of divine inspiration when the Holy Spirit comes on them, the babe in Elizabeth’s womb leaps for joy, and as Elizabeth blesses Mary, she is inspired to sing the Magnificat. In the face of so much disbelief and lack of support, this confirmation that they were both following God’s will, would have been overwhelming.

We can learn much from Mary’s faith, trust and persistence in the face of disbelief, misunderstanding and probable insult. We can also learn from this moment when God gives her both human empathy through Elizabeth and divine inspiration through the Holy Spirit to be a support and strengthening in the difficulties which she faced as God-bearer. Our experience in times of trouble and difficulty will be similar as, on the one hand, God asks to trust and preserve while, on the other, he will provide with moments of support and strengthening.

Mary has been given many titles down the ages but ‘the earliest ‘title’, agreed throughout the church in the first centuries of our faith, before the divisions of East and West, Catholic and Protestant, was Theotokos, which means God-Bearer. She is the prime God-Bearer, bearing for us in time the One who was begotten in eternity, and every Christian after her seeks to become in some small way a God-bearer, one whose ‘yes’ to God means that Christ is made alive and fruitful in the world through our flesh and our daily lives, is born and given to another.’ In his poem ‘Theotokos’, Malcolm Guite suggests some ways in which Mary’s experience can speak to us and inspire us in the challenges we face as we go through life:

You bore for me the One who came to bless
And bear for all and make the broken whole.
You heard His call and in your open ‘yes’
You spoke aloud for every living soul.
Oh gracious Lady, child of your own child,
Whose mother-love still calls the child in me,
Call me again, for I am lost, and wild
Waves surround me now. On this dark sea
Shine as a star and call me to the shore.
Open the door that all my sins would close
And hold me in your garden. Let me share
The prayer that folds the petals of the Rose.
Enfold me too in Love’s last mystery
And bring me to the One you bore for me.

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Malcolm Guite - Our Lady Of The Highway.

Tearing down, raising up, at the heart, on the edge

Here is my sermon from this morning's Eucharist at St Martin-in-the-Fields:

Picture a massive road building project cutting through hills and valleys to create a new straight, level road. The vision from Isaiah that John the Baptist quotes in our Gospel reading (Luke 3: 1 – 6) 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.” It doesn’t sound very environmentally friendly but, like the current project on the A14, may result in major archaeological finds.

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.

By quoting from Isaiah, John is making clear that he is recovering the original vision for God’s people to be a light to the nations. When Abraham was called by God he was told that he would become a great and mighty nation and that all the nations of the earth would be blessed in him. The nation founded through his obedience to God’s call was to be a blessing to all nations. The people of Israel were reminded periodically of this call, as in Isaiah 49:6 where we read:

“It is too light a thing that you should be my servant
to raise up the tribes of Jacob
and to restore the survivors of Israel;
I will give you as a light to the nations,
that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”

The prophecies collected together in Isaiah also show the kind of place that Jerusalem was intended to become; a place to which all nations could come 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.” (Isaiah 2. 2b & 3a)

Instead of that vision coming to pass, by the time of Jesus, the Temple had become a symbol of Jewish identity with all sorts of people excluded from worship unless they conformed to the detailed requirements of the Mosaic Law. The Temple and the worship in it prevented the free access to God that God wished to see for people of all nations.

In Jesus’ ministry, crucifixion and post-resurrection commission to his disciples, we see him tearing down barriers that prevented sight of God and raising up those whose position in society excluded them from worship. In his ministry Jesus expressly went to those who were excluded from Temple worship, including them both by accepting them (and teaching that they will enter the kingdom of God ahead of the religious leaders) and by healing them so they could actively return to the Temple worship. When he died the curtain separating people from the most holy place in the Temple was torn in two, showing that access to God was now open to all. Jesus also prophesied that the Temple itself would be destroyed and that when this happened his disciples should take his message of love to all nations.

As an Iona Community liturgy puts it, Jesus was ‘Lover of the unlovable, toucher of the untouchable, forgiver of the unforgivable, bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh, writing heaven’s pardon over earth’s mistakes. The Word became flesh. He lived among us, He was one of us.’ As Christ’s followers today, we inherit the 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. To do that we follow the up and down vision of Isaiah and John the Baptist; taking down barriers and raising up those who have been brought low.

As was the case for Jesus hearing John the Baptist quote the vision of Isaiah, we too stand at a point in history when the need of a broad and challenging vision for change is placed before us. Our Vicar Sam Wells has suggested that we live in a world that is pervaded by beauty, goodness, energy, creativity, trust, gentleness, joy and love but which is poisoned by violence, hatred, cruelty and fear. What our world needs most of all are communities of trust and support and love that show the kind of life that is possible when we believe that God is with us and rest in the hope that God’s ways will finally prevail.

We don’t have to invent these communities because God has already done so – in the call of Abraham and Jacob to be God’s people Israel, and when the Holy Spirit was sent on the dispirited apostles on the day of Pentecost. We’ve been given thousands of them all round the country and millions all round the world. We’ve been given the church. Yet we also live at a time and in a society where the church is getting smaller; and the church is getting narrower. Those who regularly attend worship are much fewer; and the church’s reputation and energy are becoming associated with initiatives that are introverted and often lack the full breadth of the gospel.

The vision that John the Baptist shared with Jesus in his time was an up and down vision of tearing down and raising up. That vision was necessary preparation for seeing Jesus but when we see Jesus we gain a different vision; an in and out vision, a vision of centre and circumference, of being at the heart and on the edge. By being in the godhead, Jesus was in the heart of God but chose to be on the edge by becoming a human being. Although he remained in the centre of God’s will by being the embodiment of the very heart of God, that led him to place himself on the edge as he took onto his shoulders the weight of the world’s sorrows and found himself temporarily separated from God. Jesus gives us a vision of being both at the heart and on the edge.

We have claimed that vision for ourselves here at St Martin’s seeing ourselves as being at the heart of London, the nation, and the church, while also seeing our calling as to be alongside those on the edge through being excluded, ignored or oppressed by society or church. We have then created in HeartEdge, our ecumenical network of churches, a means of sharing that vision more widely by fostering, catalysing and facilitating renewal on a national scale.

HeartEdge seeks to catalyse kingdom communities – i.e. it aims to foster, not to impose; it sees the kingdom as God’s gift to renew the church, rather than as a mission-field to be conformed to the church’s image; and it sees churches as lively and dynamic communities, rather than defensive and narrow congregations. At over 50 churches, HeartEdge is already big enough for communities to mentor one another, to offer consultancy days to one another, and for larger gatherings to offer an exchange of ideas, encouragement and challenge. We aspire for it not to create clones of St Martin’s, but to become the national embodiment of those committed to the vision to be ‘At the heart. On the edge.’

HeartEdge seeks to share the vision that the heart of the gospel is that God is most often made known among those on the edge and that the church is at its best when it speaks to the heart but takes risks on the edge. This vision not only renews the church but, through that renewal, speaks into the ways in which our world is poisoned by violence, hatred, cruelty and fear offering renewal of society more widely.

The visions of taking down and raising up and of being at the heart and on the edge are Advent visions; visions that that enable us to see Christ’s coming. Isaiah and John the Baptist tell us that God is seen when barriers that exclude are taken down and those who have been brought low are raised up. Jesus’ revelation of God shows that those at the centre can be alongside those on the edge and will be changed as a result.

So, God is seen through an up and down vision that has a vertical axis and also an in and out vision which has a horizontal axis. Pushing these analogies as far as possible the vertical axis equates to the north-south axis on a compass while the horizontal axis equates to the east-west axis, meaning that all the points on the compass are encompassed by these visions. As Isaiah prophesised, all people will see God’s salvation, or, as John Oxenham has it, ‘In Christ there is no east or west, / in him no south or north; / but one great fellowship of love / throughout the whole wide world.’ May that vision become reality for us. Amen.

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Christ's Hospital Choir - How Shall I Sing That Majesty.