Turning our understanding of life upside down

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

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 (Luke 6: 20-26), turns our understanding of life upside down. His action turned our expectations of Bishops and their behaviour upside-down at the same time as it perfectly illustrated his point.

G. K. Chesterton used a similar image in writing about St Francis of Assisi: “[Saint] Francis, at the time … when he disappeared into the prison or the dark cavern, underwent a reversal of a certain psychological kind … The man who went into the cave was not the man who came out again … He looked at the world as differently from other men as if he had come out of that dark hole walking on his hands … If a man saw the world hanging upside down, with all the trees and towers hanging head downwards as in a pool, one effect would be to emphasise the idea of dependence … It would make vivid the Scriptural text which says that God has hanged the world upon nothing.”

In what ways do these images and Jesus’ teaching in the beatitudes turn our understanding of life upside down? Jesus’ radical heartbeat can be sensed in every word of the Sermon on the Mount. The core of the sermon is a call for God’s people to be entirely different. Some of the greatest examples of the call to be different are found in the Beatitudes.

The Beatitudes give us a sense of the radical kingdom lifestyle that Jesus calls us to. It is as if Jesus has crept into the window display of life and changed the price tags. It is all upside down. In a world where ‘success’ and ‘self-sufficiency’ are applauded, and ‘the beautiful people’ are ambitious, accomplished and wealthy, Jesus teaches: “Blessed are you who are poor.” Our culture encourages us to discard guilt and the sorrow that accompanies pangs of conscience. Happiness is everything, entertainment is king but Jesus teaches: “Blessed are you who weep now.”

Donald Kraybill writing about this upside down kingdom says: “Jesus startles us … good guys turn out to be bad guys. Those we expect to receive the reward get a spanking instead. Those who think they are headed for heaven land in hell. Paradox, irony and surprise permeate the teachings of Jesus. They flip our expectations upside down. The least are the greatest. The immoral receive forgiveness and blessing. Adults become like children. The religious miss the heavenly banquet. The pious receive curses. Things aren’t like we think they should be. We’re baffled and perplexed. Amazed we step back. Should we laugh or should we cry? Again and again, turning our world upside down, the kingdom surprises us.”

It is the humble poor who know their need of God and those who have nothing who know they need everything. So, we should pray for those moments when we and others experience poverty, hunger and sadness, as they are moments when we are more likely to turn our faces to God looking for salvation. We need to pray for the opening of doors in us and others that gain and comfort have locked tight.

The Gospel announcement, our salvation, is truly comprehensive, is truly for all, because it is offered to losers, by circumstance or choice. The poor have no means of becoming rich but the rich have within themselves the possibility of becoming poor. There is nothing that we don’t have that will bar our entry to this upside-down kingdom and so we can pray to be rid of what we do have that God’s kingdom may truly come to all. In this way, as the Beatitudes state, our lives are turned upside down and we are blessed with poverty, with grief, with meekness, with hunger, with mercy, with purity, with peacemaking, and with persecution (Gerard Kelly, Humanifesto).

As opposed to the survival of the fittest or looking after No. 1, the kingdom of God, as it is described in the Beatitudes, is a place of happiness for those who know they are spiritually poor, a place of comfort for those who mourn, a place of receptivity for those who are humble, a place of satisfaction for those whose greatest desire is to do what God requires, a place of mercy for those who are merciful, a place in which God is seen by the pure in heart, a place in which those who work for peace are called God’s children, and a place which belongs to those who are persecuted because they do what God requires. That is what those, like St Francis, that we call saints came to realise. It is what we must seek through prayer as we too respond to our calling to be saints.

May God forgive our attempts to be loved, our pride, our pleasure-seeking and our leisure-seeking and instead turn our lives upside down and bless us with poverty, with grief, with meekness, with hunger, with mercy, with purity, with peacemaking, with persecution and with his upside down kingdom. Amen.

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Victoria Williams - Love.

God's upside-down kingdom

Here's my sermon as shared at this morning's Eucharist in St Catherine's Wickford: 

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. His action turned our expectations of Bishops and their behaviour upside-down at the same time as it perfectly illustrated his point.

Jesus is depicted upside-down in the painting Jesus Striped and Stripped created by Cedric Baxter for a set of Australian Stations of the Cross. Victoria Emily Jones has written that “Baxter's tenth station captures Jesus mid-tumble, naked and abused and down on his way to death, but what Christians know and glory in, especially during the Easter season, is that he's circling back. He's turning a cartwheel! The upside downness of Jesus in this image challenges us to look at Passion Week with the right perspective: as a journey that brings Christ low only to raise him up.”

G. K. Chesterton used a similar image in writing about St Francis of Assisi: “[Saint] Francis, at the time … when he disappeared into the prison or the dark cavern, underwent a reversal of a certain psychological kind … The man who went into the cave was not the man who came out again … He looked at the world as differently from other men as if he had come out of that dark hole walking on his hands … If a man saw the world hanging upside down, with all the trees and towers hanging head downwards as in a pool, one effect would be to emphasise the idea of dependence … It would make vivid the Scriptural text which says that God has hanged the world upon nothing.”

In what ways do these images and Jesus’ teaching in the beatitudes turn our understanding of life upside down? Jesus’ radical heartbeat can be sensed in every word of the Sermon on the Mount. The core of the sermon is a call for God’s people to be entirely different. One writer identifies the key text of the sermon to be Matthew 6: 8, “Do not be like them.” Like lights set on stands (Matthew 5:14), like flavourful salt (Matthew 5:13) or like saints, the children of God are not to take their cue from the people around them but from God, and to be known by their radical lifestyle.

Some of the greatest examples of the call to be different are found in the Beatitudes. The Beatitudes give us a sense of the radical kingdom lifestyle that Jesus calls us to. It is as if Jesus has crept into the window display of life and changed the price tags. It is all upside down. In a world where ‘success’ and ‘self-sufficiency’ are applauded, and ‘the beautiful people’ are ambitious, accomplished and wealthy, Jesus teaches: “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” Our culture encourages us to discard guilt and the sorrow that accompanies pangs of conscience. Happiness is everything, entertainment is king but Jesus teaches: “Blessed are those who mourn.” In our competitive world, self-help seminars teach assertiveness and power is to be sought and used but Jesus teaches “Blessed are the meek.”

Donald Kraybill writing in The Upside-Down Kingdom about this upside down kingdom says: “Jesus startles us … good guys turn out to be bad guys. Those we expect to receive the reward get a spanking instead. Those who think they are headed for heaven land in hell. Paradox, irony and surprise permeate the teachings of Jesus. They flip our expectations upside down. The least are the greatest. The immoral receive forgiveness and blessing. Adults become like children. The religious miss the heavenly banquet. The pious receive curses. Things aren’t like we think they should be. We’re baffled and perplexed. Amazed we step back. Should we laugh or should we cry? Again and again, turning our world upside down, the kingdom surprises us.” 

It is the humble poor who know their need of God and those who have nothing who know they need everything. So we should pray for those moments when we and others become poor in spirit, bereaved, meek, hungry, thirsty, as they are moments when we are more likely to turn our faces to God looking for salvation. We need to pray for the opening of doors in us and others that gain and comfort have locked tight.

The Gospel announcement, our salvation, is truly comprehensive, is truly for all, because it is offered to losers, by circumstance or choice. The poor have no means of becoming rich but the rich have within themselves the possibility of becoming poor. There is nothing that we don’t have that will bar our entry to this upside-down kingdom and so we can pray to be rid of what we do have that God’s kingdom may truly come to all.

In this way, as the Beatitudes state, our lives are turned upside down and we are blessed with poverty, with grief, with meekness, with hunger, with mercy, with purity, with peacemaking, and with persecution (Gerard Kelly, Humanifesto).

As opposed to the survival of the fittest or looking after No. 1, the kingdom of God, as it is described in the Beatitudes, is a place of happiness for those who know they are spiritually poor, a place of comfort for those who mourn, a place of receptivity for those who are humble, a place of satisfaction for those whose greatest desire is to do what God requires, a place of mercy for those who are merciful, a place in which God is seen by the pure in heart, a place in which those who work for peace are called God’s children, and a place which belongs to those who are persecuted because they do what God requires.

This is what those, like St Francis, that we call saints came to realise. It is what we must seek through prayer as we too respond to our calling to be saints.

May God forgive our attempts to be loved, our pride, our pleasure-seeking and our leisure-seeking and instead turn our lives upside down and bless us with poverty, with grief, with meekness, with hunger, with mercy, with purity, with peacemaking, with persecution and with his upside down kingdom. Amen.

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Delirious? - King of Fools.

The upside-down kingdom

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

In 1997 guests at Spring Harvest, an annual teaching and worship event, created a set of alternative beatitudes, which read as follows:

Blessed are the wealthy, because there is the Dow Jones index. 

Blessed are those who enjoy a good party, for they will drown their sorrows.
Blessed are the assertive, for they will get to the top of their career.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after chemical stimulation, for designer drugs are more widely available with every passing year.
Blessed are the ruthless, because no one will get in their way.
Blessed are the cold of heart, for they won’t get hurt when relationships break down.
Blessed are those who are involved in the arms trade, for theirs are the best deals in developing nations.
Blessed are the directors of privatised utilities, for theirs are the fat cat bonuses.

(created by Spring Harvest guests, 1997, compiled by Rob Warner)

That was a set of beatitudes for our times, a set of beatitudes which are the complete reverse of those which Jesus gave us (Luke 6.20-26). Wealth replacing poverty, partying replacing mourning, assertion replacing meekness. That is the way of the world. That is the way we are told to live today. It is the way of selfishness not the way of saintliness and Jesus calls us to something different. He calls to live as saints.

Jesus’ radical heartbeat can be sensed in every word of the Sermon on the Mount. The core of the sermon is a call for God’s people to be entirely different. One writer identifies the key text of the sermon to be Matthew 6: 8, “Do not be like them.” Like lights set on stands (Matthew 5:14), like flavourful salt (Matthew 5:13) or like saints, the children of God are not to take their cue from the people around them but from God, and to be known by their radical lifestyle.

Some of the greatest examples of the call to be different are found in the Beatitudes. The Beatitudes give us a sense of the radical kingdom lifestyle that Jesus calls us to. It is as if Jesus has crept into the window display of life and changed the price tags. It is all upside down. In a world where ‘success’ and ‘self-sufficiency’ are applauded, and ‘the beautiful people’ are ambitious, accomplished and wealthy, Jesus teaches: “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” Our culture encourages us to discard guilt and the sorrow that accompanies pangs of conscience. Happiness is everything, entertainment is king but Jesus teaches: “Blessed are those who mourn.” In our competitive world, self-help seminars teach assertiveness and power is to be sought and used but Jesus teaches “Blessed are the meek.”

Donald Kraybill writing about this upside down kingdom says: “Jesus startles us … good guys turn out to be bad guys. Those we expect to receive the reward get a spanking instead. Those who think they are headed for heaven land in hell. Paradox, irony and surprise permeate the teachings of Jesus. They flip our expectations upside down. The least are the greatest. The immoral receive forgiveness and blessing. Adults become like children. The religious miss the heavenly banquet. The pious receive curses. Things aren’t like we think they should be. We’re baffled and perplexed. Amazed we step back. Should we laugh or should we cry? Again and again, turning our world upside down, the kingdom surprises us.”

The difference that Jesus highlights, David Oliver and Howard Snyder argue, is between Church people and Kingdom people. Kingdom people seek first the kingdom of God and its justice. Church people often put church work above work, above concerns of justice, mercy and truth. In the church business people are concerned with church activities, religious behaviour and spiritual things. In the kingdom business, people are concerned with kingdom activities, all human behaviour and everything which God has made, visible and invisible. Church people don’t usually like parties, alcohol or bad people. The King of the kingdom liked all three. When Christians put the church ahead of the kingdom, they settle for meetings and spend increasing amounts of time with the same people. When they catch a vision of the kingdom of God, their sight shifts to the poor, the orphan, the widow, the refugee, the wretched of the earth, and to God’s people. They also see with real insight and fresh vision the stressed, the fearful, the hopeless at work and both their heart and time reach out. If the church has one great need, it is this – to be set free, for the kingdom of God, to be set free to become relevant exactly as God intended.

We are called to be kingdom people, called to be saints who act out the upside-down values of the kingdom in all of our life and work. God calls us to turn our backs on the kingdoms of this world and simply maintaining the churches and piety of this world and to embrace an upside-down home. How will we respond?

Based on King of the Hill, Spring Harvest 2001 Study Guide by Jeff Lucas

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Delerious? - Love Will Find A Way.

Called to be saints

Here is my sermon from Thursday's Eucharist at St Stephen Walbrook (based on King of the Hill, Spring Harvest 2001 Study Guide by Jeff Lucas):

Blessed are the wealthy, because there is the Dow Jones index. Blessed are those who enjoy a good party, for they will drown their sorrows.
Blessed are the assertive, for they will get to the top of their career.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after chemical stimulation, for designer drugs are more widely available with every passing year.
Blessed are the ruthless, because no one will get in their way.
Blessed are the cold of heart, for they won’t get hurt when relationships break down.
Blessed are those who are involved in the arms trade, for theirs are the best deals in developing nations.
Blessed are the directors of privatised utilities, for theirs are the fat cat bonuses.

(created by Spring Harvest guests, 1997, compiled by Rob Warner)

That was a set of beatitudes for our times, a set of beatitudes which are the complete reverse of those which Jesus gave us. Wealth replacing poverty, partying replacing mourning, assertion replacing meekness. That is the way of the world. That is the way we are told to live today. It is the way of selfishness not the way of saintliness and Jesus calls us to something different. He calls to live as saints.Jesus’ radical heartbeat can be sensed in every word of the Sermon on the Mount. The core of the sermon is a call for God’s people to be entirely different. One writer identifies the key text of the sermon to be Matthew 6: 8, “Do not be like them.” Like lights set on stands (Matthew 5:14), like flavourful salt (Matthew 5:13) or like saints, the children of God are not to take their cue from the people around them but from God, and to be known by their radical lifestyle.

Some of the greatest examples of the call to be different are found in the Beatitudes. The Beatitudes give us a sense of the radical kingdom lifestyle that Jesus calls us to. It is as if Jesus has crept into the window display of life and changed the price tags. It is all upside down. In a world where ‘success’ and ‘self-sufficiency’ are applauded, and ‘the beautiful people’ are ambitious, accomplished and wealthy, Jesus teaches: “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” Our culture encourages us to discard guilt and the sorrow that accompanies pangs of conscience. Happiness is everything, entertainment is king but Jesus teaches: “Blessed are those who mourn.” In our competitive world, self-help seminars teach assertiveness and power is to be sought and used but Jesus teaches “Blessed are the meek.”

Donald Kraybill writing about this upside down kingdom says: “Jesus startles us … good guys turn out to be bad guys. Those we expect to receive the reward get a spanking instead. Those who think they are headed for heaven land in hell. Paradox, irony and surprise permeate the teachings of Jesus. They flip our expectations upside down. The least are the greatest. The immoral receive forgiveness and blessing. Adults become like children. The religious miss the heavenly banquet. The pious receive curses. Things aren’t like we think they should be. We’re baffled and perplexed. Amazed we step back. Should we laugh or should we cry? Again and again, turning our world upside down, the kingdom surprises us.”

The difference that Jesus highlights, David Oliver and Howard Snyder argue, is between Church people and Kingdom people. Kingdom people seek first the kingdom of God and its justice. Church people often put church work above work, above concerns of justice, mercy and truth. In the church business people are concerned with church activities, religious behaviour and spiritual things. In the kingdom business, people are concerned with kingdom activities, all human behaviour and everything which God has made, visible and invisible. Church people don’t usually like parties, alcohol or bad people. The King of the kingdom liked all three. When Christians put the church ahead of the kingdom, they settle for meetings and spend increasing amounts of time with the same people. When they catch a vision of the kingdom of God, their sight shifts to the poor, the orphan, the widow, the refugee, the wretched of the earth, and to God’s people. They also see with real insight and fresh vision the stressed, the fearful, the hopeless at work and both their heart and time reach out. If the church has one great need, it is this – to be set free, for the kingdom of God, to be set free to become relevant exactly as God intended.

We are called to be kingdom people, called to be saints who act out the upside-down values of the kingdom in all of our life and work. God calls us to turn our backs on the kingdoms of this world and simply maintaining the churches and piety of this world and to embrace an upside-down home. How will we respond?

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Jon Foreman - All Of God's Children.

The Revolutionary Magnificat

This is the sermon I preached at St Martin-in-the-Fields 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. 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.

Donald Kraybill wrote a classic book on the kingdom of God which used this same imagery as its title and defining metaphor. ‘The Upside-Down Kingdom’ shows how the kingdom of God announced by Jesus appeared upside-down in first-century Palestine and continues to look upside-down as it breaks into diverse cultures around the world today. That image and the visual metaphor of Bishop David’s handstand can just as easily be applied to the Magnificat, the song sung by Mary following her meeting with Elizabeth (about which we heard in today’s Gospel reading) 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.’

In a Holy Week meditation I wrote a few years ago based on Jesus’ meeting with Pilate I explored similar revolutions to those articulated in the Magnificat by seeing Pilate as “representing / the oppressive, controlling / Empire of dominating power, / with its strength in numbers / and weaponry, / which can crucify / but cannot / set free” while Jesus represents “the kingdom of God; / a kingdom of love, / service and self-sacrifice / birthing men and women / into the freedom /to love one another.” Our choice is then: “The way of compassion or the way of domination; / the way of self-sacrifice or the way of self; the way of powerlessness or the way of power; the way of serving or the way of grasping; the kingdom of God or the empires of Man.”

Today, though, I want to focus briefly on relational revolutions deriving from this story. The first is that 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” (https://malcolmguite.wordpress.com/tag/mary/). Mary’s role, as Theotokos, challenges the patriarchy of the society in which she lived, as well as that of the Church throughout much of its history. 

Patriarchy is also challenged by another revolutionary aspect of Mary’s story and that is the Virgin Birth. The primary purpose of patriarchy is to assure the man of the legitimacy of his offspring.  “Patriarchy's investment in systems that ensure proof of authorial possession results from the necessity of overcoming male anxiety over the ultimate uncertainty of biological paternity. Although the woman always knows she is the mother - through her physical connection with the developing foetus - the man never knows for sure that he is the father, and thus has a high stake in maintaining a system by which he can claim paternal ‘ownership’.” (Amelia Jones, quoted in ‘Re-Enchantment’ - http://www.jameselkins.com/index.php/academic-books/234-the-art-seminar-series)

But, as we know, in the Nativity story Joseph is not the father of Jesus and does not know whether Mary has slept with another man or not. A different role is asked of Joseph from that of the Patriarch; that of being the guardian and foster-father of Jesus. So, Jesus' birth occurs outside of or at a tangent to patriarchal systems or structures. Jesus, himself, is a man who doesn’t marry and who has no physical offspring - the furtherance of his 'seed' is of no interest to him. His emphasis is on his followers as his family, rather than his blood and adoptive relatives. His death is for the entire family of God - all people everywhere – and he teaches that after the resurrection people will neither marry or be given in marriage.

As a result, the philosopher Thierry De Duve has suggested that the: “great invention, the great coup of Christianity”, resulting from the Virgin Birth, “is to short-circuit” patriarchal ownership and a “production line that fabricates sons” (‘Re-Enchantment’). Robert Song has argued that the advent of Christ changes our understandings of sexuality because there is a “fundamental shift in horizons brought about the resurrection.” In the resurrection life there will be no marrying or giving in marriage, Jesus says, and behind his thinking is the idea that where there is no death, there will be no need for birth or marriage. Subverting the patriarchal system through the Virgin Birth and removing the necessity for procreation through the resurrection opens up space in which to reimagine marriage, including the possibility of a greater diversity of relational and family structures in society characterised by faithfulness, permanence and fruitfulness. Robert Song calls these “faithful covenanted relationships”; committed relationships which are sexually active but non-procreative (https://durhamabbeyhouse.wordpress.com/2014/10/31/book-launch-robert-songs-new-book-on-same-sex-relationships/).

The anthropologist Daniel Miller in quoted in the current edition of ‘The Big Issue’ as saying that “Christmas is a festival that aims to make the family not just sacred but an idiom for society more generally, including the local community or neighbourhood but also the national family.” In Britain, he suggests, “we place considerable emphasis on re-establishing a version of the domestic at Christmas time, rediscovering a certain sentimentality for this idealised version of family life.” The article then notes that, of course, “this rose-tinted vision is a world away from the reality many people live through at Christmas” because we do not enjoy “such an idealised family festival.”

However, if we were to grasp the unconventional and non-idealised relationships which God chose to reveal himself and be incarnated through the birth of Jesus – a conception outside of marriage, a relationship on the brink of divorce, a foster-father, a birth in cramped and crowded circumstances, an immediate threat to life followed by refugee status – we might then understand the reality of incarnation; of God with us in the reality, not the ideality, of our lives.  

For Mary and Elizabeth to be caught up in events with such revolutionary implications - events which turn our understanding of societal norms for relationships upside down – was far from easy. “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.” (W. David O. Taylor - http://artspastor.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/the-annunciation-really-weird-story.html)

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.

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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Herbert Sumsion - Magnificat.

The Upside-Down Kingdom of God

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

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. His action turned our expectations of Bishops and their behaviour upside-down at the same time as it perfectly illustrated his point.

Jesus is depicted upside-down in the painting Jesus Striped and Stripped created by Cedric Baxter for a set of Australian Stations of the Cross. Victoria Emily Jones has written that “Baxter's tenth station captures Jesus mid-tumble, naked and abused and down on his way to death, but what Christians know and glory in, especially during the Easter season, is that he's circling back. He's turning a cartwheel! The upside downness of Jesus in this image challenges us to look at Passion Week with the right perspective: as a journey that brings Christ low only to raise him up.”

G. K. Chesterton used a similar image in writing about St Francis of Assisi: “[Saint] Francis, at the time … when he disappeared into the prison or the dark cavern, underwent a reversal of a certain psychological kind … The man who went into the cave was not the man who came out again … He looked at the world as differently from other men as if he had come out of that dark hole walking on his hands … If a man saw the world hanging upside down, with all the trees and towers hanging head downwards as in a pool, one effect would be to emphasise the idea of dependence … It would make vivid the Scriptural text which says that God has hanged the world upon nothing.”

In what ways do these images and Jesus’ teaching in the beatitudes turn our understanding of life upside down? Donald Kraybill writes in The Upside-Down Kingdom that 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. Things aren’t like we think they should be. We’re baffled and perplexed; uncertain whether to laugh or cry. Again and again, turning our world upside down, Jesus’ kingdom surprises us.

It is the humble poor who know their need of God and those who have nothing who know they need everything. So we should pray for those moments when we and others become poor in spirit, bereaved, meek, hungry, thirsty, as they are moments when we are more likely to turn our faces to God looking for salvation. We need to pray for the opening of doors in us and others that gain and comfort have locked tight.

The Gospel announcement, our salvation, is truly comprehensive, is truly for all, because it is offered to losers, by circumstance or choice. The poor have no means of becoming rich but the rich have within themselves the possibility of becoming poor. There is nothing that we don’t have that will bar our entry to this upside-down kingdom and so we can pray to be rid of what we do have that God’s kingdom may truly come to all.

In this way, as the Beatitudes state, our lives are turned upside down and we are blessed with poverty, with grief, with meekness, with hunger, with mercy, with purity, with peacemaking, and with persecution (Gerard Kelly, Humanifesto).

As opposed to the survival of the fittest or looking after No. 1, the kingdom of God, as it is described in the Beatitudes, is a place of happiness for those who know they are spiritually poor, a place of comfort for those who mourn, a place of receptivity for those who are humble, a place of satisfaction for those whose greatest desire is to do what God requires, a place of mercy for those who are merciful, a place in which God is seen by the pure in heart, a place in which those who work for peace are called God’s children, and a place which belongs to those who are persecuted because they do what God requires.

This is what those, like St Francis, that we call saints came to realise. It is what we must seek through prayer as we too respond to our calling to be saints.

May God forgive our attempts to be loved, our pride, our pleasure-seeking and our leisure-seeking and instead turn our lives upside down and bless us with poverty, with grief, with meekness, with hunger, with mercy, with purity, with peacemaking, with persecution and with his upside down kingdom. Amen.

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T. Bone Burnett - Shut It Tight.

The upside-down Kingdom of God

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. As opposed to the survival of the fittest or looking after No. 1, the Kingdom of God, as it is described in the Beatitudes, is a place of happiness for those who know they are spiritually poor, a place of comfort for those who mourn, a place of receptivity for those who are humble, a place of satisfaction for those whose greatest desire is to do what God requires, a place of mercy for those who are merciful, a place in which God is seen by the pure in heart, a place in which those who work for peace are called God’s children, and a place which belongs to those who are persecuted because they do what God requires.

I've been reminded of this by a post at The Jesus Question about an artwork called Jesus Striped and Stripped by Cedric Baxter.

Victoria Emily Jones writes that, 'Every year since 2008 (excepting last year, due to ministerial transitions), Catherine Czerw has curated a Lenten art exhibition on behalf of Wesley Uniting Church in Perth, Australia, called Stations of the Cross. She selects fifteen Australian artists to participate, each one choosing a station to depict. Jesus Striped and Stripped was Cedric Baxter's 2011 contribution for Station 10, traditionally articulated as "Jesus is stripped of his garments."'

'Baxter's tenth station captures Jesus mid-tumble, naked and abused and down on his way to death, but what Christians know and glory in, especially during the Easter season, is that he's circling back. He's turning a cartwheel! The upside downness of Jesus in this image challenges us to look at Passion Week with the right perspective: as a journey that brings Christ low only to raise him up.'

Baxter's image would have been perfect for a short liturgy which I prepared a while back for the Barking Area Team meeting and subsequently used at a Deanery Synod and at St John's Seven Kings. This liturgy began with an opening reflection taken from St Francis of Assisi by G. K. Chesterton:

'[Saint] Francis, at the time … when he disappeared into the prison or the dark cavern, underwent a reversal of a certain psychological kind … The man who went into the cave was not the man who came out again … He looked at the world as differently from other men as if he had come out of that dark hole walking on his hands … If a man saw the world hanging upside down, with all the trees and towers hanging head downwards as in a pool, one effect would be to emphasise the idea of dependence … It would make vivid the Scriptural text which says that God has hanged the world upon nothing.'

This image of coming out of a cave walking on our hands was used by Mumford & Sons in their song entitled The Cave. I adapted this to form the opening response:

May we come out of our cave walking on our hands and see the world hanging upside down. May we understand dependence when we know the maker's hand. Amen.

The prayer of penitence began by borrowing some phrases from Donald B. Kraybill: Jesus, you startle us as paradox, irony and surprise permeate your 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. Things aren’t like we think they should be. We’re baffled and perplexed; uncertain whether to laugh or cry. Again and again, turning our world upside down, your kingdom surprises us and so we pray now to see your world and our lives as you see them.

I put these together with some of T. Bone Burnett's lyrics from Trap Door. The responses were:

Lord, forgive our knowingness, our grasping, our comfort and our self-satisfaction.

Lord, forgive our attempts to be loved, our pride, our pleasure-seeking and our leisure-seeking. As we turn to you, turn our lives upside down and bless us with poverty, with grief, with meekness, with hunger, with mercy, with purity, with peacemaking, with persecution and with your upside down kingdom. Amen.

The prayers of intercession were as follows: 

God of Israel, the God of the Exodus, you hear the cry of slaves and deliver true liberation. New regimes which leave the old order in place, the bullies in power, the greedy with their unjust gains, and which have nothing to say to the oppressed are not good and are not news. Having heard the subversive nature of your kingdom announcement, we pray for an upside-down kingdom that will deliver true liberation.

Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as in heaven.

It is the humble poor who know their need of you and those who have nothing who know they need everything. So we pray for those moments when we and others become poor in spirit, bereaved, meek, hungry, thirsty, and turn faces to you looking for salvation. Open doors in us and others that gain and comfort have locked tight.

Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as in heaven.

The Gospel announcement, your salvation, is truly comprehensive, is truly for all, because it is offered to losers, by circumstance or choice. The poor have no means of becoming rich but the rich have within themselves the possibility of becoming poor. There is nothing that we don’t have that will bar our entry to this upside-down kingdom and so we pray to be rid of what we do have that your kingdom may truly come to all.

Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as in heaven.

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours now and for ever. Amen.

The liturgy ended with Gerard Kelly's Let Your Kingdom Come.

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T. Bone Burnett - Trap Door.

Prayer for the upside-down kingdom of God

Here is some liturgy that I prepared for today's meeting of the Barking Episcopal Area Team (credits at the end):

Opening reflection: “[Saint] Francis, at the time … when he disappeared into the prison or the dark cavern, underwent a reversal of a certain psychological kind … The man who went into the cave was not the man who came out again … He looked at the world as differently from other men as if he had come out of that dark hole walking on his hands … If a man saw the world hanging upside down, with all the trees and towers hanging head downwards as in a pool, one effect would be to emphasise the idea of dependence … It would make vivid the Scriptural text which says that God has hanged the world upon nothing.”

May we come out of our cave walking on our hands and see the world hanging upside down. May we understand dependence when we know the maker's hand. Amen.

Prayer of penitence: Jesus, you startle us as paradox, irony and surprise permeate your 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. Things aren’t like we think they should be. We’re baffled and perplexed; uncertain whether to laugh or cry. Again and again, turning our world upside down, your kingdom surprises us and so we pray now to see your world and our lives as you see them.

It's a funny thing about humility as soon as you know you're being humble, you're no longer humble. It's a funny thing about life you've got to give up your life to be alive, you've got to suffer to know compassion, you can't want nothing if you want satisfaction.

Lord, forgive our knowingness, our grasping, our comfort and our self-satisfaction.

It's a funny thing about love the harder you try to be loved, the less lovable you are. It's a funny thing about pride, when you're being proud you should be ashamed. You find only pain if you seek after pleasure, you work like a slave if you seek after leisure.

Lord, forgive our attempts to be loved, our pride, our pleasure-seeking and our leisure-seeking. As we turn to you, turn our lives upside down and bless us with poverty, with grief, with meekness, with hunger, with mercy, with purity, with peacemaking, with persecution and with your upside down kingdom. Amen.

Bible reading: Luke 7. 36-50

Reflection

Prayers of intercession: God of Israel, the God of the Exodus, you hear the cry of slaves and deliver true liberation. New regimes which leave the old order in place, the bullies in power, the greedy with their unjust gains, and which have nothing to say to the oppressed are not good and are not news. Having heard the subversive nature of your kingdom announcement, we pray for an upside-down kingdom that will deliver true liberation.

Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as in heaven.

It is the humble poor who know their need of you and those who have nothing who know they need everything. So we pray for those moments when we and others become poor in spirit, bereaved, meek, hungry, thirsty, and turn faces to you looking for salvation. Open doors in us and others that gain and comfort have locked tight.

Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as in heaven.

The Gospel announcement, your salvation, is truly comprehensive, is truly for all, because it is offered to losers, by circumstance or choice. The poor have no means of becoming rich but the rich have within themselves the possibility of becoming poor. There is nothing that we don’t have that will bar our entry to this upside-down kingdom and so we pray to be rid of what we do have that your kingdom may truly come to all.

Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as in heaven.

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours now and for ever. Amen.

Closing prayer: Let it break out like blisters on the skin of this city.
Let it cut to the heart like cardiac surgery.
Let it create more column inches than Idols or Big Brother.
Let it turn more heads in public than Brooklyn Beckham’s mother.

Let it blow in like a hurricane, like a river, like a fire.
Let it spread like a virus, like a rumour, like a war.
Like the raising of a curtain, like the roll of a drum,
let it come to us: let your kingdom come.

Let it hit the road more readily than Eddie Stobart’s trucks.
Let it show up in more suburbs than Blockbusters and Starbucks.
Let it overturn more social norms than Marge and Homer’s Bart.
Let it be driven to more victories than Tiger Woods’ golf cart.

Let it blow in like a hurricane, like a river, like a fire.
Let it spread like a virus, like a rumour, like a war.
Like the raising of a curtain, like the roll of a drum,
let it come to us: let your kingdom come. Amen.


Opening reflection – extract from G.K. Chesterton, St. Francis of Assisi & adaptation of ‘The Cave’ by Mumford & Sons. Prayer of penitence – extracts from Donald Kraybill, The Upside Down Kingdom, ‘Trap Door’ by T. Bone Burnett & Matthew 5. 3-11. Prayers of intercession – adaptation of extract from Gerard Kelly, Humanifesto. Closing prayer - extracted from ‘Liturgy: Let your kingdom come’ by Gerard Kelly.

The reflection at the meeting came from Revd. Toni Smith and was the story of a child relating to a tramp in a restaurant where the acceptance of the child was profoundly moving for the tramp, in contrast to reaction of the adults in the restaurant towards him.

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Carolyn Arends - I Can Hear You.