Love is ...

Here's the sermon that I shared at St Andrew's Wickford yesterday:

When I preach at weddings I often tell the story of the Love is … cartoons. ‘Love Is...’ began as shy love notes from the artist Kim Casali to her future husband, Roberto. Each of these notes involved a little drawing and a personal sentiment that perfectly captured Kim's thoughts and feelings for the man she loved. She began these drawings when they were dating, and she would leave the cartoons where Roberto would be sure to find them. After they were married, he showed her that he'd kept them all the drawing she had made for him. The cartoons were picked up by the press, were first published in The Los Angeles Times in January 1970, and then their popularity grew globally and they were published daily in 50 countries around the world and translated into 25 languages.

I use this as a way of introducing the original ‘Love is …’ from 1 Corinthians 13: “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.”

The ‘Love is …’ cartoons and 1 Corinthians 13 both agree with another well-known ‘love is’ statement; ‘Love is a many-splendoured thing.’ Love cannot be captured or summed up in one cartoon or phrase or even in a series of cartoons or phrases. Love constantly bursts the bounds of our descriptions or definitions and this is why there is no end to songs, poems, novels, films, dances and plays about love. When I was ministering in the City of London, I would visit the Guildhall Art Gallery where we can see that the subject of romantic love preoccupied Victorian artists who addressed themes of unrequited love, social incompatibility, family disapproval, and separation at war.

Nearer our own time, C.S. Lewis is well known for looking at some of the different loves described in Greek thought - familial or affectionate love (storge); friendship (philia); romantic love (eros); and spiritual love (agape) - in the light of Christian commentary on ordinate loves. Despite his writings on The Four Loves he was himself surprised by love as his own relationship with Joy Davidman developed. The experience of love confounded his earlier more academic perceptions of it.

It is possible that the definitive Biblical statement on love is that which is found in 1 John 4. 16 where we read that, ‘God is love’. This is also where Ernesto Cardenal takes us. Our experiences of friendship, familial and romantic love all enable us to know God as love. Therefore, he writes, ‘My former loves have taught me what love is. I know how you love me because I too have loved, and I know what passionate and obsessed love is and what it is to be madly in love with someone. And God is mad about me.’

The strength of God’s love for us was revealed among us through his sending of his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. ‘In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.’ Christ searches for us like the Good Shepherd searching for the lost sheep. His journey of salvation shows how much we are loved by him as he gives up all he has in order to seek us out and rescue us.

The extremity of God’s expression of love in giving all in self-sacrifice reveals the limitless nature of love which constantly escapes the limits of our experiences, descriptions or definitions. If God is love then, just as God is infinite and cannot ever be fully grasped by our finite minds, so love also must be inexhaustible. As St Paul stated in 1 Corinthians 13, ‘Love never ends’. Love, like God, is an infinite ocean into which we dive and can always swim deeper and further.

In The Last Battle, the final volume of his Narnia stories, C.S. Lewis sums up the reality of God, heaven and love in the phrase, ‘further up and further in.’ The children in his stories discover heaven as the real Narnia which is bigger and better than the shadow Narnia in which they had lived out their finite lives. When they reach the centre of this real Narnia, they find that their journey begins again as there is always a deeper layer to this real Narnia, meaning that there is no end to their exploration of the reality of Narnia. If God is love and love is God then, as T.S. Eliot wrote in Little Gidding, ‘We shall not cease from exploration / And the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time.’

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Victoria Williams - Love.

Love - the heart of safeguarding

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

Safeguarding has at its heart a longing for all people to be safe, protected, welcomed and cared for within our churches and in wider society. It is an integral part of the ministry and mission of our churches and a core part of how we are church. But more than this, safeguarding is about love in truth and action. As we seek to love and serve our neighbours in our communities, we are called to be places and spaces where there is a healthy culture of interactions and relationships. We need to take our call to love one another seriously. We also need to take our call to live truthfully seriously.

Over the past few years, the Church of England has been called to account for its Safeguarding failures. As an institution, we are on a journey: there is always more work to be done and more lessons to learn and there is a constant need for us to lament and repent of our failings. As a Church, we need to acknowledge our failings, learn from the past, and listen and respond to victims and survivors with humility. We need to love in truth and action.

As Nicholas Papadopulos, Dean of Salisbury, has said, “There is much for us to open our eyes to. For years, the merest sniff of a question or the first hint of an allegation sent church leaders hurrying to circle the wagons and defend the institution and its staff. Far too often we have reacted with – at best – ostrich-like complacency to those of our own who have posed grave threats to others.” “Terrible things have happened in the churches, as in all our best-loved institutions; we share a responsibility for ensuring that they cannot happen again.”

Those terrible things meant that the Church of England, as with other denominations, has been guilty of the kind of hypocrisy that Jesus criticises in today’s Gospel reading (Matthew 23.27-32). Like those who presented as whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful but inside are full of all kinds of uncleanness, so the Church of England has tried to present itself as being whiter than white, while the reality has been very different, both in terms of those who abused others and those who failed to support the victims of abuse.

As a result, many people in our communities and in our churches live daily with physical, emotional, mental and spiritual scars of abuse. If this sermon prompts any safeguarding concerns or raises any safeguarding issues you would like to discuss, please contact our Parish Safeguarding Officer or get in touch with our Diocesan Safeguarding Team. You can find their contact details on the Diocesan website: www.chelmsford.anglican.org under the safeguarding tab.

As Nicholas Papadopulos has also said, “We cannot live out the great commandment to love God and love neighbour if those who would harm their neighbour find a secure hiding-place in our common life … the great commandment … [is] right there … when we do whatever we can to ensure that the vulnerable are kept safe, remembering that any of us can be vulnerable. That, surely, is the bare minimum that loving one another requires of us.”

Through Jesus, God relates to us in love and friendship. And this is how Jesus wants us to relate to others. “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” Jesus’ primary action is to love: not to judge, condemn, criticise, belittle or dismiss. He loves. A love that goes beyond boundaries and that is without agenda. A love that is about equality and mutual respect. A love that refuses power and abuse; that washes tired, dirty feet. A love that lets everyone sit down to eat.

Faithful discipleship is known by love. Jesus calls upon his disciples to mirror the love that God has for him and the love that he has for the Father and for his disciples. To lay down one’s life is to put the needs of others before our own, to live for the good of others, to make time for them, to be present for them in times of trouble and crisis, to listen to them, to witness to their hurts. “Love one another as I have loved you.” Following Jesus means taking love seriously. As the first letter of John stresses: “We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us… love one another just as he commanded us… all who obey his commandments abide in him, and he abides in them.”

We are also compelled to live truthfully. This means going beyond addressing issues of harm and abuse and protecting against them. It means being willing to face hard truths, to stand with victims of injustice and - if required – to speak up and out with them and for them. We know that abuse devastates lives, that it has and does take place in the church and that its consequences are profound and long-lasting. The task of Safeguarding is to acknowledge this hard truth and to do everything possible to ensure that abuse no longer happens, now or in the future. In all that we do, particularly in balancing our responsibilities, we must continually seek to place survivors and victims at the heart of our concern.

We long to be a refuge for the hurting and vulnerable, and to do this we must listen to those who feel voiceless and empower everyone in our communities to remain safe, within their families, places of work and of worship. “Let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.” Jesus’ command to love as he loves is an invitation into relationships of profound mutuality and interdependence.

These kinds of relationships contribute to healthy communities, modelled on the example of Christ’s own humility and sacrifice. This is a way of being that says, who I am is caught up in who you are. We are members together of the same body of people. Whatever affects one of us affects all of us. We are all God’s children; Jesus calls us all friends; we are all brothers and sisters. So, if I am your sister, your brother, I have a responsibility for how I behave towards you and that has implications for the choices I make about how I live and love in the world. This is the kind of integrity that is the reverse of the hypocrisy criticised by Jesus in today’s Gospel reading.

As we reflect, we remember that the kingdom of God is not for the strong but the weak; it is not for the rich but for the poor; it is not for the powerful but for the powerless; it is not for the proud but for the meek. The Church is where the least, the lost and the broken – all God’s children - should be able to find the safest of places in a loving community that lives out its faith in truth and action. May that be true for us, here in Wickford and Runwell. Amen.

(Based on 'love in truth and action' by Venerable Ruth Patten, Archdeacon of Colchester)

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Howard Hewett - The Journey (Think About It).

Give me an undivided heart to revere your name

Here's the reflection that I shared during tonight's Healing Eucharist at St Andrew's Wickford:

‘Psalm 86 is by someone who identified himself as poor and needy. The Psalm could be for an individual who is suffering, a king who feels especially vulnerable to domestic enemies, or the nation of Israel, which was the victim of foreign empires before, during, and after the exile.’ (https://jamesbradfordpate.blogspot.com/2012/07/psalm-86.html)

The Psalmist speaks of God saying: ‘you, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.’ What we see in God is abundance, an abundance of mercy, graciousness, steadfastness, love and faithfulness. In God, there is an abundance of all we need when we are poor and needy.

As a result, we should come to him to ask for help. As the Psalmist prays: ‘Give ear, O Lord, to my prayer; listen to my cry of supplication. In the day of my trouble I call on you, for you will answer me.’ We can call out, cry out to God because we will be heard. We can express our pain, even anger, knowing that he will give ear, will hear and will respond.

What he wants for us is the healing of our internal divisions. St Paul described these well when he says in Romans 7:15-20: ‘I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. But in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me.’

The Psalmist knows this reality and so prays: ‘Teach me your way, O Lord, that I may walk in your truth; give me an undivided heart to revere your name.’ He then says, ‘I give thanks to you, O Lord my God, with my whole heart.’ It is that reality that God wishes us to find - love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind – as this is true healing. When we are genuinely able to do that, then we know real integration and harmony and healing within our currently divided body, mind and spirit. Therefore, it is for this that we need to pray.

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Gungor - Beautiful Things.

I have come to fulfil the Law

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

In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe the Deep Magic “was a set of laws placed into Narnia by the Emperor-beyond-the-Sea at the time of its creation. It was written on the Stone Table, the firestones on the Secret Hill, and the sceptre of the Emperor-beyond-the-Sea.

This law stated that the White Witch, Jadis, was entitled to kill every traitor, and if someone denied her this right then all of Narnia would be overturned and perish in fire and water. However, unknown to Jadis, a deeper magic from before the dawn of Time existed, which said that if a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor's stead, the Stone Table would crack, and Death would start working backwards.”

So in this story, there is a Law which is about actions and consequences and there is a deeper Law which is about love. C. S. Lewis, who wrote the Narnia stories, was a Christian who drew on his understanding of Christian faith in writing his stories. It may be that he had passages like today's Gospel reading (Matthew 5. 20 – 26) in mind when he wrote about the deeper magic from before the dawn of Time.

Jesus is saying in his teaching from Matthew 5 about the Law that it is not enough simply to keep the Law. He wants us to go deeper than simple obedience of the Law and the deeper place into which he wants us to go is Love.

Most of us actually keep the laws of this land most of the time. On the whole, because the laws are prohibitions – do not’s, like do not murder or do not steal – and because we live in a time of relative wealth, our laws are not that difficult to keep.

But prohibitions simply keep us from doing harm to others. They don’t enable us to love others. Simply refraining from murdering others or stealing from others is enough to keep the Law (we call it keeping the peace) but doing these things doesn’t mean that I am actively loving anyone at all.

To love means that I have to do something more that simply keep the Law. That is what Jesus is teaching and illustrating here and it is what C. S. Lewis shows us in Narnia through his imaginative story.

Let’s think briefly about the way laws and love work together. Parents teach their children the rules of the road. To begin with, when children are very young, the rules of the road are very restrictive i.e. the child must never cross a road without a parent and must always cross at a crossing with the parent and while holding the parents hand. As the child grows, they are taught new rules for crossing the road; for me, that was the Green Cross Code - stop, look and listen. Now, the aim is that the child learns to judge for him or herself when it is safe to cross the road.

Eventually, the rules with which we began – don’t cross on your own, don’t cross unless you are at a crossing – are left behind because the child has learnt how to cross the road safely using their own initiative. Elbert Hubbard has said, “Initiative is doing the right things without being told.” We are able to use initiative because we have not only learnt the rules but have learnt to apply in our lives and situations. At this point, we are no longer restricted just to crossing the road at specific crossing places but can cross wherever we judge it to be safe to do so.

So, we have gone beyond the rules by learning and applying the rules. In other words, we have found the true purpose of those rules which our parents enforced when we were young; which is that we learn to cross the road safely by ourselves wherever we are.

Jesus is saying the same thing. The Law starts by keeping us safe – do not murder, do not steal. If we all abide by the Law then we do not harm each other. That is good, but it is not enough. We also need to learn to love one another. That means doing more than the Law requires but to do that is also the fulfilling of the Law. If the Law is about maintaining good relations between us, then love is the fulfilment of the Law’s intent.

Jesus said: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfil them.” (Matthew 5. 17) and he commended, as being the heart or summary of the Law, these words: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’” As Paul writes, “Love is the fulfilment of the law.” (Romans 13. 10)

So, in order to fulfil the Law and these teachings we are to love as Jesus loved: “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” (1 Corinthians 13. 4 – 7).

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Randy Stonehill - Strong Hand Of Love.

Receiving light and walking in light

Here's the sermon that I shared at St Andrew's Wickford yesterday:

At baptisms, we give each newly baptised person a lighted candle and say that God has delivered us from the dominion of darkness and has given us a place with the saints in light. Then we say, “You have received the light of Christ; walk in this light all the days of your life. Shine as a light in the world to the glory of God the Father.” We do this because Jesus said: ‘I have come as light into the world, so that everyone who believes in me should not remain in the darkness’ (John 12.44-end).

What does it mean that Jesus comes as light so we do not remain in darkness? The light of Christ is revelatory as it reveals the good and bad in our lives and communities. Light reveals those things that have been hidden so we can see their true nature; whether live-giving or life-denying.

Jesus is God fully revealed in human form, so shows us what God is actually like as well as revealing all that we, as humans, can become. We come into the light of Christ by comparing our lives to his. As we do so, inevitably we find that we fall short; that our capacity to do what pleases him (by living out all goodness, righteousness and truth) is less than his capacity for these things.

Jesus says to Nicodemus (John 3. 19 - 21): “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. 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.

Our reality, as St Paul so accurately states in Romans 7 is that we are divided people: “… what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” So, coming into the light of Christ initially reveals our fallibilities and failures to be Christ-like. God sees 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” (John 4. 29). 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. As a result, if we are to be transparent in the light of Christ, we make our humble confession to Almighty God truly and earnestly repenting of our sins.

But the light of Christ does not just expose and make visible our fallibilities. Jesus came into our world as the Word of God to live a life of self-sacrificial love as a human being. He shows us what true love looks like and he shows us that human beings are capable of true love even when most of the evidence around us seems to point towards the opposite conclusion. In 1 John 5. 20 we read that “the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we know the true God.”

When we learn what pleases our Lord (which is all goodness, righteousness and truth; or, as our confession says, intending to lead a new life by following the commandments of God, walking in his holy ways and living in love and charity with our neighbours) we are then illuminated by him and become a light to others. This is what Jesus means when he tells us to let our light shine before others, that they may see our good deeds and glorify our Father in heaven.

Just as with those newly baptised people receiving a lighted candle and being reminded that God has delivered us from the dominion of darkness and has given us a place with the saints in light, today we too hear Jesus say ‘I have come as light into the world, so that everyone who believes in me should not remain in the darkness.’ Like them, we have received the light of Christ and are called to walk in this light all the days of our lives. So, may we shine as lights in the world to the glory of God the Father. Amen.

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The Call - The Morning.

The necessity of betrayal and the stature of waiting

Here's the reflection that I shared this afternoon in the Midday Meditation Service for Holy Week at Billericay Methodist Church:

“God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength …

God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God.” (1 Corinthians 1.18-31)

Jesus chose Judas to be one of his disciples. What does it mean that Judas was chosen?

In The Last Temptation of Christ, the novelist Nikos Kazantzakis has Judas betray Jesus at Jesus’s own instigation. In our Gospel reading (John 13.21-32) Jesus said to Judas, ‘Do quickly what you are going to do’ which can be understood as an instruction to Judas to betray. In the novel Kazantzakis has Jesus say, “There is no other way for the Kingdom of Heaven to come”:

“You will, Judas, my brother. God will give you the strength, as much as you lack, because it is necessary—it is necessary for me to be killed and for you to betray me. We two must save the world. Help me."

Judas bowed his head. After a moment he asked, "If you had to betray your master, would you do it?"

Jesus reflected for a long time. Finally he said, "No, I'm afraid I wouldn't be able to. That is why God pitied me and gave me the easier task: to be crucified.”

In our Gospel reading, when Judas has gone out, Jesus says, ‘Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him’. It is as Judas goes to betray Jesus that Jesus says he is glorified, again showing the necessity of Judas’ betrayal.

If it is necessary for Judas to betray, which seems to be the case, then there may be a place for betrayal. The Irish poet Brendan Kennelly wrote a book called The Book of Judas in which he looks at the Judas of Gethsemane, the Judas in our culture and the Judas in us all. He writes:

Be a knife, bullet, poison, flood, earthquake;
Cut, gut, shrivel, swallow, bury, burn, drown
Till someone senses things ain't as they should be.

If betrayal is a service, learn to betray
With the kind of style that impresses men
Until they dream of being me

On this basis Judas becomes even more fascinating as a betrayer. He and his fate become a yardstick for measuring God’s kindness and forgiveness – does He allow Judas to go to Hell, given Judas was predetermined to betray his master?

In U2’s ‘Until the End of the World’ Judas sings to Jesus. The first verse discusses The Last Supper:

We ate the food, we drank the wine
Everybody having a good time except you
You were talking about the end of the world

The second verse is Judas’s betrayal of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane:

In the garden I was playing the tart
I kissed your lips and broke your heart


The third verse is about Judas' suicide after being overwhelmed with guilt and sadness:

Waves of regret and waves of joy
I reached out for the one I tried to destroy
You, you said you’d wait till the end of the world

In this song, Jesus is there at the end of time for Judas.

Jesus chose Judas as a disciple knowing he would betray and that his betrayal would bring about the salvation of the world. He chose someone who has been seen as foolish, weak, low and despised but in doing so chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God.

Jesus chose Judas to be one of his disciples. We’ve thought briefly about what it might mean that Judas was chosen but, ultimately, as U2 sing in a song called ‘Moment of Surrender’: “It’s not if I believe in love / If love believes in me” and so, we pray, “Oh, believe in me” and give thanks that love does believe in us, as love believes in Judas. Amen.
Let’s think now about the interaction between Jesus and Judas from the perspective of what happens to Jesus.

 
“Over thirty years ago, W.H. Vanstone, canon of Chester Cathedral, wrote a book called, The Stature of Waiting. Early in the book, Vanstone talks about Jesus’ betrayal by Judas. The word ‘betrayed’, he says, as when Judas betrayed Jesus, really means ‘handed over’.” He explains that, “The word ‘betrayed’ is used only once in 33 mentions of what Judas did; the other 32 times the phrase ‘handed over’ is used. Where that phrase is used in other contexts of the NT it has no connotation of betrayal – eg the talents are ‘handed over’, Jesus ‘handed over’ his spirit as he died, Paul ‘hands over’ the gospel by preaching it to the Corinthians. The gospel writers use it consistently and automatically; it must have been the stock phrase, perhaps the one Jesus himself used at the Last Supper.”

“The gospels show a marked change from activity to passivity, action to passion, at the point where Jesus was ‘handed over’ – a phrase [which was] in common Christian currency in the first century.” According to John’s account … when Judas leaves the Last Supper to set in train the handing over of Jesus, John tell us ‘that it was night’… which must mean that the ‘daylight’ period is over and that the time foreseen by Jesus has come - the time at which ‘no one can work’, the time at which ‘working’ must give place to ‘waiting’…and is also associated, in a most striking way, with the end of Jesus’ freedom from restraint by human hands … ”from working to waiting and from freedom to constraint.” “The handing over of Jesus was His transition from working to waiting upon and receiving the works of others, from the status and role of subject to that of object, from ‘doing’ to ‘being done to’.”

“Jesus moves from being active to being passive in the Garden of Gethsemane when Judas hands him over.” “Until Gethsemane … Jesus had chosen to spend the whole of his ministry ‘demonstrating God’s kingdom’ both to individuals and to the people as a whole. And his ‘demonstrating’ invited people to respond. He longed for them to respond by choosing to deepen their relationship with God and work in the cause of justice: but that was their choice, it could never be obligatory.”

Vanstone “tells us that the word ‘passion’ comes from a Greek word meaning ‘suffer’: or ‘allow events to happen’.” It means, being passive. “The emphasis is … on being the subject not the object; being a patient.” “The passion then describes the time in Jesus’ life when he stopped taking control of the situation and simply allowed people to respond to him as they chose.” “So Vanstone says: ’The passion is not the pains he endured or the cruel manner in which he was treated by the hands of men but simply the fact that he was exposed to those hands and whatever those hands might do.’”

“This point is important because many people see God as ALWAYS taking control, always active, never passive; yet if Jesus is the perfect revelation of God’s character, Jesus’ passion demonstrates that being passive is also God-like.” “So Vanstone argues that Jesus’ death was the result of his passion, his ‘allowing events to happen’”: ”It wasn’t Jesus’ death that brought us benefits … It was his willingness to spare himself nothing, not even his own life, in the cause of winning the nation to the discipleship of God’s kingdom. He sought from the nation’s leaders that which could not be compelled: the response of discipleship.” “So, when Jesus prays in Gethsemane he still hopes that the priests might respond positively, though he knows it’s unlikely. He prays that God might be able to find him another way through this, another way for his message of love to be heard and understood. And until the moment when the priests come into the garden mob-handed there’s still the slim chance they’ll turn themselves around and support him. But in the garden they make their choice and he’ll accept it for what it is: their choice.”

“Jesus did the only thing that love can do: it can only offer itself out and wait for a response. With love, action must give way to passion, to waiting for a choice to be made. Because, as we know, Love is not possessive: it doesn’t insist on its own way; it never uses force. God offers such a love to us: an abundant, free-flowing, bountiful, love: and he waits longingly for us to want to love him in return. Jesus shows us that God’s love is not only active in showing itself, but passive in allowing us to choose what our response will be.” “The activity of love is always precarious … Herein lies the poignancy of love, and its potential tragedy. The activity of love contains no assurance or certainty of completion: much may be expended and little achieved. The progress of love must always be by tentative and precarious steps: and each step that is taken, whether it 'succeeds' or 'fails', becomes the basis for the next, and equally precarious, step which must follow.” “Love proceeds by no assured programme. In the care of children a parent is peculiarly aware that each step of love is a step of risk; and that each step taken generates the need for another and equally precarious step.”

So, “the hallmarks of the creator’s love for his creation [are] an endless love that must always shift with circumstances to see to the good of the beloved. And a vulnerable love that cannot force a response from the beloved but must watch and wait and hope for a response, whether it comes or not.” “Theologian that he is, Vanstone could not help feeling that these were the characteristics of God’s love for us — a self-emptying (kenosis) love that is always attempting to find out how to address the welter of circumstance that is every individual life.” “In the kenosis, or self-emptying of Christ, nothing is held back, nothing unexpended (Phil. 2:7). In this we recognize God’s love as unlimited. God’s love is also vulnerable. The Lord risks rejection at the hands of His own creatures and is pained by our refusal to accept love. And lastly, God’s love is precarious. By the humble condescension of the Lord, we have power to determine whether His love succeeds or fails in its communication, or its intended effect.” “The vulnerability of God means that the issue of His love as triumph or tragedy depends upon His creation.” This is the form of authentic love. If we want to know 'what love ought to be', we need enquire no further than what the love of God is.

“We live in a world which values activity and action over passivity and passion. We have lost [our understanding of what it means to be ‘handed over’]; but perhaps we should recover it, and in recovering it find our human dignity enhanced, our powerlessness removed – for so we can be like God himself, attaining the dignity which is ours because we share in his being, and reconnecting with some of the values we overlook in our emphasis on doing over being.”

The earlier reflections I given as part of the Midday Meditation Services for Holy Week at Billericay Methodist Church can be found here (A blessing on the earth) and here (Subverting the scapegoat mechanism).

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U2 - Until The End Of The World.

A never ending flow of love from God

Here's the sermon:  (11.00am, 08/03/26, St Catherine’s Wickford)

In baptism we use the symbols of oil, light and water. Here’s a reflection on the significance of these three things.

Oil …
bleeding
from the pressurised
crushed
and wounded
to
free us up
lubricate
our rusting
static lives
and
facilitate
our ever moving
onward
forward
Godward

Light …
revealing our past
lighting our future
shining like a lighthouse
in our storms
burning like a warning beacon
in our wars
warming like the sun
on our journeying
glowing like a fire
through gaps and cracks
in shattered, splintered lives

Water …
cleansing our grubbiness
reviving our tiredness
refreshing our thirstiness
nurturing our liveliness
babbling communication
rippling out our influences

May we -
baptised in water,
anointed by oil,
lit by the Spirit -
live and move freely
like a babbling brook
speaking life
to parched ground
leaping boulders and barriers
sparkling in the ever present
light of the Sun.

The poet Malcolm Guite describes the font as ‘A wide womb floating on the breath of God’ because through baptism God is ‘calling us to the life for which we long, yearning to bring us to our birth again.’ Just as at creation when God’s Spirit or breath moved on the waters, when we are baptised the breath of God is again on the waters. 

Malcolm Guite writes:

Come, dip a scallop shell into the font
For birth and blessings as a child of God.
The living water rises from that fount
Whence all things come, that you may bathe and wade
And find the flow, and learn at last to follow
The course of Love upstream towards your home.
The day is done and all the fields lie fallow
One thing is needful, one voice calls your name.

Take the true compass now, be compassed round
By clouds of witness, chords of love unbound.
Turn to the Son, begin your pilgrimage,
Take time with Him to find your true direction.
He travels with you through this darkened age
And wakes you every day to resurrection.

In this poem Malcolm Guite identifies the living water of which Jesus spoke (John 4. 13 & 14) when he said: ‘Those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life’ (John 4. 14) with the love of God seen in Jesus. The water of life of which Jesus spoke is his love filling us and welling up with us in order to overflow to others. Jesus said, ‘Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back’ (Luke 6. 38).

This is how God’s love comes into our lives. We drink in a never ending flow of love from God. It is like a tap which is never turned off and always running. As there is no end to God’s love it can fill us and overflow from us to others. As we give love to others, so we can be filled all over again with God’s love. Giving and receiving in God’s economy are intended to be simultaneous events; as we give out, so we receive more. This is why Paul writes in Ephesians that we should go on being filled with the Spirit (Ephesians 5. 18) by drinking in huge draughts of the Spirit of God.

Sometimes, though, we cut ourselves off from the flow of God’s love. We can do this in at least two ways. Firstly, by our attitudes if we become selfish rather than generous; this is why the Bible gives us so many lists of contrasting behaviour. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control, so the reverse is hate, complaint, violence, frustration, meanness, evil, inconstancy, harshness and uncontrolled. Any or all of these will cut off the flow of God’s Spirit in our lives and church. Secondly, we can also cut off the flow of the Spirit by separating ourselves from some of the channels through which God’s love can regularly reach us – such as social action, church fellowship, Bible reading and prayer.

All this means we need to ask ourselves, what if our job as a follower of Jesus is not to try harder or run faster or get up earlier or rev up your emotions? What if God really is at work in every moment; in every place? What our job is to learn simply not do those things that close us off from the Spirit? Instead of needing to do something else, what if it’s actually about how we keep ourselves aware and submitted so that rivers of living water are flowing through our being? Paul puts it like this and, in some way, the spiritual life is that simple. Just don’t quench the Spirit. The Spirit is already at work. He is bigger than you. He is stronger than you. He is more patient than your failures. He is committed to helping you 24/7, so just don’t get in His way. Don’t quench the Spirit. Don’t grieve the Spirit. We are always either opening ourselves up — walking in the Spirit — or quenching the Spirit. (John Ortberg – ‘A river runs through it’, http://www.biblesociety.org.uk/uploads/files/lyfev2/extra_resources/a_river_runs_through_it.pdf)

If we open ourselves up to God, we can have the raw material of Jesus himself – which is love – flowing out of us. His human body and mind and spirit, alive with the Spirit of God, in us and flowing from us (Stephen Verney, ‘Water into Wine’, Fount, 1985). It might sound a bizarre image; to have a river of life flowing out of you, but it is a big deal to God. The image of a river is used about 150 times in scripture, most often as a picture of spiritual life. And there is good reason. Israel is a desert country where rivers mean one thing: life. To desert people, the river is life.

We sometimes sing the opening words of Psalm 42, “As the deer pants for the water, so my soul pants for you, O God.” Next time you sing it, remember that Israel is desert country. The waters are dried up. This deer is going to die if it doesn’t find water — and that’s you and me. That’s every human being.

To be cut off from the Spirit of God means a life of perpetual unsatisfied desires, spiritual dryness, emotional death. Jesus is saying that receiving from God in this way and giving to others in this way is vital to our life and survival because where the river flows, life will flourish but where a river dries up, life does as well. The river is gift, the river is grace, the river is life, the river is love. It is what we need and all we need, so are you getting and giving all you can? Are you open to God or quenching the flow of his Spirit?

Remember, ‘One thing is needful, one voice calls your name.

Take the true compass now, be compassed round
By clouds of witness, chords of love unbound.
Turn to the Son, begin your pilgrimage,
Take time with Him to find your true direction.
He travels with you through this darkened age
And wakes you every day to resurrection.’

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As The Deer.

God so loved that he gave

Here's the sermon on John 3. 1 – 21 that I shared at St Mary’s Runwell and St Catherine’s Wickford this morning:

God so loved - love is from God because God is love; pure love, the essence of all that love is and can be. Love that is patient, kind, not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. Love that does not insist on its own way; is not irritable or resentful, does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. Love that bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love that never ends.

God so loved the world - the heavens and the earth that God created in the beginning, the heavens which declare the glory of God and the sky that displays what his hands have made, humankind that God created in his own image. God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. God so loved he world that he created in the beginning.

God so loved the world that he gave – true love involves giving; in fact, true love is giving. Our love is often less than this. We speak of those we love as being everything we need or as soul mates who complete us, but rarely talk in terms of giving all we have to others. Yet that is the nature of God’s love, he gives all he has to us.

God so loved the world that he gave his only Son – the Father gives us his Son and the Son gives his life, his whole life, even unto death. Yet, because Father, Son and Holy Spirit are one God, this is a way of saying that what God gives to us is himself, everything he has and is. God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life – God gives himself to us in order that we can become part of him and enter the very life of God himself. Jesus said he came that we might have life and have it to the full. Eternal life is the life of love that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit share within the Godhead and in to which we are called to come and share by the ever-giving love that God the Father shows to us through God the Son.

God’s love has been revealed among us in this way, that God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. We live in the light of this love which reveals all that we can potentially be and become as human beings. God so loved the world that he gave. How do we unwrap the gifts he has given?

God gave us the world in which we live, including the life that we enjoy now and the life that we will enjoy into eternity. One of the ways in which we unwrap those gifts is by means of appreciation. Taking a break to get outside and enjoy God’s creation or counting our blessings by beginning a list of all the things we’re grateful to God for including all areas of our lives - family, work, sport, food, sleep etc.

God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son. Jesus is God’s greatest gift to us. We unwrap the gift of Jesus as we admit to our need for salvation and change. We receive Jesus through the gift of his Spirit, who enables us to change by focusing our thoughts and lives on Jesus. At every moment of every day, we can ask ourselves ‘What Would Jesus Do?’ and allow the Spirit to answer that question by guiding our actions and words.

To support us in living as followers of Christ we have been given the gifts of the Bible (with its story of God’s dealings with the world he created and of Jesus’ sacrifice of himself for that same world), prayer (which brings us into conversation with God), the Church (the group of people locally who are seeking to go deeper into God and, together, to reveal God to their local community), and the gifts of the Spirit (talents and abilities given, not personal benefit, but for the benefit of others).

These are among God’s greatest gifts to us for which we should be truly grateful. We are used to the idea of saying grace (thank you) before enjoying the food we eat. In the same way, we could say grace before reading the Bible, conversing with God in prayer, coming to church, and using the gifts of the Spirit which have been given to us.

Lewis Hyde writes that ‘a gift that cannot be given away ceases to be a gift’ and ‘the spirit of a gift is kept alive by its constant donation.’ Leo Buscaglia said, 'Your talent is God's gift to you. What you do with it is your gift back to God.’ St Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 12 that ‘the Spirit's presence is shown in some way in each person for the good of all.’ He follows his chapter on the gifts of the Spirit by sharing, in 1 Corinthians 13, the best way of all; that of love. God so loved the world that he gave; as God’s children and followers of Jesus, we too are to love the world by giving.

In Lent, as we reflect on all that Jesus has given for us and to us, it is also helpful to reflect on all that we can give back to God in thanks for his overwhelming generosity. Stewardship is about the ongoing contribution we make as Christian disciples; when it comes to the money we give back to God, the talents we use in his service, the community contribution we make and the environmentally-friendly actions we take.

We live in the light of Jesus’ love which reveals all that we can potentially be and become as human beings. In Lent, particularly, we come into the light of Christ by comparing our lives to his. As we do so, inevitably we find that we fall short; that our capacity to do what pleases him (by living out goodness, righteousness and truth) is less than his capacity for these things. Jesus, through his life and death, showed us the depth of love of which human beings are really capable and, on the basis of that comparison, we are challenged to become generous in the way that God is generous towards us.

God is love. Love is gift.
God so loved that he gave;
gave life, bringing the world into being.
Life is gift. The world is gift.
God so loved that he gave;
gave his one and only Son.
Of his own free will the Son
gave up all he had
and walked the path of obedience
all the way to death -
his death on the cross -
that we might have the gift of life.
Life is gift and giving.
Life without giving
cannot be living.
God so loved that he gave.
Love is unmerited gift,
to be given freely, willingly,
without expectation.
We do not love to be loved;
we love to love.
Love is the gift.
God so loved that he gave.
Love grows by giving.
The love we give away
is the only love we keep.
God so loved that he gave.

As his love resulted in his giving himself to us and for us, so our response to him should be the same. God so loved the world that he gave – true love involves giving; in fact, true love is giving. As God’s love resulted in his giving himself to us and for us, so our response to him should be the same. May we use the opportunity of this Lent to reflect together on the love that God gives to us to also reflect on the contributions we make as Christian disciples, thinking about the money we give back to God, the talents we use in his service, the community contributions we make and the environmentally-friendly actions we take. Amen.

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Victoria Williams - Love.

A radical challenge bringing healing love

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

This passage (Mark 3.1-6) focuses on a conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees concerning behaviour that is acceptable on the Sabbath. Tom Wright says that Jesus brings a radical challenge to the religious leaders by breaking Sabbath rules to show God's kingdom - bringing healing love. This highlights Jesus as the true Israel, a new temple, and a powerful King whose actions expose the blindness of those who prioritize law over people, setting the stage for conflict and revealing the core purpose of his mission to establish God's reign.

The whole point of the commandment - celebrating God's creation and redemption, past, present and future - had been lost sight of. The rule mattered more than the reality. Jesus' verdict on that was that it constituted 'hard-heartedness' - one of the regular charges that the prophets levelled against law-breaking Israelites in days gone by. Like the wilderness generation under Moses, his contemporaries were unable to see and celebrate what God was actually doing in front of their noses. So he puts the question in its starkest terms, in words dripping with irony: is it legal to do good on the sabbath, or only to do evil? Is it legal to make people alive, or only to kill them? If the sabbath speaks of creation and redemption, the answer is obvious - and if the current interpretation of the rules says otherwise, so much the worse for the current interpretation of the rules.

I think we have an example of a similar hardheartedness before us this week as US President Donald Trump has said he no longer feels obliged to think only of peace after he was not awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last year. In a message to Norway's Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, Trump blamed the country for not giving him the prize. Trump wrote: "Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper' for the US."

However, we should never simply point the finger at others without remembering that there are also fingers pointing back at us. So, also need to ask whether there are ways in which the church today can get so blinded by its commitment to what appear necessary rules that it fails to see God's healing and restorative work breaking through?

Thankfully, we continue to have marvellous examples around us of those who give and give again to others regardless of cost and time. The stories told in the Call the Midwife books and TV series are based on selfless and sacrificial real-life experiences of nuns and nurses in the East End from the 1950’s through the 1960’s.

Series 9 and Episode 5 begins with the following opening diary monologue: There are moments when the world seems to pause in its perpetual spinning: when the minutes hang suspended as life begins, or ends. The Sisters of Nonnatus House were guardians of the threshold. A wise word, a gentle glance, the first or last murmur of blessing - they brought wisdom, they brought comfort, they brought love. They were witnesses to all that mattered: struggle, loss, triumph, ties of blood. Other people's lives were their life, and in their service, they gave all they had... all that they were. They did not stop to count the cost, for this was their mission, their calling, their joy.

Then, at the end, we hear: The wise will always learn, the generous will always find they have more to give. Thus, we cross the threshold into freedom, and to progress, and to embracing all that's new. The world shifts around us and we shape ourselves to fit: imperfect and beautiful, wounded and thriving, delicate, invincible, forever moving on. Time is not the tide, it moves in only one direction. Go forth with courage and in hope. Change is not lost - we must run with it, dance with it, give it all we have.

Other people's lives were their life, and in their service, they gave all they had... all that they were. They did not stop to count the cost, for this was their mission, their calling, their joy. This is what people like Trump do not understand and cannot experience as a result. Rather than his transactional rules-based approach which says if I do X then I will receive Y and, if not, I will no longer do X, the sisters of Nonnatus House did not stop to count the cost because, like Jesus, compassion and peace was their overarching goal, not something that was transactional or something to be earnt.

As a result, in Series 8 and Episode 4, we hear these words, which are based on what we learn from Jesus’ words and actions:

"Love is never the only answer. But it is always the best, the simplest, the one most likely to withstand the test of time. Love is the beginning. It should be the final word."

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Call The Midwife - Full Length Theme.

Visual Commentary on Scripture - Advent: Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love & Bible and Art Daily

This Autumn, the Visual Commentary on Scripture launched Bible and Art Daily, a new daily email exploring the Bible through art. Through concise but vivid day-by-day encounters, it takes you on a series of journeys through the world of Scripture and the history of art. The VCS have spent the last year bringing together experts in theology and art history to carefully curate a treasury of week-long series, each exploring a particular theme, an artistic medium, or a biblical character. Find out more and subscribe here.

Two of the commentaries I have written for the VCS have featured in a Bible and Art Daily episode so far. The first, 'Yet To Come', featured in the series on 'Picturing the Trinity'. This commentart comes from my exhibition 'A Question of Faith' which explores Hebrews 11 through the paintings of New Zealand artist Colin McCahon. McCahon is widely recognised as New Zealand’s foremost painter. Over 45 years, his work encompassed many themes, subjects and styles, from landscape to figuration to abstraction and an innovative use of painted text. His adaption of aspects of modernist painting to a specific local situation and his intense engagement with spiritual matters, mark him out as a distinctive figure in twentieth-century art.

'Picturing the Trinity' is described as follows: 'There are perils and peculiarities involved in visually depicting the Holy Trinity. Christianity insists that divinity is invisible, even if Jesus in his humanity reveals God’s purposes and presence. And the Bible’s multiplicity of images of what God might be ‘like’ forbid settling on any one as descriptively adequate. Some visual art has risked anthropomorphizing God; some has experimented with oblique or abstract modes of signification, recognizing that God ‘dwells in unapproachable light, whom [no one] has ever seen or can see’ (1 Timothy 6:16).'

The second commentary used that I have written has been included in the Series 'Trees of Life'. Episode 7 of 14: 'The Ground of Rebirth' has artwork by Arthur Boyd from my 'Back from the Brink' on Daniel 4. The image included is 'Nebuchadnezzar's Dream of the Tree'. The 'Trees of Life' Series is described as follows: 'The Christian story of salvation begins and ends with trees. The forbidden fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in Eden, once eaten, initiates a long pilgrimage through time, which will culminate in a heavenly city with a tree at its heart, whose leaves are ‘for the healing of the nations’.'

This year, the Advent programme from the VCS has had a slightly different look than those from previous years. Instead of daily emails for the duration of Advent, they have sent their Exhibition of the Week subscribers an email every Monday from December 1st, with links to seven different works of art and commentaries for each day of the week. The idea is to think of it as a traditional Advent calendar! Each of the four weeks has had a different theme, starting with Hope, then Peace, followed by Joy, and ending with Love in the week of Christmas.

Anyone subscribed to their Exhibition of the Week receives the weekly Advent emails. Their hope has been that we enjoy journeying towards Christmas with the help of these works of art. Sign up here for their Exhibition of the Week email.

The first week's commentaries included 'To Our Hopes', another of the commentaries from my exhibition 'A Question of Faith'. The most recent email reveals that the image chosen for Christmas Day is from my most recent exhibition for VCS.  Reflecting on 1 Thessalonians 2:17–4:12, the exhibition is called 'Establishing the Heart' and includes works of art by Antoine Camilleri, John Reilly and Stanley Spencer. This exhibition explores how pleasing God in our everyday lives - by living quietly, minding our own affairs, and working with our hands - leads us to see life, work and art as prayer. The image chosen for Christmas Day is John Reilly's 'Holy Family'.

John Reilly’s ambition was "always been to paint a picture which perfectly weds form and content” in order “to express in visible form the oneness and unity of [the] invisible power binding all things into one whole.” I was fortunate enough to meet him at his home on the Isle of Wight, while there on a family holiday. I didn’t know of his work before going on that holiday but found cards and prints of his amazing work in some of the shops there and had to find out more. He was kind enough to invite me into his home and show me his work and works in progress.

He has said: "My paintings are not concerned with the surface appearance of people or things but try to express something of the fundamental spiritual reality behind this surface appearance. I try to express in visible form the oneness and unity of this invisible power, binding all things into one whole. I try to express something of the universal and timeless truths behind the stories of the Bible.”

So, for Reilly, the unseen reality manifests itself both through pattern - “the oneness and unity of this invisible power, binding all things into one whole” - and through story - “the universal and timeless truths behind the stories of the Bible”. He has also used the greater freedom of expression that modern movements in art have given to artists to develop a visual language of forms and colours which he hopes expresses “something of their deeper spiritual significance.” His work draws on cubism, fauvism and orphism in particular.

Reilly has made a profound use of the circle in his work in order to depict the wholeness that he finds in the world and the life that God has created. He frequently bases his works on a central circle (often, the sun) from which facets of colour emanate, like ripples on the surface of a stream. The painting’s imagery is then set within these facets, each figure or object being embedded in the overall patterning of the painting and related to the environmental whole that Reilly creates.

By these means fragments of form and colour (the facets of the painting’s patterning) and the images that they contain are united to circle harmoniously around and within God, the central life and intelligence which is the light of the world. Works such as ‘Life Eternal’ utilise these methods and meanings and both contain and convey huge energy and resolution as a result.

His technique of colour fragments emanating from a central source enables him to suggest that his archetypal images of creation and the landscape are both, filled with the emanating rays and linked by them into a unified circle. His paintings (including 'Life Eternal’) therefore suggest the way in which we are linked both by being the creation of God and by being indwelt by his spirit.

The obituary I wrote for Reilly and my review of 'The Painted Word: Paintings by John Reilly' can both be found in the 'Church Times' Digital Archive.  

The VCS is a freely accessible online publication that provides theological commentary on the Bible in dialogue with works of art. It helps its users to (re)discover the Bible in new ways through the illuminating interaction of artworks, scriptural texts, and commissioned commentaries. The virtual exhibitions of the VCS aim to facilitate new possibilities of seeing and reading so that the biblical text and the selected works of art come alive in new and vivid ways.

Each section of the VCS is a virtual exhibition comprising a biblical passage, three art works, and their associated commentaries. The curators of each exhibition select artworks that they consider will open up the biblical texts for interpretation, and/or offer new perspectives on themes the texts address. The commentaries explain and interpret the relationships between the works of art and the scriptural text.

Find out more about the VCS, its exhibitions and other resources through a short series of HeartEdge workshops introducing the VCS as a whole and exploring particular exhibitions with their curators. These workshops can be viewed here, here, here and here.

My exhibitions for the VCS are:

'Back from the Brink' on Daniel 4: 'Immediately the word was fulfilled upon Nebuchadnezzar. He was driven from among men, and ate grass like an ox, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven till his hair grew as long as eagles’ feathers, and his nails were like birds’ claws.' (Daniel 4:33). In the exhibition I explore this chapter with William Blake's 'Nebuchadnezzar', 1795–c.1805, Arthur Boyd's 'Nebuchadnezzar's Dream of the Tree', 1969, and Peter Howson's 'The Third Step', 2001.

My second exhibition was 'A Question of Faith' and explored Hebrews 11 through the paintings of New Zealand artist Colin McCahon. McCahon is widely recognised as New Zealand’s foremost painter. Over 45 years, his work encompassed many themes, subjects and styles, from landscape to figuration to abstraction and an innovative use of painted text. His adaption of aspects of modernist painting to a specific local situation and his intense engagement with spiritual matters, mark him out as a distinctive figure in twentieth-century art.

'Fishers of People' which uses Damien Hirst's 'Isolated Elements Swimming in the Same Direction for the Purpose of Understanding (Left) and (Right)', John Bellany's 'Kinlochbervie', and Paul Thek's 'Fishman in Excelsis Table' to discuss Matthew 4:12-22 and Mark 1:14-20. These artworks give us what is essentially a collage of the kingdom whereby we are invited to imagine the kingdom of God as a body of water in which Christians are immersed and through which they are raised.

'Before the Deluge', a series of climate-focused commentaries on Genesis 6 looking at 'The Flood' by Norman Adams, 'Noah in the Ark and a Church' by Albert Herbert, and 'Noah's Ark' by Sadao Watanabe.

Reflecting on 1 Thessalonians 2:17–4:12, 'Establishing the Heart' includes works of art by Antoine Camilleri, John Reilly and Stanley Spencer. This exhibition explores how pleasing God in our everyday lives - by living quietly, minding our own affairs, and working with our hands - leads us to see life, work and art as prayer.

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Arvo Pärt - Christmas Lullaby.

Mary's fiat

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

The Revd Matthew Askey has said of Mary: “Mary, the mother of Jesus, who is one of the most significant, but neglected, figures in our shared cultural story. Mary was remarkable for the time and she has many things to show us and inspire us with today. She was an unmarried teenage mother, on the run, a refugee really, and at the same time through both her vulnerability and her determined strength she embodies so many positive characteristics of motherhood and what it means to be a woman today. Mary ultimately said ‘yes!’ to life, and gave herself into the hands of God’s love, and this is something that resulted in the life of the most inspiring person who has ever lived, Jesus, and then the birth of the world-wide Church that followed. The Church has 2 billion members today world-wide, is still growing, and about 32% of the world’s population are involved in some way with its acts of charity and life-transforming message of forgiveness and love for all people. Mary is right at the root and start of this movement of love.”

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 learn much from Mary’s faith, trust and persistence in the face of disbelief, misunderstanding and probable insult. Our experience in times of trouble and difficulty will be similar as, on the one hand, God asks us to trust and persevere while, on the other, he will provide us with moments of support and strengthening. So, let’s look at some of her experience in more detail.

‘Here am I, the servant of the Lord,’ said Mary, ‘let it be with me according to your word.’ Mary said ‘Yes’ to God. As we have already begun to reflect, there is much more to saying that simple one syllable word ‘yes’ than we might at first imagine.

The poet-priest Malcolm Guite describes the Annunciation as follows:

‘a young girl stopped to see
With open eyes and heart. She heard the voice;
The promise of His glory yet to be,
As time stood still for her to make a choice;
Gabriel knelt and not a feather stirred,
The Word himself was waiting on her word.’

Victoria Emily Jones has reflected that ‘When Gabriel came to Mary to tell her she would bear a son, she was at first troubled, afraid, guarded. How was it possible that she, being a virgin, could become pregnant? But with the angel’s words of reassurance and promise, she yielded to the divine plan …” This is known as Mary’s fiat (Latin for “let it be”)—her consent to become the mother of God—and it’s celebrated by the church as the moment at which God became flesh, setting salvation in motion.

Theologians have debated the nature of Mary’s fiat—whether she really had a choice in the matter. After all, Gabriel comes speaking in terms of what will happen, without mentioning any conditions. However, most believe in the criticality of Mary’s “yes,” of her willing bodily and spiritual surrender. Between the angel’s ‘Hail’ and Mary’s ‘Let it be’ was a moment of supreme tension, one that Luci Shaw explores in her poem ‘The Annunciatory Angel’:

‘… We worry that she might faint.
Weep. Turn away, perplexed and fearful
about opening herself. Refuse to let the wind
fill her, to buffet its nine-month seed into her earth.
She is so small and intact. Turmoil will wrench her.
She might say no.’’

Why might Mary have said ‘No’? In the same poem Luci Shaw suggests there was a ‘weight of apprehension’ at the Annunciation because what had to be announced would ‘not be entirely easy news.’ As a result, Alan Stewart, in an Annunciation monologue, has Mary say ‘I said yes to my God / And I have come to question those words / For I did not know where they would lead’:

It was a day like any other day
Kneading bread. Lost in my thoughts
And then from behind
This light
An amazing light that filled the room
I turned round, holding my hand to my eyes
Backing away from it
And from inside this light, the figure of a man
Standing there. Looking at me
I felt I should run
I wanted to run
But his gaze fixed me to the spot
Like some rabbit charmed by a fox
But actually
His eyes were kind
And I felt strangely safe
‘is this an angel?’ I suddenly thought
have I sinned?
Has he mistaken me for someone?
Someone of importance
And then he spoke
‘Mary’
he knew my name
‘Mary’, he said ’don’t be afraid’
‘I have news for you’
‘in 9 months you will have a child and you are to call him Jeshua; God saves’
before I knew it, I was speaking
‘but I’m not married yet, I don’t…’
‘the child will be fathered by the Holy Spirit and he will save his people
the lord God will give him the throne of his father David’
the Saviour?, the Messiah?
I knelt down
And whispered
Simply
‘may it be to me as you have said’
I said yes
I said yes to my God
And I have come to question those words
For I did not know where they would lead

Where they led was to an immediate future of gossip, rumours and insult from those who thought of Jesus as illegitimate and in the longer term to a life of gathering gloom, ultimately one of sorrowing and sighing before a stone-cold tomb after the experience of viewing her son’s torture and cruel death; which was like a sword piercing her heart.

And yet, although she did not know it and could not have articulated it, there is a sense that she accepted all this when she accepted the challenge that the angel Gabriel brought from God. It may also have been that for having Jesus as her son she was, like many parents, more than glad that she had said yes, accepting the trauma, the gossip, the exile, the insults that she might bear her child, the promised Saviour.

Mary could have said ‘No’ but her ‘Yes’ was a ‘Yes’ to new life, to growth, to new birth. As we have already noted, Matthew Askey says that: ‘Mary ultimately said ‘yes!’ to life, and gave herself into the hands of God’s love, and this was something that resulted in the life of the most inspiring person who has ever lived, Jesus, and then the birth of the world-wide Church that followed. The Incarnation was predicated on the willingness of the teenage Mary to respond to God’s call.’ Mary, he says, is right at the root and start of this movement of love. This means that every act of Mary is an act of love:

Love is saying yes to God without knowing what that choice entails.

Love is waiting for your man to realise that what you have said is true and to support you.

Love is enduring the arch looks and snide comments from those who know you are bearing a child conceived out of wedlock.

Love is support from your cousin, your child leaping in your womb, and your magnifying God.

Love is enduring the discomfort of travel to your husband’s hometown when you are close to full-term.

Love is accepting a stable when there is no room at the inn.

Love is laying your newborn child in a manger when there are no extended family around to support you.

Love is being welcoming when shepherds unexpectedly arrive in the night soon after you’ve given birth.

Love is treasuring all their words and pondering them in your heart.

Love is giving your child the name an angel requested.

Love is fleeing to another country knowing that the life of your newborn child is under threat.

Love is making a life to bring up your child separated from friends and family.

Love is saying yes to God without knowing what that choice would entail
and it is that choice which creates a cannonball of love that,
from that first Christmas ever onwards,
explodes love throughout the Universe and in us.

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The Angel Gabriel from heaven came.

Advent Resources

 

This year, in addition to Advent resources with which I have been involved, I also want to share information about resources from HeartEdge.

Advent HeartEdge Group Online

In December HeartEdge will be running an on-line group using the HeartEdge Advent Resource.

You are invited into a journey of hope, abundance and incarnation. Rooted in the mystery of God becoming flesh we explore what it means to make space for Christ where life is fragile, hidden yet full of possibility.

Mondays December 1st, 8th, 15th and 22nd at 10.30am.

Register Here

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. By registering you will be able to attend any or all of the meetings.

Advent Calendar Online

A version of the Advent Calendar that has been adapted by the Franciscans is now available on line.

Franciscan Advent Calendar

Making room for Christ through Advent

This Advent, HeartEdge invites individuals, families, and communities to pause, reflect, and make space. Heartbeat of the Incarnation brings together three distinct but deeply connected Advent resources designed to help us live into the mystery of God with us – Emmanuel – in ways that are hopeful, and rooted in everyday life.

Weekly Group Study THE ADVENT HEARTBEAT COURSE

The four-week Bible study series is written for small groups, churches, and HeartEdge communities. It can be used during Advent or in the weeks leading up to it. Each session explores a key theme of incarnation and belonging:

• Saying ‘Yes’: Making Space in a World of Scarcity
• The Womb as Holy Ground: Finding God in Hidden Places
• The Cost of Love: Mary’s Labour, God’s Compassion
• Birthing Christ Today: Church on the Edge

Daily Reflections 25 DAILY ADVENT WONDERINGS

The day-by-day journey through Advent draws inspiration from the mystery of pregnancy and the hidden development of Christ in the womb. Each day includes:

• A reflection grounded in the developmental stages of pregnancy
• A wondering
• A reflective action – inviting heart, mind, and body to prepare room for Christ

This is more than a countdown to Christmas. It’s a call to transformation, to slow down and notice where Christ is already gestating in our midst – especially at the edges of our lives.

The books are available at £10 Please email heartedge@smitf.org to order with details of a postal address and HeartEdge will post and send an invoice with details of how to pay by BACS.

Come, Lord Jesus, Come 

'Come, Lord Jesus, Come' is an Advent devotional (booklet & slideshow) by Victoria Emily Jones based on an Advent meditation written by myself. Each line of the meditation focuses on one aspect of Christ’s coming. To promote deeper reflection on all these aspects, Victoria has selected twenty-four art images to lead the way in stoking our imaginations and to provide entry points into prayer. She has taken special care to present art from around the world and, where possible, by modern or contemporary artists so that we will be stretched beyond the familiar imagery of the season.

Victoria writes: 'Art is a great way to open yourself up to the mysteries of God, to sit in the pocket of them as you gaze and ponder. “Blessed are your eyes because they see,” Jesus said. Theologians in their own right, artists are committed to helping us see what was and what is and what could be. Here I’ve taken special care to select images by artists from around the world, not just the West, and ones that go beyond the familiar fare. You’ll see, for example, the Holy Spirit depositing the divine seed into Mary’s womb; Mary with a baby bump, and then with midwives; an outback birth with kangaroos, emus, and lizards in attendance; Jesus as a Filipino slum dweller; and Quaker history married to Isaiah’s vision of the Peaceable Kingdom.'

Through 'Come, Lord Jesus, Come' you are invited to consider what it meant for Jesus to be born of woman—coming as seed and fetus and birthed son; the poverty Jesus shared with children around the world; culturally specific bodies of Christ, like a dancing body and a yogic body; how we are called to bear God into the world today; and more.

Victoria writes: 'Advent takes us back and brings us forward. In preparing us to celebrate Christ’s first coming, it places us alongside the ancient prophets, who awaited with aching intensity the fulfilled promise of a messiah, and Joseph and Mary, whose pregnancy made the expectation all the more palpable; it also strengthens our longing for Christ’s second coming, when he will return to fully and finally establish his kingdom on earth ... May God bless you this Advent season as you ponder the amazing truth of the Incarnation.'

Love is ...

My 'Love is ...' meditation for Advent can be found by clicking here. This meditation ponders the love Mary demonstrated at various points along the way from the announcement of Jesus’s conception to her and her family’s resettlement in Egypt.

Alternative Nine Lessons 

Additionally, I have a series of poetic meditations which draw on the thinking of René Girard in interpreting the Bible readings traditionally used in services of Nine Lessons and Carols. This set of Alternative Nine Lessons and Carols meditations can be found by clicking here.

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Steve Bell - O Come, O Come Emmanuel (featuring Malcolm Guite).

Faith as small as a mustard seed

Here's the sermon that I shared at St Gabriel’s Pitsea this morning:

Brother Lawrence was a member of the Carmelite Order in France during the 17th Century. He spent most of his life in the kitchen or mending shoes, but became a great spiritual guide. He saw God in the mundane tasks he carried out in the priory kitchen. Daily life for him was an ongoing conversation with God. He wrote: 'we need only to recognize God intimately present with us, to address ourselves to Him every moment.'

Brother Lawrence also said that ‘We ought not to be weary of doing little things for the love of God, who regards not the greatness of the work, but the love with which it is performed.' The Parable of the Mustard Seed is an illustration of this truth. In that brief parable a small action, the sowing of a small seed, leads to the growth of a large plant. Jesus says that, in a similar way, the kingdom of God has small beginnings but grows to become something much larger. In today’s passage (Luke 17:5-10), Jesus says we only need a small amount of faith – faith as small as a mustard seed – to accomplish great things, like moving a tree to the sea. As a result, we should, like Brother Lawrence says, in no wise despise small actions.

The phrase a ‘mustard seed’ has entered our language as a little idea that grows into something bigger and that is of course literally what happened with the Jesus movement itself. It was a relatively small grouping of obscure people that died when its founder, Jesus died, but which, following his resurrection and the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost grew to become the largest religion in history and also within the world currently.

We also see this illustrated in Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. Here is a man who was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman. He grew up in another village. He worked in a carpenter shop until He was thirty. Then for three years He was an itinerant preacher. While still a young man, the tide of popular opinion turned against him. He was nailed upon a cross between two thieves. Long centuries have come and gone but all the armies that ever marched, all the navies that were ever built; all the parliaments that ever sat and all the kings that ever reigned, put together, have not affected the life of man upon this earth as powerfully as has that one solitary life.

The Early Church reveals the same pattern to us. Paul writes to the Christians at Corinth and says, “think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth.” He says in this letter that, in the eyes of the world, Christians are foolish and the message of the cross is foolish.

The same words could actually be applied to us: none of us are major intellectuals or academics; none of us have major influence or power in terms of work or politics; none of us, so far as I know, were born into the aristocracy. The reality is that wonderful as each of us are, we are not major players on the world stage and that makes us, in human terms, one among millions of other human beings around the world. When we think of ourselves in those terms it easy to see ourselves and what we do as being small and insignificant.

We may not like to think of ourselves as being foolish, as well as insignificant, but that is how Paul describes the Corinthian Christians from the perspective of those considered wise in their culture. It is no different today, Richard Dawkins wrote in The God Delusion that God is a “psychotic delinquent” invented by mad, deluded people and our faith in God is a “process of non-thinking,” “blind trust, in the absence of evidence, even in the teeth of evidence.”

BUT what Jesus demonstrates through his life, death and resurrection and what Paul states in his letter to the Corinthians is that “the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength.” The Message, a contemporary paraphrase of the Bible, puts it like this:

“Isn't it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these "nobodies" to expose the hollow pretensions of the "somebodies"? That makes it quite clear that none of you can get by with blowing your own horn before God. Everything that we have—right thinking and right living, a clean slate and a fresh start—comes from God by way of Jesus Christ.”

So, the kingdom of God is a place of multiplication. The kingdom of God is a place of exponential growth. The kingdom of God is a place where the tiniest seed can become the biggest plant. The kingdom of God is where faith as small as a mustard seed can move a mountain. The kingdom of God is a place where a grain of yeast can make a whole batch of dough rise. The kingdom of God is a place where a child’s lunch can feed 5,000. The kingdom of God is a place where the salt of our behaviour can flavour the community in which we live. The kingdom of God is a place where the little we can offer can be used to the praise and glory of God.

Just as in the parable of the mustard seed, our small inputs can have a big effect and, just as with Jesus’ words about faith here, the influence that one person can have can move a mountain. We could respond to this by thinking what small thing can I do today that will have a big effect but the reality is that we are rarely able to accurately predict future effects. Instead, we can learn, like Brother Lawrence, to value small, mundane actions in the knowledge that, if well done for the love of God, these actions can have significantly larger impacts.

And, because we know of this process or pattern or plan of the small, the insignificant, the foolish, being used by God to achieve great change, we can trust that our lives also have meaning and significance as we put our faith into practice in small acts of compassion here and little words of witness there; at home, in church and in the community. We don’t know what God will cause to grow from these actions and words but we trust that they will take root and grow because that is the pattern that we, and Christians throughout Church history, have observed in practice. May it be so for each one of us. Amen.

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Randy Stonehill - Strong Hand Of Love.