You shall not be overcome

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

Immediately before today’s Gospel reading (Matthew 14. 22 - 33) where the disciples are caught up in a storm, we read about the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000. The disciples had had a wonderful experience and had grown in their faith. This was immediately followed by their going through a storm.

This is a common experience in the lives of Christians and in church life. After enjoying positive experiences and developments in our faith, we then go through some kind of trial which tests our faith. It is easy to wonder why that should be so and there are no easy answers.

One of the people I have read and appreciated over the course of my ministry has been Julian of Norwich. She doesn’t answer that question but she does say this, God did not say 'You shall not be tempest-tossed, you shall not be work-weary, you shall not be discomforted'. But he did say, 'You shall not be overcome.'

So, our Gospel reading this morning has things to teach us about how to respond when storms come in our individual lives and as a church. Jesus comes to the disciples in the storm walking on the water. He doesn’t still the storm on this occasion instead he calls Peter to walk to him on the water. Peter begins to do this but then becomes afraid and begins to sink. At which point, Jesus supports him and they return to the boat and the storm is then stilled.

In the midst of this storm Peter is asked to do something which seems impossible. He is asked to do what Jesus is doing, to follow in Jesus’ footsteps. In his storm Peter was called to walk on water but what is the equivalent for us in our storms?

All Jesus’ disciples are called to follow in his footsteps by doing what Jesus did. Like Peter being called to walk on water, following in Jesus’ footsteps often seems impossible for us because what Jesus did was to give everything he had for the love of others. Out of love for all humanity, he left everything he had with God to become a human being, being born as a baby at Bethlehem, and he then gave up his own life on the cross when he was crucified out of love for all people everywhere. When we think through what following in Jesus’ footsteps actually means we quickly find, as individuals and as a church, that there are all sorts of reasons that prevent from fully doing what Jesus did and giving all that we have and are to others out of love for them. As a result, we are like Peter who began to walk on the water but couldn’t keep going. What Jesus calls us to do and to be by following in his footsteps seems impossible for us to achieve.

Yet we know of some, like St Francis of Assisi or Mother Teresa, who have followed in Jesus’ footsteps more fully than any of us have yet managed. So, we know too that it can be done to some extent and, with that in mind, we need to be prepared, like Peter, to make the attempt, even if that means we fail to fully follow through. As he was with Peter, Jesus will be alongside us and will restore us so that we are then able to try again.

The storms we face in life are times of trial, times when life seems at its most difficult or most challenging. The temptation in these times is to lose our focus on Jesus - on who he is, what he did and how he acted – when that happens, like Peter, the worries of life crowd in and distract and we fall. In the storms we face, the more we continue to follow in Jesus’ footsteps by giving all we can to our fellow Christians and in the wider community, the more we will experience the ability to walk on water and come through the storms instead of being overwhelmed by them.

Julian of Norwich reminds us of the importance of prayer in these circumstances when we feel buffeted by the storms of life and don’t feel God’s comforting presence alongside us. She wrote, “Prayer fastens the soul to God, making it one with his will through the deep inward working of the Holy Spirit. So he says this, 'Pray inwardly, even though you feel no joy in it. For it does good, though you feel nothing, see nothing, yes, even though you think you cannot pray. For when you are dry and empty, sick and weak, your prayers please me, though there be little enough to please you. All believing prayer is precious in my sight.' God accepts the good-will and work of his servants, no matter how we feel.”

As she reminds us, “God did not say 'You shall not be tempest-tossed, you shall not be work-weary, you shall not be discomforted'. But he did say, 'You shall not be overcome.'”

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Marketa Irglova - Point Of Creation.

Memorial Service for The Revd Sally Muggeridge

Here's the sermon that I preached today in the Memorial Service for Sally Muggeridge held at St Stephen Walbrook:

The opportunity to minister at St Stephen Walbrook together with Sally was one that I greatly enjoyed and appreciated. I greatly valued having her as a colleague. She was a special colleague with great insight and ideas coupled with real humility and a servant heart. We were very fortunate to have enjoyed Sally’s assistance and ministry at St Stephen Walbrook during her curacy and were particularly grateful for the links she established with the City and with businesses locally.

Her time with us also broke down barriers as she was the first woman to preside at the Eucharist in St Stephen Walbrook. It was a privilege to be at the ‘At Home’ for WATCH during which she celebrated her first Eucharist and became the first woman to celebrate the Eucharist in that church. I also remember with real pleasure our conversations about her uncle Malcolm Muggeridge and his impact as well as all she did to work on his legacy. I will always remember her time with us and all she brought to ministry with deep gratitude.

As we have just heard, Sally had her calling as a priest confirmed to her as she cared for and sat through the night with a lady in Calcutta who was dying while in the care of Mother Teresa’s Sisters of Charity. This remarkable experience culminated with a moment of communication between the two just before the woman died and coincided, in a God-incidence, with the death of Sally’s own mother, who received a call from Desmond Tutu just before she died.

Reflecting on these experiences would have confirmed a priestly call for Sally because they are experiences of being with, something that is at the heart of what priestly ministry involves. Being with is based on the belief that to find the meaning of life we need each other. We need to spend time being present and attentive to others who may be different to us and to ourselves and the world around us. As we do this, we can discover a way to be attentive to God and discover that God is present to us.

This discovery occurs because God has always been with, although never more so than in his incarnation as Jesus. The kingdom of God comes near to us when Jesus comes near because Jesus is God with us. That is what the incarnation, the crucifixion and the resurrection are all about. The Gospel of Matthew begins with the angel's promise that the Messiah will be called Emmanuel - God with us. The Gospel ends with Jesus's promise to his disciples, "Remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age." In between we get Jesus's promise to the church, "Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there with them." … And, perhaps most significantly of all, the Gospel of John says "The Word was made flesh and dwelt with us." Jesus's ministry is about being with us, in pain and glory, in sorrow and in joy, in quiet and in conflict, in death and in life. God is with us when Jesus comes near, which is, in reality, all the time. That is our witness as Christians and it is also our ministry. If the heart of the Gospel is that God is with us in every circumstance and into eternity, then our task is to be with others in order that they experience God with them.

This was Sally’s experience and was at the heart of her priestly ministry being the key aspect of her ministry about which she spoke when she was profiled by the Financial Times: “My role is now one of pastoral care of stressed City workers. So many seek chats, prayers, a quick discussion [about] a worry about family life and work. A prayer needed, a smile, a service — I can help with examples and encouragement.”'

She was able to do this so well because of the time she had spent in the business world and the experience gained. Being with those who work in the City involves making connections between faith and working life and Sally was able to do that supremely well because of the prior experience that she brought to ministry. Again, this featured in the FT profile where it was noted that: "Throughout her career, Revd Muggeridge has been a vocal advocate of increasing the role of women in business and the church.”

As such, Sally organised a 'Women in the City of London - More than just a place of work' event which highlighted the civic, cultural, charitable and social opportunities in the City of London, including networks as a route to fuller participation. She also contributed to a series of events we ran to explore the place of faith in the world of business. We titled this series as ‘plus+ presentations’ flagging that we were seeking to add value to the experience of being in the City. Sally spoke from personal experience about campaigns to increase the numbers of women on Boards. She also chaired a Volunteers from the City event which explored the benefits of volunteering, preparation, training and support for volunteers, and the part that Corporate Social Responsibility plays in volunteering. These are just a few examples of the links she established for St Stephen Walbrook with the City and with businesses locally. They, and other gatherings, were opportunities to meet and be with the City workers to whom she ministered pastorally.

She also contributed regularly to Start:Stop, our popular ten-minute Tuesday morning reflections, one of several initiatives that created ‘a new pattern of missional engagement at Walbrook.’ These included the uplifting ‘Discover and Explore’ series of services on Mondays, which featured different themes accompanied by the music of the Choral Scholars. This service involved speaking on an eclectic but interesting variety of topics depending on the theme. Among the topics on which Sally spoke were the following: Lanning Roper, Love, the Temple of Mithras, Christopher Wren, George Croly, Hope, Sir John Vanburgh, Chad Varah, John the Baptist, Guidance, Faith, St Paul in Rome, and St Columba. Always, however, with a deep perception of where God was to be found with us in relation to the topic.

In speaking once about architecture, she noted that this impulse: “the planning and specification of buildings, is perhaps as old as man’s wish to build. But we also know we cannot look to any building, however majestic, for permanence. Buildings are by nature, like us, transitory, here today and gone tomorrow. In the search for true permanence and stability, in wishing to build Jerusalem in England’s green and pleasant land, we must look to God.”

That thought brings us back to the permanent nature of God’s being with us in the reality of life experiences that are changing and transient. As we heard in the reading from Romans, “nothing can separate us from his love.” That remains true in all that we experience as we go through life.

As Sam Wells has said: “God doesn’t spare us from the fire. God doesn’t rescue us from the fire … God is with us in the fire. ‘Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil; for you are with me.’ ‘When you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.’ That’s the gospel …

Jesus isn’t spared the cross. Jesus isn’t rescued from the cross. Jesus is with God on the cross. The bonds of the Trinity are stretched to the limit; but not ultimately, broken. When we see the cross we see that God is with us, however, whatever, wherever … forever. This is our faith.”

As Henri Nouwen says: “God’s protection is not a promise that nothing will happen to us, but that nothing—absolutely nothing—will separate us from His love.”

As a result, we can say with the Psalmist: “If it had not been the Lord who was on our side … then the flood would have swept us away, the torrent would have gone over us; then over us would have gone the raging waters.” May we know that truth in whatever difficulty we face currently.

Finally, though, God’s being with in the incarnation and in the vicissitudes of life is so that we can be with him forever in the coming kingdom of God where there will be nothing for us to fix and where there will simply be being with God, with each other and with creation. That is now Sally’s experience having come through all that she experienced in this life with the knowledge that Christ was with her in all things.

And, as will be of great importance for someone who was always learning, growing, developing and doing something beautiful for God, that experience of being with will not be static, formulaic and dull but instead will be exploratory as there is always something more to know of love, joy and peace in the never-ending depths of God. Although at rest, Sally remains on her journey of faith, exploring her calling, discovering more of the beauty in God, in others, in herself, and in creation. May the same also be true for us. Amen.

My review of 'Jesus, The Man Who Lives by Malcolm Muggeridge, with an Afterword by Sally Muggeridge, can be read here.

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Heart and Voice recital with The Choral Scholars of St Stephen Walbrook.

Witnesses who give testimony in a trial

Here's the reflection I shared in today's lunchtime Eucharist for St Martin-in-the-Fields:

“I have been used for many years to studying the histories of other times, and to examining and weighing the evidence of those who have written about them, and I know of no one fact in the history of mankind which is proved by better and fuller evidence of every sort, to the understanding of a fair inquirer, than the great sign which God has given us that Christ died and rose again from the dead.” Professor Thomas Arnold

“Is not the nature of Christ, in the words of the New Testament, enough to pierce to the soul anyone with a soul to be pierced? … he still looms over the world, his message still clear, his pity still infinite, his consolation still effective, his words still full of glory, wisdom and love.” Bernard Levin

“I believe there is no one lovelier, deeper, more sympathetic and more perfect than Jesus. I say to myself, with jealous love, that not only is there no one else like him but there never could be anyone like him.” Fyodor Dostoevsky

“In that dramatic scene on Calvary’s hill three men were crucified. All three were crucified for the same crime - the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thus fell below their environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.” Martin Luther King Jr

"Where was Mother Teresa's Jesus? He was in the Bible, in the church, in her prayer, in the Eucharist, in her sisters, in the heart of everyone she met, and especially in the poorest of the poor and the lowest of the low. Jesus was in disguise in each one of them. Jesus was behind the foundation of her order. Jesus was behind all that she did.” Mother Teresa

“A man who was merely a man and said the sort of thing Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call Him Lord and God … however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that he was and is God.” C. S. Lewis

“Brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand … For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.” Saint Paul

“Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know. This man was handed over to you by God’s set purpose and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross. But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him.” Saint Peter

“You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Saint Peter

All those testimonies to Jesus that you have just heard stem from the one testimony that we have just listened to, the moment when Peter speaks out his belief that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living God (Matthew 16: 13-20). Jesus calls Peter ‘the rock’ and he is the rock because he was the first to testify to Jesus and all the millions of people that have followed him in testifying to Jesus have built on the foundation of the testimony that Peter originally gave.

Testimony is what is given by a witness in a trial. A witness makes his or her statement as part of a trial in which the truth is at stake and where the question, ‘What is the truth?’ is what is being argued. Lesslie Newbigin has argued that this is what is “at the heart of the biblical vision of the human situation that the believer is a witness who gives his testimony in a trial.”

Where is the trial? It is all around us, it is life itself? In all situations we encounter, there is challenge to our faith and there is a need for us to testify in words and actions to our belief in Christ. Whenever people act as though human beings are entirely self-reliant, there is a challenge to our faith. Whenever people argue that suffering and disasters mean that there cannot be a good God, we are on the witness stand. Whenever people claim that scientific advances or psychological insights can explain away belief in God, we are in the courtroom. Whenever a response of love is called for, our witness is at stake.

But we are not alone in being witnesses. We are one with millions of others who have testified to the reality and presence of Jesus Christ in their lives. No courtroom on earth could cope with the number of witnesses to Christ who could be called by the defence. That is why the writer of Hebrews says, “Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.”

This is what Peter began by saying, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” We are part of the witness that has been built on that rock. So let us be encouraged today by the incredible numbers of others testifying to Christ and let us be challenged to add our own testimony in words and actions to those of our brothers and sisters in Christ because every day in every situation we face, we and our faith are ‘on trial’.

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We Have A Gospel To Proclaim.

The life of Jesus reproduced in the midst of the life of the world

Here's the reflection I shared today in the lunchtime Eucharist for St Martin-in-the-Fields:

Stephen Verney begins his commentary on this passage (John 15. 1- 8) with a great evocation of the way in which vines are grown: “On a stony hillside above his house, where the thyme grows and the prickly pear, and a wild fig tree fights for its existence in a pocket of shallow soil, a farmer decides to plant a vine. In the autumn he clears a terrace, and brings top soil. He sets a post for the vine to climb, and fixes horizontal supports for its branches. Then in the spring he plants it and fences it against the goats; as it grows he trains it, and in the following autumn he prunes it back.

The vine depends for its life on the farmer, but equally the farmer depends on the vine. For the vine can do what the farmer cannot; it can take the rain that falls on the hillside and convert it into grapes, which the farmer can harvest and tread out in his wine-press, and pour the juice into his vat to ferment and bubble. The farmer and the vine are dependent on each other, and the purpose for which they work together is that water should be turned into wine.” Jesus is the vine, his Father is the farmer. They are dependent one on the other although their roles are different. Their shared purpose is that water is turned into wine; that the vine is fruitful and that its fruit becomes wine shared with others as the sign and symbol of Jesus’ blood. The process for achieving this can itself be painful; involving pruning and crushing.

We are part of this picture because there is one vine but many branches. Each one of us as we become Christians is grafted into the vine to become part of the vine itself. Verney writes: “I AM the vine, and you are the branches. Dwell in me, and I in you. Here is teaching both simple and profound, to move the human heart. If the branch dwells in the vine, then the life of the vine dwells in the branch. If the branch grows out of the stem, and out of the roots which are drawing up the goodness of the soil and the rain, then the sap of the vine flows into the branch, and the pattern of the vine’s life unfolds itself through each branch to produce bunches of grapes. So it will be, says Jesus, between you and me. If you do not dwell in me you cannot bear fruit …”

How do we dwell in Jesus? To keep our life dwelling in Christ’s, we must continually renew our decision that “what has been done once for all on the cross by Jesus shall the basis, the starting point, the context of all my thinking and deciding and doing,” writes Lesslie Newbigin. We feed this decision by protecting time for prayer, bible study and worship in our busy lives and schedules. As we do so, the sap of the vine, the life of Christ, flows into us and we produce fruit. The fruit of the vine is, as Newbigin again writes, “the life of Jesus reproduced in the midst of the life of the world, the pure love and obedience by which people will recognise the disciples of Jesus, the branches of the real vine.”

This fruit, the life of Jesus reproduced in our lives, is the real test of whether or not we are actually dwelling in the vine, in Jesus. In recent years, we have come to know much more about the spiritual life of Mother Teresa, someone whose face shone with the all-encompassing joy of one for whom “to live is Christ.” Everyone who knew her assumed that she was supported in her ministry through a deep and abiding sense of Christ’s presence with her.

Yet the opposite was true. Mother Teresa lived feeling as if she did not believe: “I have no faith” – “They say people in hell suffer eternal pain because of the loss of God … in my soul I feel just that terrible pain of loss – of God not being God – of God not really existing.” Her sense of feeling that there was no God has been revealed in letters that she wrote to her spiritual confidantes. Yet, as Sister Wendy Beckett has written, “this woman who felt that there was no God and lived in emotional anguish was also profoundly aware, intellectually, that God was her total life and that she lived only to love him.” This was what was apparent in her life and ministry and this fruit showed that whatever she felt about the absence of God in her life, she was still a live branch in the vine.

Ultimately, the fruit of our lives - the life of Jesus reproduced in our lives – is the sign of whether we are healthy branches dwelling in the vine. Prayer, bible study and worship are channels for the life of Christ to flow into our lives rather than the sign than his life is flowing into our own. As we are grafted into the vine, into Jesus, we receive his life flowing through us and take on his characteristics – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, humility, and self-control. These characteristics result in acts of love because love must act, as we saw in the life of Mother Teresa. While hate could be indifference or inaction, love is always active and must respond practically to the needs we see around us.

This Christian Aid week we can use our spheres of influence to give, act and pray, and in this way support the loving, sacrificial selflessness of Christian Aid partners who support and empower those they serve. We can choose active love over inactive indifference and, together with Christian Aid and others like them, create a powerful force for change which derives from the life of Christ flowing into us as we dwell in him and where our active love is the fruit of the vine - the life of Jesus reproduced in our lives.

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Belle and Sebastian - If You Find Yourself Caught In Love.

The life of Jesus reproduced in our lives

Here is my sermon for today's Choral Eucharist at St Martin-in-the-Fields:

Stephen Verney begins his commentary on this passage (John 15. 1 - 8) with a great evocation of the way in which vines are grown: “On a stony hillside above his house, where the thyme grows and the prickly pear, and a wild fig tree fights for its existence in a pocket of shallow soil, a farmer decides to plant a vine. In the autumn he clears a terrace, and brings top soil. He sets a post for the vine to climb, and fixes horizontal supports for its branches. Then in the spring he plants it and fences it against the goats; as it grows he trains it, and in the following autumn he prunes it back.

The vine depends for its life on the farmer, but equally the farmer depends on the vine. For the vine can do what the farmer cannot; it can take the rain that falls on the hillside and convert it into grapes, which the farmer can harvest and tread out in his wine-press, and pour the juice into his vat to ferment and bubble. The farmer and the vine are dependent on each other, and the purpose for which they work together is that water should be turned into wine.” Jesus is the vine, his Father is the farmer. They are dependent one on the other although their roles are different. Their shared purpose is that water is turned into wine; that the vine is fruitful and that its fruit becomes wine shared with others as the sign and symbol of Jesus’ blood. The process for achieving this can itself be painful; involving pruning and crushing.

We are part of this picture because there is one vine but many branches. Each one of us as we become Christians is grafted into the vine to become part of the vine itself. Verney writes: “I AM the vine, and you are the branches. Dwell in me, and I in you. Here is teaching both simple and profound, to move the human heart. If the branch dwells in the vine, then the life of the vine dwells in the branch. If the branch grows out of the stem, and out of the roots which are drawing up the goodness of the soil and the rain, then the sap of the vine flows into the branch, and the pattern of the vine’s life unfolds itself through each branch to produce bunches of grapes. So it will be, says Jesus, between you and me. If you do not dwell in me you cannot bear fruit …”

How do we dwell in Jesus? To keep our life dwelling in Christ’s, we must continually renew our decision that “what has been done once for all on the cross by Jesus shall the basis, the starting point, the context of all my thinking and deciding and doing,” writes Lesslie Newbigin. We feed this decision by protecting time for prayer, bible study and worship in our busy lives and schedules. As we do so, the sap of the vine, the life of Christ, flows into us and we produce fruit. The fruit of the vine is, as Newbigin again writes, “the life of Jesus reproduced in the midst of the life of the world, the pure love and obedience by which people will recognise the disciples of Jesus, the branches of the real vine.”

This fruit, the life of Jesus reproduced in our lives, is the real test of whether or not we are actually dwelling in the vine, in Jesus. In recent years, we have come to know much more about the spiritual life of Mother Teresa, someone whose face shone with the all-encompassing joy of one for whom “to live is Christ.” Everyone who knew her assumed that she was supported in her ministry through a deep and abiding sense of Christ’s presence with her.

Yet the opposite was true. Mother Teresa lived feeling as if she did not believe: “I have no faith” – “They say people in hell suffer eternal pain because of the loss of God … in my soul I feel just that terrible pain of loss – of God not being God – of God not really existing.” Her sense of feeling that there was no God has been revealed in letters that she wrote to her spiritual confidantes. Yet, as Sister Wendy Beckett has written, “this woman who felt that there was no God and lived in emotional anguish was also profoundly aware, intellectually, that God was her total life and that she lived only to love him.” This was what was apparent in her life and ministry and this fruit showed that whatever she felt about the absence of God in her life, she was still a live branch in the vine.

Ultimately, the fruit of our lives - the life of Jesus reproduced in our lives – is the sign of whether we are healthy branches dwelling in the vine. Prayer, bible study and worship are channels for the life of Christ to flow into our lives rather than the sign than his life is flowing into our own. As we are grafted into the vine, into Jesus, we receive his life flowing through us and take on his characteristics – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, humility, and self-control. These characteristics result in acts of love because love must act, as we saw in the life of Mother Teresa. While hate could be indifference or inaction, love is always active and must respond practically to the needs we see around us.

This Christian Aid week we can use our spheres of influence to give, act and pray, and in this way support the loving, sacrificial selflessness of Christian Aid partners who support and empower those they serve. We can choose active love over inactive indifference and, together with Christian Aid and others like them, create a powerful force for change which derives from the life of Christ flowing into us as we dwell in him and where our active love is the fruit of the vine - the life of Jesus reproduced in our lives.

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Gregory Porter & Beverley Knight - Mary Did You Know.

Malcolm Muggeridge: Accurate prophecy in many areas

Sally Muggeridge, our curate at St Stephen Walbrook, has written an excellent comment piece for the Church Times this week about her uncle, Malcolm Muggeridge.

Sally reviews her uncle's life and thought suggesting that: 'The legacy of the writer, journalist, and Christian apologist Malcolm Muggeridge can be viewed in retrospect as one of accurate prophecy in many areas. Although he did not always get it right, he expressed legitimate concern on many of the issues of our time: sexual permissiveness, immigration, ethical questions over advances in medical science, the spread of Islam, lowering of standards in the media, the fantasy world introduced by technology, and others.'

'Writer and broadcaster Malcolm Muggeridge died 14th November 1990 at the age of 87. To mark the 25th Anniversary of the passing of her uncle, Sally Muggeridge will be leading the 10.30am service on Sunday 15th November at the Parish Church of St Mary Magdalene, Whatlington, Sussex.

As President of the Malcolm Muggeridge Society, Sally will review the life of her uncle and his spiritual journey as a twentieth century pilgrim towards faith. All are welcome. A display of the extensive literary legacy of Muggeridge will be made available to view.'

John Stott once characterised the Prophet Muggeridge as courageous, perceptive, awkward and exaggerated. Intended as a compliment after Muggeridge's London Lectures in Contemporary Christianity entitled Christ and the Media, Stott's summing up captures some of the complications that made Muggeridge fascinating as a journalist, broadcaster and writer. Stott characterised him as a prophet while the then Director-General's of the BBC and the IBA who also chaired these lectures, in order to neutralise what they thought to be his attack on them and their work, preferred to characterise him as a jester. 

He was first and foremost a journalist who, in the course of his life, reported from the key continents and ideologies of his time - Imperialist India, Communist Russia and Capitalist America. He documented his dissatisfaction in his memoirs, Chronicles of a Wasted Life, and in his novel, In a Valley of this Restless Mind.

His life took a new, and to his mind, more purposeful direction when his dissatisfaction with the transient waste of what he until then done and seen, led to conversion and a commitment to Catholicism. His new commitment was expressed both through and against the new media of television. 

As a broadcaster he was involved in programmes that allowed key figures such as Mother Theresa and Alexander Solzhentitsyn airtime to communicate. Yet he also viewed television as a shallow, superficial medium. This, in itself, would not be incredibly harmful if television was not presented or viewed as the ultimate reality - the window on the world. It was this that Muggeridge argued was so damaging and which ultimately meant that television, rather than mirroring reality, was actually creating fantasy. For these reasons he argued, in the lectures collected as Christ and the Media, that, if offered by the devil, a fourth temptation of a primetime television slot Jesus would have rejected the temptation because his reality could not be conveyed using the fantasy medium of television. 

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Malcolm Muggeridge - Face your Image.

Turning expectations upside down

Here is my sermon from yesterday's Eucharist at St Stephen Walbrook, which focused on the events of Palm Sunday. An audio version of this sermon will shortly be found at the website of the London Internet Church.

At my first training weekend as a curate the first Bishop to address us, the then Bishop of Barking, David Hawkins, performed a handstand to demonstrate the way in which Jesus, through his life and teaching turns our understanding of life upside down. Jesus had a marvellous way of subverting people’s expectations. He did it when he called on the one without sin to cast the first stone. He did it when he, their Master, served the disciples by washing their feet. And he did it on the occasion of his entry into Jerusalem too.

Some people at the time expected him, if he really was Israel’s Messiah or King, to lead an armed rebellion against their Roman oppressors. As his ministry had gone on these people had begun pressing him to declare his hand and make it crystal clear whether he was the one to lead this armed rebellion or not. Jesus chose the moment of his entry into Jerusalem to declare his hand, but not in the way that those people expected. Instead of coming into Jerusalem as a warrior King on a war-horse leading an army he came unarmed and riding on a donkey.

In doing so, he was pointing all those who knew the Hebrew Scriptures well to a passage in Zechariah which says this: “Rejoice, rejoice, people of Zion! Shout for joy, you people of Jerusalem! Look, your king is coming to you! He comes triumphant and victorious, but humble and riding on a donkey – on a colt, the foal of a donkey. The Lord says, “I will remove the war-chariots from Israel and take the horses from Jerusalem; the bows used in battle will be destroyed. Your king will make peace among the nations; he will rule from sea to sea, from the River Euphrates to the ends of the earth.” (Zechariah 9: 9 & 10)

By entering Jerusalem in this way, Jesus made it crystal clear that he was the King - the Messiah - that was expected but also that he would not be the kind of King or Messiah that they was expected. He would not come as the warrior King who will destroy Israel’s enemies or oppressors. Under his rule the only things to be destroyed are weapons themselves – the war-chariots, war-horses and bows that the Zechariah passage spoke about. He came as the Prince of Peace, not as the Warrior King. He came as the King who humbled himself by riding on the lowest, poorest form of transport – a colt, the foal of a donkey – not as a King who exalted himself on the largest, fastest steed. Later on he would wash his disciples’ feet as a way of saying that peace comes through service. And he was preparing to sacrifice all, including his own life, in order to serve his enemies by saving them.

Sometime after Jesus’ death and resurrection the Apostle Paul explained in his letter to the Ephesians how Jesus had made peace among the nations. He said: “Christ himself has brought us peace by making Jews and Gentiles one people. With his own body he broke down the wall that separated them and kept them enemies. He abolished the Jewish Law with its commandments and rules, in order to create out of the two races one new people in union with himself, in this way making peace. By his death on the cross Christ destroyed their enmity; by means of the cross he united both races into one body and brought them back to God.” (Ephesians 2: 14-16)

Instead of destroying the enemies of Israel as some expected, Jesus came to love his enemies and unite them with his own people, making peace. Paul then goes further to say that there are no distinctions either between slaves and free, between men and women, or between those thought of as civilised and those thought of as barbarians, all are one in Christ. The implication is that there are no barriers or divisions that should separate, for all can be one in Christ.

As a result, we are called to follow in the footsteps of Jesus by being peacemakers in our homes, communities and workplaces. Just as Jesus did the reverse of what people expected, by loving those who were thought of as the enemies of his people and sacrificing himself in order to bring those two groups together, so we need to do the same in relation to the divisions we experience in our own time and culture. Church needs to be a place and space in which we reverse people’s expectations by living and demonstrating Jesus’ embrace of all.

Now, we need to acknowledge that the Church hasn’t always had a great track record in doing this. The Crusades, the Inquisition, the Slave Trade, for example, all seem to have been the reverse of what Jesus did. We need to show real sorrow over that history and the effect that it still has in certain parts of the world today. But there have also been great examples from the Church, even in our own lifetimes, of people like Martin Luther King, Oscar Romero, Mother Teresa and Desmond Tutu who have tried to follow much more closely in Jesus’ footsteps.

We can learn from the example of such people so that we too become people who reveal Jesus in our world by following where he led in turning people’s expectations upside down and sacrificing ourselves in order to bring peace between all people regardless of any distinctions.

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

Candace Bogan - Give Me Jesus.

Where is God today?

People often ask, ‘Where is God today?’ That was a question asked by CBC, Radio-Canada, of their listeners in 2008. In introducing the series, they said that “For many Canadians, religion exists far beyond the walls of a church, synagogue or mosque. Faith can play a vital role in how we work, study, and interact with family and friends. But for many others, God has little or no presence.” So they asked their listeners, “Does religion play a large part in your day-to-day life? Or is God to be found elsewhere … or nowhere at all?” You can imagine the range of answers that their listeners provided but I don’t want to focus on those tonight, instead I want us to consider how this story answers that same question, ‘Where is God today?’

The answer is not one that we necessarily expect or readily accept: “I was hungry and you fed me, thirsty and you gave me a drink; I was a stranger and you received me in your homes, naked and you clothed me; I was sick and you took care of me, in prison and you visited me.”

“Today, we see the face of the suffering Christ in the experience of every person who suffers from poverty or cries out for help. Christ lives among us still, sharing the pain of our destitute brothers and sisters.” (http://www.foodforthepoor.org/prayer/stations/)

As Pastor James, of the wonderfully named First Baptist Peddie Memorial Church of Newark, New Jersey, wrote (http://www.peddiechurch.org/Articles/Ministry_with_the_Homeless.htm): “He is found in the least looked for places, in the abandoned corners of society. He is present with the least, the poorest of the poor, and the most despised. He dwells with the homeless. It's not that Christ is absent from the rich and the powerful, but that He chooses the least to make His presence most fully known to the world. It is not that He rejects refined vessels, but that He chooses broken and abandoned vessels to dwell in so that His glory may be revealed in the lowliest places. As the Apostle Paul says, "God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things - and the things that are not - to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before Him" (1 Cor. 1:28-29).”

Similarly, Bishop Edward J. Slattery of Tulsa, Oklahoma, (http://www.cjd.org/paper/resist.html) wrote, in an article about immigration: "The suffering faces of the poor are the suffering faces of Christ." (Pope Benedict XVI, Aparecida, Brazil, August 2007). Whatever has to do with Christ has to do with the poor and whatever concerns the poor refers back to Jesus Christ: 'Whatever you did to one of these, the least of my brothers, that you did unto me' (Matthew 25:40).

"In the pain of the poor and the dispossessed, in the fear of the immigrant and those unjustly accused, we see reflected the suffering of our Crucified Lord, Who reminds us that ultimately we will be judged on the compassion and charity which we show them." For I was hungry," He will tell us, "but you gave Me no food; alone or a stranger or in prison, but you could not be bothered with me" (cf. Matthew 15:42-43).”

So, we are called to show compassion on the poor, the homeless, and those who are migrants because it is in them that Jesus is seen. But the understanding that Jesus is found today in those who suffer goes deeper than simply charity towards those who are worse off than ourselves. Again, as Pastor James writes: “Often, we interpret this parable primarily as ethics - giving aid to the needy and helping the lost. Our charity to these needy people is of such a noble quality that it is as if we are doing it to Christ. From this perspective, the needy are merely the objects of our charity.

However, I believe that this parable goes beyond such a patronizing interpretation. It is not merely about assisting the needy. It is ultimately about where Christ is and where His Spirit dwells. So when we feed the hungry, we are faced with a deeper reality beneath the surface. In bringing the food, we see not only the face of the hungry but also the face of Christ who is already there with them. We see the face of Christ in the face of a teenage boy recovering from drug addiction, in the sorrow-ridden face of a homeless woman who is also mentally ill, and in the wrinkled face of an old man left to the streets with no family. They are the very temple in which the Spirit of Christ dwells. They minister to us through Christ who dwells in them.”

It is to this that we are called. In this story (Matthew 25. 31 - end)), Jesus turns our ‘normal’ perceptions of life upside down; those who are normally looked down on and treated with condescension are those in whom God is to be found. This has massive implications for our attitudes, relationships, giving, ethics and politics.

In order that may be so, we need to pray the prayer of Mother Teresa: Dearest Lord, may I see You today and every day in the person of Your sick, and, whilst nursing them, minister unto You. Though You hide Yourself behind the unattractive disguise of the irritable, the exacting, the unreasonable, may I still recognize You, and say: "Jesus, my patient, how sweet it is to serve You.”

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

Marvin Gaye - God Is Love.

Following in Jesus' footsteps

Immediately before today’s Gospel reading (Matthew 14. 22 - 33) where the disciples are caught up in a storm, we read about the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000. The disciples had had a wonderful experience and had grown in their faith. This was immediately followed by their going through a storm. 

This is a common experience in the lives of Christians and in church life. After enjoying positive experiences and developments in our faith, we then go through some kind of trial which tests our faith. It is easy to wonder why that should be so and there are no easy answers.

One of the people I have been reading during my sabbatical has been Julian of Norwich. She doesn’t answer that question but she does say this, God did not say 'You shall not be tempest-tossed, you shall not be work-weary, you shall not be discomforted'. But he did say, 'You shall not be overcome.'

So our Gospel reading this morning has things to teach us about how to respond when storms come in our individual lives and as a church. Jesus comes to the disciples in the storm walking on the water. He doesn’t still the storm on this occasion instead he calls Peter to walk to him on the water. Peter begins to do this but then becomes afraid and begins to sink. At which point, Jesus supports him and they return to the boat and the storm is then stilled.

In the midst of this storm Peter is asked to do something which seems impossible. He is asked to do what Jesus is doing, to follow in Jesus’ footsteps. In his storm Peter was called to walk on water but what is the equivalent for us in our storms?

All Jesus’ disciples are called to follow in his footsteps by doing what Jesus did. Like Peter being called to walk on water, following in Jesus’ footsteps often seems impossible for us because what Jesus did was to give everything he had for the love of others. Out of love for all humanity he left everything he had with God to become a human being, being born as a baby at Bethlehem, and he then gave up his own life on the cross when he was crucified out of love for all people everywhere. When we think through what following in Jesus’ footsteps actually means we quickly find, as individuals and as a church, that there are all sorts of reasons that prevent from fully doing what Jesus did and giving all that we have and are to others out of love for them. As a result, we are like Peter who began to walk on the water but couldn’t keep going. What Jesus calls us to do and to be by following in his footsteps seems impossible for us to achieve.

Yet we know of some, like St Francis of Assisi or MotherTeresa, who have followed in Jesus’ footsteps more fully than any of us have yet managed. So, we know too that it can be done to some extent and, with that in mind, we need to be prepared, like Peter, to make the attempt, even if that means we fail to fully follow through. As he was with Peter, Jesus will be alongside us and will restore us so that we are then able to try again.

The storms we face in life are times of trial, times when life seems at its most difficult or most challenging. The temptation in these times is to lose our focus on Jesus - on who he is, what he did and how he acted – when that happens, like Peter, the worries of life crowd in and distract and we fall. In the storms we face, the more we continue to follow in Jesus’ footsteps by giving all we can to our fellow Christians and in the wider community, the more we will experience the ability to walk on water and come through the storms instead of being overwhelmed by them.

Julian of Norwich reminds us of the importance of prayer in these circumstances when we feel buffeted by the storms of life and don’t feel God’s comforting presence alongside us. She wrote, “Prayer fastens the soul to God, making it one with his will through the deep inward working of the Holy Spirit. So he says this, 'Pray inwardly, even though you feel no joy in it. For it does good, though you feel nothing, see nothing, yes, even though you think you cannot pray. For when you are dry and empty, sick and weak, your prayers please me, though there be little enough to please you. All believing prayer is precious in my sight.' God accepts the good-will and work of his servants, no matter how we feel.”

As she reminds us, “God did not say 'You shall not be tempest-tossed, you shall not be work-weary, you shall not be discomforted'. But he did say, 'You shall not be overcome.'”

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

Dave Bainbridge - Until The Tide Turns.

The vine and the branches

Stephen Verney begins his commentary on John 15. 1 - 8 with a great evocation of the way in which vines are grown:

“On a stony hillside above his house, where the thyme grows and the prickly pear, and a wild fig tree fights for its existence in a pocket of shallow soil, a farmer decides to plant a vine. In the autumn he clears a terrace, and brings top soil. He sets a post for the vine to climb, and fixes horizontal supports for its branches. Then in the spring he plants it and fences it against the goats; as it grows he trains it, and in the following autumn he prunes it back.

The vine depends for its life on the farmer, but equally the farmer depends on the vine. For the vine can do what the farmer cannot; it can take the rain that falls on the hillside and convert it into grapes, which the farmer can harvest and tread out in his wine-press, and pour the juice into his vat to ferment and bubble. The farmer and the vine are dependent on each other, and the purpose for which they work together is that water should be turned into wine.”

Jesus is the vine, his Father is the farmer. They are dependent one on the other although their roles are different. Their shared purpose is that water is turned into wine; that the vine is fruitful and that its fruit becomes wine shared with others as the sign and symbol of Jesus’ blood. The process for achieving this can itself be painful; involving pruning and crushing. 

We are part of this picture because there is one vine but many branches. Each one of us as we become Christians is grafted into the vine to become part of the vine itself. Verney writes:

“I AM the vine, and you are the branches. Dwell in me, and I in you. Here is teaching both simple and profound, to move the human heart. If the branch dwells in the vine, then the life of the vine dwells in the branch. If the branch grows out of the stem, and out of the roots which are drawing up the goodness of the soil and the rain, then the sap of the vine flows into the branch, and the pattern of the vine’s life unfolds itself through each branch to produce bunches of grapes. So it will be, says Jesus, between you and me. If you do not dwell in me you cannot bear fruit …”

How do we dwell in Jesus? To keep our life dwelling in Christ’s, we must continually renew our decision that “what has been done once for all on the cross by Jesus shall the basis, the starting point, the context of all my thinking and deciding and doing,” writes Lesslie Newbigin. We feed this decision by protecting time for prayer, bible study and worship in our busy lives and schedules.

As we do so, the sap of the vine, the life of Christ, flows into us and we produce fruit. The fruit of the vine is, as Newbigin again writes, “the life of Jesus reproduced in the midst of the life of the world, the pure love and obedience by which people will recognise the disciples of Jesus, the branches of the real vine.”

This fruit, the life of Jesus reproduced in our lives, is the real test of whether or not we are actually dwelling in the vine, in Jesus. In recent years, we have come to know much more about the spiritual life of Mother Teresa, someone whose face shone with the all-encompassing joy of one for whom “to live is Christ.” Everyone who knew her assumed that she was supported in her ministry through a deep and abiding sense of Christ’s presence with her.

Yet the opposite was true. Mother Teresa lived feeling as if she did not believe:

“I have no faith” – “They say people in hell suffer eternal pain because of the loss of God … in my soul I feel just that terrible pain of loss – of God not being God – of God not really existing.”

Her sense of feeling that there was no God has been revealed in letters that she wrote to her spiritual confidantes. Yet, as Sister Wendy Beckett has written, “this woman who felt that there was no God and lived in emotional anguish was also profoundly aware, intellectually, that God was her total life and that she lived only to love him.” This was what was apparent in her life and ministry and this fruit showed that whatever she felt about the absence of God in her life, she was still a live branch in the vine.

Ultimately, the fruit of our lives - the life of Jesus reproduced in our lives – is the sign of whether we are healthy branches dwelling in the vine. Prayer, bible study and worship are channels for the life of Christ to flow into our lives rather than the sign than his life is flowing into our own.

As we are grafted into the vine, into Jesus, we receive his life flowing through us and take on his characteristics – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, humility, and self-control. These characteristics result in acts of love because love must act, as we saw in the life of Mother Teresa. While hate could be indifference or inaction, love is always active and must respond practically to the needs we see around us.

Several years ago, Nadia Kabula’s father died and her family became desperately poor. She lives in Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo where family loss and poverty often lead to children being forced to live on the streets, where violence and prostitution can claim their future as well as their youth. This did not happen to Nadia because of help that she received from Humanitié Nouvelle, a Christian Aid partner in Kinshasa. Nadia took a sewing course with Humanitié Nouvelle which has given her back the chance of a full life. Her unique eye for style is already earning her commissions, and she hopes to open her own business.

Nadia is trusting God as she struggles towards this vision. A talented singer, she encourages others with songs of worship. She say, “Music is an important part of life here … When I sing I feel good – it is like food. My favourite song is ‘Lord I Lift Your Name On High’.” Nadia is also displaying extraordinary determination and selflessness as she sacrifices her time to care for her four younger siblings, and helps teach other young women to sew. Her life of love is an example to us all.

This Christian Aid week we can use our spheres of influence to give, act and pray, particularly by helping with the door-to-door collection, and in this way support the loving, sacrificial selflessness of people like Nadia and the Christian Aid partners who support and empower them. We can choose active love over inactive indifference and, together with Nadia, Humanitié Nouvelle, Christian Aid and others like them, create a powerful force for change which derives from the life of Christ flowing into us as we dwell in him and where our active love is the fruit of the vine - the life of Jesus reproduced in our lives.

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

Gungor - Brother Moon.

Where is God today?

People often ask, ‘Where is God today?’ That was a question asked by CBC, Radio-Canada, of their listeners in 2008. In introducing the series, they said that “For many Canadians, religion exists far beyond the walls of a church, synagogue or mosque. Faith can play a vital role in how we work, study, and interact with family and friends. But for many others, God has little or no presence.” So they asked their listeners, “Does religion play a large part in your day-to-day life? Or is God to be found elsewhere … or nowhere at all?” You can imagine the range of answers that their listeners provided but I don’t want to focus on those tonight, instead I want us to consider how this story answers that same question, ‘Where is God today?’

The answer is not one that we necessarily expect or readily accept:

“I was hungry and you fed me, thirsty and you gave me a drink; I was a stranger and you received me in your homes, naked and you clothed me; I was sick and you took care of me, in prison and you visited me.”

“Today, we see the face of the suffering Christ in the experience of every person who suffers from poverty or cries out for help. Christ lives among us still, sharing the pain of our destitute brothers and sisters.” (http://www.foodforthepoor.org/prayer/stations/)

As Pastor James, of the wonderfully named First Baptist Peddie Memorial Church of Newark, New Jersey, has written (http://www.peddiechurch.org/Articles/Ministry_with_the_Homeless.htm):

“He is found in the least looked for places, in the abandoned corners of society. He is present with the least, the poorest of the poor, and the most despised. He dwells with the homeless. It's not that Christ is absent from the rich and the powerful, but that He chooses the least to make His presence most fully known to the world. It is not that He rejects refined vessels, but that He chooses broken and abandoned vessels to dwell in so that His glory may be revealed in the lowliest places. As the Apostle Paul says, "God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things - and the things that are not - to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before Him" (1 Cor. 1:28-29).”

Similarly, Bishop Edward J. Slattery of Tulsa, Oklahoma wrote, in an article about immigration:

"The suffering faces of the poor are the suffering faces of Christ." (Pope Benedict XVI, Aparecida, Brazil, August 2007). Whatever has to do with Christ has to do with the poor and whatever concerns the poor refers back to Jesus Christ: 'Whatever you did to one of these, the least of my brothers, that you did unto me' (Matthew 25:40).

"In the pain of the poor and the dispossessed, in the fear of the immigrant and those unjustly accused, we see reflected the suffering of our Crucified Lord, Who reminds us that ultimately we will be judged on the compassion and charity which we show them." For I was hungry," He will tell us, "but you gave Me no food; alone or a stranger or in prison, but you could not be bothered with me" (cf. Matthew 25:42-43).”

So, we are called to show compassion on the poor, the homeless, and those who are migrants because it is in them that Jesus is seen. But the understanding that Jesus is found today in those who suffer goes deeper than simply charity towards those who are worse off than ourselves. Again, as Pastor James writes:

“Often, we interpret this parable primarily as ethics - giving aid to the needy and helping the lost. Our charity to these needy people is of such a noble quality that it is as if we are doing it to Christ. From this perspective, the needy are merely the objects of our charity.

However, I believe that this parable goes beyond such a patronizing interpretation. It is not merely about assisting the needy. It is ultimately about where Christ is and where His Spirit dwells. So when we feed the hungry, we are faced with a deeper reality beneath the surface. In bringing the food, we see not only the face of the hungry but also the face of Christ who is already there with them. We see the face of Christ in the face of a teenage boy recovering from drug addiction, in the sorrow-ridden face of a homeless woman who is also mentally ill, and in the wrinkled face of an old man left to the streets with no family. They are the very temple in which the Spirit of Christ dwells. They minister to us through Christ who dwells in them.”

It is to this that we are called and it is into this way of understanding life that we are entering when we are baptised. In this story, Jesus turns our ‘normal’ perceptions of life upside down; those who are normally looked down on and treated with condescension are those in whom God is to be found. This has massive implications for our attitudes, relationships, giving, ethics and politics. But, again, it is what baptism is all about. In baptism we put to death our old way of life as we go under the water and come alive to a new and different way of life as we rise up out of the water. So baptism is not simply about me and my salvation; instead it is about me changing for the sake of others so that I see Christ in others and serve Christ in others.  

In order that that may be so, we need to pray the prayer of Mother Teresa: Dearest Lord, may I see You today and every day in the person of Your sick, and, whilst nursing them, minister unto You. Though You hide Yourself behind the unattractive disguise of the irritable, the exacting, the unreasonable, may I still recognize You, and say: "Jesus, my patient, how sweet it is to serve You.”

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

Rickie Lee Jones - Where I Like It Best.

Fruit of the vine

Stephen Verney begins his commentary on John 15. 1-8 with a great evocation of the way in which vines are grown:

“On a stony hillside above his house, where the thyme grows and the prickly pear, and a wild fig tree fights for its existence in a pocket of shallow soil, a farmer decides to plant a vine. In the autumn he clears a terrace, and brings top soil. He sets a post for the vine to climb, and fixes horizontal supports for its branches. Then in the spring he plants it and fences it against the goats; as it grows he trains it, and in the following autumn he prunes it back.

The vine depends for its life on the farmer, but equally the farmer depends on the vine. For the vine can do what the farmer cannot; it can take the rain that falls on the hillside and convert it into grapes, which the farmer can harvest and tread out in his wine-press, and pour the juice into his vat to ferment and bubble. The farmer and the vine are dependent on each other, and the purpose for which they work together is that water should be turned into wine.”

Jesus is the vine, his Father is the farmer. They are dependent one on the other although their roles are different. Their shared purpose is that water is turned into wine; that the vine is fruitful and that its fruit becomes wine shared with others as the sign and symbol of Jesus’ blood. The process for achieving this can itself be painful; involving pruning and crushing.

We are part of this picture because there is one vine but many branches. Each one of us as we become Christians is grafted into the vine to become part of the vine itself. Verney writes:

“I AM the vine, and you are the branches. Dwell in me, and I in you. Here is teaching both simple and profound, to move the human heart. If the branch dwells in the vine, then the life of the vine dwells in the branch. If the branch grows out of the stem, and out of the roots which are drawing up the goodness of the soil and the rain, then the sap of the vine flows into the branch, and the pattern of the vine’s life unfolds itself through each branch to produce bunches of grapes. So it will be, says Jesus, between you and me. If you do not dwell in me you cannot bear fruit …”

How do we dwell in Jesus? To keep our life dwelling in Christ’s, we must continually renew our decision that “what has been done once for all on the cross by Jesus shall the basis, the starting point, the context of all my thinking and deciding and doing,” writes Lesslie Newbigin. We feed this decision by protecting time for prayer, bible study and worship in our busy lives and schedules.

As we do so, the sap of the vine, the life of Christ, flows into us and we produce fruit. The fruit of the vine is, as Newbigin again writes, “the life of Jesus reproduced in the midst of the life of the world, the pure love and obedience by which people will recognise the disciples of Jesus, the branches of the real vine.”

This fruit, the life of Jesus reproduced in our lives, is the real test of whether or not we are actually dwelling in the vine, in Jesus. In recent years, we have come to know much more about the spiritual life of Mother Teresa, someone whose face shone with the all-encompassing joy of one for whom “to live is Christ.” Everyone who knew her assumed that she was supported in her ministry through a deep and abiding sense of Christ’s presence with her.

Yet the opposite was true. Mother Teresa lived feeling as if she did not believe:

“I have no faith” – “They say people in hell suffer eternal pain because of the loss of God … in my soul I feel just that terrible pain of loss – of God not being God – of God not really existing.”

Her sense of feeling that there was no God has been revealed in letters that she wrote to her spiritual confidantes. Yet, as Sister Wendy Beckett has written, “this woman who felt that there was no God and lived in emotional anguish was also profoundly aware, intellectually, that God was her total life and that she lived only to love him.” This was what was apparent in her life and ministry and this fruit showed that whatever she felt about the absence of God in her life, she was still a live branch in the vine.

Ultimately, the fruit of our lives - the life of Jesus reproduced in our lives – is the sign of whether we are healthy branches dwelling in the vine. Prayer, bible study and worship are channels for the life of Christ to flow into our lives rather than the sign than his life is flowing into our own.

As we are grafted into the vine, into Jesus, we receive his life flowing through us and take on his characteristics – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, humility, and self-control. These characteristics result in acts of love because love must act, as we saw in the life of Mother Teresa. While hate could be indifference or inaction, love is always active and must respond practically to the needs we see around us.

Three years ago, Nadia Kabula’s father died and her family became desperately poor. She lives in Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo where family loss and poverty often lead to children being forced to live on the streets, where violence and prostitution can claim their future as well as their youth. This did not happen to Nadia because of help that she received from Humanitié Nouvelle, a Christian Aid partner in Kinshasa. Nadia took a sewing course with Humanitié Nouvelle which has given her back the chance of a full life. Her unique eye for style is already earning her commissions, and she hopes to open her own business.

Nadia is trusting God as she struggles towards this vision. A talented singer, she encourages others with songs of worship. She say, “Music is an important part of life here … When I sing I feel good – it is like food. My favourite song is ‘Lord I Lift Your Name On High’.” Nadia is also displaying extraordinary determination and selflessness as she sacrifices her time to care for her four younger siblings, and helps teach other young women to sew. Her life of love is an example to us all.

This Christian Aid week we can use our spheres of influence to give, act and pray, particularly by helping with the door-to-door collection, and in this way support the loving, sacrificial selflessness of people like Nadia and the Christian Aid partners who support and empower them. We can choose active love over inactive indifference and, together with Nadia, Humanitié Nouvelle, Christian Aid and others like them, create a powerful force for change which derives from the life of Christ flowing into us as we dwell in him and where our active love is the fruit of the vine - the life of Jesus reproduced in our lives.

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

Al Green - Rock Of Ages.

Palm Sunday procession & sermon

Jesus had a marvellous way of subverting people’s expectations. He did it when he called on the one without sin to cast the first stone. He did it when he their Master served the disciples by washing their feet. And he did it in this story too. He turned the expectations of the people around him upside down.

Some people at the time expected him, if he really was Israel’s Messiah or King, to lead an armed rebellion against their Roman oppressors. As his ministry had gone on these people had begun pressing him to declare his hand and make it crystal clear whether he was the one to lead this armed rebellion or not.

Jesus chose this moment – the one that we heard about in our Gospel reading today - to declare his hand but not in the way that those people expected. Instead of coming into Jerusalem as a warrior King on a war-horse leading an army he came unarmed and riding on a donkey.

In doing so, he was pointing all those who knew the Hebrew scriptures well to a passage in Zechariah which says this:

“Rejoice, rejoice, people of Zion!
Shout for joy, you people of Jerusalem!
Look, your king is coming to you!
He comes triumphant and victorious,
but humble and riding on a donkey –
on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
The Lord says,
“I will remove the war-chariots from Israel
and take the horses from Jerusalem;
the bows used in battle will be destroyed.
Your king will make peace among the nations;
he will rule from sea to sea,
from the River Euphrates to the ends of the earth.”
(Zechariah 9: 9 & 10)

By entering Jerusalem in this way, Jesus is making it crystal clear that he is the King, the Messiah, that the people were expecting but also that he will not be the kind of King or Messiah that they were expecting.

He does not come as the warrior King who will destroy Israel’s enemies or oppressors. Under his rule the only things to be destroyed are weapons themselves – the war-chariots, war-horses and bows that this passage speaks about.

Instead, he turns the expectations of him on their head. He comes as the King of Peace not as the Warrior King. He comes as the King who humbles himself by riding on the lowest, poorest form of transport – a colt, the foal of a donkey – not as the King who exalts himself on the largest, fastest steed. Later on he was to wash his disciples’ feet as a way of saying that peace comes through service. And he was prepared to sacrifice all, including his own life, in order to serve his enemies by saving them.

Some time after Jesus’ death and resurrection the Apostle Paul explained in his letter to the Ephesians how Jesus had made peace among the nations. He said: “Christ himself has brought us peace by making Jews and Gentiles one people. With his own body he broke down the wall that separated them and kept them enemies. He abolished the Jewish Law with its commandments and rules, in order to create out of the two races one new people in union with himself, in this way making peace. By his death on the cross Christ destroyed their enmity; by means of the cross he united both races into one body and brought them back to God.” (Ephesians 2: 14-16)

Instead of destroying the enemies of Israel as some expected, Jesus came to love his enemies and unite them with his own people, making peace. Paul then goes further to say that there are no distinctions either between slaves and free, between men and women, or between those thought of as civilised and those thought of as barbarians, all are one in Christ. The implication is that there are no barriers, no divisions, that should separate, for all can be one in Christ.

We are called to follow in the footsteps of Jesus by being peacemakers in our homes, communities and workplaces. Just as Jesus did the reverse of what people expected, by loving those who were thought of as the enemies of his people and sacrificing himself in order to bring those two groups together, so we need to do the same in relation to the divisions we experience in our time. Church needs to be a place and space in which we reverse people’s expectations by living and demonstrating Jesus’ embrace of all.

The Church hasn’t always had a great track record of doing this. The Crusades, the Inquisition, the Slave Trade, for example, all seem to have been the reverse of what Jesus did. We need to show real sorrow over that history and the effect that it still has in certain parts of the world today. But there have also been great examples from the Church, even in our own lifetimes, of people like Martin Luther King, Oscar Romero, Mother Teresa and Desmond Tutu who have tried to follow much more closely in Jesus’ footsteps.

We need to learn from the example of these people so that we can become a people who reveal Jesus in our world by following where he led in turning people’s expectations upside down and sacrificing ourselves in order to bring peace between all people regardless of any distinctions. Jesus is the great peacemaker and we follow him by being peacemakers in our homes, communities and workplaces and by creating Church as a place where people of all races and backgrounds and situations can meet as one.

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The Staple Singers - I'll Take You There.

The first patron saint of emergence Christianity

This week our Lent Course at St John's Seven Kings mentioned Mother Teresa's sense that for the last nearly half-century of her life she felt no presence of God whatsoever "neither in her heart or in the eucharist."

In more than 40 communications, published (many for the first time) in Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light, she bemoans the "dryness," "darkness," "loneliness" and "torture" she is undergoing. She compares the experience to hell and at one point says it has driven her to doubt the existence of heaven and even of God.

In our Lent Course, this is used to suggest that we should not rely on feelings or experiences in our following of God but Peter Rollins makes a different use of it in a recent post highlighting the difference between metanarratives and meganarratives:

"For Mother Theresa, the traditional metanarrative of Christianity was deeply questioned and often found wanting. Yet it did not stop her from living her faith in an uncompromising manner. Indeed it was her doubt at the level of metanarrative that made her faith even more awe-inspiring. For this faith was so much a part of her flesh and blood that her Garden of Gethsemene experience did not rock her Christ-like devotion to those around her. It was obvious that she lived this way not because she beleived that she would be rewarded, or because it was what her beliefs demanded, but rather because she loved with a supernatural devotion that asked nothing in return.

She could embrace doubt and unknowing while expressing an unwavering commitment to the life of faith as expressed in caring for the oppressed and unwanted. There where many times when she was a theoretical unbeliever, but through it all she was a practical believer to the very end."

This position, he argues, "may well bring us close to understanding how a healthy and dynamic Christianity will be expressed in the 21st century" and, as a result, "Mother Theresa may well be on the short list for being the first patron saint of emergence Christianity."

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Duke Special - Freewheel.