X marks the spot

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

X marks the spot for hidden treasure. There is a long-standing idea that pirates buried their treasure and left maps enabling them to find it later. However, this is a myth which has been popularized in fiction, particularly in Robert Louis Stevenson's "Treasure Island" which was published in 1883.

The origins of this commonly held belief stem from a story concerning the pirate Captain William Kidd (c1655–1701), who, it is said, tried to escape a spell of imprisonment by writing a letter to the governor of New York and Massachusetts, Lord Bellomont, claiming that he had buried a cache of gold and jewels on Gardiner’s Island, just off the coast of New York.

Although stories of buried pirate treasure are probably fictional, plenty of people have spent time and money searching for such hidden treasures, including Captain Kidd’s hidden horde. This demonstrates the truth of Jesus’ statement, that where your treasure is, there is your heart (Luke 12.32-40).

It is an important question for us to ask of ourselves and to explore today, as we stand to gain an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. The answer to the question, the solution to the puzzle, the place where X marks the spot on the map, lies not so much with us, however, as with someone else and to discover who that is we need to remind ourselves of another story about hidden treasure.

Jesus once said that: The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field (Matthew 13.44).

It’s probable that most sermons we have heard preached on this parable told us that our salvation is the treasure and we are those who have to give up all we have to possess it. It may be that we think of Jesus as the hidden treasure. After all, we can no longer see him but we can find him. So, it may be a case of ‘Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe’, as Jesus said to doubting Thomas.

But let’s stop and think for a moment about the story told in the New Testament and who it is who gives up everything to gain something precious. The answer to that wondering is Jesus! Jesus is the one who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death — even death on a cross. Jesus is the one who gives up all he has – even to the point of death - to seek and save us; the lost, the hidden.

We are the treasure for which he seeks because to him we are of great value; treasure, though we may not know it. In the Eucharistic Prayer shortly we will hear that the ever-present and ever-living God is with us, for we are precious, honoured and loved. We know this because Christ gave up all he had in order to be with us, even in death.

I learnt that truth and that reality in my teens. I was a child who invited Jesus into my heart but who, as a teenager, felt I was unworthy of his love. I felt like that because I was very aware of my own failings, fallibilities, and sins. Fortunately, a youth leader talked this through with me one evening and showed me Romans 5.8 - God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners, Christ died for us. I came to realise that God loved me; loved me so much that he gave up his own life for me. I was the treasure and he was the one who sold everything in order to purchase me. I was the treasure and he was the who sold all he had to buy me. Later, I had an experience of uncontrollable laughter in the Spirit for what seemed like hours on end as I became aware of the weight that had been lifted from me and the love that had filled me.

Once we become aware that we are God’s treasure for which Jesus gives his life, then Jesus becomes our treasure and our hearts become his.

The X that marks the spot for us as Christians is Jesus. 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. But he did not come solely as an example or a description of love. He is love itself, the reality of love, and, therefore, as we come into relationship with him we come into a true relationship with love. This why he came, that we might receive him; that we might receive love. He is then in us and in him. Love in us and we in love.

We are to make Jesus central to our lives and experience. In speaking to would-be disciples Jesus is emphatic about making God central to our lives. Before commitments to home and to family, God comes first. This is the practical implication and application of Jesus’ summary of the Law: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul; and with all your mind.” That is the greatest and most important commandment. Love for others follows on from it, as we are then told to love our neighbour as we love ourselves.

It is as we live in relationship to him, following in the Way that he has established, that we are sanctified, become holy ourselves, become ‘Little Christs’, which is what ‘Christian’ literally means. That is what it means for us to know Jesus as the Way, the Truth and the Life. We are not sanctified by the Truth, meaning that sanctification is not about knowing and accepting truths that we are to believe. Instead, we are sanctified in the Truth, meaning that we are made holy as we inhabit, experience, practice and live out the Truth; with that truth being Jesus.

It was in my ordination training that I first discovered and experienced the reality of these things in a new way for myself and found Jesus as the X that marks the spot in a new way. Through debate and discussion with others on my course I was able to re-examine my faith while also being held by the sense of unity that we quickly developed despite our differences. Those relationships have proved extremely strong and necessary as our ordained ministries have later been lived out. My fears about my personal inadequacy and the pressures there would be for my family were eased through a sense that we were on an unfolding journey of discovering God’s love which protects and sanctifies.

I moved from an understanding of God as being there for us – the one who fixes us and who fixes the world for us – to an understanding that we are in God – that in him we live and move and have our being. May we, each one, become aware that we are the treasure for which Jesus gives his life and allow Jesus to become our treasure and our hearts desire. Amen.

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John Davis - I Hear Your Voice.

A model prayer – beautiful, balanced and brief

The sermon I've been sharing today at St Andrew’s and Holy Cross Basildon and St Peter’s Nevendon is adapted from Discovering Prayer by Andrew Knowles, published by Lion Publishing:

When the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray, he responded with a model prayer – beautiful, balanced and brief (Luke 11: 1-13). It has come to be known as the Lord’s Prayer. In his book ‘Discovering Prayer’, Andrew Knowles, a former Canon Theologian of Chelmsford Cathedral, simply and succinctly takes us through the different sections of this prayer for life.

We begin with God - Jesus reminds us to whom we’re talking. We’re coming to Almighty God who is also our Father. We aren’t phoning through a big order to a supermarket store which sells everything. Nor are we practising some weird and wonderful thought-process guaranteed to release psychic powers. We’re coming simply, humbly into the presence of our Creator, having received the invitation to do so from Jesus himself.

It’s good to remember that God is ‘our Father’. We belong to a great, trans-national, cross-cultural family, some of whom have already died and some of whom are yet to be born. Wherever we are around the world, and at whatever point in time we live, we own God as our Father and Jesus as our Lord. So when we pray this prayer, we’re sharing with our Christian brothers and sisters, across every division of colour and class, of politics and economics, of time and eternity.

We say ‘yes to God’ - Not only do we begin with God, we also ask that all he wants to do in our lives and in our world may come about. We ask that all he wants to do in our lives and in our world may come about. We ask that men and women everywhere may realise who he is and humble themselves before him.

We ask that God’s kingdom may come - The kingdom of God exists wherever God is King. It isn’t located on a map, nor do we enter it by holding a passport! The exciting truth is that God is already King of millions of lives. He is already acknowledged as Lord in a vast number of situations. We see the effects of his rule when hate is turned to love, when bitterness is dismantled by forgiveness, when disease is overwhelmed by health, and when war gives way to peace.

But we must remember that God is a father and not a dictator. For this reason his kingdom can only come when individual people invite him into their lives and submit themselves to the changes he wants to make.

This phrase, ‘May your kingdom come’, more than any other in the Lord’s Prayer, has a tendency to rebound on the user. If we really want God’s kingdom to come, then we must open ourselves and our circumstances to God, whatever the cost.

And if we’re looking for the kind of changes in the world that only God can make, we may find that he promptly enlists us in his service! We may find ourselves doing anything from bathing an invalid to mailing a cheque for famine relief. We may even find ourselves called to lob in our whole life as the only fitting contribution we can make to the service of God’s kingdom in a particular situation.

We bring our needs to God - In the second half of the Lord’s Prayer we ask God to meet our basic human needs. We ask him for enough to live on, for forgiveness, and for protection.

‘Give us day by day the food we need’ has a strong echo of the days when the Israelites were supplied with manna in the desert. Every day they had ‘enough’, and the Lord’s Prayer asks that we may have the same experience of god’s faithful provision each day as it comes. In an age when many people are run raged by their desire for money and possessions, this is a wonderful promise from Jesus. All the same, we should notice that it is everything we need that God will provide, and not everything we want.

‘Forgive us our sins, for we forgive everyone who does us wrong.’ This reminds us that our standard of living is more than a roof over our head, food on the table and a shirt on our back. Our well-being is intimately tied up with personal relationships – within ourselves, between ourselves, and between ourselves and God. Our recurring need here is for forgiveness. We hurt people by our self-centredness, our anger and our prejudice. We hurt God by going our own way in defiance of his loving law, wilfully defiling all that he intended life in this world to be.

So we ask for forgiveness. We feel the need and we say the words. But it’s no easy matter for God to forgive us. It cost him the life of his only Son to show the reality and consequence of sin. As he died on the cross, Jesus took on himself the results of all our sin. This is the only way by which we can be forgiven and restored to spiritual life. This is the Christian Good News: that life with God – something we can never earn and certainly don’t deserve – is his free gift to us through the death of Jesus. Our sins are not only forgiven but forgotten, and if we mention them to God again he’ll wonder what we’re talking about.

But as we ask God to forgive us, we must check if there is anyone who in turn needs our forgiveness. How do we feel about our worst enemy? Is there any member of the family, or anybody at work, against whom we’re nursing anger, bitterness or resentment? Only as we forgive others can we enter fully into the wonderful experience of God’s forgiveness of us. This is not just a nice idea. It’s a condition for our own forgiveness. Elsewhere Jesus warns that if we don’t forgive, then we in turn shall not be forgiven. This teaching alone, if we take it seriously, will completely change our lives.

‘And do not bring us to hard testing.’ Sometimes this is translated, ‘Lead us not into temptation,’ and we may well wonder when, why and how God could possibly want us to be tempted. And we would be right – he doesn’t. But while God will never lure us into evil, he will sometimes allow us to be tested. Just as we will put ourselves through all kinds of discomfort to get fit or lose weight, so God will allow pressure on us to strengthen our faith or increase our insight.

In the face of this testing, Jesus includes a very human plea that God won’t go over the top in his efforts to refine us. It is encouraging to hear Jesus say this, because he was tempted over a longer period and with greater intensity than we’ll ever know. Enticed by Satan, or daunted by God, we often given in at a very early stage. Our Christian integrity disintegrates and snatches at hypocrisy to cover our shame. But while we often capitulate, Jesus never did so.

The Lord’s Prayer recognises that temptation is an integral part of our daily life. We’ll never lose it, so we must learn to use it. If we can use the force of temptations to push us closer to the Lord, rather than sweeping us away from him, then we’ll be harnessing their power for our benefit.

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Marvin Gaye - The Lord's Prayer.

Hope: The light of the promised future that is to come

Here's the reflection that I shared during Reflective Evening Prayer this evening at St Mary's Runwell. 
The readings were Lamentations 3:19-33 and 'Hope' is the thing with feathers by Emily Dickinson.

Disasters are frequent occurrences, “some natural, many more due to man’s ham-fisted neglect of the planet or our inability to get by without recourse to violence.” “The result is always the need for a new start, and how we respond and rebuild colours an uncertain future more than ever. Yet, for all the carnage and chaos that catastrophes bring, an odd truth is apparent: disasters do give us the chance to shape things differently.”

As a result, as Terry Eagleton writes in Hope without Optimism, “the most authentic hope is whatever can be salvaged, stripped of guarantees from a general dissolution.” It is whatever survives a general ruin. This is where we find the writer of Lamentations; bowed down with the reality of exile, yet trusting that it is in the nature of God to bring a new beginning from this disastrous affliction which is “wormwood and gall” to him. Similarly, Emily Dickinson claims that, hope is heard most sweetly in the Gale, “the chillest land” and “on the strangest Sea”.

Hope, Eagleton writes, “is to be found in the unfinished nature of the actual, discernible as a hollow at its heart.” “Potentiality is what articulates the present with the future, and thus lays down the material infrastructure of hope.” Hope is about a vision for a future that is different from the present; one which therefore requires imagination and vision. For Christians that vision is of the kingdom of God; which has begun to be realised but is still to come in its full reality.

As a result, in Theology of Hope Jürgen Moltmann argues that “Those who hope in Christ can no longer put up with reality as it is, but begin to suffer under it, to contradict it. Peace with God means conflict with the world, for the goad of the promised future stabs inexorably into the flesh of every unfulfilled present. If we had before our eyes only what we see, then we should cheerfully or reluctantly reconcile ourselves with things as they happen to be. That we do not reconcile ourselves, that there is no pleasant harmony between us and reality, is due to our unquenchable hope. This hope keeps man unreconciled, until the great day of the fulfilment of all the promises of God.

The Church, then, is intended to be “the source of continual new impulses towards the realization of righteousness, freedom and humanity here in the light of the promised future that is to come.” Our hope should “provide inexhaustible resources for the creative, inventive imagination of love.” It should constantly provoke and produce thinking of an anticipatory kind in love to humanity and the world, “in order to give shape to the newly dawning possibilities in the light of the promised future, in order as far as possible to create here the best that is possible, because what is promised is within the bounds of possibility.” “Thus it will constantly arouse the ‘passion for the possible’, inventiveness and elasticity in self-transformation, in breaking with the old and coming to terms with the new.” The Christian hope should always have “a revolutionary effect in this sense on the intellectual history of the society affected by it.”

“Wherever that happens, Christianity embraces its true nature and becomes a witness of the future of Christ.”

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Van Morrison - These Are The Days.

All Saints Goodmayes: Stations of the Cross

All Saints Goodmayes, which has a set of Stations of the Cross by the artist Henry Shelton, has prepared a booklet of images, reflections and prayers based on these Stations. The reflections and prayers used are those that I wrote for an earlier collaboration with Henry called 'The Passion'.

The Passion: Reflections and Prayers features minimal images with haiku-like poems and prayers that enable us to follow Jesus on his journey to the cross reflecting both on the significance and the pain of that journey as we do so. Henry and I aimed in these reflections to pare down the images and words to their emotional and theological core. The mark making and imagery is minimal but, we hope, in a way that makes maximum impact. Here is an example of one of the reflections and prayers: 

Jesus dies on the cross

The sun is eclipsed, early nightfall,
darkness covers the surface of the deep,
the Spirit grieves over the waters.
On the formless, empty earth, God is dead.

Through the death of all we hold most dear, may we find life. Amen.

The set of Stations now at All Saints Goodmayes have previously been exhibited at York Minister, St stephen Walbrook, and Chelmsford Cathedral. The booklet comes with a Foreword by The Most Revd and Rt Hon. Stephen Cottrell, Archbishop of York:

"At this most holy time, as we follow Jesus on His journey to the cross, Henry Shelton's contemporary images provide an evocative background against which we can place our deepest reflections as we contemplate the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, who by his death and resurrection delivered and saved the world." 

Henry Shelton was born and grew up in Stratford, East London. He joined West Ham church as a choir boy where he first became aware of the importance of Christian art.

After leaving school he joined a London studio as an apprentice draughtsman developing his drawing skills in lettering and fine art. After 15 years of service he set up his own studio receiving many commissions to design for such clients as the Science Museum, Borough Councils, private and corporate bodies.

During this time he continued painting Christian art and after meeting Bishop Trevor Huddleston he completed a series of portraits of him which were exhibited in St Dunstan's Church, Stepney, where he was also confirmed by the Bishop.

Henry worked designing in studios across the world, including Hong Kong and the USA. Together, we formed commission4mission, an artist's collective that generated church commissions, exhibitions, events and resources. Henry's commissions include a large oil painting of the Ascension installed as an altarpiece in the Church of the Saviour, Chell Heath; the Millennium clock tower in Goodmayes, memorial etched glass windows in All Saints Goodmayes and All Saint's Hutton, paintings for the Chapel at Queen's Hospital Romford, Stations of the Crown of Thorns at St Paul's Goodmayes, and the Trinity Window at All Saints Goodmayes.

An interview that I undertook with Henry can be read here and here.

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Extreme - Peacemaker Die.

Transformation and change

Here's the reflection that I shared in the Church of England's online service and at St Andrew's Wickford this morning:

The story of Jesus turning water into wine at the wedding in Cana is a highly symbolic story of transformation (John 2: 1 – 11). It is a story that happens on the third day; the day which will become the day of resurrection. The third day is the day when what was dead comes back to life and here, we have a story of a wedding feast which is about to descend into disaster as the wine fails but which is then saved when water is turned into wine.

The water which becomes wine is that which was used for ritual washing. There were many reasons in Jewish law why cleansing from ritual impurities was required, so this was water which was in regular use. Jesus turns this water into wine which, at the Last Supper, was to become the symbol of his death. This wine of his death, unlike the water, is a once-for-all sacrifice for sin, just as the miraculous wine created at this wedding was a never-to-be repeated wine.

The wine saves the wedding feast and reminds us of the wedding which is still come between the bridegroom Jesus and his bride, the Church. That marriage is a symbol of God’s coming kingdom in which the governing principle is, “love one another.” Through this symbolic action Jesus is also seen to have moved from being the carpenter’s son to being God’s Son, the Messiah.

So, we have a story which is rich in symbolism and one where the symbolism speaks of sacrifice and transformation. Each transformation involves something ordinary – water, a wedding, and a carpenter’s son. Throughout his ministry Jesus is constantly taking ordinary, everyday things and transforming them so that they express something of God and his kingdom:

Jesus takes water and transforms it into the very best wine.
Jesus takes a child’s lunch and feeds 5,000, with 12 baskets left over.
Jesus takes bread and wine saying this is my body and my blood.
Jesus takes human life and makes it reveal God.
Jesus takes the ordinary and transforms it.

Jesus tells stories of lost coins, lost sheep, lost people, of seeds and weeds, of yeast and mustard and figs, of shepherds and farmers, workers and tenants, masters and servants, widows and judges, the proud and the penitent, the beaten up and the foreigner, the wealthy and the starving.

Jesus says,
He is the bread of life, we will not hunger.
He is the water of life, we will not thirst.
He is the light of the world, we will see.
Jesus takes the ordinary and draws out revelation.

Jesus says,
We are the salt of the world, the taste bringers.
We are the light of the world, the clear sight bringers.
Jesus takes the foolish things of the world to shame the wise,
the weak things of the world to shame the strong,
the lowly things, despised things and the things that are not
to nullify the things that are.
Jesus called the 12 and the 72,
Those who were not wise, not influential, not of noble birth
to change the world.
Jesus calls you.

Jesus calls us to transformation. A transformation that is, as in the symbolism of this story, from constant impurity to purity through Jesus’ actions. This transformation occurs as we take into ourselves Christ’s sacrifice – as we drink the wine that represents his blood shed for us – and, when we do so, we become part of the best wedding feast possible – the wedding of Jesus and his bride the Church – which is the Kingdom of God, where the governing principle is, “love one another.”

Christianity is a religion of transformation and change because we are to grow into the likeness of Christ by being conformed to the pattern of his death and resurrection. We act out this story of transformation leading to celebration each time we celebrate communion. The bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ for us and we receive Christ into our lives being changed into his likeness in the process. We may arrive at communion as ordinary human beings but we leave as those who are being transformed into the very image and body of Christ himself.

Are we receiving Christ’s body and blood in order that we become like him? Is that why we come? Is that our prayer? Is that the one thing that we desire above all else?

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St Martin's Voices - I Am Changed.

Coping in crises

Here's the sermon I shared this morning at St Chad’s Vange:

This church has stood here in Vange since 1958. However, it has not aged well and there are, as you are well aware, numerous issues with the fabric of the building. Therefore, if I was to predict that soon every part of this Church would be torn down so that not one stone would be left standing on another, you may well not be particularly shocked or disappointed. However, for those listening to Jesus as he spoke about the Temple in Jerusalem, it was a very different story (Mark 13: 1-8).

Jesus and his disciples had gone to the Temple in Jerusalem and were leaving when one of the disciples remarked on what a magnificent building the Temple was. Jesus’ response was to predict that it would shortly be completely and utterly destroyed. The Temple, at that time, was central to the whole Jewish faith. What Jesus was saying was that the whole way in which Judaism was practised at that time was going to be destroyed. A whole way of life wiped out. It was a shocking claim about a major crisis.

Mark records this for us because what Jesus predicted actually happened. In AD70 Titus, the adopted son of the Roman emperor Vespasian, “entered Jerusalem, burnt the Temple, destroyed the city and crucified thousands of Jews” (Wright). For Mark the fulfilment of Jesus’ prophecy, although a disaster for all those caught up in it, was the final vindication of all that Jesus had said and been and done. In that day, he says in verse 26 of this chapter, men will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. In other words, people will realise that Jesus was who he claimed to be, the Messiah. The destruction of the Temple was proof that Jesus had spoken and acted truly.

We know from history that the destruction of the Temple also meant that Christians in Jerusalem had to flee the city and settle in other parts of the world. They took the message of Jesus with them wherever they went. So as a result of this crisis, news about Jesus spread throughout the region and eventually to the whole world. Truly, people saw the power and glory of the Son of Man.

But Jesus also knew what a terrible day that day would be and he prepared those who listened to him for that day. At the end of this chapter we read of him saying that no one will know the exact day or time when this disaster would come but that it would be within their own lifetimes and he taught them to look for the signs that the day was arriving so that could be ready to flee the city. He tells them to be ever vigilant and watchful so that they recognise when the crisis has come upon them.

So Jesus predicts a crisis, prepares his followers for that crisis and sees that the crisis will lead to the good news about him being understood and believed.

But that was all then. What does this passage say to us now? Well, we all still face crises whether they are personal crises (perhaps caused by crime or redundancy, abuse or family breakdown) or societal (as with global warming, natural disasters, riots or war). How should we react and respond to crises?

There is a realism about Jesus’ teaching. Crises will come, he says. We don’t know exactly when and where but we know that we will not go through life and avoid crises. So first, we need to expect crises and look out for the signs that they may be coming. Jesus in this chapter retells the story of the master going away and says that we need to be like watchmen always ready for the crisis of the master’s return. As we prepare during Advent to celebrate Christ’s first coming, so we must also always have an eye to the future and Christ’s return to bring his kingdom rule and reign throughout the world. Are we looking expectantly for the crisis of our Master’s return?

Second, we need to prepare for crises by being good stewards. Jesus in the story of the master going away said that the servants were left in charge. We know from the parable of the talents what this involves, the servants are to care for and use all that has been entrusted to them so that when the master returns his estate has grown and developed. God has entrusted us with his world, with those people who are our family, friends and colleagues, with money and possessions, and with our gifts and talents and abilities. All these we are to use for his praise and glory as a way of giving back to God in praise and thanksgiving for all he has given to us.

Finally, in crises God is revealed. At some point in the future each of us will meet with God and be asked to account for the use we have made of all that God has given to us. How will we stand in that moment of crisis? But in every crisis that we face God is alongside us and wishes to be known as the one who strengthens and supports us; the one who brings us through. Just as the good news about Jesus went out from Jerusalem as a result of the destruction of the Temple, so in each crisis that we face God wishes to bring good for us and for others. As Paul says, “We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him.” May it be so for each one of us. Amen.

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Mahalia Jackson and Nat King Cole - Steal Away.

You'll never walk alone

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

I wonder if you knew that You’ll Never Walk Alone, along with other songs from musicals, has been included as a hymn in the BBC’s hymn book. Ian Barclay commenting on this in The Guardian wrote that the Songs of Praise programme producers have come to realise that secular songs from shows have taken on some on the status of folk hymns, addressing the spiritual and pastoral needs of many people. Taken out of its context in Carousel, where it is sung by a dead father who has returned to life for one day to the daughter he never knew, it can be sung as a statement of belief that, as Psalm 23 states, God will be with us as we walk through the valley of the shadow of death or through the storms of life.

When you walk through the storm
Hold your head up high
And don't be afraid of the dark
At the end of the storm
There's a golden sky
And the sweet silver song of the lark

Walk on, through the wind
Walk on, through the rain
Though your dreams be tossed and blown
Walk on, walk on, with hope in your heart
And you'll never walk alone
You'll never walk alone

Our Gospel reading (Matthew 8: 23 – end) speaks about two storms and two different ways in which God is with people in those storms. The disciples in the boat on Lake Galilee experienced a literal storm but they were also caught up in an event of set of external circumstances that were beyond their control. And that is probably the most common way in which we experience storms within our own lives.

Circumstances conspire to bring illness or redundancy or debt or breakdown in relationships. We may have made choices that have contributed to the situation – just as the disciples made the choice to go out in the boat – but we end up by finding ourselves in circumstances that are beyond our control and which threaten to overwhelm us.

The storm in the story of the two men in Gadara is different because for them the storm is not external but internal. Many of us experience periods of mental ill health when we feel overwhelmed by feelings and emotions, fears and anxieties which rage inside and threaten to overwhelm us. For some of us, the storm of those emotions becomes a more permanent feature of our lives and begins to affect the way in which we relate to others and the extent to which we are able to participate in society. For some, too, the things we use initially to bring some relief from those emotions – drink, drugs, sex, violence – also end up controlling our reactions and responses and ultimately change who we are as people. The two men in this story seem to have been experiencing that kind of internal storm.

We tend to think of storms as something to avoid, something to hide or shelter from but in both of these stories God is there in the storm. Although the storm is stilled on the lake and the internal storm released from the men in Gadara, the encounter with God takes place in the storm. To encounter God, we often need to be in the storms of life. And the God that we encounter in the storms of life goes with us through those storms until we find ourselves on the other side. That is the promise of You’ll never walk alone and of Psalm 23; even though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we will fear no evil, for God is with us; his rod and your staff, they comfort us.

The God that we encounter in the storm can release the internal storm from with us. In times of crisis and distress we often keep our emotions bottled up inside us until eventually they explode in anger and violence. The God that we meet in the storm can be an escape valve, the person that we can always turn to, the one who is always there to listen and with whom we can pour out all those pent-up emotions releasing the storm within.

The God that we encounter in the storm is also able to still the storm of external circumstances. He holds that power and that is what we often long when we are caught up in the storms of life. I experienced that power after my younger brother Nick died in the crash of a UN plane in Kosovo. With the families of others who had died I was flown to the crash site and saw the scattered and shattered pieces of the plane on the mountainside. That terrible moment brought home the physical reality of what had happened to my brother. It was the height of the storm for me. On landing again at Pristina Airport I was met by some of the people from Tear Fund with whom Nick had been working in Kosovo to rebuild homes destroyed in the fighting there. They told me stories of the impact that Nick had had on their lives and the lives of the Kosovan people with whom they had worked. As we talked and cried together, God brought an assurance into my heart that he had welcomed Nick into his presence with the words, “Well done, my good and faithful son” and in this way I knew the stilling of the storm.

The God that we encounter in the storm is also able to still the storm of external circumstances. And yet, Jesus was disappointed with the reaction of disciples in the storm on Lake Galilee. “How little faith you have,” is what he said to them. What would have happened if they had had more faith? It is likely that they would have rode out the storm in trust that God would see them through. It is likely that Jesus was asleep in the boat not because he didn’t care about their dilemma but because he trusted that God would go with them through the storm and wanted them to have that same trust too.

We may be in the middle of some storm ourselves today as we sit and listen. We may need the internal storm in our lives to be released in peace. We may have come through storms in our lives but still be bearing the scars or wondering where God was at that time. We may need to take this message to our hearts because there are storms on the horizon. If that is so, we need to know in our hearts that we do not walk alone. That if we look for him we will see God going with us through the storm. That if we trust him we will come to that place of peace where the storm clouds have blown over and we see the golden sky and hear the sweet, silver song of the lark.

Let us pray that we will recognise God with us in the storms of our lives asking for the faith to come through the storm, for release of our internal storms, and for the stilling of our external storms. May it be so for each one of us. Amen.

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Katherine Jenkins - You'll Never Walk Alone.

Online exhibitions and visual meditations

Here's an update about the online exhibitions I have curated with the Ben Uri Gallery and the Visual Commentary on Scripture. These include visual meditations on the artworks included. I have also written visual meditations for ArtWay, so these are also included in this post. 

I have curated an online exhibition for the Ben Uri Gallery which is entitled Exodus & Exile: Migration Themes in Biblical Images. The exhibition includes a range of Biblical images from the Ben Uri Collection in order to explore migration themes through consideration of the images, the Bible passages which inspired them and the relationship between the two. This is because themes of identity and migration feature significantly in both the Hebrew and Christian Bibles and images from these Bibles are a substantive element of the Ben Uri Collection.

The combination of images and texts enables a range of different reflections, relationships and disjunctions to be explored. The result is that significant synergies can be found between the ancient texts and current issues. In this way, stories and images which may, at first, appear to be describing or defining specific religious doctrines can be seen to take on a shared applicability by exploring or revealing the challenges and changes bound up in the age-old experience of migration.

The Gallery said: "We are delighted to present a new exhibition interpreting works from our collection titled Exodus and Exile. The survey has been curated by Revd Jonathan Evens who has a long-established parallel interest in art and faith and how they are mutually engaging. We are privileged to benefit from his scholarship and innate sensitivity and am sure you too will be inspired by his selection and commentary."

Alongside the exhibition is an essay Debt Owed to Jewish Refugee Art, an updated version of an article I originally wrote for Church Times looking at influential works by émigré Jewish artists that were under threat. The article mentions Ervin Bossanyi, Naomi Blake, Ernst Müller-Blensdorf, Hans Feibusch, and George Mayer-Marton, telling stories of the impact of migration on the work and reputations of these artists.

Following the launch of the exhibition, I wrote an article 'How the incomer’s eye sees identity' for Seen and Unseen explaining how curating an exhibition for the Ben Uri Gallery & Museum gave me the chance to highlight synergies between ancient texts and current issues.

I have also curated three exhibitions for the Visual Commentary on Scripture. My first exhibition for the VCS is 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 is A Question of Faith and 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.

My third exhibition is Fishers of People | VCS (thevcs.org). This exhibition 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.

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.

ArtWay's visual meditations are devoted to one work of art, old or new, made by a Christian artist or not, from Europe, North-America or another part of the world. They advocate a thoughtful engagement with art and culture over against an uninformed rejection or uncritical embrace. While dealing with works of art, they have an eye for the form as well as the content. To them an important aspect of this content is formed by the spiritual dimension of a work, whether Christian, Buddhist, or postmodern. They especially look for voices of truth, hope and love in the art of the past and the present, whether or not by Christian hand.

My visual meditations for ArtWay include work by María Inés Aguirre, Giampaolo Babetto, Marian Bohusz-Szyszko, Alexander de Cadenet, Christopher Clack, Marlene Dumas, Terry Ffyffe, Jake Flood, Antoni Gaudi, Nicola Green, Maciej Hoffman, Gwen John, Lakwena Maciver, S. Billie Mandle, Giacomo Manzù, Sidney Nolan, Michael Pendry, Maurice Novarina, Regan O'Callaghan, Ana Maria Pacheco, John Piper, Nicola Ravenscroft, Albert Servaes, Henry Shelton, Anna Sikorska, Alan Stewart, Jan Toorop, Andrew Vessey, Edmund de Waal and Sane Wadu.

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Held By Trees - The Tree Of Life.

The Mark of the Cross

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

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

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

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

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

We then reflected on these two poems:

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

***

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

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

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Adrian Snell - Golgotha.

Stations of the Cross

 

This year the Ministry Team in the Wickford and Runwell Team Ministry have once again written our own Lent Course, which looks more deeply into the Stations of the Cross which we use during Holy Week, including images, readings, reflection and prayer.

These sessions will be offered on Tuesday evening and Thursday afternoon and evening, depending on numbers, starting the week of 19th February. We also have the opportunity to share these sessions with Christ Church, giving additional days and times (Tuesday mornings and Wednesday evenings).

Mark of the Cross and The Passion are collections of images, meditations and prayers by Henry Shelton and myself on The Stations of the Cross. They provide helpful reflections and resources for Lent and Holy Week. These collections can both be found as downloads from theworshipcloud.

Mark of the Cross is a book of 20 poetic meditations on Christ’s journey to the cross and reactions to his resurrection and ascension. The meditations are complemented by a set of semi-abstract watercolours of the Stations of the Cross and the Resurrection created by Henry Shelton.

The Passion: Reflections and Prayers features minimal images with haiku-like poems and prayers that enable us to follow Jesus on his journey to the cross reflecting both on the significance and the pain of that journey as we do so. Henry and I have aimed in these reflections to pare down the images and words to their emotional and theological core. The mark making and imagery is minimal but, we hope, in a way that makes maximum impact.

Jesus dies on the cross

The sun is eclipsed, early nightfall,
darkness covers the surface of the deep,
the Spirit grieves over the waters.
On the formless, empty earth, God is dead.

Through the death of all we hold most dear, may we find life. Amen.

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U2 - Windows In The Skies.

Lent Course 2024: Exploring the Stations of the Cross

This year the Ministry Team in the Wickford and Runwell Team Ministry have once again written our own Lent Course, which looks more deeply into the Stations of the Cross which we use during Holy Week, including images, readings, reflection and prayer. 

These sessions will be offered on Tuesday evening and Thursday afternoon and evening, depending on numbers, starting the week of 19th February. We also have the opportunity to share these sessions with Christ Church, giving additional days and times (Tuesday mornings and Wednesday evenings). 

Please think about whether you would like to join or even host a group. The sign up sheet below is available at all our churches now. All are most welcome to join a Lent group.

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Ewan McColl - Ballad of the Carpenter.

A third way, an alternative kingdom

Here's the sermon that I shared at St Nicholas Rawreth and All Saints Rettendon this morning: 

Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, was martyred by Roman authorities around AD 156, aged 86. When Polycarp was brought into the stadium at Smyrna to meet his fate the Roman proconsul tried to persuade him to deny Christ, saying, "Swear by the fortune of Caesar; repent, and say, Away with the Atheists." Instead, Polycarp declared, "Eighty and six years have I served Him, and He never did me any injury: how then can I blaspheme my King and my Saviour?"

Polycarp was martyred because he refused to deny Christ and swear by the fortune of Caesar. The two went together because the claim of the Caesar’s from the time of Jesus through to the time of Polycarp was a claim to divinity. In the Roman Empire, at that time, “Caesar was the king, the saviour, and demanded an oath by his ‘genius’.” “Polycarp declared that to call Caesar these things would be to commit blasphemy against [Christ], the true, divine king and saviour.” The message of Christianity, in its early phase, was in conflict with the political forces of its day because Christ’s divinity and rule was seen as central by the Church, not Caesar’s.

We see the same kind of conflict occurring in today's Gospel reading about Jesus and the payment of taxes (Matthew 22.15-22). Jesus is asked whether it is against the Law of Moses to pay taxes to the Romans. Before he answers, he asks his questioners to bring him one of the coins used to pay the tax. This coin would have had on it an image of the Emperor Tiberius and a superscription which would have said that Tiberius was the son of the divine Augustus. As all images were prohibited by the Law of Moses and as the superscription proclaimed Tiberius to be a son of a god, these coins were hot property as far as the Jews were concerned. From a strict Jewish perspective, the coins themselves were blasphemous and to have one was compromising.

The trap that had been set for Jesus was a neat one. If he takes the orthodox Jewish position he can be denounced to the Roman authorities as a revolutionary encouraging the Jews not to pay the tax. But if he says that the Jews should pay the tax, then the religious leaders can denounce him as someone who encourages blasphemy.

So how does he respond? Cleverly is the answer. And more cleverly than we have tended to realise in interpreting this story within the Church.

Firstly, he asks for the coin used to pay the tax. This means that those questioning him have to produce the coin. In other words, they have to reveal that they have with them, handle and use these blasphemous coins. By this simple action Jesus makes it much harder for them to then denounce him if he should recommend paying the tax.

Then he says, “pay back to the Emperor what belongs to the Emperor, and pay God what belongs to God.” Now, this is an amazing statement because it is one statement that can be understood in two different ways.

The Church has traditionally understood Jesus to be talking about a difference between loyalty to a state and to God. In other words, that the state can make legitimate demands on its citizens like the payment of taxes and that it is right for Christians to meet those obligations. Always recognising, of course, that we have a greater and wider commitment to God that encompasses the whole of our lives and not just those parts to which a state can make a claim. That is one way of understanding what Jesus said and, on that basis, his hearers could have understood him to be that the tax should be paid.

But, with their knowledge of recent Jewish history, Jesus’ hearers would also have realised that his words could be understood in another much more revolutionary sense. “Pay back to the Emperor what belongs to the Emperor” could also mean pay the Romans back for all that they have done in oppressing our people. While the second half, “pay God what belongs to God”, could be understood as meaning give to God alone the divine honour that has been blasphemously claimed by Caesar. So, Jesus’ words could be heard as a revolutionary call to arms.

But is that what they were? Well, his hearers couldn’t tell because the phrase he chose to use could be understood in either way. They were amazed, the story tells us, and well they might be because they couldn’t be sure which way his words were to be taken and, therefore, he had eluded their trap. Jesus told his followers to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves and he certainly modelled that approach here.

What can we learn from this? One thing we can see is that Jesus wasn’t trapped in the two camps of revolution or compromise that characterised the politics of his day. He was able to articulate a third way, an alternative kingdom, that countered oppression and that called for justice but which worked for these things through peaceful means. He calls us to do the same. To be people who challenge the oppressions and injustices of our day but with the tools of peace and not the weapons of war.

As a result of his approach, Jesus was a threat to all around him - to the Jewish zealots advocating violent uprising he was a threat because he called for peace; to the religious leaders working with the Roman oppressors, he was a threat because he challenged the hypocrisy of their position; and to the Roman authorities enforcing allegiance to Caesar, he was a threat because he called the Jewish people back to what should have been their sole allegiance, to God.

Because it is in the final part of Jesus’ phrase that we find the most radical of statements whichever way we interpret what he said. We are to pay God what belongs to God and, if God is the creator of all that we have including our lives themselves, then he is calling us to give everything to God. If God is God, then that means not just individual giving but corporate giving too, because everything that the state has has also been given to it by God. There is nothing that cannot be given back to God because everything that exists is ultimately a gift to us from God.

Everything that we have is a gift from God to be given back to him by being used, not for ourselves, but for others. What we have - our money, our time, our talents, our community, our environment - is entrusted to us by God to use wisely in countering injustice and caring for others and for our world. This principle applies to every aspect of stewardship - our time, our talents, our community involvement and our care of the environment. When we do so, like Jesus, we are wanting to see God honoured in thankful recognition of all that he has done in creating life and in countering injustice.

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Rev Simpkins - Sing Your Life.

God's naturally overflowingly generous nature

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

Chichele Road in Cricklewood has been known as Job Street, where economic migrants line up to be hired from the back of a van, no questions asked. Dozens of men in jeans and anoraks would be found hanging around from 6.30am to discover whether they will be working that day. A car would stop, a negotiation would take place, a deal might be struck. Typically, the men would be whisked off to a building site or a house in the process of renovation. They would be paid £20 to £40 for a long, arduous day's work: no tax, no national insurance, no questions asked.

That’s essentially the scenario for today’s Gospel reading (Matthew 20. 1 - 16). The social situation in Jesus’ day was that many small farmers were being forced off their land because of debt they incurred to pay Roman taxes. Consequently, large pools of unemployed men gathered each morning, hoping to be hired for the day. They were the displaced, unemployed, and underemployed workers of their day. Those still waiting at five o'clock would have had little chance of earning enough to buy food for their families that day. Yet the vineyard owner pays even them a full day’s wage. The owner in the parable ensures that all the workers are paid enough to support their families, as a denarius was a full day’s pay for a skilled worker.

So, unlike those exploited illegal workers or gig economy workers earning less than the minimum wage, the employer in this story is concerned that those he employs are paid a living wage. The standard thing for an employer in Jesus’ day to do would be to send one of his employees to the marketplace to pick up a few extra workers for the day. But this employer goes to the marketplace himself. In fact, he goes repeatedly to seek workers and clearly cares about their predicament seeking to lift them out of their despair by providing work that meets their needs and the needs of those who depend on them. If God is like the owner of the vineyard then he cares about our hopeless situation as human beings. He comes looking for us. He goes on an all-out search to find workers for his vineyard. He longs to provide us with a life of significance in his kingdom work.

As N. T. Wright has said, God’s grace, in short, is not the sort of thing you can bargain with or try to store up. It isn’t the sort of thing that one person can have a lot of and someone else only a little. The point of the story is that what people get from having served God and his kingdom is not, actually, a ‘wage’ at all. It’s not, strictly, a reward for work done. God doesn’t make contracts with us, as if we could bargain or negotiate for a better deal. He makes covenants, in which he promises us everything and asks of us everything in return. When he keeps his promises, he is not rewarding us for effort, but doing what comes naturally to his overflowingly generous nature.

Michael Green says of this story: Length of service and long hours of toil in the heat of the day constitute no claim on God and provide no reason why he should not be generous to those who have done less. All human merit shrivels before his burning, self-giving love. Grace, amazing grace, is the burden of this story. All are equally undeserving of so large a sum as a denarius a day. All are given it by the generosity of the employer. All are on the same level. The poor disciples, fishermen and tax collectors as they are, are welcomed by God along with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. There are no rankings in the kingdom of God. Nobody can claim deserved membership of the kingdom. There is no place for personal pride, for contempt or jealousy, for there is no ground for any to question how this generous God handles the utterly undeserving. He is good. He sees that the one-hour workers would have no money for supper if they got paid for only one hour. In generosity he gives them what they need. Who is to complain at that?

Yet there is always a danger that we do get cross with God over this. People who work or move in church circles can easily assume that they are the special ones, God’s inner circle. In reality, as we have seen, God is out in the marketplace, looking for the people everybody else tried to ignore, welcoming them on the same terms, surprising them (and everybody else) with his generous grace. In Ephesians 2:8-10 Paul says, For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. Is there anywhere in today’s church, I wonder, that doesn’t need to be reminded of that message?

The parable is also a message of hope to everyone struggling to find adequate employment. In God’s kingdom, it suggests, we will all find work that meets our needs. The parable is, therefore, also a challenge to all those who have a hand in shaping the structures of work in today’s society. What can we do, as Christians, to advance this aspect of God’s kingdom right now?

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Sufjan Stevens - So You Are Tired.

Fruitfulness, and how to gain it

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

The imagery of tree and fruit was regularly used by Jesus in his teaching. His followers were chosen and appointed to bear fruit. Fruitfulness is the overall aim and lack of fruitfulness, as here (Matthew 7.15-20), is to be challenged and is ultimately destructive.

The question, then, is how do we recognise fruitfulness and how do we become fruitful?

Fruitfulness is a consequence of being ‘in’ Christ, as Jesus makes clear in John 15.5, where he says: "I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.

Branches can only bud and grow because they are part of the vine as a whole receiving the sustenance that flows up into the vine from the roots. A vine roots in the soil but has most of its leaves in the brighter, exposed area, getting the best of both worlds. So, being rooted in Jesus is the way in which Christians can open to the light and bear fruit.

Rootedness could mean commitment to Christ or being embedded in Christ’s life and ministry or both. Psalm 1 uses the image of good fruit growing on a tree in order to say that good fruit grows in our lives when we delight in the law of the Lord and meditate of that law, day and night. Regular meditation on scripture feeds our ability to better integrate our words and actions.

What is fruitfulness? What is it that Jesus is aiming to see in his followers? One way of answering that question for Christians, because Christianity has been a missionary faith, has been to see fruit as souls saved but when Paul writes in Galatians 5 about the fruit of the Spirit he is writing about the character and actions of Christians as fruit, rather than the outcome of our actions:

22 the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control.

The originator of these behaviours in us is the Holy Spirit. The fruit are of the Spirit whenever and however they show up in our lives and actions. The Spirit is the Spirit of Jesus and the fruit which is grown in Christian’s lives is Christlikeness. Being rooted in Jesus enables the Spirit of Jesus to flow in and through a Christian enabling them to begin to become Christlike.

This kind of fruit is about behaviours leading to actions. Actions speak louder than words. That proverb can be traced at least as far back as a speech made by J. Pym in Parliament in 1628 in which he said: ‘A word spoken in season is like an Apple of Gold set in Pictures of Silver,’ and actions are more precious than words.’

The proverb is, however, ultimately based on Biblical ideas and phrases such as 1 John 3. 18 where we read: ‘let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth.’ This teaching probably then derives from Jesus’ words in Matthew 7. 15 – 21, where he argues that we are known by our fruits, meaning our actions, and that simply saying ‘Lord, Lord’ without then acting on that confession is not enough to guarantee our salvation.

In the Parable of the sheep and goats (Matthew 25.31-46) Jesus emphasises that it is actions, not words, that will count in the final judgement, when he says: ‘‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’ St Francis of Assisi summed up this aspect of Jesus’ teaching well, when he said: ‘Preach the gospel at all times. Use words if necessary.’ So, what kind of fruit is evident is our lives?

Finally, Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13 that such actions as faith, hope and love remain. The word he used for remain hints that such actions continue beyond the grave into eternity i.e. that we can take something with us when we die, that the fruit or acts of faith, hope and love grown in this life continue into, and continue to bear fruit in, the next. Jesus said we will know disciples and false prophets by their fruits. He said to his disciples, "I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit — fruit that will last" (John 15.16).

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Delirious? - Everything.

We have to put our worlds together

Here is the reflection I shared at today's Healing Eucharist at St Andrew's Wickford:

‘In the early 1980s, after decades of steady deterioration, writer and academic John Hull lost his sight.’ As he adjusted to his new condition, he ‘came to think of blindness as one of the great natural human conditions.’ It is, he wrote, ‘just the way that some people are, and the world which blindness creates is one of the many human worlds, which must all be put together if the human experience is to become entire.’ In fact, ‘to believe in the God of all being who is Lord of all life’ means ‘we have to put the worlds together’ because ‘we need each other.’

In our Gospel reading (Mark 7. 31 - 37), we see Jesus enter into the world of a deaf man who also had an impediment in his speech. Jesus understands this man’s communication issues and responds to him in ways which aim to minimise his distress and maximise their ability to communicate. Jesus realises that being in a crowd would have been disorientating for this man, so takes him away from the crowd in order that they can communicate one-to-one. Then, he uses the heightened senses that this man possesses - sight and touch – in order to communicate with him. As a hearing person with speech, Jesus could have stayed in his world and sought to use words to communicate. Instead, he uses touch primarily and sight secondarily to mark the places to be unblocked and opened.

Jesus sometimes asks those he heals, ‘Do you want to get well?’ This may seem a surprising question, yet if disabilities, such as blindness or deafness, do create their own worlds, then there is a choice to be made about which world to inhabit. John Hull discovered great insights through entering the world of blindness, so it may be that when Jesus takes this man aside that he asks him which world he wishes to inhabit. On many occasions when Jesus heals, the result of his healing is that the person healed is re-included into society generally and the local community. In Jesus’ time, many disabled people were excluded from the Temple and forced to exist on the edge of society. Following many of his healings, Jesus sends the healed person to the priest in order that the person can be re-integrated into society. Today, we realise that instead of needing to change the person in order to be inclusive, rather we need to change society, both attitudinally and physically.

My friend Fiona MacMillan chairs the Disability Advisory Group at St Martin-in-the-Fields. She says: ‘Historically the church has been amazing at caring for people on the edge of society. For hundreds of years the church challenged, led and changed society through its valuing of those who are powerless. It practiced faith in action by feeding, housing and caring for people who otherwise would have suffered or died through poverty or sickness.

But since the 1960s the disability rights movement has campaigned for greater autonomy, and the Church has been slower than society to respond to what is a significant sector of the population. In the UK today there are about 11 million people with living with a disabling physical, sensory, cognitive or mental health condition, of whom 80% were born healthy and have had to learn to adjust. All of us spend our lives somewhere on a spectrum between the super-fit athlete and the profoundly impaired person, moving and changing as a result of accident, illness or ageing. Disabled people may be an uncomfortable presence in a society lauding strength, but in the Church which professes a paradox of vulnerability we're often objects for pastoral attention rather than agents of change.

The Church of the 21st century frequently fails disabled people, hearing echoes of an understanding that links sickness with sinfulness, mental health issues with possession, and disability as being in need of cure. Pounced on by street pastors, spoken about rather than listened to, regarded as difficult or demanding, costly or time-consuming, it's not surprising that many disabled people are put off going to church – even if we can get in. Access is often focused on getting in rather than joining in – ramps and lifts, hearing loops and loos – with participation seen as a step too far. We are more likely to be known by our needs than celebrated for our gifts.’

Fiona is arguing that, while the Church has at times been effective in offering healing and care, it hasn’t been anywhere near as effective in terms of inclusion, which was the overall aim of Jesus’ healing ministry. We need to do more, as the Church, to put our different worlds together and, as Jesus did, to enter the world of disabled people and then receive the gifts found in those worlds. As John Hull stated, ‘We have to put the worlds together’ because ‘we need each other.’

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Edward Elgar - Lux Aeterna.

Advent and Christmas resources

'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.' 

The alternative Nine Lessons (see below) is a poetic meditation drawing on the thinking of René Girard in interpreting the Bible readings traditionally used in services of Nine Lessons and Carols:

Nine Lessons

Genesis 3: 8–19

Hard labour in birth and work, sweat on our brow,
dirt on our hands. Thorns and thistles to prick and sting,
like death from a serpent's tongue,
till we return to the ground,
ashes to dust and dust to ashes.

Genesis 22: 15–18

A sense of sacrifice required;
the death of children appeasing the divine.
An alternative is found - ram caught in thicket,
wool held by thorns. Animals become
the scapegoats for our sins.

Isaiah 9: 2; 6–7

Light in darkness promised
through the hard labour of the birth of a child.
A child bearing peace and goodwill,
bringing justice and righteousness
without end and without measure.

Isaiah 11: 1–3a; 4a; 6–9

A little child leading us to reconciliation.
From nature red in tooth and claw -
survival of the fittest - to peaceful co-existence.
Carnivores to herbivores, the drawing of the sting
from the serpent's tongue.

Luke 1: 26–35; 38

Highly favoured as the Spirit overshadows.
A virgin birth - subverting patriarchy -
of a son who will not marry or have blood offspring.
The saying of 'yes' to God opening
the way of the family of God to one and all.

Luke 2: 1; 3–7

No room for the Lord of life, Prince of peace.
Space shared with animals kept for sustenance;
the sacrifices of existence and forgiveness.
Born into poverty; the struggle for survival
that this child will one day redeem.

Luke 2: 8–16

Angelic announcement of peace and goodwill
come in the form of the child found
by night workers, swaddled and lying in a manger.
His mother ponders these things -
annunciation, nativity, incarnation - in her heart.

Matthew 2: 1–12

Star following Magi look for the Prince of Peace
in the heart of power and opulence
only to find him in obscurity and humility.
Gifts given prefigure his divinity and sacrifice, the servant King
who, in birth and death, gives his life for others.

John 1: 1–14

Creative word now created, enfleshed, incarnated.
Divine life flowing in and through this child.
Light in darkness, revealing our passion
for power, position and personal gain.
In poverty, a counterpoint is born - compassion.

Giles Fraser, in the wake of the death of Girard and the Paris attacks, recently summarised Girard's thinking:

'The anthropologist René Girard died earlier this month, at home in California. A Frenchman, he did not live to see the latest violence in his home country. But, in a sense, he had been working on it his entire professional life. For no modern thinker has done more to understand the self-repeating patterns through which violence flows. And there can be no more disturbing conclusion than his, especially now: that violence is a form of copying, that violence is contagious, and that, as he put it: “Violence is like a raging fire that feeds on the very objects intended to smother its flames.”'

'Girard’s answer to mimetic violence is that we must break the cycle by refusing to mirror our enemies. Indeed, his rejection of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth is not hand-wringing pacifism – it is bloody-minded, hard-nosed defiance; a refusal to be defined by the violent other, a refusal to answer back in kind.'

'Girard goes on to argue that the most vociferous critic of religion turns out to be a Jewish prophet called Jesus of Nazareth. Girard understands the ministry of Jesus to be that of deliberately standing in the place of the innocent victim thus to reveal the profound wickedness of the whole scapegoat mechanism. And as he is strung up to die, the violence of religion is exposed in all its gruesome destructiveness. Forget Dawkins or Harris – according to Girard the greatest critic of religion was Jesus himself.'

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Low - If You Were Born Today.