No strangers, only friends you haven’t met yet

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

A central aspect of God's experience as a human being in the person of Jesus Christ was that of rejection. Jesus was, in the words of Isaiah 53, ‘despised and rejected by others; a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity; and as one from whom others hide their faces he was despised, and we held him of no account’ (Isaiah 53. 3). We see that rejection here, in this story (Mark 6. 1 – 6), set in his home town at the beginning of his ministry, just as we see it more violently worked out at the end of his ministry when he is crucified.

Rejection is a human experience which we all understand because each us will have experienced rejection at one time or another. It is an experience that God has also shared and therefore understands as we go through our personal experiences of rejection.

But rejection is a human experience which we all understand because it is also something to which each of us is party. As in this story, we find it easy, as human beings, to find reasons to reject other people. It is not so long ago in the history of this country that there were appalling signs in windows saying, 'No Irish, no Blacks, no Dogs'. In our lifetime we have seen whole societies built around the separation of people on the basis of colour, with the Civil Rights and anti-apartheid movements, thankfully, having brought some significant change to those situations of rejection.

Yet, although we have seen change, we continue to see particular groups of people in society demonised, scapegoated and rejected. In the Church today, it is the LGBTI community who have that experience while in society generally, it is migrants, whether refugees or asylum seekers, that are the focus of significant rejection.

When Jesus is rejected, as in our Gospel reading, God is rejected. God, in Jesus, enters in to our experience, as human beings, of rejection. He does so in order to bring to light our constant scapegoating and rejection of others by exposing us to the futility of that way of life. Rejection of others ties us into a cycle of revenge and recrimination locking us in to spirals of violence.

Yet, when we have, as human beings, scapegoated and rejected God himself, what more can we do by way of rejection? The way to free ourselves from these negative cycles is by rejecting the impulse to reject or scapegoat others, in other words by following in the footsteps of Jesus who freely laid down his life for others. It is this to which Christ’s death as a scapegoat on the cross calls us.

Today, while we may not literally see signs saying 'No Irish, no Blacks, no Dogs', similar signs are nevertheless still there is our words and actions although applied to different groups of people at this different time. 'No economic migrants,' even 'No migrants', would seem to be the current cry, while in the Anglican Communion we persist in rejecting people on the basis of their sexuality. For those who follow a God who was scapegoated, reviled and rejected, there can be no scapegoating of others. For those who follow a God who laid down this own life for love of others, there must be a similar breaking of cycles of rejection through our own attitudes, speech and actions.

Instead of being those who reject, we need to become those who invite. The opposite of rejection is not simple acceptance, but active engagement; the invitation to participate in community. The goal of those who are great inviters is “to have everyone participating, giving and receiving gifts.” Abundant community involves welcoming “those on the margins”, “which is the heart of hospitality.” As William Butler Yeats was credited with saying, “There are no strangers here; only friends you haven’t met yet.” May it be so with each one of us. Amen.

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Manfred Mann's Earth Band - Prayer.

Forgiveness - the only way to experience healing and peace

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

The rock band Good Charlotte have a song called The Story of My Old Man. It begins like this:

‘I don’t know too much, too much of my old man.
I know he walked right out the door and we never saw him again.
Last I heard he was at the bar doing himself in.
I know I got that same disease, I guess I got that from him.

This is the story of my old man,
just like his father before him.
I’m telling you do anything you can,
so you don't end up just like them.’

In today’s Gospel reading (Matthew 18: 15-20), Jesus says the church is like a family and he is realistic and recognises that, in a family, brothers (and sisters and parents will fall out). The song was about a real family and in the song, it is the Dad who has broken up the family. In all these situations there is real hurt and when people are in these sorts of situation, they react with anger saying “don’t end up just like them” or treat them “as though they were pagans or tax collectors.” In other words, don’t have anything to do with them because of the hurt they have caused.

Good Charlotte have a second song on this same theme which is called Emotionless:

'Hey Dad, I'm writing to you
not to tell you, that I still hate you
just to ask you how you feel
and how we fell apart, how this fell apart …

I remember the days, you were a hero in my eyes
but those were just a long lost memory of mine
I spent so many years learning how to survive
Now, I'm writing just to let you know that I'm still alive
And sometimes I forgive.
Yeah, this time I’ll admit that I miss you.
I miss you. Hey Dad.'

You see the difference between the two songs? They’re both about the singer’s Old Man. In both he’s been hurt by the things that his Old Man has done. But in the second song, he’s writing to try to restore the relationship, even, at the end, to say that he forgives and misses his Dad. It’s clearly not easy because of the hurt but it’s also very much what he needs to do.

And it’s a similar story in our Gospel reading. Jesus is not giving the disciples these instructions so that they can reject those brothers and sisters in the Church who do something wrong. He is giving these instructions so that these brothers and sisters can be won back; so that the relationship can be restored. When Jesus says treat people like pagans and tax collectors, he doesn’t mean reject them. Matthew was a tax collector. He knew from personal experience how Jesus treated tax collectors and outcasts. He went to their homes, ate meals with them and said that he had not come to call respectable people, but outcasts. He did all he could to restore the relationship and heal the wounds.

And that is also what we see in the parables before and after these instructions. In the parable of the lost sheep, the point is that we do everything possible to find those who are lost and the parable of the unforgiving servant was told to illustrate the point that we should not put limits on forgiveness but forgive again and again, just as God forgives us.

This is not easy. Another songwriter, Leonard Cohen, has said that, “Of all the people who left their names behind, I don’t think there’s a figure of Christ’s moral stature. A man who declared himself to stand among the thieves, the prostitutes, the homeless. His position cannot be comprehended. It is an inhuman generosity … (which) would overthrow the world if it was embraced.”

There is a divine generosity in Jesus which we are called to emulate. We will find it hard to forgive, just as the person in the two Good Charlotte songs found it hard to forgive his Dad. But that is where Jesus wants us to do and that is the point of these instructions that he gave to the disciples. They are about restoring relationships not about rejecting those we think are in the wrong. When we struggle to forgive, struggle to restore, struggle to reconcile then we are coming together in the name of Jesus and he is right there with us.

So, forgiveness takes practice, honesty, open-mindedness and a willingness (even if it is a weary willingness) to try. It isn't easy. Perhaps you have already tried to forgive someone and just couldn't do it. Perhaps you have forgiven and the person did not show remorse or change his or her behaviour or own up to his or her offences – and you find yourself unforgiving all over again. It is perfectly normal to want to hurt back when you have been hurt. But hurting back rarely satisfies. We think it will, but it doesn't. If I slap you after you slap me, it does not lessen the sting I feel on my own face, nor does it diminish my sadness over the fact that you have struck me. Retaliation gives, at best, only momentary respite from our pain. The only way to experience healing and peace is to forgive.

Until we can forgive, we remain locked in our pain and locked out of the possibility of experiencing healing and freedom, locked out of the possibility of being at peace. So, to forgive is not just to be altruistic. It is the best form of self-interest. It is also a process that does not exclude hatred and anger. These emotions are all part of being human. You should never hate yourself for hating others who do terrible things: the depth of your love is shown by the extent of your anger.

When I talk of forgiveness, what I mean is the belief that you can come out the other side a better person. A better person than the one being consumed by anger and hatred. Remaining in that state locks you in a state of victimhood, making you almost dependent on the perpetrator. If you can find it in yourself to forgive then you are no longer chained to the perpetrator. You can move on, and you can even help the perpetrator to become a better person too.

The simple truth is, we all make mistakes, and we all need forgiveness. There is no magic wand we can wave to go back in time and change what has happened or undo the harm that has been done, but we can do everything in our power to set right what has been made wrong. We can endeavour to make sure the harm never happens again.

There are times when all of us have been thoughtless, selfish or cruel. But no act is unforgivable; no person is beyond redemption. Yet, it is not easy to admit one's wrongdoing and ask for forgiveness. "I am sorry" are perhaps the three hardest words to say. We can come up with all manner of justifications to excuse what we have done. When we are willing to let down our defences and look honestly at our actions, we find there is a great freedom in asking for forgiveness and great strength in admitting the wrong. It is how we free ourselves from our past errors. It is how we are able to move forward into our future, unfettered by the mistakes we have made. 

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Good Charlotte - We Believe.

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Here's the reflection I shared this afternoon in the Three Hours at St Martin-in-the-Fields which had the Seven Last Words as it's theme: 

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

The academic and artist Ashon T. Crawley wrote his book ‘Blackpentecostal Breath’ as a love letter to his people; African Americans with a history of enslavement and therefore of having been treated by others as objects to be bought, sold, abused and killed, rather than valued as people.

He writes:

‘Having been said to be nothing, this is a love letter written to we who have been, and are today still, said to have nothing. And to a tradition of such nothingness. This is a love letter to a love tradition, a tradition which emerges from within, carries and promises nothingness as the centrifugal, centripetal, centrifugitive force released against, and thus is a critical intervention into, the known world, the perniciously fictive worlds of our making.’[i]

That ‘fictive world’ is ‘the project of western civilization, complete with its brutally violent capacity for rapacious captivity.’

Mohammed Umer Rana is someone who has experienced the rapacious captivity of western civilisation. He is a Muslim from Pakistan who became a Christian after attending a Roman Catholic church in Glasgow while on holiday with friends. Experiencing hostility from his friends as a result of his conversion he left Glasgow for London and, now known as Paul Rana, he eventually found a home at my parish of St John’s Seven Kings where he was baptised and later confirmed. Having overstayed his visa to remain in the UK, he applied for asylum on the grounds of his conversion but his claim was rejected despite evidence of faith provided by the church. Various appeals and periods in detention centres followed. On bail, while awaiting a Judicial Review, he lodged with my family at our Vicarage in Seven Kings. When the Judicial Review was unsuccessful, in fear of an imminent return to Pakistan and likely persecution, he absconded from the Vicarage and lived ‘under the radar’ for two and a half years. Now living in Camberley, he began attending St Paul’s church, where he became a valued member of the congregation. Through their support and evidence, combined with my own continuing support, Paul’s asylum claim was reviewed, with the court allowing him leave to remain as a genuine convert to Christianity.

Paul’s experience was one of forsakenness, from his rejection by his friends in Glasgow because of his conversion, which included being physically attacked, through the various rejections of his asylum claims, usually on the grounds of that he was not a genuine convert to Christianity, to the point where he was living ‘under the radar’ with no recourse to public funds and no legal right to remain in the UK. In this period he had nothing, had no legal rights to anything and was only of interest to the authorities as someone to deport.

But Paul’s experience was also of Jesus being with him. He had two visions or dreams of Christ that were foundational to his conversion and experienced the support of Christians in Seven Kings and Camberley that was maintained even when he absconded. He knew Jesus with him in and through that support and at his successful court hearing we were able to testify that his faith in Christ – his awareness of Jesus with him - had remained strong throughout.

In one email written after he absconded from the Vicarage, he said: “I have prayed to Lord Jesus our redeemer and told him about my problems and he understand everything thats why i am still a free bird i will never lose my trust in God because he is the one who showed me the right path. Whatever he decide for me will be in my favor i know there are dark nights but one day i will see the bright day again.”

Ashon Crawley writes ‘a love letter to a tradition of the ever overflowing, excessive nothingness that protects itself, that with the breaking of families, of flesh, makes known and felt, the refusal of being destroyed.’ He says that, ‘There is something in such nothingness that is not, but still ever excessively was, is and is yet to come.’[ii]

Al Barrett and Ruth Harley write that at his crucifixion Jesus was drawn into just such an experience of being made nothing:

“From Jesus’ anointing to his death he is left, as former archbishop Rowan Williams puts it, ‘more and more visibly alone, repudiated by more and more persons and groups. The [male] disciples run away from him, Peter denies that he knows him, the High Priestly council condemns him, the Roman Governor and the soldiers reject and abuse him, and he ends on the cross crying out that God too has abandoned him. The paradox, the mystery, of the crucifixion is that, in Jesus’ godforsaken cry, Mark means us to hear the very voice of God. In this Jesus, here – pushed out to the very edges of human society, condemned, isolated, dying, godforsaken – Mark wants us to see God – ‘the crucified God’.”[iii]

Why? Because this is God’s love song to all who experience rejection, who are forsaken and made nothing in this world. The incarnation is God’s love letter to all those like Paul Rana whose experience is of nothingness and forsakenness. God’s experience of being with us - moving into our neighbourhood and experiencing all human existence – culminates in this moment on the cross when Jesus not only experiences betrayal, desertion, denial and scapegoating from other human beings but also experiences separation from God. On the cross Jesus experiences the isolation that is at the heart of the human condition because our relationships with others and with God are so consistently broken. He then takes that experience into the very heart of the Godhead, into the DNA of God.

Jesus was with Paul Rana in his experience of forsakenness because he had been through his own experience of forsakenness. That was why Paul’s sense of Jesus with him was so strong and sustaining. Then, because that experience of human scarcity has been joined to the abundance of God there is within it the overflow and excess of which Ashon Crawley writes that is both a refusal of being destroyed and a ‘still ever was, is and is yet to come’. ‘There is something that endures. Something that defies despair, and the dispersal orders of the powerful. Something that gives hope … that we have barely been able to imagine … Something that goes by the name of resurrection.’[iv]

God of the forsaken, who, in Jesus, experienced the isolation that is at the heart of the human condition and took that experience into the very heart of the Godhead, may all who feel abandoned and alone today receive the love letter of your forsakenness making known the refusal of being destroyed and the something in such nothingness that ever excessively was, is and is yet to come in the name of God the parent, child, and Spirit, forever one and forever love. Amen.

[i] Ashon T. Crawley, Blackpentecostal Breath: The Aesthetics of Possibility, New York: Fordham University Press, 2017, p.197
[ii] Ashon T. Crawley, Blackpentecostal Breath: The Aesthetics of Possibility, New York: Fordham University Press, 2017, p.197
[iii] Al Barrett & Ruth Harley, Being Interrupted: Reimaging the Church’s Mission from the Outside, In, SCM Press, 2020, p.170
[iv] Al Barrett & Ruth Harley, Being Interrupted: Reimaging the Church’s Mission from the Outside, In, SCM Press, 2020, p.189

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Brittany Howard - 13th Century Metal.

There are no strangers here; only friends you haven’t met yet

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

A central aspect of God's experience as a human being in the person of Jesus Christ was that of rejection. Jesus was, in the words of Isaiah 53, ‘despised and rejected by others; a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity; and as one from whom others hide their faces he was despised, and we held him of no account’ (Isaiah 53. 3). We see that rejection here, in this story (Mark 6. 1 - 6), set in his home town at the beginning of his ministry, just as we see it more violently worked out at the end of his ministry when he is crucified.

Rejection is a human experience which we all understand because each us will have experienced rejection at one time or another. It is an experience that God has also shared and therefore understands as we go through our personal experiences of rejection.

But rejection is a human experience which we all understand because it is also something to which each of us is party. As in this story, we find it easy, as human beings, to find reasons to reject other people. It is not so long ago in the history of this country that there were appalling signs in windows saying, 'No Irish, no Blacks, no Dogs'. In our lifetime we have seen whole societies built around the separation of people on the basis of colour, with the Civil Rights and anti-apartheid movements, thankfully, having brought some significant change to those situations of rejection.

Yet, although we have seen change, we continue to see particular groups of people in society demonised, scapegoated and rejected. In the Church today, it is the LGBTI community who have that experience while in society generally, it is migrants, whether refugees or asylum seekers, that are the focus of significant rejection.

When Jesus is rejected, as in our Gospel reading, God is rejected. God, in Jesus, enters in to our experience, as human beings, of rejection. He does so in order to bring to light our constant scapegoating and rejection of others by exposing us to the futility of that way of life. Rejection of others ties us into a cycle of revenge and recrimination locking us in to spirals of violence.

Yet, when we have, as human beings, scapegoated and rejected God himself, what more can we do by way of rejection? The way to free ourselves from these negative cycles is by rejecting the impulse to reject or scapegoat others, in other words by following in the footsteps of Jesus who freely laid down his life for others. It is this to which Christ’s death as a scapegoat on the cross calls us.

Today, while we may not literally see signs saying 'No Irish, no Blacks, no Dogs', similar signs are nevertheless still there is our words and actions although applied to different groups of people at this different time. 'No economic migrants,' even 'No migrants', would seem to be the current cry, while in the Anglican Communion we persist in rejecting people on the basis of their sexuality. For those who follow a God who was scapegoated, reviled and rejected, there can be no scapegoating of others. For those who follow a God who laid down this own life for love of others, there must be a similar breaking of cycles of rejection through our own attitudes, speech and actions.

Instead of being those who reject, we need to become those who invite. The opposite of rejection is not simple acceptance, but active engagement; the invitation to participate in community. The goal of those who are great inviters is “to have everyone participating, giving and receiving gifts.” Abundant community involves welcoming “those on the margins”, “which is the heart of hospitality.” As William Butler Yeats was credited with saying, “There are no strangers here; only friends you haven’t met yet.” ('The Abundant Community' by John McKnight & Peter Block)

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Sixpence None The Richer - A Million Parachutes.

Cynicism and grace

For various reasons I've been reflecting recently on aspects of ministry that can be perceived as or predicted to be failures in that there are no tangible positive results from our input (such as, for example, pastoral visits to those with dementia).

It seems to me that investing time, effort and energy in people and situations which do not yield tangible positive results or even where it can be anticipated that such results are unlikely to be achieved is an inevitable element of ministry. This is because ministry is essentially creating or offering an opportunity for grace to be received and, because we have free will, such opportunities are often rejected.

While there is a real sense that discouragement is likely to follow if all we experience is the rejection of those grace opportunities we are involved in creating, nevertheless it seems to me that we cannot pick and choose those to whom grace is to be offered and therefore need to be willing and able to offer opportunities for grace to be received to those whom come our way.

As a result, while seeking to be wise about the motivations of those with whom we come into contact, it seems wrong to me to be cynical about the motivations of others and to withhold ministry and the opportunity for grace to be received for that reason.

I've finally got around to reading Rob Bell's excellent Love Wins, long after the controversy it caused has blown over, and, with the above thoughts in mind, was particularly struck by the following:

"Cynicism we know, and skepticism we're familiar with. We know how to analyze and pick apart and point out inconsistencies. We're good at it. We've all been burned, promised any number of things only to be let down. And so over time we get our guard up, we don't easily believe anything and trust can become like a foreign tongue, a language we used to speak but now we find ourselves out of practice.

Jesus invites us to trust that the love we fear is too good to be true is actually good enough to be true."

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Gungor - Dry Bones.

A deep, wounding experience of rejection

"At the heart of unemployment is a deep, wounding experience of rejection. You are not wanted. Your contribution is not valued. You feel as if someone has kicked you in the stomach every day, for months and months. In February 2009 a young woman in London said “It feels like being dumped fifty times a day”. This experience is profoundly de-stabilizing.

If unemployment is prolonged, you also lose an income, you lose a routine, you lose a network of other people, and you lose an identity …"

Revd Raymond Draper who, for many years, was the Chairman of CHUG (The Christians Unemployment Group) has prepared some very helpful resources on the issue and experience of unemployment. They can be found at http://www.chelmsford.anglican.org/unemployment.html and http://www.mile.org.uk/news.htm.

Praying may seem a strange response to unemployment and yet as well as thinking and acting, Raymond Draper is helping Churches to pray and to go on praying about unemployment. He writes that one of the problems we face about prayer is the very narrow view we take of it. It is seen as a last resort. Prayer is what you do when all else fails! At least that is better than not praying at all – but prayer is meant to be far more than this. It is meant to be a natural part of our life. Prayer is becoming aware of God, sharing in his life and sharing our life with him. It is not first of all telling God things, it is about becoming receptive enough to hear what God wants to tell us. So when we pray about unemployment we are first of all asking God what he is saying to us through the sufferings of so many ... we are painfully exposing ourselves to face the reality of this suffering and the reality of God’s will for our society.

Such prayer leads us first, not to righteous indignation, but to penitence; to sorrow that we are part of a society which tolerates, accepts, and uses such suffering for its own ends. So we are led to pray for those who bear the heavy burdens of unemployment and for all who seek to help and support them. Some of us certainly want to go praying for those able to influence the economy; our national leaders; and to pray that we shall see a new sense of compassion and new bold and imaginative policies that will overcome this problem. Campaigns and projects, therefore, are not divorced from prayer – they are its fruit and they must be linked to prayer if they are not to go awry. We need God’s help constantly if we are to create a just society where we love and honour one another.

Long ago, a German Pastor named Dietrich Bonhoeffer (who opposed Adolf Hitler and was executed) wrote of the need to link prayer and action. He said: “The task of discovering a new Gospel (and building a new society) is rooted in prayer and righteous action ... It is only in the spirit of prayer that any such work can be begun and carried through ...”

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The Style Council - With Everything To Lose.