God so loved that he gave

Here's the Stewardship sermon based on John 3. 16 – 21 that I shared this morning at St Andrew’s Wickford:

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

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

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

God so loved the world that he gave his only Son – the Father gives us his Son and the Son gives his life, his whole life, even unto death. Yet, because Father, Son and Holy Spirit are one God, this is a way of saying that what God gives to us is himself, everything he has and is. 

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

God’s love has been revealed among us in this way, that God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. We live in the light of this love which reveals all that we can potentially be and become as human beings. As his love resulted in his giving himself to us and for us, so our response to him should be the same.

Stewardship month is an annual reminder to us that that is so when it comes to the contribution we make as Christian disciples; when it comes to the money we give back to God, the talents we use in his service, the community contribution we make and the environmentally-friendly actions we take.

Our Parish needs a whole series of small contributions at present as we need new volunteers across the whole range of our ministry. We are looking for a new PCC Treasurer, members of our District Church Councils (the DCCs) and Parochial Church Council (our PCC). We would value new members of our choir and people who could work with children when they come to our services. We always value help with administration, pastoral visiting, prayer ministry and with our publicity (website, social media etc). The packs that you have been given include more information about Stewardship and response forms to help you think more about the ways you give currently and what might be possible in the future. The packs include a form you can fill in to offer your help.

When it comes to our financial giving, we have faced significant challenges as for a long time we haven’t been able to give the Diocese the Parish Share that is needed to cover the cost of clergy and the other support that the Diocese provides. We are gradually increasing the amount we give to the Diocese for our support year-on—year. However, we need to maintain and improve that situation this year, so ask that you reconsider your giving at this time and use Stewardship Month to decide what you can contribute to St Andrew’s and our Parish in future. There are forms in the Pack which can be used if you want to start giving or if you are able to change what you are giving.

God so loved the world that he gave – true love involves giving; in fact, true love is giving. As his love resulted in his giving himself to us and for us, so our response to him should be the same. May we use the opportunity that Stewardship month provides to reflect together on the contribution we make as Christian disciples; through the money we give back to God, the talents we use in his service, the community contribution we make and the environmentally-friendly actions we take. Amen.

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Extreme - Everything Under The Sun: Rise 'N Shine / Am I Ever Gonna Change / Who Cares?

Forget self and carry your cross

Here's the sermon that I shared today at St Mary Magdalene, Great Burstead:

Chapter meetings are the regular meeting for all the clergy and readers in a Deanery. In a previous Deanery we had some sessions where we shared with each other our thoughts and feelings about ministry. At one meeting we shared our motivations for ministry and, at another, we talked about those things that we found threatening in ministry.

Talking about the things we find threatening is itself a slightly threatening thing to do. Think about your life and work for a moment and the things that you find threatening. You might find yourself talking about tensions in relationships, unethical work practices, increasing demands on your time, the possibility of redundancy, mounting debts, nuisance neighbours, racial tensions, or fear of crime, among many other possibilities. Sharing things that we find threatening can open up some very personal things and so we felt vulnerable at that Chapter meeting as we shared together.

But although we felt vulnerable during the meeting, as we shared things that were personal to us, we did not go away from the meeting continuing to feel vulnerable. Instead, as each person shared, we felt a closer identification with each other and were able to support each other by praying together before we left. In that meeting our willingness to be vulnerable moved us to a place of greater understanding and support for each other.

As we go about our daily lives there are many situations in which we can make us ourselves vulnerable. Each time we come to church we publicly confess our sins. If we genuinely do this and genuinely understand the significance of what we are saying and doing together, then we are all publicly acknowledging specific failures in our lives, relationships and witness during the past week. That is, or should be, a place of vulnerability. As we care for others, we experience vulnerability. In a serious illness, we can see a person that we love decline mentally and physically sometimes with little that we can do to prevent that. We are torn up inside but need to stay in that place of vulnerability in order to support that person in their illness. When we witness crime, do we call the Police or intervene? Doing either may also make us vulnerable. In our world, we are faced with significant issues of disadvantage and oppression. If we take a stand on these issues then, again, we can make ourselves vulnerable.

In our Gospel reading (Mark 8: 27 – end) Jesus said that those who follow him must forget self and carry their cross. Those who want to follow him have to lose their lives, he says. This is the ultimate vulnerability and it is what Jesus modelled for us by going to the cross with all the rejection and suffering that that particularly horrific form of death involved. But Jesus is quite clear and specific in what he says. That is what he had to do, anyone who tried to prevent that from happening was doing the Devil’s work (even if that person was Peter, the leader of Jesus’ disciples and the person who had just realised who Jesus actually was), and we are to follow in his footsteps. This is a call into vulnerability coming from a God who deliberately makes himself so weak that human beings can take him and kill him.

It is an incredible statement that contradicts our gut human instinct about the right way to live life. Scientists tell us that life is about the survival of the fittest and what follows from that is that living selfishly by protecting ourselves and our interests is the way to survive in life. That is our gut instinct as human beings about life. We see it in many words and phrases that are in common usage. We’ve all heard people talk about looking after No. 1 or how you’ve got to look out for yourself because if you don’t know one else will. Much of the way we organise society is about reducing our sense of vulnerability through extra security or by minimising pain. Faced with a crime situation many people will simply pass by rather than help and we often try to lead a quiet life rather than take a stand on issues in our community and world.

Jesus says that when we live like that, trying to save our own lives, that actually we lose them. When we live life by thinking of ourselves, protecting ourselves, building barriers between ourselves and others, then we have missed the whole point of life and cannot live a life of real engagement with God, other people and the world in which we live. In other words, when we live selfishly, we are dead to the world and all that is in it.

The alternative that Jesus maps out for us here is scary but it is the way, he says, to real life. “Whoever wants to save his own life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it.”

Why is it that vulnerability will lead us into real life? The Chapter meetings I mentioned give us a clue. As we make ourselves vulnerable to others, we find what we share in common (we can’t find that out if we’re only thinking of ourselves) and we find ways in which we can help or support each other and ways in which we can work together for the good of all (we can’t find that out if we only want things for ourselves). Through the experience of vulnerability, we are born into a new world, a new way of life; a shared way of life.

This is an experience of resurrection which is what Jesus promised to those who are prepared to lose their selfish way of life for his sake. It is what Jesus himself knew he would experience: “The Son of Man must suffer much and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the teachers of the Law. He will be put to death, but three days later he will rise to life.” Paul wrote that Jesus’ death has destroyed the diving wall of hostility between Jew and Gentile making one people who are reconciled to God. That is resurrection. That is losing your life in order to find it. That is leaving selfishness through vulnerability in order to find solidarity.

We are called, as followers of Jesus, into this way of life. It is scary, there are no two ways about it. None of us feel comfortable with vulnerability – whether it is emotional, physical or spiritual vulnerability. But it is our willingness, Jesus says, to become vulnerable with others that leads into the experience of unity and solidarity that is a resurrection into the way that life was created to be. We are not created for selfishness we are created to love God and to love others and we only truly live when we do so. May it be so for each one of us. Amen.

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Adrian Snell - Son Of The World.

The water of our lives and our communities can become wine

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

The writer of John’s Gospel says that this miracle is the first that Jesus performed but the word used for first also means that it is the key miracle, the one that unlocks and explains all the others (John 2: 1 – 11). So, we need to ask ourselves what it is that we learn from this miracle that helps us to understand more fully what Jesus was doing through his ministry, death and resurrection.

The miracle is one of transformation; water being transformed into wine with this transformation bringing joy to the wedding guests. Fyodor Dostoevsky, in The Brother’s Karamasov, sees this miracle’s significance in the joy that Jesus brings to ordinary people: “It was not grief but men’s gladness that Jesus extolled when he worked his first miracle – he helped people to be happy … his heart was open … to the simple and artless joys of ignorant human beings, ignorant but not cunning, who had warmly bidden him to their poor wedding.” Later in John’s Gospel Jesus speaks himself about having come to bring life in all its fullness which must include this sense of joy and gladness in life. The filling of the water jars to the full also speaks of this sense of life being filled with goodness and gladness.

In Luke 6: 38 Jesus speaks again about fullness. Here he links our fullness to our giving: “Give to others, and God will give to you. Indeed, you will receive a full measure, a generous helping, poured out into your hands – all that you can hold.” This emphasis is important because the transformation of water into wine suggests that Jesus does not simply bless human life as it is but comes to transform it.

Water is essential to life. The human body is 75% water and needs a constant supply of water to function. The average person can only survive for about three days without any water at all. So, water is a basic need for all of us and speaks to us of the basic needs that we all need to be fulfilled in order that we can live and live comfortably.

But God wants something better for us than a life based just on the meeting of our basic needs and the turning of water into wine gives us a clue as to what that better thing is. Wine reminds us of the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. That moment when, out of love for all people, he lays down his own life in order to save us from all that is wrong with our lives and our world. So, wine is a reminder to us of the fact that the greatest love is shown through sacrifice.

This is the transformation that Jesus seeks to bring to human life. It is a change from human existence to human life; a change from the selfish experience of meeting our own basic needs to the spiritual experience of sharing what we have will others; a change from the evolutionary imperative of the survival of the fittest to the Christian imperative of sacrificial love.

This transformation is something that we seek to show and need to show in our churches, which is in part why we have this new exhibition in church by Maciej Hoffman. Maciej chooses “themes that pervade everyday life, our constant battle with problems which we inevitably face … issues which haunt us for years, shaping our perspective on the world and building us as humans”. He seeks: “contrasts between imagination and reality. Our expectations and our anticipations are never what we finally meet in real life … whether it’s beauty and ugliness, order or chaos - the point is, how it’s reflected in the mirror of my interpretation … I am moved by people’s stories with all their misfortunes and moments of happiness. It seems like one is always part of the other.” This is our everyday experience that Jesus comes to transform.

This transformation is also symbolised in the pouring out of the wine from the water jars. It may even be that this is the moment of transformation; just as what is drawn from the water jars to be shared with others is wine so, as we give to others, we are transformed from selfish to sacrificial. It may be that it is in the act of giving that our transformation comes. That is also why, alongside Maciej’s exhibition, we are unveiled David Folley’s descent from the cross, which shows us the reality of the suffering that was entailed in the ultimate sacrifice made for us on the cross by Christ.

Finally, there is significance in the reference to the role of the water jars in ritual washing. The water jars can be seen as signifying the Jewish faith that requires such ritual cleansing but from those jars and from that faith comes a new wine that must be poured out and shared with others. The new wine is for all; not just for the first but kept for the last as well. Wine symbolises the blood of Christ which is shed for all. God’s grace is no longer contained solely within the confines of the Jewish faith; coming to God no longer requires the meeting of the standards of the Law. This new wine bursts the old skins and is shared with all people of every nation, race, gender, age and sexuality.

So, we see depicted a change from the old order, the old covenant, to the new. And this change extends the transformation to all. What is depicted then is not solely a change for us as individuals but a societal change no longer affecting one nation but all nations. What is depicted is a new way of life, a new way of being human, which can, perhaps, be summed up in the words of John 15: 13, “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends”. He looks at all of us, at all human beings, and says, “You are my friends”. Jesus allowed his own life to end so that all people could know what it is like to really live.

In 21st century Britain we live in a culture that is parched and dry and desperately in need of the water of life. I still remember a Guardian article outlining reasons why kindness has gone out of fashion in the age of the free market and the selfish gene. The writers noted that “for most of western history the dominant tradition of kindness has been Christianity” which “functioned as a cultural cement, binding individuals into society” until “the Christian rule ‘love thy neighbour as thyself’ came under increasing attack from competitive individualism.” Our society is parched of kindness and we need Jesus to bring transformation.

In Isaiah we read: “The poor and needy search for water, but there is none; their tongues are parched with thirst. But I the LORD will answer them; I, the God of Israel, will not forsake them. I will make rivers flow on barren heights, and springs within the valleys. I will turn the desert into pools of water, and the parched ground into springs.” (Isaiah 41. 17 & 18)

Jesus is the river that flows in the desert of our selfish, self-centred existence because he shows us how to live in his new way of being human, loving God with all our being and loving our neighbours as ourselves. God wants us to look at Jesus and see how human life was originally intended to be lived before we chose the path of self-centredness. It is when we look at Jesus and begin to live life his way that transformation comes in our lives and our world. The water of our lives and our communities can become wine. May it be so for us. Amen.

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Judee Sill - The Donor.

God desires mercy not sacrifice

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

During the Queen's visit to the Open University in 1979, Kay Ritson's daughter met the Queen. Aged four, Sara broke through security and passed Her Majesty a bag of sweets.

Kay wrote: I was distracted by my younger child, and turned my back on Sara for a moment. When I turned around I saw she was talking to the Queen. Sara had walked straight through security and right up to her. The Queen asked for her name, where she was from, who she was with, and my daughter gave her a bag of aniseed balls which the Queen said she’d have for afternoon tea. The police then escorted my daughter back to me.

There were rules or protocols that separated Queen Elizabeth from four-year-old Sara yet Sara was able to circumvent those protocols and the Queen welcomed her when she did.

In today’s Gospel reading (Luke 5.27-32), the Pharisees were using the Law - the rules about when and how to make sacrifices - in ways that kept out those thought of rule breakers or sinners. They were doing so by adding additional requirements to the laws in order to define who was pure and who wasn’t when it came to making the sacrifices.

Jesus, by contrast called his disciples from among those considered impure and sat and ate with such people; tax collectors and sinners. Why did he do so?

The first reason he gives is that those who had been excluded from worship because they were considered impure where actually far more aware of their need of God, than those, like the Pharisees, who thought they were right with God because they kept the laws. Jesus said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.” In other words, if you realise you are sick, you also realise you need help. If you don’t, you don’t.

He saw the Pharisees as being those who were sick and in need of a physician but who didn’t call for one because they thought they were well. He was happy to sit and eat with the tax collectors and sinners because they knew they needed God’s help. We see that clearly in this story through Matthew’s instant response to Jesus.

The second reason he gives is that God desires mercy not sacrifice. In its original form, the Law provided minimum standards to prevent abuse of God and of others, while also leading people towards whole-hearted love for God, ourselves and others.

The purpose of the Law is, therefore, not to be found in following the letter of the Law but in keeping the spirit of the Law. As a result, what is important is living out mercy towards others and ourselves, rather than following the practices of making sacrifices in the Temple. God doesn't want the rules kept for the sake of the rules, rather he wants people to love others, to connect and meet and care; that is mercy, not sacrifice. One could follow all the laws or rules of making sacrifices in the Temple without that changing one's behaviour towards others one jot. Jesus looks for behaviour change and for compassion or mercy to be shown towards others.

During the period of mourning for Her Late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II we have been reflecting upon a life lived in service of others and taking Her Majesty’s 70-year reign of service as an inspiration for our own future commitment to our shared service within our nation and beyond. In doing so, we have been reflecting on mercy, not sacrifice. As the Archbishop of Canterbury said in Monday’s Funeral Service: “People of loving service are rare in any walk of life. Leaders of loving service are still rarer. But in all cases those who serve will be loved and remembered when those who cling to power and privileges are long forgotten.” Again, this was a reflection on the significance of mercy, not sacrifice. God doesn't want the rules kept for the sake of the rules, rather he wants people to love others, to connect and meet and care; that is mercy, not sacrifice.

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Artlyst: Damien Hirst The Visceral Reality Of Death

My latest review for Artlyst is of Damien Hirst: Natural History at Gagosian Brittania Street:

'God Alone Knows, Our Father Who Art In Heaven, and The Incomplete Truth have been grouped to form a crucifixion tableau with the dove of the Spirit above the central crucified sheep while a shorn sheep clutching a rosary and the Book of Common Prayer between its hooves kneels in the place of the grieving Mary or John at the foot of the cross. Exhibited separately, these are works that have sometimes been called profane and which can be understood in relation to themes other than the strictly religious ... Grouped together, as is the case here, these works exhibit a greatly increased sense of the hope that Christians see in the violent sacrificial death of God. Hirst once said, to Sean O’Hagan, the afterlife is a ‘phenomenal idea’. However, for me, it is the poignancy of expression on these crucified creatures that reminds of the once-for-all nature of Christ’s sacrifice, the sense that our violent actions and intentions are shown to be self-defeating – a literal dead-end – because by scapegoating and crucifying the Son of God there is nowhere else that our violent natures can possibly take us.'

My other pieces for Artlyst are:

Interviews -

• Sidney Nolan’s Africa: Interview With Andrew Turley
• Ilona Bossanyi: Tate’s Ervin Bossanyi Stained Glass Window Mothballed After 2011 Redevelopment
• Louis Carreon: Sampling Art History
• Modus Operandi - What Makes Successful Public Art: Vivien Lovell Interviewed
• Genesis Tramaine: A Queer Devotional Painter
• Lakwena Maciver: Review-Interview Hastings Contemporary
• Nicola Ravenscroft - Sculpture With A Peaceful Stillness
• Artist Hannah Rose Thomas – Tears of Gold – Interview
• Marcus Lyon: Human Atlas Explorations
• Elizabeth Kwant Interview
• Helaine Blumenfeld: Undulating Structures
• National Gallery Explores ‘Sin’ In New Exhibition – Interview Dr Joost Joustra Curator
• Betty Spackman: Posthumanism Debates
• Christopher Clack: Connecting The Material And Immaterial
• Peter Howson Artlyst Interview
• Marleen Hengelaar-Rookmaaker On The Legacy Of ArtWay
• Alastair Gordon A Testament To His Faith
• Katrina Moss Chaiya Art Awards Interview: Where is God in our 21st century world?
• Apocalypse Now: Michael Takeo Magruder Interviewed
• Jonathan Anderson: Religious Inspirations Behind Modernism
• Caravan – An Interview With Rev Paul Gordon Chandler On Arts Peacebuilding
• Art Awakening Humanity Alexander de Cadenet Interviewed
• Michael Pendry New Installation Lights Up St Martin In The Fields
• Mark Dean Projects Stations of the Cross Videos On Henry Moore Altar

Articles -

• Ali Cherri: Artist in Residence National Gallery
• Audrey Flack Carlo Crivelli And Robert Indiana – March Diary
• Surrealism Outside The Usual Story – Tate Modern
• Marcus Lyon Creates Fields of Vision At St Martin-in-the-Fields London
• My Art Diary And Other Thoughts February 2022
• Van Gogh Self Portraits The Infinite And The Ordinary
• Marvellous Icons: The London Jesuit Centre
• And On An Art Note: End Of Year Diary 2021
• Albrecht Dürer Travels Of A Renaissance Artist – National Gallery London
• Diasporan Identities: Life Between Islands Caribbean British Art – Tate Britain
• Isamu Noguchi: Socially Engaged Art – Barbican Centre
• Pablo Bronstein: A This-World Vision Of Hell
• Bosco Sodi: In The Beginning Of Wisdom
• George Condo Lockdown Works Hauser & Wirth
• Theaster Gates Clay As A Profound Metaphor
• Mark Rothko: Mesmerising And Intimate Works On Paper
• International Autumn Art Exhibition Reviews
• Roger Cecil: A Once In A Generation Welsh Painter
• Tino Sehgal: Location, Nature And Pandemic – Blenheim Palace
• Michael Armitage And The Power Of Art – Royal Academy
• Marie Raymond And Post-War Avant Garde Painting In Paris
• Rachel Kneebone: A Complex Tableau Of Organic And Geometric Forms
• Rodin: Suffering And Conflict – Tate Modern
• Barbara Hepworth: Symbols Of Art & Life – Hepworth Wakefield
• 20th Century Women Artists Challenging Conventions In Britain
• Chaiya Art Awards 2021 Gallery OXO
• Marc Chagall’s Exquisite Stained Glass Window Commissions
• George Gittoes Equal parts artist and warrior
• Keith Haring: Personal Spiritual Imagery
• Sean Scully: Philosophical Poetic Pastoral The 12 / Dark Windows
• Arthur Jafa: The Art Of Cutting And Pasting
• Blackpentecostal Breath: Spirit-Led Movement Jumps From Music To Visual Art
• Made in USA Ed Ruscha An American Perspective
• Robert Smithson: The Archetypal Nature Of Things
• If Jesus Is A Man Of Colour Why Did We Make Him Aryan?
• Cosmic Patches And Quilts Five Exhibitions
• Everyday Heroes: Southbank Exhibition Celebrates Low-paid Key Workers
• Entwining Spiritualism And Art – Three Shows
• Of Church And The Visual Arts
• Has The Word Master Reached Its Sell-By Date?
• The People Behind Community Is Kindness Billboard Campaign
• André Daughtry: Art, Rebellion And Racial Justice
• Salisbury Cathedral 800 Years Of Art And Spirit
• Home Alone Together Twenty Five Artists
• Botanical Mind Online: Art, Mysticism and the Cosmic Tree
• Salvador Dalí The Enigma of Faith
• Art And Faith A Time For Seeing
• Andy Warhol: Catholicism His Work, Faith And Legacy
• Kiki Smith: Embodied Art
• Art and Christianity Awards A Positive New Millennium Legacy
• Arnulf Rainer: 90th Birthday Exhibition Celebrated At Albertina Museum
• A Belonging Project And Exiles Loss and Displacement
• Robert Polidori: Fra Angelico Opus Operantis
• Art, Faith, Church Patronage and Modernity
• Contemplating the Spiritual in Contemporary Art
• Mat Collishaw Challenges Faith Perspectives With Ushaw Installation
• Waterloo Festival Launches At St. John’s Waterloo
• John Bellany Alan Davie Spiritual Joy and Magic
• RIFT Unites 17 Art and Science MA Graduates At Central St Martins
• Visionary Cities: Michael Takeo Magruder – British Library
• Van Gogh’s Religious Journey Around London
• William Congdon Holy Sites And The Kettle’s Yard Connection
• Mark Dean Premieres Pastiche Mass At Banqueting Hall Chelsea College of Arts
• John Kirby: The Torment
• Underlying The Civilised Facade
• Curating Spiritual Sensibilities In Changing Times
• Homeless Highlighted: New Beau Exhibition At St Martin-in-the-Fields
• Ken Currie: Protest Defeat And Victory
• Bosco Sodi: A Moment Of Genesis
• Bill Viola And The Art Of Contemplation
• Art In Churches 2018: Spiritual Combinations Explored
• Sister Wendy Beckett – A Reminiscence
• Guido Guidi: Per Strada Flowers Gallery London
• Peter Howson: The play is over – Flowers Gallery
• Camille Henrot: Scientific History And Creation Story Mash Up
• Nicola Green Explores Recent And Contemporary Religious Leaders – St Martin-in-the-Fields
• Art And The Consequences Of War Explored In Two Exhibitions
• Helaine Blumenfeld Translating Her Vision
• Sam Ivin: Physically Scratched Portraits Of Asylum Seekers Exhibited
• Sacred Noise: Explores Religion, Faith And Divinity
• Bill Viola: Quiet Contemplative Video Installation St Cuthbert’s Church Edinburgh
• The ground-breaking work of Sister Corita Kent
• Picasso To Souza: The Crucifixion Imagery Rarely Exhibited
• Michael Takeo Magruder: De / coding the Apocalypse – Panacea Museum
• Giorgio Griffa: The Golden Ratio And Inexplicable Knowledge
• Arabella Dorman Unveils New Installation At St James Church Piccadilly
• Can Art Transform Society?
• Art Awakening Humanity Conference Report
• Central St Martins in the Fields Design Then And Now
• The Sacramental And Liturgical Nature Of Conceptual Art
• Polish Art In Britain: Centenary Marked At London’s Ben Uri Gallery
• Refugee Artists: Learning from The Lives Of Others
• The Religious Impulses Of Robert Rauschenberg
• The Christian Science Connection Within The British Modern Art Movement
• Artists Rebranding The Christmas Tree Tradition
• Art Impacted - A Radical Response To Radicalisation
• The Art of St Martin-in-the-Fields
• Was Caravaggio A Good Christian?

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The Clash - The Sound Of Sinners.

God desires love, not sacrifice

Here's my reflection given during today's lunchtime Eucharist for St Martin-in-the-Fields:

The scribe said to him, ‘You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that “he is one, and besides him there is no other”; and “to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength”, and “to love one’s neighbour as oneself”,—this is much more important than all whole burnt-offerings and sacrifices.’ When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, ‘You are not far from the kingdom of God.’ (Mark 12.28–34)

Allow me for a moment to take you on a journey through the scriptures to explore the reasons why, in the kingdom of heaven, love for God, others and ourselves is much more important than offerings and sacrifices.

We begin where the Bible begins, in Genesis, with acts of human sacrifice made to appease the gods. People, often children, killed because, when trouble or tension arose in society, the belief was that, by sacrificing one or a few as a scapegoat, order would be restored by the gods for the many. That was the culture which Abraham was called to leave when he left Ur of the Chaldees to found a people that would become God’s people. As a way to create a decisive break with that culture, God took Abraham through a dramatic experience where it seemed that he was, as Abraham would have expected, demanding the sacrifice of Abraham’s firstborn son Isaac. At the very point of sacrifice, God made it clear to Abraham that he did not desire human sacrifice and provided an animal as an alternative. This became part of the founding story for the people of Israel, a people whose ritual sacrifices were of animals and not human beings.

If we then move forward in time, we can pause again for a moment at Mount Sinai and the giving of the Law to Moses. The Law received by Moses contained detailed instructions regarding the sacrifice of animals but also contained the commands quoted by Jesus and the Scribe in our Gospel reading. In addition to the system of sacrifice it introduced, the Law did two things. First, it gave minimum standards for the maintenance of good relations within society – do not murder, do not steal, do not covet etc. Second, in the greatest commandment, it set love for God, others and oneself as the goal to which all the other laws, including those concerning sacrifices, pointed. The Law was given not that people became of obsessed with the keeping of its minutiae but that people moved from the base point of not harming others to the point or goal of the Law, to love God, others and oneself.

We know that many paid lip service to the Law while ignoring it and others did become obsessed with following the minutiae of the letter of the Law and thereby missed the point of the Law. The prophets were the ones used by God to point this out to the people and their rulers. The message of the prophets can in many respects be summed up by these words from the prophet Amos through whom God said: ‘I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals I will not look upon. Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.’ Amos was essentially saying, ‘Love God, others and yourself.’

When God’s people ignored God’s messengers, God eventually took matters into his own hands and, in Jesus, showed us, by entering our world and being with us for 33 years, that what he desires is love and relationship. He longs to be with us and enjoy us for who we are, as we also enjoy him. That is the message of the incarnation. It is a demonstration of love.

Yet we still did not understand and, as we have been doing for millennia, made Jesus a scapegoat to excise us of our troubles and tensions, sacrificing him to relieve our fears and anxieties. The God who does not desire sacrifice became the ultimate sacrifice to show that once God has been scapegoated and sacrificed there is really nowhere else to go. There is now no god to be appeased because God does not desire sacrifice and God himself has been sacrificed. This is the end of sacrifice. The curtain was torn in the Temple at the point of Christ’s death because there was no longer any need for sacrifice and the system of sacrifice, the system that began at Mount Sinai, was itself ended in AD70 when, as prophesied by Jesus, the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed.

‘The Kingdom of God is justice and peace, And joy in the Holy Spirit!’ Like the Scribe we have come close to that kingdom when we realise that God is one, and “besides him there is no other”; and “to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength”, and “to love one’s neighbour as oneself”,—this is much more important than all whole burnt-offerings and sacrifices.’ ‘God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them’ (1 John 4. 16). That is the story of scripture. That is the place to which all scripture leads. It simply remains for us to pray, ‘Come, Lord, and open in us the gates of your Kingdom!’ Amen.

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GSNY Music - The Sun Will Rise.

Love is all we need

Here's a brief meditation summarising 1 Corinthian 13 that I wrote for a recent wedding I was privileged to lead:

No words have meaning without love.
No prophecies have power without love.
No understanding comes without love.
No faith is true without love.
No gift is shared without love.
No sacrifice is real without love.

Love is giving and not taking.
Love is receiving and not insisting.
Love is waiting and not rushing.
Love is bearing and not discarding.
Love is kneeling, washing,
anointing, serving.

Love is words in action.
Love is birth, life, death.
Love is the alpha and omega,
the beginning and the end.
The centre and the core,
the heart.
Love is our one achievement.
Love is all. Love is all we need.

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Victoria Williams - Love.

Inspired to Follow: Art and the Bible Story - Abraham and Isaac

‘Inspired to Follow: Art and the Bible Story’ is a free resource to help people explore the Christian faith, using paintings and Biblical story as the starting points. It’s been created by St Martin-in-the-Fields in partnership with the National Gallery.

Here is the latest reflection that I have prepared for the series:

Text: Genesis 22:1-12
Image: ‘Abraham and Isaac’ Johann Heinrich Ferdinand Olivier, 1817, NG6541
Location: National Gallery, Gallery D

Reflection:

Johann Heinrich Ferdinand Olivier was born in Dessau where he received his first artistic training. In 1804 he moved to Dresden where he became acquainted with the painters Philipp Otto Runge and Caspar David Friedrich. Friedrich combined landscape motifs with religious symbolism, and pictures like his ‘Winter Landscape’ in the National Gallery represent the hope for salvation through the Christian faith.

From 1807 to 1810 Olivier was in Paris, and in 1811 he settled in Vienna. In 1817 he became a member of the Brotherhood of Saint Luke, an artistic brotherhood (later known as the Nazarenes) founded in Vienna in 1809 by Friedrich Overbeck and Franz Pforr. The Brotherhood was committed to regenerating German religious art in imitation of the works of Durer, Perugino and Raphael. Olivier shared the Nazarenes' enthusiasm for northern medieval and Renaissance art and their interest in the revival of religious painting. The Nazarenes were particularly admired by the Pre-Raphaelites.

In this painting, Abraham and his son Isaac make their way to the place of sacrifice as recounted in the Old Testament (Genesis 22: 1-19). Isaac carries wood for the altar fire and Abraham holds a lighted torch. They appear to be focused primarily on their journey and don’t appear to be involved in debate or argument about the coming sacrifice.

The style of the painting is deliberately archaic, with precise outlines and odd disparities in scale, while the figures of Abraham and Isaac recall the simplified forms of a medieval woodcut. The landscape background is drawn with meticulous care. It is loosely based on Olivier's studies of the countryside around Salzburg, which he first visited in 1815. The distant mountain peak may perhaps be identified as the Watzmann, to the south of the city.

The story of Abraham’s near-sacrifice of Isaac is not an easy one to handle for a lot of people. There appears to be a lot that is wrong, even barbaric, about the tale. How can a man, elsewhere called a hero of the faith, be prepared to kill his child? And how can a God, whom we talk about as loving, ask anyone to do that? What kind of God would ask Abraham to kill his own son as a sacrifice? Should blind loyalty to God lead us to commit evil, inhuman acts? It is a story that seems like an easy target for people who say that religions cause violence and conflict.

The key to understanding this story is the realisation that child sacrifice was the norm in the religions of the day and that the reason Abraham obeys God so unquestioningly may have been because, horrific and distasteful as it seems to us, there was nothing at that time unusual about the idea that the gods required human sacrifices in order to be appeased. It may be that we see this imaged in the calmness and willingness with which Abraham and Isaac ascend the mountain to the place of sacrifice.

The stories in Genesis about Abraham are foundational stories for the People of Israel. Imagine for a moment that you want to create a foundational story for a group of people that will change their understanding of sacrifice from the understanding with which they have grown up to one which is completely different from the religious practices of all the people that surround them. What kind of story might you tell? It may be that you would tell a story in which the person founding this new nation is taken all the way to the brink of child sacrifice and then dramatically and suddenly pulled back from taking that step.

The legacy of the story of the sacrifice of Isaac, the philosopher and anthropologist René Girard has suggested, is that Israel developed a system of animal sacrifice that continued until shortly after the crucifixion of Jesus. Jesus’ crucifixion, Girard suggests, was both about God identifying himself with all the victims – the scapegoats – who have been sacrificed down through the centuries and also, because in Jesus God himself was scapegoated and sacrificed, the ultimate demonstration of the reality that, as Hosea first stated and Jesus then repeated, God requires mercy, not sacrifice.

In Jewish tradition the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem is where Abraham’s near sacrifice of Isaac is said to have taken place. At our partner church of St Stephen Walbrook there is a visible reminder of this in the central Henry Moore altar. By carving a round altar table with forms cut into the circular sides, Moore suggested that the centre of the church reflected the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem commemorating the sacrifice of Abraham and Isaac as a prefiguring of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross and the place for the offering of the Eucharist at the heart of Christian worship. In the Eucharist we remember and re-enact these stories of the sacrifice of Isaac and of Jesus because we need to remember and act on the realisation that God desires mercy, not scapegoats or sacrifice.

Prayer: Grieving God, in your son you experienced the agony of the pointless, savage, premature end of life. Hold the hand of those whose loved ones have become scapegoats; calm the fears of all whose identity makes them subject to the perverse hatred and grotesque violence of others; and hasten a world where all are celebrated for who they are as your children, where difference is a sign of your diverse abundance. Through the wounded yet ascended Christ, your personification of solidarity and embodiment of hope. Amen.

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The Call - Scene Beyond Dreams.

Service, not prestige

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

The recent story in the press about Freemasons Lodges in Westminster reflects a continuing concern that we may live in a world where much business is done through exclusive networks; which could involve spheres of influence such as the so-called ‘Old Boy's Networks’ or specific organisations where opportunities may exist to exercise influence or seek favours. As there can be a lack of full transparency about such networks, rumours abound and there is no simple way to verify the facts of the matter.

Our Gospel story (Matthew 20. 17 - 28) suggests that 'in-crowds' and 'favours' were also a part of thinking and practices in Jesus' time. The mother of James and John asked Jesus for a favour, in the way that it is alleged favours can be granted in certain networks today. She wanted her sons to be privileged over and above the others in the group and used a private conversation to make her request.

What James and John were after was another perennial temptation for us as human beings; the desire for prestige, in this case, the request to sit on the right and left of Jesus in glory. Similarly it has been suggested that within networks of influence there may be pathways to prestige which are essentially open on the basis of birth, wealth or power.

Jesus calls this whole approach into question with his response to James and John. Today we would characterise what he says in relation to discussions of rights and responsibilities. Jesus says firstly that places of prestige are not available without sacrifice (i.e. no rights without responsibilities), in other words there is no entitlement because of birth, schooling, friendships, networks. What matters in the kingdom of God is service and sacrifice and these not for the sake of future prestige and glory, but for their own sake and for the love of others.

'Whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave; just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.’

Jesus turns the search for prestige on its head. Instead of the prestige of being first being the goal and the reward, those who are great in the kingdom of God are those who make themselves the least; those who are prepared to serve in same way as Jesus, by laying down their life for others.

James and John say they are prepared to do this but it is ultimately about deeds, not words, and their action in asking their mother to ask for a favour on their behalf clearly shows that they hadn't understood his teaching and practice at this stage in their relationship with him.

Where are we in relation to these issues? Are we chasing after worldly rewards and prestige; seeking it through favours or paying for prestige? Maybe, like James and John, we have brought the values of the world into the kingdom of God and are trying to follow Jesus for some form of personal gain?

Lent is an opportunity for self-reflection on these issues and provides us with the possibility of aligning of thinking, values and deeds with those of Jesus as we become the servants or slaves of others; in order that we serve instead of being served and give our lives for the sake of others.

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John Prine - That's How Every Empire Falls.

Requiem for the Emblem of Power

My latest exhibition review for Church Times has been published today - . 

“Requiem for the Emblem of Power” by Paul Wager is at Dadiani Fine Art Gallery (30 Cork Street, London) until 20 March and is an exhibition that commemorates the centenary of the ending of the First World War by reflecting on the futility of war while remembering ‘those brave uniformed men who made the ultimate sacrifice for their countries.’

I begin the review by saying: 'PAUL WAGER uses the conventions of propaganda and memorial art to subvert their usual declarative and commemorative content. “Requiem for the Emblem of Power”, an exhibition that commemorates the centenary of the ending of the First World War, exists in the change of national consciousness bookended by Rupert Brooke’s “The Soldier” and Wilfred Owen’s “Anthem, For Doomed Youth”.'

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Edwin Starr - War (What Is It Good For?)

Abraham - The Legacy

Tonight I had the pleasure of giving the final reflection in the Lent Study Programme at St Martin-in-the-Fields. In this year's course we studied Meg Warner's book Abraham: A Journey Through Lent, where the final chapter considered 'Abraham - The Legacy':

Meg Warner writes in the final chapter of our Lent book that with Abraham's death, we are in a position to explore his legacy. Abraham grew during his life, both in maturity and in faithfulness to God. Over time he seems to have 'become' the special person God chose him to be. His obedience has long-term consequences which apply not just to Abraham and his immediate descendants but to the whole world. That is his legacy, and I want to briefly explore three aspects of that legacy now.

First, that the maturing of Abraham’s relationship with God included learning to be in conversation, in dialogue, in debate and in argument with God, in order that Abraham could find God for himself and actually embody God’s characteristics and interests. We see this most dramatically in Genesis 18. 16-33 where Abraham argues and negotiates with God in relation to saving people who live in Sodom. God chose Abraham to “direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just”. Abraham throws that phrase, “what is right and just” back in God’s face in the course of their argument – “Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?” - “Shall the Judge of all the earth not do justice?". Through their debate, God teaches Abraham to argue passionately for what is right and what is just. As he learns to do so, Abraham becomes more able to do what is right and just with his children and household.

The former Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, says that the legacy of this is that there then began that ‘dialogue between Heaven and Earth which has not ceased in 4,000 years’; a dialogue in which God and human beings find one another. Only thus, he suggests, ‘can we understand the great dialogues [found in Scripture] between God and Abraham and Moses and Jeremiah and Job.’ As with those key figures in scripture, arguing or debating with God in prayer can also be a vital and vitalizing part of the maturing of our relationship with God.

A second part of Abraham’s legacy relates to the story of the sacrifice of Isaac. Here the key to understanding its legacy is the realisation that child sacrifice was the norm in the religions of the day and that the reason Abraham obeys God so unquestioningly may have been because, horrific and distasteful as it seems to us, there was nothing at that time unusual about the idea that the gods required human sacrifices in order to be appeased. The stories in Genesis about Abraham are foundational stories for the People of Israel. Imagine for a moment that you want to create a foundational story for a group of people that will change their understanding of sacrifice from the understanding with which they have grown up to one which is completely different from the religious practices of all the people that surround them. What kind of story might you tell? It may be that you would tell a story in which the person founding this new nation is taken all the way to the brink of child sacrifice and then dramatically and suddenly pulled back from taking that step.

The legacy of the story of the sacrifice of Isaac, the philosopher and anthropologist René Girard has suggested, is that Israel developed a system of animal sacrifice that continued until shortly after the crucifixion of Jesus. Jesus’ crucifixion, Girard suggests, was both about God identifying himself with all the victims – the scapegoats – who have been sacrificed down through the centuries and also, because in Jesus God himself was scapegoated and sacrificed, the ultimate demonstration of the reality that, as Hosea first stated and Jesus then repeated, God requires mercy, not sacrifice.

The final area of legacy that I want to briefly explore is in relation to the common origins of Jewish, Christian and Muslim peoples; all descended, as Meg Warner reminds us, from one ancestor, Abraham. In his book Not in God’s Name: Confronting Religious Violence Jonathan Sacks examines our common origins in the story of Abraham, Ishmael and Isaac and gives us a reading of these stories which ‘is an ingenious and often moving turning upside down of a rhetoric of “chosenness.”’

Sacks notes ‘the extraordinary length to which the text goes to insist that Ishmael will be blessed by God.’ He notes too that because of the way the story is written ‘our imaginative sympathies are with Hagar and her child’. ‘That is what gives the story its counter-intuitive depth’. Further, he notes that Isaac spends time at Beer Lahai Roi, the place of Hagar in the desert, and that Ishmael and Isaac are together when Abraham is buried. Finally, he makes us aware of a Rabbinic tradition based on these aspects of the story to the effect that Keturah, who Abraham marries after the death of Sarah, is actually Hagar returned to Abraham by Isaac as his wife.

Sacks concludes his chapter on the story of Ishmael and Isaac by saying this: ‘On the surface, the story of Isaac and Ishmael is about sibling rivalry and the displacement of the elder by the younger. Beneath the surface, however, the sages, heard a counter-narrative telling the opposite story: the birth of Isaac does not displace Ishmael. To be sure he will have a different destiny. But he too is a beloved son of Abraham, blessed by his father and by God.’

The futures of the two brothers diverge, ‘but there is no conflict between them, nor do they compete for God’s affection, which encompasses them both.’ ‘This reading becomes all the more powerful when, in the Midrash, it is extended to the relationship between Judaism and Islam.’ ‘Brothers can live together in peace’ this counter-narrative implies and Sacks notes that it perhaps ‘needed the twenty-first century, with its ethic and religious conflicts, to sensitise our ear to the texts’ inflections and innuendoes’ and to then grasp this aspect of Abraham’s legacy.

Through this Lent Course and Meg Warner’s book, we have seen Abraham undertake a significant journey. The whole way along the journey he struggled with his faith in the God who had chosen him so unexpectedly. At the same time as all of those struggles, Abraham appeared to grow in his responsibilities and in his relationship with God, so that by the end of the journey he had become the person God chose him to be – a true patriarch, whose faith and obedience had consequences for everybody around him. In a similar way, we can benefit from struggling with these three aspects of Abraham's legacy, as they constantly need claiming and reclaiming, both in our individual lives and our world, particularly because of the ways in which populism and nationalism are currently being used to shape politics and social structures.

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T. Bone Burnett - Every Time I Feel The Shift.

When one does not die for the other, we are dead already

N.N. Trakakis has a marvellous meditation on humility and anonymity in his excellent article
Found in Translation: on translating Tasos Leivaditis:

"Leivaditis has often been classified as a poet of the margins, even the ‘guardian angel’ of the marginal, the outcasts of society that repeatedly populate his poems: the blind, the forgotten, beggars, anarchists, prostitutes, drunkards, the mentally ill—‘those poor and mad souls who imagined themselves to be birds, ladders or trees’, as he wonderfully put it. Leivaditis helps us see that the marginal is that which cannot be placed under the rule of the conventional and the socially acceptable, and so it resists falsification, dishonesty and dissembling. The real critics of the establishment are therefore those who live precariously on the margins, not those ‘professional sceptics’ (e.g., academic philosophers) who invariably turn out to be the system’s co-conspirators.

Perhaps the greatest value Leivaditis unearths in these marginal characters is their anonymity, a value he wants to ascribe to writing as much as to existence. In a prose poem entitled ‘Anonymity’ and displaying Leivaditis’ characteristic magic realism, anonymity is linked to notions of authenticity and freedom:

No-one waited for him. And he himself knew no-one. Who was he? Where was he going? This was never discovered. The only established fact was that the other day he was found dead on the street and when they went to lift him, as they would have been expected to do, they saw that the dead man—despite the continuing rain—was untouched and his old worn-out clothes were dry. They were naturally taken aback, for they of course could not see the beautiful cover of anonymity…

There is no attempt made by such outsiders to ‘make a name for oneself’, to secure a place in the cherished annals of history, for they recognise that, ‘What else is anonymity but to live in purity and to depart even purer’. This naturally provokes perplexity and fear in those who have compromised with the standards and expectations of society:

At times mother would ask me with tears in her eyes, ‘Why do you like to humble yourself?’ ‘I want to understand, mother’.

It is only the anonymous themselves, Leivaditis writes, who ‘comprehend the mystery of being a nobody’. Anonymity, to be sure, may well arouse in self-defeating fashion curiosity. But the point of anonymity is not to incite in an underhand way the interest of others, but to open up another way of being and writing. Anonymity as a matter of not merely going underground, but as emerging onto new ground.

Together with anonymity, one can detect an insistence in Leivaditis on ‘lightness’—to be become unobtrusive, like light, remaining invisible so as to make it possible for the other to be seen. At work here is something like a Levinasian principle of ‘substitution’, reflected in Leivaditis’ oft-quoted line: ‘And when one does not die for the other, we are dead already’. The life of the writer, on this model, is sacrificial, commanded by a call to give, and so always at a loss and always at sea."

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Corinne Bailey Rae - The Skies Will Break.

Start:Stop - Water into wine

Bible reading

“… standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to them, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. He said to them, “Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward.” So they took it. When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.” Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him. (John 2. 6 – 11)

Meditation

Water is essential to life. The human body is 75% water and needs a constant supply of water to function. The average person can only survive for about three days without any water at all. So, water is a basic need for all of us and speaks to us of the basic needs that we all need to be fulfilled in order that we can live and live comfortably. This is why we pray, in the Lord’s Prayer, give us this day our daily bread. This is a prayer for our basic needs.

But God wants something better for us than a life based just on the meeting of our basic needs and the turning of water into wine gives us a clue as to what that better thing is. Wine reminds us of the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross; that moment when, out of love for all people, he lays down his own life in order to save us from all that is wrong with our lives and our world. So, wine is a reminder to us of the fact that the greatest love is shown through sacrifice.

This is the transformation that Jesus seeks to bring to human life. It is a change from human existence to human life; a change from the selfish experience of meeting our own basic needs to the spiritual experience of sharing what we have will others; a change from the evolutionary imperative of the survival of the fittest to the Christian imperative of sacrificial love.

We all have a need and a desire for there to be more to our lives than simply the survival of the fittest; the scramble to meet our basic needs. Yet when we are in genuine need and poverty, it is very difficult to think about anything else other than survival. But, then, when we are in the fortunate position of having our basic needs met, we have the time and space and (hopefully) inclination to look around us to develop a compassion, like that of Jesus, which sees the needs of those whose basic needs are not being met and responds to that by sharing at least some of what we have.

This transformation is symbolised in the pouring out of the wine from the water jars. It may even be that this is the moment of transformation. Just as what is drawn from the water jars to be shared with others is wine, so as we give to others we are transformed from selfish to sacrificial. It may be that it is in the act of giving that our transformation comes.

Prayer

Dear God, give us this day our basic needs; all that we need to be fulfilled in order that we live and live comfortably. We pray this, though, that we have the time and space and inclination to look around us to develop a compassion, like that of Jesus, which sees the needs of those whose basic needs are not being met and responds to that by sharing at least some of what we have.

Give us this day our daily bread, then use our lives in giving to others.

Dear God, You promise in Psalm 23 to be close beside us and protect us even as we walk through the darkest valley. We claim this promise for those who trek to get water for their families. Stay close to them, strengthen them, and protect them. We thank You for an end to drought in places such as the Horn of Africa. We pray that families in West Africa and elsewhere will have enough rain to grow food crops.

Give us this day our daily bread, then use our lives in giving to others.

Dear God, remind us of Your command to love our neighbours as we love ourselves. Don't let us rest until we know we have done everything we can to meet the basic needs of others, particularly for clean water. Give wisdom to Your people in relief agencies as they seek to bring clean water and other lifesaving interventions to millions more families around the globe. Thank You for equipping those who love You as they bring new health and opportunities to the world's most vulnerable people.

Give us this day our daily bread, then use our lives in giving to others.

Blessing

Meeting our basic needs, developing a compassion like that of Jesus, equipping us to bring health and opportunities to the world’s most vulnerable. May those blessings of almighty God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, be with us and rest upon us, now and always. Amen.

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Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Oh My Lord.

Sermon: The moment of transformation

This was my sermon for the Eucharist at St Vedast-alias-Foster this morning:

The writer of John’s Gospel says that this miracle is the first that Jesus performed but the word used for first also means that it is the key miracle, the one that unlocks and explains all the others (John 2: 1 – 11). So we need to ask ourselves what it is that we learn from this miracle that helps us to understand more fully what Jesus was doing through his ministry, death and resurrection.

The miracle is one of transformation; water being transformed into wine with this transformation bringing joy to the wedding guests. Dostoevsky, in The Brothers Karamasov, sees this miracle’s significance in the joy that Jesus brings to ordinary people: “It was not grief but men’s gladness that Jesus extolled when he worked his first miracle – he helped people to be happy … his heart was open … to the simple and artless joys of ignorant human beings, ignorant but not cunning, who had warmly bidden him to their poor wedding.” Later in John’s Gospel Jesus speaks himself about having come to bring life in all its fullness which must include this sense of joy and gladness in life. The filling of the water jars to the full also speaks of this sense of life being filled with goodness and gladness.

In Luke 6: 38 Jesus speaks again about fullness. Here he links our fullness to our giving: “Give to others, and God will give to you. Indeed, you will receive a full measure, a generous helping, poured out into your hands – all that you can hold.” This emphasis is important because the transformation of water into wine suggests that Jesus does not simply bless human life as it is but comes to transform it.

Water is essential to life. The human body is 75% water and needs a constant supply of water to function. The average person can only survive for about three days without any water at all. So, water is a basic need for all of us and speaks to us of the basic needs that we all need to be fulfilled in order that we can live and live comfortably.

But God wants something better for us than a life based just on the meeting of our basic needs and the turning of water into wine gives us a clue as to what that better thing is. Wine reminds us of the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. That moment when, out of love for all people, he lays down his own life in order to save us from all that is wrong with our lives and our world. So, wine is a reminder to us of the fact that the greatest love is shown through sacrifice.

This is the transformation that Jesus seeks to bring to human life. It is a change from human existence to human life; a change from the selfish experience of meeting our own basic needs to the spiritual experience of sharing what we have will others; a change from the evolutionary imperative of the survival of the fittest to the Christian imperative of sacrificial love.

This transformation is also symbolised in the pouring out of the wine from the water jars. It may even be that this is the moment of transformation just as what is drawn from the water jars to be shared with others is wine so as we give to others we are transformed from selfish to sacrificial. It may be that it is in the act of giving that our transformation comes.

There is also significance in the reference to the role of the water jars in ritual washing. The water jars can be seen as signifying the Jewish faith that require such ritual cleansing but from those jars and from that faith comes a new wine that must be poured out and shared with others. The new wine is for all; not just for the first but kept for the last as well. Wine symbolises the blood of Christ which is shed for all. God’s grace is no longer contained solely within the confine of the Jewish faith; coming to God no longer requires the meeting of the standards of the Law. This new wine bursts the old skins and is shared with all people of every nation, race, gender, age and sexuality.

So we see depicted a change from the old order, the old covenant, to the new. And this change extends the transformation to all. What is depicted then is not solely a change for us as individuals but a societal change no longer affecting one nation but all nations. What is depicted is a new way of life, a new way of being human, which can, perhaps, be summed up in the words of John 15: 13, “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends”. He looks at all of us, at all human beings, and says, “You are my friends”. Jesus allowed his own life to end so that all people could know what it is like to really live.

In 21st century Britain we live in a culture that is parched and dry and desperately in need of the water of life. I still remember a Guardian article outlining reasons why kindness has gone out of fashion in the age of the free market and the selfish gene. The writers noted that “for most of western history the dominant tradition of kindness has been Christianity” which “functioned as a cultural cement, binding individuals into society” until “the Christian rule ‘love thy neighbour as thyself’ came under increasing attack from competitive individualism.” Our society is parched of kindness and we need Jesus to bring transformation.

In Isaiah we read: “The poor and needy search for water, but there is none; their tongues are parched with thirst. But I the LORD will answer them; I, the God of Israel, will not forsake them. I will make rivers flow on barren heights, and springs within the valleys. I will turn the desert into pools of water, and the parched ground into springs.” (Isaiah 41. 17 & 18)

Our Psalm promised that we shall be satisfied with the abundance of God’s house; we shall drink from the river of God’s delights. For with God is the well of life and in his light shall we see light (Psalm 36).

Jesus is the river that flows in the desert of our selfish, self-centred existence because he shows us how to live in his new way of being human, loving God with all our being and loving our neighbours as ourselves. God wants us to look at Jesus and see how human life was originally intended to be lived before we chose the path of self-centredness. It is when we look at Jesus and begin to live life his way that transformation comes in our lives and our world. The water of our lives and our communities can become wine.

When that is so for us as individuals, as communities and even as a nation then, as we heard in our reading from Isaiah, we shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God. You shall no more be termed Forsaken, and your land shall no more be termed Desolate (Isaiah 62. 1 – 5).

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The Waterboys - My Love Is My Rock In The Weary Land.

Meditation: 'Jesus and Rome - Judgement of the Nations'

I

Outside the gates of Amiens,

in the depths of winter’s bitter cold,

a shivering, half-naked beggar

begs people for pity.

They walk on by on the other side.

The true protagonist of history is the beggar -

Testing and challenging responsiveness,

refining our compassion.

A young tribune rides through the gates

protective armour gleaming,

offensive weapon at his side,

luxurious lined cloak across his shoulders.

From a height, in one quick stroke

he slashes the lovely mantle in two -

the high and mighty considering the lowly -

his death-dealing sword used to give life.

Half to the beggar, clad only in rags,

half retained, sharing not possessing.

At night, in dream, he sees Christ clothed

in the part of his cloak which had covered the beggar.

From Christ begging for our hearts,

to our hearts begging for Christ.

“Here is Martin,” says Christ,

“the Roman soldier who is not baptised;

it is he who has clothed me.”

II

Beside the Milvian Bridge

alongside the Tiber,

Constantine and his troops

sleep on the eve of battle.

He dreams of a cross;

the sign by which his enemies

will be conquered.

Uncertain, he dreams again

seeing Christ command

a likeness of this sign created.

A spear overlaid with gold,

a transverse bar forming the cross,

a wreath of gold and jewels

holding a Chi-Rho,

an embroidered cloth

interlaced with cloth,

a portrait of Constantine

below the embroidered banner.

With the sign of the cross before,

the army follows on

to victory and Empire,

enemies conquered,

Christendom begun.

III

Jesus and Pilate

head-to-head

in a clash of cultures

on the pavement

at Herod’s Jerusalem fortress.

Pilate is

angular, aggressive, threatening

representing

the oppressive, controlling

Empire of dominating power,

with its strength in numbers

and weaponry,

which can crucify

but cannot

set free.

Jesus is

curves and crosses,

love and sacrifice,

representing

the kingdom of God;

a kingdom of love,

service and self-sacrifice

birthing men and women

into the freedom

to love one another.

The way of compassion

or the way of domination;

the way of self-sacrifice

or the way of self;

the way of powerlessness

or the way of power;

the way of serving

or the way of grasping;

the kingdom of God

or the empires of Man.

IV

Then the king will say to those at his right hand,

‘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.’

Then the righteous will answer him,

‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food,

or thirsty and gave you something to drink?

And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you,

or naked and gave you clothing?

And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’

And the king will answer them,

‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these

who are members of my family,

you did it to me.’

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Dissident Prophet - Unconditional Love.