Discover & explore: Security

Today's Discover & explore service at St Stephen Walbrook was on the theme of Security and featured music from the Choral Scholars of St Martin-in-the-Fields including: O nata lux - Tallis; Psalm 121 - Rose; The Beatitudes - Pärt; and Ubi Caritas - Duruflé.

In my reflection I said:

‘Are there safe havens in these troubled times?’ ‘Our belief in education must survive these troubled times.’ ‘In troubled times, shopping became the new patriotism.’ ‘In troubled times, Europe needs Nato more than ever.’ ‘EU Labour Migration in Troubled Times.’ ‘Making ends meet in troubled times.’ These are all recent headlines reflecting our current state of insecurity. Where can safety and security be found in these troubled times?

In my last parish we commissioned a mosaic which hung on the outside of the East wall of the church facing the street. The mosaic was simply the word ‘Love’ created in grafitti-style. One Christmas, in high winds, it was blown down from its position on the East wall; quite literally a case of love come down at Christmas. Christina Rossetti’s wonderful carol, from which that phrase comes, reminds us that the incarnation, God become human, is as much a sign of love for us as is Christ’s crucifixion.

But how does this work? A prayer by David Adam provides an answer:

Escalator prayer

As I ascend this stair
I pray for all who are in despair
All who have been betrayed
All who are dismayed
All who are distressed
All who feel depressed
All ill and in pain
All who are driven insane
All whose hope has flown
All who are alone
All homeless on the street
All who with danger meet

Lord, who came down to share our plight
Lift them into your love and light

(David Adam, PowerLines: Celtic Prayers about Work, Triangle, 1992)

This prayer uses the imagery of descending and ascending an escalator to pray that those at the bottom of the descent will be understood and ministered to before being then raised up themselves. The prayer is based on the understanding that, through his incarnation and nativity, Christ comes into the messiness of human life, as a human being, to experience, for himself, all that we experience. The betrayals, dismay, distress, depression, illness, pain, insanity, loss of hope, loneliness, homelessness, danger and despair that many of us experience at periods in our lives and which some experience as their everyday life. Christ comes to understand all this and to bear it on his shoulders to God, through his death on the cross, in order that, like him, we too can rise to new life and ascend to the life of God himself. “Lord, who came down to share our plight / Lift them into your love and light.” This is the hope held out to us through the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem; that he was born into poverty, exile, danger, stigma for our sake, in order to be one with us in our lives.

Jesus was born to be Emmanuel – God with us. That is what the incarnation, “the union of the human and the divine in the life of a humble Jewish carpenter,” is all about. As John 1. 14 says, in the contemporary translation of the Bible called The Message: “The Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighbourhood.” This is what Rossetti means by that marvellous phrase “Love came down at Christmas”.

Because God, through Christ’s birth, has entered our world and moved into our neighbourhood, he has identified himself with us. He became a human being experiencing the whole trajectory of human existence from conception through birth, puberty, adulthood to death including all that we experience along the way in terms of relationships, experiences, emotions and temptations. He has been made like us, his brothers and sisters, in every way, tempted in every way just as we are and able to sympathize with our weaknesses. As Hebrews 4. 16 say: “He's been through weakness and testing, experienced it all — all but the sin.”

This means that we never walk alone. As we have heard, in Isaiah, God promises that:

“When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,
and the flame shall not consume you.”

As a result, we have a reason to sing:

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

God is with us in all of our experiences. He leads us beside the still waters and walks with us through the valley of the shadow of death. He can do this because in Jesus he has experienced human life for himself. God understands and will be alongside us in all our experiences. By being with us he is able to lead us through times of darkness until we come to live with him in the light forever. God’s promise is that he will be with us as we walk the path of life and that is where true security is to be found.

The next series of Discover & explore services of musical discovery will explore significant figures in the history of St Stephen Walbrook. Services will be led by the Choral Scholars of St Martin-in-the-Fields with input from Revds Jonathan Evens, Alastair McKay and Sally Muggeridge.

All Discover & explore services begin at 1.10pm:

· 9 January – John Dunstable (Music)
· 16 January - Sir Christopher Wren (Architecture)
· 23 January – Thomas Watson (Preaching)
· 30 January – Sir John Vanbrugh (Drama)
· 6 February - Thomas Wilson (Patronage)
· 13 February – Half Term break
· 20 February – George Croly (Poetry)
· 27 February – George Griffin Stonestreet (Insurance)
· 6 March – Robert S. de Courcey Laffan (Sport)
· 13 March – Chad Varah (Charity)
· 20 March – Henry Moore (Sculpture)
· 27 March – Lanning Roper (Gardening)
· 3 April - Patrick Heron (Art)
· 10 April – Peter Delaney (Internet)

Discover & explore services have been described as “perfect services of peace in our busy lives” and explore their themes through a thoughtful mix of music, prayers, readings and reflections.

Discover & explore service series are supported by The Worshipful Company of Grocers, for whose generous support we are most grateful.

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John Dunstable - Veni Creator Spiritus.

Subverting hierarchy: Washing the disciples feet

Here is my sermon based on John 13 from today's Maundy Thursday Eucharist  at St Stephen Walbrook:

Jesus had a marvellous way of subverting people’s expectations. He did it when he called on the one without sin to cast the first stone. He did it when he rode into Jerusalem as a King but on a donkey, not a charger. And he did it in this story too; when he, their Master, served the disciples by washing their feet. He continually turned the expectations of the people around him upside down.

It was normal for a servant to wash the feet of those who came to visit and there would have been nothing unusual in a disciple washing the feet of his rabbi. These things reinforced what people thought of as the normal, natural, hierarchical order of things where some were masters or teachers and where such people had the right to lord it over those who were slaves or disciples.

What Jesus did in acting as a menial slave to his disciples turns the normal order upside-down. This is why Peter declares so forcefully, “Never at any time will you wash my feet!” What Jesus is doing is, in the words of Lesslie Newbigin, “a total subversion of good order as we understand it, and as the smooth operation of human affairs seems to require”: “All normal management procedures require chains of authority. All of us except those at the very bottom have a vested interest in keeping it so, for as long as we duly submit to those above us we are free to bear down on those below us. The action of Jesus subverts this order and threatens to destabilize all society. Peter’s protest is the protest of normal human nature.”

Jesus’ action also echoes that of Mary who washed his feet with a precious ointment and dried his feet with her hair. So, in washing his disciples feet Jesus, as a Master, does not only take the place of a servant but also affirms and follows the example of a woman; again, a radical, destabilizing gesture within a patriarchal society. 

Jesus goes further still in his explanation of what he has done. As Newbigin explains: “If Jesus had said: “Since I have washed your feet, you must wash my feet,” then we would have been fighting with one another for the privilege of being first with the basin and the towel. Then the old order of pre-eminence would have been restored, thinly disguised under the name of “service.” The “Chief Minister” would have become the old ruler under a new name.” But Jesus says something very different which negates that possibility. He actually says, “You ought to wash one another’s feet.” This is a statement that subverts and replaces all normal human patterns of authority. Imagine the task of drawing up a management chart in which A is subject to B, B is subject to A, C is subject to A and to B and A and B subject to C and so on.

“Yet this is what is called for. The disciples are to be – literally – “servants of one another” (Gal 5. 13). This is about equality but it is not an equality based on human rights. Instead, this is an equality based on the fact of Jesus, our ‘Master’, making himself the slave of all of us equally. He laid down his life for us and out of love for all that he has done for we are to serve our neighbours.

In other words, in order to serve others in this way we need to know who we are in Christ. We need to know that we are loved unconditionally by him, that we are accepted as we are and loved by him although we are still sinners. Each one of us goes through life looking for love but it is only when we know we are loved by God that we can relax in a love that is not going to change or to fail us. Having that security and confidence in our loves frees us to serve others in this radical way.

It is what we see at the beginning of this story. Jesus knows that the Father has given him complete power; he knows that he has come from God and is returning to God. The security of this knowledge means that he can rise from the table, take off his outer garment, tie a towel around his waist and wash the feet of his disciples. The action flows directly from his sense that he is loved by God and is right in the centre of God’s will for his life. The sense of security that this provides means that does not have to worry what others think of him; nor does he worry about status and hierarchy. Instead, he is free to serve others, to love others, to give himself for others in the same way that his Father does.

The reality is that Jesus had that knowledge and sense of security in God’s love throughout his ministry but it is in this story that the Gospel writer makes this plain to us, so we can grow into the same sense of security and through that gain the same ability to serve others.

Peter protested at the thought of having his feet washed by Jesus not understanding that Jesus wanted to draw him into a deeper appreciation of God’s love for him. Today, like Peter, we too need to be drawn into that deeper awareness of God’s reaching out in love towards us. As we know and respond more deeply to that love tonight, Jesus challenges us to do what he has done for us; to wash the feet of others by sacrificing ourselves for others. 

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Graham Kendrick - The Servant King.

Start:Stop - Pastors to our colleagues and customers.

Bible reading: John 10. 1-10

“Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.” Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.

So again Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.

Meditation

Security issues and dealing with thefts are often a standard part of doing ministry in churches. The theft of lead from roofs has at times been a constant worry and a recent press article covered the finding of a stash of items taken from churches, many of which could not be traced back to their original location. In this reading, Jesus could almost have been a PCSO giving us security advice with this story which is, as usual with Jesus, drawn from the working life of his own day.

The sheepfold was the place of safety for the sheep; a place of rest during the darkness of the night where intentions could be disguised and thieves were at work. In the light of the day when people could be seen for what they were, there was no need to remain in the safety of the sheepfold and the sheep would follow their shepherd out from the fold to pasture.

In the course of John 10, Jesus describes himself both as the way in to the safety of the sheepfold and as the shepherd that the sheep know and trust to take them out to pasture. Jesus has the best interests of the sheep at heart providing safety and pasture in contrast to the thieves who come only to steal, kill and destroy. So, this is a pastoral story about providing pastoral care.

All work is to some extent pastoral. Even when we are not in the specifically caring professions, we still have a pastoral responsibility towards colleagues, team members, partners etc. So, are we legit or are we thieves? In other words, is our work focused on the nurture and care of those with whom we have contact or are we out to fleece them?

Prayer

Jesus, you are the good Shepherd leading us to pasture; may we seek to nurture those in our care. May our conversation be positive and uplifting. May we provide prompts, encouragement and ideas for personal development and change. May we encourage others in the use and development of their skills and abilities.

Focus our work on the nurture and care of those with whom we have contact. Make us pastors to our colleagues and customers.

Jesus, you are the way in to safety and salvation; may we seek to protect those in our care. May we do all we can to create secure environments in our workplaces from concern for health and safety to openness and honesty which enables others to voice what they are thinking and feeling.

Focus our work on the nurture and care of those with whom we have contact. Make us pastors to our colleagues and customers.

Jesus, you give to us life in all its fullness; may our work enhance the lives of others. Make us more aware of those for whom we work, their needs and services we provide to them. Make us those who provide services with a high level of customer care which maintains good relations.

Focus our work on the nurture and care of those with whom we have contact. Make us pastors to our colleagues and customers.

Blessing

Giving and receiving nurture and care, creating safe spaces, maintaining good relations and receiving life in all its fullness. May those blessings of God Almighty, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, rest upon you and remain with you always. Amen.

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Luxury - To You Who Gave Me Hope And Were My Light.