Equality and the generosity of God

Here's the sermon that I shared today at St John's Langdon Hills and St Andrew's Wickford: 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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R.E.M. - Finest Worksong.

Stewardship 3 - Small change

Here's the All-age sermon based on https://www.assemblies.org.uk/pri/2021/small-change that I shared this morning at St Mary's Runwell: 

Draw some coins from your purse or pocket, explaining that they are often described as ‘small change’. Comment that, when counting our change, we don’t very often look closely at the coins themselves, but each is carefully designed and made at the Royal Mint.

If younger children are present, demonstrate, along the following lines, how the coins are of different sizes and shapes and formed of different materials.

Which is the smallest? (Five pence piece.)

How many faces (sides) are there to the edge of a 20 pence or 50 pence piece? (Seven.)

Some coins are a copper colour, made from copper-plated steel, while others are silver in appearance, made from nickel-plated steel.

Mention that it may even be possible to find some hidden treasure in small change! In 2008, some new design 20 pence coins (only 250,000) were accidentally produced without a date on either side. (Details can be found on the Royal Mint’s website.) These are worth far more than 20 pence to collectors! Is it possible to find one? Look carefully!

 
Explain that the designs on the reverse side of some coins show parts of the Royal Shield of Arms. Different UK coins each show a part of the Royal Shield of Arms — and when you put them together, they create the full royal coat of arms. This clever design symbolises: England; Scotland; Wales; and Northern Ireland. So next time you’re checking your change… you might be holding a piece of royal history without even realising it! 

Observe that small change is often collected for charities such as our collections for Positive Life Kenya. Each small contribution helps to make a larger gift – just as the individual pieces of small change form a larger picture.

Introduce our Gospel reading (Mark 12:41-44) that tells how even the smallest coin can really matter. Ask a group of children to make a big thing of pouring lots of coins into a collecting bowl and one secretively placing in two pennies.

The widow’s offering

One day Jesus and his friends sat in one of the temple courts. It was a very busy place. Lots of people were there, leaving gifts of money in the collecting boxes.

Some rich people gave large amounts of money. They liked to show off. They wanted everyone watching to see how rich and generous they were.

Jesus then spotted a poor widow quietly making her way across the temple court. Looking around to check no one saw her, she dropped two of the smallest coins into the collection box.

‘Did you see that?’ Jesus asked his friends. That widow has been more generous than anyone else. The rich people gave what they could easily afford, but the small coins she gave were all she had to buy food today’.

Conclude with the following thought that small coins can mean a lot and small change can add up to make a big difference. Perhaps we should look more closely at the coins in our purses, pockets and money boxes.

Time for reflection

Coins come in different shapes and sizes and can be spent in many different ways, but every coin has two sides. Along with the happiness of getting, we can experience the joy of giving. 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. 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 and have raised funds for the first two Phases of our repair project. 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 Catherine’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.

For those who are tax payers there has for some time been a way of increasing the value of the gifts you give. Gift Aid enables us to reclaim the basic rate tax from HMRC for those who are taxpayers, so for every £1 that you give we can claim an extra 25p. That means that, if you are a tax payer, we need you to fill out a Gift Aid declaration form in order to reclaim that money. There’s a copy in the Pack for you to fill out. There are three ways you can give using Gift Aid. The Parish Giving Scheme provides simple and secure ways to give regularly to this church; online, by phone, or by posting a giving form. Joining PGS means they claim the Gift Aid and send it direct to our Bank Account. You can also use our yellow envelopes for cash donations or fill in the Gift Aid declaration on the Card Reader where giving using your bank card.

Jesus commended the widow for giving the small amount that she had. We need the contribution that you can make to our Parish, however small it may seem to you, and in whatever way you can make that contribution. Thank you so much for all the ways you give currently and the different contributions you make. They are vital to the mission and ministry of our Parish and we are very grateful for them. The mission and ministry of this church is the combined effect of the contributions that each of us make. We need you now, more than ever. God has given you resources, time and talents, so this Stewardship Month I encourage you to reflect prayerfully on all that you can and do give back to him in order that together we can combine our individual offerings to make a bigger impact for him. Amen.

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Willie Nelson & Sinéad O'Connor - Don't Give Up.

Love is ...

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

When I preach at weddings I often tell the story of the Love is … cartoons. ‘Love Is...’ began as shy love notes from the artist Kim Casali to her future husband, Roberto. Each of these notes involved a little drawing and a personal sentiment that perfectly captured Kim's thoughts and feelings for the man she loved. She began these drawings when they were dating, and she would leave the cartoons where Roberto would be sure to find them. After they were married, he showed her that he'd kept them all the drawing she had made for him. The cartoons were picked up by the press, were first published in The Los Angeles Times in January 1970, and then their popularity grew globally and they were published daily in 50 countries around the world and translated into 25 languages.

I use this as a way of introducing the original ‘Love is …’ from 1 Corinthians 13: “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.”

The ‘Love is …’ cartoons and 1 Corinthians 13 both agree with another well-known ‘love is’ statement; ‘Love is a many-splendoured thing.’ Love cannot be captured or summed up in one cartoon or phrase or even in a series of cartoons or phrases. Love constantly bursts the bounds of our descriptions or definitions and this is why there is no end to songs, poems, novels, films, dances and plays about love. When I was ministering in the City of London, I would visit the Guildhall Art Gallery where we can see that the subject of romantic love preoccupied Victorian artists who addressed themes of unrequited love, social incompatibility, family disapproval, and separation at war.

Nearer our own time, C.S. Lewis is well known for looking at some of the different loves described in Greek thought - familial or affectionate love (storge); friendship (philia); romantic love (eros); and spiritual love (agape) - in the light of Christian commentary on ordinate loves. Despite his writings on The Four Loves he was himself surprised by love as his own relationship with Joy Davidman developed. The experience of love confounded his earlier more academic perceptions of it.

It is possible that the definitive Biblical statement on love is that which is found in 1 John 4. 16 where we read that, ‘God is love’. This is also where Ernesto Cardenal takes us. Our experiences of friendship, familial and romantic love all enable us to know God as love. Therefore, he writes, ‘My former loves have taught me what love is. I know how you love me because I too have loved, and I know what passionate and obsessed love is and what it is to be madly in love with someone. And God is mad about me.’

The strength of God’s love for us was revealed among us through his sending of his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. ‘In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.’ Christ searches for us like the Good Shepherd searching for the lost sheep. His journey of salvation shows how much we are loved by him as he gives up all he has in order to seek us out and rescue us.

The extremity of God’s expression of love in giving all in self-sacrifice reveals the limitless nature of love which constantly escapes the limits of our experiences, descriptions or definitions. If God is love then, just as God is infinite and cannot ever be fully grasped by our finite minds, so love also must be inexhaustible. As St Paul stated in 1 Corinthians 13, ‘Love never ends’. Love, like God, is an infinite ocean into which we dive and can always swim deeper and further.

In The Last Battle, the final volume of his Narnia stories, C.S. Lewis sums up the reality of God, heaven and love in the phrase, ‘further up and further in.’ The children in his stories discover heaven as the real Narnia which is bigger and better than the shadow Narnia in which they had lived out their finite lives. When they reach the centre of this real Narnia, they find that their journey begins again as there is always a deeper layer to this real Narnia, meaning that there is no end to their exploration of the reality of Narnia. If God is love and love is God then, as T.S. Eliot wrote in Little Gidding, ‘We shall not cease from exploration / And the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time.’

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Victoria Williams - Love.

A typical bit of Jesus' teasing

Here's the reflection I shared at St Peter’s Nevendon this afternoon and St Mary's Runwell this evening:

In his book, Surprised by Hope, N. T. Wright says, "Forgiveness is a way of life, God's way of life, God's way to life; and if you close your heart to forgiveness, why, then, do you close your heart to forgiveness. . . If you lock up the piano because you don't want to play to somebody else, how can God play to you?

"That is why we pray, 'Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.' That isn't a bargain we make with God. It's a fact of human life. Not to forgive is to shut down a faculty in the innermost person, which happens to be the same faculty that can receive God's forgiveness."

Wright notes that Jesus has already taught his followers to pray for it (6.12), and has specified clearly that if you want forgiveness you've got to be prepared to give it (6.14-15). Now he returns to the theme. Peter's question and Jesus' answer say it all (verses 21-22). If you're still counting how many times you've forgiven someone, you're not really forgiving them at all, but simply postponing revenge. 'Seventy times seven' is a typical bit of Jesus' teasing. What he means, of course, is 'don't even think about counting, just do it' (Matthew 18.21-35).

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.

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.

However, when I talk of forgiveness I mean 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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Sweetmouth - Forgiveness.

Living God's Future Now

Here's the sermon that I shared at St Andrew’s Wickford yesterday:

What is St Paul commending to the Church in Corinth when he writes that: “from now on, let even those who have wives be as though they had none, and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no possessions, and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the present form of this world is passing away.” (1 Corinthians 7:25-31) He wants us to live now as if heaven is our reality.

I want us to follow St Paul today and start to concentrate on where we’re going. We’re going to heaven – where there is more than enough love for all, more than enough joy, more than enough truth, more than enough space for everyone to flourish. When we focus our attention on our life’s destination, we arrive at a new definition of the Church: a bunch of people who all come from different places but are all going to the same place. We’re a people pooling our resources for a journey we make together to a place none of us have ever been. There are no experts, because we’re all citizens of a country we’ve never visited and longing for a home we’ve never known.

Heaven on earth is the culmination of the story that is told in and through the Bible. It is the vision towards which everything points. It is a vision of heaven come on earth, of eternal peace in the presence of God, where evil is eradicated and God’s rule encompassing all things, and where we are resurrected to be with God, with each other and with creation for ever. As citizens of heaven we are given glimpses of heaven in order that we begin to live as if we were already there.

Our calling in the present is to create signs of this coming kingdom by living as fully as we can in anticipation of the coming kingdom. That is why we emphasise Being With as a key theme or idea for our Parish and our lives. In the coming kingdom, there will be nothing for us to fix, there will simply be being with God, with each other and with creation. In Philippians 3 we are told to imitate those who set their minds on heavenly things because our citizenship is in heaven. Citizenship is all about belonging to a particular community together with all the other members of that community. In relation to heaven, it is about being in relationship with God’s people. So, if heaven is about anything at all, it is about relationship.

Prioritising relationships, Jesus says in several of his parables, is about preparing for eternity and he specifically tells the Parable of the Dishonest Steward that we might be welcomed into the eternal homes. Why is this so? Well, the answer is very simple. As we have just reflected, in heaven there will be nothing to fix, nothing to solve, and therefore no work to be done. In heaven there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things will have passed away. In heaven there will be nothing we can do for others, because God will have done everything for us. So, what will there be to do? Heaven is all about our relationships; being with God, with ourselves, with others, and with creation. Heaven is all about enjoying our relationships to the full for what they are.

Jesus wants us to prepare for heaven. The writer to the Philippians wants us to set our minds on our citizenship in heaven. Both are, like St Paul, calling us to live God’s future now, to anticipate what heaven will be like in the here and now, in the present. We do that by prioritising relationships – prioritising our being with God, being with ourselves, being with others and being with creation now. That is also what incarnational mission and ministry is all about. After all, Jesus spent 90% of his incarnation in Nazareth being with his friends and family. He prioritised relationships in his life and wants us to do the same in ours.

Therefore, as Sam Wells has said, Christianity must take the present opportunity to be what it was always called to be: an alternative society, overlapping and sharing space with regular society, but living in a different time – that’s to say, modelling God’s future in our present. It’s not enough to cherish the scriptures, embody the sacraments, set time aside for prayer, and shape disciples’ character in the ways of truth, if such practices simply withdraw disciples for select periods, uncritically then to return them after a brief pause to a world struggling with inequality, identity, and purpose. Rather, what we need is to become and to model communities of ordinary virtues, but ones infused with grace: thus trust, honesty, politeness, forbearance, and respect are the bedrock of such communities, while tolerance, forgiveness, reconciliation, and resilience are among its abiding graces. What I’m describing is the transformation of churches into dynamic centres of abundant life, receiving, evidencing, dwelling in and sharing forms of social flourishing and being a blessing to their neighbourhood.

The experience of what it’s like to feel as though we’re already in heaven is what we call the kingdom of God. Entering in to that experience of glory is where we’re going. God invites us all to be in heaven, not because any of us have a right to be there, or because God is trying to set straight a historic injustice or present imbalance, but because God chooses never to be except to be with us in Christ, and that being-with is not a for-some-people thing but a for-everyone thing, and it’s not a for-now thing it’s a forever thing. We prepare for that reality by learning to live with everybody now and receive their unexpected gifts with imagination and gratitude in recognition that these are the people with whom we’ll be spending eternity, lucky and blessed as we all are to be there. So, we’d best use these earthly years as a time for getting in the mood of heaven. May it be so for each one of us. Amen.

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Chairman of the Board - I'm On My Way To a Better Place.

Stewardship 1: Creation care on the Feast of Creation in Christ

Here is the sermon that I shared on the Feast of Creation in Christ and also, for our parish, the first Sunday of Stewardship Month, at St Catherine's Wickford and St Mary's Runwell: 

Animals and plants were first domesticated across a region stretching north from modern-day Israel, Palestine and Lebanon to Syria and eastern Turkey, then east into, northern Iraq and north-western Iran, and south into Mesopotamia; a region known as the Fertile Crescent. This was in the Neolithic Period, also known as the New Stone Age.

It is arguable that this is the period of human history that is described by the creation story told in Genesis 2 (Genesis 2.4b-9, 15-17). Ernest Lucas notes that Eden is located at the place where the Tigris and Euphrates rise – which is in the upland plateaux of Turkey and that the word ‘Eden’ may come from a Babylonian word meaning ‘plateaux’. He also notes that Genesis 4 tells of a descendent of Adam called Tubal-Cain, who was the first person to use metal to make things. That means that Adam must have used only stone implements. Genesis 2 tells us that Adam was a gardener and that he tamed animals. All of which adds up to a picture of Adam as what we would call a ‘New Stone Age man’.

This is the point in history when human beings begin, by a combination of social organisation (sociality) and individual creativity (development), to have a choice about how we behave ethically. Prior to this point human beings had been hunters, migrants dependent on the movements of their prey and participants in the natural ‘kill or be killed’ processes of a nature that is ‘red in tooth and claw.’ However, as human beings developed agriculturally and socially, the killing of animals and other human beings was no longer essential.

So, the biblical creation stories locate the image of God in the ability of human beings to be consciously social and creative. Albert Wolters comments that: “Adam and Eve, as the first married couple, represent the beginnings of societal life; their task of tending the garden, the primary task of agriculture, represents the beginnings of cultural life." (Creation Regained: Biblical Basics for a Reformational Worldview)

In speaking of Genesis 1, Wolters suggests that: ‘There is a process of development and evolution as the earthly realm assumes, step by step, the contours of the variegated world of our experience. On the sixth day this process is completed with the creation of [human beings], and on the seventh day God rests from his labors. This is not the end of the development of creation, however.’

Creation, once made, is not something that remains a static quality. ‘There is, as it were, a growing up (though not in a biological sense), an unfolding of creation.’ ‘Although God has withdrawn from the work of creation, he has put an image of himself on the earth with a mandate to continue. The earth had been completely unformed and empty; in the six-day process of development God had formed it and filled it – but not completely. People … now carry on the work of development: by being fruitful they must fill it even more; by subduing it they must form it even more. [Hu]mankind, as God’s representatives on earth, carry on where God left off.’

Human development of the created earth is societal and cultural in nature. We are to use our organisational abilities in community and our creativity to cultivate creation (to make it fruitful) and to care for it (to maintain and sustain it), just as God told Adam to work the ground and keep it in order. As God’s image bearers we have a responsibility to care for and work with the good environment God has created.

God’s first words to men and women, were that they would rule over ’the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground’ in a way that reflects his own image. Not just God’s power, but his unselfish love, mercy and tender compassion. Similarly, when Jesus points us in the Sermon on the Mount to reflect on God’s care for the birds and plants, then he is also flagging that we, too, should care for them as well. Our focus shouldn’t simply be on our needs or wants but on God’s kingdom, including the world he made and the creatures and plants within it. We have been given a special task – to look after the rest of what God has made (Genesis 1: 26–28; Gen. 2:15). This is not an optional extra for a few keen environmentalists, but a fundamental part of what it means to be human.

Today we are seeing massive climate change and increased destruction and pollution of creation. We are treating God’s gift badly and it is the poorest in our world who will suffer most from that reality. Tragically, our rule over creation has been characterized by cruelty, greed and short-sightedness, but this was clearly not God’s intention. If we desire to obey God, then we must look for ways in which we can be good and responsible stewards of the natural world by reducing our environmental impact and raising awareness of the environmental challenges we face today as a global community.

One of the Five Marks of Mission is to strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the life of the earth. One of the ways we have worked towards that has been to take part in the EcoChurch initiative run by A Rocha. This provides a framework that support our churches and our leadership in taking practical action on caring for God’s earth. The EcoChurch survey covers five key areas of church life: Worship and teaching; Buildings and energy; Land and nature; Community and global engagement; and Lifestyle.

Our Stewardship Pack helps us think about our lifestyle by suggesting many things that we can do to treasure our environment. These include, for example:

• Share transport, walk, use a bike or public transport.
• Turn the heating thermostat down by 1°C.
• Reduce the time that the heating is on by 15 minutes.
• Install low-energy light bulbs or LED lights.

Can you commit to doing any of these or other of the things listed in the Pack? Doing so will not only help us treasure our environment it will also move us closer towards the possibility of gaining a Gold EcoChurch Award.

Being a good steward means caring for and conserving the world in which we live and the resources within because to do otherwise selfishly uses up those resources for ourselves and alters the natural cycle of life in ways that harm the world and all that lives on it. We will, therefore, be encouraging all of us, as we have done previously, to look again at the actions we can take to show responsibility by caring for this world, rather than acting in ways that dominate and exploit the natural world.

Let us pray: Lord, grant us the wisdom to care for the earth and till it. Help us to act now for the good of future generations and all your creatures. Help us to become instruments of a new creation, founded on the covenant of your love. Amen.

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Bruce Cockburn - Creation Dream.

What is it that we must do?

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

I wonder what are the things that you feel you must do? I wonder whether those are also the things that you feel God is compelling you to do?

Jesus was so greatly appreciated by the people in Capernaum that when he went to a deserted place in the wilderness to pray, the people followed him there and tried to persuade him to stay with them rather than moving on somewhere new (Luke 4.38-44).

People's appreciation is a lovely thing but, in this case, was a distraction from the task Jesus needed to complete. ‘He said to them, “I must proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God to the other cities also, for I was sent for this purpose.” So he continued proclaiming the message in the synagogues of Judea.’

What is that we must do, that we are compelled to do and does that accord with what God wants us to do?

On Sunday in our joint service, Emma Doe, our LLM, spoke about her calling and the ways in which she had known God was calling her to licensed ministry but there were all sorts of reasons why she didn’t follow that call initially. She was speaking to and for all of us, as there often are ways in which we hear the call of God on our lives but don’t or don’t fully respond, whether that is about moving into some form of authorised ministry, as was the case for Emma, or simply feeling God prompt us to go and help someone else because they are in need.

I wonder whether you can think of times when God may have prompted you to offer help to someone else and you have found reasons not to do so or to offer some help but not all that was required.

In today’s reading we see Jesus being sure of what he is called to do – ‘I must proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God to the other cities also’ – and being absolutely committed to doing so – ‘So he continued proclaiming the message in the synagogues of Judea.’

Later in his ministry when he approaches the time of his crucifixion, we see again this same combination of knowledge and commitment in Jesus. On Sunday, the message Emma preached on was about Jesus knowing that he had to go to Jerusalem to die and his absolute refusal to be distracted from that task even when his own disciples were appalled at the prospect and Peter actively opposed him (Matthew 16.21-28).

In Chapter 9 and verse 15 of his Gospel, Luke notes that “As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set his face toward Jerusalem.” Jeremy Berg writes that “Many have made a connection with Luke’s mention of Jesus ‘setting his face toward Jerusalem’ with Isaiah’s account of the Suffering Servant who ‘sets his face like flint’ toward his own suffering.” Isaiah spoke of one who offered his back to those who beat him, his cheeks to those who pulled out his beard; who did not hide his face from mocking and spitting, and who set his face like flint towards these things knowing he would not be put to shame.

Jesus’ commitment to God’s plans and purposes for his life is absolute. Our faith is unlikely to be as strong and our knowledge of God’s plans and purposes for our lives may well be less well developed and sure. Nevertheless, the example that Jesus sets is one that challenges us to learn as fully as we can about God’s plans and purposes for our lives and to being as fully committed as we can to his calling on our lives.

I wonder what is that we must do, that we are compelled to do and the extent to which that accords with what God wants us to do? May we all seek to bring those two things as close together in our lives as we can. Amen.

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Michael McDermott - But For The Little Moments.

Love - the heart of safeguarding

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

Safeguarding has at its heart a longing for all people to be safe, protected, welcomed and cared for within our churches and in wider society. It is an integral part of the ministry and mission of our churches and a core part of how we are church. But more than this, safeguarding is about love in truth and action. As we seek to love and serve our neighbours in our communities, we are called to be places and spaces where there is a healthy culture of interactions and relationships. We need to take our call to love one another seriously. We also need to take our call to live truthfully seriously.

Over the past few years, the Church of England has been called to account for its Safeguarding failures. As an institution, we are on a journey: there is always more work to be done and more lessons to learn and there is a constant need for us to lament and repent of our failings. As a Church, we need to acknowledge our failings, learn from the past, and listen and respond to victims and survivors with humility. We need to love in truth and action.

As Nicholas Papadopulos, Dean of Salisbury, has said, “There is much for us to open our eyes to. For years, the merest sniff of a question or the first hint of an allegation sent church leaders hurrying to circle the wagons and defend the institution and its staff. Far too often we have reacted with – at best – ostrich-like complacency to those of our own who have posed grave threats to others.” “Terrible things have happened in the churches, as in all our best-loved institutions; we share a responsibility for ensuring that they cannot happen again.”

Those terrible things meant that the Church of England, as with other denominations, has been guilty of the kind of hypocrisy that Jesus criticises in today’s Gospel reading (Matthew 23.27-32). Like those who presented as whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful but inside are full of all kinds of uncleanness, so the Church of England has tried to present itself as being whiter than white, while the reality has been very different, both in terms of those who abused others and those who failed to support the victims of abuse.

As a result, many people in our communities and in our churches live daily with physical, emotional, mental and spiritual scars of abuse. If this sermon prompts any safeguarding concerns or raises any safeguarding issues you would like to discuss, please contact our Parish Safeguarding Officer or get in touch with our Diocesan Safeguarding Team. You can find their contact details on the Diocesan website: www.chelmsford.anglican.org under the safeguarding tab.

As Nicholas Papadopulos has also said, “We cannot live out the great commandment to love God and love neighbour if those who would harm their neighbour find a secure hiding-place in our common life … the great commandment … [is] right there … when we do whatever we can to ensure that the vulnerable are kept safe, remembering that any of us can be vulnerable. That, surely, is the bare minimum that loving one another requires of us.”

Through Jesus, God relates to us in love and friendship. And this is how Jesus wants us to relate to others. “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” Jesus’ primary action is to love: not to judge, condemn, criticise, belittle or dismiss. He loves. A love that goes beyond boundaries and that is without agenda. A love that is about equality and mutual respect. A love that refuses power and abuse; that washes tired, dirty feet. A love that lets everyone sit down to eat.

Faithful discipleship is known by love. Jesus calls upon his disciples to mirror the love that God has for him and the love that he has for the Father and for his disciples. To lay down one’s life is to put the needs of others before our own, to live for the good of others, to make time for them, to be present for them in times of trouble and crisis, to listen to them, to witness to their hurts. “Love one another as I have loved you.” Following Jesus means taking love seriously. As the first letter of John stresses: “We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us… love one another just as he commanded us… all who obey his commandments abide in him, and he abides in them.”

We are also compelled to live truthfully. This means going beyond addressing issues of harm and abuse and protecting against them. It means being willing to face hard truths, to stand with victims of injustice and - if required – to speak up and out with them and for them. We know that abuse devastates lives, that it has and does take place in the church and that its consequences are profound and long-lasting. The task of Safeguarding is to acknowledge this hard truth and to do everything possible to ensure that abuse no longer happens, now or in the future. In all that we do, particularly in balancing our responsibilities, we must continually seek to place survivors and victims at the heart of our concern.

We long to be a refuge for the hurting and vulnerable, and to do this we must listen to those who feel voiceless and empower everyone in our communities to remain safe, within their families, places of work and of worship. “Let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.” Jesus’ command to love as he loves is an invitation into relationships of profound mutuality and interdependence.

These kinds of relationships contribute to healthy communities, modelled on the example of Christ’s own humility and sacrifice. This is a way of being that says, who I am is caught up in who you are. We are members together of the same body of people. Whatever affects one of us affects all of us. We are all God’s children; Jesus calls us all friends; we are all brothers and sisters. So, if I am your sister, your brother, I have a responsibility for how I behave towards you and that has implications for the choices I make about how I live and love in the world. This is the kind of integrity that is the reverse of the hypocrisy criticised by Jesus in today’s Gospel reading.

As we reflect, we remember that the kingdom of God is not for the strong but the weak; it is not for the rich but for the poor; it is not for the powerful but for the powerless; it is not for the proud but for the meek. The Church is where the least, the lost and the broken – all God’s children - should be able to find the safest of places in a loving community that lives out its faith in truth and action. May that be true for us, here in Wickford and Runwell. Amen.

(Based on 'love in truth and action' by Venerable Ruth Patten, Archdeacon of Colchester)

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Howard Hewett - The Journey (Think About It).

Weekly Sermon for the eleventh Sunday after Trinity

I have recorded the weekly sermon for the Diocese of Chelmsford for the eleventh Sunday after Trinity, Sunday 16 August, titled: ‘Making a family out of strangers’. Download the transcript here.

The Weekly Sermons are written and recorded by clergy and lay ministers for people who want to watch online or for ministers looking for sermon ideas.

To have the latest weekly sermon delivered straight to your inbox, you can sign up to the mailing list here.

My previous Weekly Sermons can be viewed here, here, and here.

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U2 - One Life At A Time.

 

You shall not be overcome

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Marketa Irglova - Point Of Creation.

Depth of faith uncovered in those of another race, culture and faith

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

Jesus was deliberately rude to the Canaanite Woman – a woman from another race and culture – that he encountered, as we heard in today's Gospel reading (Matthew 15. 21 – 28). He began by making it clear that she was not one of the chosen people for whom he had come and continued by insulting her and her people in calling them 'dogs'.

Why was he so uncharacteristically rude? His disciples had wanted him to send the woman away; ostensibly because of the fuss she was making but, more probably, because she was not one of 'them'. Therefore, Jesus threw all their prejudices at the woman both as a way of confronting his disciples with the ugliness of their prejudice and as a provocation that revealed the faith within this woman.

In the face of seeming denial and insult, she persisted in her request and in her faith in Jesus' ability and willingness to heal. On the back of this tangible example of faith, Jesus was then able to challenge the prejudices of his disciples (as I think was his intent from the outset) by pointing out the depth of faith which he had uncovered in a woman of another race, culture and faith.

We can see these same issues recurring in our own day and time in the way in which the debate about immigration has changed enabling the whole apparatus of the state to now be bent towards stopping immigration and sending migrants away despite such people being amongst those most disadvantaged in the world today. For example, the then Archbishop of Canterbury said that the Government’s Illegal Migration Bill was morally unacceptable and represented a “dramatic departure” from Britain's obligations under the 1951 Refugee Convention. Legislation in the UK has subsequently continued in directions that the Archbishop characterised as morally unacceptable.

Several years ago, the then Bishop of Dover accused senior political figures, including the then prime minister, of forgetting their humanity and attacked elements of the media for propagating a “toxicity” designed to spread antipathy towards migrants. He said, “We’ve become an increasingly harsh world, and when we become harsh with each other and forget our humanity then we end up in these standoff positions. We need to rediscover what it is to be a human, and that every human being matters.” We can see, therefore, that this story speaks into issues of our own day and time challenging the prejudices of still found in Government, and politics more widely, and, maybe too, ourselves.

Seeing this story of the Canaanite woman as a deliberate challenge to the prejudices of his disciples is also consistent with the story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10. 25 - 37) where Jesus tells a group of God's chosen people a story in which one of their own receives help, not from his own people, but from a man of another race, culture and faith. In that story, Jesus went further than his already radical teaching of love for our enemies by telling a story in which a member of God's chosen people received God's love and help from a person that he considered to be outside the people of God and an enemy of his own people.

However we choose to draw the boundaries of who is and who is not one of God's people, Jesus breaks through those boundaries with his love for all people, his sacrificial giving for all, and his recognition of all that those who are excluded actually have to offer to those who exclude. The strapline of St Michael’s Church in Camden Town - 'Making a family out of strangers’ - is a very good summary of this aspect of Jesus’ teaching and ministry.

It is a helpful practice, which comes from Ignatian spirituality, to try to place ourselves fully within a story from the Gospels by becoming onlooker-participants and giving full rein to our imagination. If we were part of this story, would we be with the disciples, who wanted Jesus to send the Canaanite woman away because she was not one of 'them', or would we be with Jesus, who challenged the prejudices of his disciples by pointing out the depth of faith which he had uncovered in a woman of another race, culture and faith? Our answer to that question will determine the extent to which we seek to make a family out of strangers ourselves.

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Bruce Cockburn - Each One Lost.

What can you give to God to today?

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

We have been living for some years in an age of austerity where our governments implemented a series of sustained reductions in public spending all intended to reduce the budget deficit. As a result, we live in a time of relative scarcity compared with years of a booming economy prior to the time of austerity.

When we are in a scarcity mindset we focus on all the deficits in our situation, all that is wrong, all we have lost and all that we don’t have. Today, we often experience a sense of scarcity in the Church as well. In our generation God has given his Church a financial crisis, and this can only be for one reason: to teach us that abundance does not lie in financial security, and to show us that only in relationships of mutual interdependence, relationships that money obscures as often as it enables, does abundant life lie.

The reality of living in a time of scarcity has parallels to the feeding of the five thousand where Jesus and those with him are in the wilderness with no food except for the five small barley loaves and two small fish offered by a boy in the crowd (Matthew 14.13-21). Jesus’ disciples essentially despair in the light of their situation as there is nowhere to go to buy food, they have insufficient money for the numbers involved and the boy’s lunch is too small to share with any but a few.

Jesus, however, brings abundance in the place of scarcity. He prepares the crowd to eat, gives thanks to God and begins to share the little that they have. As the sharing commences, the food is found to be sufficient for everyone’s needs with 12 baskets of leftover bread gathered together at the end of the meal.

How did this happen? It began with a young boy bringing barley loaves and fish to Jesus. Barley loaves were one third of the price of the wheat variety; it was the bread of the poor. And then there were the two small fish. The Greek word used for these fish in John’s gospel is “osparion”, which meant they were certainly not fresh fish from the Sea of Galilee. “Osparion” were either small dried or pickled fish. The young boy may have generously offered all he had but that offering was meagre in the extreme. Little wonder that Andrew should say despairingly to Jesus: “But, what are they among so many”?

Yet, Jesus willingly took what was offered and, far from commenting on the poor offering set before him, he gave thanks over the loaves and fish. And, as Jesus gave thanks a transformation took place and there was enough for all to be fed and, we learn later in the chapter, to be satisfied. With the transforming grace of Jesus even our poorest offerings can become something extraordinary.

Churches thrive when the gifts of all their members are released and they build on one another’s assets. The currency of the kingdom of God is of things that never run out. ‘The secret of happiness is learning to love the things God gives us in plenty. There’s no global shortage of friendship, kindness, generosity, sympathy, creativity, faithfulness, laughter, love. These are the currency of abundance.

The challenge for us as a church and as individuals is this, are we going to live in the economy of scarcity or are we going to live in God’s economy of abundance. Which is it to be? If we live in the economy of scarcity, we will spend our lives fearing for our jobs, our livelihoods, our reputations, our health, our families, our lives themselves. If we live in the economy of abundance we won’t fear anything. We’ll have the things that money can’t buy and we’ll know the things that hardship and even death can’t take away from us. We’ll have learned to love the things God gives us in plenty. We will be living truly abundant life.

Tom Wright in his commentary on St John’s Gospel says that all God calls us to do is to bring what we have to Jesus in prayer. We tell Him what we need. We then let Jesus bring the two together and make it enough for all! As one marvellous prayer puts it, the Lord Jesus truly can ‘transform the poverty of our riches by the fullness of his Grace’.

It is easy for us to think that big is best and that what we have and are is too little to make an impact but this story says otherwise. Jesus takes and uses the little that the young boy offers.

Small is beautiful, as E. F. Schumacher reminded us. Our small actions or contribution, combined with those of others, can then have a big effect. The BBC Radio 4 Christmas Appeal for St Martin-in-the-Fields once used that thought with its slogan ‘Small Action Big Difference’. The butterfly effect which is found in Chaos Theory and the multiplier effect in economics both show, on the basis of research, that small changes and small contributions can have significant effects.

Hattie May Wiatt was a young girl in Philadelphia in the 1880s who began saving towards the building of a church which could accommodate the large number of children going to Sunday School in those days. Hattie May died young and after her death the pastor of the church, Rev. Russell Conwell was given the 57 cents that she had saved. He used these to begin a fundraising campaign which resulted in the building of a church, a University and a Hospital.

What can you give to God today? It doesn’t matter if it seems very little or very small. Brother Lawrence that ‘We ought not to be weary of doing little things for the love of God, who regards not the greatness of the work, but the love with which it is performed.' In addition, as he did with the small offering the boy made in this story, Jesus can take the little that we can offer and can use, transform and multiply it. The important thing then is that we offer what we can. What can you give to God to today? Whatever it is, the important thing is to offer it – however small it may seem.

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Nick Battle - Dance Of Suffering.

A treasure for which someone will give all that they have and are

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

I wonder how it feels to be thought of as a treasure for which someone will give all that they have and are. I can respond to that wondering from my own personal experience as I was a child who invited Jesus into my heart but who, as a teenager, felt I was unworthy of his love. At that time if I had known them I would have identified with the confessions written by Lancelot Andrewes in which he admits to being the chief of sinners, an unclean worm, a dead dog, a putrid corpse saying I have sinned, I have done perversely, I have committed wickedness; Lord, I know the plague of my own heart.

Fortunately, a youth leader talked this through with me one evening and showed me Romans 5.8 - God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us. I came to realise that God loved me; loved me so much that he gave up his own life for me. I was the treasure and he was the one who sold everything in order to purchase me. I was the pearl of great value and he was the merchant who sold all he had to buy me (Matthew 3.44-46, 52). Later, I had an experience of uncontrollable laughter for what seemed like hours on end as I became aware of the weight that had been lifted from me and the love that had filled me.

Most sermons we have heard preached on these parables will have told us that our salvation is the treasure and we are those who have to give up all we have to possess it. Those sermons pitch us back into guilt and uncertainty; have I done enough by giving up enough or have I compromised and forfeited salvation? Those sermons have it all upside down and back to front.

Jesus is the one who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death — even death on a cross. Jesus is the one who gives up all he has – even to the point of death - to seek and save us; the lost, the hidden. We are the treasure and the pearl for which he seeks because to him we are of great value; treasure, though we may not know it. In the Eucharistic Prayer shortly we will hear that the ever-present and ever-living God is with us, for we are precious, honoured and loved. We know this because Christ gave up all he had in order to be with us, even in death.

I wonder how it feels to be thought of as a treasure for which someone will give all that they have and are. For me, it felt as though a weight had been lifted from me, that love had filled giving a sense of joy – of uncontrollable laughter – welling up within and overflowing. I wonder how it feels for you.

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Andrew Rumsey - Pilot Light.

Amazement at a rescue action

Here is the reflection that I shared during yesterday's Evensong at St Catherine's Wickford:

'Eleven Addresses to the Lord: I' by John Berryman.

This is the first of ’Eleven Addresses to the Lord’ written by the US poet John Berryman and published in 1970 in Love & Fame. Berryman was a major figure in American poetry in the second half of the 20th century and is often considered one of the founders of the Confessional school of poetry. He was the author of The Dream Songs, which are playful, witty, and morbid. In 1970 he published the drastically different Love & Fame which, in its final section ‘Eleven Addresses to the Lord’, reflected his return to the Catholicism of his youth. Despite its negative reception, its colloquial style and forthrightness have influenced many younger poets.

I share this poem because of the difficulties posed for us by the stories of miracles in the New Testament (Acts 12.1-19). In this evening’s reading from Acts, Peter is miraculously rescued from prison by an angel, while James, the brother of John, another of the apostles is killed by King Herod. Why is one apostle saved from death and another allowed to die? We don’t know and we aren’t told. We face the same issue today, when miracles are claimed for some but many others for whom prayers are said do not survive.

At the centre of Berryman’s poem are these lines:

You have come to my rescue again & again
in my impassable, sometimes despairing years.
You have allowed my brilliant friends to destroy themselves
and I am still here, severely damaged, but functioning.

He said that his conversion came about because ‘of a rescue action – into the notion of a God who, at certain moments, definitely and personally intervenes in individual lives, one of which is mine.’ But why had God saved him and not his brilliant friends who had destroyed themselves?

Berryman can’t deny the help he has received from God and even feels sure God will assist him again but is unable to go any further than that. He says that all things are possible for God but that some miracles may have been a special case to establish the initiatory faith of the apostles.

This seems a reasonable stance for us to take; we know that we have been helped but we can’t pretend to know how and why God acts as he does. Whatever may come, Berryman says he stands in awe and wonder of God – ‘accept my amazement’ – and asks to:

stand until death forever at attention
for any your least instruction or enlightenment.

May we also do the same. Amen.

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Nick Battle - The Finish Line.

The good news encapsulated in one chapter

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

Romans 8 is one of the most important chapters in the whole of scripture. It begins with the wonderful reminder us that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. What Christ does for us on the cross frees us from the effects and consequences of sin. This is the fundamental good news of Christianity!

Next, we are told that we are children of God and therefore heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. Not only are we saved from sin but we are accepted, loved, valued and welcomed by God. The good new of Christianity gets better and better!

Then, we read that being revealed as the children of God is not only good news for us but also good news for the planet because the creation is waiting with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God. Instead of the selfish and wasteful exploitation of creation’s resources – the domination and abuse – which characterises human engagement with the world, we are intended to creatively realise the inherent possibilities, the essential goodness, of creation through our imaginative ability as those who notice and name. We are able to do this because we have left our old, selfish way of life behind and have been adopted by God as his children, becoming brothers and sisters of Jesus, co-heirs with him of all he possesses.

Unfortunately, large numbers of people in our world have yet to realise that they are God’s children and live selfishly as a result. That impacts our world in many ways which are detrimental to it and, as we wait for further change, we can often feel inadequate to the work of realising the essential goodness of our world and therefore feel lost for words in praying for our world and its transformation.

I wonder how often you find yourself lost for words. While some of us are more garrulous than others, it is an experience that comes to us all, particularly when we have experiences that either raise us to the heights or plunge us into the depths.

I wonder how often you have had that the experience of being lost for words as you pray. In prayer, it is possible that we might feel inadequate as we have heard others pray publicly and think that we are unable to pray as eloquently, so may not pray at all. Equally, we may experience what artists and writers experience, that is the difficulty of beginning – of putting words together or making marks on a pristine page. Equally, in prayer, we may have the experience of feeling that our words cannot match the experience we are having, whether or exaltation or depression. Whatever the reason, we are promised in today’s New Testament reading that the Holy Spirit will help us in such moments.

St Paul acknowledges in this passage that such times come; that there are times when we find it hard to pray. We do not know how to pray he writes to the Church in Rome (Romans 8. 26) but in those times the Holy Spirit himself comes to help us by pleading with God for us in groans that words cannot express.

We are often quite restrained in our relationship with God and in our praying. Therefore, we will often praise God and say that we will obey or follow him but we rarely argue, protest, complain or question him, at least not publicly. Yet here Paul is saying that the Holy Spirit wishes to help us express our deepest feelings – the groans that words cannot express - to God. Doing so is part of our coming to know God more deeply.

Words, themselves, are sometimes inadequate to express how we feel, which may be why St Paul speaks here of groans that words cannot express. We will all have heard, for example, of the practice in some cultures of Keening.

Keening can mean making any long, sad, or wailing sound but is, most famously, the act of making a loud, high-pitched lament for the dead in the Gaelic tradition of Ireland and Scotland. As a ritualized form of mourning involving crying, wailing, and singing over a deceased person, it recognises that words cannot express our grief in the moment of death and that what is needed to feel adequate to the moment are groans that words cannot express.

I had a similar experience following the untimely death of my brother when, at the airport in Pristina towards which the plane on which he had been travelling had been headed, I heard stories of the impact he had had on people in the Disaster Response Team with which he had been working in Kosovo and on the Kosovan people whom he had been helping to rebuild their homes following the conflict in their country. As those stories were told, all I could do was to cry continually; both at the sense of loss and because of a sense that God had received my brother Nick into his presence saying ‘Well done, good and faithful servant’. On that occasion, my tears were the groans that words cannot express.

I had the opposite experience as a young Christian when, following a service, I spent along time confessing by sins to God and then felt an overwhelming sense of joy that meant I was laughing continuously without being able to stop. I was at a campsite at the base of the Malvern Hills at the time and spent the evening wandering around that beautiful site laughing uncontrollably because of the sense of joy that words could not express that God had put into my heart that night.

Being lost for words is not a problem when it comes to prayer, instead it can be an opportunity for us to become open to God in a new way that allows emotions, whether of joy or grief, to flow through us and from us in ways that touch both the depths and heights of our emotions.

Next time you encounter that sense of being lost for words when you are praying ask the Spirit to help you in your weakness, as you do not know how to pray as you ought, and the very Spirit will intercede in you with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, will know what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

The fact that God is with us in this way is a confirmation that, despite the challenges of life and the depressing effects of conflict and climate change in our world, nothing can separate us from the love of God and nothing will separate us because, as Julian of Norwich, all shall be well, all shall be well, and all manner of thing be well. As St Paul writes: ‘I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.’

So, here is the good news of Christianity encapsulated in one chapter. There is no condemnation for us as welcomes us into his family as his children, giving us all that Jesus also possesses. Our world too can and will be transformed and changed as more are revealed as children of God and live as children of God. While we wait for that change to come God speaks in and through us as his Spirit prays in us for that time of transformation to come. This reality is confirmation that the selfishness we see impacting our world currently is not the final story and will not ultimately dominate life of this planet. Instead, our world will know transformation through the love of Christ which ultimately overcomes and changes all that stands in its way. Love wins! Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. All shall be well, all shall be well, and all manner of thing be well. Amen.

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Jonathan Evens - Meditation on Alan Oldfield's Revelations of Divine Love of Julian of Norwich.

The apostle of the resurrection

Here's the reflection I shared during today's midweek Eucharist for St Andrew's Wickford:

Mary Magdalene by Malcolm Guite.

Today is the Feast of St Mary Magdalene. ‘Mary Magdalene is a woman who has been largely defined by the church fathers… as a repentant sinner, and it was assumed those sins were sexual,’ says former New York Poet Laureate Marie Howe, who was raised Catholic. In her book of poems called Magdalene, Howe seeks to re-envision Mary Magdalene for the modern age. ‘Magdalene imagines the biblical figure of Mary Magdalene as a woman who embodies the spiritual and sensual, alive in a contemporary landscape— hailing a cab, raising a child, listening to the news on the radio. Between facing the traumas of her past and navigating daily life, the narrator of Magdalene yearns for the guidance of her spiritual teacher, a Christ figure, whose death she continues to grieve.'

'Just as many women today sit down to practice meditation or to pray, Mary Magdalene sought meaning and understanding by following Jesus as teacher. “She wanted to find metaphysical meaning,” Howe said.'

In one of the poems she has an encounter that takes her to a third place she’ not yet been.

then I was looking at my old friend John—
suddenly I was in and I saw him,
and he (and this was almost unbearable)
he saw me see him,
and I saw him see me.

He said something like, You’re going to be ok now,
Or, It’s been difficult hasn’t it,
but what he said mattered only a little.

We met -- in our mutual gaze --in between
a third place I’d not yet been.

(The Affliction)

Erotic, spirited, and searching for meaning, she becomes a woman striving to be the subject of her own life, fully human and alive to the sacred in the mortal world.

‘The world that would have gone on without me bargained and cluttered and I walked where I wanted, free of the pretense of family now, belonging to no one, back to the place where he’d bent and written in the dust.’

Jim Friedman notes that it was when the sixth-century Pope Gregory the Great conflated Mary Magdalene with the anonymous woman taken in adultery and the weeping sinner whose tears bathed the feet of her Lord, that Mary Magdalene became a compelling archetype for the forgiven sinner.’ ‘Through the long centuries of male-dominated biblical storytelling, the conflated Magdalene figure was typecast as a fallen women tainted by her erotic past’.

Howe says that by being juxtaposed against Mary the mother of Jesus, ‘Magdalene was set up as the repentant sinner (often a prostitute), creating a split that has affected women for generations. This split between the virgin and the whore, the mother and the single woman, the sacred and the sensual, the body and the spirit – established by the patriarchy – has caused so much suffering in women,’ How can this split begin to be healed? Howe has said, perhaps by talking about it – telling stories – stories such as those in Magdalene.

Andrew Nunn, Dean of Southwark Cathedral says that: ‘More has been said about Mary than is probably true. Her story has been mixed up with other stories – of fallen women, of disturbed women, of faithful women, of passionate women, of accused women, of scandalous women – and all rolled into one story. But Jesus met all those women who challenged convention, who dared to speak, who dared to act and he welcomed them, as he welcomes us, with all our contradictions. But what we do know is that of all the people he could have met in the garden by the tomb in the first dawn of Easter Day, it was Mary, and he asked her to be the apostle of his resurrection.

Jim Friedman notes that these days Mary Magdalene ‘is more accurately understood as an important disciple and primary witness to the Resurrection.’ Malcolm Guite writes: ‘Mary, a woman, despised and condemned by the self righteous, but loved by Jesus was chosen by him to be the first witness of the good news of his resurrection, and in her meeting with the love of Christ a graveyard once more became a garden.’

Easter Dawn by Malcolm Guite.

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Malcolm Guite - Easter Dawn.

You'll Never Walk Alone

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

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

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

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

Our Gospel reading (Matthew 8: 23 – 27) also speaks about a storm and the way in which God is with those in the storm. The disciples in the boat on Lake Galilee experienced a literal storm but they were also caught up in an event of set of external circumstances that were beyond their control. That is probably the most common way in which we experience storms within our own lives. Circumstances conspire to bring illness or redundancy or debt or breakdown in relationships. We may have made choices that have contributed to the situation – just as the disciples made the choice to go out in the boat – but we end up by finding ourselves in circumstances that are beyond our control and which threaten to overwhelm us.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Delirious? - Find Me In The River.

A theology of welcome

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

Jesus called his 12 disciples to an itinerant ministry which involved going ahead of him to prepare people for his coming and his message. As a result, they took nothing unnecessary with them, they weren’t distracted by small talk along the way, and they welcomed hospitality when they received it but simply moved on to the next place and the next person whenever they were not made welcome. We’ve been listening to and reflecting on the instructions Jesus gave to his disciples in our Gospel readings for the past couple of weeks (Matthew 10). This passage (Matthew 10.40-42) comes as the conclusion to Jesus’ teaching. His concluding words are all about the importance of welcome.

Before the disciples go Jesus warns that those who fail to welcome them are not only turning God’s messengers away from their homes and lives but God himself too. As he says, “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me” and earlier, “Whoever listens to you listens to me; whoever rejects you rejects me; and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me.” When the disciples return to him, he rejoices at the welcome which they have received and the sense that the Gospel has been received from “the diverse and motley group he has chosen as his associates.”

The emphasis in these passages is on the hospitality provided by others to Jesus’ disciples. We tend to think of ourselves as being called like them to take the good news of Jesus to others, so we naturally identify ourselves with the disciples in the passage and think about the response we receive from others when they know that we are Christians. But to really get the force and challenge of what Jesus is saying in this passage we have to put ourselves in the shoes of those the disciples went to and ask ourselves how well do we receive others? The challenge in this passage is about the quality of the welcome provided to others. The great sin here is to be inhospitable and to be inhospitable is actually to reject the divine in our lives.

John Bowen is one who has offered a brief theology of welcome beginning with God welcoming us. God’s posture, as Jesus shows it over and over again, is one of welcome towards humankind. Thus, Jesus welcomes the crowds (Luke 9:11). In particular, he welcomes “sinners” – to the discomfiture of the Pharisees. “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them!” they say in amazed disgust (Luke 15:2). How can he open himself to such people? The story Jesus tells in response, of course, is all about a father who is also a welcomer.

The most frequent Greek word for welcome, or receive, is dechomai. Twice, when describing those banquets which are foretastes of God’s eschatological banquet, Luke uses an unusual word for “feast”—doche—-which is related to dechomai. Welcoming, it seems, is most naturally followed by feasting!

As God welcome us, so we are called to welcome God. God’s hope is that humankind will reciprocate by welcoming his banquet invitation. In fact, the word dechomai becomes almost a technical term in the New Testament – the equivalent of receiving or believing or trusting in God’s salvation. So, when the New Testament observes anyone engaged in “welcoming”, it is not just a sociological statement but also a theological one. The welcome means the welcomer has welcomed God’s grace.

Thus when Zaccheus “welcomes” Jesus into his house, it is almost Luke’s code way of saying, “Look! Do you get it? Zaccheus has entered the kingdom.” It is not only receiving Jesus which has theological significance, however. As we have heard this morning, when Jesus sent out the twelve, he explained to them, “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me” (Matthew 10:40 cf. John 13:20). Paul too understands that the messenger stands in for the speaker. When he recalls how the Galatians first welcomed him, he says, “you welcomed me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus” (Galatians 4:14). Their welcome of God’s messenger was the beginning of their opening the door to God.

Finally, then, there is our welcoming of one another. The work of God’s Spirit in us can be summarised as making us like Jesus, restoring the image of God in us. Part of that renewing is to turn us into welcomers in just the way that God is a welcomer. Jesus urged us, “When you give a feast [doch], invite the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind…” (Luke 14:12-14) Paul says much the same thing, only in different words: “Welcome one another, as God in Christ welcomed you.” (Romans 15:7) God is the standard by which we are to measure the warmth of our welcoming.

For Paul, as for Jesus, this was not a matter of mere words. When Luke records at the climax of the Book of Acts that Paul “welcomed all who came to him”, we recognise this to be a Christ-like kind of welcoming, not least because Luke adds pointedly that Paul entertained “at his own expense” — just as God’s welcoming is at God’s own expense. (Acts 28:20)

When we welcome strangers into our churches, then, like Paul we are agents of God, representing the God who has welcomed us without reserve. The hand of welcome we extend is God’s hand. There is thus something sacramental in the act of welcoming. It is, as the BCP says of baptism, “an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace”: the sign of the grace God has shown to us. Is it costly? Is it disturbing? Naturally. That’s the way grace is. But it is also deeply divine, and deeply human.

So, how do we rate on that basis? We think of ourselves as a friendly, welcoming church but it’s important not rest on our laurels and instead ask ourselves how we can be more welcoming, more hospitable to those who come for the first time and those that we don’t know well. When we are here in church, let us make those people our priority, always seeking to speak first to those we don’t know, don’t know well or haven’t spoken to for some time.

Whoever welcomes, welcomes Jesus and welcomes God. If we truly want to see and hear God, then all we need to do is to welcome those we encounter as we will see the face of God in them. God calls us not just to be those who follow him but also to be those sent out to prepare the way for him to come into the lives of others and challenges us, too, to be those who are always welcoming, always hospitable towards others.

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Let Us Build A House.