X marks the spot

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The X that marks the spot for us as Christians is Jesus. Jesus came into our world as the Word of God to live a life of self-sacrificial love as a human being. He shows us what true love looks like and he shows us that human beings are capable of true love even when most of the evidence around us seems to point towards the opposite conclusion. But he did not come solely as an example or a description of love. He is love itself, the reality of love, and, therefore, as we come into relationship with him we come into a true relationship with love. This why he came, that we might receive him; that we might receive love. He is then in us and in him. Love in us and we in love.

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

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

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

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

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John Davis - I Hear Your Voice.

The boundary-breaking call of Jesus

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

This story of Mary and Martha has often been interpreted in terms of being and doing (Luke 10.38-42). The Wikipedia entry on the story of Martha and Mary summarises the usual way in which it is interpreted: “Mary chose listening to the teachings of Jesus over helping her sister prepare food. Jesus responded that she was right because only one thing is needed, “one thing” apparently meaning listening to the teachings of Jesus… To simplify, this is frequently interpreted as spiritual values being more important than material business, such as preparation of food.”

Yet, Martha had opened her home to Jesus and his disciples and providing hospitality and welcome to strangers was of vital importance within Judaism and in Middle Eastern culture generally. The rabbis taught that Abraham left off a discussion with God and went to greet guests when they arrived at his camp. He ran to greet them during the hottest day on record and served them the best food he could put together. Based on that example, the rabbis said that taking care of guests is greater than receiving the divine presence.

When Jesus sent out his disciples to prepare the way for him to come to towns and villages on the way to Jerusalem, he told them to look out for and stay with those, like Martha, who would welcome them (Luke 10). So, Jesus’ words to Martha, while they can appear critical, were not intended as a denigration of the role she was fulfilling, which, as we have thought, has a vital place in Middle Eastern culture.

Jesus had already affirmed Martha's hospitality by welcoming and receiving all she offered. However, he also wanted to affirm Mary’s action as well because Mary's action points to an alternative role for women which could only begin to be realised as a result of his affirmation.

Mary sat at Jesus’ feet listening to what he said. That was the usual posture of a disciple of any teacher in the ancient world. But disciples were usually male, so Mary would have been quietly breaking the rule that reserved study for males, not females.

Tom Wright notes that: “To sit at someone’s feet meant, quite simply, to be their student. And to sit at the feet of a rabbi was what you did if you wanted to be a rabbi yourself. There is no thought here of learning for learning’s sake. Mary has quietly taken her place as a would-be teacher and preacher of the kingdom of God.

Jesus affirms her right to do so. Jesus’ valuation of each human being is based on the overflowing love of God, which, like a great river breaking its banks into a parched countryside, irrigates those parts of human society which until now had remained barren and unfruitful. Mary stands for all those women who, when they hear Jesus speaking about the kingdom, know that God is calling them to listen carefully so that they can speak it too.”

Martha was possibly not merely asking for help but demanding that Mary keep to the traditional way of behaving. Jesus, though, affirmed Mary in the place and role of a disciple: “Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her." Martha, Ayla Lepine suggests, “wrapped up in the anxieties of hospitality in relation to rank and status, is ‘distracted by many things.’ Jesus tenderly invites her to dare to offer loving attention that is not transactional – Jesus expects nothing in return for the wisdom and love he offers.”

Jesus refused to be sidetracked by issues of gender when faced with women in any kind of need and consistently put people before dogma. Luke’s Gospel not only reports that Jesus had female disciples, but specifically names them in Luke 8.1-3. Throughout his Gospel, Luke pays particular and positive attention to the role of women; presenting women, not only as witnesses to the events surrounding the birth and resurrection of Jesus, but also as active participants in God's Messianic purposes.

As a result, Tom Wright suggests: “We would be wrong, then, to see Martha and Mary, as they have so often been seen, as models of the ‘active’ and the ‘contemplative’ styles of spirituality. Action and contemplation are of course both important. Without the first you wouldn’t eat, without the second you wouldn’t worship. And no doubt some people are called to one kind of balance between them, and others to another. But we cannot escape the challenge of this passage by turning it into a comment about different types of Christian lifestyle. It is about the boundary-breaking call of Jesus.”

This counter-balance to the patriarchy of the time was necessary in order to signal the value of both women and men in God's plan of salvation and their equal importance in the new community that was the Church. Ultimately, this led to the point that we have reached relatively recently in the Church of England of ordaining women as priests and bishops.

In our Gospel reading today, Mary shows us the importance of making Jesus the central focus of our life and learning while Martha shows us the value of welcome, hospitality and service. The ministries of each one of us can be enhanced by reflecting on the examples that both provide and, through that, the recognition that the saints are not special, super-human people but: sisters, like Martha and Mary, who become frustrated with each other’s choices; and engaged women, like Mary, challenged to obey God in ways that put their relationships under strain.

May we be inspired by their examples and also by all women who have followed in their wake as saints and leaders, and more recently as priests and bishops. May we be inspired by saints such as, in our/my Parish, Catherine, who bravely debated with scholars, philosophers, and orators and was persecuted for her Christian faith after protesting against the treatment of her fellow Christians at the hands of Maxentius, Roman Emperor from 306 to 312 AD. Also, Our Lady Mary, “the prime God-Bearer, bearing for us in time the One who was begotten in eternity” remembering that “every Christian after her seeks to become in some small way a God-bearer, one whose ‘yes’ to God means that Christ is made alive and fruitful in the world through our flesh and our daily lives, is born and given to another” (Malcolm Guite).

We can add to those inspirational women, others associated with our churches or Deanery, [in our team, women such as Christine McCafferty, Tara Frankland, Jane Freeman, and, currently, our own Sue Wise and Emma Doe] [such as your own Jacqui Moss and elsewhere Trudy Arnold, Carol Ball, Ruth Dowley, Margaret Fowler, Christine Williams, Karen White and Sue Wise]. Additionally, there are a large number of lay women who have and continue to support and lead within our churches. Each are examples to all of us of what real commitment to Christ entails and involves. This is particularly so because the campaigns to see women take their place alongside men as bishops and at every level in the Church of England have not been about women gaining an ascendency which men have had in the past but, instead, about the full equality of women and men in the Church as part of God's will for his people, and as a reflection of the inclusive heart of the Christian scripture and tradition.

What we see through their lives and examples is that each one of us are saints; whatever our gender and ministry, its prominence or hiddenness. The only saints to feature in the New Testament are each and every member of a local church. The saints are simply those who are church members whether in Ephesus, in Jerusalem, in Rome, or wherever including, today, those of us here in Wickford and Runwell / Pitsea.

In Christ’s Church and kingdom there should be no gender divide in how we serve and follow him. So, like Martha, each of us (male and female) can practise and value the ministries of welcome, hospitality and service of all and, like Mary, each of us (female and male) can practise and value making Jesus the central focus of our lives and learning as his disciples.

May we be inspired by their examples and those of other women we have mentioned and at the same time may we support all those women who lead us so well within our churches currently, recognising that these are they who are God-bearers, “those whose ‘yes’ to God means that Christ is made alive and fruitful in the world through our flesh and our daily lives, is born and given to another” (Malcolm Guite).

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The Ocean Blue - Between Something And Nothing.

Two orders of society

Here's the sermon that I shared this morning at St Mary’s Runwell and St Gabriel’s Pitsea:

“This place has known magic, very dark, very powerful. This time I cannot hope to destroy it alone. Times like these, dark times, they can bring people together but they can tear them apart. Evil will pass through from their world into our own – these are mad times we live in, mad – and the darkest hour is upon us all. In my life I’ve seen things that are truly horrific, now I know that you will see worse. You have no choice. You must not fail.”

Does anyone know or would anyone like to guess where those words come from?

They are from the film Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince; a film and a series which are about a battle between forces of darkness and light described in words and images that are not so dissimilar from those we heard today in each of our Bible readings:

“For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armour of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.” (Ephesians 6. 12-13)

"Does this make you want to give up? What gives life is God’s spirit; human power is of no use at all. The words I have spoken to you bring God’s life-giving Spirit. Yet some of you do not believe." (John 6. 61-64)

Does this mean that as Christians we are actually living in the equivalent of a Harry Potter film? Life generally, although it is often a real struggle, doesn’t look or feel like that! Fantasy books and films can be a means of exploring the dark forces in life and the sense of a cosmic conflict in our world but they can also be a reason for dismissing, as fantasy, this Biblical sense of there being a cosmic conflict in which we are all in some way engaged.

The most helpful writer I have found on these themes to date is Stephen Verney, a former Bishop of Repton. His commentary on John’s Gospel, Water into Wine, begins by noting the way in which this Gospel consistently speaks about there being two different levels or orders to reality. What he means by this are different patterns of society, each with a different centre or ruling power. He gives as an example, the difference between a fascist order and a democratic order:

“In the fascist order there is a dictator, and round him subservient people who raise their hands in salute, and are thrown into concentration camps if they disobey. In the democratic order … there is an elected government, and round it persons who are interdependent, who share initiatives and ideas.”

So, what are the two orders that he sees described in John’s Gospel? In the first, “the ruling principle is the dictator ME, my ego-centric ego, and the pattern of society is people competing with, manipulating and trying to control each other.” In the second, “the ruling principle is the Spirit of Love, and the pattern of society is one of compassion – people giving to each other what they really are, and accepting what others are, recognising their differences, and sharing their vulnerability.”

I see these two different orders clearly defined when Jesus comes before Pilate, as I have described in the first of a series of meditations I have written on the Stations of the Cross:

Jesus and Pilate
head-to-head
in a clash of cultures.
Pilate is
angular, aggressive, threatening
representing
the oppressive, controlling
Empire of dominating power,
with its strength in numbers
and weaponry,
which can crucify
but cannot
set free.
Jesus is
curves and crosses,
love and sacrifice,
representing
the kingdom of God;
a kingdom of love,
service and self-sacrifice
birthing men and women
into the freedom
to love one another.

The way of compassion
or the way of domination;
the way of self-sacrifice
or the way of self;
the way of powerlessness
or the way of power;
the way of serving
or the way of grasping;
the kingdom of God
or the empires of Man.

These two orders or patterns for society are at war with each other and it is this struggle, against the rulers, the authorities, the powers of this dark world and the spiritual forces of evil, of which we are a part.

Now, in today’s readings, we are asked to choose our side in this struggle. Verney writes of this being the key question for us as human beings, the question being “so urgent that our survival depending on finding the answer. He writes that: “we can see in our world order the terrible consequences of our ego-centricity. We have projected it into our institutions, where it has swollen up into a positive force of evil. Human beings have set up prison camps where they torture each other for pleasure. We are all imprisoned together, in a system of competing nation states, on the edge of a catastrophe which could destroy all life on our planet.”

And so, as Colin Buchanan writes in his commentary on Ephesians: “… the major battle in which we are called to engage is among the principalities and powers, in the structures of society, in the liberation of the oppressed, in the conserving of the environment, in the provision of housing and jobs, and in the protection of the helpless and innocent.”

It is at this point that we often draw back and say what people often say about engagement in politics i.e. what different can I make? What different can my vote or my voice or my actions make? Aren’t we talking here about global order and forces that can’t be influenced or affected by individuals, so what possible difference can I make on my own?

But individual action is not what Jesus or Paul were primarily talking about. Jesus was talking to the disciples who would go on to form the bedrock of the Church. And Paul, who had already written in Ephesians 3. 10 that “[God’s] intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God, should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms”, when he writes about the armour of God writes not in the singular but the plural. The armour of God is armour for us to put on and use together in the cosmic conflict.

Colin Buchanan writes that: “Our being ‘drawn together’ by Jesus Christ, as denominations, church fellowships and individuals within those fellowships, is crucial to the fight … Paul may be telling us how to become a single army under the hand of God … So let the church identify the enemy and, as a single force – the body of Christ, go for the jugular. We have … God’s kingdom to bring in. We can only do it … together.”

We have seen this happen in practice in the various non-violent revolutions of the twentieth century; Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jubilee 2000 and other campaigns show what is possible when people of faith and people of peace come together in sufficient numbers to make a difference. Together we can engage the principalities and powers, the structures of society, to liberate the oppressed, conserve the environment, provide housing and jobs, and protect the helpless and innocent.

Together; we can only do it together. Joshua challenged the people of Israel, Jesus challenged the disciples, Paul challenged the Church:

‘Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the ego-centric ego, where people compete with, manipulate and try to control each other or the Spirit of Love, where people give to each other what they really are, and accept what others are, recognising their differences, and sharing their vulnerability. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Spirit of Love.’ Amen.

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Siskin Green - Love Is The Touch.

St Mary's Live and St Gabriel's 60th Anniversary

Great to see our colleagues and friends in the Basildon Deanery organising cultural and heritage events: 

St Mary’s Live

Please join us as we begin a monthly series of Music & Entertainment at St Mary & All Saints Church, Langdon Hills, SS16 6HY

Starting on Saturday September 30th

From 7pm - 9pm

Chelmsford based Dee Mardi - Vocalist, Writer, Actress. Versatile “Crossover Entertainer” [= Classical + Contemporary style combined] & Performance Poet presents: “On The Line”



Dee sings, reads, and airs a selection of her philosophical, witty, and comical musings and writings about life, laundry, and lines. Includes some songs from musicals and other writers, with content taken from her show "The Laundry Of Life Pegged On The Line" seen previously at the Edinburgh Festival

Interval Refreshments including Wine available. Donations welcome.

Bring some friends to this innovative first presentation.

For further information please contact Martyn Harrison - Email mhrson.music20@gmail.com

** There will be lighting provided on the path from the Car Park to the Church **

Further dates for your diary

• Saturday October 28th Lady and the Scamp - Lady & the Scamp are a talented music duo, specialising in Jazz and their own arrangements of popular ballads
• Saturday November 25th “Musical Fireworks” - Anne & Andrew Liddell with friends – instrumental extravaganza - Xmas early!
• Saturday December 9th “Christmas Waits” - A light hearted look at Christmas traditions and music from around the world plus seasonal favourites. Martyn Harrison and Contemporary vocalist Anne Sherwood.

St. Gabriel Pitsea 

1963-2023 

60th Anniversary 

Diamond Jubilee 

Celebration Services & Events 

• Thursday 21st September 5pm By the Foundation Stone Open air service on the Actual Day - 60 years on 
• Friday 29th September St. Michael & All Angels’ Day 6.30pm Evening Prayer 
• Sunday 1st October St. Gabriel’s Patronal Festival & Diamond Jubilee Celebration: 9.30am Holy Communion;  11.15am “For all the Church Family” (See what is happening in St. Gabriel’s Church now!); 6.30pm Evensong (As it would have been in 1963 - if you wish, come dressed accordingly!) 

There will be an exhibition of the building of St. Gabriel’s in 1963 running in the Church throughout September. 

Please ask for details of opening times. 

The Reverend Simon Law 01268 556874 Rector of the Parish of Pitsea with Nevendon.

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Simon Law - The Haven.