The way to unity is through diversity

Here's the sermon I shared in the 8.00 am service at St Mary Magdalene, Great Burstead, this morning:

In the culture of Jesus’ day, those with disabilities were often excluded from their community because of their disability. We see this in the Gospels in references to disabled people living outside villages and towns and being beggars on the streets. Those who were Jews, were excluded from worship at the Temple because of their disability. Jesus’ acts of healing were, therefore, acts of inclusion because, as a result, those healed were reintegrated into their community. For those who were Jews, we often read of these people being sent to authorities after their healing in other that they can return to their communities.

Despite this, as the theologian John Hull has noted, many disabled people rightly ‘claim the Bible and Christian faith are not so much part of the answer but part of the problem.’ He notes that ‘many Christians still persist with a literal concept of miracle, and the imitation of Christ is sometimes thought to involve healing miracles for disabled people.’ In addition, ‘the Bible itself depicts many disabilities in a negative way.’ ‘He gives blindness as one example, due to his personal experience of this condition, which ‘is frequently used as a metaphor for sin and unbelief.’ This is a metaphor taken from the world of sighted people and used to marginalise and demean the world of blind people. The result of these negative features of the [Christian] tradition’, John Hull says, ‘is that disabled people usually find better things to do on a Sunday morning than go to church’ (https://faithinhealth.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/theology-of-disability-health-and-healing-conference.pdf and http://www.johnmhull.biz/A%20Spirituality%20of%20Disability1.htm).

That situation is the reverse of Jesus’ intent when he healed. He intended to include disabled people in the community, culture and worship of his day but some aspects of the Christian tradition which he began have resulted in disabled people experiencing exclusion. As John Hull has said, ‘The true miracle … is when disabled people are fully integrated into Church life and accepted exactly as they are’ (http://www.johnmhull.biz/ChurchTimesInterview3rdMay2013.doc).

This is why it is vital that we address access issues as a church. We inhabit buildings which visual treasure chests, particularly here at Great Burstead with your medieval wall paintings. We rightly value the wonderful architecture and the beauty of our churches. However, if those who are blind are unable to also appreciate what we see in our churches and those with mobility impairments cannot access the spaces in order to see while those who can access and see the glories of these spaces accept that others cannot, we are actually a places and communities of exclusion. Instead, we need to creatively imagine how we can include those who are currently excluded.

Jesus, in order to communicate with the man in our Gospel story (Mark 7. 31 – 37), uses touch and gesture. There are several different theories as to why Jesus acts in ways that seem very strange to us; putting his fingers in the man’s ears, spitting before putting his fingers on the man’s tongue and looking up to heaven. The simplest explanation would seem to be that touch and gesture were the ways in which communication could take place. The starting point for inclusion for us, as for Jesus, is to enter to some extent the world of the other person, in this case the man who was deaf and who had a speech impediment.

It can only be as we connect with the different world that others inhabit that understanding can come from which inclusion can develop. John Hull says: ‘The major disabilities create a distinctive world of experience, so different from the world in which the majority live as to constitute different human worlds. The powerful majority often create a world which is assumed to be the only world. Those who do not share this world are regarded as being without a world and are pitied or patronised. This idea of multiple worlds is of great political and social significance. If you do not understand my world, how can we relate to each other with mutual respect? If we rush too soon to a single world, we create an exclusive domination. The only way to create a unity of the human species is to go through multiplicity. The way to unity is through diversity … We must also include the different human worlds of experience, such as the disabled worlds we have been thinking about. Just as the Church can’t be holy or catholic without the equal ministry of women with men, so it cannot be holy or catholic without the equal prophetic and sacramental ministry of disabled people with the able-bodied.’

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Carleen Anderson - Let It Last.

Let me go, because then the Spirit will come

Here's my reflection, with a new meditation, from the Ascension Day Eucharist at St Martin-in-the-Fields:

Imagine how the disciples must first have felt when they heard that Jesus was planning to leave them in order to return to his Father. They had had an incredible roller-coaster three years of ministry together with him which had culminated in the agony of watching him die. They thought that they had lost him and that all their hopes and dreams had been dashed. Then there was the joy of the resurrection; the dawning realisation that Jesus was alive, was still with them and was not lost to them after all.

And then the Ascension. The Jesus that they thought they had regained left them. What was that all about? There was so much that they still had to learn? There was so much that they could have done together? Why?

Because Jesus was physically distancing himself from the disciples at the Ascension, there is a similarity to the words that Jesus spoke to Mary Magdalene when she became the first to recognise him after his resurrection. As she did so, she naturally reached out to embrace him but his words to her were, “Touch me not.” Why?

There is a strand of theology which is called ‘the Negative Way.’ Within this way of thinking about God all images and understandings of God are consistently given up and let go because they are human constructions that can only show part of what God is.

So, all talk of Jesus as shepherd, lamb, son, brother, friend, master, servant, king, lord, saviour, redeemer and so on goes out of the window because God is always more than the images that we construct to understand him. In saying that, I was speaking of God as being masculine, something which is, again, only a limited human understanding of God. Ultimately, God is neither male nor female but is Spirit and the Negative Way says that in order to encounter God as being beyond our limited imaginations and understandings we need to give up and let go of all our human ways of describing him.

The Ascension and Jesus’ words to Mary seem to say something similar. Jesus seems to be saying to the disciples, “Don’t cling on to me. Let go of me as you know me because, when you do, you will gain a greater experience, less limited experience, of me. Don’t cling on to me. Let me go, because then the Spirit will come.”

To let go of what is safe and familiar and secure in order to be open to encounter what is beyond is both scary and exhilarating. Yet, it has been, in part, a key part of our experience for many of us during lockdown. It is what Jesus calls us to here and it is the way in which we encounter the Spirit in our lives.

The title of a song by the ska band Madness, ‘One Step Beyond,’ became a catchphrase in my previous parish that developed real spiritual meaning by challenging us to go further in living out our Christian faith, to go one step beyond where we are now in the way that we live as Christians. The Ascension seems to challenge us to go at least one step beyond where we are now in our understanding of God. We need to leave the safety, security and familiarity of the past in order to encounter the new thing that God is doing in the present.

The Ascension teaches us that nothing is sacred: not buildings, not books, not actions, not people; not even Jesus as the disciples encountered him! We must always move beyond our understanding of the place, space, people and realisations that we have now because that is how the Spirit comes!

Touch me not.
I am not yours
to have and hold,
in this shape
in this form.
Let go.
Let me go.
Let my Spirit come.
Divine my Spirit,
know me
within.

An absence
that is presence.
A leave-taking
that is arrival.
A loss of God
that is
being found
in God –
being in God,
being one
with God.

Touch me not
as flesh and blood.
Touch me now
in bread.
Consume me.
Let me in,
within,
as wine
divine.
Elements,
Spirit -
I in you,
and you
in me.

I ascend -
human in heaven.
Understanding,
interceding -
humanity
at the heart
of Godhead
filling the
human-shaped
space
in the very heart
of God.

Do also join us later today at 8.00pm on BBC Radio 4 for a celebration for Ascension Day. That service will be led by our Vicar, the Revd Dr Sam Wells, and the Revd Marie-Elsa Bragg, with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, The Daily Service Singers and St Martin's Voices.

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Hail The Day That Sees Him Rise.

God of the visible and the invisible

Here are intercessions that I wrote for today's Eucharist at St Martin-in-the-Fields:

God of the visible and the invisible, God of the incarnate Christ and the ascended Christ, God of the Son who lived and died in 1st century Palestine and God of the Spirit that blows where it chooses in every time and culture, we come before you today acknowledging all your different guises and ways of being. We cannot fully understand you, we cannot constrain you, and yet we can know you, love you, and know your love and life in us. In awe and wonder at your diversity and variety, we ask that we might encounter you in as many ways as we can bear and, especially, within the challenges and changes brought by Covid-19. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

God of presence and absence, we ask that in this time of physical distancing we may learn from the insights of those that have sought isolation in order to pray allowing our cells to teach us everything, as the city truly becomes our monastery. We ask, too, that, although physically separate, we will not neglect to meet together but encourage one another, and all the more as we face together the challenges of this day and time. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

God of affirmation and negation, we ask that, in this time of loss, we will discover what is truly central to our lives and loves, praying for all who have lost loved ones that the memories of all that was shared will come to outweigh the sudden bleakness of loss. In our loss of liberty and movement, may we see afresh and affirm all that we had overlooked and ignored in the haste and hurry of our previous lives; the beauty of birdsong, the clearness of air and sky, the peace and rest encountered in the still and the slow. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

God of touch and distance, we pray that we may understand our social distancing as an act of love to protect others from danger and maintain this discipline until no longer necessary. We pray for those whose touching of others is essential for the saving of life – all medics, paramedics, care workers and all in other emergency services – praying that they might be given the PPE and testing needed for their own protection. We pray, too, for those who are the recipients of their care praying for many that care will enable recovery. We pray, too, that our physical distancing at this time may become a spur to acts of greater love, support and service towards others, in ways that, while virtual, are nevertheless full of care, concern and meaning. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

God of sight and insight, we pray for those we only see virtually giving thanks for the technology that enables us to see others without their being physically present and for those that invented, maintain and develop that technology. We give thanks too for all who have preceded us in using this technology well – often those who have been on the edge of society and church – praying that we will learn from their experiences and value all they have to share. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

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The Innocence Mission - St Francis And The Future.

We are those who do not touch and yet are blessed in not so doing

Here's the reflection I shared today in the Eucharist at St Martin-in-the-Fields: 

Christianity is a touchy-feely faith. That is because of the incarnation, in which God became flesh and blood and moved into our neighbourhood. Touch was a key part of Jesus’ work as a carpenter, just as it was, too, of his healing ministry. Jesus was himself touched by the woman who was healed of a flow of blood and touched, as brutally as one can be touched, when he was arrested, tortured and crucified.

Touch is a key part of his life prior to his resurrection and here (Luke 24: 35-48) we read of his saying to his disciples, ‘Touch me and see.’ He did the same for Thomas, who had said unless I touch I will not believe, but, in this same period, he also said to Mary, ‘Touch me not’ and used his encounter with Thomas to bless those who believe without touching or seeing. In the story of the encounter on the Emmaus Road, as soon as he was recognised, and before his disciples could touch him, he disappeared from their presence. In the resurrection stories we read often of his suddenly appearing to and then disappearing from his disciples.

The visible Christ was shortly to become, following his Ascension, the invisible Christ. Those who believe in him, after the disciples, would be those who believe without touching or seeing him. Just as he prepared his disciples for his crucifixion, although they struggled to understand, so, in this period, he was preparing his disciples, who again struggled to understand, for his Ascension and a life in which they could not touch and see him physically.

This mirrors our experience in this time of lockdown. We have gone, almost overnight, from an experience of daily life in which shaking hands, hugging and kissing were all ordinary, everyday, acceptable forms of face-to-face, in-person encounter to a world in which we are isolated one from the other, only able to see each other virtually and where touch is the most dangerous action for one and all. We are like the disciples in suddenly transitioning from communing with the visible Christ to communing with the invisible Christ.

One thing is clear, though, from the Emmaus story and from the wider experience of the disciples: as the visible Christ became the invisible Christ, he was no less present to them. The invisible took shape in the disciples, as it does in us, the death and resurrection of Christ becoming the DNA of the Christian; by this shall everyone know that you are my disciples. It is what is called grace, the God-shaping of us by the invisible divine goodness.

I would suggest, therefore, that our experience of virtual church is similar; in that it is different but no less valid. There is much that we have lost, but also much that we have gained. We are separated one from the other and we are physically isolated, but, in many respects we are more in touch with one another than we were previously and are, for many of us, able to be part of more at St Martin’s than was previously the case. The nature of our experience and gathering has changed but its meaning and value have not. We continue to support and shape one another as we did previously, but have found different ways in which to do so.

That was the experience of the disciples after Christ’s Ascension but it has also been the experience of the Church at other times and in other places. The Stations of the Cross, that we experienced so powerfully in a virtual presentation on Good Friday, are an example; being devised by St Francis of Assisi for all who could not physically walk the Way of the Cross in Jerusalem.

The disciples needed to touch and see Jesus in order to be witnesses to the reality of his resurrection. We do not need to touch and see in order to believe and Jesus, himself, tells us that we are blessed as a result. Our experience of the invisible Jesus, our relationship with him, is different from that of the disciples with the visible Jesus, able to touch and see, but is no less valid, no less deep, no less life-changing for that difference. Our experience as the body of Christ at St Martin-in-the-Fields is different from what it was when we could touch and see each other and our building, but is no less valid, no less deep, no less life-changing for that difference. We are those who do not touch and yet are blessed in not so doing. Amen.

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Deacon Blue - Keeping My Faith Alive.