Homily for Maundy Thursday 2012 at St Matthew's

Maundy Thursday...

Not as the autocorrect facility on my phone would have you believe, MAUNGY Thursday...though listening to some of my colleagues at the Chrism Mass this morning, you might be forgiven for thinking that was a better word to describe the clergy at the start of the great three days of Easter, the climax of our year.

But actually the word is Maundy – from the Latin Mandatum – the root of our “mandate”...for on this night we recall two commandments that Jesus gave us – two instructions to DO THIS.

In both cases, always the Master teacher, he did not simply tell us what to do...he showed us.

First we have the new commandment illustrated in living parable as he knelt at the feet of his friends

“Love one another as I have loved you”

We so struggle with this...

Even the illustration is beyond us.

Many read of washing the disciples feet who think themselves above cleaning another's boots wrote Herbert Kelly, who founded the Society of the Sacred Mission...and I suspect that this is often the case.

We do our acts of service self consciously, - perhaps thinking privately “Aren't I doing well” when of course as long as we're focussed on ourselves, there's no point to the action at all.

What Jesus asks us to do is to forget ourselves entirely, as we offer loving service to one another -...for to love as he loves us means emptying ourselves completely, just as he emptied himself in loving obedience.

An act of submission that is nonetheless a challenge – a call to something that is as hard to give as it is to receive.

You'll notice that tonight we have just 2 chairs ready for foot washing – not the 12 that would take us more obviously to the upper room on the night of Christ's Last Supper.

There's a reason for this – I've NEVER yet managed to persuade a full dozen people to have their feet washed.

There are all sorts of reasons for this...self consciousness, for feet aren't often our prettiest feature

A desire to avoid the intimacy of that touch

Perhaps even a measure of pride in our self sufficiency...

I can wash my own feet, thank you very much....and I want to hang on to my dignity as tightly as I can.

But Jesus does this to teach us something important..

That we need one another, that we need to take the risk of vulnerability with one another, to remove the protection of our shoes and the protection that lets us keep our distance from our brothers and sisters – and from him.

In God's family, gathered around his table, there are no senior ranks...no reserved occupations....we are all called to give and to receive loving service.

Does that feel too fearful to contemplate?

Think of Peter – unable to get his head around it at all...resisting at first...but suddenly realising what is being offered and wanting to immerse himself completely in the love that kneels before him.

Truly, this risk of vulnerability is one worth taking.

“A new commandment I give to you.......”

And, once we're clean, why then we can move to the table...

To the place where again and again we obey tonight's second commandment,

the other “Do this” of this most holy night.

We can take the bread and drink the wine here where Jesus is the host, offering himself to us

“Do this in remembrance of me”

Somehow, we find it easier to accept that gift of himself...

Perhaps we do so passively, imagining that it demands little of us

But as we receive the life of God, offered to us in bread and wine, we are transformed...transformed for loving service.

So the 2 commandments of tonight belong together...

Let us pray that as we gather in obedience to them both, we may understand more of the great love that invites us to draw near.

Unless a grain of wheat falls

A grain.

Just one,
small, non-descript,cupped
in my hand.

Should I,
must I
hold it there,
preserved in sterile security?

Or is it best to let it go
to watch it slip
between my fingers,fall
to earth
and pass from sight,
too small to garner
amid dirt and dust?

Not worth the effort.

Walk away.

Forget it.

But one day,
Hungry,
I will eat the bread
grown from the harvest of
this single
grain
and eating
find
my hunger
stemmed
alway.

Drop, drop slow tears

It started with a resurrection.


Not THE resurrection - though at the time it seemed that way.
You know that when someone you love dies, the one thing you long for is to have them back...to be given one last chance to hear their voice, to tell them the things you'd always meant to, ask them that all important question, to hug them and never let go...


When Lazarus, our brother, died Martha and I felt just that way.
We would have given anything to turn the clock back.
Suddenly all our joy, all our security seemed to be in the past.
The future looked cold and threatening for two women, abruptly left alone.
And we were angry...angry at God for taking our protector from us, angry with our "friend" Jesus, who was too busy healing total strangers to come to Bethany and heal one of his best friends.
When he did come,- too late even for the funeral -  he was as upset as we were. 
He wept - hot tears brimming from his eyes, running down his face, making tracks in the grime of his journey from Jerusalem.
And we told him what we thought of him
"If you'd only been here, none of this would have happened!"
We didn't care if we did make him feel guilty,-to be honest, we wanted to. 
It seemed only fair that he should share our pain.
But neither of us was in any way prepared for what happened next...his demand to visit the tomb, his peremptory instruction, against all sense and hygiene, to "Roll away the stone"...and his call into the darkness
"Lazarus! Get yourself out of there..."


From then on, I knew I owed him everything, and as the weeks went by, I realised that in raising Lazarus he had put himself in the firing line, that the authorities were outraged, had only one thought in their minds now.
Jesus must be stopped.
He had literally exchanged his life for that of Lazarus - 
And I had no idea how to repay him.


I wanted to give him all that I had and all that I was....but how?
What symbol, what ritual, could ever be enough.


My gesture must be obvious, dramatic, an outpouring of thanks and love...and so I decided. 
My perfume.
That precious jar of pure scent...saved for my wedding, or if that day never came, then to be used at my death...
Perfume  to transform the ordinary, in an anointing that created prophets, priests and kings...
Perfume to represent an overwhelming tide of love and gratitude...


So, that Monday evening at our home in Bethany, it was obvious what I must do.
I slipped from the table, as Jesus sat chatting with our friends..slipped.away from the circle of candlelight into the shadows...fetched my precious alabaster jar - a jar as beautiful as the perfume within,and broke it open, before I had a chance to change my mind.
No going back - at once the perfume poured over my hands, over his hair in extravagant profusion, flowing down his face and over his clothes, to his feet...
Beautiful feet - that had brought good news to so many.
Now it was my turn to weep, washing those feet with my tears, pouring out my sorrow for was to come, my thanks for all his friendship meant to me, my longing to give myself to him, completely and wholly, from that day forward for ever more. 
That was my wedding day.


Judas was angry. 
Of course he was. 
He knew the cost of everything and the value of nothing.
There was no chance that he would understand what I was trying to do.
All he could see was waste - just as later, waste was all he would recognise as his Master poured out his sorrow and love from the cross.
But Jesus understood.
Standing at the crossroads of past and future, he made it clear to us all that he would always be present in the poor, that I could cherish them, weep over their feet and be as close to him then as at that moment...
But he made it clear, too, that in this symbolic gift of myself I had lost nothing.
I was to be remembered - my small sacrifice a prelude to his great sacrifice...my washing of his feet a precursor of the moment when he would kneel at the feet of his friends, offering them that intimate, transforming service.
Sorrow and love flowed mingling down


Now he is gone...but I see him every day in the poor.
And I have no regrets.


Were the whole real of nature mine
That were an offering far too small.
Love so amazing, so divine
Demands my soul, my life, my all.

Easter outdoors

Last week, in between the preparations for my mother in law's funeral & the ceaseless stream of parish funerals too, I was mostly in the churchyard!
Seems eminently reasonable in this month of funerals - but actually I was there to celebrate resurrection with children from 2 of our 3 local schools. In previous years, I've loved using the "Experience Easter" indoor stations, which take children on an interactive journey into the Passion narrative, helping them to build bridges from 1st century Jerusalem to 21st century Gloucestershire...but valley church school has now made that journey twice, so a change was called for, and the diocese had helpfully provided
"Experience Easter Outdoors".


With only 4 stations, and children coming round a whole class at a time, it was simpler to manage - and the stunning summer weather last week made it a delight to spend time exploring the events of the Triduum in a sunny churchyard. There were fewer deep conversations with the children, as we were in much larger groups - but the activities invited reflection and I'm confident seeds were sown. 
The stations worked like this

1) Gethsemane...The story of Jesus praying alone,  linked with all those who suffer pain and persecution as they stand up for what is right. Children are invited to take a stone, ask God to help them to stand up for what they know to be right, & then place stones in a circle around the tree at the centre of the garden


2) The Courtyard...VERY exciting. A fire blazing in the dustbin we use for the Easter fire (nothing if not basic in Cainscross!)...Story told, children invited to reflect on Peter's feelings after he had denied Jesus & his motivation for doing this then to take a twig, remember a time when they let somebody down, & drop twigs into the fire as they listen to readings reminding us of God's forgiveness.

3) Golgotha...Three crosses and the story of the penitent thief. A reminder that the cross is a symbol of forgiveness and love (I always talk about Jesus on the cross offering a hug to embrace all who have ever lived or ever will live)...then children are invited to make their own crosses and leave them as a reminder to all who pass by of just how much God loves them. This was quite wonderful. We had stick crosses, flat and upright, grass crosses, teeny tiny crosses of pine needles...all worked on with such attention...Visiting that corner of the churchyard now there is a veritable forest of reminders of God's love. Brilliant! 




4) Finally, of course, we remembered why Good Friday is not, after all, the saddest day ever, as we visited the Garden Tomb and saw how it was empty, with Christ risen and death defeated for all time. We talked about the power of hope and planted wild flower seeds, tiny, fragile, looking so dead but full of potential for life. If even a few of those placed secretly by the children actually germinate and grow, our churchyard will be a beautiful place this summer - but, having travelled around it in their company, I think it will always be a beautiful place for me. 

April Fool - a reflection for Palm Sunday at Selsley

Palm Sunday and the feast of all fools...

The perfect day for a spot of holy foolery...

a day to find our expectations subverted...

April fool!

Here comes the King

Roll out the red carpet....listen for the marching bands...

But wait!

Where is the white charger, where the guard of honour, where the strident announcement that might is right?

Can this rag taggle cavalcade herald a triumphal procession, this tired man on a donkey be the king at all?

We need our king to be strong.

We need him to take over.

We need the world to change.

Hosanna!

Save us now!

The cry gets louder, but it comes not from the great and the good, nor even from those who hold the purse strings, not from those voices with the power to confer authority,since they hold it themselves.

Money talks, but not today.

The proclamation issues, instead from the mouths of street kids, pariahs, those on the edge

Hosanna!

Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!

Royal David's son!

But not like this.

You have to be joking.

There must be some mistake.

April fool!

Later anger erupts...the madmen are taking over the asylum

The vagrant preacher presumes to destroy the holy order of the Temple, the Lord of Misrule challenges the protocols that determine who can do what, the catalogue of acceptable behaviour in that holy space.

Tables turned, established customs criticised in an appeal to an older order.

By what right does this man – carpenter, not priest or Levite, court controversy?

Who does he think he is?

By what authority does he issue his challenges?

April fool!

He'll be laughing on the other side of his face by Friday.

No popular acclaim but a thunderous cry from the masses

“Crucify...crucify......we will have none of him”

What price “King of the Jews” when you're nailed to a cross, unable to move a finger

What sort of Saviour is deserted even by his crazy gang of illiterate supporters?

No laurel crown but a cruel circlet of brambles forced down on his head.

No bowing or scraping but the vicious slapstick of scourging

April fool!

But wait!

In comedy, timing is all.

The world may seem stuck on Good Friday, determinedly putting love to death at every opportunity,

clinging to the belief that might & money rule the day.

Wait!

Friday now, but Sunday's a coming...

Sunday when we peer into the darkness of death but hear instead a joyous cry

“Look behind you”

Sunday when the world is turned upside down once more, when heavenly chaos sweeps away the strictures of our misguided world in a tide of wild, exuberant creativity.

Sunday when we find that weakness is power and folly is wisdom.

When finding life means losing it.

When dead men walk and weeping turns to laughter.

April Fool!

Holy Week - images

Palm Sunday....was it a demo? was it a procession? there was certainly lots of joy and excitement in the air but when we were asked whom we wanted to release the cry

"Barabbas" almost raised the roof.

I still shudder as I remember it.

There's no escape. We are all implicated.....

From Palm Sunday, with its passion and Passion, we turn to the civility of an Agape meal at church on the hill. All is done decently and in order. We hear the story, we remember and reflect...then go on our way in silence.

The following evening I wait in the Lady Chapel in case anyone should want to make their confession. Catholic practice has been rather mislaid in these parishes in recent years, so it's no surpise that I'm alone for that hour - but a casual offer on twitter for any prayer requests leaves me with so much to do that I am both overwhelmed and humbled. Such a privilege to be asked to pray for friends I've shared thoughts and moments with....so I light a candle for each of them

The week progresses......the shadows lengthen, represented by the increasing darkess of Tenebrae. Candles are extinguished, one by one as we listen to the Lamentations of Jeremiah set by Bairstow and finally to Allegri's Miserere. All is dark for a while, till amid the noise (of several dustbin lids being walloped for all their worth) earthquakes and upheavals herald the resurrection........the Christ-light cannot be extinguished.

But then we come to Thursday. The family gathers around the table, feet are washed as we try to learn together what it means to be the servant of all......bread is broken, wine poured out......but the shadows are almost overwhelming now. Together we strip the church of all that makes it special, each softening touch, each sign that this is a holy place. We listen to Psalm 22 and enter into the desolation - but there is still a garden, a place of peace and light, an island in the prevailing darkness.

Finally comes Friday...the day when the world seems to end.......the saddest day of all. We walk in the shadow of the cross, toiling uphill, a straggling group, none of us sure if we'll make it to the summit. We pray. We sing. Then at noon there is silence. We have run out of words so let our feelings, our thoughts be swallowed up by the lark song.

We follow Christ into the darkness...try to rest...but the impulse to be up and doing, to conceal our pain and desolation with a ferment of activity brings us back, like the women to the garden, - back to the church that is not a church,to the holy place made ordinary by the absence of the One who is the reason for its being. For this one day, here is a completely ordinary space - so we clean, we polish, we sweep...

And then, exhausted, hardly daring to hope - though we know the miraculous chapter that lies just over the page, we wait........and wait.......

Homily for Good Friday at Church in the Valley

I wrote something like this last year, but in the event I didn't need to use it - so I preached it this afternoon. I'm pretty certain that I borrowed a chunk of it from elsewhere, - but cannot for the life of me remember where...so if you recognise your own words, my apologies for not thanking you by name, and my gratitude for kick starting my thoughts too.

Every year, the same question…what’s so good about Friday.

This year it was voiced by a 10 year old who had just finished the first 5 stations of the Experience Easter trail & was brimming with frustrated anger at the pain he had recognised in the 100s of post-its that were covering this cross

GOOD Friday? I don’t think so

It is a hard day for most of us.

Are you against capital punishment?

To-day we are forced to remember it.

Do you see Jesus as wholly innocent & good?

Today we remember his agonising death as a traitor

Do you trust that virtue is rewarded?

Today tells a different story..

And are you fearful of death?

Today we have to stare it in the face

But it is, nonetheless, Good Friday…and actually the truth of its goodness lies deep in the pain of the world, is recorded on each one of those post-its, that fell like autumn leaves around the cross.

Good Friday is the day when those who suffer find hope, because God is suffering with them.

God knows the suffering of those who could with integrity claim the "suffering servant" passages of Isaiah as their own story, those who might find themselves voicing the Psalms of lament as their own song.

God knows the suffering of the poor, the refugees and the displaced, of those who live in fear in occupied territories, of those who have lost their jobs, their homes, their self-confidence.

God knows the suffering of the hungry and the outcast, of the meek whom the world delights to trample on.

God knows the grief of the grieving, the pain of betrayal at the hands of those from whom you expected friendship.

God knows the anguish, the terrible loneliness of one who is suffering all of these things, - and even the desolation of feeling yourself abandoned by God.

God knows all of this pain, personally and profoundly, because God suffered it all in the person of Jesus.

Our Lord naked on the cross, vulnerable to insects and birds, to sun and wind, and to the cruellest of creatures, human beings whose humanity has been twisted by violence ...Our Lord hanging there is an icon to the poor, suffering, and vulnerable that says:

You are not abandoned.

The broken body of the Christ is not some garment that God tried on, didn't like, and tossed aside in favour of more festive Easter finery; it is an icon of who God is in God's eternal nature.

The risen Christ will forever bear the print of the nails.

God was and is and always will be, there with, at one with, suffering with, the suffering, the outcast, the poor.

At Christmas we celebrate Emmanuel, God with us.

Today as we look at the cross we see God with us again in all the pain & dereliction of broken human flesh.

And why is he there?

Not to appease a wrathful deity demanding recompense for sin.

Oh no…

God loved the world so much

Christ on the cross shows us that there is nothing, nothing that God will not do to show us we are loveable.

It was not the nails that held him there – it was love…love that, in just three days, showed itself to be stronger than death.

 

One day I will once again be part of a church that can sing these on Good Friday

Homily for Maundy Thursday

For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.

A few weeks ago, The Herring of Christ (TM) and I were reflecting on the Last Supper...

Why, he wondered, was it the breaking of bread that became the Sacrament of Christ's presence for his followers?

Why did the church not place equal emphasis on the washing of feet?

After all, St John, from whose gospel our reading came tonight, doesn't even mention the breaking of bread at the Last Supper (it's there at an earlier feast - but not in this pivotal place on the night before the crucifixion)

So why, when Jesus told us to carry out both actions have we chosen simply to focus on bread and wine as the centrepiece of our devotions?

I suspect the reasons are many and complicated.Breaking and sharing bread, blessing and sharing wine was already an integral part of all formal Jewish meals.It wasn't a new ritual, or one restricted to the Passover - it was a completely natural practice for all of Jesus' disciples...but at the Last Supper it is invested with a new meaning. As so often, we have translation to thank for some of the confusion and suspicion that has been felt and voiced at the idea that we are consuming the body and blood of Christ...Listen to these words from Bosco Peters, a NZ priest who writes

"We regularly bring to our reading of the scriptures a Greek philosophical concept of a person being a “soul” – and “having” a body. Hebrew and Aramaic language regularly used “body” for “person” and .....identified “blood” with “life”. Jesus breaking bread and offering a cup of wine was saying: “this is me – my self and my life – I am giving you my self and my life – do this in remembrance of me.”

An amazing reality.

Christ's self, his life, entrusted to us in bread and wine...

Awe ful.

So, through the centuries the church, perhaps mindful that we seem to find it easier to worship the God we've not seen than the neighbour over the fence, has allowed us to focus on this mandate,

"Do this in remembrance of me"

And hoped we could take the other “you also should do as I have done for you” for granted.

The problem is that it seems much easier to care for others, to wash their feet, than to accept care ourselves

It's not so very surprising

Foot washing, you see, is intimate, embarassing....it makes us uncomfortable just thinking about it (remember how it made Peter feel, and it was part of everyday life for him!)It's always a struggle to find a collection of people willing to let their feet be washed in church, even just once a year.

Feet are rarely our most beautiful feature (no matter what the Bible tells us about the feet of those who preach good news) and we prefer to keep them safely hidden from view...

Perhaps we worry that taking off our shoes and revealing the corns, callouses and peeling nail varnish we may accidentally reveal other equally unsavoury aspects of ourselves....that the God we find unexpectedly kneeling at our feet may see us in all our vulnerability and muddle.

MAY see us?

Of course he does...He sees us, as he knows us, through and through...and as he sees us, he loves us.

As I took groups of children round the Experience Easter stations this year, it was the activity at the font that provoked the most thoughtful responses. We considered the title "Servant King", pondering how such contradictions might be joined in the person of Jesus. One small boy changed my understanding forever as he said

"Jesus understands exactly how it is to be anyone...it doesn't matter how different they  are,  what  they look like to other people...Jesus knows how it is because he has been there - from servant to king. He understands children and bullies too".

Jesus, in one action,  giving us not just a model for Christian life, but a glimpse of the heart of the God who knows us all inside out and loves us just the same....

George Herbert, priest and poet, grasped this when he wrote

LOVE bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back

Guilty of dust and sin

But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack

 From my first entrance in,

 Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning

If I lack'd anything.

'A guest,' I answer'd, 'worthy to be here:'

Love said, 'You shall be he.'

I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear,

I cannot look on Thee.'

 Love took my hand and smiling did reply,

'Who made the eyes but I?'

Truth, Lord; but I have marr'd them: let my shame

Go where it doth deserve.'

'And know you not,' says Love, 'Who bore the blame?'

My dear, then I will serve.

'You must sit down,' says Love, 'and taste my meat.'

So I did sit and eat.

Let us celebrate that amazing love as we accept his gracious invitation to

“Take, eat...”

Hosanna!

We had such a lovely time this morning!
The miserable weather forecasts proved unfounded so we gathered at Valley Church school in bright spring sunshine and made a loud and joyful journey down the road to church, waving the flags that Messy Church had made and singing Hosanna! As is my wont, I'd not absolutely worked out all the teeniest details of quite how, so there were a few pieces of creative ad lib - but so much genuined celebration that I can't think anyone was too truly appalled.
We thought about the way in which "Hosanna" and "Crucify him!" constantly fight to have the loudest voices in our lives, ably led with cue-cards by E. & M., two of our lovely 1st Communion group; we sang all the essential hymns (at least to my way of thinking) and made Eucharist together.
Then, when all was done there, the Herring of Christ (tm) and I drove up the hill to do it all over again, - this time with a dramatised Passion and  the full Palm Sunday liturgy. This Holy Week is ludicrously full, ridiculously busy, and I love it...so very much!

Servant King

This year for the 4th time I'm welcoming children into a church that I serve to "Experience Easter"...The trail was devised, originally for Gloucester Diocese, by our excellent Children's Advisor & Primary Schools Advisor, both of whom are stunningly creative & inspiring women - so the stations in themselves are highly effective. However, what makes me rejoice as I walk them with group after group is the fresh light that the children shed on events that are so deeply embedded in me.

Yesterday we opened "Experience Easter 2010" with year 5 from Valley Church School and as usual I came home with much to ponder. Insight of the day came from A. as we considered our different understandings of "servant" and "king" and how those two roles could be combined in Jesus

"Jesus understands exactly how it is to be anyone...it doesn't matter how different they  are,  what  they look like to other people...Jesus knows how it is because he has been there - from servant to king. He understands children and bullies too".

I'll never sing that song again without this added layer of meaning.
Jesus, in one action,  giving us not just a model for Christian life, but a glimpse of the heart of the God who knows us all inside out.

Yesterday

we carried the cross from valley to hill...hard work, for the hill is steep & at the end the ground was rough beneath our feet.
When we reached the place appointed, we paused for a while then turned with relief to the pleasures of hot cross buns and gentle chatter at the church below.

We left the cross alone.
People always have, right from the beginning.

Spread out below us, my 2 parishes and beyond...Thousands of people oblivious to the event at Golgotha, whose lives and whose eternities were changed for ever by what happened that day.

Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were a present far too small.
Love so amazing, so divine
Demands my soul, my life, my all.

What music?

From the very beginning I have wondered -- what is the real music of his life?
Born homeless, - in a minor key,- with dangers lurking on the streets that night
And me unable to provide that small security each baby needs.
As I rejoiced at new life given, I shivered, knew I'd failed already,
That my arms could not be enough to hold him safe, confined.
How could I welcome the angels' song, all glory & hosannas?
I craved the gentler music of a homely lullaby.

We longed to do things right, to be in tune with the traditions of our faith.
"I was glad when they said unto me, we shall go to the house of the Lord"
And so we went to join the crowds and add our simple theme of gratitude to the . Temple's age-old counterpoint. We hoped this way to silence creeping gossip, that makes scandal of a miracle. But even here the harmony was disrupted, as Simeon, that gentle, holy man, offered us words to soothe and terrify, music to bless and curse. Was he the good angel or the dark demon at our feast? I could not tell, but felt my own song falter, silenced by forebodings I did not understand. A light and a spear...how to make music here?

More dissonance: the fanfares, pomp & circumstance of travellers bearing kingly gifts, transformed in hours to the searing threnodies of mothers mourning, their life's music broken beyond repair. From then on, always, when I held my boy, I felt the weight of all those others who would never grow, nor sing their own songs in the joy of life.

I did not sing much in those years, listened instead to try and catch the theme of Jesus's own heart-song - but always it eluded me. I never really knew this child I loved, yet could not fully mother. Always, there seemed reserve, - and yet that's nonsense...for he gave and gave...perhaps he was all gift, if only I could grasp it. His complex simplicity was music pitched too high for me to hear, - but it drew others, whose rough instruments blended and supported in a way my softer lullabies could never seem to.

Even a few days ago, their sound rang out over the city - loud, bold and brassy, like a victory parade. For a while it seemed His song had changed its tune, modulated into triumph in a major key - but soon song was replaced by shouting.
"Out - my Father's house no place for this!"

Then we returned to shifting tones, the minor thirds of gathering shadows and insistent dread, a muted drum-beat heralding the men of night who came to lead my shining son into the gloom.

Confused cacophany.
Instruments flung aside, the players fled.
Silence.
Darkness.
Deeper silence than before the world began.

There is no music now.

Homily for the Eucharist of the Lord's Supper, Maundy Thursday 2009

During our Lent course this year, we took one session to explore how we learn & grow in our faith…We realised that we all learn in different ways – some by reading, some by watching or listening, some by doing.
Often in church it seems we expect only to learn by hearing but not in Holy Week. As we’ve travelled through the week together, so we’ve tried to enter into the experience of Christ’s Passion, to make those once for all events live again in our own lives.
And tonight we are told to remember

Clearly Jesus knew all about our different learning styles, because when he wanted us to understand what he was really about, what God is really about, he didn’t tell us, in a 3 point sermon, or in a Lent course. He didn’t, on this most important point, even tell us stories.

No…he showed us, and he involved us.
He both showed us, as he knelt to wash his disciples feet.
And he involved us in the action, when he gifted us with the Sacrament.

Hugely subversive behaviour…Not the stuff of after dinner speeches at all. I guess we’re used to the concept of foot-washing as a radical gesture– and its impact was brought dramatically up to date by the Bishop of Birmingham, who last year spent Holy Week busily cleaning shoes outside his own Cathedral. Think of the shoe shine boys of the depression…. Think city pavements and dog mess...and then imagine someone, anyone you place on a pedestal getting to grips with all that.
That’s what’s going on here, as Jesus kneels at the feet of his friends.
That’s what God’s love is like…the love at the very heart of the Kingdom.
Jesus turns himself into a parable to demonstrate once again the self-giving love that has service written into every action, every thought, every moment. He shows his disciples, and through their eyes we too see, and together we have remembered…

But this alone is not enough… Jesus also gave us something to do.
I received from the Lord what I handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread and when he had given thanks he broke it and said “This is my body that is for you. DO THIS in remembrance of me”
Here too Jesus is upsetting the natural order. Blessing and breaking are reserved for the Master of the feast, the head of the household. Taking the loaf to the table and giving out the pieces afterwards, - this task belongs to servants, or (in homes too poor for servants) to women.
So Jesus involves each of us in something that exists to change the world as it currently is. At supper with his friends he made it clear that the coming Kingdom is for everyone, men women and children, slaves and masters…for all are called to follow the servant king in lives of loving service.
He tells us to do this…to take and bless, to break and share and as we do so to remember – and he will be with us.
Whatever your theology of Eucharist, there’s no getting round those actions and those words.
This, this fragment of bread and sip of wine, is Christ’s body – offered to us.
All that we bring to the table is our feeble, damaged selves..
But as we offer those selves, wounded by life, dented by disappointment, we find ourselves taking part afresh in the drama of our redemption. Because as we bring ourselves to his table, Jesus exchanges those poor offerings for his own self, - the life of God contained in bread and wine.

So, whenever we gather the meal continues, with places ready for each of us.
Here in bread and wine is all the sustenance we need to enable us to live for God and to serve God's people.
Here is the life of God offered to us.
Christ in us, so we may recognise and love him in everyone around us, and serve them as we are served.
Let us do so…and as we do so, let us pray that we may understand

Remember me

Was ever another command so obeyed? For century after century, spreading slowly to every continent and country and among every race on earth, this action has been done, in every conceivable human circumstance, for every conceivable human need from infancy and before it to extreme old age and after it, from the pinnacles of earthly greatness to the refuges of fugitives in caves and the dens of the earth.

Men have found no better thing than this to do for kings at their crowning and for criminals going to the scaffold; for armies in triumph or for a bride and bridegroom in a little country church; for the proclamation of a dogma or for a good crop of wheat; for the wisdom of the Parliament of a mighty nation or for a sick old woman afraid to die; for a schoolboy sitting an examination or for Columbus setting out to discover America; for the famine of whole provinces or for the soul of a dead lover; in thankfulness because my father did not die of pneumonia; for a village headman much tempted to return to fetish because the yams have failed; because the Turk was at the gates of Vienna; for the repentance of Margaret; for the settlement of a strike; for a son for a barren woman; for Captain so-and-so, wounded and prisoner of war; while the lions roared in the nearby amphitheatre; on the beach at Dunkirk; while the hiss of scythes in the think June grass came faintly through the windows of the church; tremulously, by an old monk on the fiftieth anniversary of his vows; furtively, by an exiled bishop who had hewn timber all day in a prison camp near Murmansk; gorgeously, for the canonisation of S. Joan of Arc – one could fill many pages with the reasons why men have done this, and not tell a hundred part of them.

And best of all, week by week and month by month, on a hundred thousand successive Sundays, faithfully, unfailingly, across all the parishes of Christendom, the pastors have done this just to make the plebs sancta Dei – the holy common people of God.

Dom Gregory Dix: The Shape of the Liturgy (London 1945)

So this is what I shall do in a couple of hours...Oh the privilege of this calling!

It's been a quiet week

at Church in the Valley.
On Monday, 6 of us gathered in the Lady Chapel for an Iona Eucharist. Hugger Steward & I had gone overboard with tea lights & fairy lights & there was lots and lots of beautiful silence. Such a good place to begin our journey towards the cross.
I found myself almost unable to continue as I read those searingly honest words from the Prayer of Consecration
"our hands are empty, our hearts are sometimes full of wrong things"
Every time, something in liturgy from Iona forces me to halt, to really hear the words I am saying. That's not a comfortable process - but it's a good one.

Tuesday, we walked the stations of the cross - such a small group that I worried that Jesus might feel lonely. When I was a child, I was much perturbed by the huge crucifix outside Christ Church, St Leonards-on-Sea
"Is it nothing to you, all you that pass by?" it enquired as we chugged past on the 76 bus - and I always hated that sense of dersertion, of nobody seeing the depths of His pain. Last night, as a bare handful followed the via dolorosa, those feelings re-awakened. Each year in Holy Week I try vainly to protect Jesus, in all his frail humanity, from what lies ahead...last night I worried that we were adding to the hurt. Station 3 of Experoence Easter focussed on Christ's loneliness in the garden, inviting the children to make models to remember times when they had felt alone or afraid. Being the children they are, they made even their fears rather beautiful - an unexpected bloom in the garden. As a handful of families walked the trail on Saturday, another mum and I agreed that our worst fear was of leaving our children - that our failure to feel OK about trusting those beloved offspring to a world without us was a distressing indicator of the state of our faith. But our God knows about feeling alone - so maybe it will be alright.

Tonight was Tenebrae - which I loved. The same small nucleus, joined by just a few more, we gathered by the high altar. As we shared the Passion narrative together the darkness grew & shadows lengthened. In a kind of mirror image of the Holy Saturday Vigil, we sat listening to stories in a dark that increased as each candle was extinguished...I took the Christ candle out as the Dufflepud read the last words from the cross
Eli, eli, lamma sabacthani.
Hiding in the vestry all was quiet til I banged a metal tray relentlessly...
Earthquakes, the veil of the Temple rent asunder, graves giving up their dead. Then the Christ light returned & we heard once again of Isaiah's Suffering Servant
"Surely he has bourne our grief and carried our sorrows".

Maybe not such a quiet week for we who have been there.

Servant King

The second station...focussed on foot-washing & what that might look like in 21st century Cashes Green.
In the interests of practicality, the children weren't invited to take off socks & shoes but rather to dip their fingers in the water & trace the cross on their palms as a silent prayer that God would use them to help someone in a special way this Easter. As I listened to their ideas about situations where they might make a difference, it was clear that they had got the idea well and truly, were doing well as they thought about the essence of service.
But for my own part, I have to say that I felt a bit like Simon Peter
When you were young, you girded yourself and walked where you wanted to go; but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands and another will gird you and take you where you would rather not go (Jn 21:18).

It's so easy to agree to serve...but to be served- that's such a different matter.

During this most peculiar Lent I've learned so much about the state of dependence. It was (relatively) easy to accept (and even ask for) help from my children & a small cluster of good friends, but well nigh impossible to ask for help from the congregations. To-day is my first anniversary here & there are many good souls whom I'm happy to know, several who are well on the way to being friends, one or two whom I'd visit if I were having a bad day....but nobody whom I could envisage asking to wash my hair or do my ironing. Not yet.

I think I may have failed to grasp the potential lessons of this Lent. I did try, truly - but I think I'll be working on meaning these words for a while yet.
"pray that I may have the grace to let you be my servant too" .

During the Maundy Watch some years ago I wrestled with my reluctance to allow Christ to wash my feet.
I recognised the need to jettison such arrogant self-sufficiency, but I guess I am a slow learner.

Palm Sunday sermon for church on the hill

This will surely be the oldest sermon I have ever preached! As pressure mounted over the last week, I comforted myself with the knowledge that I would surely have a reworkable Palm Sunday sermon from my curacy that could be pressed into service for Evensong on the hill. I had forgotten, of course, that a full dramatised Passion meant no sermon at the Eucharist at St M's, while a service of musoc & readings replaced Evensong every year. So it turned out that I had no recent Palm Sunday offerings at all - and was thrown back on words I offered in a similar Cotswold village 1o years ago. With only a gentle tweak they fit quite well with what I would want to church on the hill to hear, so I shall take a deep breath & preach it when the time comes.

“Hosanna!” “Hooray” “Here comes the king”
The crowds who lined the road to Jerusalem on that first Palm Sunday certainly though they had something to celebrate. After many abortive uprisings, here at last was the Messiah, who would free them from Roman domination. No matter if his triumphal entry was on the most unlikely beast, a scruffy, workaday donkey of most uncertain temper. This was the start of something big. Life would never be the same again. For the holiday crowds, there was certainly something stirring in the air. If they had known what would happen on Friday, I wonder what they would have cried
“Fly, Lord.” perhaps?” Go home, before it is too late”.

But here are we, some 2000 years on, using the same word, ”Hosanna” if not quite with their excited fervour. What do we think we are doing? After all, the Roman Empire has long since passed away, and we are citizens of the privileged west. Why are we still remembering a journey made centuries ago, which, in political terms, did nothing to alter the course of history? You will tell me, quite rightly, that Palm Sunday marks the start of Holy Week, the crown of the Christian year. Those who cried “Hosanna” “save us now” were in fact being unwittingly prophetic: the process of man’s salvation was being worked out before their very eyes. Certainly that is not something I want to argue with, but I would like us to think a little more about what was happening when that man rode into Jerusalem in a week that was to lead him from public acclaim to public betrayal.

For we who come week by week to worship here and listen to the “old old story” it is perhaps difficult to grasp how surprising was the course of Jesus’s ministry. From the moment when the Magi find the infant king amid the dirty straw of a Bethlehem cave, Jesus constantly confounds all expectations. Those lavish gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh must have seemed miss-matched to the child found living in poverty as a refugee. But that apparent contradiction, at the very beginning of his earthly life, was to be the recurrent theme for the whole of Jesus’s ministry and reached its most perfect expression in the events of Holy Week.

Some years ago, the well-known Jesuit priest Gerard Hughes published a book which he called “God of Surprises”. It’s a splendid book, deserving of the rave reviews it received, but one of the many remarkable things about it is that no-one else had apparently used that title before, for our God loves to surprise . For us, his people, there is an historic tension between our need for, and recognition of God as unchanging and inviolable, and our knowledge that he is too a revolutionary God, who puts down the mighty from their seats & exalts the humble & meek.
God is “the same yesterday, to-day , forever” but he nonetheless constantly challenges his church to change direction, pulls the rug from beneath our comfortable certainties and demands that we start afresh, gasping at his ingenuity. Certainly, He is a God of surpises.

Jesus, of course, repeatedly surprised the Jewish authorities. After centuries of prophecies, and devoted adherence to law and tradition, they were confident that they knew exactly how the Messiah would look, and how he would behave. Though the pedigree of the prophet Jesus of Nazareth, of the house of David, qualified him for the Messianic role, his behaviour excluded him. Despite firm grounding in the precious religious traditions of Judaism, he repeatedly stepped outside its boundaries to challenge its teachings. As God’s Son, his love for the whole of creation superseded his adherence to any manmade system, however beloved, and he demanded a radical rethink in which compassion for the individual took precedence. When this compassion led him to welcome social outcasts, dine with prostitutes and touch lepers, the guardians of tradition were shocked. When he dared to speak of tearing down the Temple itself and asserted that the Sabbath was for man’s benefit, and not an end in itself, he outraged them. Though the Jews longed for a revolution, they wanted it on their terms, a revolution which would leave all their cherished traditions intact. The surprise that was Jesus was just too great for them.

It’s very easy, as Christians, to claim some moral superiority here. We recognise Jesus as Saviour and Lord, and are happy to pray for the coming of his kingdom, but I do wonder if really we are so very different in our response to him. As he constantly challenged the beliefs and expectations of 1st century Palestine,. so he surely challenges the comfortable certainties which threaten to stultify the church of to-day. That King who entered the city on a down trodden beast of burden must have something to say to us about a world in which churches are rich and people starving, in which people can profess to love the God they have not seen, but neglect Him in the stranger sleeping on the street. Though people have clung to the idea of Christ’s kingdom as “not of this world”, the Incarnation tells a different story, of his total involvement with the world, his passionate care for its victims. If we claim to follow him, we too must share that active compassion, and there will be a cost. When his Kingdom comes, I don’t think we can expect to be home in time for Sunday lunch!

Sometimes it seems that, like the Jews,we are so intent on forcing Jesus into some mould of our own that we refuse to notice when he breaks free of it. We refuse to be surprised by him, preferring him tamed and fettered by our own expectations, our very own God in a box. When we do this, we miss the point completely. The world of Good Friday and Easter Day is a world turned upside down. Here is the greatest surprise of all, that death , ignominy and defeat are transformed into resurrection, triumph and victory. Can we wholeheartedly welcome this, with all its implications for our lives, or is it easier to leave Jesus slumbering in the tomb, and slumber there beside him. If we let him break out, there is no knowing where he may take us.

So as we begin to tread the familiar path through Holy Week we must learn to expect the unexpected. We can rely on the love that beckons us onwards, but we cannot dictate the direction. The transforming righteous revolution for which creation waits with longing may be just around the corner, for, if we pray “Thy kingdom come” we must be prepared to let God answer our prayer. We need to look at the world with clear eyes and an open mind, so that we can truly celebrate the triumphal entry of the man on the donkey, who by his cross and Resurrection turns the whole world upside down.

I've got that Holy Week feeling

Things are pretty frantic in the vicarage. Having welcomed every child from two out of three schools in the parish to Experience Easter, and with funerals continuing to come in droves, time to prepare practically for Holy Week has been cut to the bone. I look set to be printing service sheets minutes before handing them to the congregation pretty much all week - there's not alot in the church cupboard that I'm happy to use untweaked, and one armed typing remains a challenge. So I really ought not to be blogging at all - but the Friday Five was so apposite I could not resist.

Sally over at the RevGal site says:

Holy Week is almost upon us, I suspect that ordained or not, other revgal/pals calendars look a bit like mine, FULL, FULL, FULL........

Jesus was great at teaching us to take time out, even in that last week, right up to Maundy Thursday he withdrew, John's gospel tells us he hid! He hid not because he was afraid, but because he knew that he needed physical, mental and spiritual strength to get through...

So faced with a busy week:

1. What restores you physically?
Sleep. Hot baths (oh I do wish I could hurl this plaster cast to oblivion - but I don't even see the Great Bone Man til Monday & nothing is certain even then). Walks with dogs & children.
Currently & unusually I'm not sleeping that well - which probably fuels the escalating panic which in turn prevents me sleeping....aaargh.

2. What strengthens you emotionally/ mentally?
Hugs from those I cherish. Reading words that have inspired me before (two saint Johns, Donne & the Evangelist are particularly effective, but there are many many others). Music - Bach is best, Mozart too (but please can someone help me dislodge the phrase from the Credo of the Weber Mass we are singing in choir that has been haunting my dreams since Monday?:I think I have it right now).

3. What encourages you spiritually? Doing my job - at the altar (though not at the desk)...in the community...that sense of being swept up into the ceaseless praise around the throne that so often comes during the Sanctus when I preside. My friends & soul mates & of course the Best Spir Dir ever. Music again - I think I need to put on the B Minor Mass urgently to restore some perspective.

4. Share a favourite poem or piece of music from the coming week.
So much of Holy Week has a sound-track for me dating from my time as a chorister at St John the Divine, Kennington. The Vittoria Passion; Lotti's Crucifixus; John of Portugal's Crux Fidelis...That's just not going to happen in an little church in the provinces...so I will be focussing on the Passion Chorale as we sing it around 3.00 on Friday.

5.There may be many services for you to attend/ lead over the next week, which one are you most looking forward to and why? If there aren't do you have a favourite day in Holy week if so which one is it?
In this first Holy Week here I'm too conscious of the responsibility for enabling the worship of others to dare to look forward yet. Some of the services that loom so large will be new to the parishes, in some we will have to find a route that honours their traditions but makes liturgical sense to me...It's going to be an intereseting week (specially if I dont get typing/copying very soon).
I'm also aware of a part of myself that is courting disappointment by wishing that the liturgy might be more finely-tuned and polished than it's likely to be. I realise that even if I hanker for it, the house style of St M's would not be authentic here, so I need to get over this fast! As I said, interesting...
But with all that going on, I am really looking forward to Stations of the Cross on Tuesday evening. I've a lovely set of posters from the sisters of Turvey Abbey, and just to try to follow Jesus, one step at a time, is surely all I need attempt - in Holy Week or ever.