On doing my best

It 's true, we cannot reach Christ's fortieth day;
Yet to go part of that religious way,
                       Is better than to rest:
We cannot reach our Savior's purity;
Yet are bid, Be holy ev'n as he.
                       In both let 's do our best.

If like me you are an inveterate Maker of Resolutions, tempted to use Lent as 

another opportunity to tackle that raft of New Year intentions 

that somehow never quite got off the ground, 

it's all too easy to press an overwhelm button as Lent begins.

After all, if I start looking hard at myself, in a kind of penitential way, 

then there's just so much that needs fixing

...and I want to manage it all before tea-time.

A very wise priest, after hearing my Confession, once told me that I was not 

on any account to make self improvement my next Grand Project - 

but I'm afraid it's a lesson I'm slow to learn.

This can make Lent somewhat discouraging.

I want to use every second of those forty days to Build a Better Kathryn, 

which means that by bedtime on Ash Wednesday

I'm frequently exhausted, bad-tempered and in sore need

 of the gin, wine or chocolate (one particularly dreadful year it was

all three, PLUS fiction) that I've rashly determined to go without until Easter.

At this point one of two things might happen.

Either I might give myself a break, allow one lapse, 

and pick up the discipline in the morning, or I throw 

all my toys out of the pram, wailing that if I can't manage all of it

and more, then clearly I am doomed, DOOMED I tell you, 

and there's no point in trying at all. 

The thing is that I do really long to be holy,

but Herbert is right, of course. 

I'm never going to match Jesus, either in resisting temptation 

or in any other respect - after all he's JESUS - 

but that doesn't mean that the whole venture is pointless. 

It's always good to try to rebalance one's life

and seek a clearer focus on God. 

But it's a good idea to approach this with realism - 

and a measure of perseverance too. 

Which means that, if I miss a day or two of blogging

as we travel through Lent together, 

I'm not just going to abandon the whole project. 

Blogging my way to holiness sounds pretty unlikely, 

but it's a discipline that has helped me 

in the past - and it's the one I'm committed to this year...

so all I can do is my best.

Opposites yoked

"The humble soul, compos'd of love and fear"

One thing I'm pretty sure of is that George Herbert must have been a wonderful priest!
Not because of all the "Country Parson" things...the assiduous visiting, the mixing up of home-spun remedies for his humble flock, the self-conscious, impossible holiness. Aspects of life and ministry that have been used as weapons against all too many parish clergy...by others, and by themselves...a way of thinking that inspired Justin Lewis-Anthony to produce a book entitled "If you meet George Herbert on the road, kill him!"

No. I'm sure he was a wonderful priest because he struggled with all the inner contradictions that are part of life for, I'd hazard, absolutely everyone who has ever aspired to follow the way of Christ.....the contradictions St Paul summed up so wonderfully, admitting to the Romans:
"For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do."
We really are a bundle of contradictions - and at the heart of them is this pair of opposites, love and fear.

Who knows which came first, the situation or the teaching? 
The legacy of the Old Testament God, almighty, capricious, both wonderful beyond our imaginings and awe-ful...the God who sent floods and massacred Egyptian babies...the God who will show mercy to those to whom he will show mercy: that legacy remains a powerful one. Small wonder that this God inspired fear, calls forth sacrifices to appease him, - and even under the new Covenant the entangling of Church and Empire, the creation of an institution designed to keep the faithful quietly on their knees played into this culture. For centuries God was all about transcendence and to be God-fearing was only common-sense. 

But, at the same time, we know that "God is love" and that "perfect love drives out fear", that we are called to a wonder, love and praise that is un-shadowed by any fear, of the now or the hereafter. On a good day, that love predominates, but still and all a residual anxiety remains part of the reality for almost everyone I know,and that anxiety becomes in itself a ground of self-reproach. 
So, after all Herbert was right. Our souls swing from one extreme to the other, though the truth remains that we are made by Love and for love, as Teresa of Avila understood. I shall pray her words today.

My God, because you are so good, I love you with all my heart, and for your sake I love my neighbour as myself. If I love you, it is not just because of heaven which you promised; if I fear to offend you, it is not because hell threatens me. What draws me to you, O Lord, is yourself alone, it is the sight of you, nailed to the cross for me, your body bruised in the pains of death. Your love so holds my heart that, if there were no heaven, I would love you still. If there were no hell I would even still fear to offend you. I do not need your gifts to make me love you, for even if I should have no help of hope at all the things I do hope for, I would still love you with that very same love. Amen.

Finding a way through the wilderness - a basic premise for the coming season

So – back in January I made the usual heap of resolutions about returning to more regular blogging.

And then life happened, as it always tends to do, and like so many other good intentions, the urge to blog evaporated, leaving only a faint miasma of guilt behind. Except, of course, that isn’t entirely true.  I love writing, and find that I make more sense of my life, notice the good bits, disentangle the less-good, better when I write about it. And as an extrovert, blogging brings the added benefit of a potential response from someone, somewhere… So I know I’m rather the poorer when I don’t find time to write at all.

Cue Lent – that golden opportunity to pick up once again the splendid resolutions that had vanished without trace.  As usual I’ve struggled with the process of choosing a discipline that I have a hope of sticking to (ENFPs are so very easily distracted), of not attempting to fix everything that I perceive to be wrong in my life by an utterly unrealistic raft of projects to “build a better Kathryn” which leave me exhausted by the end of Ash Wednesday. But it’s possible that I might have had an idea…

Long long ago I started a PhD on the poetry of George Herbert, - focussing on his use of music as metaphor for our relationship with God. The funding ran out very rapidly, so I never got beyond extending the work of my undergraduate dissertation, but the delight in his work remains.  “Who better to help me write something each day of Lent?”  I thought – so that is what I plan to try. I’m still ENFP so there may well be diversions along the way, but my aspiration is to work with lines from Herbert’s poems as I try once again to re-orientate myself, and return to “the God who will swiftly pardon”.

I started yesterday, Ash Wednesday, as I preached with his poem "Lent" - and I'll stay there for the next few days...so here it is in full, as your starter for the season. More on the poem later...

WElcome deare feast of Lent: who loves not thee, He loves not Temperance, or Authoritie, But is compos'd of passion. The Scriptures bid us fast; the Church sayes, now: Give to thy Mother, what thou wouldst allow To ev'ry Corporation. The humble soul compos'd of love and fear Begins at home, and layes the burden there, When doctrines disagree. He sayes, in things which use hath justly got, I am a scandall to the Church, and not The Church is so to me. True Christians should be glad of an occasion To use their temperance, seeking no evasion, When good is seasonable; Unlesse Authoritie, which should increase The obligation in us, make it lesse, And Power it self disable. Besides the cleannesse of sweet abstinence, Quick thoughts and motions at a small expense, A face not fearing light: Whereas in fulnesse there are sluttish1 fumes, Sowre exhalations, and dishonest rheumes,2 Revenging the delight. Then those same pendant profits, which the spring And Easter intimate, enlarge the thing, And goodnesse of the deed. Neither ought other mens abuse of Lent Spoil the good use; lest by that argument We forfeit all our Creed. It 's true, we cannot reach Christ's fortieth day; Yet to go part of that religious way, Is better than to rest: We cannot reach our Savior's purity; Yet are bid, Be holy ev'n as he. In both let 's do our best. Who goeth in the way which Christ hath gone, Is much more sure to meet with him, than one That travelleth by-ways: Perhaps my God, though he be far before, May turn, and take me by the hand, and more May strengthen my decays. Yet Lord instruct us to improve our fast By starving sin and taking such repast As may our faults control: That ev'ry man may revel at his door, Not in his parlor; banqueting the poor, And among those his soul.

 

Sermon for the Ash Wednesday Eucharist at Coventry Cathedral, 1st March 2017

Welcome, dear feast of Lent

That's what my long-time hero, the poet George Herbert wrote...but when I was a child I hated Lent with every fibre of my being. I hated the solemn feeling of Ash Wednesday. I hated the dark purple that surrounded me in church, the shrouded statues, the absence of flowers. I hated the thought that maybe, just maybe, I ought to be giving up sweets.

Dear feast? I really didn't think so.

Lent was all about dust and ashes and going without.

Not a feast at all

But then I grew up and began to learn the value of a new start, something that is pretty meaningless to children, for whom each moment of life is new.  I learned that having the slate wiped clean is really something to celebrate. 

That as we begin to turn over a new leaf, we really can rejoice.

Listen to Isaiah again: ⁶Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?⁷Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?

That sounds pretty wonderful, doesn't it? An invitation to the kind of life my best self aspires to. Ideas for things we can actually do right here and now, which will make a difference in our city and in a world where people seem increasingly intent on building their lives on self-interest, on exclusion, suspicion, and fear.

Tangible evidence of hospitality offered, and reconciliation achieved with those who are different.

We can, you and I, choose to show our best sides, reach out towards the selves God has always called us to be…and when we do so, then we will shine like the dawn.

Lenten joy there, then.

But what of that liturgy of ashing that lies ahead of us…that forced reminder of things too often left unspoken?                                                                                                                                                              Where’s the joy in that?                                                                                                                                     Isn't it just stark and bleak, an unwelcome memento mori casting shadows on a spring  day?                                                                                                                                                                                    When we receive the ash on our foreheads, we do so with two thoughts.

One is, indeed, of our mortality...the dark side of the day

You are dust and to dust you shall return

That speaks of endings…of the reality that we are so eager to hide from…of the truth that one day we will simply not be here.

Thoughts we would maybe prefer to suppress.

But the other.....the other is our hope, the route home for us, the way of life and light that means that none of us need ever fear the end.

Turn away from sin and be faithful to Christ

The cross of ash, traced where the cross of baptismal oil first marked us as claimed for Christ…as we were commissioned to a life of discipline and discipleship…a cross shaped life for which self-denial and self-giving is the daily template.

We live a continuum from that one moment at the start of our journeys, to the other at its end…and as we travel we are asked, each and every one of us, to be faithful to the Christ who is faithful to us on each step of the way.

The Christ who does not condemn us, no matter what the evidence of our guilt.

Who speaks to us, as he did to the woman taken in adultery

“Nor do I condemn you”

Christ who knows the truth of who we are, accepts us as we are, but loves us too much to leave us that way.

“Go and sin no more”

Be changed by this encounter with grace, by this touch of love from the God who meets us, like a Father, when we've barely begun to make our journey home.

Turn away from sin and be faithful to Christ

As I have often observed, life as a cathedral canon is in some ways very different from that of a parish priest. In times past, I would spend Shrove Tuesday evening burning the previous years’ palm crosses to make the ash for the next day’s worship. It sounds straightforward, but as I discovered, it can be an irritating and messy business. Often, even if you’ve dried them in the oven, the palms just won’t catch, won’t burn.

Sometimes once they get going they smoke and smoulder so that your eyes start running, your hair and clothes smell, and you feel like a reject from a kipper factory.

But that's what getting rid of sin can be like.

Painful.

Irritating.

Messy.

A fresh start isn't always easy, whatever our intentions.

“Turn away from sin” sounds simple…but we seem to have some kind of internal magnet pulling us back to face the wrong way.

That’s why I, personally, value the practice of sacramental confession…which encourages us to look hard at those things what we struggle with, those recurring patterns of behaviour that seem to drag us down…which brings us to name them, not only to ourselves but, aloud, to the God who knows the secrets of our hearts and loves us nonetheless.

We name them. We look at the truth of who we are, we see what needs fixing, we measure the gap that exists between our current state and where God calls us to be.

And then, amazingly, we are reminded that Jesus has already dealt with that gap…and that God’s forgiveness is constantly available, transforming hearts, minds, lives.

Even ours. Even in the face of those things we’ve feared to name, even to ourselves.

We hear that forgiveness spoken directly to us. By name.

We find that we are, after all, reconciled to God despite everything.

Extraordinary.

Wonderful.
A moment to spring-clean hearts, minds and souls so that our light can break forth like the dawn.

I can’t deny that sometimes that process can feel difficult and painful – for it usually involves giving up things that are part of ourselves, things that we hold much closer than even the most stubborn addiction to chocolate...so it's important to keep Lent together, as a community. Together we can encourage and support one another – by word, by example, by prayer. Together we can, by the grace of God, begin again to form ourselves into a community which proclaims by deeds that are louder than words that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself and has entrusted us with the ministry of reconciliation.  

You see, returning to that messy, tiresome business of burning the palms, I found that in the end, the warmth of a whole tinful smouldering together was enough. Finally they caught fire and the flames broke forth and sprang up and in a few moments those twisted crosses had disappeared and the residue.......well, that's what we use to remind us of both aspects of Lent.

Of our frailty and mortality......you are dust.

And of our hope in Christ......who is faithful to us.

Who accepts us as we are but loves us too much to leave us there,

who will lead us through our own wilderness times,

through the desert of repentance,

who will bring us safely home. 

Welcome, dear feast of Lent

May it be a blessing to us all

Sermon for Open at Coventry Cathedral, 2nd Sunday before Lent, Yr A: Romans 8:16-25 & Matthew 6:25-34

With thanks to my good friend Claire Maxim, whose own sermon I extensively plundered for this, when the excitement of imminent grandparent-hood became altogether too much for me!

Over the past few days, as we waited for the arrival of a 1^st grandchild our family has been doing a lot of hoping for what is not seen , - which Paul assures me is a GOOD thing...and (less good) a lot more worrying about tomorrow, and what it might bring...especially as we counted the long hours of a labour that seemed to stretch all the way from Wednesday night to Saturday morning. Do not worry about your life?

Hmmn….

I might just manage it for myself, but for my precious daughter in law? NO WAY!!

It’s fair to say that by the time I went to bed on Friday I had recast the entire family in one of those Victorian tear-jerkers where a beautiful young mother dies in child-birth, leaving a whole string of tragic orphans. Since this was Giles and Lizzie’s first baby, even a worst-case scenario would have been unlikely to lead to such a very bleak familial landscape...but since when has reality ever impacted on the possibility of a Really Good Worry.

And of course I WILL worry, even now their daughter is safely landed on the shores of time,about what sort of a world my lovely Eleanor Grace has been born into. A world where the extreme right seems to be enjoying an ascendency in previously liberal countries, where Trump is behaving like a greedy toddler high on e-numbers, where our own government seems to find it completely acceptable to leave hundreds of refugee children in a hostile environment, despite earlier promises of help and sanctuary.

It doesn’t take more than a few seconds of listening to the news to make you feel that worry is after all the most reasonable response to the current situation. Unfortunately,Jesus sees things differently (as he so often does) Our Gospel passage says pretty clearly

Don’t worry: you won’t achieve anything that way, not a second more of life, not an inch more of height…  

If only it were that easy.

Of course, there’s a risk of inhumanity inherent in not worrying – the same risk that the Romans passage presents:

“I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed”                               says Paul...and on a bad day, this might just be interpreted as

“Put up with anything in the here and now because up ahead it’s all going to be wonderful! In such an interpretation, this teaching becomes a licence to ignore those who have less than we do, to ignore people who are hungry, to ignore those who cannot afford to clothe themselves and their families.

“Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink...”

A careless reading might encourage you to decide to simply leave everything up to God...to absolve you from all responsibility
“your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things”...

But the crux of the matter lies in the next sentence:

“But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”

So yes, God knows we need food and drink and shelter.               God understands that.

And we are told that if we seek God’s kingdom, and God’s righteousness, we will get the basics as well. 

As well, not instead of. 

What does that mean for us, in this time and this place?              What might a world where everyone is seeking God’s Kingdom look like?                                                                                                What does God’s righteousness really involve?

The quick answer is that such a world is obviously not at all like the United Kingdom in February 2017.   Yes, there are plenty of good people about here and now, plenty who seek God’s Kingdom and God’s righteousness, but still and all, things go wrong for them. “All these things” don’t seem to be given to them in the way we might hope.

But I wonder why that might be?                                                  Could it be something to do with us?

In the world that Jesus describes, there is that core assumption that there is enough for everyone, that ample provision is made for all our basic needs, if only we weren’t seduced by greed, encouraged to demand more and better with every passing day. 

But still and all, there IS enough and to spare...if we can only let go of our relentless determination to accumulate more…

But we find that so very very hard.

We can’t quite take it on trust that there IS enough for all, that everyone can and will be  provided for.

And so we buy into the anxious spirit of the age. We are encouraged to worry about tomorrow, and next week, and next year. 

Who will look after us in our old age?

Will our pension be sufficient to live on?

Will our health break down, and if it does, do we have enough money to pay for our care?                                                                           Will we have to carry on working until we drop?                                 Can the over-stretched NHS give the care it should to everyone?

Worry upon worry upon worry….and they all seem utterly reasaonable to me – particularly at 3.00 am! And I'm one of the fortunate "haves"!
 

Try preaching “don’t worry about tomorrow” to someone who can’t cope with today.  As Christians, we claim that through God’s good grace we have the gift of eternal life, of bright hope for tomorrow.  But how to claim that for a mother whose children are hungry, a father whose son is disillusioned because he cannot find a job, a teenager trapped in the Jungle with his hope of a better future just a few miles away?

If we are truly seeking God’s Kingdom, truly seeking God’s righteousness, we will care about the poor, the vulnerable, the voiceless.  We will care about those for whom this is an unjust society, we will speak out for those who are at the margins.  We will care that the whole creation groans in labour pains...and not only the creation but we ourselves.

We know things are broken but we know too that we have a Saviour who came to heal...who spent his time with those on the edge, with those who have no hope

And we have a Spirit who is alive in us today, who calls us to seek God’s Kingdom, to collaborate with God in making it real here and now.

So don’t worry….but don’t bury your head in the sand either.

There’s work to be done, for you and for me.

This isn’t some academic call to an unseen Utopia, though we look for it with hope. 

It’s a call to the deepest reality, to change right here and  right now.

There is enough, if we share; there is justice for all, if we care.

And if we act,God’s Kingdom is here.  Amen. Let it be so.

On being "Rubbish at the Bible"

Once upon a time the Dean, God bless him, sagely remarked                                                                   "The Canon Pastor is RUBBISH at the Bible. Great on the Sacraments but rubbish at the Bible!" *      He clearly knows me much too well – and so the task of talking about a Bible passage that has been important in my life played straight into all my personal anxieties about not being the “right sort of Christian”…because, you see, when I look back at my faith journey, God has generally spoken to me far more through music, poetry or other works of literature than through Scripture...though I have the sort of memory that holds on to huge chunks of beautiful words, including Bible passages, and can probably tell you when and where I was first conscious of them . I had an instinctive sense of ritual and can remember creating domestic liturgy (with which my parents generously went along) that involved my 6’+ father lighting the Christmas tree candles while I recited John’s Prologue – which I had somehow learned without trying (I blame "Carols from Kings") well before my 7^th birthday.                                                                                                                                                                            "The light shineth in the darkness and the darkness comprehendeth it not."                                         But I pretty much SANG my way to faith, catching glimpses of God in the beauty of South Coast Anglo Catholicism in my childhood, but becoming certain of God’s reality in singing the Et Resurrexit from Bach’s B Minor Mass in Kings Chapel in my 2^nd year at Cambridge. By then, of course, I’d been singing in churches, college chapels and the like for a good 10 years. I loved the business of worship, the feeling that we were always on the edge of something bigger and more beautiful than anyone dared to imagine, that we could be caught up in it at any moment. I’d had a very powerful experience of God through a John Donne poem that was part of my A level revision the day my father died….but it was Bach who sealed the contract. Against that backdrop, though, I was being reeled in subversively through a web of non co-incidences. In my first term, I was set an essay on Lancelot Andrewes. I LOVED his words…the play of light and shade on the page…the sheer cleverness that was always undergirded with a genuine longing to draw us in to the text…oh, and of course, that text was the Bible – for these were sermons. 350 years old, but sermons nonetheless….I loved them so much that I wrote my Part 1 dissertation on Andrewes – who was, of course, Chair of the Committee that compiled the Kings James AV. To write about Andrewes was to spend weeks up to my ears in “his” Bible, and when the dissertation was submitted, it went in with a title that referenced both Andrewes himself, George Herbert (who was to become my lifelong companion in faith) and, inevitably, Scripture too.                                                                                                               “Thy WORD is all, if we could spell”                                                                                                                 So, truly, "In the beginning was the Word" for me…A God who communicated in every possible way…who refused to leave my head or my heart but resided there with such discretion and grace that I took a while to realise that it was God at all. So – my passage remains John’s Prologue….which does the same thing in words as the pillars of Durham Cathedral do in stone…putting roots down into the deepest truths that there are…which offers us the heart-rending sense of God’s vulnerability “He came unto his own, and his own received him not”….which takes us back to the dawn of time but proclaims God’s constant unswerving involvement with humanity  “the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us”.

Later, with my call to priesthood, came the specific instruction to bear witness to the light, to hold the light for others so that they too could be warmed by the certainty that it will never, ever be put out.

 

*This was both so true and so funny, even at the time, that it has become a family saying, and is in no way a cause for distress

Sermon for the Cathedral Eucharist on "Green Communion Sunday", 5th February 2017

Isaiah 58:1-12, Matthew 5:13-20

 

Today, as we celebrate Green Communion Sunday, our gospel takes us back to basics.

Salt and light.

We know what they are.

No thorny theological concepts here for they are both part of nature, both quite ordinary in many ways….we encounter them daily and don’t even think about them….but also quite extraordinary, since in different ways they impact on everything around them.

Salt, of course, works in a way that is hidden. When you add it to a recipe, you don’t SEE the salt at work...and you can’t remove it again no matter how hard you try (we’ve all heard tales of unfortunate souls who substituted salt for sugar with less than tasty results)…

Used well, it enhances other natural flavours, changing everything for the better.

Just think of salt and shake crisps!

When we describe someone as the salt of the earth, we’re saying something particular about them.
Yes, they are people of good principles, people who absolute integrity we can rely on – but they may not always be that easy to spend time with.
You see, they are people who don’t compromise…who carry on holding the line no matter what…Their taste is wholesome but unmissable.
On the other hand, Jesus is very clear about how he feels about those who don’t stay true to themselves – who become like salt that has lost its flavour, through exposure to damp so that it is no longer really salt at all.
That “unsalty salt” was often mixed with gypsum as a drying material in the surface of Roman roads...most emphatically destined to be trampled underfoot, for it had lost its real purpose.

Jesus doesn’t mince his words here.

In the same way, Christians that adapt so completely to the secular word that there’s no way to distinguish them from their neighbours have let go of something essential.

We have a calling, you and I….a calling to make a difference by living in a different kind of way.

That is something we let go of at our peril….and it’s something to remember on this day when we focus on our relationship to and mistreatment of creation.

More of that later.

We can be secret salt – flavouring things for the better.

Light, on the other hand, works quite differently.

You are the light of the world

Interestingly, the Greek word that is used here for world is kosmon (the root of “cosmos”)  – so we are to stand as light not just for humanity but for the whole of created order (this is the same word used in John 3:16 – God so loved the KOSMON..)

Ours is no narrowly human calling but something bigger, brighter, with an impact beyond what we might dare to expect.

If it is dark and you light a lamp – everything changes.

That’s the whole point of a lamp - to make a visible difference….

We need light in order to make sense of our surroundings, to stay safe, to do our work, to recognise our friends.

Again, Jesus is anything but obscure in his teaching – and is not preaching obscurity to his disciples either.

“You must be like a city on a hill, like a lamp in full view” - outstanding, unmissable.

Illuminating everything through a confident proclamation that Jesus is Lord – and demonstrating his Lordship by the way we live.

In other words, we have a God-given responsibility to BE different and to MAKE a difference – and on this Green Communion Sunday there’s no doubt that we must use it.

The problem is real and pressing.

The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it – but we treat it as if it were a giant super-market full of infinite resources for us to plunder at will.

Instead of regarding the world as a sacramental sign of God’s loving involvement with every single created atom and cell, we behave as if we are the rightful inheritors of all things, but are spending our inheritance as fast as we can as if we’re determined to leave nothing behind for our children.

We believe that progress means more of everything – and we don’t seem to care about the cost.

That’s probably because we are not yet asked to pay it.

Again and again it is the poorest communities that are suffering first and worst from the consequences of climate change, and yet they are least to blame for causing it. They are the ones who are losing their land to the sea, whose low-lying islands are disappearing below the waves, whose crops are failing and who are more vulnerable to diseases such as malaria. In the low-lying islands of the Pacific and in the coastal areas of Bangladesh, rising sea levels are forcing families from their homes and villages as their land is lost to the sea, entire harvests are being destroyed by floods, and the increased salinity of the soil means some traditional staple crops no longer flourish.  In Malawi, changing weather patterns mean farmers cannot produce enough food to support their families, and whole communities are struggling to survive.

And we do nothing.

I’m pretty sure that’s not what God had in mind…

Listen…

“Is not THIS the fast that I choose.

To loose the bonds of injustice,

to undo the thongs of the yoke,

to let the oppressed go free?

Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house?”

And we all know that, while it is clearly imperative to feed the hungry, it would be even better to act to prevent their hunger. This IS Kingdom business, and so it is our business too.

Quite simply, if we stay silent and inactive in the face of this, then we are become exactly those whom God berates, speaking through Isaiah

“Look, you serve your own interest...”

To which I can only respond “Guilty as charged”

And yes, I’m speaking of myself here…
I’ve bought into the “more is better” drive of our consumer society. While I wear FairTrade clothes, - I’m not so worried about shoes. Yes, I now own a “FairPhone” - designed to avoid built in obsolence and made in a factory where the workers receive a fair wage for their labour BUT I enjoy using other electronic devices with less ethical pedigrees too.
I almost ALWAYS leave it too late to walk to work, so I drive,  and I flew cheerfully to India and to Denmark last year – and back again too – and absolutely loved the experience – but have yet to engage with one of the programmes that enables me to off-set the impact of those flights by investing in tree planting.

I’m a mass of good intentions, which I don’t really follow through.

So I’m not pretending it’s easy.
But, you know, to shy away from the issues is not simply irresponsible.
I think it’s sinful too.
“Look, you serve your own interest”

And we are called to stand apart from the spirit of the age, when that spirit is one of greed and selfishness.

It may seem that environmental concern is a luxury we cannot afford in a world whose politics are teetering on the brink of madness – but that could not be further from the case.
The environment IS political – but it is also, undeniably, a matter that impacts on our faith.

From  the creation account in Genesis through to Revelation, there is a thread that binds the world and humanity together in a relationship of respect and protection. The Church is called to shout out for justice, seeking and demanding peace and righteousness where it is lacking, daring to be voice for the voiceless.

And we can do this because we have hope….hope that the way things are is not the way things will always be….hope that change IS possible...hope that in face of death and defeat, God has other, wonderful plans. The evidence of Easter is on our side there!

Hope emerging from despair, again and again and again.

“Then your light shall break forth like the dawn and your healing shall spring up quickly;

Your vindicator shall go before you, the glory of the Lord shall be your rearguard.”

Transformation and hope – cornerstones of the Christian world-view.

Can we, shall we be part of the new thing God is doing – as disciples, in this Cathedral, and in our world.?
Our task of reconciliation stretches out beyond human conflict to the reconciliation of our whole wounded planet.
We are called to leave behind the old ways, to set aside old habits that hurt other people, and to nurture new habits of life that will make a real difference.

We are called to make our longing for healing and reconciliation visible by the way we live, by the choices we make.

So – what should we do? What can we do, when we feel small and helpless at the enormity of the task.

First, I’d ask you to think and to pray with this really simple question. Ask God!
Then, have a look at some of the ideas on the back page of your service booklet…and, whatever your usual practice, on this of all days PLEASE take that booklet home with you as you consider small lifestyle changes that you might make to reduce your own global footprint, ways to step outside the prevalent culture, to reduce consumption and invest instead in a culture of compassion and community, to live simply that others may simply live.
Then, perhaps, it might be time to write to your MP, to make clear that you aren’t content for taxpayers’ money to be spent on dirty energy,  or to call on the Church Commissioners to disinvest in fossil fuels and focus on renewable energy.
Together, we can take seriously the need to become an “Eco church” - to look at the recommendations and address those areas where we fall short--because we are more visible together than apart.

We need not lose our savour – our distinctive understanding of the world, and of life, as a gift of love from a recklessly generous Creator – and nor must we ever take that gift for granted.

For the sake of God’s glory, for the sake of the poor, for the sake of all humanity, let’s invest in the future of the earth -

“Then your light shall rise in darkness and your gloom be like the noonday…

You shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail”.

Amen. Let it be so. Thanks be to God.