A Journal from the Plague Year: where two or three....???

About 15 years ago, when I was setting off in my first incumbency, I was sent on a training day about change. I can’t remember much of the content, except that after lunch we were asked to imagine our parish in the grip of some huge, possibly threatening, change – and then DRAW a model of our likely response.

I can’t draw. Absolutely rubbish…Always have been. Always will be. So that might have constrained my reaction a little, but I don’t think so. I drew a sideways rectangle, and place a cross, and an outline chalice on it…Unleashing my inner Father Ted I announced

“When in any doubt, it’s always the right thing to do to say Mass”.

So when this crisis began, it’s not surprising that this was my first response.

I work at Coventry Cathedral, where we celebrate the Eucharist at least 5 days a week, and as we began to realise that a pandemic was about to engulf us, I suggested to my colleagues that we really ought to be offering a daily celebration. Cathedrals take a while to change direction – the QE2 is lithe and nimble in comparison – so though everyone agreed, this didn’t actually start until the day after Lent 3 and our last act of public worship. We always have a combined service of Morning Prayer with Communion first thing on Mondays – so, knowing that we would open for private prayer at 10.00, we arranged to live stream our usual offering, despite the vagaries of the cathedral wifi. That first day, I think the Dean presided and I deaconed – and to our surprise a considerable number of people joined us online, from our regular worshipping community, from the wider diocese, and from the international movement of reconciliation that is our Community of the Cross of Nails. Despite ourselves, we had begun to create a Eucharistic community based on virtual presence – and that community has grown exponentially over the weeks that followed.

Of course at that point, it didn’t feel as if we were doing anything very different from our norm. Though it was pointed out that the Dean and I should really not be in the same space at the same time for risk of infection (this was the week before lockdown, remember), there was a verger present to manage the recording, though they didn’t always choose to receive…But it didn’t feel unlike any midweek Mass….Coventry is not one of those cathedrals where people queue to get a seat for daily worship…we are often 2 or 3….

As we approached lockdown, I began to panic. How would I manage if I couldn’t celebrate the Eucharist for an indefinite period? It was OK for my colleagues, who live with other people, but my family are scattered so I imagined that when the inevitable happened, I’d be stuck, deprived of something that is absolutely at the heart of my faith and my identity. I began to remember the times when I had celebrated the Eucharist at death beds, offered bread and wine to family members while the dying, unable even to manage a sip of wine on a silver spoon, were invited to make an act of spiritual communion. There was absolutely no doubt that Christ was present. No doubt that his love and life filled each one of us on that holy ground…

Was this the way forward?

Then, of course, the bishops made their pronouncement – that priests could celebrate alone on behalf of their communities…And we went into lockdown…but that pattern of livestreamed Morning Prayer with Communion continued and numbers grew day by day by day. I asked how it felt to watch me receiving Christ in bread and wine – was it something that increased the pain of difficult days, rubbed the noses of the faithful in the sad reality that I couldn’t currently give THEM the sacrament…

Did it feel as if I was eating my fill while the onlookers were left hungry? 

Basically, would they rather we stopped? 

The answer to that there was a resounding NO.

You are our priest. We want you to do the things for which you were ordained. We know you are doing this for us- and we receive that as a gift…said one who emailed…while another spoke of the comfort of knowing that whatever else was going on, however dark and scary the world had become, there was stability and comfort here. A priest who comes to me for spiritual direction was wrestling with the issues. She comes from a less sacramental tradition than mine, and I think she was wondering whether to simply offer a service of the word right the way through til everyone could gather again…Her reasoning was convincing, her longing to offer the best she could to her people shiningly obvious, and my style of "direction" very rarely wanders down truly directive paths. So I was rather startled as

I heard myself say to her “Do you honestly think that it would be better for the world if nobody anywhere celebrated the Eucharist until this is over?” – for that, surely, would be the logical conclusion, and I knew with all that was in me that for me that was a completely unthinkable situation.

"Blessed be God by whose grace creation is renewed, by whose love heaven is opened, by whose mercy we offer this sacrifice of praise" runs one of the possible prayers over the gifts in the Anglican liturgy....and it seems to me that as we celebrate the Eucharist, Love opens that window onto heaven again and again and again.

The part of the ordinal that I cling to when I am feeling least effective in ministry is the command “You are to tell the story of God’s love”.

For me, that story is rooted and grounded above all in the Eucharist. When I celebrate I bring that love story into our present. I take all the pain and fear and grief of the world as part of the offertory, and as always God touches them and transforms them, giving back God’s life in return. The bread and wine we receive embodies that – and even to watch a colleague consuming them in his home across the city makes that gift fresh real and alive for me.

That’s just where I am. It's not the only answer. Each priest, each congregation, is finding their own way through uncharted waters, and we are all doing our best to keep on telling that story of Love.

For me, it feels as if the Cathedral has grown into herself during this season so that we are actually doing what a mother-church should do. That daily act is bringing people together around a virtual altar and empowering us to live as the Body of Christ in extraordinary times

A Journal from the Plague Year: the phony war

By way of an introduction.
Ever since Lockdown started, I've wondered why I wasn't writing.
I love writing. 
I've no particular agenda, just the joy of the words, so I had imagined that in the new regime I'd delight in filling my days with word upon word upon word. 
I even chose a notebook from my stash to contain my ramblings...

Four weeks on - NOTHING!

I think perhaps at first my brain was too overloaded with emotions to even begin to try and distil them into words...but all the same, this is an extraordinary time, and I am conscious that there is so much being learned as we go through it together. So, I'm writing now, not because I feel I have anything significant to share but really because I want to capture the moment and try to make sense of it all for myself. 
If you feel like reading, that's great...but I'm fine if nobody ever does! 
These are my thoughts, memories, impressions...
Perhaps I'll be able to look back in a decade and notice significant changes  emerging from this experience. 
Perhaps I'll use it in "do you remember?" conversations with Ellie (who will then, unbelievably, be entering her teens).
Perhaps I won't be here, but at least I'll try and learn while I can.

Wars and rumours of wars
2020 was going to be such FUN. MY year!
I had a sabbatical booked, - the first in 16 years of ordained ministry - a moderately significant birthday to celebrate, and some wonderful plans as to how I might manage both.
I had a delightful new grandson to engage with and a strong and happy relationship with his older sister to continue: there's alot to be said for being the available adult in a household where a new baby has done just a wee bit of supplanting...
I didn't plan any leave after Christmas - really, once we hit spring my sabbatical would be only days away - though thankfully I did continue to make the most of the here and now opportunities, heading down to London to the theatre with some parts of the family, and continuing my regular Friday jaunts to Cambridge to cuddle those grand-babies too.
That's something I'm incredibly thankful for.

It was in January that we began to hear more about a new virus that was hitting China hard. One of my oldest friends has a son teaching English there, and I was concerned for him - and for her as a worried and distant mum - but beyond that it didn't seem likely to impinge. Chinese New Year arrived and because I was busy I didn't indulge in my habitual Chinese supper from the take-away up the road: I learned later that already they were suffering as customers began to stay away, as if you might catch the new virus simply by interacting with anyone of Asian descent. Feeling superior, I dismissed this attitude as ridiculous - and anyway, that virus was still far away...we were an island...it wasn't going to affect us.

Except that slowly, almost imperceptibly, it did.
Overnight it seemed that Italy had become a "plague zone". Just the north at first. I could still feel envious of friends heading to Venice for Carnival - until they were sent summarily home. Then there was news of the whole country going into lock-down., just as UK half-term hit, with lots of families heading to Italy to ski. Suddenly this didn't seem a far-away unreal disease. It was getting closer. I found myself hating the distance between Coventry and Cambridge, would wake up with my face damp with tears at the idea that I might be separated from those I loved most - either by a country in lockdown or, most fearfully, by death. I had not really known my own grandparents, my parents had died while I was still in my teens, and so the whole experience of becoming a grandmother was the most amazing and joyful discovery of new love as overwhelming as that which had flooded my world when my children were born. I wanted (and want) so desperately to be part of their lives - to see them grow up and watch their story unfold...Since Ellie was born I had felt so very sorry for my own parents, who had missed this total delight. 
To realise that there was a significant risk that I too might leave the little ones early was more than I felt able to bear....
Those were tricky days to navigate. 

We began to have planning meetings at the Cathedral, imagining how it might be if we had to close the offices, how we could best work from home, naively rejoicing that our ruins would allow us a space to gather even if it was felt unsafe to continue to worship inside.

Then we hit March. The shops began to empty as people recognised the probability of being confined to their homes for a while. Loo roll, pasta and tinned tomatoes found themselves popular as never before. Because I'd spent much of last year gently preparing for a No Deal Brexit I found myself embarrassingly well-off for many staples...so started giving things away. No matter how much I might sometimes wish things were otherwise, my adult children all have lives, jobs and homes a good 80 miles away so the supplies designed to feed a family really weren't going to come in handy.

News bulletins became more pessimistic day by day. 
We realised we were not looking at "ifs" but "whens". 
For some weeks we had suggested that people might prefer not to share the Peace with a handshake, that if they felt vulnerable they should avoid the common cup at Communion. 
This advice did not land well!
Our congregation is mostly retired, with experience of the great crises of yesteryear, and for some time they were resolute in their refusal to take precautions. The prevailing attitude seemed to be something along the lines of
"I've come through worse than this...and life is for living. I'd rather die now, having spent time seeing my friends and fully engaging with life than simply exist within my four walls..."
It was not until the narrative changed to "Protect Others. Protect the NHS" that they became compliant - but by the Third Sunday of Lent things felt different..
We were told that only the President should receive the wine. 
Our planned guest preacher sent a recorded sermon instead of coming in person - and some cathedral stalwarts decided to stay at home.
I was conscious of a huge weight of significance as I placed the Sacrament in hand after hand as the choir sang - so very beautifully that it seemed a distillation of all I love most about cathedral worship.
With each familiar face, each pair of hands, I found myself half engaged with an inner dialogue, composed of thoughts like these:
I may not be able to feed you for a time. 
You are old, not in the best of health. 
Will you be here when we gather once more?
Do you know how much you matter? How much you are loved?
But of course, "all" I actually said was "The Body of Christ keep YOU in eternal life".
As always, that was enough.

After the service, our usual coffee was cancelled. Instead I begged people to leave their contact details so that, once we were separated, we could keep in touch. 
"What do you mean, if we are separated?" asked R, robust and indignant as he must surely have been throughout his 8 decades...
Probably this was just as well.
If we had really REALLY grasped how life was about to change, there might have been more tears than could easily be contained in one Sunday morning.
As it was, I chatted and prayed with a few people, exchanged glances with Christ on the Sutherland tapestry - who looked as weary but loving as usual - and headed downstairs.
Public worship in that space was over for the moment.

Sermon for Passion Sunday 2020 to the Cathedral Diaspora

If a week is a long time in politics it is almost immeasurable in this extraordinary season.
Though it’s only 7 days since Mothering Sunday, when the Dean and I stood at opposite ends of the High Altar in our beloved Cathedral, already that service seems a lifetime away.
Never has Lent seen such stripping away of so much we took for granted.
Never have I longed with more fervour to see the dawn of resurrection hope...but I fear that this year I may need to wait more than the two weeks til Easte

Nonetheless, however we are feeling, today Passiontide begins.
In churches in the catholic tradition, every cross, every statue would normally now be veiled, reminding worshippers that they are entering into a time of deep darkness and pain, as Jesus walks the way of the cross and invites us to walk beside him.
This year,  no veiling is necessary for we have to do without the externals altogether.
We are in exile from our buildings, learning to sing the Lord’s song in a strange land.

And with the mounting tide of fear and grief threatening to engulf us from time to time, it’s easy to imagine ourselves amid the grim landscape of Ezekiel’s valley of dry bones, its scenery a brutal reminder of the mortality that is all too real among us .
I think we need to pause and look hard, however much we would prefer to distract ourselves.
There’s nothing to console, encourage or please us here.
Just bones, with no stories behind them...a sad reminder that golden lads and girls all must as chimney sweepers come to dust.
This is the landscape for lament – and in this season, lament may be all the prayer we can manage.

And that’s OK.
There’s nothing wrong with acknowledging our grief, our anxiety, our fear.
This IS a hard place – the most barren landscape that I have inhabited in all my life – and we are bound to weep with those who weep.
What has gone wrong, that the world is so violently shaken on its axis#?
Where is God in all this?
"Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died..."
Our Gospel reading provides an instant, unmistakeable answer.
Where is God.
Standing beside us, weeping.
Jesus wept
That famous shortest verse in Scripture carries all that we need by way of assurance that the God whose son wept at the grave of Lazarus is here too, sharing our grief for each life lost, each story changed  to tragedy from happy
Jesus wept.
And Jesus still weeps.

So, if you don’t know how to pray – weep and let God share in that weeping.

But remember, too, that ours is a God of transformation.
Ezekiel prophecies as God directs....mad though it may seem. Does God really wantvhim to engage with a heap of bones?
and gradually, incredibly, the bones begin to come together.
He speaks again and they put on flesh once more.
And finally the Spirit moves and they return to life.
Living and breathing
A vast multitude...the dead restored…hope rekindled for Israel and for all God’s people.
The raw grief of a burned cathedral subsumed in the wonder of people coming together to build something beautiful, founded on the ways of peace
“I shall put my spirit in you and you shall live”
Not yet, perhaps...there is a time for every purpose under heaven...but God holds all our times in his hands.

And  this hope is not just for nations, not simply a promise of collective redemption. It is for individuals, in all the complicated sadness and bewilderment of loss.
God is here too.
Jesus shared in the grief of the bereaved sisters, and his voice rang out in the quiet of the graveyard..”Lazarus, come forth”...calling his friend by name because the power of that voice would otherwise surely raise the dead of all ages, bring them, sleepy, bemused into the daylight…
Where is God? Opening our graves, seeing that we are released from the grafe clothes,, and calling us back to life...

Whatever comes next – no matter how overpowering the coming week may be, God is involved in it.
God weeping beside us, his arms holding us steady even when human hugs are denied.
God at work bringing about resurrection in places where there is no hope of life at all.
God’s passion for humanity meaning that he bears all that we bear, carries the pain and sadness of the present time as just one more weight in the burden bourne on the cross.

But wait.

Imagine yourself back in the Cathedral, sitting in your usual place
Think, if you would, about the great tapestry of Christ under whose gaze we live every second of life there..
Now take a journey from the nave, past the high altar into the Lady Chapel for a different perspective.
Here we can see not glory alone but also pain and suffering, the dreadful loneliness of Jesus hanging on the cross, facing death abandoned by friends and father alike
“My God my God, why have you forsaken me?”
it can be as hard to look him in the eye now as it is to gaze on Ezekiel’s valley of bones.
Our instinct is to turn away – to try and find something easier to dwell on.
Best, perhaps, simply to lift our eyes to see Christ enthroned, sidestepping his suffering.
But the truth is,  there is no break between the two scenes.
In reality as on the tapestry, pain and glory are all one.
I, when I am lifted up, will draw all people to myself
God is as fully glorified when darkness shadows the world on Good Friday as in the golden dawn of Easter morning.
There is meaning and hope to be found in both if we have the courage to engage with them.

We cannot hurry through this present crisis, for the whole world is suffering, locked down together, bereft of so much that was loved and lovely – but even as we pause to lament, we can try to lift our gaze and find God at work even here, even now, making all things new.
Let us commit to work beside him, Christs body dispersed but still living and active, ready to be part of the healing of our communities in the days ahead.

Lent 1 A Evensong at Coventry Cathedral

I wonder if it has ever occurred to you that, when we gather to worship week by week, we do so in celebration of a love story. Sometimes this is more obvious that others...but in this evening’s readings there’s no room for any doubt. First, we heard one half of the great commandment – Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and soul...with the added injunction to make sure that everyone – your children, your neighbours, anyone who passes by your houise – knows that this is a fundamental, non-negotiable fact of life.

Except, of course, that it isn’t. 

The command is there but if you’re coming to it for the first time, you might reasonably wonder just WHY this is laid upon you ...and indeed, much of the grand sweep of Old Testament history suggests that even those who were living through events were pretty rubbish at understanding or following through on that relationship between God and humanity. 
Why should they invest in it? 
And how do you love a God whom you don’t know except through history and hearsay.
So – we have the commandment and then several centuries of failure to obey it. 
Centuries in which God’s loving-kindness is rebuffed again and again by people determined to live life on their own terms..until finally God comes into the world and lives among God’s people, not only telling them but SHOWING them what God is like.

That’s what our second reading is about.
Jesus is both demonstrating and telling about God’s all-inclusive love. The reading begins with a complaint. Jesus is mixing with all the wrong people – people who aren’t respectable at all – people whom it would surely be wise to avoid, people who will bring his ministry into disrepute. 
Try as we might to be open-hearted ourselves, we can probably think of some groups of people whom we’d cast as undesirable...people whom, with the best will in the world, we might be uncomfortable sitting next to on the train, people whom we would quite like to attend a different church on the other side of town...Were adrpt at drawing lines, avoiding connections, but not Jesus. 
He sees those awkward, uncomfortable people rather differently. 

This is a love story, remember….God so loved the world – not just the nice, clean, well-behaved parts of it but the whole messed up, self-destructive, hurt and hurting caboode. 
All of it. 
Particularly the underdogs, the outsiders, the ones whom NOBODY chooses to invite to their party.

That’s really hard for us to accept. 
Our love is a pretty amateur affair  and we tend, beyond our family, to apply some fairly stringent conditions before opening our arms, hearts and homes.
We may avoid the language of sin – somehow we think it sounds quite old-fashioned- but that diesnt stop us from judging others, as we weigh them in the balance and find them wanting
That habit is alive and well in our community, even in our church...but that's NOT what the gospel is about.

The gospel is all about love.

It's that which means we're in no position to judge. 
Even if we managed, as the Pharisees believed that they did, to obey every letter of the law  we would trip up over our failure to love. In truth there are no righteous who need no repenting. We fall short. All of us.
However, that's OK. 
Listen!

Jesus begins his story, as he so often does, by asking a question
 ‘Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it?
It's a good question...so stop for a minute to think about your answer.

Think about how you’ve felt when losing something. Something unique and precious (grandma's wedding ring,  the keys to your car) may inspire a pretty concentrated search...
But frankly, if you had 99 other similar things (sheep? Coins?) – would you really bother to hunt for long?

Honestly

There are 99 sheep trotting along happily– why bother to go in search of the 1 that won’t play nicely? The loner, the trouble maker, the one who didn't fit in?
Why  risk the safety of the flock – leaving them amid all the dangers of the wilderness while you look for JUST ONE???
It doesn't seem prudent. 
It doesn't even seem kind.
All those good little sheep deserve care and attention. 
Surely a good shepherd can’t just abandon them...

No, Jesus, I don't think I'd answer your question in the way that you hope.
If I were the shepherd, then the flock would be left incomplete...one sheep lost forever. Because my love is human and limited...It just doesn’t go far enough

But thankfully I'm not the shepherd. 

I'm one of the sheep. And so are you. 
Perhaps you feel that you're one of the majority, grazing calmly with your fellows, travelling obediently along the path that is set before you...
And that might make you a little sad, even indignant when the shepherd – and the Church that exists to join in with His work – insists on making such a fuss about the missing sheep. 
What's so special about that one missing sheep after all? It's not exactly a prize merino. WHY does it matter.

It matters, of course, because God loves it with a love that  WILL NOT LET HIM REST until the flock is complete.
That's the gospel..the good news for all of us.....because, you know, actually each of us is sometimes the lost sheep...willfull....Confused....Downright disobedient.....we seem bound to wander away from the Shepherd from time to time....but HE NEVER EVER LEAVES US ASTRAY.
He loves us too much.

I was once at a toddler group when one of a pair of twins vanished.
One moment their mother was happily chatting to a friend, the next she had abandoned the conversation and was scanning every corner of the room for her missing son. It didn’t matter that her daughter was safely by her side…she needed to find that small boy so badly he might have been the only child she had. Her daughter, though, was sensible. As her mother swooped off to the furthest corners of the room, she was followed by a small but determined figure, who had no intention of letting her mother out of her sight. 
The whole drama didn’t last long, and ended in a happy reunion behind a stack of tables.…but for a brief period maybe those of us involved had an inkling of the way God feels about each one of us. He loves us so much, that we might be his only child. He actively seeks us out when we have wandered away or broken off communications with Him. It’s almost as if He feels incomplete when one of us is missing. He takes every risk, right down to sending his own Son, to seek us out and rescue us. 

And that leaves us with another question...
Are WE in the right place?
perhaps we should ask ourselves whether, if the one sheep is with the shepherd, it might not be the 99 who have gone astray 
If Jesus is somewhere out there on the margins, hunting for missing sheep, shouldn’t we be there close beside him. 
Surely the most important question for each of us is not 
“Is Jesus with me?” but “Am I where Jesus is” 
There is no better place, for we can trust him to lead us into new pastures, to keep us from harm, and indeed to lay down his life for us.

It's a love story, remember, and that's just the way love works, 

Leap Day

Every four years, when this predictable but somehow unexpected gift of a day comes round, I determine to use it well. 
Perhaps this year I'll write a poem, or visit a long lost friend.
Maybe I should hold a party, or send letters to everyone I love, explaining just how important they are to me.
Whatever I do, surely the day can't be just ordinary. 

And yet, when it arrives, that's exactly what it is.
Tempting, then, to be disappointed.
I haven't done anything amazing.
I've just lived.

Except - isn't THAT extraordinary? 
I'm already almost three years older than my mother was when she died. 
That's a gift in itself.
And I've seen places and met people I would never have expected to.

More, I've had the delight of watching one of my children become a parent, and discovered just how overwhelming the joy of grand-babies can be.

According to my calculations I've been given 15 of these bonus Leap Days so far...and yes, that's fun but actually it's no more amazing than the fact that I woke up this morning and have done so reliably through almost 60 years. 

So, today has simply reminded me that all time is a gift. I am particularly good at squandering it, but at least today has reminded me to be thankful.

Ash Wednesday

"Lord, let me know mine end, and the number of my days" sang the visiting singers tonight's Ash Wednesday Eucharist.
Choir half term, so no Allegri for us in Coventry, but as the voices wove around one another, in the courtly dance that is the middle section of Maurice Greene''s setting of the psalm 39, it didn't much matter.
The graceful interchange of voices belied the words
"Man walketh as a vain shadow"
Not a hint of futility here, but rather gently ordered beauty, soothing the soul.

The paradox of the setting is a good one for today, ostensibly  heavy with foreboding,  the intimations inescapable of mortality.
"Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return", I say, over and over again, tracing the cross as best I can on faces known and unfamiliar.
It ought to feel portentous, is certainly solemn, but is redeemed both by the inescapable intimacy that connects us all in our fragile, time-limited physicality , and by the second sentence I get to share.
"Turn away from sin and be faithful to Christ".
Diagnosis and cure delivered in two short sentences.
"Let me know mine end"

At the lunchtime Eucharist we gather under the gaze of saints and angels on the West Screen, the leaden skies supporting the message of the death that is the inescapable lot of each and every person there. Yes, even that delightful baby, and the little girl who watches,  warily, from the front row.
"You are dust...."
But then,  as the people come to me one by one, something wonderful happens.
It's an ordinary, every day event: the sun comes out from behind the clouds.
Suddenly I can no longer see the faces of those I'm ashing.
They are invisible, concealed by the pool of golden glory, the black ash crosses completely lost in the transfiguring brightness of this holy moment.
Again and again I reach forward into this enveloping blaze, declaring the truth of the moment even as I look ahead to offer sure and certain hope for the future.
"Let me know mine end".
This, this is what we can look forward to as we turn to Christ and follow in his steps on the way that leads to everlasting life.

"Rejoice oh dust and ashes,  the Lord shall be thy part."
That is the end, which opens us up to a new beginning, as during Lent even we are allowed to try on Easter hope. 

Salt and Light - a sermon for Proper 1, 9th February 2020 at Coventry Cathedral.

Welcome to Ordinary Time.

After the high celebrations of the past weeks we are back again in the green and growing season, with a focus on very ordinary things.

Salt and light.

No abstruse theological concepts but everyday things we encounter without thought....but for all that, 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 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 of absolute integrity– but they may not always be that easy to spend time with precisely because they are people who don’t compromise…who carry on holding the line no matter what. Wholesome but unmissable.

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. Roman roads were often coated with such unsalty salt, as a sealant to dry things out – trampled under foot daily as it is no use for flavouring any more.

So Jesus isn’t mincing his words. If we’re no use in flavouring things, we’re out…

If we adapt so completely to the secular word that there’s no way to distinguish us from our neighbours we’ve lost something essential.

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

We should stand out from the crowd in ways that make others long to be like us. You can decide for yourselves whether the recent appearances of the Church of England in the media serve that purpose or not…Certainly we’ve made our presence known – but not, perhaps, in ways that make our secular neighbours long to join us. Salt in the wrong place can wreck a recipe.

 

Light, on the other hand, works quite differently. Nothing subtle about it.

You are the light of the world

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

That’s the whole point of a lamp - to make a visible difference….(and of course, if you put a basket over a naked flame, you can expect a fire)

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 our confidence in God’s love, and our obedience to his law in ever aspect of our lives.

 

In other words, we have a God-given responsibility to BE different and to MAKE a difference –

This week our city is dealing with the tragedy of another teenager lost to knife crime and gang violence. Babakar was 15. Let that sink in for a minute. FIFTEEN. Anyone who has ever been a teenager will remember that this is above all the age of poor choices and impulsive decisions. I’m pretty confident that I am not the only one in the building who did some fairly stupid things at that point, though mine were pretty low key, involving fashion sense, dreadful haircuts and the way I chose to spend Saturday nights – but I’ve been given the gift of time to redeem them, to make better choices, to direct my energies in ways that might add to the sum of human happiness, not its reverse.

And, what’s more, that gift of time is still current – for each and every one of us here. A gift to be used.

 

So – what are you going to do?

What are WE going to do?

How might you demonstrate the love of Christ, as Jesus weeps over our city, where some young people go in fear of their lives, knowing that to step into the wrong post-code is to risk real violence, even death…?

The calling to make a difference is not an optional extra, so what next?

You might make a difference as salt – quietly changing the flavour of your own neighbourhood step by step by step with random acts of kindness, befriending the stranger, defending the weak, advocating for the voiceless, welcoming the homeless stranger into your house

If that appeals, you might enjoy signing up to one of the generosity challenges, Love Life, Care for God’s Creation, or 40 Acts where you are set a different challenge for each day of Lent, to lead you on a journey to transform your small corner of the world.

I’m sure you’ll find ways to achieve that – and it WILL change the flavour of your community...bringing out the best in others just as salt brings out the true flavour of food.

 

 

Or you might prefer to commit to big, visible projects that light up the whole city.

We’ve certainly got a building that lends itself to that, here on Hill Top. A city built on a hill cannot be hidden...and nor can a cathedral. Indeed, the night that St Michael’s burned it truly shone for all to see, far and wide – and the work that stemmed from that night continues to shine, visible yet further afield, drawing others from across the world so that, like a mirror, we can reflect the light of God’s reconciling love.

But that doesn’t mean we can sit back here in the cathedral and rest on our historic laurels.

If we’re keen to make a difference together perhaps there are things we can do as a community right here and now.                                                                                            What about joining in Bishop Christopher’s initiative against youth violence? 

Or committing ourselves to better stewardship of the earth’s resources by aspiring to become an eco congregation, taking our part in handing on the planet more or less intact to the generations to come?

Or – you may well have other ideas – so do please share them, and start a revolution based on love...for the point is that even if we feel weary, inadequate or defeated by the scale of the world’s need, we are called to act.

That’s as much part of our faith as daily prayer and Sunday worship.

Indeed, it’s very much part of that worship – a way in which we affirm God’s rule over every aspect of our lives.

Indeed, if our worship ends as we walk out of the door then it’s sadly incomplete…

 

When we are sent “to love and serve the Lord” those are not just words.                                                                                                                                    We serve him in proportion to our service to those who are struggling.                                To be salt that gives flavour to lives devoid of joy. To be light that illuminates dark places where violence and fear seem to have the upper hand…We should go out alert to signs of God at work in our world, and eager to join in that work beside Him.

It’s far too easy to leave Sunday worship as salty as winter road grit, and as bright as a child’s torch left on overnight. You’ll know that each year in our NCD survey we have had outstanding scores for our inspiring worship...but the question is, what does that worship inspire us to do? If it just makes us feel content, refreshed by a morning of beautiful liturgy and great music, then I’m rather afraid we’re standing beside the Israelites to whom Isaiah spoke. They attended worship, practised fasting and felt pretty good about it. They hoped to win God’s favour , and were quite indignant when God did not seem to be impressed. God’s diagnosis of their condition is brutal in its clarity. Listen to how it reads in The Message “Because your worship and fasting are all about YOU says God...You’ve missed the point. .This is the kind of [worship] I’m after: to break the chains of injustice, get rid of exploitation in the workplace, free the oppressed, cancel debts. What I’m interested in seeing you do is: sharing your food with the hungry, inviting the homeless poor into your homes, putting clothes on the shivering ill-clad, being available to your own families. Do this and the lights will turn on, and your lives will turn around. Your righteousness will pave your way...If you get rid of unfair practices, quit blaming victims, quit gossiping about other people’s sins, if you are generous with the hungry and start giving yourselves to the down-and-out, your lives will begin to glow in the darkness, your shadowed lives be bathed in sunlight.”

That really is inspiring...Christianity is not a club where we gather but a movement of people going forward to change the world as we collaborate with God in making the Kingdom real – even here, even now. True worship extends beyond the doors of our cathedral into our city and beyond, and is realised through acts of generosity and faithfulness. You’ll see it wherever you look, if you keep your eyes open. You’ll see people pausing to chat to homeless strangers, affirming their dignity as children of God. You’ll see it when people of faith stand up and challenge injustice, when they set their personal or institutional safety aside for the sake of the downtrodden, the excluded, the victims. God is constantly at work – and invites us to join in...It might not win us friends, but then Jesus didn’t call us to be popular, didn’t promise us an easy ride, or invite us to stand under the radar. If you’re shining with the light of God’s truth, you can’t really hope that no-one will notice…

I’ve heard of one church where, above the door going out a large sign proclaims

“Worship has ended. Our service has begun”

I would love that to be our motto too. Lent is near, with a fresh opportunity to recalibrate our lives and recover our calling. Let’s step out together and let our light so shine before all that they may see our good works and glorify our heavenly Father.

 

We stand together, a sermon for Cathedralv Evensong approaching the 75th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz

Almost exactly a year ago, I was privileged to pray at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. Amid many profound experiences in an extraordinary pilgrimage, this one touched my heart in unexpected ways. You see, we’d spent all our time til then immersed in Christian heritage – but as kind Jewish women made space for me among the Friday night crowds so that I could whisper my own prayers, leave my own folded petition in a crack between the stones at the Western Wall I was newly conscious of my own affinity with those who worship there week on week. Why else do we read the Hebrew Scriptures, pray the psalms each day, if not to help us to remember our shared heritage? Jesus was, among so much else, a Jew...We "People of the Book" – Jews, Muslims, Christians, - are united by so much – but as we look towards Holocaust Memorial day, it is our shared humanity that matters above all.

Our Old Testament reading tells us that there is a time for every purpose under heaven...and in its sequence of paired opposites seems to lull us into a sense that all things are inevitable, that there is no more to celebrate in the good times than to mourn in the bad. The preacher presents human experience like a great pendulum held by God and swinging back and forth from one extreme to the other...each activity balanced by its opposite, each taking centre stage for a season, and the seasons themselves taking their place amid the ever-circling years.

BUT we know that some activities, some times are NOT inevitable, that they arise because of human choices. We know.that what happened under the Nazi regime to 6 million Jews and countless other victims of persecution, is in no way part of the natural rhythm of life. We cannot look at those events and then imagine that an equal and opposite reaction, an out pouring of colossal, sacrificial kindness, would somehow redress the balance. All we can do is lament the inhumanity which still holds sway and refuse to allow any group– any nation, race, faith, sexuality, - to be othered – set apart as somehow different, less important than ourselves, somehow less human.
                                                                 That’s the message of our Litany, of course, where the power of the missing word – not “Father forgive THEM” but simply “Father forgive” unites us all in our need of forgiveness. Whenever we pray it, we are invited to recognise our own potential to do good, to be people of good will, or the reverse, to change the world for better or worse in our lifetimes.
That’s our responsibility, one which we cannot lightly set down, for our action or inaction may shape the life of others in unforeseen and terrible ways.

The German pastor Martin Niemöller recognised this in the well known confession which might give us all pause
“
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.]

When Jesus was asked to summarise the Law, he was very clear. Love God and love your neighbour...And, in case you’re in any doubt, your neighbour means anyone with whom you share this planet…
Love might not mean warm fuzzy feelings – but it does mean seeking the best for that neighbour, again and again and again, no matter their race, creed, colour, sexuality or politics. Our job is to love and care for one another. That's why we are here.

So at this season we stand together, remembering that we are all God’s children, and that our God has no favourites. The striking Echo Eternal exhibition in the north aisle includes young people's responses to the stories of holocaust survivors. They are sobering reading, and I'd encourage you to engage with them later.
One writer began “They took away my name and gave me a number. I no longer existed. I had no name”.
In that appalling season of mass-murder, humanity went missing along with the millions of lives that were lost in the death camps.
But each life mattered then and still matters today.
400 years before the Holocaust, John Donne wrote “Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind”. We don’t have a choice about that. We are all involved in mankind, all human. But we do have a choice to live into our humanity or to settle for something meaner, smaller, that focuses on our own well-being, or that of our family, no matter what the cost to others.

For centuries the Jewish people, strangers in the midst of countries across the world, bore the brunt of so much fear and hatred, which reached its climax in the unspeakable events of the Holocaust. Today that spectre of anti-semitism casts a shadow over some parts of society – but remember, we still have choices. There is a time for many purposes under heaven but there is never a right time to hate, to exclude, to persecute.
And remember, too, that we live our lives in the light of eternity…
”God has set eternity in the hearts of man” so that we might remember that we’re here for a season but will need to account to God for the way in which we’ve used his gift of time.

Let us ask for his help that our time may be a blessing – that we may be kind to one another, tender hearted…rejoicing in our shared humanity. 

Sermon for Epiphany 2A, 19th January 2020 at Coventry Cathedral

Why are you here?
No, I'm not indulging in a little existential angst on a Sunday morning.
I genuinely wonder why you are HERE.
I wonder, when you first came to church, what brought you through the doors.
Perhaps Sunday worship was part of family life from your earliest years, or perhaps you found yourself walking in almost by accident, one day in adult life.
Perhaps today is your first day.
If it is, do PLEASE come and chat to one of the clergy afterwards.
We’d love the chance to meet you and hear your story.
Whatever your original impetus, of course we’re delighted you hav got here.

I suspect though, that once you’d arrived you might not have kept on returning for long if you hadn’t had your own personal moment of epiphany, a glimpse of truth as everything fell into place, - however briefly – and you could say to  yourself
“Ah hah! Eureka! I’ve got it!”...or, as John the Baptist put it
“HERE is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world”.

John, of course, was on the look-out.
He was alert for signs of God’s kingdom from the word go, and quick to share when they were revealed  “I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God”
He’d known all along that he wasn’t the one for whom Israel was waiting and, though he did acquire his own disciples, he wasn’t intent on keeping them.
He understood his own role as a sign-post so when the moment came he didn’t hesitate
“Look, here is the lamb of God”

I’m hoping you have had a moment or two when suddenly everything made sense but if not don’t panic.The search really matters.
John’s two disciples had been looking for a while, following the Baptist, listening to his words, they were fired up by his proclamation
"Here is the Lamb of God !"
Imagine yourself hearing those words for the first time...not in the expected formality of Sunday liturgy but as breaking news.
He’s here.
Yes. HERE.

Wouldn’t you want to find out more?
So those disciples set off...lacking the confidence to approach Jesus directly, walking behind him in a face-saving game of follow-my-leader that turned lamb of God into shepherd…Sooner or later, he spotted them, turned, held their gaze.
They were stopped in their tracks as he asks
“What are you looking for?"
I imagine them shuffling, looking at each other, looking at the ground, embarrassed, til they come up with what could only be an interim answer, presented to fill an awkward silence
“Where are you staying?”

They DID  need to know where they could find him – of course they did – but the question he asked has many many answers
What WERE they looking for? What are you looking for? Are you hungy for healing? for justice? For change? for acceptance? for love?
Some of the many motivations that continue to drive humanity to seek something beyond ourselves.
We may not know which is uppermost at any given moment, but we know that we’re not at peace in the world….
This is the discomfort that Augustine noted when he wrote
“God, you have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in you”
But to know that is to be at a different stage of the journey...and sometimes God seems intent on playing hide and seek with us, even as we set out determined to engage.

Where are you staying indeed, Lord?
There are many today who would say that Jesus cannot, must not, be staying in the Church. If you’ve been watching Panorama this week, you may be among those wondering how the institution can claim to be the Body of Christ when so much that is flawed, broken, even toxic, has been allowed to hide at the heart of the institution’s life.

And yet – and yet – Jesus has never kept the best of company. He is gloriously indiscriminate in his choice of friends, finding room in his heart for us all. Tax collectors and sinners, faint-hearted followers and penitent thieves and maybe even rogue bishops. While in the here and now we need a huge work of uncovering, of naming and accepting the harm we have done, and offering heartfelt contrition, I remain thankful that the final judgement does not rest with us, that by the grace of God eternity may offer a different perspective.
The celestial banquet is not, I think, going to be black tie and silver service but a glorious mess of love and laughter, tears and forgiveness, with Jesus always at the centre, the host with open arms.

But in the meantime, where ARE you staying, Lord?
Where can we find you today?

Jesus’ answer is a simple but wonderful invitation.
“Come and see!”
So – let’s go, let’s set out together and expect to find him round and about our city, remembering his bias to the poor, his fondness for the outcast…
Let's expect to discover him amid our brothers and sisters of other denominations as together we dare to dream of a Church united and made whole.
Perhaps he might even surprise us right here and right now, if we invite him to join us.

Some of you will have heard me share the experience of praying with this passage many years ago, on my very first retreat,
In my imagination, I found myself accompanying the disciples along the river bank , never letting Jesus out of my sight.
Like them I blushed and stuttered as he turned and spoke to me directly…and like them I was unable to resist the invitation to “Come and see”
And that day, as I imagined a small dark room in a sugar cube house (based in my mind’s eye entirely on the line drawings that illustrated the Good News Bible), Jesus invited me to spend the day with him…and at lunch time he took bread, broke it and placed some in my hand.

And then I realised that I had found what I was looking for, that the place where he was staying was right there…right here…Jesus in you…Jesus in me…Jesus in bread and wine….

Come and see.

Epiphany sermon for Coventry Cathedral, 5th January 2020

I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year 'Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.

Familiar words, I’m sure,- enshrined in our national consciousness after George VI used them in his Christmas broadcast in 1939, just a year before Provost Howard spoke into a world where the unknown had become real and very frightening…

Words that my high school headteacher loved to share in the 1^st assembly of the Lent term.

For the moment, let’s not rush ahead and remember how the verse continues but rather reflect on the journey that each new year represents. I suspect I’m not alone in feeling that things are more precarious, more challenging in our national life than they’ve been, pretty much in my lifetime. And though you may feel your own circumstances are pretty stable, there are bound to be some surprises ahead, both welcome and more problematic. The fifty two weeks that it takes our planet to complete its orbit around the sun offer time enough for all sorts of things to happen.

So that plea “Give me a light” is real, and immediate, specially if you know there are decisions to make this year.

I’m not great at that. I often wish that God would decide for me, say, only half jokingly, that I long for a sign, “some sky writing would be good, Lord, telling me exactly where I should go and what I should be doing.”

Give me a light.

Of course, Matthew’s wise men seem to have had exactly that privilege, light and to spare for their journey.

An Epiphany.

A moment of clarity when God is revealed, when we can say with no doubt that God is here

So- for the wise men, perhaps their epiphany came with the rising of the star…their very own sky-writing, telling them where to go, what to seek.

“Arise, shine for your light is come”

Certainly, they seem to start out on their journey confident that they know where they are heading…all they have to do is to follow their star. Though I'd guess that the Christmas card scenes that present it as obviously the one and only REAL star in the heavens might be distorting the truth slightly…Step outside on a clear night and the sky tells a different story, even here in Coventry.

Look up.

See for yourself.

Of course, looking up might be quite a challenge if you’re feeling overwhelmed personally or politically as the year begins. Looking down and feeling sad may seem more natural – but you’ll miss so much if you stay that way.

Look up and yes, the sky will be dark but in the darkness are countless stars...stars that are always there, of course, but only visible when night falls.

So, our wise travellers looked up -and saw something that others missed.

More, they chose to focus on that light, rather than the surrounding darkness and so they set the tone for their journey.

To focus on light rather than darkness is always, in every circumstance, an act of faith.

It’s not blind optimism but hope rooted in experience.

But – that doesnt guarantee plain sailing.

This journey of faith was not, is not, for the fainthearted. The wise men needed took courage and conviction to stay the distance and wisdom to discern when the journey was really over. It seemed only common sense that the royal palace should be their first port of call...A star presaging the birth of a king must surely point to a kingly place – except that this new king confounds expectations at every turn. Our travellers have drifted off course, followed their own assumptions and so come face to face with someone for whom the gospel is anything but good news. Herod responds with the anger born of frightened self interest when the wise men ask to see the one born “King of the Jews”.

You might remember that the next time Jesus is hailed as “King of the Jews” is as he confronts worldly authority once again, in the events leading up to the crucifixion, and the shedding of innocent blood. It’s the same here, of course. God's arrival in our world is quite unlike the sweet and gentle scenes of our Christmas cards and carols. It ushers in mass murder and a young family forced to flee for their lives. But for all the violence and fear,nothing in all creation will be able to escape the touch of God's mighty act of salvation. Not Herod, not Rome. Nothing.

Meanwhile, though, our travellers have still not had their real epiphany. They have seen a king but not THE king. Perhaps they'd made a mistake in setting out? Wasted time, energy…

“The voices ringing in their ears that this was all folly”

Should they admit defeat? Head for home?

But they were determined to go the distance and followed the directions provided, directions that sent them away from the seat of power, from splendid palaces to an obscure village – yet still not least among the princes of Judah, perhaps.

As the wise men left Herod’s presence, they saw the star ahead of them once again.

“Your light has come...”

Yet this was still not their true epiphany. The star-light led them on to a very ordinary house – where all their expectations were subverted.

Your light has come

God a toddler, cuddled up in his mother’s arms…

Emmanuel. God with us.

It might have seemed an anticlimax.

No angel choirs or fiery messengers, no earthquakes or thundering voice but an everyday scene repeated in countless homes across the world.

Already, in this epiphany, if they were truly wise, our travellers could discern the signs of the times, could recognise the nature of the kingdom. It was, and it is, a kingdom that included the little and the least, the poor and the weak. A kingdom that welcomes those who were searching, those who have wandered in the wrong direction for a little while. A kingdom for insiders and people from beyond the edges of society, Jews and Gentiles, those already at home and sojournors in a strange land

The magi had come far to worship a new king, yet found themselves somehow at home and welcome in his kingdom.

The Franciscan writer Richard Rohr says this

An epiphany is an experience that transforms everything, and before you can do anything with it, it does something to you... it always seems to demand a change in people‘s lives. To live with a faith that makes room for Epiphany leaves us on our heels, ready to step out to wherever it is that God may be revealed

The paradox, of course, is that we may not have to travel far at all.

We don’t really need to go looking for God in rare and particular places. Instead, in the child born in Bethlehem, God has sought us out and come to dwell with us in the midst of all of our humanity.

Emmanuel.

God with us as we begin our journey into the year ahead.

Your light has come

We can seek that light in other places that carry the promise of epiphany - in the company of those who are hungry and thirsty, the sick and the imprisoned, the lonely and those stripped of their dignity; - among people who turn from the destructive powers in their life and in this world, to discover new strength from God; among those called to leave the familiar behind and step out in new directions; - wherever people experiences healing and new life or moments of forgiveness and new love.

Truth is, as Richard Rohr continues “if God can be manifest in a baby [born] in a poor stable for the unwanted, then we better be ready for God just about anywhere and in anybody.”

“Anywhere and in anybody”…..

Arise, shine, for your light has come.

The arrival of the Light of the World in our midst enables us to shine with reflected glory. As the moon has no light of its own, but reflects so beautifully the flaming radiance of the sun, so we, in all our mundane humanity, can and should shine…

The light that drew the magi to the house in Bethlehem, that showed them God in the ordinary, should shine through us as well and we should expect to see it in other places and other people too.…

That’s why I’m an enthusiast for the old European tradition of chalking the doors – a visual prayer on the lintel that Christ will bless the home with his presence – a reminder to me and a sign to others that I WANT mine to be the sort of home where his presence can be felt, his love shared. I’ve a pocket full of chalk if you want to mark your home too…to remember as you come and go that the Lord is here. There really is no need to travel far to seek him.

So, as you go forward into this new year, be alert to celebrate epiphany wherever you encounter God. It won't be just in this building, that's for sure...nor simply at the the high moments of life In all times and places and people, even the most pedestrian and apparently uninspiring...because, after all, what good is it if we only see God on high days an holidays…

Most of life is quite difficult, even dull...it can seem dreary, dark – but remember – the magi looked UP and saw the beauty of the night sky...revealed only because of the darkness.

So, even in our own lives, and even in our own times of gathering gloom, we may come to experience the glory of God through Jesus Christ

Your light has come – so, as Minnie Haskins wrote long ago

“Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.”