Faire is the heaven. Remembering Ian Keatley and John Walker

It has been a tough week in Southwark. A week to look for God, if not always to find God easily. Amid much else, events have made me stop and consider the ways I've had my own gaze turned towards God across the years.

No big unmistakable miracles, nor encounters on the Damascus road for me, but often the silent gospel of a life lived according to the law of love, and so often heaven brought close through the compelling power poetry or of music in worship.

I  was a teenager when I served as Head Chorister in my school choir, directed by John Walker. We singers adored him forming our own community around him as he helped us to use our gifts to make the intoxicating magic of choral music.  

JW was loud, funny (often sharing  very slightly naughty jokes to the delight of his teenage audience) and deliciously irreverent about many of the trappings of life in a minor public school. He must have been an impossible colleague at times, causing the Headmaster many a sleepless night for some of the self same reasons his choristers loved him. Expansive both in girth and hospitality  he was generous in all things but was utterly serious about only two: the pursuit of excellence in music for worship and (though he rarely spoke of this directly) the love of the God to whom our worship pointed.

The morning after my father died he changed the music list for the school Eucharist so our anthem was Jesu joy of man's desiring ."You'll need Bach", he said.

Looking back, those two years singing for John were among the most formative of my life as he gave me a gift that has endured ever since....of looking beyond the music to the beauty of God that inspired it. I'm not the only one of his singers to find myself ordained...

This week here at Southwark we are all reeling under the shock of the sudden, death on holiday in Austria, of our own director of music Ian Keatley.  This morning I find myself reflecting on the ways in which Ian's passion for music, his perfectionism, his utter focus in worship will have impacted those who sang for him.

To watch him conducting, to see the chemistry between him and the choristers, was to see what Irenaeas described as "the glory of God, a human being fully alive". To hear the excellence he drew from them time and time again was to find yourself arriving on holy ground even on a gloomy evening in a near empty cathedral.  Of course I will treasure memories of his grand occasions, the installation of Dean Mark, my first Southwark Easter, the extraordinary diocesan festival which crammed the nave with choirs from near and far for a glorious Choral Evensing extraordinaire. I'll never forget his last service, when the Cathedral Singers led Evensong for the Church Commissioners: fabulous music, flawlessly performed and comp,iments flowing as generously as the champagne afterwards.

But I'll treasure too the random moments: meeting him in the link leading the boys choir back to the Song School from their Sunday lunch he stopped them dead and demanded they offer "Three cheers for the Precentor!"...the times when our meetings ended in gales of helpless laughter...his kindness when I fluffed the Responses.

And my strongest memory: standing in the quire after the 1st lesson on a day when a tummy big meant that Ian had suggested the unthinkable: that he might pass on conducting Evensong to his second in command. That didn't happen. Come 5.25 he was there with the choir for inevitably his longing to be with his singers outweighed any vestigial queasiness. As I watched I could seee him drawing energy and strength from being in the centre of their music, the way his focus on each singer brought out the best in them, even when they were uncertain they had a "best" to give.

He was so very alive, and this made the rest of us more alive as well, as Ian used his gifts that the music might throw open windows onto heaven

So...we are shocked, bereft, but deeply grateful to have travelled with him across holy ground in the worship of the place he loved, and in the service of the God he loved.

In that light we dare to look forward too.

So listen...to words from poet  Stuart Henderson, that look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come

this day in paradise

new feet are treading through

high halls of gold

this day in paradise

new legs are striding over jewelled fields in which

the diamond

is considered ordinary

this day in paradise

new eyes have glimpsed the deep fire ready

to flame the stale earth pure

this day in paradise

new blood, the rose red juice that gushed at golgotha

now ripples and races down the pure veins

of a recently arrived beloved

this day in paradise

a new heart pounds in praise

a new body shaped by sacrifice

this day in paradise

the daunting dart of death

has no point

no place

and no meaning

and whilst we mourn and weep

through these human hours

this day in paradise

the blazing embrace

between saviour and son goes on and on and on..

An awful lot of bread!

Be gentle, when you touch bread,

Let it not be uncared for, unwanted.

So often bread is taken for granted.

There is so much beauty in bread,

Beauty of sun and soil,

Beauty of patient toil.

Winds and rain have caressed it,

Christ often blessed it;

Be gentle when you touch bread.

What's on my mind? Bread! 

One way and another there has been a lot of it about the place this week.

On Wednesday I found myself, to my considerable surprise, standing in the pulpit of Tewkesbury Abbey, following an invitation to their very beautiful Musica Deo Sacra Festival.

As a Gloucester ordinand and priest, with a serious addiction to church music, MDS was a regular source of wonder and delight...so it felt like a daunting privilege to be asked to preach. In the event, the Spirit danced the music was glorious (Finzi Welcome O sacred feast is beyond words when sungvin context, at the Offertory) and I was surprised and delighted by the appearance of several friends from days of yore, including my WEMTC Principle, Richard Clutterbuck, the lovely John and Rachael Willard, Simon Fletcher and someone whose path crossed mine at a time of deep tragedy for her family, which remains one of the most formative experiences of my priesthood.

With blessings like that to celebrate, the preach was all but incidental, and the wonderful hospitality  of Molly and Hannah Faith Barraclough  (extended to Willow too) and the warm welcome of Nick Davies  looking very at home in his new context, really carried the day.

Thursday, of course was Lammas Day, and in my very own Voices of Morebath moment I got to preside at the Loaf Mass after Mark Oakley had pronounced Decanal blessings on our excellent neighbours in Borough Market, Bread Ahead. The amazing smells that emerge from the bakery every day, the perfection of the cinnamon buins and the friendliness of the entire team make Bread Ahead a blessing to us, so welcoming them to the cathedral was delightful.

The day before Nick had talked about how conscious he is of the Abbey's past when he presides at the high altar, of those who have prayed and consecrated there before him. I had a similar sense of long gone congregations gathering for the loaf mass, hopeful for the harvest, deeply connected with dependent on the cycle of seasons we would seem to override today.

What would they have made of a woman at the altar, going home to eat food she had not grown, living in a world replete with plenty for some, whole others are ground down by poverty?

I was glad to be forced to confront the questions...

In case you're interested, here's what I said at the Abbey. The intention was Thanksgiving for the Blessed Sacrament, the readings those for Corpus Christi

When I was a student I had a good friend named Jack. He was extremely tall (particularly when standing next to my 5’4”) and carried not an ounce of surplus weight. He was a great cook and a famous host, but the meals I remember him by most clearly were those I never actually got to eat. You see, Jack was generous with his invitations to afternoon tea, and his rooms were only a short walk from one of Cambridge’s better bakers. When he was expecting guests, Jack would set forth to Tyler’s, on a mission to buy bread for the tea-party. Unfortunately, on more than one occasion the smell of the new bread, and its fresh-baked warmth proved too hard to resist, and he would arrive back in his rooms with only the stub end of the loaf, having consumed the rest on the walk between bakery and college. Legend has it that on one occasion at least, he visited the bakery 3 times before actually making it home with an untouched loaf. Bread from Tylers was pretty wonderful, but for someone Jack’s size, one loaf was only a short-term solution.

I often think of Jack as I break the bread at the Eucharist. 

Of course, we generally use wafers, and sometimes people complain sadly that they bear no resemblance to real bread at all. 

Actually, that's no bad thing. There’s no room for confusion. We’re not eating a “proper meal” together, but taking part in something quite different, whose value lies far beyond any standard nutritional benefit. The fragment of unleavened wafer we receive becomes something much greater than itself, for it is here that we are offered Christ, in all the fullness of his risen life. 

In our gospel this morning, John sets out to demonstrate that Jesus is the One for whom Israel was waiting, and to do this he aligns Jesus with Moses...To understand his technique, we need to remember that for the Jews, the Torah (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) provided a constant frame of reference. The contents of these books were not abstract concepts for the Jew - these were living words, pregnant with layers of meaning, and each new generation of Jews felt themselves living in the story in some way….in the same way, of course as we find ourselves living in the story whenever we gather to make Eucharist. 

So John’s Jesus is inviting his hearers into an exercise in anamnesis as he evokes memories of the defining period in Jewish history, the Exodus from Egypt, and recalls God’s provision of manna, “bread from heaven”. 

This was the freedom food, which enabled God’s people to travel onwards to the place they had been promised. 

The food which sustained them, and made it possible for them to live as a people on the move, following wherever God lead them. 

The bread of life, but for one day only.

You see, though this food seemed miraculous, it had to be consumed on the day it appeared, or it rotted and became worthless. 

The Israelites were not allowed to build up prudent supplies in case of crisis. 

They just had to trust God’s provision, day after day after day.

Now Jesus compares himself with that bread…in terms guaranteed to have any observant Jew sitting bolt upright on the edge of this seat

I am the living bread

I AM is the name God gives himself when he meets Moses, at the burning bush 

 Say I AM has sent you. 

And so Jesus identifies himself with God and urges the crowd 

“Stop looking only to your physical needs!

Your ancestors ate manna but died!

You who ate when I fed the 5000 will die in time!

But belief in me is ‘food’ that leads to eternal life.”

Jesus, the bread which now comes down from heaven sustains those who eat for ever. 

This is no less the food of pilgrimage, no less a food provided directly by God,- indeed this food represents God’s very life, available to be absorbed by all God’s people. 

Jesus is offering himself to his disciples…whoever eats me…

Imagine the impact of that, with Jesus himself standing beside you, on a hot day in Palestine, as the crowds press around, murmuring in doubt or disapproval. 

A living, breathing man inviting you to eat him.

Shocking, unthinkable words.

Frightening, unwelcome words – in the same way as those words Jesus spoke at the Last Supper

“This is my body…this is my blood...”

John wrote several decades after Jesus’ death and resurrection, as part of a community that would have regularly celebrated the Lord’s supper together. For them, as for us, Jesus’ imagery - eating flesh and drinking blood - had come to life in a new way as the church shared the meal Jesus instituted.

So it is, week by week, when we gather and make Eucharist.

We bring ourselves, just as we are, broken, flawed, hungry for love and reassurance.

We bring the mess and muddle of our lives and lay them with our gifts upon the altar.

And as the bread and wine are consecrated and transformed, as Christ becomes truly present in those ordinary things made holy by the power of the Spirit, so we find ourselves joined with Christ and with one another.

There is a story told about a Eucharist that took place in prison camp – where rations were low, and morale lower.

Neither bread nor wine was available but the longing for Christ, the prayers of the faithful and the words of the priest together made this a true and holy Communion.

Listen

It was Easter in the camp. There was not a single cup. 

No bread or wine. The non-Christians said, "We will help you; we will talk quietly so you can meet for worship." Too dense a silence would have drawn the guards' attention as surely as the lone voice of the preacher. "We have no bread, nor water to use instead of wine," the preacher told them, "but we will act as though we had."

"This meal in which we take part," he said, "reminds us of the prison, the torture, the death, and final victory of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The bread is the body that he gave for humanity. The fact that we have none represents very well the lack of bread in the hunger of so many millions of human beings…but in Christ all our hungers are satisfied. The wine, which we don't have today, is his blood and represents our dream of a united humanity, of a just society, the hope of the kingdom to come...."

He broke the bread and held out his empty hand to the first person on the right, and placed it over their open hand, and the same with the others:  "Take, eat, this is my body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of me." All of them raised hands to mouths, receiving the body of Christ in silence. The communion of the empty hand..."

Was Christ present there? Need we really ask that question?

My flesh is real food and my body real drink.

Real. Not material, but deeply deeply real.

Food and drink that sustains us to live our deepest reality, as we take our place as beloved children at our Fathers table.

“I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty”

Hear Christ speak these words to you as you make your way to the Communion rail, as he comes to meet you and  answer your deepest needs.

In that tiny fragment of bread, we receive Jesus himself, all we will ever need to sustain us on our pilgrimage. 

Bread is the traditional staff of life, but the life that this bread represents is everlasting. 

It is the life of God himself…and we are invited to share it.

Thanks be to God!

Sermon for Southwark Cathedral, Crossbones Sunday 2024. Ephesians 2:11-22

 Last week Mark called us to courageous love via the story of Rose,an enslaved African American woman, and of her descendants. Today I want to start by inviting you to reflect on a multitude of nameless women, whose descendants, for the most part, probably died with their mothers. The Winchester Geese were very definitely not members of the flock here at the parish church...Abused, scorned, excluded by those who claimed the name Christian, these women’s bodies were made use of for the pleasure of others while they lived, and consigned to unconsecrated ground when they died .

They didn’t belong among the respectable dead whose monuments we see around us. Outsiders in life, they remained outsiders to the end….Their story is  of pain and shame for them at the time, and also for us in the present, as we will recognize with lament at rhe Crossbones aervice later.

The urge of humanity to create dividing walls seems as embedded in history as it is depressing today. How often we choose to be anxiously small minded, small hearted. That, surely, is what is driving the rise of the far right in politics...fuelled by the urge to organise the world along the lines of “them” and “us”…

It was an issue for Paul too, picked up in his letter to the Galatians, Gentile Christians who were very much outsiders from a Jewish perspective. There was absolute clarity about belonged and who did not.

Even the very fabric of the Temple was designed to keep Gentiles at a distance via

a  series of physical l barriers. Outside the Temple there was a yard, called the court of the Gentiles, and a wall bearing frequent warnings to Gentiles that to progress further would lead to death 

(Suddenly I feel slightly less anxious about our somewhat bewildering signage!)

 On the other side of that wall, the next court was reserved for Jewish women. Another barrier kept them from going any further in. Inside that barrier only Jewish men were permitted, and beyond was the area where  priests alone could go

 But even then, a final barrier existed.here only the high priest could enter the sanctuary of the holy of holies, and that only once a year! 

Exclusion in every stone.

A clear statement of the identity of the Jews as God’s chosen, with a monopoly on God's presence safe and sound in the sanctuary.

It's uncomfortably redolent of how the Church has behaved at various points, but without much chance of any change for Gentile outsiders.

These, says Paul,  were a sorry lot, with nothing to look forward to at all.

“having no hope, and without God in the world” - 

No God. No hope. 

The situation for centuries. A world in waiting. 

But – something incredible happened

Something that tore the temple curtain apart and changed everything for always.

The crux of this passage – and the crux of our faith…The cross – the ultimate expression of God's solidarity with God's creation, of his all inclusive love for the world.

He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, 16and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it. 17So he came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; 18for through him both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father

Where there had been divisions, there is now a new community of faith and worship...founded on that utterly compelling love which the world saw – and sees – in the person of Christ.

If that sounds exciting – it should do – though it's easy to lose sight of the excitement amid the familiar ways of life and of worship.

But, you know, it is what brings us here…

WE are not simply the constant beneficiaries of God's love at work in the world, but we are also inheriters of that new way of being, that new humanity reconciled to God and to one another – (_ it's that new community of love and hope into which Reiss, Ava, Archer and Sophia are being baptised today…Each of them Welcomed and beloved exactly as they are…just as you are welcome ..and you ..

And me

This new community of love founded at the cross is now the place where God dwells on earth...not in a building but in a people.

Us

The Church.

The household of faith -where those who were once excluded are now part of the family, 

The Church to whom Paul wrote stood for the overcoming of those deep seated divisions that had split his first century world into Jews and Gentiles...Today God's Church MUST stand still for the overcoming of divisions, for Christ's way of love, for  justice and joy for all God's children

The cross of Christ, lifted up and proclaimed, has the power to draw all people to our loving God, in whom things come together, and it is this that we must show to the world, where the pain of division continues to hurt and destroy.

Making space for love means radical hospitality…rejoicing in diversity, celebrating difference. We rejoice when others come to stand with us, but

When we speak of those who have joined the church as having experienced “conversion” -thats not assimilation this won't automatically turn all who enter our doors for worship into people Just Like Us.

We can expect to be enriched, challenged and changed  – for as nobody can be excluded there may be surprises along the way,

.

We are asked to be reconciled with all people...not just those who fit in with our notions of what a church (small c) should be like....because actually, the point of Church (capital C) is that it is a community for all.

We will all struggle with different kinds of people.... It may be people of other faiths, or alternative lifestyles. It may be those of a particular political hue...For me, I'm conscious of the very real danger of being illiberal in my liberalism...of wanting to exclude those who see the world in terms of black and white, “in” and “out”.

But...I'm not called to exclude them. I'm called to love them…and to make space for them to flourish, heart, mind and soul…for this is God's will for each and every precious child forever beloved and known by name. 

Thought for the day. Southwark 13th July 2024

 I wonder where you are in the story.

Yes, I know I ask that question quite often.

That's because I think it's one of the very best ways to engage with Scripture, rather than sim0ly find yourself lulled into unthinking by a familiar scenario, a sense that you already know what is going to happen.

So...I wonder where you are in the story.

Likes account of the Last Supper.

A scene we know so well ThatThat we literally have a liturgy that brings us into the story week after week after week. We know the script 

We really do know what happens.

But I don't think it was ,ike that for the disciples.

Come on. REALLY think about.

Set aside any sense of wondering devotion inspired by a long Eucharistic obedience 

It won't have felt like THAT at all

Rather I imagine it was one of those situations in which while we understand each individual word, the overall message of the conversation makes no sense at all.

"What, oh what, is Jesus talking about?

Why is this the last Passover he will eat?

Are those ugly rumours about forthcoming violence true? And if they are, why are we here in thecfebrile atmosphere of Jerusalem at festival time..?

How can he know he won't drink wine again until the kingdom comes?

And then he blesses and breaks the bread but instead of taking us into our past, into our familiar defining story of Passover, he says, quite calmly, that the bread is his body.

The wine his blood

Even Jesus surely can't rewrite a story, change its meaning, just like that.

And if he has...what are we supposed to do?

EAT and DRINK.? While the man we love is still sitting among us, full of life and love? Really?!?

How can we?

Surely that would be an unforgivable betrayal, not an act of faith?

It seems that Jesus is expecting betrayal from one of us....but that hasn't stopped him sharing this strangest of meals with all of us. Each and every one of us as welcome, as beloved as ever, no matter what.

I wish I understood what he was talking about, what it all means...."

I wonder whether it began to make some kind of sense for them in the coming days or whether they clung on in blind obedience to the mandate Do this in Remembrance of me gaining confidence little by little every time...

I wonder too, whether the visitors who enter our churches and hear those same words, so familiar the insider, are every bit as confused and disturbed,

What a way to celebrate love....

And yet...and yet...the experience of eating and drinking in humble obedience brings the deep certainty that Christ is with us, that we can, and do, meet him in the breaking of bread.

May we find ourselves in the story, welcomed, fed, transformed...

Trinity 6 Evensong, for the end of Choir Year

:‘As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me,

   and every tongue shall give praise to God.’

So then, each of us will be accountable to God 

I hope, on this last Sunday of the cathedral choir’s year, that the rest of the congregation will forgive me if I literally Preach to the Choir.

You see, week by week, service by service – they preach to us.

Their tongues, their voices give praise to God and encourage the rest of us to do the same, whether we arrive as fervent believers or curious spectators. That’s the power of music in worship. It takes us up, even despite ourselves ,and transports us to places we cannot reach in other ways. 

Sometimes it catches us unawares and while it may be the tune that we take away in our conscious thoughts, often that tune carries with it words that lodge in our hearts, shaping us against our expectations.

You see, I’m pretty confident that, regardless of your feel8mgs about God, you cannot sing as you without having a keen sense of beauty...and beauty rests in something that is beyond the strictly rational. I know that those in the choir will be all too familiar with my describing music as something that can open windows on to heaven. I really do believe it. It is, I guess, pretty much why I am a Precentor...because I believe in the power of words and music together to effect what they describe.

But I wonder, oh my loved and lovely choristers, if you had ever noticed that you are potentially enticing a riot whenever you sing the Magnificat. 

Listen to yourselves

He has put down the mighty from their seat and hath exalted the humble and meek

He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he hath sent empty away

If that’s not revolution I’m not sure what is. 

That’s the world turned upside down even more assuredly than our own UK political landscape in the small hours of Friday morning.

And you, as you sing the Song of Mary with so much beauty and skill, are reminding us that this – THIS – is what God has done, and what God will always do...Challenging injustice, unseating oppressive power, lifting up the lowly.

And God invites us into living in that world of Magnificat right here and now...We are to be part of building it.

 It is here that our accountability lies.

What does that mean for us?

Sometimes we seem to put our own gloss on it. We choose to assert that, as God's kingdom is not of this world, so we can live our daily lives according to the rule of our own wills. We leave God to one side in some kind of remote insubstantial spiritual realm which doesn't impact on our actual behaviour at all, and seek to build a kingdom based on our own desires.

That’s NOT being accountable to God by any stretch of the imagination. Remember, this is the God who is SO involved in human kind that He opts to join in with our life in all its mess and muddle, frustration and disappointment.

He's invested in us, all right.

Interested whenever his children cry out for justice...whenever they long for bread but are given stones....whenever we exclude or deny or try to limit His life-giving, transforming Grace.

Christ's Kingdom may not be FROM this world but it is most emphatically FOR this world...For those taking up new roles in government, assuming weighty responsibilities that might just reshape our national life for the better...and for those who are having to rethink their lives in the light of electoral defeat….

For those who now dare to believe that they may have a voice in the conversation and a place at the table, and those who are anxious that at a time of new beginnings they might be discarded, excluded while the world oves on.

For the General Synod of the Church of England in all its current pain and division and, for the people of this city, - baffled, apathetic, distressed...f

In all these structures, and in every aspect of our lives, we are to be accountable to God as together we look for the signs of God’s Kingdom,  founded on love that gives without reserve, that befriends with ceaseless generosity, that values everyone, regardless of gender or opinion, as someone made in God's image, someone for whom Christ was pleased to die…

So as we sing of a world transformed and renewed, we can begin to LIVE the Magnificat. Let the music effect what it describes in your hearts and in your lives...and let is song continue in your soul through these holiday weeks when we may not worship together...because the Magnificat is for life and not just for Choral Evensong...it is a rallying cry which calls the world together to magnify the Lord, to sing God’s praise and with our lives as with our voices.

A Sermon for St Edward's Kempley, Trinity 5, for the first Mass of Molly Boot.30th June 2024

 It’s a complete delight to be with you here in the beautiful Leadon Vale...a bit of a change from Elephant and Castle, where my day began. Coming down the A40, as soon as I crossed the border from Oxfordshire the memories began. I passed signs to The Rissingtons, where I served as a Reader fir 10 years before ordination, Charlton Kings where I served my title and resisted the urge to follow the road to Stroud where I was a very happy incumbent.

I loved living in Gloucestershire – but for one thing. It is so distressingly far from the sea.

Like Molly, I grew up in East Sussex, and have loved the sea all my days, whatever the weather.

As a child I imagined the Sea of Gallilee to be very like the English Channel off Hastings – and whenever I heard the gospel that has just been shared with us, I imagined Jesus and Peter crunching their way along the shingle as they completed their life-changing conversation. I would be there,  trailing along behind, and catching a few words til the wind blew them away.

I have since had the joy of visiting the Holy Land, and even read this passage to a group of pilgrims on the shores of Galilee – but even so, I’ve yet to re-imagine the story in its true setting. Somehow the sea off Hastings, in all its many moods, has become inextricably entangled with my images of God, so the first time I sang the hymn we’ve just enjoyed together, it made perfect, uncompromising sense.

"There’s a wideness in God’s mercy like the wideness of the sea.."

When I sing it, there I am, a small child on Hastings beach, looking out at the vastness that stretches as far as my eye can see...The chances are that I am singing, or shouting poetry into the waves (I've not changed much through the years!), safe in the knowledge that the sound of the breakers will drown me out. I can say anything and the sea will just keep on being itself and let me be myself, and everything is absolutely alright.

Please don’t panic at this point, and think that I’ve given in to panentheism and am so intent on meeting God in creation that I’ve confused creation with Creator. While that can sometimes seem a tempting diversion, it's never really more than a signpost...a prompt to help us look in the right direction.

"A wideness like the wideness of the sea..."

God’s boundless mercy, God’s endless love – there, just for the taking.

There for Peter, who has so comprehensively failed in his aspirations that he has denied the One whom he held most dear.

There for each of us, no matter what is going on in our lives, whether we feel able to respond, to dip a cautious toe in, or not.

There despite what our flawed and broken institutions may say.

A love that is truly broader than the measure of our minds

And it is into this love that each one of us is invited today.

Our Gospel has a very particular invitation, which understandably resonates with many who have taken a leap of faith and hitched their wagon to ministry in the creaking institutional church. 

Jesus tells Peter – Peter, crushed, mortified, overcome by his failure to stay true to his call – that he still has work to do…

."Feed my lambs...tend my sheep…"

Despite his proven inadequacies, he remains one of the foundation-stones on which God builds his Church, and Jesus trusts him to care for the people Jesus loves.

Often the call to ordained ministry is thought about in those terms – shepherding a flock, keeping them safe, fed, watered. 

If you were in the cathedral yesterday, you’ll have heard a lot about what the Church expects of her priests…They are not just to shepherd but to teach and preach, absolve admonish,  baptise and so much more....It’s an exhaustive and exhausting list, which can all too easily leave clergy feeling defeated at times, but I think that at its heart it boils down to one central calling

Listen

“With all God’s people, priests are to tell the story of God’s love”

That’s it. That’s at the heart of everything. THAT is what Molly has signed up for this weekend...but it’s not their calling alone .

Yes, of course ordination matters.  

God’s Church has been blessed and changed forever by this new priest – who, wonderfully, gloriously, is the self-same Molly, flawed and gifted and graced as we all are...

Our Molly, whom we love,- and so we are rightly excited and delighted to see what they and God will get up to together in this new phase.

As God’s priest they are empowered to tell God’s story in particular ways, inviting others to take their place in it, offering God’s forgiveness to those burdened by doubt, feeding God’s people in the Sacrament of Bread and wine, God’s very life offered to each of us as a gift of transformation and hope. 

Molly, your new priest, will seek to tell that great story through how she lives her life each and every day...but it’s not their calling alone. 

As God pours an immeasurable, unbounded tide of love into our hearts and draws us inexorably ever closer. there is a vocation and ministry for all of us, that uses all our gifts, and makes sense of all that we are to shape a song that only we can sing.

Today, and every Sunday as we gather for worship, the God stories become real, lived experience 

We meet with God in one another – made in God’s image, carrying oour own spark of creativity and compassion- gifted by God to serve the world in this time and this place.

We meet with God in God’s Word, shared and interpreted to challenge and change us.

We meet with God in a fragment of bread and a sip of wine, God’s very life offered to each of us as a transforming gift.

And then – this is where it gets really exciting – we are to take that gift and share it….take that story of love and tell it to others, using words if we must….

It’s a story born before the world began to be,.a story which sweeps us up and carries us along until by God’s grace we are embraced in love for eternity.

Molly, even on the bad days, stay with that story – for it is the truest thing there is...and let us tell it here together til, by Gods grace we see God face to face and need story no longer, for we know as we are known.

Where are you? A sermon for the Cathedral Eucharist, Southwark, Trinity 2 (Proper 5)B 2024

Disclaimer: Before we dive into this morning's thoughts, let me reassure you. I believe that Scripture can be many things, and can be read in many different ways. Sometimes it points to deep truth through the language of story or myth - but it is nonetheless true for all that.

I suspect that I am not alone in finding that there are lines in Scripture that have the power to stop me in my tracks whenever I hear them.

Sometimes it is because they shine a spotlight on a deep truth that I need to hear.

Sometimes it is because they force me to recognise something about myself and the way I am living my life

But sometimes, it is because they take me to a place of such utter beauty that I would long to be there, more than anywhere else in the world.

The first sentence of our Genesis reading today is firmly in that category. “They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze”.                                                                                                       Oh, - I so want to be there...To hear God’s footsteps walking across thhe grass….God’s presence making perfect an already perfect place, for this is Eden, God’s company hallowing an already sacred time.

I imagine myself running to meet him...slipping my hand in his and strolling on enjoying the evening breeze together.,Everything is just as it should be. Just as God has always intended.

And it was good.

Til I look down and realise I’m naked, unfit to be seen. That I must hide. And I run off into the trees because my shame and my fear are greater even than my longing to be close to God…I slope off , as Adam and Eve did before me,

And God calls out to me “Where are you?”

If this is hide and seek its’s a game with the highest stakes, the greatest prize.

Where are you?

God’s first question in Scripture...addressed to Adam and Eve, yes – but beyond them to everyone...who has lived since, who will ever live.

Where are you?

I wonder how you hear that question.

I suspect that quite often our knowledge that this is the story of the Fall, - the day when it all went wrong – constrains us to hear the voice of an angry parent.       "Where ARE you, you disobedient child? You’ve failed me, let yourself down and now you are in BIG TROUBLE."

If that’s the tone that you hear, well, it might well make sense to stay hidden, hidden from God, - and maybe even hidden from yourself,After all, humankind cannot bear too much reality.

There’s a measure of that in the Genesis story, where nobody is keen to look at the world in the light of God’s truth, nobody is willing to take responsibility for their actions...Adam blames Eve, Eve blames the serpent, and the serpent slithers away, content at the chaos caused. In this version of events “Where are you?” seems inevitably to lead to “Come hear so that you can be punished...”

But what if we reframe it, hear that question in a different tone? Still a parent, but one who is anxious, afraid that their child is in danger, unable to rest until they are sure they are safe and sound.                                                                 “Where are you? Come here love...I’m waiting. It’ll be alright”.

I wonder if that voice sounds more familiar...the voice of the God who so loves the world…Can you quite believe the generosity of that invitation? Is it enough to draw you from your hiding place? Dare you, dare I,  accept that depth of love?

Or maybe, just maybe, this is a wistful call from a God who loves those evening walks in the garden, who is missing those precious companions made in God’s image...Can we hear the voice of the lover entreating the beloved               “Where are you? My arms are empty, until you come to fill them once again”

However you hear the question it is surely one worth attending to. God only asks, you see, because we are none of us quite where we should be. We have become so caught up in ourselves that we cannot stand the thought of God seeing us naked , undefended,...in all the bare truth of our flawed humanity...and so we prefer to slip away into the trees.

In his commentary on the Book of Genesis, Walter Brueggemann suggests that the serpent in the Garden of Eden is the world’s first theologian because it is the serpent who convinces humankind to exchange obedience to God for theology about God. That’s a little unnerving, specially for those of us for whom doing theology is a substantial part of how we live out the vocation that we believe is one of God’s gifts to us...but then, misreading what God is ACTUALLY calling us to is a problem as old as humanity.It’s the same problem the scribes were dealing with, - they had become so trapped by their own understandings of how God would be that they simply couldn’t recognise God walking beside them in the person of Jesus Christ. Their presumed knowledge had become a means of self preservation and protection in its own right, rather than a means of transmitting and communicating faith in the living God.

Small wonder, then, that Jesus draws a clear line to point up the contrast. Relationship with God depends not on knowledge nor on obedience to any elaborate system of codified laws...nor even on family background. “Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother”

Time to ask ourselves afresh that key question “where are you?” Are you hiding from God? Or have you created an elaborate system designed to fend God off while purporting to bring you closer? 

We often speak of searching for God, as if in this ultimate game of hide and seek it might be God who is playing hard to get. I hope by now you are beginning to realise that this is not the case. Rather, the whole sweep of salvation history is the story of our relentless pursuit by the one whom Francis Thompson described as the Hound of Heaven….

I fled him down the nights and down the days

I fled him down the arches of the years

I fled him down the labyrinthine ways of my own mind...”

Again, it takes a long time (171 lines of poetry in fact) for Thompson to understand that this is not a hostile pursuit…to recognise that though God has eternity in which to find us, God does so only to bring us safely back to that walk in the garden at the time of the evening breeze

“Rise, clasp my hand and come” says the final stanza, a gracious invitation to all.

When I first read today’s lections, my heart sank as I homed in upon emnity, a house divided, a mother and siblings rebuffed. I’m glad that the Spirit drew me to focus on that picture of the Lord God walking quietly, inviting us to come close again. When I logged on last night for one last polish, one more attempt to offer what it seemed that God wanted me to bring today, I found that a friend had posted what was presented as a summary of the whole of Scripture.

Perhaps I should simply have shared that and left you to ponder, for hear I read that the God who asks “where are you” has a 4 line manifesto.

It runs like this. Listen!

I love you.

I am with you.

Do not be afraid.

You can come home.

Amen. 

Thanks be to God