Sermon for CCN Sunday 2024 at Southwark Cathedral

 Cats and Dogs

Cops and Robbers

Montagues and Capulets

Democrats and Republicans

Jews and Samaritans

Protestants and Catholics

Conservatives and liberals

We humans have an extraordinary and distressing tendency to view the world in terms of opposing binaries, and to build division into the very fabric of our social structures. We are intensely tribal apparently needing to organise the world into “people like us” and “the others” - to be viewed with suspicion, if not outright hostility.

We even convince ourselves that such divisions have been built into the very fabric of existence, that it’s somehow part of “the plan”. The Genesis creation story has God dividing light from darkness, land from sea, even before the Fall. And after that, of course, it’s official.

I will put enmity between you and the woman. She shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise her heel.

And have you noticed how often matters of faith – or, more accurately, matters of religion, are the pretext, if not the actual basis for division? It is, you see, all about group identity. The very word “Religion” comes from the Latin ligare, to join or bind. Religion binds people within the group....More specifically, since some of the most bitter conflicts take place within a faith, it binds members of the same sect, church, or denomination. It invests group solidarity with sanctity. In advocating a special relationship between god and believers, every religion potentially creates an in and an out group. Religious identity creates draws firm boundaries, which we defend come what may. Within our groups, we may manage to practice altruism. Between and beyond them, we are all too prone to practice aggression, and because religion is the most effective way to establish a group identity, it is too often implicated in the consequent violence.

On the basis of the evidence I was genuinely surprised that the rather splendid group of year 10 students who visited the Learning Centre on Friday felt, on balance, that religion might still be a force for good...Or rather, that FAITH might be. It’s important, you see, to maintain the distinction.

Religion binds us together – but it might also set us against one another.

Faith, I think, looks beyond.

We see this in our gospel – that story that is so well-known you probably switched off as soon as the deacon proclaimed it. Admittedly, Luke’s account, more succinct than that elsewhere, does not labour the point - but there’s no evading the identity of the man who offers help to the benighted traveller. He is a Samaritan – one so far beyond the pale that you can almost imagine a hiss from the crowd, a collective drawing in of their skirts, as Jesus has this uncongenial outsider stopping to offer the help that the Insiders – the priest and the Levite – had failed to offer.

Imagine if the traveller had been conscious...Would he have accepted the rescuer before him? Or would partisan pride have won the day? We don’t know. We never will...though I’m always wryly amused that when Jesus asks “Which of the three was a neighbour...” the lawyer cannot bring himself to utter the word “Samaritan” - but, looking uncomfortably at his feet, mutters “The one who showed him mercy”

We can, it seems, be choosy and partisan even when we are offered help.

But there IS another way...and it is this that we are recalled to today, as we celebrate our membership of the CCN – for here we are reminded that faith can support those values on which peace and reconciliation flourish. 

You’ll know the story – but nontheless I make no apology for sharing it again, our story is a living proof that we CAN rise above a dualist view of the world.

In November 1940, one night of heavy bombing reduced much of the manufacturing city of Coventry to rubble. Despite heroic efforts by local fire crews, the medieval cathedral of St Michael was one of the casualties, catching fire and burning all night. The following day, the leader of the Cathedral community, Provost Dick Howard, was walking amid the ruins of his beloved Cathedral. It’s easy to imagine his feelings. Distress, surely, at the destruction of something precious and beautiful. Grief at the loss of life across the city. Perhaps anger, - at so much destruction and waste...hatred of those responsible.

But no. 

Provost Howard was a remarkable man, who had taken to heart the message of peace and reconciliation that lies at the heart of the Christian gospel. So he asked for two words to be written on the wall of the ruined cathedral’s sanctuary, behind where the altar had stood. Just two words. “Father, forgive”. He deliberately didn’t complete the quote from Scripture...He DIDNT say “Father, forgive THEM” because he wanted there to be no “them” and “us”...no demonising of the German people, no pretext for nurturing hatred and revenge. He knew that we are all equally liable to those patterns of behaviour, that pursuit of power and glory, which left unchecked could lead to such disaster...That the destruction of the old cathedral was as much the responsibility of his own community as it was of the German pilots who flew the bombers that night.

Father forgive”….because in this we are all to blame. “Father, forgive” because it is only through following the way of costly forgiveness that hope and healing can be found. 3 of the ancient nails that had fallen from the roof of the burned cathedral were taken and bound into the shape of a cross, - and now that cross of nails has become the symbol of all the work of peace and reconciliation that has gone out from Coventry around the world. Here at Southwark we are part of it...part of the God-given message of reconciliation which has at its heart a refusal to make anyone stand as “other”.

At the beginning of the service we prayed together the Coventry litany of reconciliation. The response to each clause is those two words “Father forgive”

The power of the missing word...the refusal to stand and pour hatred over “THEM” - those other, different people who are not us, and who threaten us by their very existence...is the great gift that the Community of the Cross of Nails can offer to our divided world.

WE SHALL NOT “OTHER” ANYONE.

That must be our resolve – part of the way in which at Southwark we make space for love with heart, mind and soul. 

And this is something intensely practical. It’s seen as different faith communities come together to share food and fellowship at an Iftar in the nave. It’s seen as the Drakensburg Boys Choir brings black and white S African children together in an act of artistic revolution. It’s seen in the delight of two Muslim teenagers from Leicester who spent a summer Saturday knitting, with 2000 others, in our cathedral churchyard. Yes – those are all easy wins...Soft radicalism...But we can only start where we are, recognising that the time may come when the call to reconciliation demands more of us. 

When I worked at Coventry, a strong influence was the American Mennonite John Paul Lederach. He suggests that reconciliation is only complete when you have so fully entered into the life of those who were formerly “the other” that your own comrades feel that you have betrayed them. 

You see, reconciliation involves such identification with those who were once “other” that you cross the line to join them...you learn to see things from their perspective...you tell their story as if it were your own.

That’s just not possible in the binary world that we’re offered in Genesis, but the grace of God at work in Christ moves us on from the creation story to the confident assertion that there is a NEW creation, in which we no longer “other”, in which we no longer hide behind the stories of past wrongs but together tell a new story as we move from a fractured past into a shared future.

All this from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation. 

Only Luke is with me: a sermon for the patronal festival of St Lukes, Woodside, 20th October 2024

 Thank you, Sam, for your invitation to be here today. I bring warm greetings from your cathedral to all of you and, of course, wish you a very happy feast day. Luke is SUCH a great patron to have. May you all be blessed as you celebrate.

But, I want to start today with Paul, who is in anything but festive mode. 

It's kind of comforting, I think, to realise that even he had his “Eeyore” days, wasn’t always a shiny Christian, full of joy..

To be honest he sounds pretty miserable...even self-pitying

“I'm already being poured out as a libation...Everyone has gone away and left me. I'm cold (I left my cloak in Troas…) and worse still I’ve run out of things to read. For heavens sake bring me books (I suddenly feel a great rush of empathy here!)

I've been picked on by Alexander the coppersmith....(I’d love to hear the story behind that)

Only Luke is with me”

You see what I mean, don’t you. This is Paul’s pity party...and some of his woes are real I’m sure, and even saints and apostles have their bad days...

And yet...

ONLY LUKE...

Is that fair?

Only Luke…!!!!

Only the man who wrote what amounts to 28% of the New Testament

The one who gives us the birth narratives (without Luke, our carol services would be very short indeed)

The writer who spends time listening to the Virgin Mary, and who focusses, again and again, on those women whom other writers might choose to leave on the sidelines, if they mentioned them at all.

ONLY LUKE – one of the 4 evangelists whose words we continue to read week by week almost 2000 years after they were first penned...ONLY Luke – whose praise in in the gospels”

The problem is, of course, that we dont' know much about him.

I guess he'd say that this means he got things right.

Because he didn't intend to write about himself.

Not for one moment.

He has a very clear agenda when he begins his gospel...

 Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things thathave been accomplished among us, 2 just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, 3 it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, 4 that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught. 

He wants us to KNOW the truth...the eye witness evidence of the gospel...so that we, like Theophilus, may be set free

Luke might perhaps, to have preferred to remain anonymous, though I'm glad we do know his name because it's so apt for the man. 

It probably comes from the Greek “Lucanus” the light giver...Isn't that wonderful, for someone whose time was devoted to showing the light of Christ to a world that needed it badly?

So...we have someone with a longing to share the truth of the gospel. A non Jew, writing in beautiful, stylish Greek, sometime around 75 AD, or thereabouts.

Someone who takes his research seriously.

And who travels.

Alot.

Caught up in Paul's missionary journeys – and with a clear mission of his own as well.

The stories that Luke shares give us a very particular understanding of Jesus...

Only in his gospel do we find The Good Samaritan, Martha and Mary, the Rich Fool, the Prodigal Son, Dives and Lazarus, the Pharisee and the Publican, the Good Thief, and the Disciples on the road to Emmaus. 

Imagine a Bible that didn't include those.

Only in Luke do we get a sense of the kingdom's bias to the poor – from the moment that Mary prophecies the world turned upside down in the Magnificat, Luke’s world is one that is shaped byt the prophecies of Isaiah, as he sees in Christ the restoration and healing of all that is broken in the world.

Only in Luke – those wonderful words, stories that go to the heart of the gospel...Stories with the power to change hearts, minds, lives.

Later, as his narrative in Acts changes from 3rd to 1st person, he becomes part of the stories he is sharing. Perhaps he was travelling with Paul as his personal physician...

We know, after all, that Paul had a long-standing medical condition, and, I'd guess, an uncertain temper too. Think of the assorted disagreements and divisions that we hear about as he travels about the Mediterrannean....all those others who have decided to go their separate ways...But Luke, compassionate Luke, stays with him...caring, not critical

He's the kind of doctor, then, who cares about the whole person...Who sees not just the broken pelvis in bed 3 but the scared teenager who is trying so hard to play it cool.

I think I'd have liked to receive care from Luke....for he understands the needs of the soul as well as the body.

Bodies, after all, are quite good at mending themselves of many of the everyday wounds that life affords.

Souls find that harder...they need to be loved back to health..

They did when Luke was writing

They still do.

Too many people travel through life damaged by hurts and losses,believing the voices of the past that have left hidden wounds...

Believing themselves unloveable, untouchable, deserving neither help nor pity.

And Luke recognises that these people in particular need the assurance of God's love and searches for medicine for them. As our Collect reminded us,he sets aside his calling to heal bodies in favour of a calling to be “and evangelist and physician of the soul”

Think of the way he describes Jesus healing those possessed. While we no longer use the language of possession by demons, we've surely we all encountered, perhaps at first hand, the unwelcome legion of voices that tell us that we're not worth bothering with, a waste of space, a disappointment to any and everyone who has ever invested in us.

Voices that are so compelling that they all but eat up the sense of self...warping it beyond recognition.

THESE are some of the people whom Jesus encounters – the people whom Jesus heals.

Instead of the clamour of negativity he asks them to listen to another voice, to imagine another viewpoint...the viewpoint of the One who sees each of us as infinitely loveable...

And, warmed into new life by those words, the hearers are healed.

And Dr Luke gets to tell these stories as his two vocations combine to make him the kind of evangelist who not only TELLS good news – but IS good news himself.

Which bring us neatly to our gospel...and the mission that Jesus gives to the seventy as he sends them out...encouraging them to take nothing but the message of peace with God which is the hallmark of the Kingdom. 

These missionaries go out in pairs – not alone.

They are to equip themselves not with an exhaustive kit-list but with faith in the God who, as Paul discovered for himself, stands by us and give us strength.

They are encouraged to settle in to the local community – to make friends and join in with ordinary life.

To speak peace, without labouring the point (if the response is poor, save your breath)

And – they are to heal the sick.

In other words – those 70 are to be signs of the Kingdom themselves.

And so are we.

“Give your whole Church the same love and power to heal” says the Collect...dwelling on the way the gospel can transform even the most broken heart and soul

Luke knew this – for he had seen its power at work again and again as he journeyed with Paul

He knew it – and wanted others to know it too.

He was not there when Jesus sent out the 70 – but his own journeys mirrored theirs.

And his words, reporting those of the One whom he followed, still have the power to heal lives.

“Only Luke” - “Only Jean” “Only Sam” only you...even while you sit here thinking that call is for somebody else. Only ordinary people who become extra-ordinary, because they have experienced for themselves the impact of the Good News and are fired up to share it with others.

Only people like you...doctors and teachers, drivers and office staff mums, grandpas...The Body of Christ in Woodside today.

People on a mission to BE good news here and now – to love and to heal in the name of Christ.

Never believe that you're “only” small, inadequate, bound to fail. God's grace is sufficient, now as then, so follow your patron and live so that others can see Gods power at work in you, as you live as a sign of God's kingdom.

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

 

Holy family? A thought for Morning Prayer on the feast of the Visitation, 31st May 2024 at Southwark

 Families

They bring you joy

They bring you pain

And they very rarely turn out the way you expect.

I was young when I was first betrothed to Joseph...very young.....naive...hopeful....

He was kind, gentle...and we walked the hills around Nazareth imagining our future home..Naming in our dreams the children we might have together

That was before the angel came and the world changed forever.

Honestly I didn't know what to say, what to think, how to feel

Was this new beginning going to end all my hopes and dreams of a quiet family life?

I know I had a choice, but honestly...how could I say no when God called, however strange the summons?

At first I hugged the news to myself, praying in the wakeful nights, pouring out to God all my amazement "how can this be...." my confusion "what will it mean?'....my fear..."how shall we live.".

But babies grow and the time came to talk to Joseph and to my parents. 

That was hard. So hard.

Always a quiet man, Joseph shut down completely.

"I see" he said, then walked away into the evening shadows.

Next day, though, he returned. He too had had a message from God. We would stay together. He would father my child. God's child. I think I fell in love with him properly that day....

But that still left the neighbours to contend with, so it was agreed I should go away to my cousin Elizabeth, a visit to buy some time.

When life is hard, family can be a rock,-  though sometimes they are first to pick up a rock to hurl at you.

Not this time though. The moment I crossed her threshold Elizabeth was all joy at my visit and at my news. With no prompting she affirmed my news

"How is it that the mother of my Lord should come to me?"

She KNEW. Her unborn baby KNEW.

I wasn't going mad, as I had sometimes worried...I had heard an angel

We hugged, laughed, cried, praised God together. Mothers, babies and the Holy Spirit dancing for joy.

Joy was the keynote when my delivery day arrived too.Yes it was hard to be away from home, from my own mother, but Joseph was there, and the light and love that filled the strange birthplace was enough to confirm that God was deeply involved, committed, an ever present part of our little family.

After that came fear again,- the strange old man at the Temple who said wonderful things about my baby had harsh things to say to me, about future wounds to my heart and soul...the reports of soldiers coming for all baby boys and toddlers in Bethlehem.

Tragic. Chilling. Even though we were safe enough in Egypt.

And as Jesus grew up, I  could never quite relax into motherhood. He was all loving kindness of course, sensitive beyond his years, quick to help, to hug, to listen and love. Sometimes it seemed he was the parent, I the child.

He would tell me off if I tried to protect him, tried to fix things.

"Just trust" he would say. "My father's got this."

Strange, wonderful years though sometimes he shook our family to the core, wounding Joseph so deeply when he told those in the Temple "I must be about my father's business"

There were other children by then, boys and girls whom I love truly and deeply, but my bond with Jesus was different, so I felt torn in two when he left home.

I knew it was time.

He knew it was time

But all the same, I thought he would miss us, his family, would be as excited to see us as I was to catch even a glimpse of him in the crowds.

I never imagined he wouldn't spare us even a few minutes.

Would disown us so harshly.

It seems he has a new family now,-bigger, for sure...but can they love him as I do?

Do I still have a role to play, for my precious firstborn? I am still his mother.

And maybe for this wider family, those who do God's will I can be a mother too. 

After all, I have tried to do that every day...tried to trust that God's got this, even when it seemed most unlikely

Yes. Perhaps I can mother by example for them, . 

Mary, mother of God' family. Mary, mother  of God.

All about chocolate? Thought for the day, Friday 16th February

How is it going so far?

Barely three days into Lent, and I’ve so nearly failed in my Lenten disciplines already, as yesterday morning my hand automatically stretched out to take the chocolate kindly offered by a colleague after a big memorial service. Salted caramel…pretty much my favourite. Of course I’d like one…Thank you…Except…and so I remembered in the nick of  time the new law that I had established, and swerved away – my resolve unbroken even if my internal monologue was on the decidedly grumpy side.

Sometimes at the start of Lent it can feel as if we have written a whole catalogue of new rules simply to make life harder for ourselves, forbidding things overnight that had been entirely licit only the day before. Whether we are giving things up or taking things on, whether we’ve created a whole new schedule of prayer or are planning to spend 5 nights a week volunteering for some worthy cause, we often seem intent on creating situations which confine us, set us up to fail, load us all with a plethora of new reasons to beat ourselves up.

So – is that really what it’s all about. Lent, a season to make ourselves as miserable as possible and, as a result, to make those around us pretty miserable too? Is the idea that I should become a kind of penance for my nearest and dearest?

Well, obviously not.

While Lent can look like a kind of spiritual assault course, one more desperate attempt at self-improvement at which we’re bound to fail, that’s never the point. Yes, we are called to amendment of life..Yes, we should expect to learn some important truths about ourselves in the coming weeks…but the point of it all is to enable us to focus ever more deeply on God and God’s love.

A  long time ago, I asked a group of primary school children what they thought Lent was about.

“It’s spring-cleaning for the soul” said L – and for me, that hit the jack-pot. This is our season to give up, not just chocolate, but all those things that get in the way so thoroughly, to declutter heart, mind and soul – to attend to those matters that really need attention…Remember, though,  it’s not the obedience to our own internal legislation that matters, any more than it was adherence to the full Mosaic code that spelled salvation for the Galatians.

There’s nothing we can do to make that happen...Nothing we can do to earn our seat at the table, - Christ has already done that for us and it is ours through God’s grace…

But we CAN use these coming days and weeks to strengthen our faith, as we learn to be God’s people once again, touched by God’s love and enlivened by the Spirit. With an agenda like that, chocolate probably doesn’t matter.

 

 

 

Racial Justice and Transfiguration Sunday 11th February 2024 at Southwark

How clearly can you see?

I’ve just admitted defeat after decades of wearing glasses to drive, and am the somewhat anxious owner of my first pair of variafocals. In theory this should mean that absolutely everything is much clearer, though I’m not completely convinced yet. I asked the Sub-Dean for advice and he simply told me to follow my nose – but I’m not quite sure that my nose knows where I’m heading, which makes me feel rather like an unsuccessful blood-hound., so I’m wearing my new glasses rather less than I should.

However – the whole experience has made me think hard about the gift of sight, and the need to see clearly in order to navigate life without injuring myself or anyone else.

And that seems a good route in to today’s readings – and to Racial Justice Sunday too.

It seems to me that a great deal of what Christian spirituality is about is "seeing."
When Elijah was taken from him, the critical question for Elisha was “would he see it happening”
On that hung so much of his own future hopes in ministry …He would be given a double share of his Mentor’s spirit if he had eyes to see, even if to see is not always a joyful experience. Whenever I read this passage I’m struck by Elisha’s desolation “father, father...the chariots of Israel and its horsemen”

He can see that for Elijah there is no going back. He really is leaving, so Elisha stands, bereft, tearing his garments, confronted by the incontrovertible evidence of his own eyes.

Clear vision isn’t always welcome – as we begin to comprehend things, notice hard truths that we just hadn’t seen before.

When I was a child, Racial Justice Sunday simply hadn’t been thought of. It was first marked in 1995 though it has taken far longer to gain a secure foot-hold. At its best, I imagine that the Church of my childhood was full of benevolent paternalism, that my mother’s view that to be colour blind was the best possible approach was pretty widespread, that nobody had noticed, somehow, that the playing field on which different races and colours were standing was unimaginably far from a level one. It took a long time before anyone felt able to acknowledge that.

It would be great to be able to say “But that’s all gone now...” - except that clearly, it isn’t. If we’d learned, then there might be no need for Racial Justice Sunday at all -….but you’ll know the statistics as well as I do...how much harder it can be to simply get through life, let alone thrive, if, to put it crudely, your face doesn’t fit.

It can be very hard indeed to truly see and name the situation for what it is. White privilege remains white privilege whether we acknowledge it or not...and can be internalised in myriad unhealthy ways. I discovered this for myself when I first spent time in India, as part of a diocesan exchange programme. Wherever we went, with our Indian clergy hosts, queues formed to ask for blessings and I discovered that there was an unexpected hierarchy at play, such that the hands of a white British priest, - even a woman- were perceived as somehow more holy than the hands of the faithful Indian priests who served those communities day in day out. It was shocking, unwelcome but undeniable. The myth of white superiority had been so thoroughly absorbed in those rural communities, it was hard to imagine an appropriate response that did not look simply ungracious. And, after all, that myth had its origins in the days of the Raj...it was my forbears who had taught those communities that they were of second rank, second value.

Simply because I was, in effect, wearing new glasses, this did not change the view for everyone. Seeing clearly can be very hard work…Sometimes the gospel, the truth of God’s unconditional, all-inclusive love, seems to be veiled by the very institutions that exist to embody it – and that is something of which the Church must, and does, repent.

But the truth, of course, is always there, whether we see it or not, just as it was for the disciples on the holy mountain. Listen to these words from Madeleine l’Engle’s wonderful book The Irrational Season:
"Suddenly they saw him the way he was; the way he really was all the time, although they had never seen it before, the glory which blinds the everyday eye and so becomes invisible. This is how he was, radiant, brilliant, carrying joy like a flaming sun in his hands. This is the way he was - is - from the beginning and we cannot bear it. So he manned himself, came manifest to us; and there on the mountain, they saw him; they really saw him, saw his light. Now, perhaps, we will see each other, too."

NOW PERHAPS WE SHALL SEE EACH OTHER TOO.

That must be our task, on this Racial Justice Sunday.

To see ourselves, to see the unconscious privilege that some of us enjoy and to repent of that.

To see the face of Christ in all whom we meet, regardless of race, colour or all the other external markers that might deceive us or threaten to distort our vision.

To see Christ and so seeing, to love and serve him as he loves and serves us all.

So, how clearly can you see?

Perhaps you need new glasses yourself...

As a pilgrim in the Holy Land some years ago, my own experience on the Mountain of the Transfiguration provided the kind of lesson I wish I didn’t need. We visited in January, and as the group emerged from our taxis close to the church, cloud did indeed overshadow us so that we could see – , honestly, precisely NOTHING.

Inside the church building all was gold and blazing splendour – the image of Jesus with Moses and Elijah instantly recognisable and unmissable.above the altar Outside, though, I could barely see the ground at my feet...had no idea where I was heading...was in real danger of falling over my own feet or tripping up others..

I know I can be guilty of that in daily life too. I just don’t see…

But perhaps that is the task of priesthood: simply to help others to see.

Or better yet, perhaps we can help each other..

Would you help me?

Together we might learn to see God’s presence in everything and everyone, to see one another with his eyes of love…with no judgement, no comparison, neither anxiety, pride nor fear…

To look at one another and to see, not those features that divide us, those characteristics that irritate...but, like the disciples, only Jesus.

As we begin our journey through Lent, our eyes fixed on the cross and the love that transforms it,, let us pray for that grace to see God’s glory blazing through the ordinary til everything is extraordinary, everything illuminated. May we see that more and more til the day dawns and the morning star rises in our hearts.