A sermon for Pentecost: Southwark Catheral 8th June 2025

When the day of Pentecost had come the people of Southwark Cathedral were all gathered together in one place and suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire space 

where they were gathered and

How did you feel as you heard those words?

Delight or panic.

What would that sort of dramatic outpouring of Gods Holy Spirit actually mean for us here? Do you honestly believe it could happen?

Every year as we approach Pentecost, Im conscious that Im being pulled in two directions.

On the one hand, of course I love the beauty of our liturgy, and the safety and security it offers too. I come expecting meet God in this community, amid the blend of Word, Music and Sacrament, and I am seldom disappointed. I jnow that if I come troubled or distracted the liturgy will provide a trellis that enables me to worship even when I canno find the right words for my own prayer. Im Anglican by choice as well as by chance, and yes, I value worship which is conducted decently and in order”, and I suspect thats true for many of here, so imagining the sort of radical transformation that the Holy Spirit might bring to us is, on one level, more than a little alarming.

The American writer Annie Dillard sums it up rather nicely in her book “Teaching a Stone to Talk”

Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we blithely invoke?Or as I suspect, does no-one believe a word of it? It is madness to wear nice Sunday hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Stewards should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us to where we can never return.

Scary stuff – to go where you don’t know and never be the same. But on the other hand what Christian, confronted with the diverse challenges facing both church and world today could fail to pray for the transforming power that enabled a group of fearful uneducated men to take on the world for Christ?

So yes, I love and value what we have, but I know that we, in the western Church and not just here in Southwark, often settle for less than our primary calling to BE the church a sign of God's kingdom, a powerful agent of transformation in a broken world...And I know that we will continue to fail, without a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit in this communities, at this time.

I guess the inner struggle that I experience is simply par for the course. We all know that encounters with God are unlikely to leave us untouched and sometimes the changes and challenges ahead seem too huge to contemplate.

The good news is - I rather suspect the disciples felt the same. When the Acts reading begins, they are gathered together, waiting. Though Luke doesnt say so, its quite possible that they are actually gathered together in the upper room, their unofficial Jerusalem HQ. This is holy ground for them, the place where theyd celebrated the Passover with Jesus, and hidden in fear when the Lord was arrested and crucified. The same room where they had huddled together in the fear and grief of Holy Saturday and the place where they heard the first rumours of resurrection. There they had encountered the risen one who came among them despite barred doors, there they had regrouped when he left them once again, there they had watched and prayed for his promise to be fulfilled. Holy ground indeed,the place where they felt themselves to be a community, still united despite the departure of their Lord. 

Yes, they were a community in waiting, uncertain about their next step, but a community gathered in faith and hope nonetheless. That sounds more like it, doesn’t it? A community gathered in faith and hope.

Of course, they were also a community under threat. Perhaps as we hear of more and darker institutional failures, we might wonder if we too will soon find ourselves in that category. 

Outside the house, the streets were thronged with people who cared little or nothing about what was going on inside. That’s quite familiar too, isn’t it.…I wonder if the disciples ever defined themselves as if set against the crowd outside. They were the ones with the special knowledge and experience of God, though the crowds were the ones with the courage and freedom to move about the city. 

We don't really know, and we mustn’t rewrite their story to match ours, but we DO know that with the coming of the Spirit, everything changed.

Hiding no longer, they went gladly out from their place of safety, out to speak to the crowds, overwhelmed with enthusiasm for a message that just had to be delivered. They were caught up in the excited turmoil, which was so pervasive that it seemed to onlookers that this was a scene of drunken revelry. 

Can you imagine it? That kind of excitement? Even here, even now??

Is it something we long for?

Because we know that God never forces themselves upon anyone…The Holy Spirit is a GIFT – a gift with the power to change everything…but a gift we have to reach out to accept or nothing whatever will happen.

That day in Jerusalem lives were changed. 

People heard the Gospel and responded to it. They were baptized and devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of the bread and the prayers"

For the disciples, the coming of the Spirit meant that they had to let go of the securities of their holy place and go out into the streets, among the crowds that could so easily turn nasty. 

The Spirit made that venture possibleand in doing so, opened up Salvation to the whole world.

Wonderful, inspirational....but perhaps not quite what you thought you’d signed up for in coming to Mass this morning. 

But, you know, Pentecost was not a once only event...The Spirit has been active throughout history, moving over the face of the waters at creation, transforming Ezekiel's dry bones, descending like a dove upon Jesus at his baptism.

And the Holy Spirit has not vanished from the world, not even from the Church!

At that first Pentecost, God reached out to communicate directly with everyone.

And God still does.

But not always, of course, in the mighty rushing wind, the multilingual gifts and high excitement of the day of Pentecost.

While Luke presents the coming of the Spirit with fanfares and celebrations, John’s account offers us only a gentle whisper, so quiet that we might even miss it.

Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you."

When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit.

Jesus looks at his exhausted, disappointed disciples, wrung out by all the dramas of holy week, of death and resurrection and offers them nothing less than artificial respiration. He breathes HIS life into them...literally INSPIRES them....That weary, fearful group is given the very life of God, and a new calling, to reconcile and bless                                

We have to do the same.

Filled with God's life-breath, Inspired as God's church, this is our calling.

Knowing that God so loved not church alone but the whole world, we are to reach out to her in all her pain and brokenness and speak God's words of healing and forgiveness.

Knowing that our language of worship may not be adequate, we are to listen to God and allow the Holy Spirit to translate so that we may more fully communicate God's love.

We speak so many different languages of mind and heart and spirit culture and community yet all must hear the Gospel and see its reality shaping our lives.

There is no official language for God rather God comes down and speaks our language, whatever it may be. 

God's one supreme message of love is translated so that nobody can fail to understand.

What joy, to celebrate God’s Spirit poured out upon all flesh in the wondrous diversity of this diocese, in the rich variety of Gods people, within and beyond our doors.

Can we let that celebration spill out into the streets? You see, if we will only let him, God can speak through us to all , each in their own heart-language.

Can you believe that? Can you dare to dream God’s dreams for the world, to see with God’s eyes a vision of the world transformed and restored?

At the end of our worship this morning, bearing candles lit from the great Easter flame that was kindled in the dark of Holy Saturday we will be sent out to do just that, for Mass and mission have the same root...

Ite, missa est. 

Go you are sent

Pray with me that this may be true in this time and this place, for the sake of all times and all places

Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of Your faithful, and kindle in them the fire of Your love.

Send forth Your Spirit, and they shall be created, And You shall renew the face of the earth.

  

Easter 3C Acts 9 & John 21 - for St Hugh's

Two weeks ago at the Cathedral, by the light of the great Easter candle, we rejoiced as a group of people of all ages took a new step and were confirmed in their faith , and with them renewed our baptismal vows as Bishop Christopher asked us all

Do you turn to Christ?

It feels like a really straightforward question, to which we can respond with joy.

Of course we turn to Christ. We want to live his way, - with lives shaped by love and the grace of God, though sometimes making that turn feels more weighty than others, if we've been struggling with life and faith - as I think everyone does from time to time. But still, we know the drill. Turning, repenting, changing our focus should be a daily activity for us- and it’s demonstrated in our readings by both Peter and Saul/Paul.

Saul would seem, at first glance, to have little to repent of.

He’s a Pharisee, and a good one at that. Dedicated in his observance, and burning with the kind of zeal that might just give zeal a bad name. He is, if you like, a fundamentalist Jew, intent on stamping out this strange cult of The Way, that challenges the faith of his fathers..

But as he heads on his way, with single-minded devotion, he is literally stopped in his tracks.

Why?

Because he meets with Jesus, un-looked for and unwelcome, and his world is turned upside down. The route of tradition, safe, sure, established beyond any doubt is suddenly shown to be leading to a dead end…

Saul needs to repent, to do a U turn. This might be a moment of total devastation. He has staked his all on something, devoted himself to a world-view that is contradicted in an instant.

Everything that he had thought and believed suddenly unravels before his blinded eyes. He was as wrong as it was possible to be! The unconscionable had happened: God had raised Jesus from the dead, and that meant that Jesus was God’s Messiah! The resurrection – the hope of Israel – had begun … with the very man the religious leaders had had put to death. And, scandal of scandals, on a cross!

You have to feel sorry for Saul.

At that moment, all he understands about God and God’s ways is in tatters. Everything that he has been and done has been wrong. He’s been waging a holy war – and he’s been on the wrong side!

Imagine that the belief that you hold most dear, the conviction about which you are most passionate is suddenly revealed as a colossal error. Imagine having to eat your words, reverse your arguments.  It’s not an inviting prospect is it,- and something that, in human terms, we find very hard to do.

But fortunately for Saul, he is overtaken not by a compelling argument but by the presence of Christ. Suddenly he is relying not on the guarantees provided by letters from the Sanhedrin, but on the grace of God….

He realises that he was wrong, that he had persecuted the very God he sought to serve; but he discovers something even more important than his own errors.

He discovers the power of God’s grace, that changes everything.

Beside that, everything that went before is inconsequential, simply never mentioned again. There is no lecture on the substance of persecution. Saul is not asked to apologise, forced to abase himself before the throne of glory. Rather he is given the opportunity to recognise Truth and respond to truth

“Who are you, Lord”.

Even as he seems to wonder, he already knows the answer to his question, and it is that answer, that recognition, which alters the whole course of his life.

In our baptism service, having asked the candidates to turn to Christ, the next question is whether they submit to Christ as Lord. That’s a radical act. It means that in every decision, at each and every moment of the day, we are trying to put God’s agenda first. It means that the turn around is played out again and again and again…Who are you, Lord.

I recognise you and place you in control of my whole life from now on.

I've just come home from a wonderful conference with the charismatic catholic Anglicans of On Fire Mission, a group of friends and pilgrims whose gathering sustains and encourages me every year. One thing we were reflecting on together was the way in which we are, wonderfully, family with EVERYONE who can say with heart and soul "Jesus is Lord"....That beside that yardstick any other worries about doctrinal differences, or preferences in worship styles should pale into insignificance. If you and I can both say "Jesus is Lord" - we're family. 

You, and me - and Saul too, in this moment when his old world crumbles, but a new work begins.

“But get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do” (Acts 19:6).                     What Saul will come to understand – perhaps more keenly than anyone else – is that the new world brought about by the resurrection is a world of grace. This is a world constituted by the Good News that God’s salvation includes those who are least worthy,- persecutors, bombers, self-obsessed politicians - the whole kit and caboodle.

And he, Saul, believes that he is the unworthiest of all. Yet grace means that a former persecutor still has a part to play. He is not condemned for his past. Instead, he is told how to begin something new- and given a new identity, as Paul the apostle.

Amazing grace!

Of course, the reality for us as we strive to live out our baptisms is an experience of regular disillusion and failure. As I declaimed my faith with joy on Easter day, I know that  I meant everything I said...but I know too that  in just a few hours I’d slipped a good long way from that peak of fervent aspiration.

Enter Peter,- my hero in faith….quick to get things wrong… feeling, speaking, acting first, reflecting afterwards. Oh goodness, we have a lot in common!

Unlike Saul, he is surely in no doubt about the need to repent. He has been doing little else since the small hours of Good Friday. On one level, his feelings are a normal reaction to bereavement. After a death, survivors are gripped by all sorts of feelings, - grief, of course, relief possibly, but often guilt as well, no matter how unjustified, unreasonable or downright silly. My father was unable to eat at all in the last 2 weeks of his life – but after his death I berated myself with distressing regularity for some months because I had not, as I’d promised, made him some of the cheese scones he so much enjoyed.

I would have loved to have been able to put the clock back…to cut short the exam revision and do some baking instead.

It felt as if that would have made all the difference to my ability to cope with his death.

It wouldn’t have, of course…but grief is rarely rooted in common sense and guilt is so often part of the package.

Feelings rise in a tide that can threaten to engulf us even after what would seem to be a “Good death”. There are often unresolved issues,  words unspoken and deeds regretted, so it's small wonder  that we’re prone to thinking

 “If only I could have him back, just for long enough to put things right – then I’d be able to move on”

Just one more chance….

Usually, those guilty feelings are simply our reaction to our own survival in a world which someone beloved has left…but occasionally, there are real grounds for contrition.

And we can’t put the clock back. There are no more chances.

We can repent as much as we like but we can’t hear the words of forgiveness we seek from the lips that we long for. And that’s hard, very hard.

But of course, it was different for Peter, wasn’t it? He had a genuine reason to beat himself up – reason enough to wallow in misery till the end of his days. So we find him days, a week perhaps after that fateful Passover weekend, mired in guilt and regret. He longs to put the clock back – but since he can’t, he decides to pretend that the whole Jesus event, this wonderfully exciting chapter of his life, never really happened.

It’s easy to imagine the disciples, sitting round in a dispirited huddle until suddenly Peter takes the initiative.                                                                                                                        “Right. That’s it. The past is over. He’s not coming back. – so let’s get on with our real lives. I’m going fishing…”

The wheel has come full circle. Peter is heading back to the beginning. He had been called away from his accustomed business but now that his dreams have been shown to be delusions, where else can he go but back to the boats? Fishing is in his blood. It’s who he is. Peter the fisherman, back at his nets.

And the others join him. The comfort of familiar things, familiar places….Again, quite a common reaction to grief. Let's pretend nothing has changed. Only even this comfort is denied  the disciples…for a long cold night out on the lake nets precisely nothing.

If Peter needed any confirmation that the world has gone awry, this must surely have provided it. He can’t even make it as a fisherman any longer. Deep gloom.

And then, as in each of the resurrection appearances, Jesus is there, changing everything. First, he recognises their situation.                                                                           “You have no fish, have you?”                                                                                                   Then he offers them a remedy.                                                                                                     “Put your net out on the other side. Change direction yourselves. It will make all the difference.”

Another U turn….and a fruitful one. We, and they, have been here before but this time, having learned their lesson three years earlier, the disciples take his advice without demur, and are duly rewarded, not just with a bumper catch but with the sight of the One they most long to see. But everything has changed after the resurrection – even Jesus! There’s something unrecognisably different about him. And so it’s as though he appears for the first time again. This is a new commissioning to a new ministry…

Here’s Peter, trapped between love and loyalty. It’s his love that makes him respond as he does,- impulsively leaping out of the boat to reach his Master as fast as he can. He’s always loved Jesus like that .But being ruled by his feelings he was also particularly vulnerable to his fears…It was those fears that spoke in the courtyard as he denied his Lord, and  his own love for Jesus. Can you imagine the inner turmoil he’s been wrestling with? Not only did Jesus die, but he died believing (as far as Peter was concerned) that Peter did not love him.

If ever there was someone who needed to hear words of absolution, it’s Peter and in this new world of restoration and second chances Jesus offers him the chance to take back those words he wishes he had never said.

Three times he asks the question that has been tormenting Peter:

“Do you love me?”

Three denials balanced by three chances to affirm his love afresh, three opportunities for forgiveness.

In human terms, forgiveness is one thing but trust in quite another. After we’ve been let down, disappointed in a significant way, we may strive to forgive but the reality for most of us is that a shadow of mistrust and anxiety clouds the relationship from then on. We may manage to get along on a superficial basis, but we’re unlikely to make ourselves truly vulnerable to someone who has let us down…

But with Jesus, things are rather different. Peter is not just told “There there, it doesn’t matter” He is confirmed in his vocation as the rock on which the church will be built. He’s not to be a fisherman but a shepherd.

A new identity for him, as for Saul (turned from persecutor to apostle).A new certainty, for all of them, that they are now heading in the right direction, following the One who is way, truth and light.

To encounter the risen Christ is to be challenged, challenged and changed. He forces us to reflect on our own direction, our practice of life and faith. Perhaps like Saul we’re side-tracked by legalism or by the fine print of observance, and have missed the living reality of Christ staring us in the face? Maybe we’re so intent on getting it “right” that we have forgotten why “it” exists at all?

Perhaps we’re conscious of failures and shortcomings, of lacking the courage of our convictions, of putting safety before radical love, and so hang back, reluctant to ask Jesus for help in moving onwards. But the message of Resurrection is that transformation is possible, if we can accept it.

I'm afraid we are pretty much bound to fail from time to time - , gloriously, ignobly, repeatedly.

But thanks to the transforming power of the resurrection, we mustn’t give up. Not even on ourselves.

Even if you're feeling stuck - in life or in faith...Jesus has something for you to do in the new world of resurrection, with hope restored and new life brimming over.

And he's asking just one question...a question that has the power to shape everything for us.

Do you love me?

And so by the grace of God we find ourselves at Eastertide gazing in wonder at a world made new, a world of grace and Life and Light.,a place of transformation. Easter Sunday is not just the first day of a new week: it is the dawn of a new creation and things can never be the same again.

And, in the light of that new dawn, Jesus invites us to come and eat with him. Right here and right now.

Thanks be to God!

 

 

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Ash Wednesday 2025 at Southwark Cathedral

 Welcome, dear feast of Lent

That's what beloved George Herbert wrote...

but when I was a child I hated Lent with a passion.

I hated the solemn feeling of Ash Wednesday

I hated the dark purple that surrounded me in church

I hated the absence of flowers.

And that was before anyone even hinted at giving up sweets or other delights.

Dear feast? I didn't think so.

Lent was all about death, dust and ashes and going without.

A fast, not a feast at all.

Pancake day?

That was quite different

That was a feast right enough.

Something to celebrate and always the hope that one of my father’s pancakes would go so high it stuck to the kitchen ceiling...It did at least once.

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

I learned that having the slate wiped clean is really something to celebrate.

That as we begin to turn over a new leaf, to flip the pancake to show its best side, we really can rejoice.

Listen to Joel again. Not that bit about

The day of darkness and gloom,

    a day of clouds and thick darkness!

Nor the part of about terrifying armies!

I promise, his message is not just about misery and destruction.

Listen

Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful

Return.

Come back to where you really belong…

That’s an attractive invitation, - that speaks more of joy than of dread… and indeed that joy should be the mood of the day.

You see,when we receive the ash cross on our foreheads, we do so with two thoughts.

One is, if you like, the down stroke…

…our mortality...the darker, more sombre aspect of today.

You are dust and to dust you shall return.

There’s no escaping that. It’s a reality with which we just have to make our peace sooner or later.

But set against this the other, which crosses out that declaration of annihilation... the route home for us, the way of life and light that means that none of us need fear the end

Turn away from sin and be faithful to Christ.

It’s as simple as that.

Change direction, away from sin and towards home.

Home to Christ, who is faithful to us.

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

Christ who shows us the overwhelming love of God who meets us, when we are still far off, and have only just begun to make our journey home.

Be faithful to Christ

In that cross of ash we receive both disease and remedy in one. Here is Death and resurrection. The whole of life’s journey and purpose collapsed into a short encounter which deals both with stark reality and transformative hope.

When I was a parish priest I often struggled with the apparently straightforward task of burning the palms to make the ash needed for today.

Often it was an irritating and messy business

Perhaps, even when dried out in the oven, they just wouldn't catch, wouldn't burn

Or they’d smoke and smoulder so determinedly that that my eyes streamed and my hair and my clothes smelled like a kipper factory.

And the task always took about twice as long as I actually had available.

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

Challenging

Irritating

Messy

And time consuming – it always takes longer than we would hope

A fresh start isn't always easy - But there's no need to despair.

You see today we have another opportunity to look at who we are and who we want to be. To turn around and begin our journey home. To spring-clean hearts, minds and souls so that our light can break forth like the dawn

That can be difficult and painful: often it would be so much easier to rend garments than hearts. Heartbreak hurts– for it usually involves giving up things that are part of ourselves, things that we hold much closer than even the most stubborn addiction to chocolate...so it's good that we keep Lent together, as a community.

Together we can encourage and support one another – by word, by example, by prayer.

Together we can, by the grace of God, begin again to form ourselves into a community which proclaims by deeds that are louder than words our determination to live lives shaped by God’s Great Commandment of love.

Together.

You see, returning to that messy, tiresome business of burning the palms, finally the warmth of a whole tinful smouldering is enough. Finally those dried out leaves catch fire and the flames break forth and spring up and in a few moments those twisted crosses disappear and the residue.......well, that's what we use to remind us of both sides of Lent

Of our frailty and mortality......you are dust, and so am I.

And of our hope in Christ......who is faithful to us, who will lead us through our own wilderness times, through the desert of repentance, who will bring us safely home

I once knew a priest,  chaplain at a college of further education, who decided to rewrite part of the liturgy for Ash Wednesday, so that rather than “you are dust and to dust you shall return” his students heard instead the loving reassurance of Jesus:

“I do not call you servants, but friends”

“God loves the world so much”

“Abide in my love”

“I am with you always, to the close of the age”

Those words, those comforts, are implicit in that brief, strangely intimate exchange as we are each marked with the cross, the enduring sign of God’s love retracing the seal of our baptism year upon year.

Ash Wednesday takes us back to that moment, and invites us to reflect on the truth of who we are, and the truth of who God is…knowing that always, ALWAYS, God’s love will win.

In the words of the hymn 

“Rejoice oh dust and ashes, The Lord will be thy part

His only, his forever, thou shalt be and thou art”