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!

 

 

….

 

 

 

 

 

 

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”

Safeguarding Sunday 2024, Southwark Cathedral

If a week is a long time in politics it might be even longer in the life of this Cathedral. Last Sunday as we gathered to remember all the victims of war, I reflected to myself that next week, ( ie today), with Safeguarding Sunday and no less than 5 new Christians ṭo be welcomed through Baptism into God's Church, we could look forward with hope and joy. 

Yes I was conscious that the Makin report had been published; but because I believed that events that had made it necessary happened mostly in the 70s and 80s I dared to hope that our íncreasingly professional, stringent Safeguarding arrangements meant that the worst was behind us in the Church of England. I imagined that ïf I mentioned the report it would simply be as a powerful illustration öf why we ņeed Safeguarding Sunday , and of course that remains the case. However the increasing anger at the Church of England's failures to listen to victims, to act, to accept responsibility have led in an unexpected direction, ẅith the resignation of the archbishop and an ever greater sense that as an institution we are confronted by the the wrong we have done and the good we have failed to do. So much for simple looking forward. And what price hope and joy. Surely this is a season for long and bitter lament.

Honestly, who would choose to sign up to Church of England plc in the current climate? And how can we within the institution come to terms with our own sense of disappointment and shame? I have several clergy friends who decided against wearing their collars out and about ṭhis week, fearing that our church had become a dangerously toxic brand.

And yet, and yet...here we still are meeting to worship, committing ourselves afresh to the truths enshrined in our Creeds, encountering God in one another, in God's word and in the breaking of bread..and perhaps as we step away from the tides of righteous anger flooding the media and settle ourselves in this place where Church scandals have come and gone and prayer has been valid for centuries, we can try to recover hope again. 

For what does the God we meet in Scripture have to say to us this morning? What messages might he be offering to our baptism candidates, to help them focus on the essence of faith, on what really matters when the institutional church fails.

Speaking through Isaiah he offers comfort

Do not fear for I am with you. Do not be afraid for I am your God 

And that promise is true for each one of us, every single day, no matter what. One of the saddest outcomes of John Smyth's abuse is that for too many victims faith and fear, God and pain became inextricably entwined..so let me say this loud and clear. Whatever the Church and her representatives may say and do, God is always bigger, better, more loving than we can possibly conceive and we must never ever confuse God with the institutional Church.

God also offers a call...we are to love God with heart mind and soul and our neighbour as ourselves

God is love and the invitation to which our baptism candidates will respond today is to be loved and to·love with all that is in them. That's what we are all called to, summed up in our gospel this morning and in recent months in our own Cathedral vision statement... making space for love with heart, mind and soul. 

Sometimes that love may be costly. Sometimes the body theology Paul offers, that connects us all to one another means that we are joined to people, good and bad, whom we would never have chosen. That's part of what our candidates are signing up to too. Through Baptism we are eternally connected with one another, each of us an essential part of the body of Christ. In a hard week like this, that may principally mean that we are conscious of the pain that others are carrying. If you carry that pain yourself, from hard and personal experience, please know t that the Safeguarding teams in both cathedral and diocese are here for you and will do all that we can to support you, to hear and act on your story. We are not a place that wants to shy away from hard truths. How can we?

If one member suffers, all suffer with it said Paul, and experience suggests he was right. The pain of victims must be the pain of the whole Church..as it is the pain of Christ himself

More, the call to love our neighbours as ourselves means there will be times when we must bear those burdens too....I think that the collective weight of grief and shame this past week will have been at least a contributory factor in Justin Welbys ḍecision to step down from his role as archbishop.,.. If we belong together, ẁe also bear responsibility for one another and that responsibility extends far beyond the Church. I think it might just be part of being human. 

We share the pain. We take responsibility for one another. We accept that there is actually no boundary to define Ẅho is my neighbour?...all are worthy of love and care and protection, especially when vulnerable.... and every single one of us needs to take our part in ensuring that Christ's great commandments of love are a constant ín our life together here, written into the very DNA of Southwark Cathedral. 

So this Safeguarding Sunday, while we ğive thanks for our Safeguarding officers Helen, Jill and Cherry, don't for a moment think that they are doing the work so you don't have to. The responsibility belongs to each one of us. If we can live our commitment to love with heart mind and soul, we will perforce take action to ensure that all can flourish. L, R, G, J, F... that's part of our commitment to you today]. Ẁe want to be a community whose life together helps you and all comers learn more of God's love. Like any family, we won't be perfect. From time to time one of us will fail to greater or lesser degree... There may be times when you do as well. Failure is part of being human.

But... the love for which we make space is more than human, as God offers God's own resources, God's very Spirit, to make a home with you today. That Spirit prays in us, weeps for our brokenness, enables us to love more and better day by day, so that each of us can gradually become a sign öf God's boundless love in a world which needs it so badly. 

With a calling like that, perhaps baptism isn't such a strange choice after all, for here God meets us with a promise to show us the path of life and fullness of joy that will never fade. 

That surely is a hope to hold onto. 

All Saints Sunday 3rd November 2024 at Southwark Cathedral

 When I first landed in parish ministry, I felt rather embarrassed that expediency demanded that we keep All Saints and All Souls alike on one day. It made me sad that I knew we’d not get a congregation of any size if I kept the feasts on their proper dates...but one year I noticed that the readings set for one service could equally well suit its companion, and the penny dropped. All Saints and All Souls are, you see, two sides of the same coin, festivals that belong together, and yes, even on the same Sunday.

 The Creed reminds us “I believe in the Communion of Saints” and that’s a wide term – encompassing both those whom we love but see no longer, and the official representatives of sanctity, revered and canonised by the Church. We all know about the latter category. They come in two gothic varieties, male, with a page-boy haircut, and female with long flowing tresses. Dressed in white, carrying some incongruous object or other – a wheel, a gridiron, a set of keys- they can be recognised above all by their haloes Two-dimensional characters, frozen in perfection, bright in their stained glass shrines… finished products from the beginning of their lives…but honestly, too remote and ethereal to be much use to anyone here today. What do they know of the struggles, hopes and fears we lesser mortals face

No. Stop right there, Kathryn!

That's arrant nonsense.  Really think of some of those whose holiness is celebrated by the Church. I doubt if any of them was sufficiently self-conscious to notice their own holiness at all...would laugh outright to hear themselves described in these terms. They were real...and like us, they struggled constantly with their own shortcomings. Take Peter, founding saint of the church…commissioned by Jesus to be the rock, on which the Church would stand. Peter the impulsive “have a go hero” who dived in where angels fear to tread, and shed blood among the olives in dark Gethsemane. Peter, the frightened, quick to deny his friend and master. Peter, who ran headlong to the tomb but couldn’t believe the evidence of his eyes on the morning of the Resurrection. I very much doubt if he thought himself holy!

Or Mary of Bethany…so emotional that she dared even to lay into Jesus for his neglect of her family. “lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died”, so blinded by her tears that she didn’t recognise her risen Lord until he called her by name. An example and inspiration? Apostle to the apostles? I’m sure she didn’t see it that way.

True saints are absolutely human...and we know that to be human is to carry within us the potential to bless the world by our life choices..There really aren’t two categories of people – those born to outstanding holiness and those heading at speed in the opposite direction. We feebly struggle – but that does not exclude us from coming to shine in glory too.

But how? It’s clearly not a question of donning a mask of false piety...

Thomas Merton wrote

“For me to be a saint means to be myself...Therefore the problem of sanctity and salvation is in fact the problem of finding out who I am and discovering my true self”.

In other words, if we live out our vocation to be ourselves, rather than attempting to be unsuccessful imitations of someone who APPEARS to be more holy, then –bingo!. One of the great Rabbis in the Jewish tradition told of imagining himself standing before God on judement day, to be asked not “Why weren’t you Moses? Or Why weren’t you Elijah?” but “Why weren’t you yourself..”

Because, of course, the glory of God is a human being fully alive...and THAT is what makes the saints, saints. They have given glory to God by being fully and wonderfully themselves, and in so doing have enabled God’s light to shine through them. Our calling too.

Here this morning we are celebrating two particular ministries...the Mothers Union who both model and support what it means to live as families in so many different ways...and our choristers, who offer their gifts to lead our worship. Much though I love and admire them, I have to admit I don’t think they’re perfect. But they are saints all the same – because they show us something of God. 

It’s as simple as that.

Think for a moment about your own personal saints. Not those whom we admire because their stories are part of our heritage of faith, but the everyday saints who would blush or guffaw at being described in that way...the friends and family who have loved and prayed for us, encouraged us, inspired us. For me, there’s an elderly couple who used to invite my toddlers to sit with them in church – giving me the space I so badly needed, to worship and to listen to God  There’s godfather whom I saw very seldom, but who, wonderfully, prayed for me each and every day of my life, and whom, together with a much-loved Bishop and mentor, surely continues to pray for me now that he has found his home in heaven. There’s my first director of music, who helped a teenage chorister recognise the beauty of God in the beauty of worship. When I first presided at the Eucharist, the day after my ordination as priest, I was completely bowled over by the overwhelming presence of that heavenly company….MY saints. - the people whom I’d known and loved, who had shaped my journey…and those who had died long before I was born, but whose words or deeds had inspired me. They were all there, standing beside me at the altar – and when I’m properly attentive, they are there still, week on week, singing with us, lending power and life to our song. Pause to listen for their voices yourself, this morning, and be thankful for our everyday saints – shining forever with God's love, just as we too are called to shine.

In the collect for All Saints' Day, we pray:

Almighty God, you have knit together your elect in one communion and fellowship in the mystical body of your Son Christ our Lord.

The mystical body...All sorts of men, women and children – ALL SOULS who have become All Saints – those whom we have loved long since and lost a while...people dealing with a myriad different issues, facing their own struggles in life and faith – and numbered among the saints not because of their talents or personalities but because of God's action in them and through them

And what is true for them holds good for us too.

Through Jesus' ministry, we have been knit in one communion, one fellowship, one Body of Christ. It is in Jesus that we find our true identity, and our passport to the Communion of Saints.

In other words, "For all the saints ..." is for us – you and me

We are part of one communion of saints with all the heroes of the faith, with our loved ones who have gone before us, with our friends on earth and friends above...In all our doubts and fears, in all our joys and certainties we are not for one moment alone. Together we are part of that great company in whom God's love shines...

I believe in the communion of saints

Flawed, imperfect people. People like us, through whom the Light of the World is content to shine. Ordinary, broken (for we need the cracks to let the light shine through) but transfigured by God's grace and God's glory.

 All are one in Thee, for all are thine.

Alleluia!  Amen. Thanks be to God

 

 

 

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..