Famous Last Words: Holy Tuesday "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit"

Famous Last Words. Tuesday

It was now about noon, and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon, for the sun stopped shining. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Jesus called out with a loud voice, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit When he had said this, he breathed his last.The centurion, seeing what had happened, praised God and said, “Surely this was a righteous man.” When all the people who had gathered to witness this sight saw what took place, they beat their breasts and went away. But all those who knew him, including the women who had followed him from Galilee, stood at a distance, watching these things.

Our journey through Christ’s last words is one that draws us into conversation with Him, and encourages us to do business with ourselves. We can place ourselves in the crowd, imagine the impact of those words on the bystanders who heard them first. We can wonder how we might have heard them then, what feelings they would have evoked.

And then we can lift those words up and carry them away to look at them more closely, allowing a new light to fall…These are messages from someone whom we love, which are given to us to reflect on here and now, to remember as we journey on, following His footsteps as best we can.

Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.

 Words we sing as part of this very office of Compline, words that speak to us of a laying down, of endings, of the final departure of the passing soul...perhaps we bow our heads and keep silence for a moment in the face of the enormity of the death of God

Only in extremis could we ever imagine letting go so completely of the very essence of ourselves.

Giving up our spirit.

In this age of self-fulfillment it’s almost unthinkable.

“Into your hands”

Letting go of our inmost being…

Isn’t it just too much to ask?

If I give up my spirit, who am I? What have I left?

Of course, it’s easier for Jesus.

Jesus, who told us to call God “Father”…whose relationship with God was one of unbroken love and trust, of complete unity placing himself with complete confidence in the everlasting arms.

In some ways he is handing himself over TO himself
He has known throughout his life and his ministry that he is God’s beloved Son…that he and the Father are One, that in his death and resurrection the Father will be glorified.
Such trust must have seemed woefully misplaced to those passing by in the chilling noontide dark to witness his agony, but even Jesus somehow holds on to the knowledge that his spirit is uniquely precious and beloved, and will be received with joy.

Father, into your hands…

Safe hands, then,  at least for Jesus…but for us? Could we pray this, perhaps, as a last resort. The King James version says that after these words Jesus “gave up the ghost”…a phrase that, for us, is apparently redolent of defeat and despair. We don’t like giving up anything, really.

But surely we are wrong

“Father, into your hands”…

What was true for Jesus is true for you and me

Those comforts (gifts of the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, conferring strength) that were part of Jesus’s own experience are available for us too.

Each of us is uniquely precious…God’s beloved child in whom he is well pleased.

Each of us will be received with joy.

Each of us has been touched by God’s breath, the Spirit, and our true being comes directly as gift from him, so that this act of handing over is simply returning responsibility to the only one who is ultimately able to sustain it.

Father, into your hands

So here is an invitation for us.

An invitation to give up the self-consciousness that seems to be an irrepressible part of being human, so that “into your hands” becomes not an end but a beginning.

An invitation to pray this prayer every day – and ask for God’s help to mean it.

It is a prayer to mark not just the transition from earthly to eternal life, nor even the ending of the day as we step out of consciousness and lay the burdens of wakefulness aside.

It is, rather, a way of marking, welcoming, and hallowing our real life with God, a way of ensuring that we remember, as Moses did so long ago

“All things come from you O Lord, and of your own do we give you”.
 
So this prayer of Christ’s from the cross can be the one with which we start each day. It is both a protection from the worst of ourselves (for if we are serious in our prayer, giving God free-rein over what makes us US, then we can expect that God will be equally serious in bringing about our transformation)… and a recognition that we can do little or nothing without God. Though we may struggle to learn it, to consciously place ourselves and our enterprises in God’s hands daily, to let go of our anxieties and entrust ourselves to him unreservedly at each and every moment, is indeed the route to life in all its fulness.

During Lent, some of us in the Cathedral have been reading Rowan Williams book Being Disciples together, and I was taken by his suggestion that holiness is that state in which someone is so intent on God, and on God’s presence in other people, that they become utterly un-self-conscious, lost in wonder, love and praise.

By this light the saints are those who can pray “Into your hands” and mean it...who are prepared to trust themselves completely to God, knowing that with him, to lose your life is to gain it.

Through God’s grace may this be true for us all

Father of mercies and God of love In his last hour your Son, our Saviour, committed his spirit into your hands.

Help us to do the same

To know that in your hands we are held secure

That there is no safer place to be.

So father receive us now, as we commit ourselves into your hands

Our souls and bodies

In life and in death

For time and for eternity

Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

 

 

 

Famous Last Words: Monday. Father, forgive them for they don’t know what they are doing

I hate Goodbyes. It doesn’t matter whether they are short-term as children return to university or visiting friends depart, or much more lasting, non-negotiable...goodbyes in the face of death, goodbyes that we know will have to content us til we too go home to God.

Such farewells are extraordinarily difficult, because we’re physical beings, rooted in our material world. We value the physical presence of those whom we love.

But if they must leave us, as ultimately they must, we cling to our memories of our final encounters...what we did together, what they said to us.

Last words have a power beyond the moment, as they will be replayed again and again in all the time of separation….so it is no wonder that Christians through the ages have focussed on the words that Jesus spoke from the cross, reading them again and again, finding messages that speak beyond the immediate circumstances of the first Good Friday.

These are messages spoken in the face of a terrible, painful death – yet even the bleakest is somehow comforting. As we hear them afresh this week, let’s allow them to draw us deeper into the heart of God’s love for us

And of all those famous last words, these are the ones that perhaps speak to us most loudly in this place, this Cathedral of reconciliation, where Provost Howard’s decision to offer “Father forgive” as his response to war and destruction sowed a seed of hope that continues to flower today.

We know these words with one missing...use them day after day.

We make much of the inclusive power of the omission….of the way that simply saying “Father forgive” brings us all to recognise our common culpability, our share in the habits of mind and heart that can be played out with such terrible results. We realise that when it comes to destructive patterns of behaviour there is no “them” and “us”…and there is a sort of liberation in that discovery. All have sinned and fallen short.

For all our longing to do better, to be our best selves for God, we fall over our own humanity again and again – and so we stand together in need of forgiveness for sins that are both corporate and personal.

But Jesus is in a different place. He is the only one who needs no forgiveness at all…For him, it makes perfect sense to pray “Father, forgive them”

With all our work in reconciliation, there is an underlying assumption that the wounded party needs to forgive, the guilty one to receive forgiveness...It’s a transaction in a currency that we can sometimes find it hard to master and it would be tempting, so often, to put our hands in our pockets and refuse what is being proffered.

I wonder how those words sounded to the Roman soldiers as they performed their familiar duties as executioners. Maybe they were indignant. How dare Jesus suggest that they didn’t know what they were doing, were not masters of their trade?

They knew what they were at well enough - except, of course, that they didn’t know the half of it.

What they saw was a defeated man, one who had attempted nothing by way of defence, whose friends had abandoned him, whose body was already broken before ever the work of crucifixion began.

They knew what they were doing with him - but surely none of them, following orders that day, had even an inkling that this Galilean carpenter was indeed guilty as charged….He WAS the King of the Jews, he WAS the Messiah, the anointed one, the Son of God…

And that reality was what put him fair and square in the place of execution.

There simply wasn’t enough room in the world for his kind of power and that of the ruling classes.

They were directly opposed...Here a servant king knelt to wash the dusty feet of his followers, there a Roman governor sat in judgement, given the power of life or death over those who came before him.

It was impossible that there should have been any other outcome.

This kind of self-emptying, unbounded love is simply too hard for us to grasp...because, deep down, we suspect that there is not REALLY enough of it to go round…

So we either reject it altogether, walking off into a bleak illusory independence that demands that we build barriers between ourselves and our neighbours…

or perhaps we try to earn God’s approval...to make him love us because we are delightful, charming, loveable people.

In both cases we miss the point.

God loves us not because of who we are or what we do...God loves us not in preference to anyone else….God loves us because God is wholly and eternally love.

God can do no other.

And so God reaches out to us constantly, through the beauty of creation that is pure gift, through the inspired wonder of life-changing music, great art, transformative words…

And God’s Son reaches out in this one overwhelming demonstration…

How much do I love you? THIS much…

“Father forgive them…”

Jesus speaks of us...we who long to follow, but too often fail

We whose hearts and minds are too often distracted by the wrong thing, who are too ready to choose a smaller, meaner way of being...We who keep silence when we see injustice meted out to the vulnerable, who refuse to let the pain of the world disturb and challenge us.

Jesus speaks of us - understanding us as we never manage to understand him…

Hear his words now, and take them to heart. Jesus, who knows you through and through, loves and forgives you, and invites you to be reconciled to him and to your neighbour.

Be kind to one another, tender hearted as God in Christ forgave you.

In God I trust and will not fear...

In God I trust and will not fear
for what can flesh do to me?

Psalm 56, appointed for Morning Prayer today, seemed painfully apposite in the aftermath of yesterday's events in Westminster. A few weeks ago, an Anti-Terrorism officer from the West Midlands police addressed all the cathedral staff, sharing with us the new ACT (action counters terrorism) strategy. It made for sobering listening...and gradually the realisation dawned that an ordinary day in an ordinary place could in a split-second be transformed into the stuff of nightmares...that being a run-of-the-mill cleric in a small Midlands city was no protection...that actually everyone, everyone is at risk in this new climate.

That doesn't mean that I emerged from the presentation convinced that any particular faith or nationality was suddenly "the enemy", or that I bought into a set of fear-filled responses that would have changed both who I am and how I live. That wasn't what the officer was after either. He simply wanted us all to understand that the threat was real, and that as things are at the moment there is a very real possibility of a random person using something as ubiquitous as a family saloon car to cause death and chaos....that there are many prepared to die for causes both real and, sometimes, imagined - and that with the best will and the best policing in the world you cannot keep everyone 100% safe in situations like that.
The presentation ended with a short video of a (staged) attack by an armed gunman on an office block. I found this completely terrifying. There was something about the little group of staff huddling in the basement of the offices that really hit home, and since then I've had a huge sense of how ordinary life is - until it suddenly becomes noteworthy because it is threatened by violence. 

So yesterday my first reaction was fear. Were either of my sons anywhere near Westminster? Was it suddenly more risky to be a baby barrister in London now than it had been on Monday? Could I actually cope with either of them working in the capital when such awful things could happen so randomly? I wanted to do that "mum thing" of gathering all my family in one place and hugging them. Often. 

That was yesterday. But today I've been reading so many responses on-line, seeing how again and again bloggers and tweeters have seen the choice of fear as a choice that allows terrorists to win. After all, a terrorist is so-called because he deploys fear and violence to achieve his own ends. But if we refuse to give in to that fear, if we focus not on the hurt that has been done but on the love that is represented by all those who rushed to help, then there is no victory for terrorism.
And this morning the psalmist reminded me that there are worse things that to be maimed or even killed...that while flesh can indeed harm flesh, to follow God's way of love is to resolve, day by day, to cast out fear and replace it with a trust that all will, ultimately be well. 

That's so easy for me to type when I am not the mother of a policeman whose family are forced to begin to believe in a life without him, nor the colleague of a teaching assistant who won't be there to help with Y5 tomorrow...I've not been touched by this in any direct way at all. The truth is that actually flesh can do a great deal to us, no matter how much we trust in God. And that's scary - particularly when you are fearful not so much for yourself, but for those whom you love.

But I spend my days in a place that bears visible scars of what can happen when we allow fear and hatred to have the upper hand, but also in a place that proclaims with all that is in it that we will not be shaped by the violence of the past. Rather we will use those wounds as launch-pad for a wider compassion founded on an understanding that we are all wounded, and all equally to blame for the wounds that others carry. 

I'm often proud of working at Coventry Cathedral, conscious of the power of that resolve to foreswear the easy division of humanity into "us" and "them", foe and friend, which inspired Provost Howard to have just two words written in the sanctuary of his ruined Cathedral.
Tonight, too, I know there is no "us" and "them". We have messed up collectively. We haven't loved enough. have pursued our own interests, as individuals and as nations, all too assiduously. 
And as a result, fear and hatred drove across London Bridge yesterday afternoon.

Father, forgive

Meanwhile, back in Bemerton*...

...George Herbert is trying his best to help us to understand the extraordinary thing that is prayer.
The Church's banquet, he says..., taking us simultaneously to both the Eucharistic feast, offered Sunday by Sunday and often in between...the meal which gives the Church her identity and her food for the journey...and to the heavenly banquet of which it is a foretaste. 
His sense of the coherence of Church Militant and Church Triumphant shines through so much of his work and here he pauses to reflect that prayer, this most basic of staples in our spiritual diet is something that gives us a glimpse of that proximity with God that will sustain us in heaven forever.
You cannot have a banquet on your own, so by using this image Herbert proclaims his conviction that prayer needs to be both personal and corporate...We gather around God's table together.
Of course, prayer is as essential to our spiritual well-being as any staple is to our physical health - but it is always more than this, - not just a drill to be practised but a lavish gift to celebrate, a high feast which deserves our best selves - though it is always available, always open to us, even  if we turn up in no state to really engage with it.
There is no fear at this banquet that any guest will be turned away for wearing the wrong clothes. Rather the host will provide outfits for us, kneel and wash our feet before we feast.

*Bemerton is the village close to Salisbury where Herbert served as parish priest for the three years of his ordained ministry leading up to his death. Do visit if you can. The church is tiny, plain and steeped in holiness

Learning from Eleanor - a sermon for Cathedral Evensong, Lent 3 Hosea 11

When Israel was a child, I loved him,and out of Egypt I called my son.

The more I* called them,

the more they went from me;*

they kept sacrificing to the Baals,

and offering incense to idols.

Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk,

I took them up in my* arms;

but they did not know that I healed them.

I led them with cords of human kindness,

with bands of love.

I was to them like those

who lift infants to their cheeks.*

I bent down to them and fed them.

How can I give you up, Ephraim?

How can I hand you over, O Israel?

My heart recoils within me;

my compassion grows warm and tender.

I will not execute my fierce anger;

I will not again destroy Ephraim;

for I am God and no mortal,

the Holy One in your midst,

and I will not come in wrath.*

Our readings this evening take us straight into the complex simplicity of humanity’s relationship with God…

Bear with me if that phrase, “complex simplicity” sounds like utter nonsense to you: I want to explore the thought that actually this central relationship, the thing for which we’re made, is ALOT less unfathomable than we seem to make it – and I’m thankful for the way God spoke through Hosea so many centuries ago in a way that makes perfect sense to me today.

You see, I’ve spent the past week really getting to know my tiny grand-daughter Eleanor, as I’ve been with her morning, noon and frequently night, as she has settled down into life in this world. I was short of grandparents myself – two having died many many years before my birth, and the remaining pair following them quite early in my childhood – so I was completely unprepared for the way Ellie has taken over my life by storm. In the same way that, 30 years ago, the arrival of my firstborn changed the landscape of my life forever, Eleanor has refashioned it all over again, so that my priorities have changed, my horizons shifted all because of that tiny scrap of humanity.

My rational brain knows that this is a common experience but my emotions are reeling, as I’m drenched with a tide of love that might well sweep me off my feet and land me, who knows where?

So what? This whole “revelling in grand-

parenthood” thing is becoming both self-indulgent and rather dull, I’m sure...(and for that I do apologise) – but the reason that I’m returning to it again and again in preaching right now is because it is helping me to understand a tiny bit of what it means for God to have the stake that God does in humanity.

Our Old Testament reading chronicles centuries of God’s love and humanity’s indifference...but while the idea that God cares isn’t exactly news, the idea of God as a perfect parent can cause a few problems for us, as struggling human beings. Most of us have at some point been a lot LESS than perfect in our behaviour to other people – whether as parents, children, colleagues, siblings, friends.

So the well-worn metaphor of God as loving father can be really uncomfortable, even painful, for those whose own experiences of the parent/child relationship have involved less love, more pain.

We’re so very very good, we humans, at messing up relationships, at causing hurt to people who just don’t deserve it...goodness, even JESUS seems to have done this as part of his adolescent spreading of wings. Even as Mary and Joseph heard the words that confirmed they hadn’t dreamed the extraordinary events of their son’s birth, those same words must have cut them to the quick.

“Didn’t you know I’d be in my Father’s house, about my father’s business.”

What price the family home in Nazareth, they must have wondered.

Whatever his special relationship with God, couldn’t Jesus be a little kinder, a tad more considerate to us?

We’ve been so worried – and now we have him back, but it seems that we are already losing him to a life that is beyond anything we might have dreamed of or imagined for that precious baby boy who once snuggled in our arms.

But – wasn’t that just a bit cruel, a little thoughtless?

In his focus on the divine, did he forget that he was human too?

And of course, the irony is that it will, surely, have been the human, proto-teenager in Jesus who shaped that conversation – not the God who knows all the secrets of our hearts, and all the wounds that we so carelessly inflict on one another, and on Godself too.

That’s the thing, you see.

By choosing to be involved in creation God makes God vulnerable to all the hurt that fallen humanity can perpetrate...and you can feel that hurt in every line of our reading from Hosea, just as you can feel the tenderness of God’s love in caring for the unthinking toddler nation, Israel.

“When Israel was a child I loved him….I took them up in my arms...I led them with cords of human kindness, with bands of love.”

That love is offered to us, too, although we are still very bad at recognising it, don’t realise that God is caring for us, even while she holds us in her arms.

Often people in some horrible situation will say to me “God doesn’t care, or can’t be real, because God has left me all alone to face this” - not seeing, amid their fear or sadness how often God arranges for God’s love and care to come through other people.

“They did not know that I healed them”

But our lack of response or recognition makes no difference.

God simply carries on loving us, because we are God’s children and the God who IS love can do no other.

How can I give you up, Ephraim?

How can I hand you over, O Israel?

My heart recoils within me;

my compassion grows warm and tender.

There really is no option.

God loves us because she loves us, because she loves us, because she loves us….

There is nothing we can possibly do to make her love us more.

There is nothing we can possibly do to make her love us less.

Each of us is Ioved, completely and fully, as if we were a precious only child, made for love and held in love at each moment of our lives.

Simple

At the beginning, though, I spoke of complex simplicity.

Being loved, of course, is what makes us able to love in return…but we are apt to find the staggering truth of God’s love too much for us to absorb or accept...and so we’ve hedged it round with rules and practices, with worthy doctrinal attempts to make sense of a mystery we are invited to enter into and live within…

That’s not wrong – of course it’s not. Our intellects are gifts from God to be used to make sense of our place in the world and the ways in which we might make real God’s desire that we would do justice, love mercy and walk humbly...and where there is much to be done, we can do better together, so the institutional complexities of the Church make sense too.

It’s not wrong – but sometimes it can cloud the issue and, worse still, deter others from daring to believe that God is interested in a relationship with them.

But at the core there’s something very very different.

“I was to them like those

who lift infants to their cheeks”

Says God to Israel.

I want my people to be that close...so that we can become all the world to one another, bound up for all time in a relationship of love that has no fear and no hurt in it whatsoever.

In a perfect world, with a perfect lectionary, we would have heard this evening not Psalm 132 but its immediate predecessor, psalm 131...and that’s where I would like to leave you – resting on the God who demands nothing from us but that we should accept God’s love, and rest in it all our days, as simply and trustingly as Eleanor slept last week nestling on my shoulder

“O Lord, my heart is not lifted up,

my eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things
too great and too marvelous for me.
2 But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
like a weaned child with its mother;
my soul is like the weaned child that is with me.[
like a weaned child with its mother;
my soul is like the weaned child that is with me.

[a]3 O Israel, hope in the Lord
from this time on and forevermore.

A thorny problem

A long time ago, in galaxy far far from here, I had this kind of idea that to be a priest meant to know about prayer...Clergy surely spent most of their time engaged in it, becoming experts as the years went on. For them, this mysterious business of opening ourselves daily to a relationship with God was second-nature, as easy and un-selfconscious as breathing.

Then I was ordained, and realised that the only advantage clergy have in this is the expectation laid on us to practice prayer regularly, through the framework of the Daily Office, the realisation that to share a "cure of souls" makes you as vulnerable and anxious about those souls as the parents of a new-born baby are about their infant, and that there is absolutely no possibility that we have a hope of doing or being all that is expected of us without consciously involving God at every single turn.

That doesn't mean we have it sorted...as a friend once remarked "If you want to make your vicar look wretchedly uncomfortable, as him about his prayer life"....and when I revisited this poem a little while after ordination, having spent so much time with it from an English Lit perspective years ago, I was encouraged that just as when Jesus is trying to pin down the Kingdom of God in terms that the crowd might gather he talks all round it ("it's a BIT like a treasure in the field...or a lost coin...or ...") so Herbert, now held up as a model priest in the best traditions of the parish system, gives us a range of equally diffuse metaphors when he speaks of prayer. I'll explore some of them over the next few days, all being well - but meanwhile, here's the whole poem.

Prayer the church's banquet, Angel's age,
God's breath in man returning to his birth,
The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,
The Christian plummet sounding heav'n and earth;

Engine against th' Almighty, sinner's tow'r,
Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,
The six-days world transposing in an hour,
A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear;

Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss,
Exalted manna, gladness of the best,
Heaven in ordinary, man well drest,
The milky way, the bird of Paradise,

Church-bells beyond the stars heard, the soul's blood,
The land of spices; something understood.

Where time touches eternity

E'en eternity's too short,
To extoll thee

I remember once reading about a holy man, - perhaps a monastic, though I'm not sure I ever knew, who had a picture in his room of angels, archangels and all the company of heaven praising God with all that was in them. Whenever he came through the door, there they were at full tilt...and he would greet the painting "What? STILL at it....?!"

That, I'm sure, is what we join in with as the Sanctus is sung during our Eucharists...a moment when the Church militant and the Church triumphant are united in one common purpose, that of worship.

“Jesus Christ, yesterday and today, the beginning and the ending, Alpha and Omega; all time belongs to him, and all ages...”

In the relationship between a time-bound humanity and an eternal God, it is not surprising that we humans need some markers, and a structure that enables us to keep hold of the knowledge that we journey through our days in company with the God from whom all time comes as gift. We need to “check in” with God at regular intervals through the day – and, since our own sense of appropriate gratitude or heartfelt dependence comes and goes, an objective system that ensures that this “check in” will happen has been part of liturgical practice from the earliest days. It's one way in which we maintain our connection to God – and as such is also part of his will for us. Hence the Daily Office - something to ensure that this necessary "bonding time" happens, whether we feel like it or not.

It has been a difficult day: "My soul magnifies the Lord"

It has been a wonderful day: "My soul magnifies the Lord".

Actually, today has been overwhelmingly dull: "My soul magnifies the Lord" even so.

But beyond that is the overwhelming truth that this is actually the point of it all.

"Life is for love. Time is only that we may find God" said Augustine...and finding God (or allowing God to find us), we then called to lose ourselves in wonder, love and praise.

And if that praise is to be true to the one to whom it is offered, then it will spill over to fill every second of time that we have both now and hereafter, for in heaven the praise never ends. 

Eternity may be too short, but that chorus of praise is the purpose of all creation - reflecting and celebrating the God who is its source.

This poor sort

" In my heart, though not in heaven, I can raise thee.
Small it is in this poor sort to enroll thee"

One of the first things I loved about the "Metaphysical" poets of the 17th century was the way they crashed contrasting ideas together (think about "Great little one", the beautiful words of Richard Crashaw from his poem "On the Incarnation" which Common Worship offers as an introduction to Midnight Mass) to produce something startling, beautiful and somehow more true than either component concept.
Sometimes they do it very clearly, as Crashaw does, - but sometimes that same process is present implicitly, as it is here.
"Small it is..."
Small, yes - because Godself is somehow focussed in that tiny space, a human heart...where God is yet all in all
But greater than our greatest imaginings, beyond our furthest reach...because - how can such things be? God enrolled, enlisted in the poor sort of human life and human praise.
And yet, extraordinarily, that is exactly where it pleases God to be.
God in our hearts, pitching a tent there with the same commitment to us that is shown above all in the Incarnation.
"Heaven and earth in little space. Res miranda"

Seven days a week

Sev’n whole dayes, not one in seven, I will praise thee. Last week, I had the pleasure (having got comprehensively lost en route!) of giving
an address to Shipston Deanery, as part of their Lent series. My brief was to work with their theme "Our life as God’s People: thinking of life as one holy offering" and focus on

"Life as worship. Praise in every event." As I thought and prayed, and prepared and wrote, Herbert was never far away. Here's part of what I said:

*******

I’ve always loved psalm 150…As a musician, I’ve spent time wondering just what that growing orchestra might sound like – would the lute and harp be completely lost as the cymbals, both loud and not QUITE a loud – got going…would the flautist want to go home if the trumpets praised too exuberantly

I’ve been carried along with the sense of mounting excitement, as I’m sure was the psalmist’s intention, til we reach that glorious conclusion

Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.

Everything. The whole of creation.

Including you and me.

And sometimes that is so easy and wonderful that we can really know with every fibre of our being that truth expressed in the Catechism,that the chief purpose of humanity is to glorify God…in both life and worship

And at others, I’m very conscious that mine might be a discordant voice, and not part of that great chorus at all.

I feel not unlike Isaiah, after he had had that amazing vision of God enthroned in glory

“Woe is me, for I am a person of unclean lips, and I dwell among a people of unclean lips”

I can’t contribute to this song of creation in praise of its maker.

I’m out of tune and out of step…simply because I’m a flawed, fallible human being.

Or worse still, I feel completely unlike singing, for it seems that my voice has been stifled by events in the world or in my own life, that for the moment I just don’t feel much like praising at all. Things are hard for me or for someone for whom I care – and I might manage to cry out for help….but to PRAISE God? That’s beyond my capabilities altogether.

Which is completely reasonable from a human viewpoint…but trickier when you remember that we’re not supposed to be working by those standards at all.

Rejoice in the Lord always, said Paul to the Philippians…and I’m sure you’ll all have come across those truly shining Christians who genuinely seem able to praise God in the most impossible circumstances. I find it very easy to reduce myself to a state of near panic by my own failure to achieve anything even faintly similar…though I’ve found things a bit more manageable since reflecting that we are not necessarily called to praise God FOR the hard times – but to keep alive that flame of hope that reflects the “measure of faith that God has assigned”, and keep on praising God for BEING God no matter what.

And I find it hugely comforting that it IS God who has given that gift of faith – so knows what I might or might not be capable of…and sees my longing to get things “right” for him, even as I fail once again.

So – it becomes far more manageable if I reflect that I’m not called to celebrate the situations that make me sad…but to celebrate that God remains God in all God’s amazing glory. Remember

“The chief purpose of humanity is to glorify God…

That’s what we are for, you and I.

We are made for praise and worship.

A long time ago I found myself embroiled in a group discussion about which style of worship in church was most edifying or helpful – or, if we’re honest, which one those in the conversation liked best…And one of the group decided that we needed a definition of worship – and came up with one that I found really helpful.

How about this?

"Worship is the giving of love, admiration, sacrifice and commitment to the thing that is the idea that your heart and soul longs for",and those elements of total commitment (present your bodies, a living sacrifice) and longing are central to the experience of Christian worship. And in Christian worship, the one for whom our heart and soul longs is of course God himself

The thing is that we tend, for the most part, to live deeply disordered lives...disordered, at least, where it REALLY matters.

While we may feel that we are quite secure from the breaking that first commandment “You shall have no other God before me” when we think in terms of idol worship – the truth for me is that I find it distressingly easy to put other things ahead of my relationship with God…Good things, of course. Things that absolutely come as gifts FROM God….but sometimes in our pleasure in the gift – family, friends, the beauties of nature – we may put those gifts ahead of the giver. It’s easily done. But it’s not the way things should be.

You see, if worship is all about "giving worth" to God then its role is to ensure that He is in His proper place, at the centre of all things. Though this may seem to be stating the obvious, through the centuries we have repeatedly lapsed into the idolatry of placing something else, something less, at the centre of lives and our

celebrations. So the words of the Te Deum

"We praise you O God, We acknowledge you to be the Lord"

are a more profound statement of worship than their familiarity through endless more or less joyous repetitions of Matins might suggest. Equally, the doxology (from Greek doxa (glory), is another reminder of God's supremacy in all things. When we say or sing it, we’re not doing it to make God feel better but to acknowledge the most powerful reality there is.

“Praise God, from whom all blessings flow.”

That’s what we’re for

We are called to "Ascribe to the Lord the glory of his name; worship the Lord in holy splendour"and in practising this we are freed from the egotism that puts “me” at the centre of my universe, and become more fully our true selves, who exist above all in relationship with God..

To be fully oneself, as God intends, is to be one who worships (for worship is the hallmark of a being fully alive in God ), but though it is our natural response to God's pre-existing generosity, his outpourings of the gifts of life, love, forgiveness and transformation, the act itself is only possible through his gifts. If worship is about the whole of life and how we live it, it must also be about our whole selves, bodies as much as minds and spirits,- for it is to be a complete outpouring of ourselves to God.And it absolutely is NOT limited to Sundays – though it matters to have times set apart to ensure that we really do attend to this defining business for which we were made.

“Seven whole days, not one in seven I shall praise thee”
In other words, a full time calling.

Seven whole days, yes?

Sermon for Lent 2 A

Did you sleep well last night? I hope so…Tossing and turning as the hours tick past can be a wretched experience.

I wonder if that’s what brought Nicodemus to Jesus…Perhaps he had been mulling over something he’d heard and just couldn’t sleep till he’d cleared it up.

Jesus had started a train of thought that had ended with a really burning question…it must have been pretty overwhelming to actually get him out of bed

If you had, as the song puts it “Just one question” to put to God’s Son, I wonder what you’d choose…what you most long to hear answered….

Think on that.

Maybe even try asking him, sometime?

Meanwhile, though, back to Nicodemus.

Perhaps he's afraid of what his friends and colleagues will say if he's seen approaching this controversial itinerant preacher. Hence his nocturnal ramblings. He’s chosen the cover of darkness, because actually he’s scared.

Scared of being caught showing an unhealthy interest in Jesus.

Scared that in engaging with him, he might be identified as one of the lunatic fringe.

After all, Nicodemus is a respected figure, part of the establishment with a reputation to protect, and a lot to lose. He’s not in the same position as that ragtag handful of Galilean boatmen who could just drop everything and go where Jesus lead. He has real status – and status and Christian discipleship are always uneasy companions.

It makes sense for Nicodemus to be anxious, even fearful.

Fearful as some of our brothers and sisters in the world church still are, fearful that faith might cost them their livelihoods, even their lives.

That’s not a kind of fear we are familiar with, enjoying the freedoms we do.

We’ve come through these doors in broad daylight – and though the world may seem to walk by our west screens we don’t feel the need to put up blackout curtains, lest we be seen at worship.

The worst we face, on the whole, is a kind of incredulity – that as sensible people we would choose to spend our time in chilly buildings talking to an imaginary friend.

That may be frustrating, and should make us wonder what we might do to share our faith in ways that actually speak of God’s living reality – but it doesn’t put us in fear of our lives.

I wonder whether, in comparable circumstances, you and I would have visited Jesus by night – indeed whether we’d have actually managed to leave home at all.

Are we engaged enough to leave our beds to meet with Jesus?

Would we risk our reputations for his sake?

Would we mind being identified as disciples, if there were any inherent risk?

Again, if you’re not sure how you’d answer that, it might be worth reflecting on.

Perhaps you could talk God, or to one of his friends whom you trust…

Because really, there doesn’t seem to be much point in turning up week by week, if this whole faith thing hasn’t yet taken you by storm, nor the wind of the Spirit swept you off your feet, planting you somewhere you neither chose nor expected…

That passion that forced Nicodemus from the safety of his home by night is a gift of the Spirit that transforms the way of faith from duty to joy – and it’s something to ask for, and to celebrate.

I think that’s where Jesus was going as the conversation unfolded. Here’s Nicodemus, immured in his current way of life…believing that he’s too old for a fresh start…. But still he comes, armed with his deductions, in search of some answers..

You see, he thinks he has worked it all out.

Jesus is undoubtedly a Rabbi sent specially by God.

That’s the only explanation for the signs and wonders that so many have witnessed.

In grasping that, Nicodemus is already half way there but recognising a heaven-sent teacher is not in itself enough to propel a man from his bed in the small hours. Something more is nagging away… but he doesn't know what,- he is just aware of that vague feeling of disquiet which is often a sign that God is trying to get through to us, if only we will stand still and listen. A restless searching is another of those gifts of faith to be cherished and engaged with

Nicodemus, of course, has come to listen, to be taught, but he must have found Jesus's response at best discouraging, - positively baffling i. Instead of being congratulated on his perception, - he does recognise the presence of God when he sees it,- he is told that he can't even SEE the kingdom, still less enter it.

He’s still way off course.

He needs to be born again.

"Ah yes, born again" we say, nodding sagely, for this has become a Christian cliche over the centuries, carrying with it all sorts of associations, helpful and otherwise.

It is hard to imagine how very strange the phrase sounded to Nicodemus – who is much too adult to consider a new start.

We’re confident that we know much better than him, with his literal vision of re-entering the womb

Actually, though, his confusion has much to say to us, if we really think about a new-born baby, something I’m very keen on doing at the moment, as the granny of Eleanor Grace, now three whole weeks old. She arrived, as do we all, naked, totally helpless, dependent upon others for food, warmth, love, everything she needs to help her live and thrive.

In the same way, Nicodemus and all who seek the kingdom must become totally vulnerable and helpless before God, accepting that without him we can do nothing, that it’s never about pleasing him with our best efforts, proving our faith with acts of loving service, however much we might want to earn God’s love.

But of course, we’d rather be loved and admired for what we can do…specially in this age of achievement, when we want to believe that we have conquered the world and everything in it. Accepting that, in matters of eternal significance, we are ultimately helpless without God isn’t easy.

It wasn’t easy for the cultured, educated Nicodemus either.

Total vulnerability never is.

We want to believe that we understand the world and have mastered its way, unlike a newborn baby who comes without intellectual or emotional baggage, with literally no pre-conceptions.

Nothing is impossible, impractical, foolish, beneath that hypnotic newborn gaze.

In contrast, when we find ourselves challenged by the Gospel, too often our response is limited by our ideas of what is actually sensible, or socially acceptable. It takes a lot of courage to dump all that we have learned about how the world works, even when we are becoming aware of the shortcomings of the system…but if we are starting from scratch, we can be more genuinely open to the radical implications of the gospel message.

Being born again might look a bit like that

Finally, a baby and its parents in those very first newborn days can become all the world to each other, giving and receiving absolute unconditional love. There are no distractions for the baby: she knows no-one else to love, and has no idea that her parents, brimming with good intentions, will ever let her down. Eleanor is loved by all her family simply because she is herself. And that, wonderfully, is the way God feels about us.

He can’t HELP loving us. Amazing! Incredible, but true.

That gift of love is offered to us, today and always, by the God Nicodemus yearned for day and night.

The God we meet in Word and Sacrament.

the God who loved the world – not just the good, not just the Jews, not even just the Christians - the God who loved the WORLD so much that he sent his only Son…